Humanoids

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

- Howard Beale, Network 1975

(An e-mail reply gone horribly awry.)

I hadn't heard of her, but I saw the Budd Dwyer video.

Gotta love a good old fashioned public suicide. That's what I don't get about these dumb kids shooting up the schools. Wouldn't it serve their purpose and intentions better to do it in a public place with lots of cameras?

That's how stupid people are these days.

They write half-assed notes in pseudo-literary prose describing how they'll be famous - go off and shoot a bunch of people, kill themselves, and no one ever sees it. All we get is a stupid emo note. Why the hell don't they at least wait for the news crews to show up before killing themselves? Ya know?

Use the first shooting as a teaser to get people to call the police. Shoot a few more to make it a live event that the news has to rush over and cover. Move closer to the doors where the cameras are and plug people as they run out. Then step out with a female hostage - no one cares about male hostages. It helps if she's shorter, so as not to block your face, and it's preferred that she be young, blonde, and attractive (big tits and a tight shirt are a major ratings grabber) so that male newscasters can imagine her when they go home to fuck their wives - it helps in keeping the story fresh and on the front pages when it's all over.

Wait a minute to make sure everyone's focused on your faces, then shoot yourself in the head. Skull and brain fragments flying against sheet glass doors. Young girl shaking and screaming in place, covered in her captor's blood. Bystanders stunned. If a person like this has a real sense of humor, he'd say that he has an accomplice waiting inside. No one would know what to do. The cops couldn't move in because there might be some other maniac inside ready to open fire with a high powered assault rifle loaded with hollow-points. Slow-motion chaos. 2001: A Space Odyssey with bullets in a suburban high school.

But, no. We get the kids who think they're all bad ass and smart, and who don't even bother to think how they're going to draw the most attention, which is really what they want. They're so self-centered, they think that as long as they can see it, then everyone will be able to picture it themselves. They're so stupid that they give the public enough credit to be able to imagine something like that. Natural Born Dumbasses.

The more of these shootings I hear about, the less upset I get over them. They're all the same, and no one learns from them. Society gets what it deserves when people don't learn from their mistakes. Even with this latest mall shooting, the media's splashing this douche bag's face all over the air. They're telling his story, which is all this stupid fuck wanted to begin with. They never stop to think that they are actually perpetuating the problem by giving more of these nutbags reason to do it. "Hey! That guy got famous! So can I!" I had hope after the Virginia Tech shootings because NBC got blasted for showing the guy's tape. I kept wondering to myself why they were doing exactly what the stupid little prick wanted. Of course, as soon as they stopped showing it, people forgot and moved on.

That's how stupid people in this country really are.

As a society, we're so sick that we actually long for someone to mourn. We need villains to deride and victims to cry over, we're so devoid of natural human emotion. We don't allow ourselves, as a culture, to feel realistic emotions about everyday occurrences. Everything has to be wildly extreme. We have to root for the underdog without regard for the quality of their character. We have to destroy the heroes because no one's allowed to sustain their success...it's just not fair to the rest of us who "work hard to get where we are" (the greatest lie a country ever told itself, right after "We're bringing democracy to the world.").

Everyone cheats, everyone wants attention, everyone wants the easy path, and it pisses us off when someone else does it instead of us. We say that we value fair play, but the truth is we want an even playing field only to allow us a better opportunity to take advantage of the naivete of others - their sense of "fair play." How else could a nation turn Barry Bonds into a goat while carrying Mark McGwire on its shoulders? Big Mac did it when it was widely accepted, if not out in the open. We feel sorry for a white wrestler who kills himself and his family after taking too many steroids, we stand in awe of Ken Caminiti's bravery for telling the truth, yet we want to string up the first 'nigger' who follows in their footsteps. Blacks already have an athletic advantage, so it hurts our sense of fair play when they "cheat".

The stupidity of this country astounds me to no end. Everyone is hypocritical, except us. Everyone lies, cheats, steals, murders, rapes, and pillages, except us. Why? Because we are the self-righteous bearer of God's will. Our morality is unquestionable because we refuse to question it, and we bomb the shit out of any country that does. We're worried about Iran and North Korea, Syria, and Vladimir Putin. We don't like it when someone can even the playing field against us, so we turn them into an evil empire of criminals and madmen who's sole purpose is to destroy us, and not to survive against us. Sure, those countries are "dangerous" and can't be trusted. The same can be said for us. We're one of them. We have God on our side, just like they do, yet we've convinced ourselves, as a nation, that we are better. We are moral, we are good, we are right.

THAT'S how fucking stupid Americans are.