are you getting a fax?

So I'm all hooked up on this godforsaken cardiac event recorder today. It looks like a big beeper attached to two EKG leads, one on my upper chest and one on my opposite ribcage.

Of course now that I have the damn thing on NOTHING has happened. It's unbelievable. But if something does, I get to push a "record" button and it will capture the event. The cool thing is that it operates like TIVO and goes back a few seconds before you've pressed the button. I was wondering about that because these palpitations I have are like thunder but only last a few seconds. Pretty cool technology.

The bad thing is that when I press the button it sounds like I'm receiving a freakin' fax. That's gonna go over great in meetings and graduate school classes.

"Oh sorry, I'm getting a fax. It's being transmitted through the old metal fillings in my molars. I'll be done in just a second..."

Lovely.

I can't even talk about the Nepalese executions today. I can't talk about the war. How do you dissect mass insanity? How do you make sense of that which does not make sense? It causes me such grief. Even further down on the rungs is the decimated Sudan. How can these things be allowed to happen anywhere in the world? Did people ignore the Holocaust the way we are ignoring the Sudan? Does outrage only happen after the final report is drawn up and the historians have penned best-sellers? It's like mass inaction. Everyone feels bad but doesn't really do anything--me included.