loosie: words: Clanton's Rant

Clanton's Rant

Tsinging the Tsunami Blues

by Clanton McNeese | 2005.01.13

My dictionary includes only three “ts” words. There’s the tsetse fly, an African biter that spreads deadly sleeping sickness. There’s tsutsugamushi disease, an Asian malady that vexes its victims with rash, fever and sometimes death. And, of course, there’s the now familiar tsunami.

Drawing on my etymological expertise, I can state without fear of contradiction that “ts” stands for “terrible shit” in an otherworldly, which is to say, Third Worldly way. You got personal experience with one of these weird words, you got trouble. Tsutsugamushi disease, which also goes by the endearing aliases “scrub typhus” and “flood fever,” is spread by small, sneaky chiggers. Tsetse flies are way littler than leopards, and generally strike when folks are not on their guard. This stealth theme is continued by the tsunami, arising from the ocean floor essentially unnoticed until it inundates a coastline.

By now, you’ve all seen the amateur videos, the miles of rubble, and the stacks of bodies. It sucks to be in the way of a tsunami, that much is certain, and you’re ready to help out. We Americans are offering big bucks, both as individuals and as a nation. Congress has given the tsunami relief funds a headstart in the charity sweepstakes by extending through January the 2004 tax year for tsunami donation deductions. So for the survivors, what with the worldwide outpouring of funds, things are looking up, in a kind of meaningless, monetary way.

It’s television, no doubt, that generates such generosity. Back in 2001, each time the slow motion collapses of the World Trade Center towers were rerun, another batch of Americans reached for their checkbooks. If they’d been thinking logically, it might have seemed unnecessary to make millionaires out of all the surviving spouses, but they weren’t thinking logically. They needed to write those checks; they needed to do something good.

Now Sri Lanka, Thailand, et al. have become the charity beneficiaries du jour. That so many children have been orphaned tugs at the purse strings, and that so many white-skinned Euros were among the mix plays to still potent ethnic connections. No doubt lots of the money could be put to more immediate use in other devastated areas of the world, but for the moment, it’s all tsunami, all the time.

I get that. What I don’t get, as a non-believer, is the matching ecumenical deluge of prayers uttered on behalf of the victims. How exactly are these pleas phrased? “Dear God, who dealt death and destruction by water, could you now cut these poor people a break?” Or, “Dear God, who does not intervene in the affairs of mankind, could you make an exception in this one case?” Does God deserve some blame here, or is he merely a celestial relief agency of last resort?

Of course, I might be a tad simplistic on the topic. Maybe the prayers are primarily for the souls of the drowned and departed. More than one deity is involved, of course, and reincarnation as well as paradise is a possible fate, so the whole sorting out process becomes mind-numbingly complex, before you even consider multiple tongues and time zones. It’s definitely the kind of complicated situation that can be untangled only by the most godlike of arbiters.

Should I wander into the path of a Jeep Cherokee or a forest fire, I’m not about to snub those who want to put in a good word for me to a higher-up of their choice, but I’m not sold on the benefits. I do, however, wish to emphasize that my offspring will be forever appreciative of more tangible expressions of support. Still, I’m guessing they won’t receive a cent. The problem is that a single death just doesn’t draw the crucial extended news coverage, unless the corpse belongs to Jimmy Hoffa, Laci Peterson, or Elvis, so potential donors will squat on their wallets. It may be a metaphysical truth that each person dies alone, but it sure pays off better for your descendants if you go down in a crowd.