If you're not pissed off at the world/Then you're just not paying attention

I’ve been sitting here trying to sum up my thoughts and feelings on yet another tragic school shooting and I just keep erasing everything I am saying because I just can’t do my emotions any justice in words. When I was a kid you had to worry about another kid at school punching you in the face and now you have to worry about another kid at school shooting you in the face. This world just keeps on confusing me, making me angry and bitter and enraged and sad as here we are in the middle of another century where we just keep repeating the past in mad spirals and the bulk of the populace continues onward in blissful ignorance because it is far more important to know who is going to win American Idol then to write the government to strengthen gun control laws. We have IPODS and downloads and cell phones and Harry Potter and Hollywood and Britney Spears’ insanity to keep us all nice and complacent. Shouldn’t Columbine have been a message on the edge of a bullet? How many more kids have to be murdered at the hands of other kids before the point is made that these weapons are too easy to obtain? The blame game begins anew in the wake of this shooting and they’ll point the finger at video games or comic books or rock music or the violence on television and people will gripe and moan for a few months and nothing will be rectified because change costs money, my friends. We'll just replace tragedy with Spiderman 3. Where are we going wrong as a race? How is it that after all we have witnessed, the history that has amassed, the knowledge we have…how is it we keep revisiting our low points again and again and then proceed to bury the important issues that affect humanity under a mountain of possessions, sweeps weeks and box office grosses that keep us all nice and sedated until the next tragedy comes along to grab our attention momentarily before the media moves on to the latest celebrity fuck up. The needless wars rage on, the rich keep getting rich off the poor, we continue to pollute the planet and kids keep grabbing guns and blowing each other’s heads off. It all just riles me up because I feel powerless. They say we as individuals are not mute voices should we choose to speak up, that we can change things but I have marched and I have raged against the machine and I have shouted and the world keeps on turning on unmared by my voice, a speck of dust in a sea of black, so small…so small.

I would like to share a few songs with you that I dug up because they do my emotions more justice then my fingers on this keyboard. Peace.

* * *

Dan Bern - Kid's Prayer
So sad, so sad the news
Come our way this morning
Like a bad bad dream
A dream that you’d never even talk about
In a school, a school
A place where we send our precious children
The only place of innocence the world might ever let them know

And barely aware of the odds against existence in the first place
Of love and fertility and risk of a baby being born
And of clothes and food and fear and maybe relocation
Of sickness, recovery, of music lessons, painting the bedroom

And lingering over eggs and thoughts and sleepy conversations
And plans for the weekend
One last pause to say goodbye
And a glance at the clock
And the grabbing of the sandwich and the notebook
Confident of nothing but the unbroken days that they've been granted

But comes a child
A child so full of anger and hatred
Barely aware of the genesis coursing through his veins
With a gun, a gun
Deaf and blind deliverer of madness
Skilled beyond his own unformulated brain

And with his hand in a fist
And his soul in a knot
And his heart racing
And his mind sick with images
His slim shoulders finally feeling tall

And his fellow creatures
Students and their crushes and their daydreams
Struggling to unwrap the ancient secrets of geometry
He pulls from his coat the instrument to shatter all forevers
In a random blaze of insides and blood and endless now

And noise and flash and more and not even when it's over
Can any so much as summon up the sanity to scream
Then on the floor his classmates blown down and choking
As he lays his weapon on his desk, hardly sure he isn't dreaming

And all the world descends and offers up their condolence
And offers up their theories what went wrong
And who and why and when and how

It's all the killing day and night on television
It's all the movies where violence is as natural as breathing
It's guns and bullets as easily obtainable as candy
It's video games where you kill and begin to think it's real
It's people not having God in their lives anymore
Or it's all of it, or none of it, or some of it, or various combinations

And all those theories sound pretty reasonable, I guess
Though I ain't no scientist
I ain't no figurer of statistics
I ain't no theologist
Or psychologist or biologist
All I can do is offer up a prayer of my own

Talk to your kids
Play with your kids
Tell them your dreams
And your disappointments
Listen with your kids
Listen to your kids
Watch your kids
Let your kids watch you
Tell your kids the truth
Best as you can tell it
No use telling lies
Your kids can always smell it
Cook for your kids
Let your kids cook for you
Sing with your kids
Teach your kids the blues
Learn their games
Teach them yours
Touch your kids
Find out what they know
Be sad with your kids
Be stupid with your kids
Learn with your kids
Cry with you kids
Be yourself with your kids
Be real with your kids
Embarrass your kids
Let them embarrass you
Be strong with your kids
Be tough with your kids
Be firm with your kids
Say "No" to your kids
Say "Yes" to your kids
Take it easy on your kids
You were a kid
Not so long ago
There are things you know
Your kids will never know
There’s places they live
Where you will never go
So dance with your kids
Paint with your kids
Walk with your kids
Tell stories to your kids
Watch movies with your kids
Eat popcorn with your kids
Tell secrets to your kids
Stop for rainbows with your kids
One day your kids
Won't be kids
And maybe they'll have kids of their own
Let’s hope they talk to their kids
Play with their kids
Tell them their dreams
And their disappointments



* * *

Ani Difranco - To The Teeth
the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we're all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
and school kids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confused liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out
and every year now like christmas
some boy gets the milk fed suburban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and the women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when the men bring the guns home
look at where the profits are
that's how you'll find the source
of the big lie that you and i both know so well
by the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run it's course
they're gonna to make a pretty penny
and then they're going to hell
he said the chickens all come home to roost
malcolm forecast the flood
are we really going to sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood
yeah it may take some doing
to see this undoing through
but in my humble opinion
here's what i suggest we do
open fire on hollywood
open fire on mtv
open fire on nbc and cbs and abc
open fire on the nra
and all the lies they told us along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he's giving head to some republican senator
and if i hear one more time
about a fools right to his tools of rage
i'm gonna take all my friends
and i'm going to move to canada
and we're going to die of old age



* * *

Kasey Chambers - Ignorance
Don't wanna read the paper
I don't like bad news
Last night a man got shot
Outside the house of blues
I'd like to ignore it
I'd like to just pretend
That the reason for it
Is something I can comprehend

I don't listen to the radio
Last time it made me cry
Two boys went crazy
Fifteen kids died
And I don't know their families
I don't ask 'em how they're going
They're on the other side of the world
But it's way too close to home

I've got something to say
And I thought it might be worth a mention
If you're not pissed off at the world
Then you're just not paying attention
And you can turn off the TV
And go about your day
But just 'cos you don't see it
It don't mean its gone away hey

We don't talk to our neighbours
They've got funny coloured skin
We see 'em out on the sidewalk
But we don't invite 'em in
We only eat when we're hungry
And we throw the rest away
While babies in Cambodia
Are starving everyday

We risk our lives
We hit our wives
We act like everything is funny
We hide our pain
While we go insane
We sell our souls for money
We curse our mums
We build our bombs
We make our children cry
We watch the band
While Vietnam
Just watch their children die

I've got something to say
And I thought it might be worth a
mention
If you're not pissed off at the world
Then you're just not paying attention
And you can turn off the TV
And go about your day
But just 'cos you don't see it
It don't mean its gone away hey