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| FetusTV: It's never too early |
| Posted: Tuesday, May 1, 2007 |
Among the hundreds of things that irk me about the current Bush/Cheney war currently showing overseas, is the way that our media is serving us a body count as it happens.
Every few days my emailed news headlines include cheery messages like "9 More Troops Killed by Roadside Bomb" or "Local Soldier Dies in Iraq."
These missives are peppered in with other death notices regarding people all around the world -- those who have perished in storms, auto accidents and suicides as well as dramatic deaths like being swept out to sea by rogue waves, or taken out by a lunatic rifleman.
But the war-death count, a few here, a few there, I could do without. At the very least I would like to be able to set my war-death announcement preferences to monthly.
My personal intrigue with death was originally sparked by a series of films shown to my high school driver's education class. You know the sort -- super-gory with dramatic narration and equally dramatic titles such as Red Asphalt, Mechanized Death, Wheels of Tragedy and a class favorite, The Last Prom.
Real-life footage of that sort was not readily available again until we brought home our first computer. I would spend ridiculous amounts of time at websites devoted to crime scenes past and present.
The deaths would be neatly categorized and the supply seemingly unending. I found the photos extremely educational.
"So that's what it looks like when you cut yourself in half with a bandsaw." I would think to myself. I thought about how the highway safety films viewed in driver's ed class were meant to deter us from unsafe driving. Maybe the crime scene photos of suicides would prevent the despondent from unnecessarily offing themselves.
Once a friend and I were taken on a secret tour of a large San Francisco morgue. From street level, one would never suspect the vastness of the place.
While the casket showroom and chapels were above ground, the embalming and body work rooms were two and three levels below. A person could be picking out a final resting bed for Grandpa directly above where the corpses-in-waiting were being infused with embalming fluid.
While a group of people were crying their eyes out in the chapel above, the eyes of the dead were slathered with Vaseline down below.
I was emotionally unfazed with the viewing of these real dead bodies, just as I was when I was death-surfing online. Then I became pregnant, and the concept and notion of life and death changed. A lot.
I was no longer drawn to images of death. I had no interest or curiosity to see the damage done by the world's Bundys, Dahmers and Gacys.
I would instead watch soppy programs on TV like A Baby Story and tear up every time a wet little head emerged from a mother's body. I would particularly lose it if the dad started to cry.
"I'm going to have one of those soon." I would think, as I felt my fetal daughter's elbow cross from one side of my womb to the other. Death was the very last thing I wanted to think about or see.
And that is pretty much where I am at these days, and why I am unsettled by the daily reports of the 3 who died yesterday, or the 7 who perished the day before.
I must admit though, that every few months I sneak a quick peek at LiveLeak.com, the one and only icky website that I still view, and wonder if one day my dead self might end up on one of those Visions of Death websites.
I just hope that I die with all of my make-up on and that the police photographer uses a decent flash.
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