South Korea

I went to bed at 8:15, barely able to keep my eyes open, and slept for a solid eleven hours, to the point that the cats were coming into the Recovery Room to question why they hadn’t yet been fed. When I finally got around to checking my phone, which had been knocked onto the floor, the AP alerts told an interesting story. 8:33 – 17 dead in South Korea airliner crash. 9:46 – 29 dead …. 11:23 – 74 dead …. 12:29 – 179 dead …. In the end, AP reports A total of 179 people — 85 women, 84 men, and 10 others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable — died in the fire.

Exactly what happened is still unclear. The Muan tower issued a bird strike warning and gave permission to the Jeju Air flight to land on a different runway. The landing gear was never deployed. The plane skidded along the runway on its belly before crashing into a concrete barrier and exploded into flames. Aviation experts who talked to Reuters expressed doubts about a bird strike affecting the landing gear, though, and raised additional questions. “Why didn’t fire tenders lay foam on the runway? Why weren’t they in attendance when the plane touched down? And why did the aircraft touch down so far down the runway? And why was there a brick wall at the end of the runway?” said Airline News editor Geoffrey Thomas.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, North Korea’s roly-poly dictator with a bad haircut announced his toughest anti-US policy yet. Never mind that North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Russia are dying almost as fast as they’re deployed. This overgrown toddler with a bad temper has absolutely no regard for the people he governs. He wants to be the biggest bully on the block, but all he’ll ever be is an afterthought.

At this point, I’m not sure that there is anything that can salvage this dumpster fire of a year. Among all the year-in-review articles floating on every news page, I was most interested by a statement from Taryn Simon in her piece for the New York Times. “You can’t see anything reflected in boiling water. But when it’s still, water is a mirror,” she said. “It’s still in the anticipation, and it’s still in the aftermath. But we’re told to watch when it’s boiling.” There has been a lot of boiling in 2024 and there are already plenty of people turning up the fire for 2025. We have to look carefully at all that’s going on, watch the water after it has settled, before seeing the reality of what’s happening.

I’m afraid I’m going to need a new coffee machine (yes, there’s a metaphor coming). The machine that I bought in 2015 has reached a point where I have to wait two to three hours for half a pot of coffee. Never mind that I put in enough water for a full pot. Half the water is evaporating before it hits the ground beans. The problem is blockage. We have hard water and over almost ten years of use, the narrow lines have limited the speed at which water is moved from the heating tank to the basket containing the coffee. Sure, we’ve tried various solutions over the years, but ultimately the corrosion wins. I’ve had to drink my morning coffee a half cup at a time.

Countries are the same way. Boiling water is useful, removing impurities and such, but when water is left boiling too long, it begins to evaporate. If the heat isn’t removed, the whole thing becomes useless. Corrosion, corruption, lies, deceit, and fear-mongering destroy what should be useful conversations. Exclamations that amount to “this is my country, not yours,” keep tempers hot. We stop talking and start yelling. We stop listening. As a country, we’ve been boiling for so long that we’ve forgotten what turned on the heat in the first place. Our lines of communication are so corroded with opinions and lies that the truth has trouble getting through.

The price of coffee keeps increasing, as well, but that’s another conversation for another time.

Make no mistake, life in the US has been worse. Drop back to the 1930s, less than 100 years ago, when the depression was in full swing, when organized crime controlled much of the nation, when soup lines were a necessary part of survival, women’s rights were largely nonexistent, and “alternative” sexualities were unspoken. People needed to have large families because the odds of children surviving into adulthood were too slim, and the odds were just as bad for mothers surviving childbirth. Families in rural America often maintained their own cemeteries because they just kept dying.

The problem is that we don’t need to be anywhere close to challenging century-old statistics. The economy is, supposedly, booming. Medical science allows us to live over 100 years. We throw out more food than we can consume. So, why aren’t our lives better?

Consider the possibility that we have so much of everything, that we’ve lost our damn minds and don’t know what to do with it all. Prime example: the disaster that is method dressing. Sorry, this world doesn’t need more impractical red-carpet looks, especially when there’s no fucking red carpet. Neither do we need to see anyone’s butt crack. Whale tails and jelly everything weren’t good ideas the first time around. WTF is “pre-shower” makeup?  What’s the difference between a “mushroom bob,” “micro-bob,” and “boy bob”? I’d ask Kat but I’m afraid she might throw something at me. We have made 2024 just as much of a cultural nightmare as the political climate.

Maybe our best move at this point is to start 2025 by turning down the fucking fire and letting the water be still. Pour vinegar over the corruption and see how much melts away. Replace what’s not working in our lives.

Clearly, our approach to 2024 was a bad one. Let’s try something different.