Columbine's Most Wanted

MSTed by Freezer, Tonberry King, Keith Palmer, and Rebo Valence; Edited by Dalty Smilth; Additional material by Matthew Blackwell

Essay by Peter Guerin


Read this MSTing.


Essay: Peter Guerin invites us to imagine Daria (apparently the character first and then her show) being publicly accused of influencing the Columbine massacre. There was a post to a message board relating a somewhat similar point made in a debate class, after all, and an unspecified amount of discussion in unidentified fora after that, so surely the topic must be about to burst out into the mass media.

To head this off, Daria fan fiction writers, including Guerin himself, have offered counterarguments in their stories. Excerpts over, he reluctantly admits the blame's already been laid on other things, makes one final valiant effort to make the show sound controversial by invoking the network it's on, and wanders along to defend goths in general.

With that point brought up, Guerin is at last free to free-associate about his own outcast status back in high school. His squeaker of a defeat in a Student Government Education is remembered once more, but at least Daria helps with the pain. With that and a gentle shower of inspiration, he closes.


Host Segments: Prologue: The Satellite of Love crew films Crow's new and and completely original independent comedy movie, "Convenience Store Workers." Unfortunately, Kevin Smith is not amused.
Invention: The Satellite demonstrates the Corganizer, which allows anyone to write lyrics for Billy Corgan songs. Frank has lost Deep 13's invention.
Segment Two: In honour of the experiment, the Satellite of Love presents The Six Degrees of Daria. It manages to dispense with most of the degrees in the middle. Frank still hasn't found Deep 13's invention, but he does manage to find Dr. Forrester with the junk he's dug up.
Stinger: The few, the brave, the courageous!


Reflections: I signed up for a group MSTing of an essay by Peter Guerin with thoughts including that it would have to be shorter than certain other works by him, and that it was. At the same time, though, its elegant progression of arguments seemed as rewarding in its own ways as his stories. I did wonder at the start if perhaps it was too short for all of the MSTers working on it, but out of all our contributions a solid end result seems to have been assembled. It certainly took long enough, though.

Dalty's Reflections: I think when I found this essay, I had just finished reading the misting of "Triumph of the Retart", or as its French fans call it, "Le Retart de Triumph", and I had not read any of the other mistings of Pete's stuff. As someone who, like Peter Guerin, suffers from ADD, I tried to see things from his point of view. And I certainly had problems in school. But in my case the torture and abuse didn't come from the students, but rather from the teachers. And this was a Catholic school, no less. A Catholic *Grade* School. As in K-8. Fortunately in High School I had teachers who had gotten their degrees later than 1950, so they were willing to work with me. Anyway, I should stop ranting about my problems before *I* start sounding like Guerin. (And that's your cue to say "too late.") As for the misting itself, it was the first and so far only misting I've edited, though I had a lot of help from Matt Blackwell, who himself had edited three of Guerin's opuses. (Or should that be opi?) It was hard work deciding which funny line to keep and which ones to cut, but fortunately I was able to cut everyone else's riffs and leave all of mine in. (Just kidding.) I think I had just recently bought the movie "Mallrats" when I was coming up with the first hostseg, and I was kind of obsessed with Kevin Smith at the time, so that's how I came up with "Convenience Store Workers. The Corganizer is a real invention that a couple of my friends came up with. Though their version was a computer program rather than a Billy Corgan head with a crank sticking out of it. The whole business of the Mads losing their invention exchange was just a lazy way for me to avoid coming up with an invention for them. I chose to put this in the Comedy Central continuity because I think Dr. F and Frank are so much fun to write for, plus I haven't seen that many Sci-Fi era episodes. For more details on this, consult the appendix to "Mystery Ketchup Nobuo Uematsu Dance Dance Revolution", or contact your local psyche ward.
Dalty Smilth, February 12, 1888


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