There are days when it seems like the world has gone insane, when every news story holds some tragic relay of events that are both cruel and hard to decipher. I watch the local news every morning, then I watch the first 30-45 minutes of The Today Show. I get text alerts from CNN for breaking news events throughout the day. Today it just seems that it's been one shock after another.

First, the local news relays a story about a young man working at a Tim Horton's who tried to stop someone from breaking into his car parked in a lot next to his job. He was shot dead by the potential car thief and the guy got away.

Then The Today Show reported the sad story that the young news reporter Anne Pressly from KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, who was brutally beaten and left for dead in her home last week, has died from her injuries. Her killer is still on the loose. The evidence collected thusfar suggests it may have been a home invasion and robbery and that her assailant was a stranger. They also reported on the two students killed and one injured in a shooting at the University of Central Arkansas in Little Rock.

Not enough tragic news this morning, so says CNN. I get a breaking news blurb from them stating that the SUV in connection with the Jennifer Hudson family murders and the Amber Alert on her 7-year-old nephew Julian King, who has been missing since the murders, has been found with the body of a young black boy inside, believed to be Hudson's nephew. His identity hasn't yet been confirmed, but the vehicle is confirmed as the one sent out with the Amber Alert and the Amber Alert has been cancelled this morning. Bad signs.

Not enough? I must have missed this one on Friday, so I just found out about it this morning when I was on CNN's site for more news on Hudson's nephew. Apparently, the FBI released their lab results that resulted in the 7-count indictment (including 1st Degree Murder) against Casey Anthony with regard to her missing 3-year-old daughter Caylee. According to Friday afternoon's blog post on CNN's Nancy Grace's site on the Caylee Anthony case:

The report confirming evidence of human decomposition and high levels of chloroform discovered in Casey Anthony's car trunk.

--(From Stacey Newman, Nancy Grace Producer, Friday Oct. 24, 2008, 3:23 PM ET)

Wow. So today's news isn't enough. Through my efforts to try to escape all this tragic news rather than try to wrap my head around the all the whys (because I can't), I'm lead astray by Jennifer Hudson's new movie, "The Secret Life of Bees." Having read this wonderful book by Sue Monk Kidd, and also being a big fan of Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning, both of whom star in the movie, I decided to go off in a lighter direction in my internet wanderings. I visited the the official movie site, read a nice review by Roger Ebert on the flick, then wandered off to the movie's official Myspace page. While there, I shot out a Friend Request to the movie's page, and to Queen's and Dakota's pages.

For the time being I was sufficiently distracted.

I'm thinking movies. Then I remembered seeing the TV ads for the new movie "Changeling", directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich. Looks interesting, but I remembered the TV ads saying something about it being based on a true story. So I Googled it. I should have known better. I was trying to get away from the very real tragedies of the morning by going off in the direction of movies, wasn't I?

"Changeling" is based on events that occured in 1928-30 in Los Angeles called the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. A man and his mother were convicted (and the man was put to death) for the kidnapping, torture and brutal axe murders, including dismemberment, of 3 young boys. According to the man's own confessions, he could have killed up to 12 boys; he changed his story frequently. It's a truly bizarre story, but the worst part about it is that it's true.

I guess I didn't move far enough away from the bad news of the morning. There are some tragedies that I will never understand. Even if I come to understand it on a (messed up) psychological level, I never can grasp it on a moral or emotional level. But then, senseless death is like that, I suppose. I doubt even those murdering senselessly, though they may have reasons that seem to be rational in their own twisted minds, are really ever able to make true, deep-down sense of their own actions.

So, I guess I'm off to temper the bad with some good on another internet foray. Hopefully this time I won't get sidetracked into even more bad stuff, but if I do, it won't be the first time. My curiousity tends to lead me in all sorts of strange directions.