As of this post, “crackpot team of investigative journalists” still stands, but the crow has been eaten (edit: kind of — well, not really).

All links SFW, possible funny accents.

In my prepubescent years I had been like so many others sitting on my bed with my undershirt pulled halfway on, my face swollen and chest soaked in tears, screaming that I didn’t want to go to school that day. A few years later I came up with a less confrontational tack, and begged off school sick for roughly half of the year. The stress brought on by my treatment at the hands of my classmates was so bad that my illness actually did resemble a respiratory condition, until I answered one of the doctor’s questions in a way I shouldn’t have, and the screaming battle started all over again.

If any of us were spoken to about the problem back then, it was usually to be told that it was the law of the jungle, and to just suck it up and deal with it. Upon hearing the news of the massacre, I can imagine that a lot of us grinned too widely as we tried to swallow our schadenfreude knowing that someone had taken the message to heart and followed it to its logical but unintended conclusion. There wasn’t even going to be a trial because the killers had turned the guns on themselves. That was a grand lie we were told — “you can’t run away from your problems.” As many of us learned in our adult lives sometimes running away really is all it takes, but the people who could have made the call often left us to rot in the name of teaching us some sort of valuable life lesson, and for the sake of not offending their own notions of correct martyrdom and grace under pressure.

After the firsthand accounts, wipespread confusion, camera-crowding and constant running projections were put aside, and a municipal cover-up had run its course, the research of many over the intervening years, wrapped up nicely in Dave Cullen’s excellent “Columbine” has concluded that the great schoolyard massacre that was Columbine was an act of domestic terrorism. It wasn’t about the shaken and ticking social pressure cooker that is high school, it was about Oklahoma City. There were seven bombs, and possibly an eighth, discovered undetonated in and around the school. The killers’ journals revealed that they felt they were performing, essentially, an act of the superior extinguishing the inferior. They were acting as Leopold and Loeb with extinction ambitions and better ordnance.

Easily the most poignant comment on Columbine I had seen up until reading the book was a Tom the Dancing Bug comic that boldly proclaimed “teenage ink blot goes on massive killing spree” with several talking torsos around the edges of the single panel blaming among other things bullying, violence on TV, and the moral relativism brought on by the Internet; but it appears that I can no longer hold Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold up as despicable hero figures to the swollen, wet and crumbling school age girl that I once was. I have had to fold up my vindication of an indefensible youth and put it in the files alongside my tax returns, credit card statements and other trappings of adulthood I couldn’t even imagine back in those days, because it’s just a blot of ink that someone else underlined.

I reach the Castle Frank station where I end up doing the “L” and “R” gesture trying to figure out which direction I go to hit the Yonge line. I dash across the platform for the westbound, which is remarkably easy in jogging attire, and take a place in the well of the opposing door. After the train is in motion again (and this is how you know you’re a captive audience) someone comes up to me and motions for me to take my earphones out.

“You are wan of the most elegant women I hev seen.” Standing there in my sunglasses, jogging pants, tank top and runners, my hair and the rest of me covered in sweat, my bullshit detector is dubious. He’s another one of the middle aged, homely and deperate Eastern European men who seem to have pegged me as homely and desperate that have been cropping up on the TTC and elsewhere ever since I got back to Toronto. Usually the fact that I’m listening to T. Rex’s Electric Warrior is enough to summon them, but this time it was Barenaked Ladies’ Gordon as I’m on something of a rock kick because that’s the only type of music that sounds passable on these miserable Skullcandys that I am soon to strangle myself with.

He hands me his card as I drip sweat from my chin onto my wifebeater.
“I hope to hear from you soon.” I immediately recognize the handle on the card as a variant on Canada’s own inferior-but-infinitely-sleazier copy of “master pick-up artist” Mystery from that VH1 show or shows, halfheartedly fail to stifle a laugh and go to put my canal earphones back in, which involves an overhead lift of the opposite ear when I’m not feeling charitable. It’s Friday, and my usual schedule is to shave on Saturdays. There’s no mistaking naturally black body hair contrasted against the fourth generation-Irish great Canadian tan, and I’m still sweating has he’s standing at the opposite end of the door well.

The Sherbourne station comes and goes without incident. As we’re pulling into Yonge-Bloor he gestures at me again, leans in and says “You hev no idea how desirable you are” before exiting the train. I mumble something about his instructor and move into the opposite door well. Once again I hit the Bay station in Yorkville before doubling back into Yonge-Bloor so I can be sure I’m not being followed.

Out of curiosity I visited Inferior Canuck Mystery’s Web site, and find out that this pinhead paid the princely sum of thirty bucks Canadian to attend a class to learn how to “quickly seduce cold, uptight and sexually repressed local sluts” and rereading that I’m still not sure if that statement makes sense. If I ever succeed in getting the replacement pair of earphones for my custom ear moulds which are remarkably easy to pass off as hearing aids when such things matter, I really, really do have to learn “Hi, I just sat on your duck” in American sign language.

After the first round of layoffs, one of my managers told me that we were the lucky ones, and I told the manager that I honestly didn’t feel that bad about it, already knowing that my time in the U.S. was coming to an end. Quite a few of us have moved on, and things could not have lined up better for me personally; which makes hearing about this one even worse. It happens all the time, but these are some of the best friends I’ve ever had now out of work in a saturated industry.

Two, is project natal, or more specifically, project natal and Travis Touchdown. To my understanding, project natal’s principal threat is to let me have a relationship with my entertainment, and I don’t want to see my significantly more doable Johnny Knoxville become an emotionally needy Tamagotchi-like entity; although this idea may be closer to in-world reality than I’d already care to admit. My dear, departed Skinner always looked extremely self-satisfied after defecating, but in No More Heroes the camera always cut before Travis got back up off of the can.

My understanding of project natal is that its input methods will rob No More Heroes of its crowning achievement in meta-gaming; The motion any male will default to, in contradiction of the actual on-screen directions, when using the Wii remote to charge the beam katana (Dear SUDA, Genius, but you knew that. Love, Carbon). It doesn’t look nearly as impressive or socially awkward when I do it, but I fail to see how this achievement in social engineering will be topped when all I can do is swat air and maybe scowl a little in an effort to get Travis to feed himself or undo his belt buckle.

Is my weekend fun guy that was always up for some quick beam katana action going to start making demands that I’m not ready for? A reassuring hand on his shoulder when I completely blow the fight? Will we have to do the lame and half assed post-match “good game” handshake with former assassin body parts when I don’t blow the fight? Am I going to have to play pocket billiards with him instead of Sylvia this time out?

Oh… wait, I’m supposed to care about these things? I see what you did ther, Mr. Molyneux.

Links are totally SFW, and I tried to find a post of the video with the fewest anti-Semitic comments. YMMV.

The Wii Vitality Sensor is an odd entrant in this year’s E3. It does have some interesting applications in light of the Wii Fit explosion, although its current form factor might leave something to be desired. Heart rate monitors are somewhat essential while doing cardio, but I have a hard time imagining myself being able to keep the vitality sensor in its current state clamped on to my index finger as I’m jogging on the spot, especially with the Wiimote already bashing itself against my outer thigh with every step. Having taken several cell phone calls on my Wiimote from Sylvia Christel that cast aspersions on my masculinity, I just want to see SUDA do something kinky with it.

Speaking of substandard audio and fantasizing: the only thing that worries me about the trailer is the fact that the voice of Travis in the newly recorded dialogue does not sound like Robin Atkin Downes in the slightest; which is a pity, because it’s a great line.