"I Don't Like Mondays"

There is no making sense of what Cho Seung-Hui did at Virginia Tech. The loss of life. The agony that will follow for always. There are no adequate words for his selfish and brutal massacre of innocents.


His words (manifesto) tells us very little about who and what he hated so much. They are void. Almost practiced, or rather rehearsed, in a society that glorifies violence. Violence as mediation. And violence as solution.

I don't want to sound callous or uncaring. But there are tough questions that will have to be faced in the months that follow. Relentless questions that peer deeper than the surface. Questions that lay bare the alienation of capitalized life. Questions that go beyond the front that obscures the lonely detached life of a system/society that cares more about profits than it cares about people.

This is what I mean, in part, by the comment about a rehearsed life. Cho was relaying manufactured pieces. Unorganic pieces that are fragmented, and surely driven by his mental illness, but they are not his own in both meaning and dysfunction.


The randomness and senselessness of his actions are therefore not new. Cho is very much a product. A product no doubt grotesquely enlarged. But no more than a manufactured pathological product among others.


Do you remember the 1979 Brenda Ann Spencer case in San Diego? She used the rifle her father gave her for christmas and shot and wounded 8 kids at the elementary school across from her house. In a 6 hour standoff she also shot and wounded a cop, and killed the principal and head custodian.


When the standoff ended she was asked why she did it. She answered:
"I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."



Her detached statement inspired Bob Geldof, then a member of the Boomtown Rats, to write their hit song "I don't like Mondays."

I listened to the song two nights ago. Made my skin crawl. Then feels so much like now. Read below. And go listen on YouTube. See also the 1985 Live Aid version.

*I Don't Like Mondays*

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.
And daddy doesn't understand it,
He always said she was as good as gold.
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays ...
I want to shoot
The whole day down.

The telex machine is kept so clean
As it types to a waiting world.
And mother feels so shocked,
Father's world is rocked,
And their thoughts turn to
Their own little girl.
Sweet 16 ain't so peachy keen,
No, it ain't so neat to admit defeat.
They can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown?

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays ...
I want to shoot
The whole day down.

All the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while.
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die.
And then the bullhorn crackles,
And the captain crackles,
With the problems and the how's and why's.
And he can see no reasons
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die?

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays ...
I want to shoot
The whole day down.