Being on Santa's list turns out to be a very bad thing.

A man disguised as Santa, walks in a house where 30 or more people are having a Christmas party, he kills eight people, apparently torches the house, then escapes only to take his own life. These are truly amazing and terrible times we are living in. You couldn't dream this kind of stuff. Don't mistake me, what happened in an L.A. suburb is tragic, horrible, all of that and more, but the idea of it, the mental image you get of what it must have looked like, Santa spraying bullets. How can anyone not wonder what went through the minds of people as it unfolded. Think about it, one minute you are sipping eggnog and listening to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, the next minute he arrives and starts shooting up the place.

I wonder if the shock of seeing a guy in a Santa suit about to shoot you, would maybe ease your passing a little. Remember when you were a kid, you had a loose tooth, your mother or father ties a string around it. All the while you are hopping back and forth, one foot to the other like you are about to piss your pants. You just know it's going to hurt, the time it takes her to get the string around your tooth, the anticipation and panic building. You tell her you changed your mind , or some such shit, then she tricks you. Does something to distract you, and when you least suspect it, YANK! You stand there with your mouth hanging open, not sure what just happened, not sure if it hurt or not, trying to make up your mind between bawling or laughing. Then you see the tooth dangling from the string and it's over. The sudden unexpected yank preventing any pain or the time to consider it. I think that must be what it feels like to get shot by Santa, except on an infinitely higher scale, with very a tragic and permanent outcome.

The killer, Bruce Pardo, was apparently there to kill his wife, which he did, whom he was in the midst of an ugly divorce. That part of the story, while horrible, isn't really anything new, or uncommon. The L.A. times reports that Pardo shot an 8 year old girl in the face as she answered the door, thankfully she is expected to live. Without fail comes a quote from someone who thinks they knew the killer, ""I'm just — this is shocking," Detanna told the Times. "He was the nicest guy you could imagine. Always a pleasure to talk to, always a big smile." Of course he wasn't the nicest guy, and the statement is idiotic, but there always seems to be someone who "knew" the killer ready to tell us all what a great guy he was.

People always seem so shocked when someone they knew in passing, a guy they worked with or lived next door to, commits some heinous act. That's because people don't pay attention, they don't really scratch the surface. I don't need to know if Pardo was a good or quiet neighbor, the fact that he was an usher every week at his church, or tended his flower bed, or any of the other unassuming tid bits from his day to day life that will continue to trickle out of news sources in the coming days. I won't bother tuning in to people like the Nancy Grace's or Geraldo's in order to "make some sense" of it all. I can tell you everything you need to know to understand all there is about Pardo, and I can do it in one sentence. "He shot an 8 year old child in the face as she opened the door for Santa". That tells you the guy was a monster. He wasn't a quiet, smiling, unassuming, church usher and friendly neighbor. That's just typical media hype and horseshit. Something to keep us all glued to the screen, on the edge of our seats. He was a monster, the world is a better place without him, unfortunately, he took eight innocents with him on his way out.

As if this twisted Christmas story wasn't enough, four Washington DC cops are caught on tape stealing Toys for Tots. Heart warming isn't it? I hate to be the one to piss on everyone's holiday parade, but these two stories are just the tip of the iceberg. There are a million other horror stories that take place with such regularity, we won't give them much more than a quick Tsk Tsk, a shaking of the head, and maybe an "oh, that's just awful", before we go on about our daily routine. That doesn't make us bad or uncaring people, it just means we are helpless, we don't know what else to say or do.

But there can be a bright side to all of this, or at least some semblance of a bright side. Hopefully all of the really bad shit that happens to other people will give us pause, make us think, make us better people. You take a few extra minutes with your own children, or you help the older neighbor, maybe you send a card to a dying child, or give that homeless guy your 5 spot instead of giving it to Starbucks, whatever small thing you can do to try to balance it all out. Small acts of kindness can't reverse time, can't undo whats been done, it won't prevent future horrific incidents, but at least it's something. It's what separates us from the monsters.