Beyond Sane and Insane.

But he was unmoved, and cried: "If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!"
--H.P. Lovecraft
"The Temple"

A few days ago, I commented over on PubliusTX that I wished people would stop calling the VA Tech shooter crazy and start calling him what he was -- evil.

Turns out his tastes in literature yield some evidence into his nature:

On the eBay-affiliated Web site half.com, several books were listed for sale under the screen name "blazers5505."

They include "Men, Women, and Chainsaws" by Carol J. Clover, a book that explores gender in the modern horror film; the publisher's note reads: "Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism?"

Others include "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre," by H.P. Lovecraft; and "The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense" by Joyce Carol Oates _ a book in which the publisher writes: "In these and other gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves."

Books by those three authors were taught in his Contemporary Horror class, meaning he could have been merely selling the used books at the end of the semester.

Does a crazy man take "Contemporary Horror" classes? Or does an evil man?

I wonder if he ever came across another dark writer's instruction, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."