Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Virgina Tech University Death Toll is 32






BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - The new details added to a chilling portrait of Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean student who massacred 32 people and then took his own life at the university on Monday in the deadliest shooting spree in modern U.S. history.

32 students were shot dead at Virginia Tech University

in what has become the worse school shooting in history. In Columbine, 13 students died at the hands of 2 students. The Virginia Tech shooter acted alone.

There’s a certain degree of horror to a situation, but especially when a killer acts alone. Authorities have described Cho Seung-Hui as a “troubled Loner.” People are left asking why this all happened.

Why did this all happen? I would not have been surprised if something like this happened at a High School, but I’m appalled that it happened at a College. Isn’t college supposed to be the healing point from high school? The best years of your life?

What happened?

The shooter chained doors behind him to prevent escape, used two hand guns that he purchased legally, and fired into classrooms, shooting to kill. He then took his own life on a stairwell.

I grieve and morn for the students dead. Individually, they probably didn’t do anything at all to deserve what happened. But now I am going to say something that will anger and offend most of my readers, most of the people involved, and most people anywhere.

I don’t blame the Killer.

I don’t blame him at all. I don’t endorse what he did at all, I condemn it to the fullest extent humanly possible, but I don’t condemn him. I think if anyone deserves forgiveness, it’s him.

What happened to the souls of Barry Loukaitas, Klebold and Harris, and Cho Seung-Hui to make them so unbelievably enraged that they wish for death? Not just their own death, but the death of everyone?

Barry Loukaitas was the first school shooter who acted alone. His fall is described as slow, methodical abandonment and isolation by close friends, peers, and teachers. A well liked kid started all of the sudden being left behind. These things can destroy a mind and a heart. We’ve all felt bits of what a school setting can do to a young person, but because we’ve all felt it, does that make it justified?

Cho Seung-Hui was a loner, whom according to reports did not choose Lonerism. He apparently tried to fit in, tried to be accepted, but was ultimately rejected. A police report says that 2 female students complained of him annoying them. I know from experience that most socialization techniques of Loner’s tend to be annoying to everyone else, but the Loner doesn’t know that, and hence is shunned for reasons he is completely oblivious to.

Can you imagine having everyone hate you and you not having the slightest notion of why?

I can, and that is why I sympathize with the shooter. I would not have stood by him while he did what he did, I do condemn his action, I would have handed him over to the law, but I also would have hugged him, because apparently someone else forgot to.

I do believe that someone who knew him, a roommate or distant friend, saw what was happening to him and ignored it. I believe lots of teachers sat witnessing his fall, and watched and did nothing. I think in the back of their hearts everyone saw this coming when they looked at this young man, but no one cared. No one cared.

I believe that suicide is murder by a mass group of people, people who thought it not their duty to step in and do something, 2 kids died in my graduating class. This was indeed murder, but I want everyone to realize that this killer was not a murderer. Cho Seung-Hui was a young man who snapped. I am dearly sorry that the students at Virginia Tech had to pay the price for what may have been too many insults from jocks or too many put downs from a few dumb ass students and no shoulder to lean on.

We all need somebody to lean on.

The coming investigation will reveal what exactly pushed him over the edge and many more people will say what I just said and that will make it okay, but in the meantime, my heart goes out to the students at Virginia Tech University.

To ALL the students.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Oh My LORD!

PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.

Help! Religious Zealots are trying to push their crazy ideas on me again! Particularly Catholics who are all about “God created everything by snapping his fingers and saying Let There Be Lightbulbs!” Hence giving humans the ability to “think.”

Theists somehow believe that we can’t use our brains without God. They are so perplexed by this seemingly awe-inspiring thing called consciousness and our ability to do the simplest thing imaginable (think) that they’re ultimately confused. They have a thought and they’re like “Wow, where did that thought come from,” and then they start thinking about it and are like “whoa! There it is again! Where did it come from! I can’t see where it came from, so therefore God must have put it there!” It’s like that one episode of the Simpson’s where the Mayor was searching for who was stealing the water (it was going down the drain).

Catholics in particular are mesmerized by the simple innate ability to just plain think, and their reasoning is that since we can’t throw a thought under a microscope, it must be divine. They think that means that the burden of proof is on the scientific community to disprove God and they can go ahead and keep turning a blind eye to all the progress we’re making with science because “science can’t explain the ability to think.”

Okay, maybe your biology professor lost you in college, so maybe you weren’t paying attention when you were studying this thing called a brain, which is an actual organ that if I shoot you in you die, it’s responsible for intelligent thought. Since you seem to only understand idiot-speak, I’ll dumb it down for you. There’s a bunch of things called neurons and lots of other cells with big long names, and the electric charge they create allows you to think. Now, I know this is sounding very farfetched to you people who believe the earth was created sometime in the last ten thousand years, but I think it’s a much better rational explanation than “an invisible man in the sky is controlling our minds.”

That’s the thing with you guys, you never listen to reason. We can throw all the evidence in the world at you, but if a single “i” isn’t dotted, you blow us off and stay in denial, which is ultimately what you’re doing right now. Ever since Science came up with a rational explanation, even if only in theory, for just about everything, you wannabe-philosophers have picked your brains to come up with weird theories that aren’t mentioned anywhere in the bible like “Intelligent Design” and whatnot. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there has never been ANY empirical evidence to hint at the existence of God, the only thing that’s ever given you your case is the lack of empirical evidence to disprove him. You still have absolutely nothing!

So when you start talking about things like Evolution like they are theories, it really starts to get old. I mean Evolution sometimes take millions of years, how do you expect us to recreate that in a laboratory? We’ve already come up with mountains of scientific evidence that we can pretty much see what the picture on the 5000 piece puzzle is without needing the other few missing pieces, why can’t you? You still cling to the idea that some entity magically created us, and then accuse scientists of saying the same thing. Well no, actually they’re not, finding Dolphins with remains of legs and finding animals like mudskippers who bridge the gap from fish to frog isn’t exactly magic, it’s empirical evidence. Yet you downplay it and say that we really don’t have that much evidence! OH GOSH what more do you want? Domestication is an example of evolution, and though we show you a marine iguana and a desert iguana, you’ll still staunchly sit there and insist that they weren’t at some point in time related. You’re too proud to admit that man is an ape and an animal with a scientific name, and I’m convinced that you’ll never be convinced.

"Just who is this 'nature' or 'evolution' as (an active) subject? It doesn't exist at all!" the Pope said.

Okay well if you want to take that approach, neither does your “rationality” or “conscious thought” for that matter since you can’t throw it under a microscope. Therefore your God doesn’t exist either if he is the God of thought and thoughts don’t exist. But thoughts DO exist in the same sense that nature exists, but if there is thoughts but no nature…isn’t there a word for that?...oh yes.

I smell a hypocrite.

"Science has opened up large dimensions of reason and thus brought us new insights," the Pope himself seems to agree with me on most cases as well. "But in the joy at the extent of its discoveries, it tends to take away from us dimensions of reason that we still need. Its results lead to questions that go beyond its methodical canon and cannot be answered within it," okay, basically you’re saying that the only thing religion is good for is a tool for exercising thought…or those “dimensions of reason” that you’re talking about. Wow, from the Pope’s own mouth, religion is nothing more than a philosophy, an ideal!

So Religion teaches us to be good people, and supposedly without religion the world would be filled with hate and crime and evil etc. Well the funniest thing I ever saw in a movie was a gang banger going to church. Not so funny when it’s a Muslim extremist blowing himself up in the name of, oh, GOD!

You’re still clinging to ideas that were created before running water was invented and trying to make me cling to them too! Well sorry, I’m a little more practical. I know you have a “whole other world” of existence to explore, but I do to, it’s called my imagination. And if God is thought, and thought exists, then I guess we agree…God is all in my imagination!

(Thank you, I’m here till Thursday)

You can believe whatever you want to believe, but in that case, so can I. Don’t push your crazy ideas on me. It’s really starting to get annoying.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Cure Autism! NOW DAMMIT!














"Sometimes I feel angry when I read about attempts being made to 'cure' autism. I do not wish to be 'cured' from my autism, and many autistic persons who are able to communicate their feelings, say the same thing."


I’m sure a lot of you know people who have young autistic children. The kids that are absolute brainiacs and can do prime factorization like a computer but have weird mannerisms and stare up at ceiling fans for hours or don’t sit still. You haven’t seen autism until you’ve seen an Autistic teenager!

They’re hopeless! Weirdo’s from some other dimension who speak in binary code and think that the way to make friends is by going up and saying “my shirt has a kitty on it.” Oh gosh the speech pathologists are shaking their heads going “no Billy, complement their clothes not your clothes.” These kids can’t hold a conversation for their life, are masters at murdering jokes, are the people in the group that always manage to humiliate themselves in a way that it humiliates everyone else in the group, and are just plain strange.

I’m not talking Napoleon Dynamite strange, I’m talking Napoleon without the Dynamite, kids that are so messed up that they have no cute qualities about them, no attractive personalities, repelling auras, but an insane knowledge of every species of gymnosperm on the planet. They often have no friends because they’re not stupid enough to be special ed, so they sit in regular ed classes at the back of the class. Even geeks make fun of these kids, they're so incapable of socializing that they've even been rejected by the rejects! They’re often the object of kids ridicule, and at lunch they read a book instead of hang out with friends. They excel at repeated activities, everyone remembers the autistic waterboy who scored 27 points in a high school basketball game.

We all know someone like this, and chances are that 5 times out of 10 (since now one in 250 kids are born with some form of autism), they’re autistic. But the strangest thing about a lot of kids like these who know they have this disorder, who’ve been on meds and hospitalized for this disorder, wouldn’t want to be cured!

This is not the first person with autism I’ve heard say they don’t want to change, I used to be the same way. Autistic teens somehow get it in their mind that having this disorder makes them special and makes them who they are, and they wouldn’t want to change who they are. Oh god forbid, don’t make me part of the “collective!” “I’m original!”

“I’m Special!”

You stupid loners! You have no clue what you’re talking about! No, I’m not afraid to call you stupid because I’m one of you, I know how your inverted mind works! You don’t know what society is really like because you’ve never been in it. You don't know what it's like to have people who have your back no matter what and someone to go to the mall with and a group to have fun with. The ride is so much funner if you're sitting next to someone you call friend. You’ve never integrated yourself into a group of people, so you don’t know what it’s like to be part of a group of people. You don’t know what you’re missing because you’ve never had it. But some like you have had it, and some like you have had it and lost it because of your “special” people skills. You’re amazing ability to drive people away and award winning joke killers are astounding, why, you’re practically a joke sniper! You shoot down girls without even knowing how, and you insult peers without even knowing you have. Your existence is in itself offensive, but you don’t see it because you’re stuck in your own little Autistic world and you think that’s okay!

Maybe you’d march straight up to the doctors and researchers working on a cure and say to them “No Thank you, I’m just fine the way I am.” But then of course I’d come over and punch the living daylight out of you, you stupid ingrate crack-babies. In sci-fi novel’s you’re all euthanized! You don’t know how horrible it is like to be cursed against friendship and intimacy!

So the hell with all you disabled kids, Cure me dammit! I want to be part of the collective, I want to join society! I don’t like who I am, I don’t want to be autistic anymore! I don’t want anymore meds or counselors or psychologists or evaluations or peers avoiding me like the plague. I don’t want special education and home aids, or learning programs designed for the autistic brain, or weird looks when I say something insane. I want groups of cool friends who tell funny jokes and say cool things and hang out with me and don't dress like losers or punks. I don't care, make me a poser! But God please no longer a Loner! I’ll throw away my alternative humor and fall in line, I swear I will! Love me people, please oh please! Take me to movies and hang out with me!

If I had all the money in the world, where can I go to get rid of me?

I don’t want to be Autistic, please cure me!


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UPDATE!!!

I found something interesting on Youtube. This is for the parents of SEVERELY AUTISTIC children, the ones who I'm not ragging on in the post above. A hospital in Costa Rica is doing work with Adult Stem Cells on Autistic Patients and claims to have pretty much a CURE. In case the vid doesn't work properly, it's called the Institute of Cellular Medicine in Costa Rica.