Xolleen

From what I can see, we haven’t got a lock on stupidity in the south.

Hell look around, I’m sure you can spot someone stupid, it’s not like they are rare anywhere.

I went to the post on Zero Intelligence and read the comments left by “Icarus” for myself.

Icarus doesn’t write like 90% of high school students. “Heretofore”? “Perhaps this might illuminate matters”? He also talks about high school as though he is outside of it, not a part of it: “This student’s claim lacks credibility.” Then there’s the follow-up comment on ZI by “Dementia,” noting that she’d read a conservative newspaper column on the story that said some of the same things as Icarus…

I smell FUD. Either “Icarus” isn’t who he claims, or this is a socially isolated English geek. If it’s the later, he might have his own bitter reasons for posting those comments. I’m a former socially isolated English geek myself, so I know whereof I speak. However, I had the benefit of learning by my Junior year not to give a flying fuck what other students thought of me.

It’s a lesson I wholeheartedly recommend for high school students of any intelligence.

The former debate coach in me wants to tear apart the four assertions Icarus makes. What the frell, let’s indulge that whim, shall we?

(a) Poole’s story about the journal material changed (first it was an assignment for vocational school, then an English assignment — except, says the source, Poole doesn’t have an English class this term).

1) We only have Icarus’ word that the story changed, as (s)he is the only person stating that the writings were written for anything other than an English class.

2) Even if Poole doesn’t have an English class this semester, why must the story have been written recently? It could have been written for a class previous semester.

(b) The source also claims that Poole has previously been in trouble for fighting at school,

1) Poole is stated to be an 18 year-old junior. He may have poor grades. He may be a disciplinary problem. But these are suggestive, not conclusive. We can’t leap from them to the conclusion that fighting at school is an automatic step toward terrorism, because…

2) It’s non-unique. Many kids get in trouble for fighting at school. Hell, I threw a punch in a wiffle ball game back in ninth-grade, and that’s about as trivial a reason for throwing a punch as you can get.

(c) that the written material included detailed information on the real high school’s security camera system,

I lived in Kentucky for ten months. No, I would rather not talk about the experience. In this case, though, I will.

ABC broadcast Amerika in February 1987, if memory serves. I remember watching it, the story of how the Soviet Union conquered the United States, broke the nation down into smaller parts, and how people reacted to the changes in life that came about because of that.

I don’t remember it very well. I do remember that I thought it had some interesting ideas.

Frankly, Amerika was more interesting than my classes, and I would spend hours doodling ideas in class. If the Soviets attacked Barbourville, where would be the best place to set up a redoubt? What about rigging recoilless howitzers? Would it make sense to hole up in the high school? I filled a notebook with nonsense like that. Was I planning a high school takeover? Was I mapping out the school? No, it just happened that Barbourville City School happened to be the one building in town other than my house with which I had any familiarity, so it naturally figured into my plans.

I would be willing to bet that for William Poole, George Rogers Clark High School has the same familiarity. It’s what he knows, and it’s so often said, “Write what you know” that it would make sense that he would use the school, even anonymously.

(d) and that Poole’s sister has read the material and doesn’t consider it fiction.

If, as the reports indicate, what Poole wrote wasn’t a story but notes toward a story, it wouldn’t necessarily be fiction. Or at least, not obvious as fiction.

I’m a writer, with a published novella and short story under the belt. Different writers have different working styles. Some of my working notes look completely unlike anything with narrative or character. One short story for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest had five pages of notes on the physics of engaging the warp drive within a Type-III Dyson Sphere. Tell me that someone reading that and not knowing what it was for would have any frelling idea what I was on about.

If Poole works in a similar manner, his notes may have looked like one thing when they were actually something very different.

I’m not saying that Icarus is wrong in any of the assertions made, but reasonable arguments against each of them can be made. Indeed, Icarus could be right on everything. The trouble is, I find the idea of a student being arrested for writing a story about zombies to be completely credible. It sounds fantastic. It sounds impossible. And yet, in these Orwellian days it sounds all too plausible.

For more unsettling news of the same sort, you might want to check out Our Horrible Children or NeoFlux, both written by the same man. I don’t agree with all of the author’s politics, but he’s dead-on when it comes to the stupidity of “Zero-Tolerance” school disciplinary policies.