Tsunami Relief

Hello, Everybody--nice seeing you again.
The WFMU post-holiday party was last night, and I wish I could tell you all about which DJ showed up dressed as the Baby New Year in a diaper, and who spent the whole evening riding up and down in the elevator drinking Jagermeister, and what Program Director Brian did on the pony ride--but unfortunately I wasn’t there. I don’t go to parties very often. Usually I tell people that parties make me uncomfortable because of my face-blindness, which is true, but really it’s just that I’m married. The main reason I ever went to parties in the past was to get drunk enough to get over my natural aversion to having sex with another person, but of course that’s all over once you get married. So I don’t expect I’ll ever go to a party ever again in my life. Why should I?
I had to go to my dayjob’s office Christmas party this year, but I don’t think that counts because it was more like work than a party per se. I did get kind of drunk, but not enough to have sex with any of those people. The nice lady from accounting who always tries to get people to do the electric slide with her tried to get me to dance, but I told her I couldn’t because there wasn’t any pole.
I have no idea what the people at my dayjob think of me. A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us ordered in Chinese food and we were eating lunch together in the little conference room, and everyone was talking about the tsunami and what they could do to help those poor people. I said I’d already written a check to the Islamic Circle of North America, which is a Muslim charity that’s taking donations for tsunami relief. There could not have been a more shocked silence if I had crawled up on the conference table and emitted a big poo in front of everyone. I was kind of surprised at their reaction, and I’m still not sure I understand it.
On Tuesday, December 28, two days after the tsunami, the Daily News ran a box on page 3 headed “Here’s How You Can Help.” It listed a few agencies--AmeriCares, Save the Children, and the Islamic Circle of North America. It made sense to me that religious groups with some local presence would have the best chance of distributing aid, and Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world. But since that day I haven’t seen another mention of Islamic aid groups anywhere. I’ve checked newspapers and online, and they all list a variety of agencies, but not any Muslim ones. Actually, they usually list 1 or 2 Jewish agencies, which strikes me as a little odd because I don’t think the tidal wave hit any areas with large Jewish populations. But anyway, I can’t think of any good reason why Muslim aid organizations wouldn’t be listed--just bad ones. Like there was a survey recently that found 44% of Americans think the federal government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans.
Okay, here’s something even scarier: Last week there was a newspaper story that said Richard Lugar, the U.S. Senator from Indiana, was on a TV show called “Fox News Sunday” on New Year’s Day, and he said on that show that he thought it was a bad idea for the federal government to lock up terror suspects FOR LIFE without giving them a chance to defend themselves in court. But it turns out there wouldn’t be any way to take them to court because the suspects they want to lock up FOR LIFE are the ones they don’t have enough evidence to prosecute. And apparently Colin Powell was on the TV show “Meet the Press” the same day, and he was asked about the federal govenment’s plan to build a 200-bed “super-maximum-security” prison for these alleged terror *suspects,* and he said he didn’t have enough facts to talk about it, in spite of his own people being involved in the planning. So there’s a plan to put people in prison FOR LIFE because there’s not enough evidence to bring charges against them--What country are we living in? Have you even heard about this? ‘Cause I hadn’t. But, like everyone else, all I know is what I read on the Internet.
Anyway, D.J. Kelly and I are going to be in a movie that’s going to be shot at FMU this week, so maybe I can write about that next Sunday.
Thanks for reading my blog entry, and may God bless.
-Bronwyn C.