I hope everyone is having an unproductive 4/20 if you're into that type of thing. You damn hippies!
April is slowly becoming a notorious month. It's hard to believe the events that took place eight years ago today would someday be referred to as America's second worst school shooting. I find the most disheartening part of all this is how these deranged individuals attain a greater notoriety than any of their victims do. These days it seems one can attain more fame by a single moment of evil, than one can with a whole lifetime of good deeds. What is our morbid fascination with these psychos, our fetish for evil? Why do we seek it out? There must be some primitive survival instinct that compels us to confront monsters and try to understand them. There must be some in our psyche that drives us to make sense out of the senseless. Perhaps it's to help us overcome our fears. Somehow by looking evil right in the eye, one can somehow defeat it. Isn't it a sad state of affairs when this gun toting moron is projected god-like on a seven foot television screen, and their victims are regulated to small blurbs on A New York Times webpage, or given a small segment at the end of the nightly news.
Even I am not immune from this false idolatry. I've tried to stay away from the media coverage of this event, but I was unable to quell my morbid fascination. Last night at two in the morning, I found myself reading this idiot's pathetic excuses for plays to try to somehow theorize what might have gone wrong with him. I found no such explanation. Just the inane babble of a testosterone filled boy. I felt angry at myself for seeking this drivel out.
Then I looked at the victims pages. To me the most tragic thing I found was their Myspace pages. Many of them had last login dates on Monday. It's sad to think they logged in that morning, blissfully unaware that that would be the last time they ever would. It's so strange to see the shift from banal chatter to somber eulogies.
Our need to understand is one of our worse curses.
In more personal news I am about to start hell week on the play, Take Me Out, I've been working on for the last several weeks. It's coming together, although there are a few spots that really need improvement. I have a fun role. I represent the fans of baseball, and get to go on long diatribes about the significance of baseball. It's not a part I would have cast myself in, but somebody believed that I could do it. I hope I don't disappoint.
So here is the shameless self-promotion:
April 26th, 27th, 28th & May 3rd, 4th, 5th at 8pm at the Asheville Arts Center, 308 Merrimon Ave, Asheville NC
Come see me on-stage if you get a chance.
April is slowly becoming a notorious month. It's hard to believe the events that took place eight years ago today would someday be referred to as America's second worst school shooting. I find the most disheartening part of all this is how these deranged individuals attain a greater notoriety than any of their victims do. These days it seems one can attain more fame by a single moment of evil, than one can with a whole lifetime of good deeds. What is our morbid fascination with these psychos, our fetish for evil? Why do we seek it out? There must be some primitive survival instinct that compels us to confront monsters and try to understand them. There must be some in our psyche that drives us to make sense out of the senseless. Perhaps it's to help us overcome our fears. Somehow by looking evil right in the eye, one can somehow defeat it. Isn't it a sad state of affairs when this gun toting moron is projected god-like on a seven foot television screen, and their victims are regulated to small blurbs on A New York Times webpage, or given a small segment at the end of the nightly news.
Even I am not immune from this false idolatry. I've tried to stay away from the media coverage of this event, but I was unable to quell my morbid fascination. Last night at two in the morning, I found myself reading this idiot's pathetic excuses for plays to try to somehow theorize what might have gone wrong with him. I found no such explanation. Just the inane babble of a testosterone filled boy. I felt angry at myself for seeking this drivel out.
Then I looked at the victims pages. To me the most tragic thing I found was their Myspace pages. Many of them had last login dates on Monday. It's sad to think they logged in that morning, blissfully unaware that that would be the last time they ever would. It's so strange to see the shift from banal chatter to somber eulogies.
Our need to understand is one of our worse curses.
In more personal news I am about to start hell week on the play, Take Me Out, I've been working on for the last several weeks. It's coming together, although there are a few spots that really need improvement. I have a fun role. I represent the fans of baseball, and get to go on long diatribes about the significance of baseball. It's not a part I would have cast myself in, but somebody believed that I could do it. I hope I don't disappoint.
So here is the shameless self-promotion:
April 26th, 27th, 28th & May 3rd, 4th, 5th at 8pm at the Asheville Arts Center, 308 Merrimon Ave, Asheville NC
Come see me on-stage if you get a chance.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
I have a pretty solid grasp on anger and violence. I'm still trying to figure out why these guys choose random, innocent targets.
...hope the show is going well!
When I saw the picture of Cho Seung-hui posing with a pistol to his head it reminded me of the Vietnam war picture of the man being held by marines and shot. You could almost hold the two up and see into Cho Seung-hui's mind- but that just a gaping whole in the head. There's so much weeping going on all over the world for atrocities.
This was one horrible instance of the sleep being wiped from the eyes of world, afterall it all comes from one place, the tear duct. I just read the British Queen is to visit the survivors in Richmond. What do Americans claim is being done to sort peoples lives out before they turn to guns? I still remember the shooting here in the Uk in 1996. We try hard not to hold on to every last 'piece' of the jigsaw. It feels much safer here.