-We had our very own first school shooting here in Greece, and I’ve been doing my best to avoid TV coverage of it and sticking to newspapers/news blogs, because the asshole TV journalists are making me upset in ways that are entirely unrelated to the sad event. From drawing flimsy connections between this and anti-government violence (NO. Just…no. These were obviously the actions of a mentally disturbed young man, not some political protest act) to continuing the frustrating trend towards American news-style infotainment by pointing out that the guy wore a lot of black (!) and listened to that ‘rock-goth’ music. *headdesk* HAAAAATE. We don’t have a Faux News equivalent yet, but at this rate, we’ll get there.

-On a much lighter note, the marry/shag/throw off cliff meme: skuf gave me Tom Welling, Eliza Dushku and Kevin Smith. ( Read more... ) If you want to play, comment and I’ll give you three names.

Season’s Greetings from Greece
(Now that’s how you wage “war on Christmas”! Bill O’Reilly, take note.)

Some of you might have heard about Greece basically becoming riot central, following the murder of a 15-year-old boy by police on Saturday (naturally, the root of the riots and discontent is deeper and a hell of a lot more complex, but I won’t bore you with my ramblings on it: to sum it up, corrupt government, even more corrupt cops, an educational crisis and oh yes, that pesky economy).

I figured I’d do a post following a couple of messages to clarify I’m fine: yes, I tend to go out in the very area the riots originated. No, I haven’t been there the last couple of days, for obvious reasons. Some of the worst rioting damage reached shops literally five minutes from where I live, but I’m doing fine. Pretty calm about it all, said calm further reinforced by the media monkeys and their dramatics and my poor mum calling me from abroad every two hours to at turns remind me not to go out in the center and yell at me to switch on the news.

I keep my TV watching to a bare minimum. I’m at turns angry at a bunch of professional rioters (just as likely to smash and burn stuff after a football game than a genuine political rally) co-opting the anti-government sentiment to just smash stuff and the media for their appalingly sensationalist and simplistic coverage (not to moron journalists: not all ‘extreme elements’ are monolithic, not all rioters are politically motivated, and not all protesters are rioters), angry at our lovely cops/hired thugs who sit around basically scratching their balls faced with the looting but the next day proceed to intimidate and attack a rally consisting mostly of school kids (I guess a bunch of teens are easier to take on than actual looters) and almost getting the urge to go downtown and possibly throw some rocks myself.

By the way, my ex called from Thessaloniki, and said that rioters had torched most shops with the exception of snack shops and patisseries (McDonald’s was, of course, burned to a crisp again. One wonders why they bother reopening after all the times that’s happened). Whoever said the violence was mindless?

You know, I really didn't want to make a post about this. But then it occurred to me that the event is covered enough in world news that someone may actually get worried, so, yeah.

I'm in no danger personally-I never thought the day would come that I'd be grateful for central Athens being completely tree-free. My mental state is a whole other thing-I refuse to process it, really.

Forest fires are a yearly occurrence in Greece. It's a combination of greedy arsonists who want to use the burned land for development, a corupt, incompetent government who refuses to either stop the sales of the land, reforestate, or fund our firefighters properly, and yeah, the dry/windy climate doesn't help either. But not like this. Never like this.

I went outside today, and the sky was dark with smoke, it kept raining ash, and everything was bathed in a sickening orange glow, and fuck, when did I walk into the Apocalypse.

Forget about the human casualties for a moment (though on second thought, I can't-people are getting freakin' burned alive, entire villages and towns are surrounded by flames in every direction, and I just can't think about that-the images on the news look like a war zone, you know?), this is literaly burning the LAST forests and trees in Greece, and we didn't have any to spare to begin with.

I'm just filled with hatred right now-at the worthless pieces of human flesh who started the fires (and of course it was intentional, it always IS, and the whole thing was just planned and perfeclty synchronised), the government (and the previous one, and the one before) who are fucking USELESS, the fuckers who are already planning the properties they'll build before the smoke settles, just the fucking universe. You know, I'm anti-death penalty as a citizen and a believer in human rights, but on a personnal, visceral level? The ones who started the fires, the ones who planned this whole thing? Burn them alive. I'll light the first flame.