For years, I’ve written under the
Joker pseudonym as an attempt to not get black listed at companies and ad
agencies for voicing my opinions about advertising. Surely my enthusiasm at
sharing my “secret identity” to drive web traffic went against that purpose, though it was fun.
Thinking about it, I’ve actually
been using the Joker moniker for more than half of my life, since that
was my screen name on ICQ (yeah, it's been a while). It’s allowed me to express part of myself and I’ve
often identified with that character, not for his violence and mischief, but
for his creativity and twisted art.
It’s been a decade since I’ve
carried a Joker card in my wallet for good luck. I’ve given some to family as
one of my deepest signs of love and I used it for the scavenger hunt that I
prepared for my wife when I proposed.
I’ve always been proud to be
identified as Joker... and that’s not going to change.
A senseless act of violence that
yet again puts into perspective that maybe the constitution does have it wrong
for this point has taken the lives of a dozen people, and injured dozens more. The
possibility that our capitalist system focuses on sales rather than
repercussions makes this an even more painful lesson to learn.
Throughout its history, the character
of the Joker has faced against Gotham’s finest, swimming in the underworld and
using the innocent as pawns to push the dark knight into a corner... he has
killed senselessly and maniacally, but he has never gone fully armed into a
theater and opened fire on an audience, not even in Frank Miller's Dark Knight graphic novel. You see, although some people may
insist there is no method to the Joker’s madness, there always was. He’d be
willing to watch the world burn if it meant getting the bat and pushing towards
anarchy.
What this guy did didn’t push the
public into anarchy. All it did was push us further into the fear
bunkers than what we already are. All it did was injure and take from us lovely
people that just wanted to show their support to a franchise that they love.
All it did was question our sanity as a race. For years, I’ve ranted about
wanting to kill someone because they pissed me off at work, so I ranted about
it... Thanks to this guy, now I might have a file opened to question my sanity
because someone else lacked in that department.
Thinking about this whole
event... I insist on four things:
- I’m not going to stop being who I am because of the acts of a coward.
- I will not stop going to the movies.
- I will not live afraid.
- I will not take for granted the work I bitch about, the coworkers I bitch about or the millions of blessings that lean fate towards my side each and every single day of my life.
My condolences, thoughts, prayers
and rants go out to all those who were harmed by an impostor that does not deserve
the name he gave himself.
Cheers
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