Virginia Tech and the Implications of “Normality”

While I don’t want to continue beating a dead horse, or I suppose 33 of them (too soon?), I felt it was my responsibility to chime in on the so-called “Virginia Tech Massacre.” Though I completely agree with Mark’s assessment about the incident, I feel that there is another significant problem following in the wake of this undoubtedly brutal crime. The tension and nervousness felt around college campuses is giving way to a growing discourse on “normality.” I just received a rather irritating e-mail from my own university that contained the following line:

While University Housing and the University work very diligently to make our on-campus housing and campus environment as safe as possible, we also want to remind you of the most important actions you can take to enhance your own safety and security and the safety of your fellow residents: - Always close and lock your room or apartment door even when you will only be gone for a few minutes
- Don’t allow people you don’t know to tailgate behind you when you go into your residence hall
- Be alert for suspicious behavior or something going on that causes you to be uncomfortable; report suspicious activity to DPS immediately at 3-1131.

The part I bolded is what I want to delve into. While the death of these young men and women is a tragedy, the fascist and voyeuristic reaction to it is even more alarming. Vague terminology like “suspicious behavior” seems to inherently promote students spying on other students. The term also brings into focus the question of what is considered “suspicious” or, perhaps more importantly, what is considered “normal behavior.” Does this mean that if one prefers to stay in the dorm and watch a movie alone to venturing to a frat house one is a “loner”? Does this mean that if one enjoys hunting they have a proclivity towards violence? Does this mean that if you don’t have as many friends as the people who live near you, that you’ve suddenly found yourself as the “other”? Already, high schools and universities around the nation have begun the process of responding to the heightened fear of the “other.” A high school student in Bogalusa, La. has already been arrested for writing a suspicious and threatening note. At the University of Tennessee, buildings have been evacuated for suspected bomb threats. At St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, buildings were also evacuated and school cancelled because of a suspicious phone call.

The truth is that we’re all the other. There was not anything particularly special or disturbing about the young man who went on a shooting rampage a few days ago, though articles such as “Gunman Showed Signs of Anger” and “Va. Tech Gunman Had Mental Problems” or “Roommates Describe Gunman as Loner” will attempt to suggest otherwise. There exists a disturbingly fragile layer between love and hate in the human psyche and, though we’d like to believe otherwise, it is easily capable of breaking at any moment, so long as the conditions exist for this to happen. Moreover, how can we possibly render an ad hoc psychoanalytic conclusion about someone? What’s even the purpose of this, except to give clues to other people on how to root out those suspicious individuals who exhibit frightening characteristics like “showing signs of anger.” If we can’t even understand ourselves (this is what we pay therapists for), how can we possibly delve into the mind of someone else? Are we now all miniature-Freudian psychoactualists rendering judgments on people we don’t even know?

Someone going on a shooting spree doesn’t shock or upset me. Rather, it confirms my belief that the world is an insane, chaotic and disturbing place. I’ll reserve my shock for when I hear something great: a cure for cancer, solving the issue of global warming, ending genocide in impoverished countries, etc. I’ll also reserve my anger for when I see these types of hypocritical reactions to the tragic and inevitable outcomes of the drama of human emotion. What better way to incite another shooting than to alienate those around you who appear to be suspicious? We’re all unique and fragile people, but there isn’t that much that sets us apart from one another. Perhaps the questions that we should be asking (like, does the senseless shooting of 33 people seem to mirror our own proclivity towards violence as a nation) are too frightening; too revealing about our own senseless nature.

Bryan Klausmeyer 5 Comments

You’re Not a Hokie, Unless You Are

When I’ve visited Facebook, watched TV or read the news lately, I can’t help escaping empathetic appeals to the victims of the Virginia Tech mass murder. Although the intent is perhaps good, I can’t help but be angered by the emptiness of many of these symbolic gestures of empathy. Empathy– the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Unless you were somehow personally impacted by the mass murder at Virginia Tech, there’s no reason you should be displaying a ribbon of empathy. How can you claim to have empathy for random murder? If anything it should allow you to contemplate the fragility of human life and the randomness of death, but to empathize is a different matter entirely. Putting up a picture or post saying your heart goes out to those affected is a meaningless symbolic gesture in response to the echo of another meaningless symbolic gesture– the killings.

To say you empathize specifically with those killed from randomness at Virginia Tech is to say you consider them more important than, for example, the 61,000+ Iraqis who have been killed by random warfare paid for by your tax dollars and the support of estranged religious sects. One hundred and twenty seven were killed yesterday in car bombings in Baghdad yet there is no mass wave of meaningless symbolism surrounding their demise. Why should you consider the lives of those unknown to you at Virginia Tech more valuable than any other random deaths? Because they were just like you? Because other deaths are faceless?

Who claims to share their empathy with the unremembered? With the unrememberable– the one whose face will not appear on CNN or the front page of the New York Times? Who would put up a ribbon and claim “Today we are all Human”? I for one, am not a “Hokie,” and cannot pretend to understand. To understand something you have to be able to perceive a meaning. What meaning can be derived from random death except that of random life?

Mark Elliot Cullen 7 Comments

Massacre at Virginia Tech

Cho Seung-hui, a 23 year old English major from South Korea, has been identified as the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday.

Cho, here in America on a student visa, is believed to have purchased his two pistols sometime in the past week in Virginia.

On Monday at 7:15, the first shooting occurred at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory, killing two people, female student Emily J. Hilscher and RA Ryan Christopher “Stack” Clark.

While campus police investigated the initial double homicide, Cho was apparently readying for further carnage across campus at Norris Hall, where the majority of the killings took place. As the shootings began, students in classrooms either barricaded themselves in to prevent Cho from entering or jumped out of classroom windows, sometimes as high as four stories up.

According to a statement by a doctor treating the injured, Cho was especially brutal in his methods.

“There wasn’t a shooting victim that didn’t have less than three bullet wounds in them,” said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo of Montgomery Regional Hospital.

Cho took his own life at the end of his killing spree that killed 32 and injured 15 others. At least two Virginia Tech professors are among the dead.

While the university struggled with sending out warning emails, students were identifying the dead and injured themselves through social networking sites like Facebook.

Not everyone was using the inter net for good however. Wanus Maximus, a user of Live Journal edited his blog profile to pose as the killer.

As the identity of the killer was not immediately known, and all that was known was that it was an Asian male who apparently argued with his girlfriend, Wanus created a profile of a depressed gun nut. He was convincing enough to have Warren Ellis and through him Wired to point him out as possibly the real deal. He was eventually debunked, and continues to update his journal with each site that comes out to prove him false.

Our hearts go out to the victims and their families and our thoughts are with them in their time of grief.

Zach Cullen

Plagiarists Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them.

So, INTERNET.

Yeah, the Internet is pretty sweet. An endless supply of content (re: PORN) for every poor bastard on this pale blue dot, right at my fingertips, for moderate monthly fees. Possibly right up there with the Hot Pocket in terms of human achievement. There’s no doubt that it’s certainly responsible for the rise in the creative forces on the earth, from the blogosphere, to the youtube, there are many great and… not so great artists out there. I can’t really identify a point in history where this many people from any walk of life were able to create and display this much art. Too bad the Internet is also the perfect place to steal art from.

The most recent case of theft happened to cartoonist Dave “Shmorky” Kelly, creator of webcomics Purple Pussy, Living in Greytown, and the animated series The Flash Tub. In 2001, Kelly created the image above, a squirrel character saying her bedtime prayers. It most recently appeared in a Los Angeles art gallery, re-colored and credited to artist and t-shirt maker Todd “Goliath” Goldman.

Long story short, the internet went nuts. Cartoonists voiced their outrage, goons swore oaths of violence and provided legal advice, angry emails were sent. A few local papers picked up on the story. Goldman then issued a statement. Well, first he called Kelly a child molester and sent some minors emails filled with porn, but then his publicist made this statement:

CLEARWATER, FL, April 11, 2007—Popular post pop-artist, Todd Goldman who has made a career of making fun of the world with his sarcastic commentary and cartoon icons, has mistakenly used the design of an another artist in two of his recent paintings. Todd’s painting, “Dear God, Please Make Everyone Die,” was inspired from a drawing he received unbeknownst to him belonging to an underground web comic artist David “Shmorky” Kelly.



In addition to painting, Todd designs t-shirts for his clothing company, David & Goliath. Todd and his design team create and receive thousands of design ideas every month. It’s no secret that Goldman creates a lot of his painting ideas from his t-shirt designs. Goldman says “I made a judgment error and didn’t research the background of this particular submission. “My intention was not to copy Mr. Kelly. I have never seen his work before and would never intentionally knock-off someone else’s idea.”



Goldman has issued a formal apology to Mr. Kelly and has stated that he will not be using his design again in the future. As a gesture of good faith, Goldman has pledged not profit from his mistake. He will instead donate his proceeds from the painting directly to Mr. Kelly or his charity of choice.

And this is will be the end of it. This is as far as internet justice gets you. Goldman halfheartedly apologizes and says someone sent the design anonymously. Anyone who’s ever gotten an email knows that’s bullshit! You get a return address right there! Sure there are anonymous email services out there, but you’re telling me someone would go through all that effort to get Shmorky’s art stolen? It’d be a hell of a lot easier just to have his house looted through Craig’s list.

The only way to prove that that email submission exists or doesn’t exist would be to hire a lawyer and subpoena for it. Though of course, that’s not always a guarantee… But regardless, Shmorky can’t do that. He’s just a starving artist; he doesn’t have that kind of money. I’ve seen this a lot, Ebaum does it all the time. Rapper Timbaland who is going on tour with Justin Timberlake is also accused of it. This is how David gets his ass whooped by Goliath. If the guy you steal from can’t get a lawyer, you can either completely ignore his accusations, or say that an anonymous source gave you the content. You didn’t know! Honest!

It sucks, but hey, at least he can sell t-shirts now. Maybe one day he’ll be as accomplished as Goldman and can rip someone off himself!

Watch this! It was on SNL! I laughed!

If you don’t get it, the short is parodying the end of the second season of The O.C., as shown below.

Best goddamn show on TV. Should have kept Mischa Barton, could have gone on for another three years at least.

Heh. I just realized I stole the title of this article from a bunch of other people’s articles on this subject. Whoops! I mean the titles were submitted to me anonymously! I didn’t know I was stealing!

End Transmission.

Zach Cullen 3 Comments

So It Goes.

One of Dr. Vonnegut’s favorite short stories: Occurance at Owl Creek.

And a final poem:

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Mark Elliot Cullen

College Laptop Trouble

Like many college students, I use my computer to record notes in classes. It saves paper, and is an efficient and orderly way to keep notes– as opposed to digging through composition books and paper that was at one time a page trying to decipher my own, admittedly poor, handwriting.

Several times in classes I’ve received accusatory looks from teachers, and sometimes embarrassing verbal reprimands for using a laptop. In a recent exchange, we were theorizing the influence of a particular public policy, and I opened a powerpoint presentation about the policy. As soon as the dock icon started bouncing on my MacBook, the discussion was interrupted and I was told not to check my e-mail in class.

I found this particular instance particularly annoying because of the assumptions made about me as a student and about my level of involvement and interest in the discussion. While I’m not a model student, I tend to contribute what I can to classes without sounding like I’m trying to impress the professor or other students with my level of involvement. Even though I was active in class participation, it was assumed that I was more interested in the latest postings on message boards or Daily Show clips on Youtube, simply because I was using a laptop.

Many professors seem to assume their students use laptops not to take notes or to find class relevant information, but to chat with their friends and play games. Which might be true of some students– who hasn’t seen someone subverting the value of their education by posting on Facebook about the unbelievable beer pong game they played the night before? But the point is, it’s the beer ponger’s education to subvert.

What students take away from a lecture is ultimately their decision, not the professors. While many professors assume the introduction of a laptop into the classroom introduces unnecessary distraction, it’s got very little to do with the device, and more to do with the student using it. I can find interesting ways to ignore the lecture without a computer– drawing epic surrealist composition book landscapes, secretly folding paper cranes, etc.– but typically I choose not to, just like when I use a laptop.

Most professors realize they cannot force feed students information: there is no choice but to trust students with their own education. There is no legitimate reason professors should limit laptops in the classroom (assuming the student isn’t blasting My Chemical Romance or exposing Fergie’s exposables on their desktop). What’s more, banning laptops means limiting academic freedom, in-class academic resources, and student-professor trust. Until professors “get with the times” they’re going to find tech-saavy students leaving them behind.

Mark Elliot Cullen 2 Comments

Iran Develops Nuclear Butterflies

IRANIAN BORDER/CAPITAL– Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that rascally womanizer, silenced critics with a turn of his curly straw. “It’s my work,” he say, “and I do it for the pay.” No word from Washington on the implications of his rugged populism.

Iran has been the center of growing concerns about the possibility of a chance of potential occurrences, as yet undetermined by unmentionable officials. Professor Mahmoud’s odious warnings were delivered with a precision and aplomb unheard of in the Age of Radar.

“Resident Amhadinejab is asking for the UN to act as a Oujia board on which he can place the rolling glass window device of nuclear capabilities,” noted environmentalist “Silver Shoe” Shuffler. “Those stupid F[Bush Administration]’s are trying to spell ‘NO’ but they can’t find the letters. They’re just pushing the mirror.”

The yellow bellied races of England discussed the issue at their annual meeting, offering several solutions including the “sale of unlikely advances and futures to distract the Iranian Monster.” Yet President [Name Omitted]’s [Title Omitted] insisted yesterday that these events would in no way deter the “rescue of the Princess of Democracy.”

At this time it is unclear, very unclear.

Mark Elliot Cullen

Poor Unfortunate Ghosts

Mark Elliot Cullen