Hope in the Hardest of Times

The following is from the Oregonian. Enjoy.

Ten minutes before it reopened Thursday night, things could have gone either way at The Zone, the site of Portland's worst mass shooting. Five days afterward, would people be too scared to return? Would the place be packed?

Outside, news cameras pointed toward the entrance. Inside, workers waited, nervous but hopeful. Healing will take time, they said. Might as well start now.
On its first night since the shooting, the club would give all proceeds to the families of the two girls killed.

At 7, they opened the doors and waited.

Five minutes later, the first customer walked in, handing over $10 instead of the scheduled $3 cover charge. "Keep the change," the teenage boy said. All night teens overpaid. Passers-by popped in to donate.
The benefit was originally planned for Jalontae Howard, 16, a Northeast Portland dancer who was shot during the melee that left seven wounded. But Thursday morning, Jalontae's mother called the club's owners. Yeah, I'll have medical bills, she told them. But I also have my son. Give the money to those who lost their daughters. Having Jalontae safe is all she needs, Dyrenda Waller said, as she surveyed where a bullet blew through her son's right ankle, breaking it in two places and possibly ruining his chances at a dance career.
She couldn't walk by the spot where shooter Erik Ayala, 24, of Milwaukie fired on the crowd. Instead, she used the back door. "I'm nervous," she said. "I didn't want to come. I had never been here before, though, you know? It actually feels pretty safe."

Other parents -- about a dozen showed up -- echoed her thoughts.

Sandy Schroll never wanted her 16-year-old daughter, Kristina, like Jalontae a student at Centennial High School, to hang out downtown. She certainly didn't want her returning to The Zone so soon.
"I thought, 'What if there's a copycat shooting?'" Schroll said.

Opening the club up to parents was a rare opportunity for them to check the place out, though, and she wanted to show support. "We actually get to see the personalities that hang out here," Schroll said. "The kids are all hugging, not cussing or acting up." Schroll looked around at more than 100 teens, dressed in Nikes, hoodies and tight, hip jeans.
"I'm the oldest one here," she said. "And I feel at home."
Jalontae, the only victim who attended the benefit, showed up at 7:45. The owners had placed a couch on stage for him. Some of the teens knew him from school. Others recognized him from years of going to the club. As Jalontae sat down and took one deep breath, they thronged to hug him.
The doctors said Wednesday he probably won't dance as he used to. He'll have a cast on for three months, and they expect he'll suffer from severe arthritis the rest of his life. "But he's strong," his mother said. "Nothing's going to stop him."

Club owner Dan Lenzen asked everyone who worked Saturday night to come up on stage. "These are your heroes," Lenzen told the crowd. As all went silent, Josh Dudley, a 21-year-old employee of The Zone, prayed for the victims. He added, "God, thank you for letting us live," and closed with a solemn "Amen."
It was time to heal. Time to dance.
-- Casey Parks; caseyparks@news.oregonian.com

The Layoffs

One of my company's five campus buildings is being shut down and everyone who works in it is being laid off, regardless of job description… the President sent out an email reassuring us that is was not due to the economic crisis or lack of financial strength, but their continuing effort to decrease their bottom line to keep pricing competitive.

That’s like telling my wife that I’m not staying out late with my secretary because I’m having an affair, we’re just relying on each other for emotional and physical support.

Erik Ayala

The reports on the Erik Ayala massacre in downtown Portland this week are the same as the reports of all the others. The killer was young, quiet, kept to himself. He had a history of mental problems and depression, but had been showing no signs of violence. He had no criminal record, and he was perfectly calm when he walked into the pawn shop and bought a semi-automatic pistol shortly before he turned it on a group of girls, walking down the same street I walk down every time I hit the town, just like they were doing.

There are a few things people have been clinging to as the blame for all of this. The Oregonian put in big headline letters, “fan of video games.” The Tribune was quick to point out that he was born in Mexico, though they downplay the fact that he legally entered the country and was completely assimilated. Today the media focus on how easy it was for someone with a history of mental issues to acquire a gun.

Basically, nobody gives a fuck about this kid; somewhere inside of them they’re grateful that another group of innocent bystanders was shot down in cold blood, because with all the optimism we’ve had recently, they were running out of statistics to point to in furthering their cause.
Me, I noticed the little things. The fact is, I’ve written a suicide letter in my head much like the one which was published from the kid. I’ve written the letter not because I’m suicidal, but because sometimes I’m just angry enough at someone that I want them to have my death on their conscience for a little while. Your mind goes to dark places when it’s past its pushing point.

But you can only have that much anger towards someone you love, and anyone with any empathy could never do that to someone they love. So your mind recovers, and you move on to better times. You turn to your friends, you rant to your parents, you lash out at your significant other, and they understand it’s just something you’re going through.

That’s where Erik Ayala was different. He was detached from his parents. His friends were there but unsupportive—after the incident, none of his friends even knew he was fighting depression. Erik didn’t have any loved ones, and he was just a temp—there was no one he could turn to at work. He didn’t have people who loved him. He just had anger. So he found a group of people he felt he could kill without guilt, probably to ensure that his suicide didn’t just disappear without notice, and then turned the gun on himself, punishing all the people he loved for not loving him back.

I’d like to share something from this story that affected me on a personal level. For any of you who have followed this blog, you will know that I have long faced problems being happy at work. With that in mind, I want to share with you what Erik's old employers said about him (not at the temp agency; at the place that laid him off after two years of service). They asked his old employers what they remembered of him, and this is exactly how they replied:

Erik was our top employee in terms of reaching performance standards both for production and low error rates.

That’s the bonds we have at work. That’s how people who you’ve spent 2/3 of your waking hours with remember you. They ask what someone was like whom they’d known intimately for two years, and that’s how they answer.

If you want to start asking questions about how someone can slowly collapse into homicidal depression without anyone noticing, I’d like to suggest that this is where to start looking.

All Hail the Conservatives

One interesting byproduct of Obama taking office is that it tarnishes the reputation of liberals. You notice that? I certainly have. Obama’s pretty far to the left—I’d go so far to say that a majority of Americans are to the right of him ideologically, if only slightly, but because he’s a true president (lower-case), he takes more conservative opinions into consideration.

Meanwhile, liberal pundits like Maddow, Olbermann, Randi Rhodes et al are starting to look like freaks and assholes. They’ve wasted no time sharply criticizing Obama for not being critical enough. One of the people on Countdown last night went so far as to say that Obama should be lumped in with Cheney and Ashcroft as being pro-torture, because he has not vocally and unwaveringly called for their immediate arrest and detainment. I’ve heard a few liberals (they’re literally lying around on the street here) rant about how Obama’s a traitor because he’s still going to spend the bailout money on businesses instead of giving it back.

So for all of us who tend to be in the center ideologically, all these liberals who were on the same side of the spectrum as us when compared to Bush are starting to sound like a bunch of ideological dipshits, while people like Shepard Smith and Wolf Blitzer are starting to make some sense.

Les Entendres

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Portland Represent!

Check it y'all—Portland was represented twice in last night's Countdown:

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Obama's First Controversy

Well, this is a first in my lifetime, and I mean that literally. Obama has released his first budget, for $775 billion, including $300 billion in tax cuts. The controversy? Democrats as a whole are taking credit for the budget, as it clearly is in the best interests of Democrats everywhere. Meanwhile Republicans are boasting their influence on the President-Elect, as the budget is clearly in the best interests of Republicans everywhere.

In other words, Obama hasn’t even taken office yet (he’s submitting the budget now so he can approve it in his first month in office) and the biggest problem with his first budget is that it benefits so many people that it doesn’t leave any room for partisanship.