Dead people and vomit

There are two things that I have an exteme aversion to. And by extreme I mean I will scream and cover my eyes and avoid at all costs. The first one is vomit. I hate seeing vomit, I hate thinking about vomit, and I certainly despise being put in a situation where vomit is being hurled out of an orafice. Let me give you two examples that I have come across in my very recent history. I was driving to work about two weeks ago, minding my own business, when I stopped at a red light. Directly in my line of vision, for no apparent reason, there was a young man throwing up into a clump of plants in the parking lot of the downtown McDonald's. I hope that young man is happy because I will never be able to eat at that McDonald's again. This week was the debut of one of the few reality TV shows that I actually like, "So You Think You Can Dance." (This year they even have a nice little Mormon boy in the top 10!) But one of the "Can you believe this horrible dancer auditioned" shots was a girl who danced, and then threw up off of the side of the stage. And they showed this shot repeatedly, both in the "teasers" and as a segment of the show. I don't want to see vomit on my nice, family-friendly TV show. Seriously, I'm not kidding.

The second thing I have a severe aversion to is seeing dead bodies on the news. If Saddam's sons got blew up, great, but don't broadcast the picture over and over and over. I don't want to see. At least they had the sensitivity to hide the pictures of Uday and Qusay behind "sensitive pictures" links on most web sites. But I can't escape the picture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Quida who was killed during a US air raid this week. Yes, I know he was a bad man. Yes, I believe that he was killed. But I can't go on any US news site, and I can't go on many blog sites, without seen graphic pictures of his dead face. I don't want to see his dead face. I don't like to see death, no matter how justified that death might be. I didn't even visit my father in the mortuary when he died. I knew what he looked like alive, and that was enough for me. I don't want to see dead bodies piled up after a bombing or a flood, I don't want to see body bags after a fatal car wreck, I don't want to see a father holding on to the limp body of their child. I just don't want to see it. It makes me sad. It puts images in my head that won't go away. Put pictures of al-Zarqawi being nasty on a videotape or something on the news articles, but don't put his bloodied dead face on venues where I can't avoid it. It gives me nightmares.

Rant over.