...So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did...

-- Allen Lee, Carly-Grove High School Student

 Allen Lee wrote some seriously disturbed crap during a "Free Writing" assignment in his high school English class this week.  Apparently the instructions on the assignment made clear that the students were not to censor themselves and should instead write whatever came to mind.  The point was to keep writing and not to stop until the time ran out.  Allen's essay begins "Blood sex and Booze. Drugs Drugs Drugs are fun. Stab, Stab, Stab, S…t…a…b…, poke."  The end of the essay concludes with a message to his teacher: "No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting." The "cg" refers to "Carly-Grove", the name of Allen's school.

It is evident from his essay that he has an extremely low opinion of his teacher, and English in general.  So I suppose it's possible he selected subject matter most calculated to upset the teacher.  If so, the calculations were spot-on.  Allen's teacher apparently called the police, and now he is charged with disorderly conduct according to the Chicago Tribune.  You can read Allen's entire essay here.

I read the last sentence of Allen's essay as a threat, and therefore I am not at all surprised that some sort of discipline is in order, and I fail to see why Allen would be surprised.  But apparently a lot of people are surprised because they seem to be leaping to his defense and claiming that the teacher/school are overreacting.

In the meantime Allen is planning to join the Marines.

The questions here are, are these the ravings of a deranged mind, or a normal high school student attempting to undertake a free writing assignment and making a poor choice of subject matter?  Was arresting him an appropriate reaction or an overreaction?

What do you think?

I always knew that one day the horror that was Columbine would be surpassed.  I just hoped it would never happen in my lifetime, and I didn't expect it to be this bad.

To the families of those killed and wounded at Virginia Tech today, my sorrowful condolonces.  This is just awful.

Life has been a little hectic for me, and while I've had time to take part in interesting discussions on articles I posted over a year ago (weird) I haven't had much time to post any new articles.  So here's what's goin' on, reduced to a bullet list, just so I can get the shite out there:

• Went to see the oral surgeon on Tuesday, no real surprises there, it was just a consult, they wanted me to know what to expect and to talk to me.  Had to read some scary consent forms where they tell you everything that could possibly go wrong during your procedure... we might break your jaw, we might puncture your sinuses, we might damage teeth you were planning on keeping, you might have a heart attack from the anaesthesia, you  might die, the world might end.  Great stuff to read if you are a person with an anxiety disorder triggered by medical situations.  Thanks guys.
   
• I go in for my impressions at the dentist this afternoon.  Probably have to have the surgery in about 3 weeks.
   
• Celebrated Easter with Patty's family on Saturday, and with my family on Sunday.  Plus we had a little egg hunt for Lynnea at our house Sunday morning.  Total of 3 egg hunts, and I hid somewhere between 85 and 145 eggs over the weekend (I had help on the last hunt.)
   
• Atheist's don't believe in jinxes, but lately it's hard to shake the idea of misfortune following me around.  During Saturday's get together, I noticed that the dog of one of my sisters-in-law, who had been brought to the gathering, was acting funny--labored breathing, strange movements.  I told my sister-in-law about it, and she took the dog to a vet during the celebration and was informed that the animal needed to be put to sleep.  Happy Easter kids, the dog is dying.  They had the dog put down that same day and a lot of the kids were crying about it.
   
• Continuing the jinx thread, I was on the phone with a friend yesterday afternoon and we were discussing all the things that had been going on in my life when suddenly I heard a loud bang on my cellphone.  My friend had been rear ended by another driver and terminated the conversation with "my back is hurting, I can't talk now".  Later in the evening I heard back that after a trip to the hospital my friend was okay, but he didn't yet know how bad the damage to his car is.  We joked that I should try to capitalize on this Hurleyesque bad luck of mine, have people pay me to stay away from them, or pay me to hang around with folks they don't like until the meteorite hits them.
   
• I've been seeing my Mom each weekend and helping her to get things taken care of now that Dad is gone.  Mom runs a small business out of her house and depends entirely on an ancient Windows-98 box to do her work, and the box is acting pretty spotty lately.  A few weeks before Dad passed away he had purchased a new computer, and so now I am trying to repurpose that box so that when my Mom is ready, she can switch to the new box and run her business on that.  Unfortunately the new box comes with Vista which my Dad hated, and after spending a couple of hours trying to use the box I can see why.  Microsoft completely changed the standard windows interface, all the control keys are different, and no functions are where they used to be.  They also decided (apparently) that menus are overrated, so the standard office suite doesn't have menus anymore... yeah you heard that right.  Everything is now reorganized on a new fat toolbar with tabs on it so that you can switch between toolbars.  Microsoft calls it "the ribbon", I call it "thumbing your nose at everybody who already learned how to use your shitty applications".  Vista does not come with a "classic mode" option like XP did... they really expect you to relearn where everything is.  I refuse to subject my 68-year-old mother to this nonsense.  So I backed up Dad's files, packed up his computer and all his peripherals and disks, brought it to a computer shop and told them to wipe it, and then install XP home edition and Office 2000, and get all the drivers to make sure the peripherals work.  In the end, my Mom will be happier for it.  And having a chance to check out Vista I am now quite certain that I won't be upgrading to it.
   
• Had a little birthday party for Pat at home last week, a little cake and song, and a couple gifts (taking our economic situation into consideration of course).  Pat got the movie "Eragon" which was -eh-.  It's basically Star Wars... AGAIN, and progresses far too quickly.  I kept saying "these guys forgot the montages" while watching it.  But the dragon was pretty, and it was still fun to watch.
   
• Oh, and I am saddened to report that Kurt Vonnegut passed away.  Thanks for the stories Kurt, we'll miss you.

Guess that's about it.  Gotta get to work!  See ya later.

Yes, my good friend Jay (you may know him as "Hooligan" from comments here on ULev) has decided to take the plunge and start a blog. Yayyy!  Check out Jay and "Stuff" when you get a chance, it's been added to the blogroll.  It's brand new so it may change names or appearance as Jay settles in.

Jay is a software developer whom I worked with for several years, we were introduced by our mutual friend Brian over at Bri Wise World.  He is an excellent cook and anticipates writing some about that, as well as personal stuff related to his life.  Expect some technical stuff related to dotNet or whatever Jay happens to be into at the time as well.  I'm looing forward to it!  Welcome to the blogosphere, Jay.

BlogRoll Changes

•  Jay and "Stuff" added!
•  CuriousFrog removed, my friend Mike hasn't been blogging for awhile and the link no longer works.
•  AbsitInvidia removed, my friend Steve's blog also seems to have been inaccessible for a long time, and I think he's moved on to other interests.
•  ARTifactor modified, the URL has changed since Art has left BlogHarbor and moved to VOX.
•  Minor edits to the mouse-over information on PurpleCar, and ManRobotMonster.

So Pelosi went to Syria to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and deliver a message from Israel signaling that Israel would like to resume peace talks with Syria.

... "Peace in the Middle East is a high priority ... We were very pleased with the reassurances we received from the president that he was ready to resume the peace process. He was ready to engage in negotiations (for) peace with Israel," Pelosi added...^[1]

Wouldn't it be nice if the peace talks resumed?  Needless to say, one person doesn't think so.

...At the White House, President Bush criticized Ms. Pelosi's visit, saying it sent mixed signals to the Middle East and to President Bashar's government.

"Sending delegations hasn't worked," Mr. Bush told reporters. "It's just simply been counterproductive."

The United States, which has accused the Syrian government of providing militants with safe passage into Iraq and of meddling in Lebanon's politics after its army was forced to leave there in 2005, has sought to isolate Syria economically and politically. Damascus denies the charges...^[2]

Once again Mr. Bush demonstrates that diplomacy is a weapon of last resort.  It takes all of two seconds to see that if Israel enters into peace talks with Syria, and gives Syria back the land taken from it during the war, then Syria loses an important excuse for aggression against Israel.  If Israel returns the Chebaa Farms to Lebanon, Syria loses another important excuse.  With each excuse lost the hardliners become more isolated.

Bush wants to isolate Syria as long as it is meddling in Lebanon's affairs and letting militants into Iraq.  In order to do this he needs to provide evidence, like we did during the Cuban Missile Crisis... photos George, not cartoon trucks.  Unfortunately for our foreign policy, the world doesn't assume we know what we are talking about anymore, wonder why that is?

Imagine if Syria entered into a peace agreement which Israel met fully, and then proceeded to engage in some aggressive action?  Wouldn't that isolate Syria?  When someone has decided to do an evil thing, usually it involves making excuses.  One effective way to make it more difficult for them is to take away those excuses.

I'm not naive enough to believe that this one visit by Pelosi is likely to amount to anything substantial, but I'm also not naive enough to believe that you can solve problems with others by not talking to them.  In the meantime, the Syrians are happy to see Pelosi.

..."Ms. Pelosi is going to be very happy in Syria," said Izzat Abdoulkarim, who runs an optical shop in downtown Damascus. "George Bush says we are bad, but she will see this is not true."

He added, emphatically: "She views the world through a different perspective than Bush. She's more open-minded."^[2]

There's your message to the average Syrian civilian, George.  You are bad people.  Way to go.  Counting down seconds before some wingnut compares Pelosi to "Hanoi Jane". 5, 4, 3, ...

According to the Hartford Courant, sentencing in the Julie Amero case I wrote about last month has been pushed out a second time to April 26.  States Attorney Michael Regan has become involved.  No reason for the delay has been officially given, but it's clear that it probably has something to do with a pantload of people who actually have a clue when it comes to computers saying, in effect, "WTF are you idiots doing over there?!!?"

Stay tuned...