"I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take, when people run in circles, it's a very, very, mad world, mad world....'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Nq086QB1Q
Mad World by Gary Jules (Tears For Fears Cover)
It is not a completely mad world but you really have to wonder.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/31/canada.bus/index.html?iref=hpmostpop
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/31/shenadoah.beating/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/31/preacher.freezer/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/07/31/teen-found-charges.html
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2008/07/31/6318311-ap.html
The following is from The Fire-Dwellers by Margaret Laurence.
"Nothing like that, nothing even remotely like that could happen here. And then again, anything that could happen to anybody could happen to anybody. Anything."
I wrote the following earlier this evening.
Cruelty
July approaches August
Without offering anything new
This summer has become a failure
I accept all blame for its disappointment
My heart was never really in it
There is a fundamental flaw in me
I think too much about everything
Doing nothing about anything at all
Vaguely interested in other people
Though never enough to matter
Living appropriately like a recluse
Saying as little as possible
For fear of becoming friends
There is too much reciprocation required
I cannot offer it or fake it
Without feeling too much awkwardness
We are all wired a certain way
My circuit board is frayed and damaged
Miraculously it functions sometimes
I do not need to be fixed
Write your song for someone else
An appreciative chap who smiles
Kindness is a mask for cruelty
Not the killing kind but torture nonetheless
Interaction engaged and quickly disengaged
I make no apologies for such inadequacies
My promises are purposely nonexistent
Those made to myself have all been broken
Daily it seems they are growing
So you will get nothing from me
Remembering I want nothing from you
Cruelty is more than cutting someone’s head off
A lifetime spent keeping people out is as cruel
I remember being a different boy
Those many summers ago
When July approached August
Offering another month of fun
What a strange word in my head
Thoughts can take almost any form
I made a costume of invisibility
Even though being so is impossible
Perhaps the boy and the man
Are not so different after all.
07/30/08
jr.