COLUMBINE, does it ever end?

tract housing for 73000, did you say?

yeppers one giant Skinner Box

That disturbs me greatly. And that's not me being flippant, or exaggerating, or nuthin': it really freaks me out.

I used to drive a lot between the Sierras and the CA central coast, so I'd pass through the silicon valley pretty frequently. The first few times I'd get off the freeway to poke around, and I came across a couple of these nascent business/living developments that just put the fear in me. Nobody had moved into either one yet, but all the construction was complete, so I'd just drive by mile after mile of identical white fake-stucco houses and brushed-concrete-and-steel business parks in my little beat up truck, and drive out feeling shaken and paranoid. It may not be everyone's reaction to these things, but I can see how somewhere like that could take a marginal personality and just push it over the edge. Such an anaesthetic and dehumanizing environment...

It's the 50s all over again, except we are a more experienced population now. You can't go back. If you try to, you end up missing the things you know are out there beyond your reach.

While I believe that there are many factors that lead to kids going to school and gunning down their classmates and teachers, I'm not sure tract housing is one of them.

I grew up in one of the cookie cutter suburbs decades ago. I hated it then and hate them now, so don't get me wrong--I think they're dreary places to live. But I don't think they lead to mass murder.

Seems like some of these shootings have occurred in rural communities, too...

the modern upscale Levittown-ultimate conformity. also known as ratomorphic psychology..(they have given up Brie (french connection) and gone back to Velvetta-good taste is timeless)

Eric Harris and Dylan Keibold have obviously achieved some degree of the notority they had hoped for.

Teenagers are not sophisticated thinkers. Harris and Keibold are celebrities--and celebrities are "important" in our culture (which is not completely run by unsophisticated teenagers).

The poisonous scrawls on the high school walls are distressing. All the same, remember Jesse James was a murderous little thug who achieved a national reputation in his lifetime--and after his death.

I hopethat the graffiti will be scrubbed off the walls and that the graffiti artists are going to be tracked down and publically prosecuted and punished.

Would that the events of four years ago could also be erased.

The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on
Not all thy piety nor all they wit
Can call it back to cancel half a line
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

very true. didn't have access to quite the same level of weaponry, though...

Interesting re Jesse James: A new biography came out about a year ago. I didn't read the book, but I read some reviews. It's a serious work, concerning issues of law and order right in border states after the Civil War.

Somehow I doubt we'll be reading scholarly works about the Columbine killers a century from now, but one never knows...

Have been tossing around the thought with a couple of people recently that, given the right historical developments, reports of various workplace shootings could be unearthed in a couple of centuries and held up as examples of the "early office revolts of the 20th and 21st centuries" by coddled historians who excoriate the inhuman and inhumane working conditions of the cubicle farm.

Naturally, it could only take place in one of those mechanized, nobody-works-much utopian futures that are supposed to have arrived already and haven't.

Every culture produces "heroes" compatable with the virtues and values of that culture (or sub culture).

There is a difference between The Hulk and the Columbine Killers, but there are similarities as well. Maddened by percieved injustice _____ takes justice into his own hands.

Those two amoral brats (who might have matured to be decent adults) have a sulphurous glamour for alienated youth.

Look at the "heroes" of sports and rap music and video games and the gory big screen.

Oh, Brave New World.

Yeah, Harris and Kiebold--heroes of the New Millennium. Standing up for put-upon nerdy kids everywhere.

Although after seeing some of the video of those senior girls beating up and humiliating younger girls at the powder puff football game in Chicago earlier this week, I'm a little suprised more kids don't show up in school with automatic weapons.

Anyone remember being shocked when a sniper climbed the tower at UT and killed several people seems so long ago but was the start if I remember correctly of many mass murders it seems the TV press and a public hungary for sensational news perpetuates the phenomena.

I do remember it, Robby. Charles Whitman, the man's name was, if memory serves...