A Brilliant Plan

Why am I going on so much about this?  I'll just say it.  The Trans Nashville Christian Children Killer.  That's it.  Previous to her spree, if it qualifies as a spree, I had touched it as it arose.  Heh.  Touched on this particular peculiar tranz detail of a generally degenerating culture -- all of a piece with pronouns, riots and cancelled careers.  Just stuff, because life is not supposed to be a smooth road.  But none of that was murder.  

Mass murder takes it to another level.  

The queer apologists, and I think I'm using the term correctly -- formerly it was a slur, but now it's reclaimed, like swampland with condos on it.  Repurposed, like aborted fetus tissue harvested for stemcells, or human skin used for lampshades.  Pragmatic, utilitarian.  Prudent.  

The queer apologists remind us that it's seven, not six but seven victims of this unfortunate occurrence.  Of course it was foreseeable, they remind us, because the real and metatragic victim, of amerikkka's white supremasist patriarchy maga-cis republican ultra toxicity, was driven to her or his ultimate expression of self-assertion by me, Jack H, for obvious reasons of hatred, intolerance, envy, evil, hatefulness, Jesus, penises, and evil.  

The Red Chinese demand an apology for US molesting their perfectly innocent balloon (Go Biden 2024!).  They inform us that we're racists for claiming covid came NOT from Florida but China.  Mao blamed "rightists"; Hitler knew that jews were to blame; Stalin identified the "wreckers"; for Pol Pot it was city-dwellers and anyone who wore glasses.  And from exactly this same playbook, manifesto, the queer lobby identifies the victims as the perps.

Society is to blame. The Establishment, the Man, the magaman, the ultraheteroman, the white male man. Make gay love not proxy war with Russia, but, yes, do. Don't trust anyboomer over thirty. Defund the police. Comrade Napoleon is always right.

It's a brilliant plan.  They deserve to win.  They smart, we dumb. The Killer was a victim.  Seven is our lucky number.  Who are the monsters?  In this our new america, it's anyone who has no difficulty identifying what a woman is.  In Neoamerica, Wokeamerica, to be rational is to be hateful. 

A woman is a human adult who has a paleovagina.  We might say biological vagina, or traditional, or natural, or real, or nontranz.  Very rare genetic anomalies can complicate matters, but untidiness is always the case, everywhere.  If we couldn't count on universal generalities, neither logic nor experience could have validity.  That is satanic: what is perfectly adversarial must end in universal chaos.

Seems like all of a sudden, to speak of pronouns we need to talk about the existential qualities of genitals.  If it's all about vaginas and penises, then it should be either academic or pornographic.  Grammar is the last place we'd expect to find gender.  

English is the only European language that is NOT gendered.  We use figurative language -- Father Time, Mother Nature.  But time and nature are its.  The only gendered nouns are those that identify which of two types of genitals are at issue.  Man/woman, actor/actress, bull/cow.  "Earth" is not masc, the "moon" is not fem.  These things do not have genitals, or gender.  In other languages, nouns do not have genitals, but they have gender: der Mond is NOT male, but it is masc; la terre is NOT female, but it is fem.  

A "tranzman" is NOT a man or male, or feminine, and she is fem.  A "tranzwoman" is NOT a woman or female, or masculine, and he is masc.  Because in English, paleopenises or paleovaginas determine our very few gendered pronouns, exclusively. Those individuals who have had transsexual surgery no longer have genitals, strictly speaking, but they still have a grammatical gender -- they were born with it.

What are genitals then, strictly speaking?  A prosthetic limb is not an actual arm or leg, but it is good to have.  A transplanted arm is an arm, as a transplanted liver is a liver -- good to have.  So, I'm honing in on something that is biological in character.  

Reshaped vaginal tissue, supplemented with additional skin and tendon and cartilage, is not a penis.  A transplanted penis is a penis.  In transexual cases, such a transplant-recipient would be a woman who now has an actual penis, thanks to a donor.  

This would be something like a mouse having a human ear growing from its back.  

Science progressing as it is, a penis might be grown de novo.  I'd expect that transplanted testicles will someday be an option -- rather than the cosmetic, prosthetic ovoids currently provided.  

Again, because this seems to be difficult, a woman with a transplanted penis is a woman.  The way a horse with a transplanted horn is a horse with a horn.  Not a unicorn. It's not that unicorns have horns -- it's that they are magical.  If there were magic, a magical horse might be a unicorn.  But there is no magic.  Science does not transform the nature of a thing.  Unnatural results may accrue, but they are unnatural because they are not authentic.

If gene therapy were to became so sophisticated that all XX chromosomes were changed to authentic XY, and ovaries became or were somehow replaced by testes, and the Skeen glands became and took up the functionality of a prostate, and the feminized brain became testosteronic in its compartmentalization ... etc, well, that would be a male body.  

Male authenticity would become merely philosophical speculation, or a question of theology: is spirit "binary".  Thank you, critical gender theorists, for that term in this context. It is apt.

But for reality as it is, genitals are those organs genetically designed for procreation. They are biologically generative.

For men, soldiers, who have been catastrophically wounded, it is altogether fitting and proper that every surgical means be used, to restore them.  They will never be lessened, by their tragedy.  Such losses, in the performance of duty, can never be repaid.  All we can do is honor what is noble.  

That is the opposite of what I'm talking about. 

I'm talking about what is ignoble.  Their brilliant plan.  The tranz takeover of pronouns is so bizarre that it has normalized gay marriage. Brilliant.  Being white is racist, having a penis is violence, outside-in penises are vaginas. Woke politics is so much more an attack on common sense, let alone on civilization itself, that former extremes wither in comparison.  Genius.

It works because conservatives think there are rules, but we want to be polite, so we are silent.  That's what "acquiesce" means -- "to become quiet".   We were silent until we were unable to speak. 

And we are grateful for what we get.  The sop that the Most Supreme Court has tossed our way re abortionism might have made some of us do backflips of glee, but all that August Body really did was allow some hydrogen peroxide for an open wound.  Ouch, but thanks -- master.

Logic.  Logic logic logic.  Penis penis penis.  Wherever there is a NEO, there must be a PALEO.  Thus, there are no more vaginas, only paleovaginas and neovaginas.  No more "women" -- only prefix-woman, either traditional or tranz.  Tradwomen or tranzwomen.

I must have said it already, years ago by now.  I said we will have no more marriages!  Tranzmarriage hath made me mad.

I'm not done yet.  It's not the words weener or peachie, tee hee, that bring me back like a dog to its vomit.  It's the murders.  

Their plan is brilliant.  The murders were a bit much.  But we are, most of us, too polite to bring them up.  And anyway, the new news is that Trump was indicted.  He's the real criminal.  

J

Sexual Lobotomies

As it were.  The permanent removal of metabolic function, for the sake of emotion or convenience or expedience.  Unmanageable behavior, so lobotomy!  A societal cure for a personal issue.  Likewise genital glands — testes, ovaries.  Superficial characteristics as well — breasts, penes.  

Lobotomies, well, that was long ago, like, the 1950s in its heyday.  Here we are in '23 skidoo, and we're so past that.  Now we've got meds to handle emotions!  Tune in, turn on!  Enlightenment Now!

And people, generally young, who are confused about that very most basic of emotional issues, sex?  And confused about who they are ... "identity"?  Every teenager is moody, or questioning, or unsure.  Not every option in this existential questing is a solution.  Maturity is a solution.  That takes time, which a precipitous lobotomy precludes.  Robbed.  Likewise, orchiectomy — testicle removal.  

Sounds like something the mafia would be involved in.  Tony Soprano's Medical Waste & Bio-hazardous Material Removal Services — 'No refuse refused!'  Unwanted breasts are an Emotio-hazard, per conventional psychological politics.  Fetuses, testicles — remove whatever it is that the "healthcare" of wokism mandates.

The Trans Nashville Christian Children Killer was reportedly on meds.  Didn't help her emotions (in this case I would have supported a lobotomy).  What meds?  Well, first, "meds" should have the function of curing, or at least helping.  So, fail.  It was some variant of TESTOSTERONE.  

And there we have it, the mystery of the mysterious motive, solved.  Motive was only secondary.  Testosterone was the motivator.  

The news informs us of this Tennessee girl and young woman who never ever had to learn how to cope with male levels of male hormones.  No puberty or adolescence or adulthood of having to deal with the chemical instincts of masculinity — a man's hormones.  

Then, she was injected with massive doses of such conduct-altering ... drugs.  For which she had zero experience controlling.  Presumably she was dosed with T levels to match (or exceed) those of a young man in his mid-twenties.  That, if you do not know, is still a very dangerous age for young men.  That was me, once.  I was more stupid than dangerous, but stupid is dangerous.

Maybe they should have started her off at 80-year-old man levels.  Benjamin Button her into the tranz version of the man she aspired to be.  Weaning her off the, as it were, female whey, slowly introducing male solids.  But, bitesize, and mooshy.

Every man, and young man, and boy, and very little boy, has his lifetime of having to deal with levels of testosterone ten times higher than in females.  It varies with age, but ten is an order of magnitude.  We learn how to handle it.  It's very difficult.  That's why men are physically violent, so much more than women.  Our androgenic hormones are hard to deal with.  We deal with them as much as our character allows.  Practice.

This week's news has educated us as to how at least one female dealt with her male hormones.  

'Roid rage is a thing.  It is surpassingly ugly in men.  Now we've seen how it looks when it is made to be a female thing.  Beyond horror.

Alas, the noble and liberating cause of Transgenderism has been very slightly set back, by this unfortunate and unforeseeable occurrence.  This has also been a week notable for several tornadoes.  Christian school murders ... extreme weather phenomena — we can't ever really know the causes of such things.  Climate Change of course, and patriarchy...

Then again, the killer was under some "psychological" "professional" "caregiver".  That person is responsible for the "medications", and for the murders.  

Maybe some courageous DA will mount a case against him or her or they or them.  Maybe NY City will provide legal expertise.  Perhaps George Soros will contribute to the cause.  Cuz, no justice, no peace.  No justice!  No penis!  How dare those Christians exist, to tell us how to live.  

I seem to have lost my train of thought.  

Death to the intollerant.  Pass the ammunition, and the makeup.  

J

Now That She's Dead

It's a state religion, this transsexual cult.  Because it is entirely about the spirit, or, if you will, the soul.  But since they do not allow it to be a psychological issue, they can't have it be soul, that conjunction and construct of metabolism and higher brain function.  So it's about the spirit.  

The government is telling us that there is a human spirit.  This spirit, somehow, was born into the wrong body.  So spirit has a sex, or, as they insist, a gender — which is of course a grammatical and arbitrary social construct.  Clothes are for genders, to meet cultural expectations so that individuals may play their proper roles.  Bodies do not have a gender, they have a sex. 

A spirit in the wrong body is called a demon.  There are demons that have sex.  Perhaps all of them do, but in particular, incubus and succubus.  (I'm ignoring the plural, as pedantic.  Also, their pronouns would not be they/them.)  Very religious youths, and older, would have supposed they encountered such entities, late of a night, but we have the phrase nocturnal emission to explain such matters.  Too bad we can't come up with another such likely explanation, for the misgendered.  (Which, my spellchecker informs me, is a real word.)

A spirit in the wrong body is a simple variation on gnosticism — divine spirit trapped in evil matter, and by denying this inappropriate flesh, one's true self is liberated.  Wow.  Religious.  

No animal is transgender.  Same-sex mounting behavior is observed, but it is a display of social heirarchy, the alpha baboon dominating a subordinate.  Know your place.  Female monkeys (Harlow's rhesus), when raised to be insane by neglect and isolation, if somehow inseminated will kill their babies.  Virtually all other females will raise their babies normally.  A specific, supporting the general fact that there are no transphenomena in the animal kingdom.

These are general observations.  The specific is the Trans Nashville Christian Children Killer.  It's all in there, right?  Because having given it less than one second of thought, "shooter" isn't the preferred noun. The emphasis is misplaced, like a demonic spirit in a human body.  Murderer is the term.  How the murders were committed is ancillary — irrelevant in fact.  

Guns probably make it easier.  But 10 or 20 gallons of gasoline, or aviation fuel, tactically placed would take out a neighborhood.  That's a little less personal though, a distance thing, so her needs wouldn't have been fully met. (I hope I haven't given anyone ideas.)

The most salient adjective for this Killer is "Trans".  First — and I say this in ignorance and mere speculation — I would suppose that the level of rage and self-hatred of whatever percentage of these people so far exceeds the bounds of sanity that violence, against self or others, is absolutely unavoidable, given our current depravity.  

It won't be widely reported, but it is my expectation there will be an epidemic — no, a pandemic of trans violence — I mean violence by trans ... transes, tranzes ... trannies.  We hear the literal hate speak, from the White House.  An encouragement and incitement to, well, I guess we'll see.  Death to the Christian haters.  I mean haters who are Christians.  

But here's the point.  Now that she's dead, what will they call her?  Her body is undeniably female.  Even such a person as Caitlyn Jenner has a male body, mutilated they seem to be implying, castrated and somewhat reconfigured, and I'd supposed saline implants in his chest.  Any autopsy would show male hips and shoulders, etc.  No anthropologist digging up his bones would be confused.  Maybe the surgical-grade plastic for the implants would cause some puzzlement. 

So the Trans Nashville Christian Children Killer has/had (her verbs) a body that, when dead, is female.  Did it revert?  Like Dracula dissolving into dust, or the Wolfman returning to his humanity?  The vivifying male spirit which required six human sacrifices has fled or been exorcized from this young woman, leaving a hated female husk like a spider-drained wasp?

We all must agree that it was only her thoughts that made her male, or suppose she was.  She is currently non-existent, or in hell.  It would be for Satan to tell her what she is now, and indeed what she was when yet in her body.  Yes, my sweet, you really were and are male.  Or contrariwise.  There are only two choices, given the biological fact of sex, and therefore of the facts of life.  

This leaves a dilemma for the coroner and mortician and city registrar and perhaps the guy who carves any potential headstone.  What is she now?  Do her pronouns survive her demise?  Was it only her spirit that required the world to label her as him?  

This is going to be happening much more frequently.  Confused and lost kids in previous decades dressed up like commandos to commit their school murders.  Trans is a new-again cult that affirms those who are self-loathing, and entitles them to elevated status, victim and hero.  It is instant celebrity, based on wardrobe selection and a flawed understanding of so elementary a thing as grammar.  

It entitles them to outrage when other people's reality conflicts with their self-image.  It creates a sense of being invalidated that goes beyond the old-fashioned and now forbidden idea, fighting words.  It justifies violence as an act of self preservation.  Self-identity is, as the gays say, who I am.  

Speech is foremost among the earliest and most basic of human accomplishments.  Sort of the same way that unambiguous sexual organs are literally universal in all viable vertebrates.  Everything with a backbone manifests a sexual nature, and only one at a time.  None of them are out of synch, in terms of behavior consonant with its organs.  

Only a religion could get sex so screwed up.  

J

Too Soon

Ho hum.  It's that time of the year again, or of the month, or of the news cycle.  What's old is new again.  Seems like I've covered this ground before.  Oh, yeah, yes, I have.  Virginia Tech, and this, which I don't even remember.  You're too young to remember.  

Now this girl -- Nashville, Christian school, nine-year-olds.  Very unusual, a girl being a school shooter.  And with our new awokeness about identity and shit, it's truly very confusing.  First, it seems like there should be a distinction between student school shooters, and adult school shooters.  They're totally different.  

And I just added to the confusion by calling her a girl.  She's 28, and a man.  But maybe I'm wrong about that.  Maybe she identifies ... identified as a nine-year-old boy?  I think she did -- that was the manifest focus of her interest. Michael Jackson would have been a healthier role model.  Peter Pan wasn't homocidal.

But even more confusing is that here I was, thinking I'd finally mastered the jargon.  When we say, say, trans women, "trans" means the thing they are not.  In reality they'd be men.  They want to be, they think they are, they're insisting with fierce vehemence and pretending with great vigor to be women.  Trans is aspirational.  

So the preferred and required usage, the neo-orthodoxy (certainly not heterodoxy), the government-established religion, has it that she be identityified as "he" etc.  

But she's NOT being identityified that way!  They're not being inclusive and equityable, our leaders, rulers and overlords (pardon my gendered language -- I just did it with "mastered" too.  I am incorrigibly deplorable).  It's always "she", in the reportage.  This is outrageous.  So disrespectful.   After all the hard-fought battles we've fought -- yes, I've converted -- the blood, sweat and tears we've spilled, to be treated so insensitively by the ultra white extremist supremacist republican genocidal maga moslemophobic cacofemistic cisphallic fetophile equitimachist Jesus-lovers who should all be killed and exterminated like the evil haters they all are (point of order: they don't hate evil.  They are evil and haters).

See, stupid?  

 

It's right there, online, easy to find.  HE.  HIM.  Is that so incredibly hard for you to understand?  

He is NOT a trans "woman".  Idiots.  He IS a woman.  He is a trans MAN.  "Trans" means the thing you WANT to be.  Is that too hard for you to comprehend, in your pathetic peabrain?  Nothing to do with so-called biology.  A complete repudiation and negation of that pseudoscientific myth. 

See?  Are you blind?  Look!  Use your eyes, those jelly balls in the middle of your stupid face.  (Bonus: Beauty is found in symmetry of breadth, and not of depth or height (I've been reading Pascal). The top of a face should not match the bottom.  Unlike starfish, we favor bilateral symmetry.) 

Clearly, clearly she is a man.  She's not dressing like this for the fashion of it.  It's who she is.  (I have that same tie.)

But I jest.  

I have nothing to say about the grief.  I'm not even thinking about it.  There's no one for me to hold, and words, well they are why we're in this mess as it is.  Words are what we use to tell lies with.  

I'm somebody who makes jokes too soon.  It's what I do because I cannot throw my body between children and monsters.  I hate this goddamned world so much.

J

Web

The best and most fantastic thing about Obama's reelection is that now I can be so very much more agreeable.  In the old, BO days, Before Obama, when the Lefties were unceasingly asserting how bad America and Americans were, selfish and greedy and fat and stupid, I would hasten to correct them, saying they meant humans, not Americans.  I will no longer be asserting that point.  Now Americans have clarified and affirmed their stupidity and laziness and stupidness and greed and stupidosity and incompetence and stupiditude.

Every now and again I find myself saying, outloud, whether I'm alone or in public, in an exaggerated hayseed backwoods voice, Mahyjuk buhynz?!  Were kin Ah git me sum uv theym mahyjuk buhynz!?!   We've just traded all our pigs for some of them magic beans -- I mean, they're magic!  So I can agree with the Lefties.  It's not even a compromise.  I'm on their side.  I've been converted.  Americans are the stupidest.  America is the stupidest.

Aside from the macro destruction, slow but inexorable like the progression of ice age glaciation, we have the localized insanity, today, of a massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.  There simply are no words for it.  An entire classroom of kindergarten children murdered.  The killer first murdered his father -- perhaps, speculatively, I won't bother to corroborate this -- in New Jersey, then transported himself to his mother's hometown and murdered her in her home, then went to the school where she taught and murdered her little students.

The murderer was dressed all in black.  Some official, or a talking head, or talking mouth on the radio, characterized the killer as "troubled."  He didn't seem to have much trouble.  Euphemisms.  Well, as I said, words cannot suffice.  No word or words will do.  Scum, garbage, monster ... "shooter", etc.  Meaningless in their inadequacy.  There is no consolation, no justice, no explanation or understanding.  There is only the inevitability of Hell -- the purpose for which God made it.  Had the killer not killed himself, the only appropriate response would be summary execution, first armed man on the scene puts a bullet into his head, no goodbyes, no speeches.  Mad dogs need to be put down.  Isn't it a shame that there are mad dogs.  Tsk tsk.  But kill them.

Dressed all in black.  He wanted to be scary, see.  All those tens of thousands of hours he had spent playing video games, kill games -- the concrete fantasy he had constructed in his mind, the sexual emotion power terror of it all.  Kewl.

The Lefties, who have been proven right by the recent Revolution, will of course be right in their triumphant calls for gun control.  I think this will do it, actually.  The next big thing.  Save the children -- not repeal but ignore the Second Amendment -- just a scrap of paper.  First Term, ObamaCare; Second Term, SaveTheChildren.  It's obvious.  So my idea, of banning killgames -- it's a nonstarter.  Guns, not murderers, slaughter kindergarten classrooms.  It would be unconstitutional to ban killgames.  Free speech.  First Amendment.  The Constitution rules, and never mind any apparent inconsistencies contained within this paragraph.  You need to get your head right with Obama.  It's a New Age.

You notice I have not spoken of grief.  Did I not say there were no words? I have no emotion.  This is the way the world is.  It's the new normal.  I'm not being my usual sarcastic insensitive self when I say we can expect more of this.  We are the terrorist islamists now, who want to destroy our civilization.  We stupid stupid stupid worthless scum Americans, who see what is good and innocent and sweet and kind and generous, and are impelled to hate and destroy it.  I expected the onset of the Tribulation to be more obvious in its religious nature.  Turns out to be a lack of religion that set it a-going.  Islamism doesn't count -- it is on the outside, and cancer is what will get us.  The islamist can sit out this Jihad -- we'll do the job ourselves.

The killer is reported to have been developmentally challenged, Asperger's perhaps, an A student, Honors, with no interpersonal skills at all, always alone, didn't appear in the school yearbook, pencils in his pocket, walked with his hands straight at his sides.  Mother said to be very attentive.  Very clean house.  Highly involved with her kids.

So something like 20 little coffins, and a few adult-sized ones, will be the most recent monument to our culture, where regardless of reports to the contrary I believe adolescents are left alone in their rooms to drive themselves mad with videogames and web pornography, while not one single adult makes more than one single effort to intervene, intercede, rescue, pray for, this lost indifferent poisoned desperate and degenerate generation, whatever its trendy denomination, Gen Y, Gen Mill, Gen Nil.

That's all.


J

The Latest Eh-Hole

Whatever this latest eh-hole's name is. Jared. Jared Shih? Whatever. "Please don't be mad at me." No, I'm not mad. It's just that I'd like justice. An equal amount of pain should be levied upon him, as he has provided to others. Justice. Impossible of course. Like Virginia Tech. Like 9-11. Stupid people made evil by their actions. We're all stupid, sometimes. Hardly any of us have the poor judgement to manifest said stupidity into reality. Yes, we do create our own reality -- the New Agers are right, if there are any New Agers anymore. Is my terminology out of date? No more hippies, I know. Um, Emo? Global Warmists? They are all of a piece, these Emotionalists -- and correct, in thinking globally and acting locally.

Jared Shih acted locally, per his anarchist and/or Satanist handbook, the result being a little dead nine year old girl, and some dead old people protecting their spouses, and a dead judge, and then a score or so of wounded. Some heroism, bystanders leaping toward the gunfire instead of away. Thus, even in horror there is beauty. Thank you God, for including a capacity for nobility in this world of general materiality.

Jared Shih, I hear, lived in his parent's hillbilly shack with tar buckets on the porch, and was kicked out of the Y and the library and the local community college, and was denied entry into the army, and he'd dress as a hippie one day and as a rasta the next and hip hop after that. Just trying to find himself -- an anus in search of some butt cheeks. My metaphors in this topic tend to the scatological.

Whom shall we blame for Jared Shih's actions? ... other than himself, of course. Enlightened as we are, we know how complex such matters must be. His schizophrenia, no doubt, we must blame. Who after all can resist voices telling us to do a thing? The fact that there is a lifetime of such voices, external, and real, telling us to act rightly -- this fact shall be ignored. The excuse of a mental disorder will be sufficient to excuse these murders. And of course talk radio, and the Tea Party. Sarah Palin is a root cause, no doubt -- it must be a certainty that Jared Shih studied her website, on which there was a certain congress woman's name, somehow associated with crosshairs. QED.

The sheriff of Pima County is to be excused, in his emotional rhetoric maligning talk radio. The logic isn't very sound, and his grasp of history is poor -- but his point was that civility should be valued. On the topic of free speech, Dick Durbin, Dhem Sen of Ill, confused himself by wondering, "Don't we have an obligation, those of us in public life and those who cover us to say, 'This is beyond the bounds. It may be constitutionally permissible, but it shouldn't be acceptable rhetoric? We owe it to our own in both political parties to have at least the good sense and common decency when people say these outrageous things to say, 'Wait a minute, that just goes too far, whether it comes from the right or from the left."

Um. No? It should not be acceptable? It should be forbidden? Sir. Outrageous, incivil, stupid speech is, must be, and shall remain acceptable in the public forum. I have every right to be wrong and to be offensive. It's called freedom, and it works both ways, to your pleasure and to your discomfiture. And as for things that may be constitutionally permissible, such as free speech, which may be permissible, constitutionally, well, sir, you are the reason we need a Constitution. What would you forbid, without it? The answer is apparent. Free speech, and the right of self-defense as provided for through the right to bear arms. As for the degree of incivility, it is a reflection not of a change in human nature, but of a coarsening of broadcast standards. The knowledgeable reader will call to mind the Alien and Sedition Act, in point of support.

... Oh, wait. I see I've been unfair. Dick Turgid excused his disrespect for the Constitution and covered his ass by adding some boilerplate verbiage about common decency. So that's all right then. Never mind. On the one hand he belittles the Constitution, but he makes it all right with a fix-it appeal to emotion. See?

As for the latest coward child-murderer, he was planning on killing himself. So he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences. Planning ahead is a good thing. Forgiveness? My position should be apparent by now. It is not for me to forgive. I am not harmed by the murder of children I do not know. I mean, abortion is legal, right? And I no longer distress myself over this fact. He surely needs forgiving. Where will he find it? In the hearts of his living victims? -- or from the loved ones of the dead? From God, who created or at least allows Hell? I really don't care. It's not my problem. Justice, not mercy, is the proper concern of society and its instruments. Let us then try to approximate justice.

I regret that he has but one life to give for his crimes. Sadly, the coward does not die a thousand deaths.

J

The Last Thing I Have To Say about Cho

Now I'm depressed. I've driven myself just about as far as I can go, and it isn't nearly far enough. I'm sick of this aching old body that carries me through this tiresome life. I use exhaustion as a drug, realizing that no addiction can solve the underlying problem. All my careful calculations about how to maximize my potential still do not allow me to perform with the intensity that I expect or require. It's seeming like a waste. A misuse and a misapplication of energy. What possible payoff is there? I'm not running toward anything. Just running away. That's no way to live.

I always thought I'd be able to have another family. If I were a woman, though, I'd be in menopause. Lucky me, I'm still as fertile as ever. But the more time passes, the crazier I get, and I find myself facing, more and more, the idea that nobody could want me. Pathetic, I know. I'm such a great guy. But I don't even look at women anymore. Why bother. I'm pretty much done with kids, too. Well, not pretty much. Completely. That's too bad, because I had a lot to offer.

I move down a corridor that extends past the vanishing point, and it echoes with the sound of slamming doors.

Self pity? You're such a genius.

There's a young fellow that I have glancing contact with, who went to MIT or UCLA or somesuch when he was 14. All I can think is that I wish I'd had his parents. What an incredible waste. How much of my intelligence went into just surviving the madhouse. I can actually feel it, daily, the weight of the inhibitions and neuroses and now-maladaptive behaviors. Slowing me down, making me actually stupid. My thoughts flow so much more freely when I'm alone. I've taken to just watching the plodding of my brain in social settings. It's pathetic.

But I've found it doesn't pay to let anyone find out who and how I really am. I make my lame little jokes, and give the same breathless speeches on my few pet topics, and otherwise stare off into space listening to molecules bounce off my eardrums. Chance of sunshine? -- slight. Chance of a great freeze? -- overwhelming. Take that young fella I just mentioned. We have really bad communication. Really bad. He's young, and still doesn't get it, about frames of reference. I no longer feel the urge to be Professor Pedanticus. Where does that leave us? Waiting for a long bus ride, when we can have a soulful heart to heart and he'll get the chance to see what Jack is all about. Yeah, right. That's the cosmos, right there. A galaxy of pinpoints, each with its own and correct frame of reference. Surrounded by an infinite void of darkness.

What good is God? A great Prime Mover, he is. Merciful and Just and Gracious, to have set up a scheme for salvation. Thanks for that. But now, right now in a world that shudders with grief and desolation and pain that cannot be forgotten or suppressed, where is this God? How many promises of peace, left hanging like some fruit on some tree. So high, so far, and guarded by serpents. What comfort? We are rescued, if we are, only from hell. Life remains to be endured.

The crippled man cannot run. The mute cannot call for help. The man whose mind is broken, whose soul has been born into a poisoned brain, so that all music is clangor and all communication sounds as a dissonance -- what hope do these have? We must crawl, then, and grunt, and ignore the phantoms of madness in the hope that what is pleasant is not mere illusion. Autistic and schizophrenic, Cho was. Was that his fault? Free will? Speak to the raging sea, and tell it to be still.

I just wish that there were less misery. There are too few saints, and I don't think I know any of them. What? Be one? You be one. Fruit will just fall into your hands.

Maybe I'll start fasting.



J

News Cycle

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I heard on the radio that 130 people had been exploded in Baghdad that day. One really big bomb and maybe some smaller ones. You'll have to excuse my vagueness. There was only that one announcement on the news that I heard, and I didn't quite catch all the details. Not enough to remember. I need repetition to really get facts down solid. Wow, imagine, though. All those people killed with just two or three bombs. What if something like that happened here? We'd never hear the end of it I bet. You'd think that any such negative news would really get played up, not just because blood sells for a good price, but because it all just goes to support the idea that we've lost the war in Iraq, like the media is always telling us. Maybe something more important was in the news, though, that crowded out that particular story.

Oh yeah, I remember now. That thing about that guy at that college back east. He went crazy and stuff. Killed like 32 people. Or maybe it was the guns that did the killing. Anyway I think I got the number right. It's been repeated so often. Downgraded from 33, but I suppose they've got the facts straight now. Somebody must have just looked dead. Or maybe they stopped counting the killer. Hey! I just thought of something. Like, 32 is almost exactly one-forth of 130! Isn't that ironic? I bet it would be exactly one forth, if there were such a thing as half a person. But that's ridiculous. There's no such thing as half a person. Everybody is equal in the eyes of God, right?

And remember like last year? That dude Mohammad Taheri-azar? Drove his Jeep into a bunch of students at some college in North Carolina. What's up with them easterners? Oh, I don't mean like ethnic easterners. Like Middle or Far Eastern. Dude, that would be totally racist, and we're all equal in the eyes of God. No, what I meant was them east coast college dudes. Cuz Virginia is like right near North Carolina. It's like right above it or below it or something. Well, it couldn't be right below it. That would be South Carolina. Unless it's one of those East Virginia deals -- I mean West Virginia, which is really northwest West Virginia I think, when you think about it. Sort of squeezed off to the side, so maybe Virginia could be right below North Carolina, and South Carolina could be below it too, and next to Virginia. I suppose I could look it up, but I could look up the details of those Baghdad bombings too. If it's not important enough for the news to report all day long, though, why bother. Anyways, how many did that Mohammad kill with his SUV? Oh well, why bother. It was so long ago. Old news. Like that Baghdad thing all those days ago. And wasn't there something earlier this week about some dude who shot a bunch of people? And can you believe what Imus said?



I heard a fellow say that on Monday he heard about Cho's rampage, and processed it, and then had to go to some meetings. Afterward he couldn't remember where he'd parked his car. Had a panic attack. Never happened to him before. He had the self-awareness to realize that it was really about the shootings. I'm not like that. It comes as no surprise to me at all. Same deal with 9/11. Nine Eleven, which was almost one hundred times more deadly than the spectacle that young Mr. Cho managed to produce. That would make it about twenty five times more deadly than the above referenced bombings in Baghdad. As you can see, I'm a prodigy at keeping things in perspective. I try to be emotional only about things that affect me directly. Is that selfish? I call it ... realism.

The world is full of pain. Jesus has to feel it. I don't.

And Mr. Cho? I don't need to have any emotion about him. He's in hell now, and that is sufficient justice for me. Compassion for him? Forgiveness? Healing? First, he had enough pity for himself. That well must be dry. Forgiveness? It is for the victims to forgive. I mean the ones who are still alive. You and I are not sinned against, so need not forgive. Healing? Wasn't there a pretty poem by that blonde black woman, about us being Virginia Tech and laughing again? There it is then. By this poem we are healed. We hardly needed to feel the wounds at all. Those of us who actually were wounded, I mean.

As for Mr. Cho, possessed of a human genome, he was of course human. As much as, say, an unborn baby is human. Bad example though, what with fetuses being subject to termination as a matter of choice. Fetuses cannot terminate themselves, or others, as did Cho. Well, they say we all have a spark of the divine in us. Something of the image of God.

Mohammad of the SUV killed, or tried to kill, for his god, Allah. The generic mohammads of islamism have their cleansing rites of Allah down to a science, or rather to a theology. Cho killed and killed and killed and killed again and again, for his own god. What is it with these assholes, always killing for their gods?

God can do His own killing.



J

Vision

He didn't think far enough ahead. He saw himself killing, pulling the trigger, seeing the looks of shock and fear. He imagined the satisfaction it would give him. Power. Contempt. Hatred. Disdain. It's something like erotic -- pierced flesh and body fluids. Racing heartbeats. Domination. Tension, release and stillness.

He imagined the tears, the mourning, the gasps of anguish, and he smiled a narrow one-sided smile and nodded his head. He rehearsed the sorrow of it endlessly, author of a masterpiece of grief. All his years have brought him here, to a place where every eye will be on him. He will be a wonder and a watchword, and that will be enough.

He looked only to the final moment of his own life. A last bullet, into his brain. Then everything that matters stops.

He did not see himself, naked and pale, stretched out on the coroner's slab. He did not see his slack jaw, his dry lips, his dry tongue, his teeth now just the first of his bones -- did not see his eyes only half closed, showing the whites now clouded to gray. He did not see his stiff flat flesh conforming to the surface of the table. He did not see his ribs unmoving over breathless lungs, his belly concave and still between his jutting hips. He did not see his flaccid penis and hanging scrotum, like an empty glove, exposed and slack in the cold of death. He did not think of the hands that move his limbs, the blades that cut a long incision from throat to crotch, his organs pulled out and arrayed for examination, pink and purple streaked with blue and green.

Now he lives as an eternal spirit in the place where God is not. Such a place, that lacks every organizing principle, where blackness and fire and torment and abysmal void are only words that hint as dark metaphors at what the spirit cannot comprehend. What has light to do with darkness? What has spirit to do with chaos? But such is all that remains for those who embrace despair.

His imagination did not extend so far. He thought that death is just a final stillness of the body. He will never find stillness again. Life can never end. It just changes locations. He has gone to the place of his choosing. There is no pleasure in this fact. Just inevitability, and resignation to the unavoidable, plodding order of things.


J

Massacre Control

I've never committed any crime. Which is not to say I've not had intimate associations with the criminal justice system. And with the civil justice system as well. As if there were such a thing as justice. Ah well. We live in an imperfect world. I probably had a nodding acquaintance with each and every cop in the certain suburb in which I raised my family. One of my boys, you see, didn't start out with me. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Turns out I wasn't the tree surgeon I had hoped. Ah well. Regret could devour the soul. Teach us to care, and not to care. Teach us to forgive every imperfection -- those of the world, and of our boys, and of ourselves.

Now another young man has aroused the interest of the criminal justice system. He took into hand this morning several firearms and gunned down some dozens of people. When I first heard the news, I excluded Moslem terrorism. Not their style. SUVs and bombs are more to the taste of that particular sect of Islam. It would have been a first. No, I expected it to be some white guy. Those whites are so violent. Turns out, according to what I've been hearing, that it was an Asian. Not Turkish -- Turkey of course is in Asia. Not Jewish -- Israel is in Asia. Not Middle Eastern. East Asian. I don't mind that stereotypes get broken. But I expect the lad was just studying too hard, and had to let off some steam.

What, gallows humor is inappropriate? Sir. More people are killed by peanut allergies than by Asian student handgun campus massacres. What's the big deal? It's hardly ever a problem.

Now there's some talk about handguns and their concomitant perils. I generally avoid that debate. My position should be obvious. Self-defense is an inalienable right. Someone said today that guns should be made more difficult to procure. I felt the need to quip, "Yeah, that's why drugs are so hard to get." Guns should be hard to procure, the same way a driver's license is. The Constitution assures us the right to bear arms, but there is that troublesome little clause, about a "well-regulated militia." Just a bit murky, but custom has clarified the matter.

I do own a gun. Never fired it. Bought it in 1992, just after clinton was elected. My reasoning was that he would try to ban gun ownership, and I wanted to beat the rush. I'm far more likely to engage an intruder in a philosophical discussion -- bring in issues of his childhood -- talk about God and grace and compassion. Which is not to say I wouldn't blow him away, given the need. I consider myself to be the agent of destiny -- the Righteous Arm of a Loving but Fierce Lord. My son, after all -- whom I raised -- has a job that may require him to ventilate the skulls of evil-doers of a certain confession and ethnicity. Good. Evil that will not be reformed must be destroyed. Or contained, to be Realistic about it.

So here's what I thought: if guns were not available, there would be just as many, or more, murders. With a gun, I kill someone and there's a big noise which brings attention to my crime and thus effectuates my capture. With a knife, I kill someone and move away in silence, so that over the course of the next few months and years I can kill many more. I, you see, am an opportunistic killer, and if I am not allowed my spree, I will kill serially. I speak in the abstract, of course -- all things averaging out in the end.

If this presumably young student had not walked down the halls picking off his cohorts with his array of guns, he would have gone to the internet and found the formula for some explosive or some gas or some poison -- or crept through the dorm at night with a machete. This is, alas, a rather deterministic view. But I think it is valid, even if not true. Is there a way to break out of this cycle of despair? No. Reformations and revivals and Great Awakenings are rare, whereas decadence is common. There are bright spots all across the globe. Bright spots, shining out of a great darkness. There is, alas, always much more night than there is daylight, when we factor all the vast black universe into the equation.

It's a matter of perspective. We must not focus on the evil of the world. Evil, like the universe itself, is boundless, given that every act of selfishness diminishes the beauty of life. This young student, this studious Asian boy, went mad, coldly insane, and calculated how best to impose his despair upon his world. Very efficient he was, too. Why did he think this needed to happen? Obviously because his heart was not touched by love. Poor lad. We never know, we never know what secret pain consumes the soul of even our close acquaintances. How can we? Even when we are honest, humor diffuses our intensity, or apathy keeps us from being heard. It's inevitable.

God needs us to have free will, so that He cannot be thought of as evil. He is not responsible for our evil. The evil that we do, we choose to do. There is always a way out of that temptation. Unfortunately that way out has to do with self-denial, with patience, with humility. Apparently wisdom too is a choice. It is a gift, available to those who ask for it. Asking is the free-will part. Life has taught me that I am an utter fool. I'm even more of a fool because I really don't ask God for anything, anymore. That must be something like despair. Well, I ask him to protect my son. But that's more out of fear, than trust. The last blow would be the harshest, and I could not survive.

What final blow fell upon today's gunman? It must have seemed unbearable. Perhaps it was the realization that he was unalterably alone. When hope dies, so do we -- whether we are the shooter, or the victims. The solution to this insoluble problem is almost too painful to contemplate. We must risk to love, so that such a light might bring hope to the lost.

I write this for myself.


J