no notoriety

I see that my favorite children’s book author, Daniel Pinkwater, is philosphically aboard the popular twitter hashtag “#nonotoriety”, if not actually.    (He saves his hashtags for making fun of Donald Trump.) [Though his moniker “TheDaniel” has “discomfiguration issues”].

It’s not entirely possible to manuever completely around the details of the news, but it is certainly an “at last” in terms of popular public discourse on these tragedies — that we have finally noted the “contagion” effect at work, and… a mass shooting is effectively just a publicity stunt to promote the suicide note / slash / “manifesto”.  But sure dig into the details anyway — just be sure to note the  most important detail… in the case of Southern Oregon… the man shot the classmates one by one, and was sure to let one go — with the instructions to be sure to deliver his manifesto to the proper authorities.

There’s been a way the “reason”ing has fallen apart anyway.  The Columbine kids made it pretty clear in their year long “production” that they were out to kill hundreds in pursuit of immortality and something “bigger than McVeigh”– they failed at the body count simply because (professionally manufactured) guns kill people more effectively than homemade bombs lining the locker rooms.  Yet despite the fact that they hated Marilyn Manson and the “Trenchcoat Mafia” had largely graduated the year before, we got treated to a bunch of that.  The UC Santa Barbara killer, I am told, had written a long manifesto about how much he hated women — and yet he killed 3 men and 3 women — it feels atonal to say this, but he didn’t follow through on his supposed ideology.  (But it is better for the matter to descend on one societal ill than the panoply of things.)  I’d think the Newton case would settle the matter — there is no way one can stick outside stimuli on the vacancy of the mind at work — and so here, more than anyone else I have contempt for this culprit’s mother — with this person in her custody, why is she having a stockpile of weapons at easy disposal?

Never mind.  I’m rambling and contradicting myself to get to my point.

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