TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

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So What?

Deadly revenge for bullied kids an absurd idea:

This is a great editorial from the Miami Herald by a man named Leonard Pitts Jr., who writes what I’ve been saying for years, bullying is no excuse to shoot up a school…

We have become sadly experienced with school massacres in recent years. We have seen many disaffected loners turn campuses into killing grounds. And then comes the inevitable explanation.

He was an outcast.

He was jilted by a girl.

The other kids bullied him.

And I repeat: So what?

And just like myself, Mr. Pitts has also been accused of not knowing what it’s like to be bullied…

My wife, who I’ve known since fifth grade, once had to run and get my folks after some boys jacked me up and tried to inject me with hypodermic needles they’d found in the trash behind a medical clinic.

Now that’s hardcore. How many of these Harris and Klebold wannabes have been harassed to the level of their tormentors wanting to inject them with medical waste? I can almost guarantee you not one of them. Did Mr. Pitts plan to shoot up a school? Not according to his article…

So yeah, I know a little something about being bullied. And yeah, too, I know something about wanting to mash the face of some jerk who’d made my days miserable.

There is, however, a gulf of difference between wanting to do that and wanting to indiscriminately massacre a schoolyard full of people.

It takes a special kind of arrogance, self-absorption and entitlement to believe that your humiliation and pain merit the lives of a dozen strangers.

Mr. Pitts also disagrees with the criminal as victim mentality and sums things up with an obvious question…

So to say a child killed people because he was bullied or ostracized is to dignify the act with false rationality — and to shift the onus for the crime to its victims.

I get impatient with hearing that because it explains everything and explains nothing, because it does not help me understand how a child can become so alienated from his own humanity and finally, because it does not address, much less answer, a question that ought to be painfully obvious.

Kids have been bullied and ostracized from the beginning of time. Why is it they are just now picking up guns?

Why indeed, Mr. Pitts. Why indeed.

I’m not doing the piece justice at all. So click on the link at the top.

I’m not familiar with the rest of Mr. Pitts’ work, but after reading this I think he deserves a Pulitzer.

December 6, 2004
A Little More From Valpo

Valpo teacher talks about stabbing:

There is not a whole lot of information forthcoming from the Valpo school stabbing incident. The only mention of a motive that I’ve found so far comes from this interview with the teacher in the class at the time of the incident.

Police reports later revealed Lewerke believed God directed him to do it because his classmates were “sinners.” While school violence is sometimes traced back to bullying, Dobis said she did not think that was the case. She told police Lewerke was a quiet student who got A’s and B’s and showed no signs of violence.

More on this if I receive anything.

December 2, 2004
Violent Video Games 2004

How gory is that game?:

Just in time for the fucking holidays, we get yet another “why won’t someone think about the children?” group who has their panties in a wad over violent video games.

Of course, they’re naming the usual suspects of GTA: San Andreas, Halo 2, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. All pretty violent games. All games that are Rated M you dumbasses. It’s the video game equivalent of an “R” rating.

You can blame the game companies for making such games. You can even blame the game retailers for being lax in their enforcement of the ratings. But here’s a thought, how about laying blame on THE PARENTS who buy these games for their kids.

The rating is clearly marked on the packaging, and it even states why the games received that rating. The fact that “parents” keep buying these games for their underage kids means one of two things. They’re either oblivious to the ratings or they just don’t care.

November 30, 2004
Knife Attack in Indiana High School

Student Slashes Five Classmates in Indiana:

I waited to do anything on this story because it happened the day before Thanksgiving and I wanted to wait until a possible motive was discussed, but something else has happened to make me comment on this.

For those of you that have not heard 15-year-old, James Lewerke attacked 5 students at Valparaiso High School with a machete and a tree saw. Luckily, none of the injuries were that serious and all those injured have been treated and released.

So far, the only thing the media in Indiana covering this story has talked about was security concerns at Valparaiso High School. I have yet to find one story that tries to address the problem of why James Lewerke did what he did.

This also comes after a kid brought a gun to school that was used in a suicide. While security is a great concern in these issues, why isn’t the reasons behind these incidents being addressed?

Apparently, it’s a question that the local school board needs to address.

November 28, 2004
A Special Trench Reynolds Thanksgiving

If I could be serious for a moment.

(Lights dim, soft piano music plays)

We here at The Trench Reynolds Charity Foundation are always looking for ways to help better our community and our country, and this Thanksgiving should be no different. While many of us are scrambling at the last minute to try to get a turkey for our families and coming up empty-handed, I say that we should no longer terrorize the poor turkey.

As we all know, the turkey would have been our national symbol if Ben Franklin had his way. That makes the turkey an also-ran. A runner-up. A loser. Not to mention that the turkey is a bird so stupid that it will drown if it looks up in a rainstorm. As Americans, is this how we want our holiday feasts to be looked at? Feasting on a sub-par, sub-intelligent, too stupid to live, ugly bird? No, of course not. We’re Americans, we’re all about being the best that we can be. We’re all about being #1. So why would we want to eat an also-ran bird? That’s why my friends I am imploring you as a proud American to start a new Thanksgiving tradition. A tradition where we feast on the noblest and proudest of all birds and PETA be damned…
(more…)

November 24, 2004
Idaho Teen Honored in Michigan

Idaho teen honored for helping avert Detroit-area school attack:

Celia McGinty is the Idaho teen who tipped off authorities to Andrew Osantowski’s school shooting plot after online chats that they had.

The school and community where the shooting was to take place are now honoring her. She should be honored. A lot of kids don’t have the courage that she did, or would just dismiss it as idle talk.

However, one person is not too happy about the celebration. Andrew Osantowski’s lawyer, Brian Legghio. He had this to say…

“I’m absolutely appalled at the rashness of the Macomb County law enforcement community,” Brian Legghio told The Detroit News. “Their conduct taints the judicial process.”

“By glamorizing this young lady and claiming that she prevented some tragedy is to convict my client in the press and to deny him a fair trial by impartial jurors,” Legghio said.

Translation: There’s no way in hell I can win this case, so I wish people would stop talking about it.

Mr. Legghio, I think, would best serve his client by doing his talking in court and not in the media. Then again, I didn’t go to no fancy lawyerin’ school.

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what Mr. Legghio’s defense strategy is going to be.

November 23, 2004
The Winner and NEW Champion

Camden, N.J., Is Most Dangerous City:

In your face, Detroit! Go, Camden. Go, Camden.

Beating out Atlanta, St. Louis, Gary, Indiana, and last year’s champ and everyone’s perennial favorite Detroit, Camden, NJ is the county’s most dangerous city.

For those of us who have lived anywhere near the area can tell you this is no surprise, and we’ve been saying it for years. How many Mischief Nights (Or Devil’s Night) have we watched Camden in flames? And yet, this is the city that the state decided to put The New Jersey State Aquarium.

We used to joke that when they built the aquarium, they built it around the fish in the Delaware River. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the State Aquarium in a beach resort town like Wildwood or Atlantic City, or even the Island Republic of Brigantine? I mean, Brigantine already has the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. Instead, the state decided to put it in a crime-infested cesspool like Camden.

Since it’s on the river, they call it “The Waterfront” now. Like, the Delaware River off of Camden is something to be romanticized. You can probably walk across it and it may be flammable. They even put the major regional outdoor concert arena on “The Waterfront”. It’s changed corporate sponsorship at least 3 times since it’s been open. Camden’s attempted revitalization is like putting a rose on top of a trash heap. Way to make New Jersey proud.

November 22, 2004
Hey kids…

It’s The JFK Assassination video game. Remember kids, when you play “JFK Reloaded” it’s best to tilt your joysticks back and to the left.

November 22, 2004
11/7/04: From The Mail Sack

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s been almost a month. I guess that’s a good thing because it means mutant activity is down, but I still have mail. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

This one was an e-mail I got with the subject “colorado shooting on 4-20-99″…

This is from:gdsmk624@aol.com robert(198.24.30.43)

first of all there a are some parents that know what the word RESPECT means. i personally am glad that the parents didnt search their childs room cause other wise they might be shot first and the shooting may or may not have been prevented.

RESPECT works both ways, Robert. It’s obvious that Harris and Klebold didn’t RESPECT their parents, or else they wouldn’t have kept their weapons in one of their parents’ houses. And obviously, they didn’t RESPECT life enough not to kill 13 people. Whether or not the shooting would have been prevented we’ll never know because their parents didn’t lift a damn finger to do anything.

As usual, from The Eric Harris journal…

👿 I think all of those students deserved what they got.

Every day that you say something mean you should remember

this ” Are you willing to die for your beliefs”

Comment by Vodka — Thursday Oct 28, 2004 @ 8:34 am

Yeah, they deserve to be shot for having no association with those two scumbags. Whatever. Next. Also, notice that we have another mutant calling him/herself Vodka. Not an original thought by yet another of the mutant collective.

From my entry on The Columbine Death Photos…

All of you need to shut the fuck up, I knew dylen and erric they were both nice boys we were in the same gang together.

And they were my heros when they shot up the school like that. Did you know that they asked me to help them but i said no because it was stupid but now i realize i should have done it and helped them. It would have been so cool.

so all of you need to shut the fuck up, Those boys did what was right, Erric once said to me”i need to kill those kids and i’m going to, you know i need to fuckin kick start the revolution here!”

So all of you think what you want but what they did on that day was awsome and i wish i could have done it with them.

Comment by trenchcotemafia — Tuesday Nov 2, 2004 @ 8:53 pm

Another mutant claiming to know those two scumbags. Like I keep saying, if even half the people who claim to have known them actually knew them, they would have been the most popular kids in Colorado. You can’t even spell their names right. Not to mention the fact that they weren’t actually in The Trenchcoat Mafia. Just another mutant trying to convince people that his or her fantasy is the reality.

And lastly…

This guy is an asshole we all know Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are fucking heroes!! 😈

Comment by plAyeR76 — Sunday Nov 7, 2004 @ 9:23 am

This could be your son or daughter leaving this comment, but you’ll never know because as a parent, you couldn’t be bothered to be involved in your kids’ lives.

It’s like those commercials. Parental Involvement: The Anti-killing.

November 7, 2004
Calling all blog developers

Since it’s Friday and hardly anyone reads this between Friday and Sunday, I’m doing this for my own benefit.

This is a call to all blog software developers. You may think that your blog software is the greatest, but it’s not. What we need is some standards across all blog software platforms.

Importing and Exporting: Stop locking people into your software. You may think that people would never stop using your software, but there’s always another software around the corner that just might be better than yours. Since most blogs will import entries from Movable Type, I think they should all export in the MT format as well. Right now, I’m stuck in WordPress. Not that there’s anything wrong with WP, but I just don’t like being tied into one software format. I’ve tried the WP to MT export scripts, but so far, I have yet to get one to import properly.

Subscribing to comments: When I leave a comment on someone else’s blog it’s nice to receive an e-mail when someone else replies to it. A lot of blog developers think this is unnecessary and an RSS reader should be used instead. That’s all well and good, but only a small minority use RSS readers. Plus, I don’t want a line in my RSS reader for each comment I’ve subscribed to. I’ve left thousands of comments on hundreds of blogs. I don’t want a line on my RSS reader for each of those comments that I’ve left. This is a standard feature on PMachine and Serendipity. A plugin is available for WordPress. There used to be one for MT but since they went to 3.0 I don’t know.

Permalinks: The URL’s to blog entries should be uniform so when someone moves from one platform to another, their URL’s will stay the same. Personally, I think WordPress’ URLs are the best. It goes domain/archives/date/entry-title. Seems simple enough to implement.

Toggle options: While the developers may think something is a great option or feature, the user may not. Since I’m not a PHP or Perl guru, I would rather just click a button to turn a function on or off and not have to alter any code. For example, in WordPress, if you want a pop-up comment window you have to remove part of the code. Granted, it’s labeled real easily within the code, but I’d rather not mess with the code. In Serendipity, trackbacks are automatically pinged whether you want them to be or not. To turn it off, you have to alter the code. While I may be comfortable doing that, someone else may not be.

Not that any of these platforms are bad, with the possible exception of MT 3.0, but I just think there should be some kind of blog industry standards. Trust me, if I had the time to learn how to write scripts I would at least try to develop my own. (Hmmmm. TrenchBlog? Trenchpress? Movable Trench?)

November 5, 2004