* Life in an Open Boat

Why are those "Funniest Home Videos" TV shows still so popular (in syndication, at least)? Maybe because they're the closest thing to a real reminder that humans aren't truly in control of their own destiny? Or better—we really don't want to know this truth about ourselves; it's far preferable instead to project this anxious knowledge upon others (e.g., the dad catching the ball from his son's bat in the groin). No one wants to recognize that, at last, we're all sailors in Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," forever at the whim of the random farts of fortune.