I just saw The CBS Evening News, which described the new string of school shootings, different than Columbine, because they are committed by outsiders--adults. The reporter referred to this as 'puzzling.' I don't think so.

I really need to go to the gym to work out some of this anger and frustration, but I'll come back this evening after I've collected my thoughts on why.

Yow. Another one today.

In Amish country, which threw me a little. I just hope the killer didn't plan it there just to get my attention.

I had always thought murderers were the lowest form of life. I'm starting to feel like copycat murderers need their own private circle of hell. I know that gets into really shaky territory of ranking one evil against another, and there are worse elements than copycatting for sure, but they have my ire up. It feels like a more blatant attempt at publicity: I saw this person garner fame for killing people, so let me find a gun.

And this business about adults doing this and choosing schools for publicity is just taking a horrible act and making all the more despicable.

On a personal note, it's helpful to talk about them, though. I actually learned about this one from a reporter emailing to talk about it. We talked for quite awhile and just hashing it out helps. A lot. If I had just turned on the TV and seen it today, I think I just would have lost it. But forcing my brain into analytical mode and trying to be constructive in some way, I guess that makes me feel slightly less powerless about it. At least the pain--(the helplessnes? the revulsion?)--doesn't stay bottled up inside me.

I just watched last night's 60 Minutes segment on bum-bashing over breakfast and I don't know how much more of this I can take. If there's another school shooting or horrifying act of senseless violence any time soon, I think I need to just sit it out. I know they're happening somewhere every day, and I'm not normally one to turn away, but . . . you can only take so much.

The bumfights segment was so debilitating because they rattled off some stats about how common they are--one a month, that we know of, and we mostly only know about them if somebody captures them on video. So God knows how many.

I wouldn't have expected to see parallels to Columbine or Platte Canyon or Montreal initially, but then I watched some of the perpetrators being interviewed. They didn't really have a reason, it was just somebody they perceived being lower than them, that they could pick on. And of course, something they could get away with. In these cases, they started smacking a helpless sleeping drunk with a stick. Then they came back with bigger sticks. In one case, they finally came back with a two-by-four, with a nail exposed and bashed him in the head with it. They killed him.

That small group got locked away for a long time, but most of the crimes are invisible to the rest of us. Street people rarely report crimes against them.

It's just so disheartening. So painful to watch these defenseless people get attacked for no reason on film. I'm not sure which emotion was stronger when I watched--the horror for that poor person, or my revulsion at the human being that could or would do it to them. God.

Then there's the whole issue of the horrible, exploitive Bumfights video series that clearly inspired a lot of these attackers. I am very leery of ascribing motive to the influence of video. I think it's dangerous to pin too much on the videos, because the videos are not going to inspire any sound person to do this kind of thing. But people have been doing shitty things from lynchings to the Holocaust since the beginning of time, and some people don't seem to take much to wind them up. These videos, which treat bums as subhuman--submammal, really; a person would never get away with treating a dog or cat this way--and justify attacking them for sport are clearly throwing gasoline on the smoldering fires inside some of these people.

The guy who made them and still defends them was a whole different case entirely. Morally bankrupt as well, but motivated differently than the others in the story, not by the bullying instinct, but by greed.

Huh. I feel so much better just writing about that. I was kind of overcome when it ended. Just couldn't stop sobbing. It's been a rough week. I've been writing about death for what seems like ages, and then Wednesday I just watched that horror at Platte Canyon for hours. It dredged up a lot of pain, I guess. The events were very different, but the feelings were the same. They're right up on the surface now. Not sure how long they'll stay. I can actually feel the warm, prickly feeling right now, like it's bubbling just underneath the skin layer, up and down my arms mostly, along the tops my forearms, less so in my upper arms, but along that strip between my biceps and triceps, then really strong again in my shoulders. I don't usually feel it in a physical way like that, mostly just an overwhelming sadness. Not all the time, or even most of the time, mostly just right after. Thursday was hard, but it got better, then watching this show was just . . . too much. For the moment. Writing this really helped, though. It at least got it out of my body, onto the page. I think I'm feeling it in my arms because they're so close to the keyboard. I'm sure it's all imaginary, but it's like my brain is visualizing the stuff literally pumping through my arms, out my fingers and onto this screen via the keyboard. I'm just glad to get it out of me..