Thus the inscription on the T-shirt worn by an eighteen-year-old from Finland who killed eight schoolmates yesterday. The photograph comes from a popular website, where he recently announced his foray. His name is Pekka Eric Auvinen. The school is in Tuusula some forty kilometers north of Helsinki. The last alias he used on the World Wide Web was Sturmgeist or Storm Spirit in German. And so on, and so forth. The local newspapers are full of information about the horror, but there is not a word about the T-shirt. Not a peep. Does it mean the inscription is old hat already?

Addendum (November 9, 2007)

Not being lazy, or at least not as lazy as the local journalists, I just searched for the T-shirt slogan on the Web. As it turns out, it does not come from some creepy comic-strip character or a grizzled rapper, but from the critically-acclaimed American television drama entitled “House,” in which a British actor named Hugh Laurie plays a cynical doctor who works in the field of infectious diseases. The line is actually his. Now, anyone can buy Auvinen’s garment of choice from the “House” website, which comes up close to the top of search results. I forgot to check the price, though. Given the Finnish massacre, it is quite likely to go up. And fast. Misanthropes, hurry up!