Grand Mental Station

"There was a time when there was nothing at all,
Nothing at all,
Just a distant hum.
There was a being and he lived on his own
He had no one to talk to
And nothing to do.
He drew up the plans..."

"Hide and Seek" by Howard Jones

"Your beliefs, philosophy,
Don't give us peace.
Destruction of our enemy
Does it make us right?"

"Natural" by Howard Jones

ZERO TOLERANCE DOES NOT WORK!

OK, boys and girls, I said it at the time of Columbine, and I'll say it again: Until we preach tolerance to our children, we will live with zero empathy.

The guy in the picture above (taken from Yahoo!news) did nothing but listen to his friend. That friend was Andy Williams. This "Friend of Andy" was led away, in handcuffs and under full media attention, because of that fact.

In an article titled "People Sketch Different Sides to Teen Suspect", a San Diego paper (the Union-Tribune, I think) quoted one of Andy William's classmates as bragging "He didn't have that many friends. A lot of people picked on him. He was kind of a weirdo," said (The Person who proudly named himself to the paper). "He didn't talk that much. He just kept to himself . . . One of my friends stole his skateboard about a month ago ".

Is the loss of your skateboard alone enough of a reason to take a gun to school and shoot people? Hell no. But look at the Braggart's statement: Andy Williams was not popular, people picked on him, he kept to himself, but still, the Braggart announces to the media that "one of my friends stole his skateboard" (an item easily worth well over $100).

There is no remorse over one of his friends stealing a prize possession of an already battered-down human being, there is no thought over how that theft could have contributed to the actions of Andy Williams. There is just arrogance about a "Weirdo" who "kept to himself", a kid who was picked on until he fought back and, therefore, will be from now on demonized as a madman suitable only for death row.

Of course, in the same article, Andy Williams was described by friends as "an Ivy Leaguer hanging around a bunch of hippies" and credited by one mother as "steering her son away from potential trouble".

According to our mutual disgust at the act, it doesn't matter that this kid will face the death penalty, that he may just as well have used those last bullets as giving up to police, because we, as a society, will make his last living years even worse than the previous 15.

The message we send out is "Feel like dying? Take out as many as you can, because we'll make sure you die".

Think about it: A kid who other kid's parents loved because of his influence, someone so frustrated that he finds the thought of suicide via Columbine as a release, a kid who is so picked-upon that someone could steal from him an almost three foot long object (a skateboard can't exactly be stuck in one's pocket) and then have that thievery bragged about on "Good Morning America" without any retribution whatsoever.

I have held a friend's gun in my hand and made him leave it in my car before school. If the current "zero tolerance" rules were in place then, I would have been suspended, expelled, or possibly faced fucking lawsuits, "back in the day" for doing so.

That wasn't in an inner-city school, it was in suburban Connecticut. It wasn't last year, it was in 1990. The people he wanted to shoot, to this day, don't know how lucky they were. If one "popular" person wasn't cool enough to make friends with one geek, and that geek didn't extend that friendship to other people, things might've been different in suburban Connecticut back in 1990.

Andy Williams will face the death penalty for not having "popular" friends to protect him and for fighting the peer group that chose him as their target.

Until we realize that we, as a country, are one friend away from anarchy, we will be tortured with our constant destruction. Only when we realize, and are able to hold onto that realization into our old age, that we are united by our differences, will America begin to mature.

Maybe once our elders and leaders stop dissing these acts as "cowardice" and start facing the facts of "kill and die or have the shit beaten out of you daily" we can start to put a stop on the kind of shit that's allowed in our schools.

To get to the old stuff, click here

sometimes, when I'm nervous, I put my hands under my armpits...