Dates & Dark Matters

On February 9th, I wrote: "Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages...."

On February 14th, the NIU campus shooting occurred. More events are coming.

Will an assassination attempt be next? Another rampage shooting?



I have a strong track record for predicting.

What do I see on the horizon?

Few take notice.

Dates

A blogger at Circle of 13, however, quoted me heavily on Sunday, February 17, 2008, in "Valentine's Massacre (Again) In Illinois":

Loren Coleman...noticed a change in pattern. “Change is in the air. And danger,” he wrote on Feb. 9, 2008. There have been “shifts in rampage shootings.” And, warned Coleman, “Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages for this spring, unfortunately. Look again, too, to the months of March and April, with the red zone of the ten days from April 16 through April 26, 2008, as especially dangerous.” (“Shootings Shatter Gender Barrier,” by Loren Coleman. )

Coleman's “Red Zone” of ten days between April 16 and April 26 coincides with the April 19 special marker. On that day, in 1993, the Waco Massacre final event occurred. Also on April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma City Bombings traumatized the nation.

Of course, the patterns are hiding in plain sight.

"Circle of 13" remembers Oklahoma City and the Waco Massacre, but April 19th is also Patriot's Day (Revolutionary War) and the date the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.

April 20th is Hitler's birthday; Hitler died by suicide. Also, it is the anniversary of the Columbine school massacre, which ended in two suicides.

In 2008, April 16th will be the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings of 32 and the suicidal death of the shooter Cho. Vulnerable suicidal individuals who are thinking about homicide will be triggered by all the repeats on cable television as April 16th gets closer, and for ten days, through the anniversary of Columbine. The days through April 26th could be a dangerous time.

The ending date I penciled in for this year's red zone is April 26th. That date is Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess's birthday, still celebrated by neo-Nazis in some locations in Germany. Hess officially died by suicide in 1987.

On April 26th, 2002, in Erfurt, Germany, the school shooting with the highest body count before VA Tech occurred when Robert Steinhauser, 19, went to the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium (a secondary school), stalked the halls, and killed 12 teachers, an administrator, two students, one policeman, and wounded 10 other people before he killed himself. Seventeen people died.

Dark Matters

Now some concern must be expressed about other new dates: February 22 and April 11th, 2008.

Double digit dates always seem to be attractive in this new age of domestic terrorism, which is only, after all, another label for school shootings, mall rampages, and urban bombings.

February 22nd, 2008, is the release date for a presidential assassination film, Vantage Point. What concerns me is the obvious worries in the air in this year when some politically unique choices exist. Due to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, assassination fears are being expressed on the internet rumor mills.

It will be noted that before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the book and movie Manchurian Candidate (film, 1962) were popular. (Director John Frankenheimer's birthday is February 19, 1930.)

The idea of a brainwashed assassin ~ literally a Manchurian candidate ~ gained much favor among theorists by the actions of Sirhan Sirhan before and after the Robert Kennedy assassination.

Will the release of Vantage Point cause a more overt discussion of assassination in the USA? Will it trigger some unfortunate behavioral reactions from someone on the edge? February 22nd is rapidly approaching, at week's end. No doubt, the U.S. Secret Service should take note.

April 11th, a Friday, will see the wide release of a new indie film, Dark Matter, starring Lui Ye, Meryl Streep, and Aidan Quinn, by New York-based Chinese opera director Chen Shi-Zheng. The movie was originally delayed last year because of the killings by a Korean-American at Virginia Tech. Dark Matter stars an Asian character, a graduate student, who goes on a "shooting rampage" at a Midwestern university. It was announced after the NIU shootings that the movie was going ahead with its originally scheduled release date.

Dark Matter is more powerful than most narrative fiction films because it is based in reality. It is loosely the story of Gang Lu, born in Beijing, China in 1963, who was a graduate student in physics at the University of Iowa. On Friday, November 1, 1991, using a .38 caliber revolver and also carrying a .22 caliber handgun, he shot and killed five people on the Iowa campus in Iowa City, seriously wounded another, then died by suicide.

Writer Jo Ann Beard later wrote an acclaimed personal essay based in part on the Gang Lu killings. The article "The Fourth State of Matter," was originally published in The New Yorker in 1996.

The Sundance award-winning film Dark Matter will now appear on the 11th of April, at theaters around the country. The 11ths of the months are already touchy, so this "school shooting" movie coming out on this date, considering what just happened at NIU, has to be viewed as a new red flag.

Dark movies. Steven Steve Kazmierczak (kaz-MUR'-chek) seems like he stepped out of Donnie Darko. River Phoenix's last movie, Dark Blood remains unfinished. I've already noted that July 18th, 2008, when The Dark Knight opens, the cultural spill over from Heather Ledger's final Joker may have some kind of unknown impact. I don't really know.



Dark Forces

Dark forces move these people who kill in our midst.

A former professor says Steve Kazmierczak was a "gentle" and "quiet guy." Yes, the "nice guy next door" story is one we've heard before. There are two sides to every story, and some of them are very dark. Dark matters. Dark nights. Dark knights, indeed.



A woman who worked at a Chicago psychiatric center where Kazmierczak was admitted after high school says Kazmierczak used to cut himself. He wrote a paper on self-injury (parasuicidal behavior) in prisons. His cutting himself was parasuicidal; he was in that mental health facility for a year.





Kazmierczak came to NIU with his gun in his guitar case, yet another scenario seen in the movies, such as Desparado. Karzmierczak, the dark knight dressed all in black, felt, it appears, he was in a movie.

Let me just end here with the chilling tattoo from the arm of this Northern Illinois University shooter. (Let me hasten to mention I am not anti-tattoo, as I merely see the practice as a new cultural reflection of many creative young people.) I only wish to point out that with this specific shooter, Kazmierczak decided to obtain on his right arm the pictured tattoo, depicting a character in the horror movie, Saw. Tattoo artist Jason Dunavan said Kazmierczak got it in the last five to six months.

It may be significant that the "Jigsaw Killer" in these Saw movies requires horrific self-mutilation (an extreme extension of Kazmierczak's own cutting and interest in prisoner self-injury) of his captives:



In these dark days, it appears we all are becoming captives of the suicidal mutilation of our culture.