I’m not sure how healthy or productive it would be for me to dwell on current events for too extended a time frame. Last night’s writing jag became one of my most uncomfortable sessions in years, so I’m still trying to get my head back in the right space, or at least within the same area code as said space. It absolutely does not involve any cessation of prayers, but it does involve a bit of disengagement from the single-subject “news” stream and minimizing my additional reading, which has been winnowed down to links passed along by well-meaning online friends.

I realize that reading and writing about the subject must go on for others, whether it’s the quixotic quest for understanding the incomprehensible or the hypnotic allure of a true-crime drama destined someday to be reenacted awkwardly on numerous low-budget basic-cable true-crime shows. All I ask is that such commentators show a modicum of decorum, restraint, and best judgment. (I can dream.)

The following would be examples of opening lines and excerpts from articles and opinion pieces I do not want to see, that should neither exist nor have readers:

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Webster’s Dictionary defines “aurora” as, “a luminous phenomenon that consists of streamers or arches of light appearing in the upper atmosphere of a planet’s magnetic polar regions and is caused by the emission of light from atoms excited by electrons accelerated along the planet’s magnetic field lines.” And “phenomenon” certainly describes what happened in the city of Aurora last Friday…

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So there’s this maniac that I like to call “Surely-Locked-Up Holmes” in a tale our news team likes to call “A Scandal in Aurora” —

[repeated sound of Jamie Farr, Jaye P. Morgan, and Pat McCormick taking turns ringing a gong]

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dude is lucky he didn’t try to bust in on a theater with me in it cause if he did I’d be all like NUH-UH SON and dive out of the way like I learned at my dojo and then I’d jump over the seats from row to row till I got up behind him and then snuck in close enough to pop off his gas mask and then when he turned to point his gun at me I’d just slap the barrel away and put my foot through his teeth and then grab his gun by the barrel and then be all like HEY…

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Batman Begins opened in 2005. The Dark Knight opened in 2008. Both films share much in common — several actors, one director, one super-hero, fights between good and evil. The most important thing they have in common is they were both released while President George W. Bush was in office. The culmination of this trilogy in a seemingly senseless act of heinousness was no mere string of coincidences.

Obviously this was all part of the Plan. It all makes sense if you can follow along with my 600-page treatise, Bullets, Bush, and the Bat: How the Bush Administration Lived to See Itself Become the Villain, which I will copy-and-paste for you in its entirety right now…

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Remember back in the ’90s when it seemed like every time a gang-themed film opened in theaters, shots was fired and people was dyin’ left and right, and the MPAA was all like, “That’s it, no more gang films”? Yeah, Colorado homeboy gone and outdone all of ’em them combined. Funny how the white media don’t like to talk about that…

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We’re constantly told that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The obvious solution: make people illegal and give the land back to the animals…

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Thirteen years after Columbine, mass murder returns to Colorado in the seemingly safe town of Aurora. Why is Colorado at it again? What dark secrets does this state harbor, and how can they be stopped once and for all?

[This should be accompanied by a photo of a “Welcome to Colorado” sign run through an Invert Photo Negative filter, all the better to symbolize True Evil.]

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Webster’s Dictionary defines “joker” as, “a person given to joking.” That certainly does not describe the man who —

[sound of needle scratching record when turntable tonearm is slapped hard]

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GOD HATES BAT-FANS

…

[DISCLAIMER: The above examples were products of a singular, presently world-weary imagination and hopefully not real. If any of these resemble someone else’s genuine response now available online, I’ll be rather disappointed and spending tomorrow sighing a lot. Not during the movie, of course.

On a tangential note: if someone would tell WZPL in Indianapolis that starting off my late Saturday morning with “Pumped-Up Kicks” was not the best way to go, I’d very much appreciate it.]