I'd like to ask your opinion: I would like to donate something for helping people, but right now I really don't have much money (well, I mean, I am not working, but studying, meaning I only get a little cash for my parents to buy a book or two, nothing more). What exactly could I do asides from giving money? I do have some free time on weekends (Well, I'll have in february, cause exams are coming soon).

Oh, by the way, nice post, Captain.

Anyway, and now comes another thing to think about: dosen't it feel bad to help sometimes? Everytime I give money to a beggar or something along those lines, I feel horrible. I don't feel like a good person giving charity to a person who asks for help, but like a heartless bastard that needs to do such thing to clean his bad class conscience. Ironically, I don't feel good at all doing it, because in the moment I may start feeling good about giving charity, I feel like a total asshole because I realize I am buying my good conscience for an euro. Sometimes I help people simply for good will, but as soon as the idea of feeling better with myself by doing this crosses my mind, I soon start self-torturing myself with the feeling I am actually being a selfish bastard. And I question myself if it was really good will or an unconscious selfish action. Makes me feel like crap. And I can't help it.

Also, on another note but in a somehow related issue, how do you feel about the media coverage? Because I can say I absolutely hate the TV for the way they are covering the issue. It's not only this, it has been building up for ages, and it's the fact that such a sensationalistic style is given to the facts, to a point the actual problem seems to be dissolved, blurred, in front of shocking images of corpses piling up in beaches. It almost feels as if people are meant to obtain some sadistic pleasure over it, and it really irks me. They way it is focused- so many images, so many deaths- dosen't actually give you a perspective of the magnitude of the tragedy, but some kind of sick feeling of vanalization, the fact they try to impress you but fall into some Hollywood style image. It feels like a small tragedy- nothing to worry about, it wont get to us- it's far away, it covers of minimmum corpses distant territories, of tragedies we cannot see in the distance. That is how it feels, it has been sensationalised in such a way it's hard to really feel it, because it feels like fiction. However, when it hits close home, it feels different, if it happens in a place you have seen, then you go like "crap, it could have been me". It's how I felt the 11th of March after the bombs in Madrid, or- in a less degree- on the 9/11 (because I had visited New York). However, this feels so distant, it's places I have never visited, people I have never met, and so it makes it look like some fiction, like it's not really happening, even if it is. Argh, I feel like crap. Does anyone share this with me? I wonder if I am becoming insensibilized, and that worries me...however I feel I am not alone.