bending_sickle | I am truly horrified by modern man.*

What started off as YouTube wander through John Barrowman's musicals then into Julie Andrews' 12-year-old self and The King and I, then a quick Yul Bynner search brought his anti-smoking commercial (which I remember watching once on TV).

Then a few related links later and I'm watching Thanks, Tobacco: You Killed My Mom, which is a personal documenting of sonicbondage's mom's struggle with lung cancer at her request to disencourage smoking. It runs throughout her illness and hospitalization, through to her death and burial. Needless to day, it is not for the faint of heart, for it will be wrenched. The hospital scenes were tough on me particularly, due to it bringing up personal memories. (Some other bits made me uncomfortable in the, "I can't believe you're filming this" way for a number of different reasons.)

Then that video's related-link list brought me to Killed on Camera by chicagoreader. The summary describes it as Footage of Chicago police officer Alvin Weems shooting an unarmed man. Narration by Chicago Reader staff writer John Conroy. Full story. I stared at the whole thing with my mouth wide open and my love for humanity weeping profusely in a corner.

I've decided not to embedd these - and I'm still iffy on actually posting this - because they're both, in completely different ways, terrible, terrible things to watch. I'm so sorry, so very sorry. I almost want to tell you all not not watch these, but, if you can, you learn a bit. (Oh, but it's a tough lesson.)

My next YouTube search is going to be "Tennant hair" and by gods, I'm not straying for that.

ETA: The hair delivers, so watch this instead. It's a double-whammy of optimistic "I lurvs people"

* Alexander Herzen