Suicide Vs. Free Speech

The Independent: Ministers Seek Curbs on Internet Suicide Sites for Teenagers

suicide = Very Bad Thing in the eyes of the general population
Everyone knows that.
I know where they're coming from.

But is it really OK to only allow one perspective on the Internet?

And what about this blog, or possibly mine- would they be deemed unsuitable because they're not specifically anti-suicide? I do not see the harm in these types of sites. And yet, something tells me Encyclopedia Dramatica would squirm around it, being a so-called satirical encyclopedia.

I guess what bothers me the most is that the Internet is one of the few places left to talk and write about issues that are normally taboo, and soon it may not be an option.

I also can't see it working reasonably well- they will find a way. Maybe the chat room or forum isn't specifically about suicide. Maybe it'll happen on sites like MySpace or Bebo, on which most of the users mean no harm. Maybe the people will converse through PM's on YouTube. It will happen as long as there's people online.

And my guess as to why some of those people signed into chat rooms? They wanted to ask for help. They wanted to know how to get out of mind-numbing depression. And what was the answer they got? They were told to kill themselves.

To Fly... To Fall

When I was little, before this whole mess began, I used to stand on a high bridge or on a balcony of a tall building and look down at the insect-sized people. I wondered what it'd be like to fall all that way- whether it'd be like flying and if my hair'd whip around.

Seven years later, I saw the empty space as a means to destroy. I imagined my body dashed into pieces on the pavement. I'd put my hands on the rail, knowing it all could be over in a few seconds, and asking myself if I could ever work up the courage to do it. But every time I turned away, only to feel instant remorse.

Yesterday, I watched the cars whizzing across the freeway. They were small, yes, but not as small as they were before. I touched the rail, and I knew I still had the power to swing myself over the edge, but I again declined. My life is a choice, and I have a strong gut feeling as to what's the right decision concerning it right now.

I continued on my walk.

What do YOU think?

"No, they don't. I know when I have problems! But, I am not selfish and absorbed. Part of being mentally messy (and please, no hate mail, you KNOW it's true) is about being selfish. People who are selfish don't really give a crap about self introspection. Therefore they don't know from crazy!"

-- Response to the question Do Crazy People Know They're Crazy? on Yahoo! Answers

We aren't asking specifically about narcissistic personality disorder, Sugar. From what I've read on blogs, those living with a mental illness seem to do quite a lot of self-introspection. How much do you do? And makes you arrive at that conclusion, a bad experience with one person, prehaps?

Ok, Mariah, that's quite enough ranting at the person.

Since, as far as I am able to tell, the majority of the readers of this blog would fall into the "mentally messy" category, what do you think about this opinion? Are the mentally interesting automatically somehow selfish? And are the selfish less self-introspective? If you disagree, what do you think pushed this Answerer to that conclusion?

Consumerism and Materialism Rant

Overheard conversation between a group of 13-14 year old girls:

Girl A: I NEED a new cell phone. My dad has a Razor- it's so embarassing!

Girl B: Which one are you going to get?

Girl A: I like those new ones with the keyboards. Or maybe an iPhone.

Girl C: Wait- you already have a phone?

Girl A: I don't use it much. Unless someone texts me. Which is like, totally useless since my stupid parents won't pay for it.

Girl C: Why? I have unlimited texting AND Internet.

Girl A: They think I should (makes air quotes with fingers) learn responsibility by paying for these things myself.

Girl B: But... if you don't text, you won't use the keyboard.

Girl A: I know. But they're so awesome!!!

Why does it seem to me that happiness and success are measured in material things? It bothers me that people can be that superficial.

Or maybe they're not. I'm bothered and it's not like I do much about it, so who's to say they're not the same?

Everyone wants to fit in. That's obvious. But in the way I think, someone's not really your friend if they suddenly exile you because you aren't wearing the "right" style of shoe. Or don't have a certain type of cell phone. Or are an epic failure because you turned down some OMG he's so hott dates.

And: if you aren't going to use it, don't buy it; that's ridiculous. Especially if you know that right from the start. This goes hand in hand with the teenagers who need the reduced lunch prices but are sporting hair highlights and brand-new iPods.

I also hate it when people feel obligated to give me a gift, even though I tell them it's not really nesecery or that I don't want anything (except some sanity, world peace, and a magical cure for migraine headaches).

Buy this. Buy that. Oh, look! A slightly better version! Best sale of the season! I get overwhelmed.

And whatever happened to meaningful conversations? It's just as topical. Aren't/isn't my new shoes/cell phone/boyfriend so awesome!

I just can't take being someone other than yourself just to pretend to fit in, and that conversation pushed me over the edge today.

Conversation II

Think of what you'll miss out on if you commit suicide!

Huh?

You'll never graduate high school, fall in love, have children- all that.

I knew what you meant. I just don't see how I'll be able to "miss out on" it if I'm dead.

Okay, maybe not miss out, but definitely never experience, anyhow.

Am I supposed to care? I don't now, and I certainly won't if I'm dead.

It's wonderful stuff.

The way I am, things aren't ever going to be wonderful. Good things don't find me in this state. I mean, I very well might drop out of school.

Slipping

I can't get around it mentally... physically. I don't know why, what triggered this.... That's what's so darned fusterating.

It hurts so much.

Again I am suctioned into the gloom.

There isn't much else I wish to write, or that I haven't written.

Why does this fucking have to happen?

And now I shall sign off for now with a very random picture:

Conversation From My Head

Suicide is a waste of life.

How is it a waste?

All the ideas and potential of an idividual are thrown away.

Well, you could also argue that you are saving the world from a possible terrorist.

Most people don't end up as terrorists. Besides, life is precious.

Why?

It was given to us by God; He didn't have to do it, you know.

That's just what a suicidal person wants. And I don't believe in a creator, so why should life be precious to me?

Wouldn't you be sad if everyone you knew murdered themselves?

Yes, unbearably so. But that doesn't make life sacred.

A Wonderful Day!

I don't know what the matter has been with me lately. For the last couple of weeks or so, I've been blowing people off for no reason. I just don't want to go do anything or see anyone. An ideal day, or all I feel like doing today, would be to sleep, drifting in and out of subconsciousness.



I called in sick to work today, and I have no desire to meet a friend at the movie theatre tonight as planned, or to go work out at the gym like I usually do every day. And it's not just limited to the "real world"- I've been closing online accounts like mad. But why? I can't say, really... I just want to.



I'm feeling empty and hollow, tears barely kept under the surface perpetually, again; the last time this happened was last September-October. And then again for a few days at the end of December. But that was right around Eva's birthday, so I think I know why that was. The September-October thing came straight out of the blue, like this. It was during that time I last self-injured.

I don't understand. Why now? Several projects I'd been working on had been going well, and I hadn't been missing Eva any more than usual. Damn, it's not August yet...

There's a world outside the window, but I don't care for it today.

It's days like this I realize how lonely I feel all the time. Of course, you're probably now thinking something along the lines of, Well, then why are you cancelling all your opportunities for social interactions? The answer is, of course, that I don't know.

Maybe it's because I don't really know any of those people. Oh, they're fun to chit-chat with or whatever, but I don't seen them understanding my present moodiness, except maybe the one I was going to go to the movies with. She probably would, but I wouldn't feel comfortable explaining to her.

Therein lies the problem. There's a good number of people, generally very nice and everything, whom I consider acquaintances, and there's only two who I call my friends (this includes the one who I was supposed to meet tonight.) Even though I've known most of these "acquaintances" for a year or more, I can't get past the "Hi, how are you?" stage to have meaningful conversations. Why? Because I'm afraid to. Afraid I don't know them well enough. Afraid they'll betray me. Afraid they'll think I'm a nutcase.

All the time, I see people becoming best friends practically overnight. And I stand, absolutely clueless as to how that happens.

I am not exactly appreciative of life at the moment.

I am fully aware I complain about YouTube excessively...

... so I will spare the rant today.

Revisting the Selfish Issue

A little over a month ago, I wrote a post asking whether suicide was selfish without coming to any real conclusions.

I still haven't, really. But there's an awful lot of views.

In a comment on the original post, CatatonicKid wrote that:

I think the 'selfish' idea comes out of, much of the time, an underlying assumption people have that really people don't want to die if it can possibly be avoided. So any reason not to do it should be reason enough to the mind of someone who isn't tied up in depression or grief. We're all selfish when we're in pain, is the thing. Every single one of us, it's human nature.

Well, suicide is a last resort. And if you think about it, it takes an awfully good Samaritan to patch other people up after something like a car accident before tending to their own wounds.

I remember reading a while ago- I'm not sure where, but I have a feeling it was on somebody's blog- that your life can be compared to a owning a business. You are the primary owner and make most of the descisions, but there's also stockholders who share it with you. Suddenly bailing on them isn't very nice.

On Suicide Survivor Letters, a blog where people send in letters saying what they never could say to family and friends lost to suicide, part of a letter titled "Justin" reads:

Damn you for not being as strong as you let on. Damn you for not leaning on me when you knew I was there for you. And damn you for being so selfish.

In the letter to Bret on the same website, someone wonders who's really the selfish one- the survivor or the dead:

Maybe it’s selfish of me to feel so sad. I know we didn’t have the chance to remain friends even after we split apart. But I never wished you harm, even through all the anger and tears, I never wanted this, I never dreamed you were capable of giving in.

And I’m angry, I’m angry and I’m hurt and I want you to be here so I can yell at you for being so selfish and not…reaching out. But you wouldn’t have, would you? You never would have really reached out and told anyone how lonely or hopeless you felt. Always so concerned about appearances, about being strong and being able to withstand anything.

I wonder if she's right, that it's the survivors who are selfish. I guess it comes down to who is hurting more- and there isn't a measure for that.

Here, people write responses to the same question. Some are well-thought out, but there are the ever-present illiterate jerks too.

Some of my favorite responses:

Suicide may be selfish, but to a suicidal person this means nothing. I mean, if a person kills himself/herself, he or she won't have to think about what they've done or deal with the people they've hurt. So yes, it is very selfish, but I'm not so sure how much a suicidal person is going to care about his or her image after he/she is already dead. That's the whole point of suicide. To escape thinking.

suicide at the point of commiting it, isn't selfish. to the person who toys with the idea of suicide it is merely an escape, often one they think is appropriate because they feel like no one cares. most of the time suicide is accompanied by the suicide note. this carefully worded letter usually is a spawn of guilt this person felt before going through with the act. in this sense we must realize that they identified suicide as an impacting event but never considers it selfish therefore leaving behind apologies, confessions, reasons, etc. personally, suicide is both selfish and "the only way". i do believe there are other ways to get through problems, and having been there myself know that there are people who can help. friends family doctors... suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

By making anothers pain about us are we being selfish?In stating that when one commits suicide and leaves us with all but pain and agony it is selfish.It was their choice. Yes. Their suicide will bring us pain but it is rediculous to make it all about what we feel. Their feelings obviously drove them to it and having done it we obviously did not help so why is it such a horrible thing. Maybe they lacked our support. Maybe we were being selfish by not providing it.If someone feels the need to commit, peoples feelings dont come into consideration. It is up to us to help ourselves. Nothing can be done for us.It is our race to run. Our choices should not be reworded to suit another.

What if we take the argument the other way round...take the example of euthanasia (considered as suicide by some). Is it selfish from the family members to insist on keeping the patient alive (against his will) even though he/she has no reasonable opportunity of completely recovering and leading a normal life ever again? In this case it can be argued that relatives are putting their emotions in the first place and ignoring the patient's. Is that selfish? I would say YES

And there's an open question on Yahoo!Answers... I think it's absurd how money got dragged into this one; welcome to the modern world, I suppose: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080710015549AAlE6ay

Conclusion for today: I still can't give this question a straight answer. And so can't a lot of people, apparently.

Zero

Zero
By-- Hawk Nelson

Your life dreams are shattered, now you're gone away
We've cried here for hours, and the hours turn to days
We know you regret this, leaving us here
With portraits and memories that we've held so dear

When I hear your name, it's not the same
No matter what they say, I'm not okay.
And we started at zero, and went different ways
Now we're all out here wasting away
And if we started at zero, then how did things change?
It seems like just yesterday we were the same

It's been 3 months since he left us
So far nothing's been the same
And my question without answer is, am I the one to blame?
He was such a good description of a favored future man
He spoke well of other people, and they said the same for him

When I hear your name, it's not the same
No matter what they say, I'm not okay.
And we started at zero, and went different ways.
Now we're all out here wasting away
And if we started at zero, then how did things change?
It seems like just yesterday we were the same

They say they're sorry, well what are they sorry for?
How can they possibly know what im going through?
I feel like no one's ever had to deal with the pain that I'm dealing with right now

Just 6 months ago, everything was fine, or so it seemed
What turn of events caused him to do downhill?
His parents are devastated, his girlfriend's depressed, what was he thinking?

And we started at zero, and went different ways.
Now we're all out here wasting away
And if we started at zero, then how did things change?
It seems like just yesterday we were the same

Aha!

The professor/chalk/god story isn't true, as confirmed on the USC website.
http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/dt/V136/N04/04-philoso.04c.html

They must've hated that.

Off-topic: How not to make an argument

This video infuriated me- not because it was trying to prove that God exists; everyone is entitled to his own beliefs- but the method it used to argue the case.

This is a shining example of a straw-man argument. While this device sometimes convincing, especially against the gullible, it carries no factual weight whatsoever.

In order to properly explain, and to avoid sounding like a hypocrite, I am going to have to assume two things:

1. That this actually happened, which I doubt. Educators aren't supposed to force their religious beliefs on students, and this professor supposedly worked at a prestigious university.

2. That a god exists.

So, the professor says that God could stop the chalk from shattering on the floor. The first thing that hits my mind is Why should He? Why should God care; He is probably more concerned with starving children in Africa at the moment, and why would He listen to a non-believer anyway?

Enter the straw-man. If the chalk breaks, God doesn't exist. The professor could just as easily say, "I am going to ask God to turn my hair purple on the count of three. If my hair doesn't turn purple, God doesn't exist." That sounds a lot more preposterous, doesn't it? But the point is, it's the same thing. And we know perfectly well that it probably won't happen. (Try it. I know you're dying to.)

You can't tell me other students didn't pray before and didn't believe after that class. Many students didn't want the chalk to break. And yet, it only stayed intact one time.

It's very possible that the chalk slipped. The professor was angry, after all, and chalk is a rather slippery substance. If instead the professer had used the example I gave, and his hair turned purple, I wouldn't know quite what to think, as peoples' hair doesn't spontanously turn unnatural colors- it eliminates the chance of error. And why did God choose to listen to that one student and not the others?

Towards the end of the video, it says that there are two things you can do: to ignore it, or to pass it along to your friends to restore their faith. I chose the unwritten third- I chose to think.

The Urge to End It All-- New York Times Magazine

Yesterday, New York Times Magazine published an article on their website which attempts to get to the bottom of who attempts suicide, who succeeds, and why and how that is. I found the entire article quite interesting, but there are a few sections that stood out to me in particular.

For generations, the people of Britain heated their homes and fueled their
stoves with coal gas. While plentiful and cheap, coal-derived gas could also
be
deadly; in its unburned form, it released very high levels of carbon
monoxide, and an open valve or a leak in a closed space could induce
asphyxiation in a matter of minutes. This extreme toxicity also made it a
preferred method of suicide. “Sticking one’s head in the oven” became so
common
in Britain that by the late 1950s it accounted for some 2,500
suicides a year,
almost half the nation’s total.

Those numbers began dropping over the next
decade as the British
government embarked on a program to phase out coal gas in
favor of the much
cleaner natural gas. By the early 1970s, the amount of carbon
monoxide
running through domestic gas lines had been reduced to nearly zero.
During
those same years, Britain’s national suicide rate dropped by nearly a
third,
and it has remained close to that reduced level ever since.

How can
this be? After all, if the impulse to suicide is primarily
rooted in mental
illness and that illness goes untreated, how does merely
closing off one means
of self-destruction have any lasting effect? At least
a partial answer is that
many of those Britons who asphyxiated themselves
did so impulsively. In a moment
of deep despair or rage or sadness, they
turned to what was easy and quick and
deadly — “the execution chamber in
everyone’s kitchen,” as one psychologist
described it — and that instrument
allowed little time for second thoughts.
Remove it, and the process slowed
down; it allowed time for the dark passion to
pass.

The article then gives another example of two bridges only a few feet away, but the one with a slightly lower rail accounted for a greatly larger number of suicides than the bridge which would take a bit more time and effort to jump off- key elements in an impulse suicide, the article argues- and it also tells why people just don't go off the other one.

“At the risk of stating the obvious,” Seiden said, “people who attempt
suicide aren’t thinking clearly. They might have a Plan A, but there’s no Plan
B. They get fixated. They don’t say, ‘Well, I can’t jump, so now I’m going to go
shoot myself.’ And that fixation extends to whatever method they’ve chosen. They
decide they’re going to jump off a particular spot on a particular bridge, or
maybe they decide that when they get there, but if they discover the bridge is
closed for renovations or the railing is higher than they thought, most of them
don’t look around for another place to do it. They just retreat.”

Seiden cited a particularly striking example of this, a young man he
interviewed over the course of his Golden Gate research. The man was grabbed on
the eastern promenade of the bridge after passers-by noticed him pacing and
growing increasingly despondent. The reason? He had picked out a spot on the
western promenade that he wanted to jump from, but separated by six lanes of
traffic, he was afraid of getting hit by a car on his way there.

“Crazy, huh?” Seiden chuckled. “But he recognized it. When he told me
the story, we both laughed about it.”

Actually, I first took the reason of not getting hit by a car to mean that he didn't want to end up hurt and unable to jump, thus prolonging his life. It does make sense, in an odd sort of way, but I would've always assumed differently. Especially when it later says that people who are considered at high-risk of suicide generally choose less lethal methods such as OD'ing than those who commit suicide without a history of a mental illness or previous suicide attempt. So the at-risk is, in a way, " safer than one acting in the heat of the moment — at least 40 times safer in the case of someone opting for an overdose of pills over shooting himself. "

Beyond sheer lethality, however, what makes gun suicide attempts so
resistant to traditional psychological suicide-prevention protocols is the high
degree of impulsivity that often accompanies them. In a 1985 study of 30 people
who had survived self-inflicted gunshot wounds, more than half reported having
had suicidal thoughts for less than 24 hours, and none of the 30 had written
suicide notes. This tendency toward impulsivity is especially common among young
people — and not only with gun suicides. In a 2001 University
of Houston study of 153 survivors of nearly lethal attempts between the ages
of 13 and 34, only 13 percent reported having contemplated their act for eight
hours or longer. To the contrary, 70 percent set the interval between deciding
to kill themselves and acting at less than an hour, including an astonishing 24
percent who pegged the interval at less than five minutes.

When I first read this paragraph, I was just shocked. Less than five minutes. The time it took me to read two paragraphs of this article. Ages 13-34. No suicide note. Eva. Maybe she really was fine the last time we spoke. I don't know what to think.

As with every other survivor of a near-lethal suicide attempt that I spoke
with, Debbie told her story with an almost eerie poise. There was one moment,
though, at which she suddenly fell silent, where words failed her.


“You know, I hear myself describing all this,” she said, “but it seems
completely surreal. I feel like I’m describing a movie I saw or a book I read.
Even sitting here now and looking at that” — she motioned to her cane — “it’s
hard to believe this is something I actually did.”


I suspected part of her incredulity stemmed from the recentness of the
event; it had been less than three years. But perhaps it was also rooted in
something more profound. What united all the survivors I spoke with was a sense
of having been so utterly transformed by their experiences that, in essence,
they had become different people.


In California, I met with Ken Baldwin, a schoolteacher who, in the
grips of a deep depression 22 years ago, leapt from the Golden Gate
Bridge.


“I’ve had two lives,” Baldwin said. “That’s the only way I’ve ever been
able to describe it. Up to the day I jumped, that was one life, and now this is
another. I’m not so much a changed man as a completely different one, and that’s
why it’s so hard to even recollect what I was like back then, what I was
thinking.”

I feel this too. I was not so close to death as Debbie and Ken, but I still do. I've split myself in two: The Before and The After. Anything that happened pre-suicide attempt happened to the Other Mariah, anything after happened to me. I am rooted to the past and yet so distant from it at the same time. As for the "eerie poise," maybe this is what I call my ability to only write about my own experiences the same way I would summarize Jack and the Beanstalk.

Dear Eva

Dear [Eva],
I guess you could say that this letter has been nearly two years in the making. I'm not going to get angry this time. All this is going to be is a letter to an old friend.

I don't know if you'd recognize me these days. I'm not just older, (and assumingly, more mature!) I'm also different. Hardened, I guess. Or maybe I'm a dreamer now grounded.

Do you remember the summer we were eleven and you and your mom and I went to the Badlands in South Dakota? Even though we all got slightly dehydrated and no one could figure out how to put up the tent, I still consider that trip the best few days of my life. Sometimes it's the little calamities like that make it all the more special.

The sky is a beautiful deep blue today, the same hue that it was the day you left. Sometimes I think back to that day and wonder why you chose it. It's not as if it was remarkable in any way; nothing noteworthy even in the weeks previous. What was it that pushed you over the edge, [Eva]?

I do still feel guilty for not being there that summer; maybe something happened then that I would've noticed. And then you could still be here, instead of wherever you are now.

[Eva], I'm rambling. It's not that I don't have much to say, quite the contrary, but I can't put the wild emotions and racing thoughts into mere words. Broadcasting my thoughts to you, if it were possible, would be so much easier.

I haven't seen your mom in the same amount of time I haven't seen you. She moved to Alberta, Canada, to be with your grandparents. She took your remains with her, if I remember correctly. Funny that I don't know your final resting place. I guess I could look it up online, but it wouldn't be of much use. I wish your mom and I had kept in touch. She was a mother to me too.

It's strange, [Eva]. I should be used to this by now, but a few weeks ago, when I learned I had gotten the coaching job, my first impulse was to call you. Will I become accustomed to living without you as the years fly by, or will I always feel that that there's something missing, and as hard as I may search, I can never find it? In which case, the years might not fly, but instead crawl.

I see a road stretched out ahead; it is winding and endless. Anyone's guess is good as to where it goes. I, and I always assumed you, thought our lives were clear-cut, but now I realize it was never so. The future isn't set in stone; it is more like a footprint on the beach: it shifts and crumbles, and may disappear all together, but it is easily re-imprinted.

I loved you. No, I take that back. I love you. Still, even after everything. And I have a feeling it's not going to change anytime soon- maybe not ever. Is that why I can't seem to move on? Sometimes, I think, I'm waiting for you to call or to hear the ping that you've IM'd me. I know it'll happen the day pigs fly, but still, I catch myself.

News? You want a summery of the last two years? [long section of stuff that happened after the suicide attempt that I don't yet feel comfortable putting online]

Well, that's me- what, you want to know about the rest of my family too? They haven't changed that much:
Mom still burns everything.
Dad still screams at everyone constantly.
Naomi still routinely paints her toenails that awful hot pink.
Hayden is still getting beat up in football.
Martin and his fandom are still going strong.
Ben continues to be a cute, but evil, little (but now slightly larger) pest a good portion of the time.

"Have I said too much?/ There's nothing more I can think of to say to you..."

Goodbye, [Eva].

Love,
Mariah

A Different Approach?

Something I don't understand: On websites about suicide and informational videos, there is always a message akin to If you are suicidal or considering suicide, IMMEDIATELY call 1-800-SUICIDE!

If someone is so gone she is going to attempt suicide, then she isn't going to call for help. Why would she? She wants to die, and doesn't want anyone to get in her way.

I guess this might be based on the assumption that suicidal people don't really want to die; I don't think that assumption is true, or didn't seem to me at least in my suicidal days. If I had seen that number on the Internet, I wouldn't have called it.

There needs to be a different approach to this, but I can't say what it is. Perhaps education about depression, SI, and suicidal thoughts provided in public education? Don't think it'd do much, but it might relieve some stigma...

Exploding Cartoon Pigs

Today I stumbled upon an article on a Christian news site titled "When Cartoons Tell Kids to Die" Naturally, I was intrigued.

The main focus of the article is an online quiz/game put out by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which asks 11 questions relating to carbon consumption, CO2 emissions, and your daily habits (play the game here.) Called Prof. Schinpinkee's Greenhouse Calculator, it features a cartoon dog wearing a lab coat, making the assumption easy that it is meant for children, as demonstrated in the CBN article.

I beg to differ. Many of the questions are not related to a child's life whatsoever, for example, in question #2, it asks how much of your car fuel is paid by your employer.

So the interactive web feature may be geared for adults, but does that really make it any less disturbing? It calls people pigs, and, according to them, the average Aussie has used up his "share of the Earth" and "should die" by the time he is twenty years old. The results are shown to a graphic of an exploding pig.

Yes, I get it: ride the bike more, accidentally leave the lights on less. I understand that many people could take simple steps in their lives to preserve the Earth for the future. But telling people they should be dead? Seems a bit extreme to me.

Oh, and my results: "At this rate, you could live forever!"

Simply Mariah

Written on July 10th, 2004

I am Mariah
Simply Mariah
Nothing more
I have no
Great title nor
Amazing skill
I am Mariah
Simply Mariah

My parents aren't
Rich and famous
My siblings are
Just, well, siblings
We live in
Boring suburbia
I am Mariah
Simply Mariah

What marks me as
Different from others
My appearance
Isn't extraordinary
Untidy hair
Goodwill clothes
I am Mariah
Simply Mariah

What would I give
To be a somebody
A somebody
Everyone knows
A somebody
Who is unique
But I am Mariah
Simply Mariah

Yet Simply Mariah
Isn't all that bad
Sometimes it's better
To blend in and
Not have a face
Still I wish that
I wasn't Mariah
Simply Mariah

I have changed quite a lot in four years. I long for the old anonymity and carefree, easygoing life I expirienced at twelve. On the other hand, my poetry-writing tecniques and skill level haven't progressed much, which bothers me more than a little. I still like the poem though.

Eek

After my internet was down for most of today, I finally got on and noticed that the total number of hits on this blog had nearly doubled since this morning.

What was so interesting?

The short blurb I wrote about Ruslana Korshunova.

It's not that great of a post, people. I figured others would be saying intelligent things elsewhere and my opinions would be redundant.

Fox News and Ruslana Korshunova

I'm getting a bit fed up with the media.

Last night Fox News aired a story about the suicide of the model Ruslana Korshunova.

That's OK.

However, it contained video footage of Ruslana's dead and bloodied face on the pavement twice for over thirty seconds each. Not the body bag, which is what is normally shown. Her face.

Suicide is not a publicity stunt; it is a tragic event not to be used to boost ratings. The gory face of a homicide victim would never be broadcasted, as that would be disrespectful to the victim and disturbing to the general public, but yet somehow this was justified.

It makes me very sad.

After debating whether I should post a link to a video or not, I have decided I will, but with all due respect and warning.
http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=e3cc35cd-2d1b-4c84-951f-72b0e8de4776