Pilot's Log

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of November 1, 2012

Zombies used to be terrifying. But then they became a featured motif in pop culture, often in humorous contexts, and now there's a growing acceptance and even affection for them. Here's the view of Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide: "Eventually rock and roll morphs from Sid Vicious to the Jonas Brothers. Same thing with vampires: We went from Dracula to Twilight to make them peachy and G-rated. I guarantee you someone is working on a way to take the fear out of zombies and market them to children." Your assignment, Sagittarius, is to do to your personal fears what the entertainment industry has done to zombies: Turn them into amusing caricatures that don't trouble you so much. For example, visualize an adversary singing a duet with Justin Bieber.

ICBMs loaded with My Little Pony toys? Neo-Nazis on the way to the Ethnic Cleansing derailed by a special on Deep-Fried Bacon Triple Angus Burgers at the Drive-In? A Sino-Viet-Japanese-Korean idol singer contest with Gangam Style dancing?

I don't think it's working.

Hey.

Just read http://www.acig.org 's first article about what historians are beginning the call the "First African War", which spun out of the civil war and genocide in Rwanda and the downfall of the Zaire regime thereafter. The chaos and brutality of this conflict--which probably didn't even resolve one political issue in Africa--reads like a bizarre role-playing game run. If thousands of lives weren't lost over it it might even seem pathetically comical.

And we didn't care because it was happening while we were licking our wounds--and then seeking vengeance--over the Al-Qaida attacks of 2001. Just one more instance of apathy from an America that is still hopelessly ignorant about that part of the world...at best.

FP