Tuesday 29 January 2019

the silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload

On this day in 1979 a sixteen-year old Brenda Spencer opened fire at a neighbouring elementary school as pupils were arriving for the day in Santa Barbara, California, killing the principal and a janitor and injuring nine others, tragically marking one of the first in a painfully legacy of senseless gun violence and school shootings, well-covered in the media but resulting in no change in attitudes.  The rifle and ammunition an unbidden Christmas gift from her father, interrogators asked Spencer why she had committed such an atrocity, to which she responded, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Musician and activist Sir Robert Frederick Zenon (Bob) Geldof and his band The Boomtown Rats were touring in the area about a month after the incident occurred with legal proceedings on-going and was inspired to pen the song after the unreality of the call of the reporters and Spenser’s response. Far from wanting to glorify the act through infamy, Geldof hoped his song would help prevent acts like this in the future.