The Circle

If you will recall, the summer of 2001, the one that ended in unspeakable horror that made us change everything, was host to a tremendous amount of media coverage about shark attacks at beaches. The coverage was sensationalistic and silly--as these things usually are--going so far as to produce covers of Time and Newsweek featuring toothy sharks. You are more likely to die of bee sting than shark attack...but we used up all the bee stories in the '90s whent the killer bees (ominously called: "Africanized" with all the baggage that carries, unintentional or not) finally made it to the US and then didn't do anything so they needed to be sensationalized. Well I was just watching the CNN and after a helpful piece on how to avoid having your own pretty white women go missing we got: a shark attack story. So there we are, full circle on the shark thing. Whatch out, they're coming for you! And your white women in Aruba!

Oh, and in 2004 there were 61 shark attacks world wide with only 7 fatal according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Seven dead. World wide. Yeah, lets definately freak out over this. Hell there's a possum that lives behind my apartment and I bet the little fucker's got rabies, when should I expect the news 'copter?

It's partly not the medias fault. We like worrying about stuff like this because it makes mortality remote and not-our-fault. If the image in your mind of a horribble death is a shark attack, then it is just nature red in tooth and claw that is the source of misery in the world. But if your image of horrible death is something more like starvation in the Third World, then it's kind of humanity's fault for our own misery isn't it? And nobody wants to think that at all...so bring on the shark attacks: did you know that they kill more people in a year than die in America from gun violence in an hour!