Stagg Editorial- November 1994

People love to look at pictures of disasters. In particular people like to look at organized collages of pictures of disasters. The management and the symmetry and the organization of these pictures are very important to the connoisseurs of pictures of disasters. The pleasure to be gained from viewing these things is in direct proportion to the beauty generated by the organization.

What pleasurable mementoes people have gathered of these various disasters. A trinket, indeed a postcard, an autograph, a wisp of hair, a broken cup, a videotape of all the misery.

Sitting warm and dry, the comfortable chair holder says "Damn, that rain and mud looks uncomfortable. God, those are the ovens from hell."

What pleasure it brings to the chair holder to see what is there and yet not be there, to be comfortable in the observance of misery. To sympathize, yet not to experience.

There are many tales that missionaries have to tell of the terrible misery of the ignorance, of the vast untapped potential and most of all, of the dull, fathomable misery that permeates these far away places. These are the tales the missionaries tell to chair holders, to comfortable, warm and dry recipients of gossip from afar. The pleasure seekers seek the postcards, the mementoes, the vicarious thrills.

Shootings in Oshawa, ferry disasters in the Baltic Sea, poverty on a Newfoundland stagehead: This human misery must be more than viewing pleasure for fat, lazy slobs.

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