I randomly found this contest while looking for something related to M.C. Gainey. It sounds like quite a bargain.

In the latest issue of This is True, list owner Randy Cassingham linked to a piece about the Columbine massacre, written in 1999 by Dan Savage (of the Savage Love fame). I hadn’t seen it before, and I found Savage’s thoughts to be very interesting.

"The motivations of the two killers," [the cover story on Columbine in] People continued, "were hard to fathom." Actually, I had no problem fathoming Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s motives. While I didn’t suffer the extreme abuse some of my friends did, I was fucked with enough to spend four years fantasizing about blowing up my high school and everyone in it. I can only imagine the scenarios that must have rolled through Marty’s head on a daily basis. Watching SWAT teams inch their way toward Columbine High, I wasn’t shocked that something like this could happen in a high school. I was shocked that something like this hadn’t happened at any of mine.

Savage doesn’t aim to excuse or justify the actions of those two boys, but he does bring a perspective that was absent in the mainstream media at the time. I was lucky to not have a high school experience like his.

As you can see, this blog continues its timely coverage of current events. In the future, you can look forward to my thoughts on Y2K, 9/11, and the Bush/Gore election.

On Todd’s recommendation, I finally saw Once this weekend and, to use a line from the movie, it’s fucking brilliant. It was beautiful little film, and everyone should see it. I was going to write more, but now I’m dead tired, so instead I’ll go hum Falling Slowly as I get ready for bed.

Sidenote: The amount of time I’ve had this DVD in my possession demonstrates that I am really not getting my money’s worth out of Netflix, so I think I’m going to discontinue my subscription. Goodbye, red paper envelopes.

I’ve given up on the idea of writing a coherent blog post to sum up the last 6 months. With each passing week, it gets more overwhelming to think about recapping, so if I don’t just start posting my usual random stuff here, I’ll never use it again. In no particular order, I have:

• Seen the launch of the new Shipwire.com in October, as well as many new features since then.
• Taught a two year old that "mooses" is the plural of "moose" after his mother laughed at me for not remembering that (despite the fact that I’ve never actually seen a moose, let alone more than one, so this is hardly relevant information).
• Tricked someone into redesigning my site for me, only to procrastinate on actually slicing the images and building it.
• Started taking guitar lessons again.
• Become obsessed with Rock Band.
• Decided to start a new genre called Agnostic Rock to compete with Christian Rock, including such bands as Unknowable, A Priori Objections, and Scintilla of Evidence.
• Wasted thirty minutes researching agnosticism to write that joke.
• Come to believe that people riding their bikes on the sidewalk is bothersome, but less so than people riding their bikes the wrong way in the bike lane.
• Ridden Rachel’s horse.
• Killed my Treo 650, thus getting an upgrade to a Treo 700 and giving me an excuse to purge my phonebook of people who I never call and who never call me.
• Come to terms with the fact that my musical taste leads to like bands who are younger than my brother.
• Received a USB humping dog due to contractual obligations.
• Rocked out in matching haiku shirts with Rachel and Allison.
• Spent my second consecutive New Year’s Eve in Minnesota, as well as many other weekends along the way.
• Been to see Cowboy Mouth, Melee, Matt Nathanson, Magic Bullets, Glen Phillips, Jonathan Kingham, and Will Hoge in concert.
• Attended An Event Apart in San Francisco.
• Voted for Obama.
• Started planning a trip to Hawaii.
• Lost 12 pounds on an office diet bet to avoid dressing as Santa.
• Partook in a Wii hunt during the holiday season.
• Forgotten many interesting and exciting things I have done in the past few months.