Conundrum

How can Fox News blame violent video games when the Amish start shooting up their schools?

Thanks. I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress!

For serious. What is going on in this country? I feel like there have been about seventeen school shootings in the past month, some of them very close to home. Why are kids so pissed off? I've got news for you, potential school shooters.

Life sucks. Sorry.

I know you were raised on Sesame Street and your mommies and daddies never let anything bad happen to you for as long as possible, and you thought life was going to be all kittens and rainbows and cotton candy. But people are going to be mean to you, just because they can. Popular kids are going to treat you like shit, just because they can. There is no reason, there is no cure, including pumping the kids you hate full of bullets. Teachers will fail you if you don't do the work. Some of them will be hard on you because they're former geeks and dorks who exact their revenge on kids by teaching. Is it fair? No. Life's not fair. Sack up. Do you know how I got through high school? I took comfort in the fact that my life was still basically in an embryotic stage then. The best years of my life would not be when I was just learning to drive a car and couldn't buy beer. Yeah, I didn't like it when people talked about me, or I didn't get to hang with the cool kids. But I found a posse of freaks and stuck with them.

Whenever I think about school shootings (which I tend to avoid), I think about Matt Parker and Trey Stone, who are the creators of South Park in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Say whatever you want about Moore, but Matt and Trey were really insightful. The upshot of their interview was that high school sucks, and it's hard for kids to realize that once they get through high school all the dramatic, cliquey bullshit ebbs. The popular kids settle down, get married and have kids, and the dorky kids (like Parker and Stone) are actually successful, and the violence happens when kids think that high school is the rest of their lives.

I mean, we can't blame modern life if the Amish are going all apeshit in the one-room schoolhouse. Something has got to give in our culture, or whatever is causing all these kids to go nuts. Perhaps the NEA will start putting Ritalin in all the juice boxes in the cafeterias. I have no idea. But, if I have any high-school-aged readers, just hang in there. High school is not the rest of your life, nor is that time the best of your life. Also, stop reading all the posts about my public drunkenness and boobs. I don't want to end up on To Catch a Predator.