Vacationing in Yellowstone -- And Watching The Horror in Santa Barbara

The descriptions of this young man who went on a murder rampage bring back painful memories.  He stabbed to death three, and shot to death three or four others (news accounts are conflicting).  For, n some odd (actually, not so odd) reason, some news outlet are referring to seven killed a drive-by.

His YouTube videos were so disturbing that police talked him on several occasions before this tragedy.  Some accounts describe them as the work of a "madman."   As I read the history of conflicts, I find myself suspecting that this may be literally correct.  He complained that women only wanted brutes, not "the supreme gentlemen" like himself, and it appears that he had trouble making friends.  This USA Today article suggests a person with serious conflicts over pretty minor things.  Someone who would go on a rampage like this is obviously pretty disturbed.

It was my experience when I was 19, 20, 21, that yes, "bad boys" had a much easier time getting girlfriends because so many girls that age were rebelling against Mom and Dad, looking for guys "the kind you don't bring home to mother" (to quote Rick James' Superfreak).  Not being a doper also put me at a real disadvantage, too.  But I also sense from the quotes from this guy that he was completely unaware that he might have had serious problems that could have been an obstacle for him, and that the core problem might have been him, not them.  (How many young men fully appreciate how much they need to mature?)

Of course, where you go to meet the opposite sex matters, too.  I was not having much luck finding the girl for me until I started attending church -- and at a Bible study, I met the woman I married in 1980, and we're still together.  You don't fish for trout in a sewer, and expect to get good results.