Thursday, April 19, 2007

A little more on Virginia Tech....

It's particularly shameful that people are blaming the incident on Islamic terrorism.

It's pretty clear, if anything, the guy was a Christian. Yeah, I know, not a "real Christian," but the guy was raised Christian and compared himself to Jesus Christ in the videos he sent to NBC.

Kos pretty much gets this one right...

Should this be blamed on Christianity? Of course not. To do so would be horrible.

But it would have been just as horrible to blame this on Islam, even if he were a Muslim.

Everyone who blamed this on Islam needs to apologize. So far I haven't seen anyone do so.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

How the Virginia Tech incident could have been prevented

It's quite simple really.

First, we need to tighten our borders. Stop letting so many foreigners into our country. Especially Koreans, who obviously can't be trusted. And did you hear this kid might have been Muslim? That's it, no more Muslims allowed.

Now that that's taken care of, we need to ban music by the murderer's favorite band, Collective Soul. And also, let's throw out all our CDs from his other big influence, Guns 'N' Roses.

And really, freedom of speech is nice and all, but we should no longer tolerate anyone who writes shitty plays. And we should no longer accept any violent art at all.

The mentally ill clearly cannot be trusted at all, either. If someone has a single suicidal thought, from now on they should be shielded from society. And anyone who's ever had any incident involving police, or annoyed a couple women, even if no charges were filed, should be locked up forever.

The students who did nothing to stop the shooter are a bunch of wimps, as are the police and Virginia Tech safety people. All of them easily could have stopped it all.

It's all Bush's fault, really, and Nancy Pelosi's fault, too.

The solution is clearly to take everyone's guns away. No... even better! Let's give everyone guns, so they can shoot these guys before they kill again. But lets take away their video games.

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*Ramming my head into the wall approximately 12 times*

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Phew! I think I have my senses back. I almost blamed the whole incident on Southern Illinois beating Virginia Tech during March Madness.

The truth of the matter is simple...

Shit like this will happen from time to time. And there's next to nothing we can do about it. We can implement all of my suggestions above, and there will still be crazy fuckers out there. That answer is no more satisfying to me than it is to you, but it's the truth.

At the risk of sounding like a hippie, I say we all love each other and spread good vibes as much as possible. That's the best advice I have for minimizing incidents like this in the future.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

YOU get to pick my new favorite living author!

That's right....

Since I can't for the life of me come up with a single living author that I hold in the same esteem as Kurt Vonnegut, I'm going to let YOU, the public, decide who my favorite living author is. Depending on how this goes, this could really take the burden off of me... I could have the public choose my favorite band, my favorite food, my favorite color, my religion, etc. Poll is on the sidebar.

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Six of the contestants for Justin's Favorite Living Author (or the JFLA, for short) were suggested by my fiancee a few days ago.

Among these is the one that was most obvious to me when I initally started thinking about this question... Ray Bradbury. Farenheit 451 might be my favorite single novel by a living author, but it's the only thing I've read of his. And let's face it. The man is 87 years old, so if Bradbury wins, I might have to conduct this poll again very soon.

The only other of her suggestions that I've read anything by is Maya Angelou... I like her, but I think of her more as a poet than a novelist.

Others that my fiancee suggested...

Martin Amis (who she says I'd like, but I know nothing about)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera; One Hundred Years of Solitude)

Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day; The Artist of the Floating World; When We Were Orphans)

Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

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Another suggestion comes from my friend Brad via email..... Tom Robbins. I've never read anything by Tom, but Brad's been suggesting I do for a long time, so I'll include him.

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The other three are authors of books that I've meant to read for a long time but never have....

Milan Kundera (Unbearable Lightness of Being)

Dave Eggers (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.... bonus points because he went to University of Illinois?)

Toni Morrison (Beloved, etc.... she seemed like such an obvious candidate, I have to incluide her).

Happy voting!

Poll Results

Here are the results of my latest highly popular (among the two people that voted) poll...

Which New York vs. New York matchup is more likely?

Mets vs. Yankees, World Series, 2007 100%
Hillary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani, Presidential Election, 2008 0%

I actually think I slightly disagree... I think Clinton v. Giuliani is somewhat more likely. Although I wouldn't predict either to happen right now...

I currently predict Red Sox v. Cardinals and Obama v. someone-who's-not-Giuliani-or-McCain (Fred Thompson?)

New poll on the way.