Okay... I just have to make one last statement about Columbine and that Time article. The article does a fairly good job at being reasonable and objective (although Salon.com had a much better article about the shooting a few months back), so when people say that Columbine was an oppressive high school they give the students a chance to reply. Now, when I was reading this part of the article...it was fucking surreal. In fact, let me just quote the whole paragraph right here:

Maybe they saw the kids who flicked the ketchup packets or tossed the bottles at the trench-coat kids in the cafeteria. But things never got out of hand, they say. Evan Todd, the 255-lb. defensive lineman who was wounded in the library, describes the climate this way: "Columbine is a clean, good place except for those rejects," Todd says of Klebold and Harris and their friends. "Most kids didn't want them there. They were into witchcraft. They were into voodoo dolls. Sure, we teased them. But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? It's not just jocks; the whole school's disgusted with them. They're a bunch of homos, grabbing each other's private parts. If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease 'em. So the whole school would call them homos, and when they did something sick, we'd tell them, 'You're sick and that's wrong.'"

Ahh! Jesus Christ! These people are so blind! These people can actually say that the school wasn't a pit of social-cruelty, and at the same time defend their actions! The dumb fuck is practically saying they were different, and therefore deserved to be mocked. No, he is saying it, quite clearly in fact. But I am not defending those little pukes. Being different comes with it's burdens as well as it's benefits. I personally believe that there is no such thing as an outcast. The people who exist outside of popular society do so at their own will. They shed the sheets of ignorance and accept the inevitable mockery.

Or you can be like me, and try to get the best of both worlds. Though I now realize that I was wrong. I did what was minimumally expected of me to be 'normal', but inside my mind I did everything I could to maintain my individuality. And in the end it has only caused me pain. Maybe it would have been better if my school was more diverse. I think for the most part my school was good, but everyone was the fucking same! There were the jocks, the popular kids, the band geeks, the IB people, maybe a few nerds here and there. That was it. I tried to be none of them, and all of them at the same time.

There were a few people though, and I wish I fucking got to know them better. There was a girl named Brooke in my 10th grade Biology class. I loved that class. It was one of the few 'real' classes that I was ever in where I felt that I was truely one of the best in the class. Before tests we'd have these little quiz-games to study. Me and Brooke invariably ended up on opposite teams, and it always ended up being a one-on-one match. It was always just for fun, and we never took it too seriously. Her hair was somewhat shaven and dyed red (never have seen a hair style quite like that--I can't do it justice with words, but it rocked), and she was the only person in my high school with a toungue ring. I fucking admired her willingness to stand-out, and I respected her intelligence. [Sorry for the excessive use of the word 'fuck,' but I tend to use it for general emphasis.]

And then in my 11th grade video class I worked with one of the hardest of hard core punks. Since 90% of that class involved slacking and doing nothing, he'd spend tons of time going over various punk zines while bitching about posuers. While I liked the guy, I realized that even the snobbiest Abercrombie and Fitch dork could never hope to achieve the heights of eletism this guy had. While I liked the guy, and even though he'd never admit it, I knew he thought I was cool, his insane snobbery annoyed the fuck out of me. I was less than him simply because I didn't listen to the bands he listend to, or wore the clothes he wore. More than ever now I love punk: the music and what it stands for. But god DAMN some of the people need to drop the whole eletist snob bullshit.

Now I feel I have an identity crisis. Right now I want so much to be accepted into a group of people. I want to be goth, punk, geek, and a million other things. But... By being goth, I can't be punk or geek. It's like, you have to trade freedom as a price for acceptance. I can't be everything, so I'm nothing. I can relate to those people till I'm blue in the face, but my refusal to abandon any part of myself prevents me from fully being anything. But I've lived my whole life like this, I figure I can at least go another 19 years right? I'm sure by then I'll be a little conformist company prick handing out pink slips to the underlings anyways.