After posting an entry about how happy I am, I hate to go back. But it must be said: I’m not as happy as I was. My co-workers in the department are bright, intelligent, motivated people whom I cannot read to save my life. I never know if I’m pissing them off or intruding or what because the varnish of politeness has yet to crack. It makes me think of Hogsboro with nostalgia; gone are the days when I was 4th in seniority in the department and with more experience than almost anyone, the days when Grace praised my organization in my Grade 11 course, or the days when I could laugh with Chris over our feast-and-famine approach to marking. Back when I was comfortable in my skin. Back when I wasn’t worried about making a bad impression because my chance had already come & gone.

"Christian zombie vam-pyyy-rrrrs!" - my life with the thrill kill cult

So some idiot went out and shot up a CEGEP yesterday. And I’m getting a pain from the familiarity of it all. Every time some person goes off the rails, the media hunts for a simple solution. Teachers didn’t care enough or mummy didn’t breastfeed. My personal favourite is playing out right now; following the report of presumably hard facts surrounding the shooting, newsreaders will tack on the delightful phrase: “the shooter made postings to a vampire fantasy board.” Then, leaving this juicy morsel to marinade in the minds of Sally Popquiz and Eddie Snoozebar, a new & unrelated item will be tendered for our collective consideration.

The implication is, as it was after Columbine, that anyone who enjoys a goth fantasy life is one bell tower closer to an extreme act of violent madness.

Now, the Boy’s abundant curiosity was piqued by this irrelevant factoid, so he took a look at the darque site in question. Upon scanning the shooter’s profile, the Boy quickly realized that this unfortunate gentleman belonged to an often-mocked but seldom-categorized sub-species of goth: the LoserGoth. In this case, he was also psycho and violent; atypical attributes of the breed, so I’ll spare you my monograph on the subspecies.

My point is this, and please feel free to release it to news outlets as the official statement of someone who spent a great deal of time in her youth pretending to be a vampire, but then grew up & got a respectable job. Just because some psychopath used to fantasize about violent acts before he committed one horrendous example of his own doesn’t mean that everyone who plays with the dark side of their nature will do likewise. Think on this: there are many of us with jobs, many of us who have integrated into mainstream society, and many of us with children. Stinking up the online world with your gun fetish only stays fun if you’re not getting acceptance any other way. Most of us have that love in our lives, and we’re not about to go Boomtown Rats on the local Junior College.

But it at least confirms our long-held suspicion that no one truly understands us... And you don’t want to be responsible for a lot of goths feeling smug, do you? I thought not.

- 0 comments/hedgehogs -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 9/14/2006 08:40:00 p.m.