Pace on Earth

I Don't Like Mondays

Friday night I stopped by North's and picked up some vinyl that a generous friend had left there for me. This was a good little score; the Dead, David Bowie, among others, including The Boomtown Rats. The only song I ever knew of theirs was I Don't Like Mondays. So I looked up a video for the song this morning and found a few. One of them included an explanation of the song, which is a story I never know, but everyone should. Maybe most people do, who knows.

The song is about a school shooting in 1979 in San Diego. The shooter was a 16 year old girl who lived across the street from Cleveland Elementary. She killed 2 adults and wounded 8 children and another adult. After the incident, when asked the one question of why, she is said to have shrugged "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She is still in a California jail.

We tend to think of school shooting to be a reflection of today's societal ills; this debunks that at least a bit. Quite simply there have always been some messed up kids. We might be producing more now but that's just demographic inflation. Plus mental illness is mental illness.

I actually had no idea what this song was about. Hadn't even bothered to make sense of the lyrics. It's a better song after knowing that. Here is the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0qNGYxUwmU and here is someone else's sim city interpretation. No shit:

Seeing the original video now put Jeremy in context. Mind you that was almost 20 years ago too.

In reality, I don't really mind Mondays.

Pace out.

posted by Vitamin S @ 7:35 p.m.