Mama, put my guns in the ground

 
While casually scrolling through my playlist, "Jeremy" came up again...

Play "Jeremy"

... the quiet boy who draws during lessons, whose parents are too busy to pay him any attention, finally shoots himself in front of his english class. It actually did take place at Richardson High School in Texas on the morning of January 8, 1991.

Fast forward to 20 April 1999 - Columbine, Colorado. Then to 16 April 2007 - Blacksburg, Virginia and finally to 14 Feb, two days ago - DeKalb, Illinois. Why do these shootings keep taking place? What are we doing? Why are we here? Is it because of anger, sorrow or just some inexplicable reason which causes such irrational behaviour which calls for taking another person's, or in numerous cases, multiple persons' lives?

Eddie Vedder once commented in an interview regarding the song Jeremy. He said "The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back." And I can't help but agree with him. The reason for taking one's own life as I can only imagine is to seek the end, an end to all the drowned out sorrow and misplaced judgements. But would the end be a peaceful one if all it does is lead to the pain of even more people. I dunno, maybe that's the objective after all.


If you've watched Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore, you probably would have known certain facts about the United States and its state of catastrophe with firearms. I've always thought it's completely retarded to allow civilians to own firearms. I mean I dunno how the average Joes in US live with it, but imagine if you live in Singapore, how would your everyday Ah Pek and Ah Mah react when they walk into your friendly neighbourhood NTUC Fairprice and right by the Sunshine bread and Tops kaya spread shelves, there's a cabinet stocked to the brim with Kalashnikovs and Carbines and your asortment of Paras and Arctics? All displayed there proudly with a shiny FOR SALE sign on it targeted at every bum on the street. Okay maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but think about it, the least it would do is to make every sane human being go like "knnsmljccbwtfbbq?" or translated to english loosely it would be something like "holy mother of... WHAT T H E F U C K B B Q?" (the "bbq" at the end simply symbolizes the speechlessness one would feel after saying fuck, yet yearning to say something to continue expressing one's bewilderment). well you get what i mean.

Anyways it's just the sad fact of reality and society that we may never know the true motives or causes behind some of the things that happen. we can only offer our prayers and hopes. But I think it's also time that people examine some age old traditions/rights which doesn't really help with the situation in this screwed up new era. e.g. the Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms in the US.

And on a final but ironic note, the guy who committed the massacre just 2 days ago, he's currently (well he was before he killed himself) enrolled at UIUC as a graduate student. and the thing is UIUC is one of the schools that I have applied to and it is pretty high up on my possible-schools-to-goto list. i cringe at the thought of what other possible nutjobs are still in there...