There Are No Coincidences

In just my first 24 hours of vacationhood, here are the coincidences I've observed:

1) I had the Cars' song, "Good Times Roll", from their 1978 self-titled debut album, going through my head on the bike ride home yesterday, and it seemed like such an appropriate anthem for a five-week break that I used it for my blog posting yesterday. Minutes later, I was visiting some of my regular stops within the blogosphere, and got to Sean Twist's always-entertaining site only to spot the cover to that very same 70s release at the bottom of his post about the Marvel Godzilla comic series! I mean, is that freaky or what?

2) Today's big event is "Live Earth", a 24-hour series of concerts worldwide, intended to raise environmental awareness by having big name rock bands play music (I don't make up the news; I just report it!) Today was picked - maybe - because it's 07/07/07 (July 7th, 2007) or so I read somewhere. Anyway, I've watched some of the musicians - although I admit most are unknown to an old fogie like me - and obviously there's a lot of environmental talk happening. I took a break to go outside, have a swim and enjoy the nice weather for a few hours, and decided to start the Kurt Vonnegut book, A Man Without A Country, that I'd received from lovely Vicki many months ago. I wasn't sure I'd like it, as I've had good and bad reactions to the late Mr Vonnegut's work in the past. Within the first few pages of what, it turns out, is a semi-autobiographical series of observations, the author makes it clear where he stands on the environment: "Hey, as long as we are stuck with being homo sapiens, why mess around? Let's wreck the whole joint!" A little later: "... my car ... was powered ... by the most abused, addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels." And probably the best line on that topic so far has been: "We are all addicts of fossil fuel in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on." Pretty great image, eh? Anyway, funny that the book I happen to pick up would have, as one of its central themes, the same topic that's being given Center Stage treatment throughout the world right now. I call that a coincidence.

3) Sticking with A Man Without A Country, Vonnegut also mentions having been to Auschwitz and Krakow, two places that daughter Tammy has visited in the past few days, and which she and I had talked about at length over Messenger last night. That's just weird!

4) And finally, there're the two comics I read last night in bed. For absolutely no reason other than that they were the two next comics on the pile to be perused, I took Fallen Son # 5 and Countdown # 43 and plopped myself down beside Vicki. Now, I knew what each issue was about, since there's been a lot of publicity around them, but it wasn't until I started reading them that I realized I'd grabbed two comics that were entirely devoted to funerals! While death is somewhat common in comics, spending an entire issue on the burying of someone isn't! And yet here were the funerals of Steve "Captain America" Rogers and Bart "Flash" Allen, both occupying full-length stories, and being read by me back-to-back! Besides being somewhat depressing, it also struck me as downright bizarre timing. What gives?!