Feeling Minnesota?

The following will not be for your amusement. In advance, I apologize for being a stick-in-the-mud.

I have recently been complaining a lot about Florida. It is a state where stupid and/or destructive and/or scary and/or weird and/or shitty stuff happens, usually involving needless suffering. Too numerous to enumerate, but for starters:

1. Janet Reno's home --> creator of Waco nightmore, et al
   
2. Home of the biggest presidential-election stealing scandal ever
   
3. Anthrax terrorism's first victims were here
   
4. Elian Gonzalez (remember him? ah, the innocent controversies of yesteryear)
5. Disneyworld, aka child-abduction conspiracy epicenter
   
6. Cocaine superhighway
7. Obnoxious celebrities, superficiality, and retired folks together in one penis-shaped place
   

And now, Florida... you've bested yourself! Children are getting arrested trying to bring water to the lips of a woman who once suffered from severe bulimia and anorexia, leading to hypokalemia and her near-death, a suicidal-seeming cardiac arrest. If only she had eaten normally back then! "Honey, my irony tastes terrible; can we send it back?" (We must defend this once mentally-ill woman, quick, before someone discovers that WE SUPPORT KILLERS AND RAPISTS, at least in the metaphorical sense. At least in the sense that we vote for them. So then they can give us small tax breaks as tokens of their appreciation. And then their gigantic businesses can fuck us harder, since they've proven how dedicated they are, after all, to LIFE, at least in cases where it's completely not life at all.)

But no. It's the easy way out, isn't it? I mean, mocking Florida. It's too easy. Furthermore, I now live in the state that is known for:

1. Electing a pro-wrestling, "Predator"-acting, bald "Reform" libertarian as Governor
2. Being really fucking cold
3. Having few black people, and certainly few good sports teams
4. Prince
5. Possibly being part of Canada

And, of course, let's not forget the newest one:

6. School-murder epicenter for 18 months straight

Here we are, now, entertain us. This kid in Red Lake, Red Lake High School, Jeff Weise. The warning signs. No one cared. People knew, you know. They just didn't listen, care, or look with mercy. His mother, cousins, grandfather died in shocking ways when he was young, to start with. Then this Neo-Nazi shit. The trenchcoats. The death-poems. The Flash cartoons of boy shooting people and himself.* He telegraphed Monday's events from way back there. He needed help. There was none to be found. If we had listened, then what? This would not have happened.

This is not TV, videogames, comic books, music, the internet, movies, or even (I hate to admit) our lax Minnesota gun laws that allow any idiot to conceal and carry. This is not goth. This is not even (again, I hate to admit) neo-Nazi.

It IS all of the above causing us to be numb, desensitized. It is public schools of ignorance. It is no child left behind. It is our culture of cruelty. It is mental health for profit. It is Terry Schiavo and US soldiers. It is info overload. It is no trust. It is our ongoing gift to this land and its Natives. Fire water. Guns. All of the above.

It is about a boy who killed 9 people, then himself. Who fantasized about it for a long time. Who thought a lot about God and the Devil and racial purity and hatred. Who hated himself, I think. (Who needed something that we'll never know now. But we never wanted to know in the first place.) For whom they shall say: Fuck him, damn him to hell, and fuck you for almost caring.

The papers shall dine upon this for a while like a fine dessert. It's gotten our minds off of the tsunami relief effort, at least. "The what, now?" Good... very good... that's right....... Just sit back, watch the pretty colors, and come up to Minnesota, where it's always colder than Florida.




*if you only follow one link, make it that one!