Whiny children, hm? No comment on the lack of command of the English language here...tempting as that may be.
There's a lot of things to say on the Littleton topic -- these kids were monsters, true...but what *made* them monsters? Anything? Was it guns? Quake? Not eating their King Vitamin in the morning? What?
We're going to be asking that for years to come, if we're smart. Considering the audience here, I hope we are. I really do.
I'm just like you, just like a lot of you. 25, successful in the technical industry, got the living hell beat out of me for most of my public school life. The only times it stopped were when I either lost it, and ended up nearly hospitalizing the people who thought it was good fun (all part of 'growing up', you know) to beat the snot out of the smart guy, or when, like Shotgun there, I joined part of the system -- in my case, football. Wrecked one of my knees doing it, too. But that's neither here nor there.
Shotgun's right, in one respect -- embracing apathy and joining the system *is* a solution. It works, we can prove it. Look at 90 percent of the people on the street -- they're happy, or think they are. They get up, go to work, come home, watch TV, sleep. They might have hobbies, they might not. Doesn't matter, really...because people like that don't matter. When was the last time the 'average man' built a great monument, wrote a symphony, left any kind of mark on history's pages at all? Never. Because, my friends, they are part of the same system that isolates us, that keeps, through apathy and torment, people apart.
I feel for those kids in Colorado, I really do. I've felt what they're feeling right now, I've seen what happens when a person finally reaches the breaking point, and blows some poor motherfucker's brains out all over the Quickie Mart/library/Mcdonalnd's floor. I feel it, because I've *seen* it. Age 12, folks. Random violence, three people dead. I read the newspaper later -- guy angry at his girlfriend for leaving him, comes in, blows her, the new beau, then himself away. It didn't matter to me, because I spent that entire time hiding behind a cooler, praying to whatever gods might be listening that he wouldn't kill *me*. At 12.
I fit 3 out of 4 of the warning signs for serial criminals, according to John Douglas. So do most of us, I'd imagine. Harsh, but true. We walk the razor's edge every day, and some of us slip. Or is that pushed?
We're never going to know, truly know, until we stand up, and make Joe Average face the facts -- it wasn't guns, or Quake, or Jesus Christ speaking from a tortilla that made Littlefield a household name. It was the abdication of responsibility -- by the school, by the parents, by the students, and ultimately by the gunmen -- that made this tragedy possible.
Or, to put it more poetically -- the fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.
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Whiny children, hm? No comment on the lack of command of the English language here...tempting as that may be.
There's a lot of things to say on the Littleton topic -- these kids were monsters, true...but what *made* them monsters? Anything? Was it guns? Quake? Not eating their King Vitamin in the morning? What?
We're going to be asking that for years to come, if we're smart. Considering the audience here, I hope we are. I really do.
I'm just like you, just like a lot of you. 25, successful in the technical industry, got the living hell beat out of me for most of my public school life. The only times it stopped were when I either lost it, and ended up nearly hospitalizing the people who thought it was good fun (all part of 'growing up', you know) to beat the snot out of the smart guy, or when, like Shotgun there, I joined part of the system -- in my case, football. Wrecked one of my knees doing it, too. But that's neither here nor there.
Shotgun's right, in one respect -- embracing apathy and joining the system *is* a solution. It works, we can prove it. Look at 90 percent of the people on the street -- they're happy, or think they are. They get up, go to work, come home, watch TV, sleep. They might have hobbies, they might not. Doesn't matter, really...because people like that don't matter. When was the last time the 'average man' built a great monument, wrote a symphony, left any kind of mark on history's pages at all? Never. Because, my friends, they are part of the same system that isolates us, that keeps, through apathy and torment, people apart.
I feel for those kids in Colorado, I really do. I've felt what they're feeling right now, I've seen what happens when a person finally reaches the breaking point, and blows some poor motherfucker's brains out all over the Quickie Mart/library/Mcdonalnd's floor. I feel it, because I've *seen* it. Age 12, folks. Random violence, three people dead. I read the newspaper later -- guy angry at his girlfriend for leaving him, comes in, blows her, the new beau, then himself away. It didn't matter to me, because I spent that entire time hiding behind a cooler, praying to whatever gods might be listening that he wouldn't kill *me*. At 12.
I fit 3 out of 4 of the warning signs for serial criminals, according to John Douglas. So do most of us, I'd imagine. Harsh, but true. We walk the razor's edge every day, and some of us slip. Or is that pushed?
We're never going to know, truly know, until we stand up, and make Joe Average face the facts -- it wasn't guns, or Quake, or Jesus Christ speaking from a tortilla that made Littlefield a household name. It was the abdication of responsibility -- by the school, by the parents, by the students, and ultimately by the gunmen -- that made this tragedy possible.
Or, to put it more poetically -- the fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.