Hello, I'm not pants shittingly funny today...well, not entirely. I'll tell you why.
What would compel a human being to commit such a heinous act against another person, especially children? Understanding it wouldn't have helped or stopped it. Yet, I yearned to. It felt like the only tangible step to be taken, just to make sense of it. Alas, we've all been cheated of any such opportunity. What is left is to piece together a reason and knowing there's a possibility of it being wrong. We'll have one soon enough, regardless. It seems that without a clear direction to take, our confusion, fear and grief...have lead to an outpouring of anything that would help to make sense of it, for ourselves. A lot of it; words of sympathy, prayer and love are always given during times like these. Others...were a little misguided and in bad taste..like...
Leonard Nimoy's Tweet
- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83, female.
- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female
- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female
- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06, male
- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65, female
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06, female
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06, female
- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male
- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06, male
- James Mattioli , 3/22/06, male
- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05, female
- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60, female
- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06, male
- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male
- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06, female
- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06, female
- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female
- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female
I tried to make this a live embedded tweet, but, Twitter's code told me to fuck myself.
The population of the internet at large is still, mostly nerds. So, telling you who Leonard Nimoy is, is largely a moot point. However, for those of us who weren't born and raised in the soft, mothering glow of t.v., he is an actor that played a character named Spock on a little known television show called...Star Trek.
On the outset, tweeting that "lots of people will not LLAP (live long and prosper)..." looks like an ass load of bad taste in the face of a tragedy. What I feel people are missing is the sentiment. Leonard Nimoy is far from a spiteful old prick. He donates tons of time and money to charities and even has a foundation of his own that gives grants to artists and want not. So, when he tweeted about people not living long and prospering, I don't think he meant it as a snarky Star Trek dick move.
I think he meant well, despite it coming out in a sad, somewhat retarded kind of way. Though, try as I might, I'm not sure what the two exclamation points at the end indicate. My guess is that is conveys shock from hearing the news, but, came off as a shocking revelation that LLAP somehow ties in to the gunning down of children. The latter being...just creepy and weird, both of which Leonard Nimoy can be accused of, just not when it comes to horrific, child death things.
Gun Control, Takes Control Of Facebook
Ah, the enlightened dialogue of Facebook.
At almost anytime, during the day or night, Facebook can erupt into a tizzy of sociological debate. This is especially true with anything involving the law. 99% of Facebook users are lawyers or so the deluge of gun law support/rebuttal status updates following the tragedy would lead us to believe.
During those horrible hours after the tragedy, Facebook lit up in a flurry of disbelief, disillusionment and revulsion. People wanted answers and there weren't any. Information coming out of the turmoil was scattered bits of; man, school, gun down children and teachers. With so little to go on and so much confused, hear say information. All anyone could react with was disoriented rage. The one thing we did know with any amount of certainty was "there was a shooting that killed school children and teachers, in a school". So, naturally, the target of every one's frustration became guns and "gun control".
"Banning guns is the answer.", some people said, "If gun laws were more constrictive, this might not have happened." said, others, yet, was that a real solution? No, unfortunately. In the haze of bitterness and the search for a culprit, people chose something completely wrong to gripe about.
Gun control, in theory, is a great deterrent for gun related crime. Guns would be tracked from manufacture to sale to owner. Everyone would know where all the guns are and all would be well. Criminals would be left, out in the cold, gun-less night. However, since we are human and this is "actual reality", it's never quite that simple. Criminals don't obey laws. By definition, that's why they're criminals. So, strict gun laws would do...in a nut shell...nothing to dissuade criminals from obtaining guns. Regardless, guns had a bit part to play in the horrific events. Something more severe helped that horrible event play out far more than guns did.
The fact that the gunman was mentally disturbed seemed to have been missed by Facebook denizens. The fact being that the guns he used, were reportedly, not his and he was mentally ill. A mentally deficient man was the cause and his illness, the catalyst to the shooting. Yes, he shot those poor kids and without a gun, it would have went very differently, but, being mentally ill was the cause, not a gun. Well meaning as stricter gun laws may be, Facebook status update junkies would do better to pass along pertinent information.
Westboro Baptist Church
Announces They'll Picket Newtown
Yes, those hate mongering fag flags.
When not being the most hated church since Jones Town, The Westboro Baptist folks are angering the masses with hateful protests of tragedies, with no apparent reasoning behind them other than their closed minded hate faith...thing. Usually, I'm all for blind hatred toward...everything. It's what gets me up every morning to set fire to my lawn. These poor, dumb as shit bastards take it to a whole new level, however. A level so ridiculously unattainable, only people in their own family can reach it and even then, it doesn't make sense to them.
Now, I can sense what you're thinking. "What the fuck, Elton? You're telling me about misguided assholes, you throw in these freaks?! You're way wrong, man. These people are the king cunts of shit head land. You know what? I'm shitting on this post. Literally shitting on it.". Look, I understand. I wish the worst kind of pain on these people too. Their protests are atrocities toward everything that is decent and noble in humanity. They're also not very popular and painfully stupid.
The Westboro Baptist Church consists of brain washed people spouting asinine hate slogans generated by their patriarch/savior/prophet Fred Phelps, a man, by a margin of 99% is regarded as too stupid and hated to live. Yet, via the logic that a copied image is less sharp than the original, he's convinced his own children that his brand of 'Jesus hates fags, Jews [Edit: Jesus was a Jew], actors, reading, gas companies and random shit' Christianity is the pathway to heaven. That of course is, according to prominent Christian leadership, the spiritual equivalent of ramming your dick into a lit furnace full of broken glass and calling it happiness.
So, do they mean harm? I don't think they do. Mostly because I don't think they know entirely what they, themselves mean. Sure, their signs say "Demo Fags", "Fag Santa" and "Faggity Fags Are Faggity Fag, Fag". Okay, that last one I just made up, but, still. What do those signs even mean, if not to demonstrate, via poor graphic design and grammar, that the person holding it...is stupid beyond reproach? That there is a fag Santa or that Santa is a fag? See? You couldn't shoe horn intellect in there if you greased it with whatever anal lube fag Santa would use. These people are complete and total idiots with no hope of salvation. They're hopelessly lost in a world built by a demented old man and his empty hate rhetoric and are too stupid to realize it. So...fuck 'em. Fence them off behind a sound proof barrier and let them jerk each other off to the sounds of their dumb assed hate speeches. Then, we'll protest their brainless, hillbilly funerals when the day comes...which I hear will be soon. Fred Phelps is half deal already.
Despite all the protesting and misguided tweets, there's an underlying this tragedy that's far worse. As bad as it is, it will come to pass, as it has so many times before. This tragedy will be forgotten. Like the Columbines and Kent State's before it, the world will move on and leave this horrible day as a small foot note that will only be remembered when the next awful thing needs clarification or scope.
It doesn't have to be that way. We, as a people, could mourn the dead and still use this ugly event by learning from it. Be it the benefits of treating the mentally ill early via publicly funded programs or research toward a better understanding of how all of this could be avoided in the future. Keeping the memory of what happened fresh and alive, so that whatever could have been gleaned from the lost of so much life, isn't wasted. Those poor kids deserve that in the very least and in doing that will never be forgotten.
Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06, female
- Daniel Barden, 9/25/05, male- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83, female.
- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female
- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female
- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06, male
- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65, female
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06, female
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06, female
- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male
- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06, male
- James Mattioli , 3/22/06, male
- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05, female
- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60, female
- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06, male
- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male
- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06, female
- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06, female
- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female
- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female
