Roughly 18 hours ago (or sometime yesterday around 2 pm Pacific) Patton Oswalt posted a statement about yesterday afternoon’s Boston bombings. HE is surely among the last sites to link to this but what the hell. While I feel awful for the victims and for the citizens of Boston affected by the sonic impact of this sickening act, I don’t feel the least bit bummed out or dispirited by it, certainly not in a general philosophical sense. Oswalt was bummed by the 9/11 attacks but not this time. He explains as follows:

“This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness. But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak.

“This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago. So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good outnumber you, and we always will.'”