Big, sensational "true crime" stories bore me cross-eyed. (They also scare me. The original OJ Simpson trial traumatized me for life. I still have the scars.) I try to ignore them, but I'll occasionally give in and peek. And every time I do so, I end up kicking myself: That's x-number of minutes I'll never get back, and I've killed off scores of brain cells to boot. But given the high ratings these tabloid products generate, I'm clearly a minority in these United States. To paraphrase a line in Thelma & Louise about the (alleged) female psyche, "People. They love that shit."
Which brings me to one Jason Valdez of Utah. Apparently, "an armed Valdez, 36, held a woman hostage at a motel in a tense 16-hour, overnight standoff with SWAT teams," per news reports. But here's the kicker: During the entire episode, Valdez kept his family and friends (and, dumbly, the cops) updated on Facebook. Yes, Facebook. The police think he posted six times and added a dozen new "friends." Which begs the question, why would anyone converse with a crazed felon online, let alone "friend" him, in the middle of the night? I mean, who are these people? Anyway, I'm certain Valdez generated beaucoup "Likes" for his trouble.
Five or six centuries from now, I hope anthropologists will find a shard of this post in the digital stratification of what was once a Blogger.com server room. Hopefully they will gently scrape away the bytes to reveal this crucial part: No, most of us were not BATSHIT CRAZY. But, alas, a great, great many of us were.
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