TAWK

I've said before that I hate the word "meme," and viral isn't that far behind, but I wouldn't mind if this gets passed around.

I didn't have a favorite Beatle, so John Lennon wasn't my favorite. But I loved him in the way that one loves someone who gave so much to the world and, for that matter, me personally, if one's personal reaction to mass culture is personal, and I've lived my life as if it is. How different, and poorer, would the world have been without Lennon? We'll never know how much poorer the world is for our loss of him.

So I hated the guy, you know, the asshole who killed John Lennon. And one day, I realized that was the only way I was ever again going to refer to him: The Asshole Who Killed John Lennon. It is the only revenge I know how to take.

Part of the creepy little smile is the knowledge of the fame of notoriety. Kill someone famous and you become as famous as they are, if only for a moment, and you'll be famous forever, in some small way. Nobody plus Somebody equals…

Nobody.

The Oklahoma mall gunman is said to have wanted "to go out in style," and told someone that he'd soon be famous. Not from me, sport. Your name is now officially The Asshole Who Killed a bunch of people in Nebraska.

And hey, you, yes, you, 24 hour news cycle TV, print journalism, and every cash-in-on-the-carnage magazine and book publisher. You're just the gawkers at a car wreck. You slow down the traffic of important information to fill the channel with this crap, TAWK news items. People die every day, in all kinds of ways. Why is this kind of death news? Why are you feeding these assholes with exactly what they crave, attention?

And don't give me any crap about how people should be aware of "the warning signs." The "warning signs" amount to being upset and looking peculiar. Yeah, it's really helping the cause to turn every citizen into a spy, ready to turn in anyone with a mental illness, or a perceived drug habit, or a brush with the law. Yeah, we've got enough resources to watch every one of them.

Crap, I'm just glad that no one has figured out a way to put up instant billboards next to traffic accidents, extra premium if it was an injury accident, because blood on the pavement draws more eyeballs.

So screw TAWK John Lennon, and TAWK@ Virginia Tech and TAWK@ the Texas Tower, and all the rest of those losers who have tried to make losers of the rest of us. I'm just trying to maneuver as quickly as I can through the mess of gawkers at the fatality accident.