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Half Mast
Alex, the protagonist of the story, is a geeky kid. He gets picked on. And he kills somebody because of it. But that's pretty much where the similarities between Alex and Dylan Klebold end.
What's refreshing about Half Mast is how the author accurately captures the world of a high-school outsider. Writers can be pretty introverted types themselves, but few of them end up killing anybody. So when they try to imagine the type of character who would, a lot of them tend to fall into the trap of inventing someone even more unfathomably nerdy than themselves. Thankfully, Null avoids this.
Alex isn't a complete, pathetic loner. He has friends. And together, Alex, Travis and James aren't the typical cookie-cutter stereotypes of kids too terminally dorky to get with the program. They're not so trollish that they can't get within booger-flicking distance of a girl, or so chess-club square that they wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol at a party (in fact, they spend much of their summers doing just the opposite). Null gets it: that most geeks aren't necessarily "deprived," and being an outsider isn't always about being excluded. It's about being different -- and that, in and of itself, can have its consequences.
In Alex's case, his nemesis is Steve Williams: hometown hero, star athlete, the pride and joy of Fall Valley High -- if you care about that sort of thing, that is. Alex doesn't, particularly. He fails to kowtow to Steve the way the way Fall Valley's golden boy thinks he deserves -- and here's where his proverbial troubles begin. Steve subjects Alex to a series of humiliating tortures that should have even the most picked-on geek cringing.
When Alex does finally strike back, it isn't with a hail of gunfire, either. He's calculating about it. I must admit, I'm not really convinced that Alex's modus operandi would actually pan out the way it does in Half Mast. But it certainly makes for more interesting reading than your standard shoot-out, and in its way, it's much more sinister. Also, because Alex doesn't have the option of the Columbine killers' quick way out, he's forced to live with his actions and their impact on his own life.
That's the book's focus, and what saves it from being just another wannabe crime thriller. Christopher Null cares about his characters, and he's taken care to depict them in a way that geeks will find sympathetic and (mostly) believable.
While a lot of Null's characters and situations were amusingly familiar, others rang less true. The Steve Williams character was a little too prone to making speeches about the relationship between bullies and their victims, for example, instead of just knocking Alex into the dirt the way the kids at my school would have done. There were also a few too many end-of-chapter "zinger" one-liners for my taste, and the novel uses the awkward device of a present-day journal talking about events that took place several years in the past.
Still, it's an impressive debut novel about an uncommon subject matter, and one I think a lot of Slashdotters would get a kick out of. Half Mast is a fast read, and an enjoyable one. It's also notable because the author chose to self-publish rather than go the traditional route. (Or maybe the topic was too "troublesome" for mainstream publishers in a post-Columbine world?)
You can purchase Half Mast from bn.com as well as from Null's own Web site at sutropress.com, which also has some excerpts from the book. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
he could have gotten even years later, like I do. When I see those jocks that used to oppress and torture me years ago in high school, I undertip them, and call the pizza shop to tell them it was cold.
.... I thought this was about a book called "Half Mast" describing the sadness of living with impotence. .... No offence intended.
ZERO
I think it's really sad that a young person is classified as an "outcast" or a "loser" if he doesn't choose to define his life through sports.
It's certainly not just 'computer geeks' that must live as outsider's in mainstream society. Just about any group of behavior, tech related or not, that does not participate in norm behaviors are easy to ostracize. In lieu of a classic 'geek', there will always be someone different enough to take the fall.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
For a short while, I was actually left alone and not harrassed. Due to the previous frequency of harrassment, people kept whispering that I was the most likely to go on a rampage in the school (gee, doesn't that make me feel warm and tingly). Thankfully, I'm not crazy enough to persue that type of behavior (though I did chase somebody with a bat after they crap-kicked me once), and I didn't have access to firearms.
At least for a while though, the events that occurred shocked everybody into realizing that
a) Even geeky people do have a breaking point
b) Bad things happen when you push them past it
I don't sponsor what happened what happened in Columbine: some killings were also based on race and religion, etc, but for awhile its affects gave me a breather. However, now that harrassment in schools is picking up again I wouldn't be surprised to see more students "losing it"
It's also worthy of note that when an event like this happens - all of N. America and possible the world cry "how could it happen," while suicides based on harrassment - which are more frequent often end up as a statistic except for local grief.
Oh, and to this day I find that people tend to bother me less if I wear a nice, dark, long trenchcoat.
1. you do not have to have a redisposition to psychosis AND be a nerd to filp out with a gun. actually some of those who filipped out are neither psychotic nor nerds. in fact they're pretty nice people.
2. psycho tests will get you nowhere, they can all be cheated. (ALL, by ANYONE, forever)
sorry, but as a psychologist who did an internship at a forensic mental hospital, i just had to correct that.
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"But i don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here.
I'm mad, You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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I use my superior wit and lack of qualms about homosexuality to cause disorder within their ranks by seducing their frat brothers.
As a computer geek, there are many other ways to settle the score without resorting to violence. It's always a shame when somebody who bothered me has all his work on the network drives corrupted, a spontaneous reboot just before saving... or floppy disks subject to magnetic disruption.
Oh... and the year I was the lab admin was the best, many of these jokers were in my class and the prof left me deal with them according - or just assumed that various events were just regular/random PC happenings.
Ah, the pleasant memories:
"These computer SUCK, this is the third time it's crashed before I could finish this assignment"
If you like this book, you might check out The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci. It also paints a pretty realistic portrait of high school life within the context of a murder/suspense story (a pretty good device for for forcing characters into the sort of stress and introspection that really sets young good young adult fiction apart, if you ask me).
As a librarian, I especially recommend it to those of you who are (or have little brothers/sisters/nieces/nephews/children) in high school.
-phatty 2x4
P.S. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger are also superb YA novels, just in case you find yourself liking that sort of thing.
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
I mean, who were these evil people that gave you such a hard time that you still care about them tens of years later? To tell the truth, I can barely remember the names of most of the people I went to school with, and the only people I keep in touch from high school are all close personal friends. I'm not saying elementary and high school were easy times for me, but I don't dwell on them. Things are good now! I have the respect and admiration of my peers, I do pretty much anything I want, etc.
I mean, who cares about what some foolish child did years ago? Who cares about what those people are doing today? Personally, I couldn't care less.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Notice that there *hasn't* been a major school rampage in a couple of years? For a while, multiple shootings were happening several times a year, with individual alleged bullies being shot by alleged outcasts much more frequently than that.
Once they dropped off the front page of the paper for a while (as the attention of the media turned elsewhere), they stopped happening. The individual shootings may continue unreported for all I know, mass killings have stopped.
Remember all the experts on TV telling us that it's too many guns, not enough guns, religion, atheism, video games, sex education? Well none of those things have changed and the Columbines have disappeared. What's the only thing that has changed?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You don't have to be born with the psychosis. Enough constant abuse will give it to you. Everyone has a breaking point.. most kids find ways to cope or stop the abuse before they reach it. Some can't.
Furthermore, it takes more than just peer abuse to cause a kid to snap. In all the situations of school shooting, there has been abuse or neglect from a majority of the adults in the kids' life, too.
He said, two plus two equals four for the mainstream, and that's what we're going to call sanity. We need rules to keep society ordered and we need a common ground to talk from. But everybody has their places where they don't line up to the norm. For some peeople, that's everywhere. For some people, 2 + 2 = 22, or twelve, or bright green. And Some day, they're going to betalking you down from the top of a building (he was addressing the whole class) and they're going to ask you, gee, what the H* were you thinking? And you're going to say, well... i don't know. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time...
And that's not the scary part. The scary part is, that it will be true: it really will have made sense at the time. You will have found the place where, for you, two plus two no longer matches the four that everyone else comes up with.
I don't offer this to excuse anything that anyone has done. Murder is murder. But I offer this as thought-fodder against the prediliction that we have, as a society, for nice little categories and nice little diagnoses. There's a wide range of stuff out there in the human mind-spectrum, some of it dangerous and some of it good, and not all of it definable by our current terms.
Yeah, and I hated high school, too. But I think a lot of social fringe elements are actually better prepared for the outside world, and tend to do better in it, than their high school tormentors, because they have been forced to face the world as an individual without backup. It isn't right and it isn't necessarily worth it, but let's not forget that if superman hadn't had those powers, he never would have made it through high school without being stuffed into a locker either- or else he would have been one more football captain.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Columbine didn't do this, it's always been the case. Be it geeks & nerds with their computers or not.
For the most part society has always viewed different as being bad.
Look at racism and other ethinc discrimination: they're not my race/colour, so they must be bad!
Sexual orientation: he's gay, so he doesn't get the same rights. He's also open season for a beating.
Same with geeks and nerds: they don't play sports, they like computers, they must be screwed up.
Frankly people I think that as geeks we've had to put up with a hell of a lot less than either one of the two groups I've mentioned! Ya it sucks sometimes, but we still get off easy. I haven't heard of geek-bashing (as in beating to the point of death, or near death), nor have I heard of a geek not being allowed to vote or made to use a back door. It's not right, but it isn't new either.
The problem is societies general intolerance for anything different... not some very disturbed individuals who also happen to be nerdy going postal in a school.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I'm not saying "hit with stick time" is the first solution or the only solution. But there are kids where it is the only solution that works. In today's society, people like you dismiss it out of hand. That, I believe, is part of the problem.
I have no problem with believing that many kids would respond well to offering them rewards for good grades and good behavior. And, I undestand it's important to set the example for them. But in the end, if you really love your child, you should be willing to go to any lengths to make sure they grow up right, even if it means hitting them.
There's a big difference between "hitting with stick time" and "child abuse". I'm not suggesting you injure your child, but simply to have the option of using pain as negative reinforcement. Recognize the difference.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
One day I was crying (remember I was in about the 3rd grade) about having recently been beat up. My mother that day told me "the next time that bully hits you, you hit him with your lunchbox, and punch him in the nose." I did. I got about a three month reprieve from being harrased from it too. About every three months we would fight, but there were periods of nothing in between. This carried into higher grades (different bullies).
Did the teasing and bullying stop? No. But I *did* keep my self-respect, and dignity. Talking to irrational people does *not* work. Ususally bullies are too stupid.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Im sick of a--holes, who tell me and others like me didnt suffer or "thats what everyone went through and stop whining."
What the f--k is the difference between being physically abused by a peer or being physically abused by a parent? The difference is if your physically abused by a parent you can call family services and theyll act. You try reporting physical abuse by a peer the abuser wont even get arrested will get some minor slap on the wrist and then beat u up again for reporting them.
This is not about "having no friends" . I would have been happy having no friends if the bullies would have just left me the h-ll alone!
Some of us have emotional scars that have lasted years, and therapy bills going into the thousands of dollars, and we didnt suffer?
Most of us didnt care if we didnt hang around with the popular people, or had only a few friends, or didnt get many dates. We just didnt think it was right to be tormented by others because didnt have those things.
Even in the last couple of months, there have been lots of school shootings.
The only thing that's changed is you're not hearing about them.