For Rachel
My book... It's as of yet untitled because I can never settle on a title. It's about a boy, his name is Jake. I guess the best way to summarize is to explain how he explained :
It was about summer of 2004 when I had decided that I was the next step in the revolution Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold started with the Columbine High School Massacre. After five years a person notices no one's taken the next step. This is also one of the reasons I thought it was a mistake for the two of them to blow their own brains out right after the whole thing. You don't kick-start a revolution and then exit stage left. You have to be there to guide.
It was sort of an idea I had played with. I guess I didn't think I had the guts to go through with it because I never made any solid plans or tried to recruit any depressed losers to kiss my ass. Maybe I was just afraid that I would end up like the idiots who did those pointless shootings before Columbine, like Jonesboro... Or worse, that 'I hate feminists' bullshit. If I was going to do something it had to be meaningful, it had to be beautiful, something with power and intellect behind it.
Needless to say, I had mixed feelings when I heard about Red Lake. I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be the next step, but I was enjoying the fact that I wasn't alone in the fight, or maybe the fact the weight of the continuance was off my shoulders. That is, until I found out it was just some copycat idiot who pretended he liked German, put on a trench coat and went apeshit. It was about as intense and rewarding as Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Columbine wasn't about being impulsive. It wasn't about rage or aggression. It definitely had nothing to do with pop culture or any other kind of influence; parents, bullies, whatever the fuck else you want to pin it down to. Most of all, it wasn't about going apeshit. It was a carefully planned social commentary that, unfortunately, was poorly executed. Then again, a first step is never a perfect one. Which, if you think about it, is a good thing. If they had done everything perfectly, if they had found a way to bring about the apocalypse like they dreamed of doing, they wouldn't have allowed the rest of us to improve upon their ideas. I don't believe in that whole apocalypse thing, anyway. That's where we differ. I just think humanity needs a wake-up call. People are getting tasered in libraries by pigs for no fucking reason and the reaction is "Can I have your badge number?" They need a motherfucking wake-up call and I'm just the guy to give it.
The reason Columbine failed at opening the drowsy eyes of society is that people were too caught up in the location. I don't think they really understood the idea behind using a high school. It represented civilization, the present humanity. The problem was, people looked at it and all they saw was a school. Then they looked at these two kids and all they saw were bullied, alienated goth boys who were a product of their social lives rebelling against those who did them wrong. They were nothing of the sort. They had an ability to look objectively at themselves and at others in a way that is unheard of in most beings. They had self-awareness, which is paramount in these situations. They knew that Columbine wasn't about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, they were simply a part of it. They also knew that it was inevitable, that it had to be done.
Just as it had to be done, it has to be continued. And, of course, I am the perfect candidate to come through with this achievement.
Now that the insurgency was back in my hands I had to think : what represents American capitalism, the decline of civilization, the vile disease that is the mental inertia of humanity more powerfully than a high school?
The answer was incredibly obvious.
A mall.
Except he's not as extreme as that. Over time, his opinions begin to differ greatly from the original idea but the act stays the same. He says so himself several times that they are different, including here :
' Basically, I am not a brainless depressed 'goth' puppet from a broken home with criminal tendencies and a mental health issue. After this is all done, everyone will be hoping I am, though. They'll want to pin me down as a member of the teenage shooter stereotype and use me against 'goths', drugs, and violent video games everywhere. I think in these points, again, Eric & Dylan differ from myself. I think in their cores they knew what they were doing, but I don't think even they fully realized the scope of the message they were supposed to be sending. They took the whole thing a little too personally for my taste, which is something I think did contribute to the ultimate decision of suicide. Sort of a 'If we go down, we're bringing you with us,' kind of thing that I just don't go for. They may have said 'Don't blame the parents,' and all of that shit but I don't think they noticed how obviously they were pointing to some of that stuff. Of course it was easy to manipulate what they did into whatever people wanted to believe about it, they made it easy. '
He loves a girl :
'My name is Jacob Hartell. Most of the people I know call me Jake, except for the only person that I hope survives everything. Her name is Ophelia. I'll never know why her parents called her that but for whatever reason they knew she would come out looking like she stepped out of Hamlet. She has that long, wavy reddish hair and I don't know if she's ever even tried to save herself from any misfortune in her entire life. I only met her a couple years ago but right away I knew she was just like me. I could feel it deep inside of myself. In that way I suppose I love her or I did love her. She's changed since then. Now she's as detached from me as I try to be from myself. She calls me Jacob.'
'You have to make your statement, and then you have to argue it. You can't argue it when you're dead or you're running. I don't think that I will ever run from anyone. I will face up to what I do because, ultimately, people will thank me for it. Not outright. No one will ever admit that I was right in doing what I did, but they'll know that without this revolution, which I was part of, everything would stay the same as it is now. I know this is only the beginning, but I hope to be alive to see the end result. That beautiful perfect world where people snuff out their problems before they grow like shadows after noon and eventually end up consuming the entire world. This is the end of the world if someone doesn't stop it.'
So. That's really what it's about. A boy's journey to (successfully) bombing a mall.
It was about summer of 2004 when I had decided that I was the next step in the revolution Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold started with the Columbine High School Massacre. After five years a person notices no one's taken the next step. This is also one of the reasons I thought it was a mistake for the two of them to blow their own brains out right after the whole thing. You don't kick-start a revolution and then exit stage left. You have to be there to guide.
It was sort of an idea I had played with. I guess I didn't think I had the guts to go through with it because I never made any solid plans or tried to recruit any depressed losers to kiss my ass. Maybe I was just afraid that I would end up like the idiots who did those pointless shootings before Columbine, like Jonesboro... Or worse, that 'I hate feminists' bullshit. If I was going to do something it had to be meaningful, it had to be beautiful, something with power and intellect behind it.
Needless to say, I had mixed feelings when I heard about Red Lake. I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be the next step, but I was enjoying the fact that I wasn't alone in the fight, or maybe the fact the weight of the continuance was off my shoulders. That is, until I found out it was just some copycat idiot who pretended he liked German, put on a trench coat and went apeshit. It was about as intense and rewarding as Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Columbine wasn't about being impulsive. It wasn't about rage or aggression. It definitely had nothing to do with pop culture or any other kind of influence; parents, bullies, whatever the fuck else you want to pin it down to. Most of all, it wasn't about going apeshit. It was a carefully planned social commentary that, unfortunately, was poorly executed. Then again, a first step is never a perfect one. Which, if you think about it, is a good thing. If they had done everything perfectly, if they had found a way to bring about the apocalypse like they dreamed of doing, they wouldn't have allowed the rest of us to improve upon their ideas. I don't believe in that whole apocalypse thing, anyway. That's where we differ. I just think humanity needs a wake-up call. People are getting tasered in libraries by pigs for no fucking reason and the reaction is "Can I have your badge number?" They need a motherfucking wake-up call and I'm just the guy to give it.
The reason Columbine failed at opening the drowsy eyes of society is that people were too caught up in the location. I don't think they really understood the idea behind using a high school. It represented civilization, the present humanity. The problem was, people looked at it and all they saw was a school. Then they looked at these two kids and all they saw were bullied, alienated goth boys who were a product of their social lives rebelling against those who did them wrong. They were nothing of the sort. They had an ability to look objectively at themselves and at others in a way that is unheard of in most beings. They had self-awareness, which is paramount in these situations. They knew that Columbine wasn't about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, they were simply a part of it. They also knew that it was inevitable, that it had to be done.
Just as it had to be done, it has to be continued. And, of course, I am the perfect candidate to come through with this achievement.
Now that the insurgency was back in my hands I had to think : what represents American capitalism, the decline of civilization, the vile disease that is the mental inertia of humanity more powerfully than a high school?
The answer was incredibly obvious.
A mall.
Except he's not as extreme as that. Over time, his opinions begin to differ greatly from the original idea but the act stays the same. He says so himself several times that they are different, including here :
' Basically, I am not a brainless depressed 'goth' puppet from a broken home with criminal tendencies and a mental health issue. After this is all done, everyone will be hoping I am, though. They'll want to pin me down as a member of the teenage shooter stereotype and use me against 'goths', drugs, and violent video games everywhere. I think in these points, again, Eric & Dylan differ from myself. I think in their cores they knew what they were doing, but I don't think even they fully realized the scope of the message they were supposed to be sending. They took the whole thing a little too personally for my taste, which is something I think did contribute to the ultimate decision of suicide. Sort of a 'If we go down, we're bringing you with us,' kind of thing that I just don't go for. They may have said 'Don't blame the parents,' and all of that shit but I don't think they noticed how obviously they were pointing to some of that stuff. Of course it was easy to manipulate what they did into whatever people wanted to believe about it, they made it easy. '
He loves a girl :
'My name is Jacob Hartell. Most of the people I know call me Jake, except for the only person that I hope survives everything. Her name is Ophelia. I'll never know why her parents called her that but for whatever reason they knew she would come out looking like she stepped out of Hamlet. She has that long, wavy reddish hair and I don't know if she's ever even tried to save herself from any misfortune in her entire life. I only met her a couple years ago but right away I knew she was just like me. I could feel it deep inside of myself. In that way I suppose I love her or I did love her. She's changed since then. Now she's as detached from me as I try to be from myself. She calls me Jacob.'
'You have to make your statement, and then you have to argue it. You can't argue it when you're dead or you're running. I don't think that I will ever run from anyone. I will face up to what I do because, ultimately, people will thank me for it. Not outright. No one will ever admit that I was right in doing what I did, but they'll know that without this revolution, which I was part of, everything would stay the same as it is now. I know this is only the beginning, but I hope to be alive to see the end result. That beautiful perfect world where people snuff out their problems before they grow like shadows after noon and eventually end up consuming the entire world. This is the end of the world if someone doesn't stop it.'
So. That's really what it's about. A boy's journey to (successfully) bombing a mall.