Shooting at Northern

I know everybody else is going to talk about it. I've only just now heard about it.

I know that there's going to be - once again - a lot of blame going around. The warning signs. The loneliness. The registered or unregistered weapons. The barely-veiled threats (assuming there were some). The fact that it's Valentines Day and he was probably romantically shunned. The university security not being at first-guard to ward these types of attacks off.

And the fact that I work in an academic setting (albeit a much smaller one, with security and cops and metal detectors all over the place) doesn't help, because I'm not a student or parent of a student at one of these schools now. I can't imagine what on-campus college students across the nation are feeling. I can only begin to grasp what their parents are feeling.

Some people need a lot of love. Pray for the victims. All of them. But also, pray for the preyers, for those outcasts. Not that they're the real victims. But the hurting needs to cease and they need to be loved and counseled and nurtured. America needs to love the least and greatest amongst us, not just the innocent. Not just the cute and cuddly. But the would-be monsters. The would-be Trench-coat Mafiosos.

This was something King and Jesus understood. People hate out of fear and alienation. Perfect love casts out all fear. Love joins people. Love the mess (and pain, frustration, self-loathing, hate) out of each other. That's bold Valentine's Day love.

Let's Play Catch-Up!

• Apparently, Ol' Bessie (aka, Cheap Acer - the term-of-no-endearment Mrs. jasdye gave her) was running on empty. The old hard drive just ain't what it used to be. An expensive inpatient stay at the Geek Squad informed me of that. Now I have to try to figure if I want to spend another couple bills fixing her or just start from scratch and buy a more reliable machine. Which I may or may not take with me to work (why should I endanger my machine for their work?, I keep asking myself. To no avail. I make a lousy conversationalist). In any case, I'm really concerned about my iTunes. Can I transfer all those tunes via my iPod into another computer? How does that work with the DRM's? Does anybody know? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I need to back everything up from now on out eight times over.
• I also lost my phone. I'm turning into Homer Simpson in things digital. Funny thing is, I haven't stored most of the numbers there anywhere else and I barely remember my own number. AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!! I'm such a block-head.
• Mrs. jasdye and I have been looking for a new church now for a bit. Which has been hard for me, since my old church is like family. Old family, in quite a few cases. But, we're both really liking this church. It's about a mile from our house, it's multi-cultural (in some ways more so than our last - which is hard to find in the Evangelical tradition), has a congregation that is social/economically-mixed (also like our last church - with a mixture of homeless, yuppies, college students, hipsters, etc.), is laid back but mixes high-church liturgy (which is a mix that I'm pretty comfortable with and have been trying to get my old church to embrace), and speaks our language in terms of the redemptive work of God in the whole of the world through Jesus' death and resurrection. The one weak spot that we've noticed is that we would be considered in the older end of the church's spectrum, that being a very small window for the most part. But, like ourselves, it seems like the church is also booming out some babies and young'uns. So, we'll see and try to keep posted.