i've got to remember not to go crazy and start shooting people. inevitably, people will find my stash of columbine stuff (not unlike that guy who shot up that mall in new york yesterday) and think i was obsessed. to be fair, i was obsessed with columbine when it happened. and i've still got newspapers and videotapes (of 24 news coverage, including funerals) that i kept to use for a book (about media coverage around a school shooting (a fictional one, that is), a book i'll probably never write, but just in case, i have the stuff in a box still). and, my website at www.angelfire.com/ca4/muaddib began with an essay of sorts drawing connections between the shooting at columbine and what was going on in kosovo at the time (a connection michael moore briefly mentioned in bowling for columbine). of course, if i started shooting people now, it'd have little or nothing to do with columbine or my stash of columbine related stuff anymore than it would have to do with my collection of first edition stephen king hardcovers or my comic book collection or my stash of cookbooks or all the various television series i've gotten on video in the dozen or so years i've been actively recording stuff (lately, i've been trying to cut down, now that most any series that has any success at all will make it onto dvd... of course, i've been watching cupid again and think i'll have to make my own dvd of that one in case my tapes get too old and unwatchable...

what was i talking about? oh, right. mall shooting yesterday, guy had stash of columbine memorabilia. not sure what counts as memorabilia (except maybe that cd of that "columbine" song, which i've got, i think, in my stash as well). anyway, real story with this mall shooting was that it was as big a story as it was yesterday. only saw it on cnn, so maybe they were the only news network to cover it like they did, but still, it was overkill (pun unintended but certainly accepted). live coverage from outside the mall, shots of the fbi and police standing around (and what were the fbi doing there, anyway?), and the big news is guy fired some bullets, and like one person was injured (shot in the leg apparently). no one even bothered to get killed. and, this had cnn doing live coverage with very little content. at least all the columbine coverage way back in 99 led to something, more than a dozen killed, so-called experts talking about how we raise boys these days and why kids lose it... and no one finding any conclusiong with which they can actually deal, so now there's strict policies about weapons in schools, metal detectors and no-tolerance rules about threats (which leads to stuff like i mentioned a while back on this blog, kids (and, a reminder, these were elementary school kids) getting arrested at school for drawing pictures of other kids dead

of course, an adult (mike diana, if you want to look up the case on google) was ordered a decade or so ago not to draw anymore after being convicted of obscenity--and, if i manage to find some issues of his comic book, boiled angel, will that show up as evidence, along with my stash of columbine media coverage, after i shoot people?

of, course, i should state for the record, i have no intention of shooting people. hell, aside from a little speeding from time to time, i don't intend to commit any crimes. still, i don't want a national ID or for people to think they understand my motives because of what kind of stuff i've got stashed around... unless of course they make sure to catalog all of it to get a nice, well rounded picture--not, for example, to cite my owning of a tarot deck as evidence of some occult purpose in anything i do

in other news, a guy was arranging for a suicide party for today, the loveliest of holidays, and he got arrested because the whole shindig would have involved a few women killing their kids before showing up for the party

and, mary kay letourneau and her previously underage lover are engaged to marry once she's done with her prison sentence. and, a funeral was held in huntsville for three kids starved to death by their mother

and, bush wants $82 billion more for iraq and afghanistan, a former lebanese prime minister and about nine others were killed in an explosion, three iraqi nation guard troops were killed when "insurgents" blew up a pipeline, and it's valentine's day, a time for love and peace and caring about others... or is it erotic games with random girls whose names you picked from a hat (see friday's blog entry or look up the origins for valentine's day customs)?

and, and obsession with columbine is a big deal when someone fires a gun? how about we stop pretending that recent things like columbine or pearl jam's jeremy video or the matrix can inspire people to kill, and maybe take a long hard look at our culture, where every day we kill each other and we pay billions so our troops can kill some foreigners as well

white people and capitalism in danger isn't the end of the world... thing is, is that the tragedy of it?