I Have A Huge Head, And Little Tiny Arms!

People depend on us, the blogging community, to synthesize the news stories of the day, to make the connections that they otherwise would not have made, whether for lack of time, lack of motivation, or lack of intellectual wherewithal. Taking that duty as seriously as I do, I present to you today the obvious upshot of these four recent stories:

Fearless Glow-In-The-Dark DINOSAUR ARMY!


You heard it here first, people. Don't act all surprised when you see the ripples in your Mojitos.

Hosannas In The Lowest

If I were the type to make sweeping pronouncements about cultural paradigms, I might be tempted to say that that kid in Omaha who carried out that suicide attack on a shopping mall was the final step in the ascendancy of the most truly American of cults, celebrity. The kid said he wanted to go out with a bang, and that he would be famous. Note that he didn't decide to get famous by shooting a celebrity, he decided to become a celebrity by shooting random people and then himself (which, by the way, is no easy feat with an SKS). Apparently that's an accepted method now.

I understand the draw of celebrity, or so I thought. There's money and power and ease of life, and all that. Being a celebrity could be pretty sweet, as a means to an end. But this guy, he has a more radical theology, i.e. that celebrity is the end in and of itself. And he was willing to both kill and die for it. A interesting idea, certainly.

Several folks interviewed expressed sorrow for this guy. I wonder if they express sorrow for suicide bombers who blow themselves up in markets in Israel or Baghdad? I'm not judging the response, I'm just suggesting that drawing a distinction between the two is a bit too picayune. Suicide/murder in hopes of posthumous reward, inability to grok the finality of death, it's the same rationale. If there's any reason why one is deserving of sympathy and the other is not, I don't know what it is.