My first use of "asshat" is plural!
The wildfires in California have my attention, with family, friends and professional interests all (to fall back on an unfortunate phrase) in the line of fire. I'm out there a couple of times a year, having last been in June and soon to go again. If not for the typical Southern California boogie-woogie (fires, quakes, mudslides, weirdos, brown air, overpriced housing, traffic, population density... you know the drill) I'd probably find it more convenient to live out there. But I discovered that traveling is easy, so I don't need to actually move there and contribute to their problems, and my quality of life is just fine.

Yet I'm very familiar with some of those places, and it's all either burned up, about to be, or at least within uncomfortably close view of smoke and flames. People out there expect some of this to happen, what with the ecosystem, the "urban/wildland interface," the sorts of things you used to see Gage and DeSoto and the rest of Squad 51 tackle singlehandedly every week.

What they don't expect, or much want to think about, is folk like the pair of asshats driving down a highway tossing books of lit matches out the window of their van into the brush. Two cockroaches, listening to all the media coverage about the winds picking up, and the fire danger, and the lack of funding for forest management and wildfire control. Two brain surgeons who get boners from the sound of sirens and the sight of fire trucks.

I've been desperately seeking information about what's going on out there, but our national news networks haven't been much on the case. Today, they're getting misty-eyed on CNN about the multi-million dollar homes in Scripps Ranch and Chatsworth that are burned up.

Pardon me for being egalitarian, because I do believe a loss is a loss no matter what the scale or economic value. But whole neighborhoods of ordinary Centex and K&B dwellings got scorched, along with older bungalows inhabited by people who perhaps clean and fix those big homes, are paid shit for it, and can't afford adequate fire insurance. Didn't see much of fuck-all about that on the networks. Can we stop being so elitist? I'm willing to bet those people living on the ocean have the means to rebuild, if not to the exact scale, certainly to a level of comfort most can't reach on the first try.

Tragedy is a true "equal opportunity," isn't it? About 5,000 homes so far, a billion-with-a-B dollars worth of property damage, 15 deaths, hundreds of thousands of lives disrupted. But when the flames get to the estates, then it's a big deal, somehow more important today than Saturday, when it was already a major deal, but only affecting "merely ordinary" people.

And a sideshow to the whole thing... we also get to see governor-elect Arnold out and about. Watch that man carefully. He's about to get a wake-up call. Gray Davis (aka "Governor Gumby") will have the last laugh, as will many perceptive others, when Arnold discovers that government and politics aren't as responsive or coddling as the motion picture business. Arnold's headed to Washington. Wow. The Terminator goes to demand money, much as he allegedly demanded to fondle boobs on the set.

We'll see how that works out.

Meanwhile, I hope they can get a handle on these fires soon, that people out there are spared further misery and loss, that they hunt those firebug fuckers down, and the news organizations stop pandering to the top sliver of the demographic. 11:58:07 PM    comment []trackback []