Andy from the World Wide Rant just sent me "this horror"--a tribute song called ""Remembering Laci." He has a nice little write-up on it, including stats on how many thousand times it's been downloaded. 

I assumed it was a parody, but there's always the remote chance that one person on this planet actually that misguidedly earnest. I have this naiveté problem, though, so I was a bit afraid to ask. He assures me it is sung with the purest intentions.

Yikes. Listening to it took me right back to the Littleton Fire Department setting video footage of the Columbine wreckage to music. I looked up my old Salon story on it. Here's the key verbiage:

The video opens with the "Friend of Mine" song written and performed by two Columbine students just after the massacre. It moves on to give a detailed tour of the wreckage inside the library and the rest of the school, set to the three songs. No bodies are shown, but it's hard to imagine a viewer who won't be disturbed as the camera zooms in on fresh bloodstains, wandering from small splatters to enormous pools. Each site is set off by numbered yellow evidence markers -- several clearly labeled with the name of the child killed there -- all accompanied by Sarah McLachlan crooning "I Will Remember You."

"Don't let your life pass you by," she wails, as the camera hovers over a staggering pool perhaps 4 to 6 feet wide, so thick it visibly rises up over the floor.

I just could not believe they had done that. But they did.

And they have again.