Monday, April 16, 2007

I can't get over the snow.

I'm referring to the tragedy at Virginia Tech today - 33 dead at last count. The worst part? There were two shootings - two hours apart, and the campus police did nothing.

I hate TV news, local and national. But I watched the BBC World News on PBS at 5 for no real reason. (The accents?)

They had the best coverage - there are no background checks in Virginia? Since Columbine, the gun laws have been weakened in this country?

How does that make sense?

I had every channel on mute - they didn't cut into the insipid Inside Edition, but they cut into Jeopardy, and I was totally winning.

I didn't want to hear it, I prefer my news in a written format, when most of the facts are out - as it happens leaves you all messed up and confused.

So I had it on mute and some channels split the screen, so you had the talking head and footage from the school. In one, there were little light snowflakes, innocent and pure.

On top of a massacre.

I can't get over the snow.

Jon Stewart was great - he said he couldn't add anything insightful to the tragedy and he's going to bury the tragedy deep inside and freak out in 30 years over spilled juice, then went on to the e-mail thing.

Colbert hasn't said anything.

Oh, and I feel like shit. I finally got a new pain medication and it hasn't kicked in yet and the heating pad hasn't worked since 9 something this morning. Grr.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I couldn't get over the snow either. I mean, it wasn't snowing here and I'm practically in the Arctic. In fact, it's finally spring here and it was around 70 degrees yesterday. No snow, although my backyard is still half covered in glacier because it takes that long for 6 months of snow to melt.

I'm kind of amazed that the campus wasn't shut down after the first shooting. When I was a student, way back in the dark ages, a girl was murdered in her dorm room by her ex-boyfriend. I lived in a different dorm, and the entire campus was sealed. No one was allowed out of their rooms, campus buildings were sealed and guarded, roads were barricaded etc. No one was allowed on or off of campus. This is a big university, too - 15 000 students or so. I guess now the officials at VTech know better. It just boggles my mind that they assumed the shooter was gone. Not that I'm blaming them for what happened, mind you, just pointing out that there are ways to keep people safe even when a lot of students and staff are in transit.