No, it's not that. It's that I don't believe it, not at all. There's no way my sense are accurately conveying to me a genuine massacre. You know that stupid legend about Indians standing on the shore, looking at to sea as boats from the Old World approached, and those Indians literally could not see them, had no synaptic-bundles in their brains capable of contextualizing towering structures approaching on the tide. Put me in a schoolyard and show me the swords and hand me a camera and tell me to take pictures of the geysers of blood as you lop their heads off one by one and I'll push the button over and over again, but what I see in the view finder will be green grass and yellow dandelions. And that's all.

Cup of tea steaming away in front of me, crossword puzzle about one-third done. I think I've picked up the theme, so it should be easier now. Solve the long ones and the shorts ones fall right into place. And they do. And like I said, it's getting so easy it's easy to get arrogant and make mistakes. Cruciverbalistic Hubris. That would be a good title for something. That and Indians On the Shore. I should write something based on one or both of those titles.

The movies was about kids killing each other, and the people who enjoy watching that sort of thing, and we, the audience, are supposed to hold those people in judgment and find them contemptible. But we watched too. We watched the children slaughter each other, we enjoyed the contempt we felt. We're just as bad. We're worse. A few blocks away from me, children are being run through by spears, pikes, and other weapons who's names are coincidentally the names of pop stars and teen idols. I'd rather write about it than go see if it's really happening, would rather muse on how I'd be unable to deal with the situation.

There's a chunking sound from the washing machine, a sudden silence, holding my breath and so no whistling noise from my nose. My ears keen in the quiet, tinnitus loud and buzzing. The machine chunks again, the whooshing and gushing more forceful, and my breath comes rapid and shallow. The crossword is about two thirds done. The rest is just those bits and pieces that got left behind because the clue was just a bit too obscure. Not so obscure though. This is a Monday, afterall. I just need the one letter to get me started.

No clues about children, about blood, about weapons forged in factories by the thousands. No clues about tea, some famous brand that I forget as soon as I look away from the label on the string on the bag steeping in the hot water. Here's a fun game to play. Find a friend who's a snob and tell them they can't tell the difference between kettle-made tea and tea made from microwaved water. Test them, and tell them they've guess correctly, no matter what they say. And then tell other friends, at gatherings, that when your snob friend shows up, he'll brag about the microwave and kettle test, As practical jokes go, it's not a very good one. But it's better than trying to convince them, in conversation, that your mind played tricks on you and it sounded like kids where being butchered at a nearby school.

Because there's just some things you should never share with anyone, ever. There's pithy, and then there's pathetic, and apathetic, and apoplectic, and mixing them together isn't alphabet soup, it's just gritty water.