Don’t cry for Sanjaya. He can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so his 15 minutes of fame were just weird for about the last 14:59. But just as weird is the sense of relief I felt on seeing that he was voted off Idol tonight. That must be some systemic love of ambient Justice, because really I couldn’t care less. I never watch the show, and I don’t care if the Great Unwashed vote for a crow cawing on top of an outhouse. But I do feel better. Guys who can’t sing — like Sanjaya, and like me — really ought to be content doing something quietly. And try not to look like a giant mutant cockatoo in the process.

I haven’t said anything about the taking of lives at Virginia Tech. It’s not because I don’t care, or because I’m incapable of crafting a response. It’s because the most eloquent possible answer to madness, sometimes, is to take some time to think.

I have seen the police blamed for a sluggish response. Video shows cops outside the building, and the sound of gunfire. They were not apparently running to anyone’s rescue at that moment. I’m reminded of Columbine. I got an e-mail yesterday that read, in pertinent part, “fucking pussy cops.” Well. I think maybe that’s right, but I’m not sure. I’ll let the survivors decide.

The university can’t be blamed for a maniac’s state of mind. It seems that a lot was done to try to help the killer deal. His writings were a cry for help, and people heard and answered that cry. He didn’t much reach for the hands that were extended. However, if I were the president of a college and two people got murdered, I would cancel classes for the day. Enough said.

There is only one person responsible for what happened. May God have mercy on his soul. What he did was evil, but this was obviously a very sick young man, not a demon. I wish he had left school and gotten some good inpatient care.

There is one unequivocal evil emerging in all of this, and that has pustulated forth after the fact, in the ignorant, reactionary, pro-gun, knuckle dragging howls of the bottom feeders of our failed evolution.

Example: One John Derbyshire of nationalreview.com. He blames the students – the ones struggling and dying in the classrooms, for their own suffering and death:

Where was the spirit of self-defense here? … why didn’t anyone rush the guy? …He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. …

… if I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d at least take a run at the guy.

Incredibly ironic. Here’s a man who advocates the possession of guns as instruments of intimidation. He’s criticizing unarmed college kids for being intimidated by guns — while they are being fired on. Can you believe the audacity of this shithead? His First Amendment rights notwithstanding, he needs to be soundly Imused, and that right quick. Before the sane among us – who have long since had the sense to put down our six-guns, remember where we stashed the tar and feathers.

Hey writers, if you were writing a novel about being homeless, begging to survive, would you live it to write it? Me neither. But this guy does . Hmm. As a writer, I like to think I can rely on my imagination for some of my material. But if you see me in the mall, with my laptop case open on the ground, I hope you’ll do what you can.

God bless you.

Ever heard of Robert Bolaño? Me neither. But apparently he’s pretty hot, for a dead writer. So says the LA Times.

While norteamericanos were rereading dog-eared copies of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera,” a dyslexic, globe-trotting high-school dropout and ex-heroin addict was publishing the most celebrated Latin American novels in three decades.

Then, in 2003, he died.

But the reputation of the Chilean-born Roberto Bolaño, whose old pictures make him look like the guitar for a psychedelic garage band, continued to grow: Young Latin writers in particular sang his praises, and he became, in the Spanish-speaking world, the most admired author of his generation.

“I want my father. Where is my father?” 11-year-old Sajad Kadhim cried out as he lay on the grounds of the hospital, where doctors were treating his burns.

“All I remember was we were shopping. My father was holding my hand and suddenly there was a big explosion. I don’t know where my father is. I want my father,” the boy cried.

Here is a really splendid essay/obituary by Harvey Wasserman, on the life and passing of Kurt Vonnegut. No kidding, it's good.

As the media fills with whimsical good-byes to one of America’s greatest writers, lets not forget one of the great engines driving this wonderful man—he HATED war. Including this one in Iraq. And he had utter contempt for the men who brought it about.Kurt Vonnegut was a divine spark of liberating genius for an entire generation. His brilliant, beautiful, loving and utterly unfettered novels helped us redefine ourselves in leaving the corporate America in the 1950s and the Vietnam war that followed.

Kurt Vonnegut was a force of nature, with a heart the size of Titan, an unfettered genius who changed us all for the better. He was possessed of a sense of fairness and morality capable of inventing religions that could actually work.

Now he’s having dinner with our beloved siren of social justice, Molly Ivins, sharing a Manhattan, scorching this goddam war and this latest batch of fucking idiots.

I never cease to amazed and amused by the statements of criminals and crazies. Of course, Shrub tops the list, but check out the ramblings of the woman who killed her preacher husband last year:

“It’s just a lot of stupid stuff,” she said. “I love him dearly, but gosh, he just nailed me in the ground. … The first of our marriage, I just took it like a mouse, didn’t think anything different. My mom just took it from my dad — that stupid scenario.”

But Winkler said she got a job at the post office and that experience taught her to stand up for herself. “That’s the problem. I have nerve now, and I have self-esteem. My ugly came out.”

I’m reminded of a man, years ago, who killed his wife, at least two of their children, another adult or two … and slashed the throat of his small daughter and left her to die. I think she survived. This took place up the Napa, as I recall. As they were bringing him back from Mexico on a plane he said this:

I don’t know, I guess for me I just got a little nervous.

Ain’t that something?

www.earthjustice.org/wolf

Kurt Vonnegut is dead, in this moment. In many other moments he is alive. So it goes.

On the radio, I heard his wife say he was still writing up to the end, that he died on the top of his game. Or he played at the top of his life.

So it goes.

(click to enlarge)