PUNK NOT DEAD

Apparently the following graph is too violent* for my otherwise Erma Bombeck-y treatise on why March is by far the longest and most hateful month of the year:

"Is it any coincidence that the month inspired the terms Mad as a March Hare and March Madness? That last term isn’t about basketball -- it’s about losing it during a winter that never ends. Like Brian Nichols, who killed three people outside an Atlanta courthouse on March 12. The next day Terry Ratzmann opened fire at Living Church of God in suburban Milwaukee, killing seven. On March 21, Red Lake High School student Jeff Weise killed ten people, including himself. Two days later a man opened fire at a plumbing store in Arlington Heights (he missed). And on the 24th, Rockford’s Michael W. Mitchell brandished a box cutter and tried to steal a gun from a store in Florida, so he could “take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo.” "


Something tells me they won't like this replacement much, either, since I've removed the local references *and* mention the dreaded W-word:

"Is it any coincidence that the month inspired the terms Mad as a March Hare and March Madness? That last term isn’t about basketball -- it’s about losing it during a winter that never ends. Last year there was a record number of domestic shootings in March, in places as diverse as an Atlanta courthouse, a suburban Milwaukee church and a Red Lake, Minnesota high school.

"In fact the name March is derived from Mars, the god of death and war, and in Roman times it was considered an auspicous time to do battle. (Apparently it still is -- considering that the US invaded Iraq in March three years ago, and this March the country appears to be on the brink of civil war)."

It's enough to make me want to take up arms.....

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Of course it's all the violence that's violent, not the paragraph.