🍝 THE DAILY SITDOWN 🍝

So, listen up, you’re gonna hear about this goddamn mess in Pakistan. Three-oh-seven people dead. Three-oh-seven! That’s more than a fuckin' wedding in Little Italy, and nobody’s celebrating. Landslides, floods… the whole shebang. Sounds like a bad day at the Meadowlands, only with less garbage and more, you know… *death*. Most of it’s in this Khyber Pakhtunkhwa place, some shithole up north. Seventy-four homes gone, kaput. Poof. Like a cannoli after a meeting with Paulie Walnuts. And get this – a rescue helicopter crashed. Five guys dead. Five! These guys are supposed to be *saving* people, and they end up as another statistic. Fuckin' amateurs, I tell ya. Shoulda hired my cousin Vinnie, he’d have landed that chopper in a goddamn rice paddy. Nine more croaked in Kashmir, five more up in Gilgit-Baltistan. It’s like these guys are playing a game of who can kill more people with Mother Nature. I’m telling ya, this is worse than dealing with Bobby Bacala and his endless complaints about his goddamn back. They’re saying more rain’s comin’, till the 21st. They’re calling it a "disaster zone." They're probably a little late with that, huh? This ain't no surprise, it's the monsoon season. It's like clockwork – every year, the same song and dance. It's almost… predictable. Almost. Except for the helicopter crash, that was a surprise, a real fuckin' surprise. Some guy, Azizullah, says the flood hit like "doomsday." The guy’s not wrong. I mean, imagine seeing your whole fuckin' life washed away. You know, reminds me of that time my wife, Carmela, found out about Meadow and that little wiseguy she was seeing… Except, you know, this is a lot more water. And a lot less… *hair*. The chief minister – this Gadapur guy – says the bad weather did the helicopter in. Bad weather? I’ll tell ya what’s bad weather: a ratfuckin’ informant squealing to the Feds. Now *that’s* bad weather. This is just… inconvenient. They show pictures of this crowd in Bajaur, lookin' at some excavator digging through the mud. Funeral prayers goin' on in a paddock. People grieving over bodies covered in blankets. It's a fuckin' graveyard out there, but it’s not the best spot for a picnic. And down in Indian-administered Kashmir? Sixty people dead, at least, with more missing. Swept away like… like a bad business deal. You put your money in, think it's gonna multiply, then… poof! Gone. Except this time, it's people. Three hundred dead, they’re sayin'. It’s a lot of bodies, even for a guy like me, who’s seen his share of… *accidents*. The monsoon rains bring in three-quarters of the rain in South Asia. Landslides and floods? Yeah, that's what happens when you mix a lot of water with a whole lotta mountains. It's the circle of life, I guess. Except this circle… is filled with a lot more mud, and a lot less… *happy endings*. This whole thing… it’s a fuckin’ tragedy. But what can you do? You can't stop the rain, can you? You can try to fix things, help people, but sometimes… sometimes you just gotta sit back and watch the world wash itself away. And maybe order a couple of espressos. You know, for the nerves. Capisce?