An arsehole with an arsenal... more or less?

Walt is no bleeding-heart, let's-all-make-nice gun control advocate. I confess to a certain youthful fascination with firearms, often in combination with white-and-reds cocktails and loud music. Playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture on a stereo cranked up to "Mother" and supplying your own cannon-fire -- shotgun blasts will do nicely -- to augment the finale is an experience exhilirating to the point of being aphrodisiacal.

Such things should be done, though, out in the back 40... not in crowded cinemas. A Jamaican salute to the New Year or other holiday isn't cool if innocent bystanders get hurt or killed.

Which brings me to the Aurora Massacre, the reason why Walt has been MIA the last couple of days. I have been trying to think of something cogent and witty to say. I have failed.

What kind of mind, what kind of personality says to itself: I think today I'll go take in a flick, maybe blow away a dozen or so of those damn ordinary people, just to see what it feels like.

That's if there is a mind, a sentient human being applying some kind of thinking process to the concept. Which is doubtful. Did James Holmes really think this through? The facts revealed so far would seem to suggest he did.

He spent weeks ordering and receiving an arsenal of weapons. Somehow, somewhere he acquired the suit of body armor and other colour-coordinated accessories. Not to mention all the D-I-Y work required to booby-trap his apartment so as to take out a few law enforcement officers and perhaps himself in one final Götterdammerung. The last part is speculation, which brings us back to pondering what he had in mind.

If anything. The argument will surely be advanced that the man is sick, sick, sick. Out-to-lunch insane. Totally gonzo and not in the amusing way. That's what "progressive thinkers" always say. There are no bad people, just people who are "depraved on account of they're deprived" as Stephen Sondheim wrote.

Maybe James Holmes was attacked by a bat in his childhood. Maybe he was so under the influence of mind-altering substances that he saw it as his duty to blow away all the creatures in the bat-cave of a cinema. Who knows?

Nobody knows except James Holmes. And you can bet he's been advised by every attorney he's talked to to keep his mouth shut. Let us guess... yeah. This is a case where silence is going to be the best possible defence. Let the shrinks pick his orange wig all they like. What conclusion could they reach other than that his cheese done slipped off his cracker, just like that Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile.

End result? Holmes spends a few years in the laughing academy until another set of shrinks decide he's not a threat any more, and then they turn him loose. I hope they let us know where and when that happens.

As for making it a little harder for the average deranged American to get his hands on anything more powerful than a cap gun, don't count on anything happening anytime soon. The NRA is way too powerful. Besides, as Toronto police chief Bill Bliar would say, this is just another "isolated incident".