Gunman Kills 12, Injures 40+ in Aurora, Colorado

[pinback]

I just asked this question on a Yahoo forum. Apparently the answer is "Obama and the gays."

[milker]

Well then it is obviously a loss of brains. Yeah, I guess the haunted house I do with zombies is not much different then the society I am surrounded by.

Do these people drool all day as well?

[milker]

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500156_162-2954532.html


February 11, 2009 4:40 PM

Why Is Everyone So Angry?

By
Lloyd de Vries

You're sitting at a red light, and it turns green. In the millisecond before you step on the gas, the guy behind you honks his horn and makes an obscene gesture at you. You're with a bunch of people when someone mentions the name, "Hillary," so then people's faces turn red and hate spews out of their mouths. Or, you're with people when someone says, "George Bush," and hate spews out of their mouths. The waitress mistakenly brings you your hamburger with the tomato you didn't want, and you react as if the burger were covered with hemlock. Why are people so mad these days?

I guess I was motivated to write this column because of two things. The first was my seeing a sign in the driveway of a church that read, "This Space For Pastor Only. All Other Cars Will Be Towed!!!!" It was the underline and the four exclamation points that got to me. I understand that the pastor was probably tired of people parking in his space. But as I tried to read between the lines, I didn't see him saying, "Look, I really need to park here, so please park somewhere else." Instead, I saw someone who was angry and fed up, whose attitude was, "You'd better not park in my space or I'll have your *!@!* car towed." And this was from a pastor — about a parking space.

The second thing was a comment someone made in the "blog" section at the bottom of one of my columns. A reader wrote to me, "Just do the country a favor and shoot yourself." Is it just me, or does that seem a tad bit of an overreaction to a column about a proposed Harry Potter amusement park?

Did that reader really think that my opinions have any effect on the condition of our country? And did he really want me to commit suicide because of my views on an amusement park? Probably not. In all likelihood — I hope — he was using hyperbole. Maybe he was in a bad mood before he read the column, or maybe some things I wrote just rubbed him the wrong way. But how angry does someone have to be to write something like that?

And "Mr. Go Shoot Yourself" is not atypical. Surf the Internet for a second or two, and you'll see the venom pouring out from those who verbally attack each other. Listen to talk radio, and you can almost hear the blood pressure rising from those speaking about immigration or gas prices or the ending of the last episode of "The Sopranos." Some angry drivers in California recently became so impatient with the progress of a freeway's repairs, that they actually started aiming their cars at the highway workers.

So, what's going on? Where did all this anger and impatience come from? Why are so many people walking around with such short fuses? Is it the war that everybody wishes were over? Is it still a reaction to 9/11? I wouldn't rule out these possibilities. Daily expressions of anger could be symptoms of the anxious times we live in. Perhaps people are living in a constant state of tension and fear about the world. But we feel frustrated and angry because we don't know what we can do to change things. And these feelings have to go somewhere, so we vent our anger at the old lady in front of us in the grocery store express line who has 11 items instead of 10.

If it's understandable for us to be tense and angry these days, what can we do about it? Well, while we pressure world leaders to make this a safer planet, we can at least take a deep breath now and then to calm down. Of course, when we take those deep breaths, we'll be breathing air that's being polluted by corporations that don't care if they're poisoning us! They only care about making money!! And they're among the most despicable entities in the history of the world!!!! Sorry about that outburst. Sometimes I just get so angry.

[Flack]

I saw an article on CNN that there were three different "incidents" related to the Batman film (some other guy got pulled over with a bunch of guns in his car, and a third guy called in a bomb threat or something to a theater showing Batman) so yeah, it would not surprise me to see a "violent film" backlash come out of this.

The biggest issue I see here ... well two things, the first of which is, whenever a tragedy like this happens at an event, people are going to question that event. When two kids tried to kill themselves after listening to Judas Priest for hours on end, that's what rang in the modern era of backmasking horror stories. So it's always the heavy metal, or the movies, or the whatever. But the second thing is, this is just one of a few recent shooting events in which the murderer legally obtained a lot of stuff that should have in theory, somewhere, raised some red flags. When a guy drops out of college and starts buying automatic weapons and 6,000 rounds of ammunition, you would think somebody somewhere would notice.

Now, this is America, and I don't say this sarcastically, but as an American we do not want people tracking us. We have a constitutional right not to have evidence gathered against us before proof of a crime has been committed. They already do this to a certain extent. Buy the ingredients to make meth from a few Walmarts or what it takes to build some bombs and you can expect a visit from the authorities. So on the one hand we don't like being monitored, but on the other hand we wouldn't mind it if other people were monitored, especially the crazy people. Should the authorities be alerted when someone buys a gun? Two guns? Four guns? A hundred bullets? A thousand bullets? Ten thousand bullets? I don't know the answer to that. Most of me says no. A small part of me says maybe.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

You're sitting at a red light, and it turns green. In the millisecond before you step on the gas, the guy behind you honks his horn and makes an obscene gesture at you.

This doesn't happen. Come on, his first argument is fake. How about, "You're sitting at a red light checking your phone for text messages and Twitter. It goes green and you are unaware. A guy honks at you."

The waitress mistakenly brings you your hamburger with the tomato you didn't want, and you react as if the burger were covered with hemlock. Why are people so mad these days?

Ha, this is funny. So I was sick this morning and needed half a day off to recover. Rather than get into work and take lunch, I decided to get some fast food during the drive in.

I ordered a fish sandwich and a sundae, because I am a 12 year old. The drive-through line was one of those that had two lanes that "merge" into one where you pay. I finished my order and was about to merge. The woman in the other lane finishes her afterwards and then GUNS it ahead of me, because she is a disgusting pig that has to get her order fast all of a sudden.

Whenever that happens, I know that the kids behind the counter will screw the order up.

So, sure enough, I get my bad and just the sundae is in there. Now I have to walk inside the place, wait in line and ask for my fish sandwich.

Why are people so angry? Because we're starting to get a bit sick of the goddamn incompetence from the minimum wagers.

Why are people so angry? Let's say the entire thing I just described didn't involve a fish sandwich, but a mechanic at a repair shop. My girlfriend had to take her used car into a place over 10 times because there was a leak that resulted in six inches of water appearing over the floor and the used car place she bought it from refused to give up and pay the dealership to fix it properly.

Why are people so angry? Let's pick on my career instead of food and cars -- every fucking day some untalented asshole has to change the way user interfaces work "just because." So now the simple act of scrolling through your Google IM list involves two scrollbars that move indepentendly of each other ******and disappear****** when you are not using them.

I'll credit the restaurant this: they had 12 or 13 people in there. So they were certainly hiring a staff. A lot of businesses fired employees when the recession started and are now scraping by in completely understaffed situations, angering their customers because the owners of those businesses are too fucking cheap to hire up properly. EVERY business is doing this, so there's no places to turn. (A libertarian hears this and thinks, "No! The free market will create businesses out of whole cloth with the proper number of employees!" The libertarian then leaves on his indigo-colored butterfly-unicorn.)

The guy in the original article complaining that someone told him to kill himself has no idea how the internet works and shouldn't write on it: that stuff is noise. Static. He should be thankful he's getting the views. In fact, you CAN'T get views over a certain number without people screeching about Obama, climate change, the gays, and their desire for you to kill yourself. It doesn't mean anything.

But for the most part, people are angry because America, as a whole, isn't happy. And it's because we all made it this way in our own tiny way, one interaction at at time.

[AArdvark]

I feel that people are angry because they are watching the country that is supposed to be the greatest in history crumble around the edges more and more and there's nothing they can do about it.
It's mostly overpopulation.

[pinback]

I feel that people are angry because more and more we are brought up to be Ego Monsters, and everyone is just the most important special snowflake that must have everything their own way at all times. Of course, real life doesn't allow for this sort of ego gluttony demanded by today's citizen, so today's citizen reacts the only way that the ego can still get what it wants: Anger. As in, "This is WRONG!!!" Or "That guy is an ASSHOLE!!" Which equates to the ego as "I am RIGHT!!!". Or "I am BETTER THAN HIM!!" Yay, me!

That's about the size of it.

That being said, and to ICJ's first point: The Don & Mike Show used to do a bit ("Honk for Cash") where they'd get someone on the phone, get them at a red light in a left turn lane. Then when the light turned green, they had to stay there, with the phone out the window, listening for all the car horns urging him to get the fuck out of the way. However many car horns sounded in 60 seconds, that's how much money they won.

The thing is, it was often amazing how hard it was for anyone to win any money at that thing.

[Flack]

The world has changed. Our generation was about dealing with being offended. The next generation is about not offending people. And the new generation ... I don't even know.

I just read an article on abcnews about some Olympian that got kicked out of the Olympics for tweeting a joke on her personal twitter feed.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/gre ... BCZq7QV2o0

That's where we are, folks. You can get kicked out of the Olympics for Tweeting a joke. Can you imagine what pussies the ancient Grecians would think we are?

And now I have to decide if I like chicken sandwiches, or gay people. But I'm not allowed to like both. When did ordering a sandwich get so political?

[Flack]

Also, one time I was sitting at a red light that turned green and 3 seconds later a guy in a giant pickup truck behind me just gave it gas and started trying to push me out of the way.

[AArdvark]

But Honk for Cash was funny sometimes.



THE
ASSHAT
AARDVARK

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

That being said, and to ICJ's first point: The Don & Mike Show used to do a bit ("Honk for Cash") where they'd get someone on the phone, get them at a red light in a left turn lane. Then when the light turned green, they had to stay there, with the phone out the window, listening for all the car horns urging him to get the fuck out of the way. However many car horns sounded in 60 seconds, that's how much money they won.

The thing is, it was often amazing how hard it was for anyone to win any money at that thing.

This is amazing. Do you think that if the game was done today, people would win more money? Because my knee-jerk reaction would be that they would win hundreds of dollars.

[pinback]

The Chick Fil-A thing is getting out of hand.

Yes, the owners are a bunch of bigoted, religious crazy people. So are In-n-Out's owners, but they don't get nearly the flack, even though I'd turn down a lifetime of free Double Doubles for a single Chick Fil-A sandwich, god DAMN are those things good.

I forget what the topic was. I think the topic is, the craziness of your opinions is only allowable in proportion to the quality of your product.

Chick Fil-A owners: KEEP HATIN' DEM GAYS!!!!

Man I love those sandwiches.

I guess that's my only real opinion here.

I love Chick Fil-A sandwiches.

[Flack]

How long before Bert and Ernie finally come out of the closet?

I remember several years ago this lady sued the public transportation system because they had put Prince of Persia advertisements on the side of the buses and her kids were so scared of the ads that they wouldn't get on the bus.

Can any of you imagine this scenario playing out when you were a kid? If I refused to get on a bus because of an ad, my parents would have said "bye!" and they would have ridden the bus home and I would have learned what it was like to walk a few miles.

Actually, it's a moot point. When I was a kid, I would have LOVED to ride on a PRINCE OF PERSIA BUS. How rad would that have been?

http://www.pcmech.com/forum/general-dis ... games.html

[Tdarcos]

The thing that surprised me is I used to live in Aurora. We lived in an apartment building directly across the street from Buckingham Square. (And I always kept misidentifying it as Buckingham Palace.)

I determined the theatre is located at 14300 East Alameda Avenue. Where I lived - which I just realized was more than 34 years ago - is about 3.8 miles away at Mississippi Ave. and Havana Street. Chances are, the theatre didn't even exist when I lived there, that part of Aurora was like right at the edge of development, I think it was mostly empty space beyond that. And it might even be that the building I lived in isn't there any more, Google Maps shows it as a lot of built-up commercial development.

Dane Cook apologized over a joke he made, which apparently was something like "The Batman movie is so bad, had the killing spree not occurred, the people inside of the theater would have been begging for someone to shoot them."

"Yes, Mrs. Kennedy, but other than that, how was your trip to Dallas?"

[Tdarcos]

"A monumental conclusion to the epic trilogy. Audiences will be blown away."

--Marlow Stern, assistant culture editor of Newsweek

"Christa McCauliffe, teacher nominated to ride aboard the Challenger, will be able to give some lectures to the worldwide audience. But, soon, it will all be over..."
- Accidental prescient comment by newscaster made before the explosion

[Tdarcos]

I have a pet theory that the overpopulation of humanity contributes to the senseless violence that is becoming more and more prevalent in our society. It is an attempt to lessen the social pressures by eliminating some of the population.

Again, it's only a theory.

Robert Heinlein, in Starship Troopers has Johnny Rico argue that all wars are caused by overpopulation in the attacking country. "Even the crusades, but you have to go through analysis of the trade routes and so on."

I've also heard some consideration that homosexuality is a genetic response to overpopulation. In rat colonies that experienced extreme overcrowding, the researchers discovered a lot of them resorted to homosexual acts in much higher rates than the normal amount.

[Tdarcos]

Now, this is America, and I don't say this sarcastically, but as an American we do not want people tracking us. We have a constitutional right not to have evidence gathered against us before proof of a crime has been committed. They already do this to a certain extent. Buy the ingredients to make meth from a few Walmarts or what it takes to build some bombs and you can expect a visit from the authorities.

Buy them at one store and they'll notice. Buy them at different places and there's no tie in. Go to a garden store and buy 500 pounds of fertilizer, about ten bags, then stop at a gas station that sells it, fill up a 100 gallon tank with diesel, and nobody will notice unless you cause a big bang somewhere.

I walk into a grocery store, purchase bleach, ammonia, moth balls, Karo corn syrup, pancake mix, soap, pine sol, bacon, and a few other things, am I buying the precursors to make explosives including nitroglycerin, and possibly an antipersonnel gas (by mixing bleach and ammonia) or am I simply purchasing cleaning supplies and breakfast? (The bacon gets you the glycerin, and nitric acid you can get at a number of places; it has so many uses it's not unusual for someone to buy it for innocent purposes.)

Hell, walk up to a filling station with a can and purchase 5 gallons of gasoline, which has about 600 Mjoules of stored energy, and nobody notices. Try to buy two sticks of dynamite, about 6 Mjoules of stored energy, and there are questions and possibly paperwork, if you don't need a permit in the first place.

[AArdvark]

Re: Starship Troopers. Obviously I didn't get out of it what you got out of it.


Homosexual rats, who knew?


THE
OUT OF THE CELLAR
TAKES ON A NEW MEANING
AARDVARK

[Tdarcos]

I'll credit the restaurant this: they had 12 or 13 people in there. So they were certainly hiring a staff. A lot of businesses fired employees when the recession started and are now scraping by in completely understaffed situations, angering their customers because the owners of those businesses are too fucking cheap to hire up properly. EVERY business is doing this, so there's no places to turn. (A libertarian hears this and thinks, "No! The free market will create businesses out of whole cloth with the proper number of employees!" The libertarian then leaves on his indigo-colored butterfly-unicorn.)

It's not just businesses. A few years ago, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority did that, they got rid of a lot of expensive people either through attrition or layoffs or something. As a resul they had the Shady Grove accident in 1998 where a train that the dispatcher refused to allow the operator to switch to manual control, crashed into the end of the line under automatic train control and killed him.

There were a number of major and minor accidents after the purge until the transit authority's people had enough experience that they knew what they were doing. If the equipment didn't have a lot of built-in redundancy and safety factors I'd be scared shitless every time I got on a bus or a train.

[Tdarcos]

In fact, you CAN'T get views over a certain number without people screeching [] their desire for you to kill yourself. It doesn't mean anything.

You seem to be able to realize that. Flack, on the other hand, lacks that capacity. Or understanding.