Reassurance

Today, at work, my coworker told me that she owns a Glock. She keeps it in the drawer by her bed, "just in case." In case of what, I asked her, and she shrugged. "You know," she said, "burglars, rapists." I was about to ask her if perhaps an alarm system would work better, but than I thought better of it.

I've lost count of how many school shootings there have been this month. Eight? Nine? This can't be normal. Can it? Perhaps it's not the violence I'm afraid of, but the fact that violence is now the norm. All you ever wanted to know about blood and death, news at six.

That was morbid, but I'm in a morbid mood. I came home and walked to my bedroom closet and reached up to the very top shelf where all my unwanted junk is kept and I brought down the wooden box and I opened it. And there it was. The gun.

Somehow, it is reassuring to me. I picked it up and it felt heavy, heavier than I expected. I spun the cylinder and it made a nice clicking sound as it went around.

I couldn't throw it away. Someone might have found it, digging through the trash. So I keep in my closet. I can't use it -- I'm not about to buy bullets or anything. As I said, somehow just looking at makes me feel safe.

Now I just have to figure out: safe against what?

A Sick Joke

That's what this is. That's what I received in the mail today. A stupid, sick joke.

So there was a package waiting for me when I got back to my apartment. It was wrapped in brown paper with my address scrawled on it. There was no return address, of course.

Inside was a wooden box. And inside the wooden box was a gun. A revolver. I've checked online to see what model, but I can't find it. The company who made it - printed on the side of the barrel - is called "INTERITIO," but I can't find anything about them online. There are no bullets.

There was, however, a note alongside the gun:

ENDMAKER

MERCYGIVER

That's all it had on it.

This has to be some sort of sick joke, right? Should I call the cops?

A Theory About The Nature of Conspiracy Theories

I am currently reading a book about the history of conspiracy theories, which naturally led me to think about those emails I received. I'm still receiving emails, I'm just electing not to post them here, since they are similar to the last ones.

In any case, I was thinking about those conspiracy theories and I've come to a theory about them: they are all about control or, rather, lack thereof.

A lot of people don't feel in control of their own lives, for good reason. People die everyday due to circumstances that are out of their control -- sickness, violence, accidents. So some people invent an invisible enemy, a boogeyman that does control our lives. It's not random chance that kills us, it is Them with a capital T. They control every aspect of our lives, but at least someone is in control, right? At least we're not living in an out-of-control world.

Hell, even I'm guilty of thinking like this. Making this blog in an attempt to find some reason for these shootings, when I should have just realized that the reason was "because, just because."

Because there is no invisible boogeyman. There is nobody pulling the strings. Life is a chaotic series of events. Or, as Terry Pratchett put it, "things just happen, what the hell." So our view of an ordered universe itself is actually just a civilized illusion.

Replies

How did I manage to get three crazy responses in one day? I have no idea.

Anyway, here was the first email I received:

Subject line: It's the government 

The govenrment is brainwashing our children. That's why there's so much violence. Have you looked at the movies these days? Have you played these video games? Their conditioning our children to kill, kill, kill. we should smash all the tvs and burn all these games and then when they try to teach our children that godless evolution, we will smash thier schools and make them know that GOD does not agree with them.

How did we go from violence in movies and games to evolution? I fail to see any logic in this.

Here's the next one:

Subject line: All a hoax 

That's what it is: a hoax. Those school shootings didn't really happen. Obama just set it up so he could justify taking away our guns. All those dead bodies were just lifelike mannequins. The real kids are being held in a facility somewhere and they arent allowed to talk to anyone or go anywhere. Dont believe the lies they tell you -- it's all been faked.

Yeah, it's been faked, just like 9/11 and the moon landing. Please go die in a fire.

And if you thought those last two were deranged, just read the third email:

Subject line: There Is A Man 

There is a man. He wears a gray suit and a gray bowler hat. He has a white pocketwatch. I'm not sure what it's made of, I didn't get a good glimpse at it. I was too busy running for my life. But I saw him, I know he was there. And it wasn't the first time. I found him before, in different places, different tragedies. He's always there. Looking at his watch. Check and you'll see. I'm not sure if he causes them and merely records them, but he's always there.

Creepy, right? Until I remembered that that's the plot of an episode of Fringe.

Why does this subject always seem to bring out the crazies? Why can't I talk to someone normal about this? Perhaps I should see a therapist, but that costs money, money I don't have.

I need to just stop worrying, but I can't.

Tired

It's been a long day. I work inside an office at a high school and everyone time someone walked through the door, I was afraid. I almost compulsively surf the internet now, checking the news, checking for stories of shootings. I know I shouldn't, but I just want to know. I want to know why.

But I'm tired of living inside my own head, asking myself these questions, so instead I'm going to ask anyone reading this blog: why? Why do you think these events happen? You can comment here (I have opened it up to anonymous commenting even) or you can email me: thesiliconchipinsideherhead@gmail.com.

Just give me a theory, any theory.

February 2, 1996

Location: Frontier Middle School, Moses, Washington
Victims: Three
Wounded: One

Barry Dale Loukaitis, 14-years-old, dressed as a gunslinger with .357 revolver and .25 semiautomatic pistol, walked into his fifth-period algebra class and opened fire, killing two students and the teacher. Afterwards, he said, "This sure beats the hell out of Algebra, doesn't it?" a quote from the Stephen King novel Rage. Loukaitis took the rest of his class hostage, until he was eventually subdued by the gym teacher.

Motive: Loukaitis claimed to suffer from "mood swings" and a court-appointed psychiatrist said he experienced delusional and messianic thoughts. As well, Loukaitis's mother had separated his father and had often spoken of committing suicide.

Tell Me Why

I don't understand.

There were ten school shootings in the United States in 2012. Six of them resulted in deaths.

Do you know how many school shootings there have been in 2013? Four. Four in less than one month.

Is it bullying? Drugs? Are students becoming desensitized to violence because of video games and movies? Or perhaps it's our culture itself, the fetishization of mass shootings, the obsession that our news media has over the smallest new story related to these shootings.

Or perhaps it's none of the above. Perhaps it's something else entirely, something completely unknown, invisible to us.

I don't understand.

This is my attempt to understand. This is my attempt to look back at history and try and see a pattern. Any pattern. Anything to make sense of the senseless.

January 29, 1979

Location: Cleveland Elementary School, San Diego, California
Victims: Two
Wounded: Nine

Brenda Ann Spencer, a 16-year-old teenager who lived across the street from Cleveland Elementary School, began shooting at the school from her window with a .22 caliber rifle. Afterwards, she barricaded herself in her house for seven hours before the police apprehended her.

Motive: When she was asked why she did it, Spencer replied, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." Later on, Spencer claimed that she was on drugs (which was denied by the police) and that her father beat and sexually abused her.

July 12, 1976

Location: California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, California
Victims: Seven
Wounded: Two

Edward Charles Allaway, the 37-year-old custodian of the school library, purchased a semiautomatic rifle at a local Kmart, then killed seven people and wounded two in the lobby of the school library and the media center in the basement before fleeing. Allaway later turned himself in.

Motives: Allaway was diagnosed during a second trial with paranoid schizophrenia  He believed pornographers were forcing his wife to act in films. It is not known if he thought the people he killed were the pornographers or if he believed they were showing the films in the library. He is currently in the Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino.

May 6, 1940

Location: South Pasadena Junior High School, South Pasadena, California
Victims: Five
Wounded: One

Former principal of South Pasadena Junior High School, Vieling Spencer, walked into the school and shot six school officials, killing five of them, before shooting himself in the neck.

Motives: Revenge perhaps? Spencer had recently been let go from his job. Were his victims those who forced him out? Did he target them specifically or were they merely bystanders in a rampage? Unknown.