Yes, the Ever-lasting contrast. Since existence has known, the 'fight' between good & evil has continued. Obviously, this fight can never end. Good things turn bad, bad things become good. My fav. contrasting symbol, because it is so true & means so much – the battle between good & bad never ends… Here we ponder on the tragedy of Dylan Klebold.
Tag: Dylan Klebold
CBS Evening News reports the first look at the Basement Tapes release via the transcripts supplied to Time magazine and the controversy surrounding it.
December 13, 1999
“Harris and Klebold talk a lot about their parents. They apologized to their parents for the hell they said they’d be putting them through but they said they really had no choice on this matter, it was something they had decided to do and would go ahead and carry it out.“
When memory bears witness to the innocents consumed in dyingrage..
The way lies throughour love..
There can be no other means to the end..
Or the keys to my heart you will never find.
“My takeaway is that Harris was very Type A, in your face, very plan-oriented, very structured. Klebold was more Type B. ‘Just tell me where to go; I’ll show up, I’m good.’ So, to me, their personalities were just very, very different. Was Harris more of the man with the plan? Yeah, but I don’t think Klebold just followed along like a little puppy dog. He was in. He was all in.“
Kate Battan, Dave Cullen and Dwayne Fuselier on a Columbine-related episode of “Oprah” that will no longer air today. (for the 10 year anniversary)
As pointed out earlier today in a blog about the many media appearances of Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis, Colorado journalist Dave Cullen, author of the widely praised volume Columbine, was scheduled to appear on Oprah today, the tenth anniversary of the massacre at the high school. However, yesterday afternoon, Cullen sent out a note to folks on his e-mail list revealing that the program wouldn’t run due to “a production decision.” This choice was confirmed earlier today on the Oprah website. A note from host Oprah Winfrey reads: “I decided to pull the Columbine show today. After reviewing it, I thought it focused too much on the killers. Today, hold a thought for the Columbine community. This is a hard day for them.”
The Winfrey comment suggests that there’s more to the story – and there is. Randy Brown, father of Brooks Brown, a friend of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who has worked indefatigably over the past ten years to make information about the killings public, says that he was among several members of the Columbine community, including relatives of victims he declines to name, who contacted producers to express concerns about the show,which was heavily promoted in recent days on Channel 4, Oprah’s broadcast home in Denver. Brown and company were especially distressed by the presence as guests of Kate Battan, Jefferson County’s chief Columbine investigator, whom Brown believes was part of an information cover-up, as well as Dwayne Fuselier, an FBI profiler whose son was a Columbine student who made a parody video depicting the destruction of the school two years before the assault.
Brown, who has appeared on Oprah in the past, doesn’t denigrate Winfrey for moving forward with this particular lineup. Instead, he praises her profusely for taking to heart complaints from families. “I think it’s an incredible sign of Oprah’s humanity and understanding that she would listen to these people and do something about it – not air the show out of respect for them,” he says. “That’s a really good thing.”
A spokesperson for Oprah doesn’t make the same cause-and-effect connection between the complaints and the change in the content of today’s show, which now features a segment about a mother released from prison. The spokesperson says family members voiced objections prior to the taping, and the decision not to air the Columbine program was Winfrey’s alone.
“The biggest problem I have with Cullen’s book is his conclusion that Eric is a psychopath,” Brown adds. “Whether that’s true or not, Dylan wasn’t a psychopath – and these children had motivation for what they did. As misguided and ridiculous as their response was, they had a motivation: bullying at the school, and the atmosphere there. You can’t bully and humiliate people without them having a response to it. Now, in this case, that response was ridiculous and violent and wrong. But to just say they’re psychopaths is so easy. People don’t have to think anymore. They don’t have to worry. They can say, ‘There’s nothing I can do about it.’ But that’s not true. You can do something. You can stop bullying and harrassment in schools and in the workplace.”
That Cullen would be joined on Oprah by Battan, who some Columbine families despise, and Fuselier, a man with what Brown considers to be a major conflict of interest on the Columbine story, only raised more red flags, Brown says. And he has just as many negative remarks to offer about DeAngelis, who appeared on the taping of the show last Wednesday via Skype. “He’s making his attempt to rewrite his place in the Columbine tragedy,”Brown argues.“And he’s very good at it.”
Such thoughts were shared in e-mails sent to the Oprah production office, Brown notes,“and a senior producer responded to – well, it’s an understatement to say ‘misgivings.’ More like anger at having Battan and Fuselier and Cullen on that show.And the people at Oprah listened to them and responded accordingly out of respect for the families.”
The eleventh-hour plug-pulling is a huge blow to Cullen, who declined to comment for this item. After all, author appearances on Oprah have provided larger book-sale boosts than any other promotion or forum in recent years. But Brown isn’t shedding any tears on the author’s behalf. Instead, he lauds Winfrey. “Television shows are big productions, and there’s a lot of work that goes into that show,” he says. “It had to be a difficult decision for Oprah. And I certainly think she made the right one.”
Local author Dave Cullen’s book Columbine has received an enormous amount of media attention – far more than another recently published tome, Columbine: A True Crime Story. And Jeff Kass, the ex-Rocky Mountain News reporter who penned the latter, has definitely noticed the discrepancy. He’s not surprised that the national press gravitated toward Cullen’s offering, which was issued by Twelve Books, a growing publishing powerhouse. (In contrast, Kass’ effort comes courtesy of Ghost Road Press, a modest, Denver-based outfit.) But he’s more bothered by inattention from local outlets. For instance, although Colorado Public Radio aired an enormous number of Columbine-related reports around April 20, the tenth anniversary of the attack on the high school, he notes that “they never interviewed me, and as far as I know, never mentioned by book.”
Adding to his frustration is the willingness of so many reviewers and observers to accept Cullen’s conclusions as definitive. In Kass’ view, “Columbine is a major social issues, and it deserves a lot of books to be written about it – a lot of serious books.” Moreover, he says, “I have issues with some of the things he says in his book. I just don’t find the attribution for a lot of it. There’s room for contradictory and conflicting opinions as long as they’re backed up by facts – and I feel I’m able to back up everything in my book.”
Of course, the authors agree on plenty of things, including the relative unimportance of bullying as a motivator for the killing spree launched by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold –a major bone onetime Columbine parent and activist Randy Brown has to pick with Cullen.Kass bases his beliefs in this area on diaries kept by the murderers. “They write about everything from losing their Zippo lighter to not being able to get a date,” he points out. “But they barely talk about bullying, period, and they never talk about being bullied themselves. And you’d think they would have if it had been such a factor for them.”
Likewise, Kass concurs with Cullen about Klebold’s depressive tendencies. But he’s not as willing to suggest that Klebold merely followed Harris’ orders. “Dylan’s writings show him to be pretty entranced by the plan. And their code word for the shootings – NBK, which stood for Natural Born Killers, one of their favorite movies – came from him. He was the first to mention doing an NBK, going NBK. That says to me that he wasn’t such a secondary participant.”
Kass and Cullen also have slightly different takes on Harris. Both argue that he was probably a psychopath – although Kass acknowledges some evidence to the contrary. “The trademark of a psychopath is that you have no emotion, no feelings. And in Eric’s diaries, he does have emotion. For one thing, he worries about what’s going to happen to his parents, and he feels bad about not being able to bond with his father more. And he feels devastated that he has no friends and that people ignore him and he can’t get dates.”
This last point is a key one from Kass’ perspective. “He says Eric Harris was this wildly popular student, especially with the girls – that he’s dating or having sex with all these girls at school. And I totally disagree with that. I don’t find any attribution in his book or in the end notes for that. I don’t know where it comes from. I’d like to know. And he says similar things about Dylan. He says Dylan had all these friends, and that he was well-connected at school and at least was more popular than we thought he was. And I don’t know where he comes up with that, either.”
"Now, maybe you can find a study showing that if you have five close friends, you’re a normal high school student in America,” he goes on. “But even if you could prove that Dylan had five close friends, that doesn’t mean he was a normal high school student, because Dylan didn’t believe that himself. Dylan was blinded to friends by his depression, and Eric was blinded to any friends he had by his rage. So I think you’re in this academic situation. You could say, ‘Gee, Eric and Dylan, you had a lot of friends, and you lived these great middle-class lives.’ But that didn’t get through to them. They thought their lives were miserable. So it’s a classic case of perception versus reality.”
As for Kass’ perceptions, he says, “I think both Eric and Dylan died virgins. And even though it’s sort of a weird topic to get into – their sex lives – I really think it’s illustrative of how well-connected, or not connected, they were to the school community. I feel they were outcasts. I feel they were among the most unpopular kids in the school – and my evidence is their diaries. Pick up almost any page and all they talk about is how much they are outcasts, how they don’t feel part of the school or any community.”
More distinctions between the books crop up in terms of the topics the authors tackle. Cullen focuses almost entirely on the crime itself, whereas Kass devotes his epilogue to what he describes as “the cover-up” conducted by Jefferson County law-enforcement officials. He also attempts to find links between Columbine and other school shootings around the country, and his research leads him to conclude that the vast majority take place in suburban communities in the southern and western parts of the United States. He’s also come up with a theory to explain the regional nature of the phenomenon.
“I found studies done before Columbine and with, from what I could tell, no notion of school shootings in mind that talked about the culture of honor,” he says. “It’s a well-known concept in the South, but also in the West, where, if you feel your honor has been violated, you feel the need to retaliate to defend it – and you feel that it’s okay to do that with violence. That’s seen as an acceptable means of avenging your lost honor.”
For Kass, getting this information out to the broader public remains important – and even though Columbine’s tenth anniversary has passed (with Cullen grabbing the vast majority of spotlight time), he hasn’t given up on reaching readers. He’s hoping to arrange a book tour to other places that have suffered through mass shootings at schools, such as Jonesboro, Arkansas, Blacksburg, Virginia and West Paducah, Kentucky.
“I think there’s still a window of opportunity to promote the book, and really, it’s always going to have relevance,”he says. “Even if all of this was to stop tomorrow, people would still want to know about what happened and why.”
Shades on; arms crossed: the reclusive solitary man
Melissa Couris said that he had been in at least one of her classes last year and she knew who he was. She thought he had been in a Language Arts class with Miss Jankowski last year (’98). She said that he was always quiet, didn’t talk to anybody and sat in the corner with his arms crossed. She said that he wore a trench coat and sometimes he wore his sunglasses in the classroom.
“..you seem a lot like me. Pensive, quiet, an observer, not wanting what is offered here (school, life, etc.)“ – DBK
Interviewed [Redacted (Brett)] on 5/11/99. Didn’t know why he was on Klebold’s List. He has known both for about 5 years but had no association with either. He said that years ago Klebold was made fun of because he didn’t fit in and was very odd.[Redacted (Brett)] did not recognize any nicknames on the list.
Klebold was quiet. […a very long redacted sentence that we all wish we knew what it said…..] “He was sort of the brunt of jokes”. They would never make fun openly but O’Neil said that it was a possibility that Klebold may have been aware of it.
Reblog with your MBTI and if you relate more to Eric or Dylan!
I relate more to Dylan and I’m an INFP.
Take the MBTI free tests here or here to find out what your personality type is. 🙂
Insomniacs and JNCO jeans enthusiasts will almost certainly remember Amp, MTV’s hour-long music video program electronica showcase that aired from 1996 to 2001. Much like its sister program 120 Minutes, Amp changed its time slot often and aired exclusively in the middle of the damn night. In a pre-DVR era, catching every episode required superhuman levels of dedication and a healthy working knowledge of VCR programming.
Amp was aimed at the electronic music and rave crowd and was responsible for exposing many electronica acts to the mainstream. When co-creator Todd Mueller (who had worked on this with V. Owen Bush and Amy Finnerty) left the show in 1998, it was redubbed Amp 2.0. The show aired some 46 episodes in total over its 6-year run. In its final two years, reruns were usually shown from earlier years. Amp’s time slot was moved around quite a bit, but the show usually aired late at night or in the early morning hours on the weekend. Because of this late night time slot, the show developed a small but cult-like following. A few online groups formed after the show’s demise to ask MTV to bring the show back and air it during normal hours, but MTV never responded to the requests.
The format of the show strongly resembled the original MTV model of broadcasting primarily music videos, but without VJs to host. The show started with an intro and logo, some basic information about that week’s show contents via onscreen text, then an hour of electronic music was played before the show’s conclusion. The show’s theme song was “Tempest” by Deepsky. Nick Philip, a San-Francisco based multi-media artist created the first video for Amp, “Meccano” by Sun Electric. Occasionally, non-electronic but still classic music videos were aired for the sake of nostalgia within the electronic genre, such as Ofra Haza’s music video for “Im Nin’Alu,” which was sampled by several electronic artists in the early 1990s.
Dylan’s yearbook reference to Eric [discussed here]
“all the amp, shit we’ve seen, strobe! (NIPPLE-FU!)”
clicked into place as I was searching for some Chem Bros merch and stumbled upon this ..and then I remembered the show and it was like that perfect puzzle piece that fit into place. I do love every time that happens. 😉
Originally, I’d assumed ‘amp’ as the acronym for Asian Massage Parlor porn which seemed to work in conjunction with the ‘strobe! (NIPPLE-FU!) references. However, if we look at this in the context of Amp, the artsy, acid-trippy MTV music video show, it’s so easy to see Dylan and Eric staying up very late at night during one of their many sleepovers sort of watching it while talking. What better way to sample this week’s MTV showcase of cutting-edge electronic artists along with the visuals while a bit buzzed on alcohol? As you can see the artist list, music that both Dylan and Eric liked was played on Amp each week. In addition to the multiple techno groups that Dylan enjoyed as mentioned below, Amp even had some bands that Eric dug such as Prodigy, Orbital and Eat Static – all aired on Amp.
The hour-long segment flowed from one artist’s song into the next with non-stop hypnotic, often repetitive, surreal imagery that complimented its mantra-like electronic rhythm and beats. The two sharing ‘inside jokes’ while watching it such as “strobe! (NIPPLE-FU!)” are entirely possible. 😉
Given many of the cutting-edge electronic artists showcased, I wouldn’t doubt that quite a few of Dylan’s primary musical tastes as well as his lesser-known attractions – Prana, Ceiba, FSOL and Spacetime Continuum – were most probably his little discoveries while sampling the weekly array of Amp offerings.
There are many, many episodes of Amp like this^^ ( complete episode guide), We’re fortunate the Youtuber, NinjaAnonymous, uploaded a fair few of them 7 years back but it’s just a scratch of the surface, and unfortunately, they stopped posting more of them for unknown reasons. So, it makes it a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack finding what vid segment amounts to Dylan’s exact comical ‘strobe!” reference. However, given the eye-catching visuals in the sample episode posted above, I wouldn’t doubt there was something they that caught their eye which inspired this particular comment enough that Dylan is recounting the hilarious joke momentTThe in Eric’s yearbook.
And as for “(NIPPLE-FU!)”… well..?
I would not doubt that it was this very cheesy, one-hit wonder called “ Kung Fu” by 187 Lockdown: which aired on Amp episode 212, airdate June 15, 1998 See 00:21 for the “Nipple fu!” action.
Once I started watching this I pretty much laughed my ass off over it because it seemed so spot-on and exactly like the juvenile, cheeseball, slapstick humor the two would’ve been amused by..and joked about while at school regarding the jocks. We know from Eric Veik that the two enjoyed the occasional MAD TV on the weekends which had very similar, zany to the point of ridiculous skits. According to Veik, the two enjoyed the stupid humor MAD TV’s Spishak Car Waxcommercialso much that it inspired them to write and film their own take of the car wax commercial skit for class.
“Just A Day” essay Deciphering and decoding Dylan’s writing.
People seem to believe that the essay ‘Just A Day’ was authored by Eric. This notion seems to stem from the belief that the document was found on Eric’s computer. In actuality, it wasn’t. Instead, it’s Item 871 located on Klebold School Server Files [see end of this post]. However, even if it was a document found on Eric’s computer or his school file server, as most people have thought in the TCC, I still would not believe it was authored by Eric Harris Every single time I’ve ever read through this essay trying to remain impartial, I can not help but feel that it is distinctly Dylan’s personality characteristics and idiosyncrasies that we’ve seen patterns of in his style of writings and school work. The earmark clues are all there in the grammar syntax and the use of sophisticated vocabulary inconsistently peppered with lazy shortcut ampersands and dollar-sign censored expletives. Eric would never dare to use expletives in a school assignment. He knew better than to intentionally add bad language which could risk him a lower grade. Eric dutifully abided by the teacher’s rules. On the other hand, Dylan was a bit of a slacker rebel when it came to stuff like this. He didn’t much respect his high school or its’ rules and he occasionally flouted them when/where he could. The clues are also present in his disdainful superiority of the vapid bourgeoisie suburbanites. How he sees the overly domesticated society almost like a pollution infringing upon the eternal, omnipresent beauty that is nature as spoiling his momentary serenity.
So, let’s begin dissecting this essay, revealing 20 stand-out clues which I feel confirm that ‘Just a day’ belongs to Dylan in heart and soul:
1) “They (our fishing trips) were always preempted (planned in advance), never extemporaneously (randomly)..”
Here we see the use of sophisticated language and complex almost archaic, old-fashioned syntax such as:
‘Preempted’ meaning ‘acquire or appropriate (something) in advance’ ‘Extemporaneously’ meaning spur-of-the-moment, impromptu, without planning.
2) “brought out by my father before his intended day of relaxation.”
Here you can see the proper address of ‘Father’ rather than ‘Dad’. Dylan opts for formal rather than casual. Conversely, I tend to think Eric might prefer to use the latter. In scanning through some of Eric’s work, this rings true.
The odd, sophomoric, antiquated use of ‘brought out’ combined with the intellectually stilted “intended day of relaxation’. I have to say it almost sounds a bit like mid-eighteenth century Byronic writing! Well, okay, maybe more like Dylan Thomas. 😉
I will also add in here [even though not numbered] that…
“a barrage of arguments *& pouting”
this wording tends to sound very intellectually posh. It doesn’t at all sound like something Eric would come up with. Besides, Eric would never admit to ever pouting: real men don’t do eat quiche or pout. 😉
3) “This was a good thing, as opposed to getting up for school”
Dylan loathed school; he didn’t want to be there ever. Apart from the fact that he was on the defense in the toxic, clique-y environment, there was nothing engaging for him academically. By contrast, Eric liked school because he enjoyed learning – however, he hated homework. He mentions this in his “Know What I Have/Love” list.
4) “or some other bulls*St.”
Dylan had a nasty, passive-aggressive habit of adding couched expletives in his essays. Again, it’s an amusing juxtaposition to all the other sophisticated manner of speaking in the rest of his essay! He kind of ruins everything else about his beautiful writing when he does this. So, inconsistently, rebelliously him! Another instance of the literary self-sabotaging that landed him a written reprimand from his Creative Writing teacher was his infamous ‘Man in Black’ essay written not weeks before the massacre. His teacher compliments his writing abilities and then proceeds to admonish him at the bottom of the essay that ‘I am offended by the use of profanity. In class we had discussed the approach of using * ! * !.”
5) and *6) “black skies *& coffee bean aromas.I never liked coffee, but I loved the smell.”
Again, simple but effective sorts of descriptors which sensorial picture paint the mood and setting. In that little snapshot, you can just imagine what that would look like as well as the smell of that early morning. Dylan was very astute at setting a mood and atmosphere in his writing style. You can see how gifted he is at describing a setting here in his gunpowder essay. You just feel like you are there experiencing everything with your five senses.
* Instead of typing out ‘and’ he opts for the lazy “&” ampersand. There are quite a few peppered throughout the doc. All his sophistication at the start of his doc goes out the window with each of his lackadaisical shortcut ‘&’.
7)“I would dine on fancy breakfast cuisine, otherwise known as Cocoa Puffs”
A dash of tongue-in-cheek wit with an oxymoron contrast. It’s a playful humor poking fun of his younger, unsophisticated self in happier memories. It’s also reminiscent of his playful sense humor in the cards he gave to Devon Adams.
8) “I always remember my brother trying to impress everyone, and myself thinking what a waste of time that would be.”
This is a bit of a salty, arrogant dig against a brother. It speaks of sibling competitiveness while simultaneously implying that he is above competing for people’s attention.
We know that both boys had older brothers which were much more socially outgoing with people. Of the two boys, Eric looked up to his brother and was known to be supportive of his football games. Still, I’m sure there was the sort of jealousy there for living in the successful shadow of his brother. I honestly don’t ever see Eric taking snooty pot shots at his brother, least of all in a school essay which might be read to the class.
Dylan, on the other hand, was gifted and naturally just ‘impressed’ with his advanced abilities. But perhaps Dylan was jealous that Byron was good with people and managed to naturally ‘impress them’ and win them over with charisma and woo. If that’s the case, Dylan is justifying his lacking in the arena of social skills since he was usually never inadequate at anything else academically speaking. So, here, he prefers to view all of that as jumping through hoops trying to please and win people over and that it’s just a vapid waste of time trying to define oneself by impressing others rather than just simply being who you are and not caring what people think. Winning people over as perhaps Byron naturally did with most people he came in contact with is relegated to simply “a waste of time” by Dylan.
9) and *10) “The drives up to the mountains was always peaceful, *a certain halcyon hibernating within the tall peaks & the armies of pine trees.”
He describes the trips as enjoyable because nature provides an automatic sense of calmness for him. It’s easy to understand when his mental chatter was constantly going all of the time. You could say that being out in nature and suspended in total quiet, soothed his mind and soul. Again, he describes what he is visually experiencing while on the trips up into the mountains in a concise yet, very vivid manner which makes you easily envision it easily.
10) A who else uses the word ‘halcyon’ but Mr. Dylan Klebold? It is his signature word of which he uses repeatedly in his journal. This is a deal breaker for me. Why isn’t it for most people that have read this essay and assumed it’s Erics? ‘a certain halcyon hibernating’ quite a poetically romantic description….
Eric, by contrast, would tend to describe things in a prosaic, very direct manner. By contrast, his writing approach is more action-oriented rather than ‘stop and smell the roses’ reflective.
11)“It seems back then that when the world changed, these mountains would never move. They would remain at peace with themselves and with anyone who would respect them.”
The world changes and advances yet, the mountains remain unalterably everlasting and majestic. Those that trespass but respect these timeless, constant monuments reap the peace and tranquility that is their silent secret.
12)“The lake is almost vacant, except for a few repulsive suburbanite a$$holes.”
Dylan censors an expletive to describe the artificial humanity infringing upon a near pristinely vacant lake.
13) “I never liked those kinds of people. They always seemed to ruin the serenity of the lake.”
No doubt altering the mood of the natural environment with their massive campers, garbage, and noise (and grill) pollution. Once they start to trickle in, the lake begins to lose the still and pure quality that Dylan enjoys witnessing – without having to share it with others who are undeserving of it for lacking in respect.
13) continued… “I loved the water. I never went swimming, but the water was an escape in itself”
Gazing into the water was a way for his mind to figuratively swim elsewhere..and to escape from the troubles of everyday life.
14) “Instead, I went with a lour, even though this was a lake.”
He misspelled ‘lure’ for a fishing lure. Generally, it seems as though he has at least one or two errors in his work. Even his college application letter, which should have been thoroughly proofed and error-free, had a glaring mistake with it’s rather amusing use of a veeeery wrong word. 😉
15) “Cast, reel, etc countless times, and my mind would wander to wherever it would want to go. Time seemed to stop whenever I was fishing.”
Again, you can see that the act of doing something repetitive, out in nature, in an absolute quiet, helped to provide a meditative state for Dylan. Time would become suspended and his mind would transport to where he happily wished to be.
16) and 17) “The lake, the mountains, the trees, all the wildlife *s$*t that people seemed to take for granted, was here.”
The mindful appreciation of the natural world goes unappreciated by most people other than himself. 17) Typical Dylan to ironically sum it up as ‘wildlife s$*t in a cavalier, irreverent fashion even though his point is that no one reveres it as only he can. Again, if we can assume that this is an essay written for school (can’t really get what else it might’ve been created for?), he clearly knows that using profanity is a no-no yet, he passive-aggressively slips it in the essay anyway along with those wildcard characters.
And for humor sake, let’s not forget how he started off this essay using lofty words such as ‘Extemporaneously’ and has now progressed..digressed? to a much different tone by the end of the essay.
18) “It was (as) if their presence was necessary for me to be content.”
I feel as though he forgot to put in ‘as if’ in this sentence. But again, he’s stressing that the breathtaking visuals surrounding him were integral to him finding a sense of contentment. A rare state of being for a Dylan.
19)“Time to go!. Done, Back to society. No regrets, though.”
You’d think most teenage dudes returning from a fishing trip might write it this way: “well, time to go back home! But so worth it!” Dylan rather perceives it more lamentingly like ‘time to go back to (the) society’…yes, back to the artificial world, with all of the humanity’s stupid system and rules. Though, maybe I’m just inferring a bit much here..
However, ‘No regrets though’. For all the hullabaloo of getting up at the crack of dawn, and traveling out that way out into the precious, perfect solitude of nature – so well worth the time spent. No regrets! but instead, fond memories of the spiritual commune with the Mountainous Gods of nature.
20)“Nature shared the secret serenity with someone who was actually observant enough to notice. Sucks for everyone else.”
Others come out here to just do a bunch of stuff while out in a nature: pitch a tent, crank up the BBQ, drinking beer and make a lot of noise chattering – much ado about nothing. Nature is irrelevant to the suburbanites..it’s just place for them to use and besmirch. As oppose to Dylan, who is there to commune with nature while pensively fishing. In his mindful appreciation, Nature shares a gift of ‘secret serenity’ – his attaining contentment in solitude for a few hours that feel like a state of foreverness. Nobody else gleans the obvious while out in nature but he. For they are too busy to notice.
Here is where this essay was found by Jeffco. If I’ve not persuaded you enough above, then this should be the deal breaker that ‘Just a Day’ belongs to none other than…Mr. Dylan Klebold
p.s. Honestly, just between you and me, I would so love to see all of those 28 essays of Dylan’s that were found on Eric Harris’s computer. Read the source. 😉
MEG HAINS, 17, junior, a biracial student at Columbine, claims that she knew both the gunmen and that the two were her friends at school through friends in the trench coat mafia and had always been nice to her. [Source] She ran outside the school thinking there was a fire drill and found her way blocked by a fence she could not climb.
“Jock is a kind of slang down term, like some people will call other people freaks because their hair is different. They’d call them freaks, weirdos, faggots. It was just stupid name calling, acting like little children. It’s like my cousins come home, they’re only 2 and 3, and they come home and start calling me names, calling each other names like butt-head and all these other things. They probably couldn’t handle it.”
“I have a friend, he doesn’t dress like everybody else. He wears heavy metal band T-shirts, black shorts no matter what the weather, and a black hat, and he has long hair. And friends who normally just come up to me and talk to me and are so nice to me – when I’m around him, they give me looks. And people come up to me after I talk to him, they’re like, “How can you talk to him? How can you even acknowledge his presence?’ I’m like, "It’s simple, he’s nice."That was the same with Eric and Dylan. I knew both of them. I went bowling with them occasionally. And they were extremely nice. They never showed any signs that they’d like to go off and hurt people.”
“I’ve played the game Doom that they’re saying Dylan and Eric constantly played. And I don’t think it was that game. I’d go to school and there were people that would so royally piss me off, and I’d just go home and I’d sit on that game for hours, just taking out my stress on it. And the next day I’d be perfectly fine.That’s the way I get rid of my stress, instead of going out and really killing people. It saves a lot of time. I know this sounds weird, but some violent games are a therapy for kids. “I am utterly afraid of guns. When I heard somebody had a gun, I was fine, but then I had to jump over the pit fence and I couldn’t make it. My arms just went totally wobbly. And then I found out he was shooting people. I broke down into tears, a mass of tears. I couldn’t find my best friend. And this was all over guns.”
I was in a drawing class. I saw my friend Lance. He was shot. My teacher would constantly tell him to sit down, sit down, Lance. He was always standing up, walking around talking to everybody.On Tuesday night I got maybe an hour of sleep, but I had a dream. I was walking into my drawing class and there was Lance. It was just me, Lance and the teacher. And the teacher tells him, "Go sit down, Lance.” And he goes over to his desk, sits down, and blows up. And then I see Dylan and Eric laughing. I have never had a worse dream. It’s been recurring for the past week. And I just can’t get rid of it. Because I’ve known Lance since middle school. And I’ve also known Dylan and Eric all year. I’m literally torn between them.”
“There are cliques all over the place,” said Meg Hains, a 16-year-old sophomore. “You can’t go to high school without cliques."Hains and her friends Jessica Jones, 15, and Erin Brinkley, 15, who gathered outside the high school on Wednesday with hundreds of other students, classified themselves as their own tiny group, "the individuals.”“We’re the outsiders,” she said.The “individuals” shun clothes bought at the Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch, the labels favored by the jocks and preps. “We vowed we would never wear Abercrombie,” said Jones, adding that she could not afford the $30 shirts and $25 hats even if she did like them.
On September 11, 1998, Dylan turned seventeen. Our gift to him was a nod to his prodigious appetite—a small black refrigerator that he could take with him to college the following year. He loved it and insisted on carrying it right up to his room, the cord dragging behind. As soon as Nate found out, he showed up with a companion gift: a supersized bucket of fried chicken, all for Dylan.
That month, he volunteered to do the sound for a Halloween production of Frankenstein at school and rekindled his friendship with Brooks Brown. The two of them had drifted apart after the conflict between Eric and Brooks the previous year, but they fell back into an easy friendship while working on the play. Dylan was proud of Frankenstein; he used a wide variety of unusual audio sources to develop the eerie soundtrack. The cast and crew recorded a surprise video to thank the drama teacher. In the video, Brooks, Zack, and Dylan clown around—saying they hope she’ll buy them beer, or pay them to pass down their senior year production know-how to the next crop of students. Judy Brown threw the wrap party, and took a picture of Dyl laughing at the video along with everyone else. – Sue Klebold, A Mother’s Reckoning.
Watch the entire CHS Frankenstein 2016 spring production (I’m sure the script is basically the same and perhaps some of the props are reused from the nineties)
You can imagine Dylan creating the audio sound effects “Don’t get fire within twenty feet of the pants,” Dylan warned, referring to my ‘Frankenstein monster” costume. “There were about thirty different chemicals put into that.” (This was true, actually. Dylan and I made the pants using an old pair of jeans that we soaked in gasoline and paint thinner to make them look as horrible as possible. After the final performance, we took them out to a field and flicked a cigarette at them. They immediately burst into flames.) –Brooks Brown, “No Easy Answers”
I can just see him.. alone in his bedroom, late into the night. His red shuttered windows opened wide as a soft, warm breeze of night time gently wafts in. There is the sound of crickets and other wild life off in the distance. His outside view is majestic, primal and untamed. A beautiful sight for those who can still see and appreciate not for those who have already seen many times and have long since taken for granted. The jagged outline of pine trees and ancient pink canyons are now a looming onyx. They jut upward to the horizon in a competing, stark, contrast to the pitch blackness of the midnight sky. Every star is a distinct pinpoint, magically pulsating and twinkling.in silent reverie.
The flick of his Zippo cuts the silence, and the flame flicks forth in contrast to the darkness of his room, casting a small warm glow. His long, dexterous fingers light the wick of one, lone, white candle before him.
He takes a swing of his flask and settles down onto the floor. The liquid burns the back of his throat. It blooms and glows a soothing warm throughout his body, numbing the pervasive sadness.
Only a soft repetitive beat and melody plays in the background from his stereo speakers like a constant, hypnotic mantra. The volume turned down several notches in the wee hours of the night as his parents’ slumber unaware.
He leans back against his window seat and focuses on the flame as it dances, casting shadows on the wall. The Ponderer’s restless, heavy mind, with its constant flurry of thoughts, begins to finally still, to drift into a quiet state of a reprieve as his tired, blue eyes stare at the rhythmic dance of the candle’s flame, and thoughts begin to singularly focus on his wishes, his dreams..his true love, his heart’s desire. He basks in the visions of pure happiness that come. Normally fleeting glimpses, they are crystal clear now.
His voice speaks soft and low, interrupting the silence with intent. An invocation to the universe..if per chance it was in fact, listening.
“The candle burns....,”
He waves his finger tips over the billowing vapor hovering just about the flame…
…he glances up and focuses his gaze off into the distances at the vast, dark heavens with its infinite bespeckled stars.
he continues in a murmur.
“The stars set the mood……”
A gentle, warm September breeze gently gusts in through the window shutters causing the candle to flicker as if in response to his words.. causing it to nearly blow out.
He purses his lips and slowly blows on the flame teasingly, until..at last.. the flame is over powered and sputters out.
A billowing, white, wisp of smoke curls.up into the air before him.. The acrid scent filling his nostrils.
“the smoke fills the room”
…it spirals upward…ascending higher… out the window..on to the wind…
“the hope is sent thru infinite places…..
..carrying his prayers like a message in a bottle…
all of purity….”
…. up, into the endless starlit sky.
Another year has passed, and another candle lit in memory of all the hope and possibility that you once were, that which you became, and all that you now are.
The hope is sent thru infinite places, all of purity…to you.
A wild Dyl-dog lops across the field, his paw-feet barely touching the ground.
Dylan is a cross between a giant Borzoi with his prominent, long nose and a gangly Saluki with that messy fur-hair framing his head. You could almost picture his beloved Boston Redsox ball cap smooshed down a top it (4th photo down, on the right) with those super long legs and skinny physique.
Traits of these dog breeds match Dyl-dog’s personality perfectly. 🙂
Borzois are known to be: Gentle, Independent and Quiet Saluki’s are Reserved, Aloof, Quiet and Intelligent
Letter #4
_____ = is for the ___________ found love I’ve been looking for all my life
Dylan’s acrostic love poem in 10 segments – 4th Letter of ? ¿ name
Letter #3
_____ = is for the ___________ moments she shares with me.
Dylan’s acrostic love poem in 10 segments – 3rd Letter of ? ¿ name
Letter #2
_____ = is for how she ___________ me helpless with her beautiful gaze.
Dylan’s acrostic love poem in 10 segments – 2nd Letter of ? ¿ name
Letter #1
_____ = is for the ___________ joy she gives me.
Dylan’s acrostic love poem in 10 segments – 1st Letter of ? ¿ name
The Everlasting Contrast 
