Word: luke
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their isolation, the boys seemed to suffer an erosion of self-esteem. Partly it was their physical awkwardness: Michael and Kip were small for their age; Mitchell and Luke were pudgy. Furth describes Mitchell as "a sensitive, soft 13-year-old"; in Arkansas, where little boys are taught to be flinty and stoic, softness is a handicap. Luke and Michael were teased about their physical appearance (both were called "gay," the latter in the school paper...
...about his guns. Though a friend says it's a myth that he was voted "Most Likely to Start World War III" by schoolmates, one gets the sense that Kip wouldn't have minded the tag. In fact, according to people close to the investigations, after their arrests both Luke and Michael expressed a morbid appreciation of their infamy...
...Listen to some of the words on Kip Kinkel's favorite CD, Nevermind, by Nirvana: "Death/ With violence/ Excitement/ Right here/ Died/ Go to hell ... Take a chance/ Dead." It's not completely clear what Kurt Cobain had in mind with these lyrics, but they are lush with nihilism. Luke Woodham listened to goth rocker Marilyn Manson, and Mitchell Johnson to rapper Tupac Shakur. One doesn't have to support censoring any of these artists to see that hurt, isolated kids may not understand any intended symbolism...
There were other cultural loves. Woodham had implicated himself in a role-playing game at the behest of an older boy, Grant Boyette, now 19. "Grant said he knew I had been hurt by Christina, and he said there was a way to get revenge," Luke told a psychologist. "He said Satan was the way." He said Boyette introduced him to Hitler and Nietzsche, beat and burned his pet dog and eventually led him to a Satanic group believed to be called the Kroth (initially named the Fourth Reich). The Kroth played an interactive game called Star Wars--sort...
...believes that media violence undermines kids' resilience and self-control, psychological mechanisms that allow people to bounce back and to count to 10 before they lash out. Some biologists--Harvard's E.O. Wilson has pioneered this thinking--believe there is a genetic component to these traits, that kids like Luke and Kip simply lack the DNA that keeps their fingers off the trigger. In the end, Satan is certainly the easier explanation, if less intellectually satisfying. As Kurt Cobain once sang, "Now the people cry and the people moan/ ... And try to find some place to rest their bones/ While...