Post-Modern Drunk: A Love Only Hinckley Could Appreciate
Related to yesterday's post concerning male-on-male violence to impress a lady, it is clear that on the whole, we just don't know how to act to impress a lady. While we'd like nothing more than a lady to see us act and say, "This is sexy," it just doesn't work out that way.

This past year's winner of the John Hinckley Award For Inappropriate Wooing goes to Maksim Gelman, a 23 year old who confused his infatuation with a girl for a romance, and when informed that his "girlfriend" was with someone else, went on a 28 hour stabbing spree, killing his stepfather, the girlfriend, and her stepmother, and then a livery cab driver, two people in a carjacking, and someone on the subway. Even by the standards of being distraught, I don't understand what he was hoping to accomplish there.

Still, while I can't understand his methods, I do understand some of the underlying impulses. I remember the feeling of despair: of wanting someone so much and not knowing what I could do to impress them and knowing that I would never win their heart no matter how desperately I wanted to do so. I also remember coming up with ridiculous plots to try to change their mind.

I didn't go through with them--well, most of them. There was that girl in elementary school who I brought a can of Mountain Dew for every day for months in the hopes that she would notice me and my love for its real purity. But for the most part, I didn't try to put into action the crazy schemes, and I never considered acting out in rage or anger against a girl or the guy responsible for the girl not being able to notice me.

I know not to do this because of having read enough books and articles and seen enough movies to know that going Full Metal Bickle isn't the way to win a lady's heart. For one, anything that gets you enough notoriety for her to know what you did for her is also going to clue in the cops to your forbidden love. For another, no lady outside of Bonnie Parker is going to be impressed that you tried to kill some random person for her. Only sociopaths are turned on by violence, and sociopaths are not good relationship material.

If your plans are not only cruel, but doomed to failure even as a symbolic gesture, it's time to get some new plans.

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