Tag: Doomandvodka

were eric and dylan good bowlers

I’d say Eric and Dylan were unique,

unconventional

 bowlers?  So, the adjectives ‘good’ or ‘accomplished’ don’t really apply..at least, not in the traditional sense of the  sport. Both had their own patented zany bowling techniques that generally made a powerful impact and momentum so a potentially higher chance of slamming a strike and knocking all the pins with sheer force.  

The two bowled in strange ways, as if shotputting or pitching the balls; this resulted in peers teasing them for their odd behavior.

Dylan’s generally style was to grab the ball and pitch it over head as if he were playing baseball. I’d imagine he’d probably splintered the wood on the lane from the sheer impact. 😉

Eric’s style was odd but effective: he would pick the lightest ball in the place, an eight-pounder, then heave it from his chest down the alley. It was loud but he got strikes.

If I could time travel, I’d make sure to drop in on one of their Friday midnight sessions of Rock n’ Bowl or witness the two goofballs in action  in morning bowling class just for the ridiculous hilarity of it all.

Here’s a few of their morning bowling class scores.

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Harris was smiling, rolling strikes and trading happy “high fives” with other teens at their weekly Friday night bowling party. Harris grew more unhappy and distant at school, friends say. But at the Friday night bowling parties, he would relax and come alive. “Rock ‘N Bowl,” as it’s called, was his social life. At Belleview Lanes, 16 students would crowd together on four lanes to bowl and smoke cigarettes.

They kept score on the electronic monitors overhead and the team of Harris, Klebold and Morris often won. 

“Eric bowled like an idiot,” Kim Carlin recalled, giggling.“He’d throw it,”

Sara Arbogast said. “A lot of people laughed because it worked and he would get strikes and stuff”.

”Sometimes Eric and Dylan shouted “Sieg Heil!” when they made strikes.

A classmate said about Dylan’s explosive temper:

“He did have a lot of anger, but he hid it most of the time. One time in bowling class, he got so pissed he slammed his fist down on the ball return. It freaked me out.”.

“Dylan would get so mad when he didn’t get strikes,” Jeni said. “One time he hit the bowling return machine really hard.”

did dylans parents know he smoked and if so what did they think of it

I think he attempted to hide it from his parents at first but there came a point in time where there was just no disguising the scent on him any longer. He also would’ve gotten into the habit of going out for a puff at the smokers pit at school or while socializing with friends. The impulse to step outside his own home and have a smoke late at night would’ve been just too great.  But again, the smoke scent wafting about and immeshed in his clothing and trench (can’t you just picture Sue throwing his t-shirts into the wash and holding them up to her nose? aww..) There’s just no concealing that for very long. His parents likely confronted him at some point and and wouldn’t have been too happy given that Bryon was a pot head but perhaps they capitulated since there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it plus many of Dylan’s friends smoked too. They were probably marginally okay with it, sort of  like, ‘as long as it’s not marijuana or hard drugs, son’. lol 

do you think dylan would ever want or get a tattoo

Possibly. If it was body art of important personal significance..like say the everlasting contrast symbol of 5 his influential number. Mind you, I don’t think he was in a serious frame of mind to go out and actually get one –  not to mention the expense of it. I do think he had it in him  to envision certain symbols on himself what with the way he wore personal items of significance on his being all the time like his “B” ball cap, beaded cloth necklace, onyx ring and the soviet hammar and sickle pin on his boot. Makes sense that he would consider a tattoo another form of bad arsery decoration on his being that would be of personal importance to him and also to get  people curious and to think. I don’t see him doing the multiple tattoos thing though. Just one or two of resonating significance to himself personally. 

What did dylans parents think of him quitting his job at blackjack

I’d say not pleased but his excuse probably was that he was looking for a computer technician job that paid a lot better and was better worth the hours and effort since it was the field he was interested in going into. Just, well, no such job panned out for him until August ‘98 and so he spent the first half of the year taking odd and unsatisfying jobs in between until he landed that one.

did dylan have a job in between the 2 times he worked at blackjack?

Yes. Dylan worked at Albertsons grocery store for about a month, approximately Jan/Feb ‘98. 

While sending out his resume and looking for work all spring of ‘98 (even stooping to apply for McDonalds) in June of that year (during summer break after he’d finished his Junior year),  he settled on doing some maintenance, landscaping/yard work for a next door neighbor to make some extra cash. (Bryon used to work for these neighbors and helped take care of their horses) 

In August ‘98, Dylan worked at Computer Renaissance as a computer technician. This job which was supposed to be his dream job at the time, didn’t last too terribly long.

In December ‘98, Dylan gets rehired by Bob Kirgis of Blackjack Pizza because they are in a pickle for help. He gets a raise and begins working more hours than his first stint with Blackjack.  The majority of the NBK finances would’ve been stockpiled during this time.

did eric or dylan ever really go into the schools library

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As Brooks Brown mentions here in an excerpt from “No Easy Answers”, the boys did hang out in the library quite frequently as newbie Freshman. But I think that by Sophomore year they probably had begun to hang out there less often. They had begun to feel more familiar with the skewed way their school operated with it’s dysfunctional favoritism towards and against certain groups of students. I’d surmise the library was now less appealing to congregate in because they’d gotten the message that they didn’t belong there in a place of quiet with the Columbine ‘approved’ students.  That’s not to say they didn’t at all choose to study there once and a while, it’s just that it was no longer the desired space it once was in their naive freshman year. They could also hang in the computer lab and be louder than in the library. When there was free time, better to sit at their self designated tables in the Commons with their friends in the TCM or under it’s staircase or outside, at the smokers pit or to sit in (or on) their cars. Being outside their despised school was probably the most preferable place to be.

Btw, Nick Baumgart, as mentioned above by Brooks, is part of the jury members for the James Holmes Aurora Theater shootings trial taking place presently..

in dylans writing in the junior year book is there any meaning to the symbol he uses to show where his writing continues?

The inverted Trident – answered here.  I haven’t fully sussed the symbol out completely yet. Still working on that.  That post will be updated if/when I’ve hit the mark. 🙂   Of course, the other possibility here is that it’s simply a super sekhret symbol Dylan made up for Eric to follow along.

did dylan really say that he wanted to do the shooting with someone other than eric?

Yes, Dylan wanted to do NBK with his best friend, Zach Heckler – his Numero Uno first choice. When Zach took up with Devon, Dylan began to fantasize about going NBK with his love who he had hoped would be revealed to him at some point. When that didn’t happen and senior year was winding down to it’s end, he began to resign himself (Jan ‘99) to going NBK with Eric simply out of practicality sake since, well, he’d basically been planning the thing all along with the dude. I go into a bit more detail about this here.

in hitmen for hire what are the straps around dylans legs

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A duster is also a long waterproof coat that is often referred to as a “trenchcoat” – but it is quite different in its details. The flap over the closure, the no-lapel collar (which clasps shut, completely enclosing the neck if necessary) and the built-in extra rain protection on the shoulders. Dusters are typically made of oilcloth and are built for handling the practicalities of herding sheep in the rain, not for style

The interior includes straps that let you attach the bottom of the coat to your legs, so that it does not blow around when you are on horseback. Also, the back is cut in such a way that you can cover both your legs and the rear portion of the saddle with the coat. These practical elements are usually not present in trench coats.

do you think dylan would have committed suicide anyways if he hadn’t done the shooting with eric

Maybe his life would’ve turned out fine but maybe not. It’s difficult to say. We just don’t know that ‘Timeline B’ for certain.  One thing is for certain though, the sort of chronic depression Dylan experienced needed to be addressed long-term or else it would’ve kept manifesting itself in whatever life challenge that confronted him.  For example, if Dylan had made it through HS and on to college, there would’ve been a continual new set of problems cropping up for him to deal with.  He could’ve easily, at any point in the future, come to the same conclusion that his life was still not worth living. Good and bad things would happen, as with anyone’s life, that would’ve put his resiliency to the test. Things like failed relationships – perhaps a couple of dates with a girl that he really liked but she broke it off or worse yet, decided to friend-zone him when he had just fallen head-over-heels (and the sex was amazing, well, for him).  Maybe he had issues making friends in college or his first software job was less than satisfactory or he couldn’t get along with a co-worker or boss or maybe layoffs occurred or –whatever external problem presented itself that he found himself struggling with – could have triggered his low sense of self worth, sending him into a deep funk. There too, I tend to think Dylan was genetically prone towards the depression – but with the right therapist and long-term treatment and also the support of friends, he could’ve pulled through.   Dylan simply needed someone close, friend, family or girlfriend, to help him open up and to realize and acknowledge he had a problem so he could begin to deal with it by leaning on their support (which would’ve been hard for him in itself). It’s not something he could’ve just barely managed to continue squeaking by on his own as he had barely scraped by in high school and look how that ended up in ‘Timeline A’?

do you know what ‘platform’ dylan used to set up his website?

There is no mention as to what platform or software Dylan used to set-up his website. Back in the day, sites were often manually written or coded in html with a wysiwyg html editor. Some were lucky to afford a more intuitive shell-based wysiwyg software program like Dreamweaver where the coding was done back-end.  I’d say Dylan’s website/s would’ve been manually coded given that he was a computer geek and was probably very clean at the coding. It would’ve been very bare bones, maybe had frames (which would’ve been ‘cool’ back then. lol )  and probably heavy text based with images and basic animated gifs inserted occasionally.  I’m sure his Fantasy Baseball website was very wordy, informational driven with maybe a back-end database interface to it for updated plays.   He did use the OS platform of Windows PC and Linux (running on his Apple).

truecrimejunkie77
Funny you refer to those as platforms; I always referred to them as Web Hosting sites. lol  I’d say likely geocities, maybe angelfire but definitely not AOL. 

can you explain what the halcyon dylan talks about is?

The Halcyons is Dylan’s idyllic expression and embodiment of a spiritual – non-religious- ‘heaven’. It encapsulated everything pretty much the opposite of what life on the earth ended up not being for him. To Dylan, humanity seemed plodding, repetitive, overly complicated, when in truth, it needn’t be – filled with illusions and fake realities that bogged all of us down. And because he felt he knew the truth of the matter, that the true reality of things was not as painful as everything seemed to be here, it made him feel at war with himself, struggling in sadness to fit into such a cumbersome earthbound existence. The Halcyons is the ideal ‘place’, a spiritual state of being in the spirit realm where everything comes together effortlessly: all is calm, at-peace, serene, untroubled, happy, favorable. It is tranquility, pure love and timely blissful completion.