Orthodixie
The Internet. From seemingly out of nowhere it has swooped in to dominate — Dominate — much of our lives. Thank God for the ease of search engines like Google, and the ability (if desired) of keeping abreast of recent – up to the millisecond — news.
[There’s also the ease of gossip, endless pics of naughty bits, and all that ridiculous spam in our e-mailboxes. What is a Barrister anyway? How many rich people are there in Nigeria – and why do they all want to give me their money? It can, at its worst, resemble the graffiti on a men’s room wall in a run down gas station. It’s only legit if the “author” was illiterate – misspelled words carry great weight on PRW (public restroom walls).]
When something like the massacre at Virginia Tech occurs, the discussion around the GWC (Global Water Cooler) changes. The GWC, in many respects, is no different than the old-timey proverbial one: People chat about the news of the day; if you want to be heard, you have to stay on topic. When something extreme happens the chatter stops entirely. For a moment … Then the emotions; the analyzing, the pontificating and awfulizing. Somewhere along the way, as with all things HOP (human-outside-paradise), the topic becomes politicized. Some leave the discussion. Others become experts on the subject. Few learn anything new. But the chatter goes on. It’s possible to lose all sense of “otherness” beyond the tragedy.
During “normal time,” The Weather is always a safe bet for small talk. Now, thanks to the uncertainties of the GWD (Global Warming Debate), we can’t even civilly discuss that!
Back in my days in radio it was considered a bit of a stoop for a station to “sell the weather.” That is, some stations would have the DJ to say that the forecast was coming up … brought to you by … and the listeners would have to endure the sponsor’s ad just to find out the current temp and predictions. Now that sounds old-timey. Not selling the weather? Pshaw! These days, every broadcast station does it. There’s even a whole Cable Channel devoted to selling the weather.
But, bear with me here: What if we could politicize the weather? What if the new TTH (threat to humankind) is none other than the constant threat of … the weather!
We should just shut up.
Take a breath.
Unfortunately, now that we have entered “election cycle,” we can’t, they won’t, some body else will … it’s a mess.
Great. The Internet = The new Tower of Babel. Who’d a thunk?
Speaking of thunk? Since when did the common denominator of a mass murderer become: “He was a loner?” Good heavens. Loner and crazy tend to go together. I mean, one doesn’t require the other but; they’re seldom without each other. The same could be said for Loner and Genius — but we just don’t seem to have a lot of genius running ’round these days. Crazy, however? Prevalent.
Speaking of crazy – Some things don’t even strike me as queer anymore. For example, while scanning the news my eyes often deceive me. A while back, this is what I read:
Pat Robertson responsible for killing cats
Of course, that’s NOT what the blurb said.
I later discovered that Pat Robertson was really Rat Poison!
Weeks later, the same eyes:
Giuliani’s Head Shrinks
Which was, rather … Giuliani’s Lead Shrinks
But, you see, the problem is not so much my old eyes – but the fact that the world has gotten so nutty that it was only later, much later, that it registered that I’d been deceived. At first glance, I paid no mind to such wild headlines!
Crazy.
Anyway, all this is to say, I could almost swear that I’ve heard voices saying the killings at Virginia Tech might be attrubitable to rich kids, firearms, loner-hood, system failure, the dean, kookiness, the police — in fact, anything …
but evil.
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