Dimebag Darrell

To get this new series off on the right foot I have investigated the sad demise of Dimebag Darrell. How did I choose such an unlikely character for my self-education in the mores and fables of this modern world?  Looking at this page allows one to see what it is that the hoi polloi consider worth searching for and as, as you know, my task is to find out what it is that interests this class of moderns it seems like a good place to start.
In short Dimebag was a guitarist with a band called Pantera (who they are is a subject for another day) and had just gone back on the road (see how this cultish language of the rock and roll lifestyle seems to slip off the tongue so effortlessly!) with a new beat combo known as Damageplan. Sadly, while performing their music hall turn (what I believe is known as a "gig") in a colonial ville called "Columbus, Ohio" on Dec 9 this year a member of the audience decided to shoot him four times as he performed before said assailant was himself shot by the police. One could make tasteless jokes about the seriousness  with which they take musical critcism in the Mid-West but this would be wrong for there were three other entirely blamless people also killed in the incident (it is difficult to imagine that a guitar player of the "heavy metal" kind could be described as entirely blameless and the murderer was of course not).
The rest of my research has concentrated on his amusing forename, not one that I believe is common in the baptismal registers on this side of the Atlantic. Apparently his mother thought it would be interesting to name her son after a common packaging of cannabis, a ten dollar bag (slightly confusingly our colonial cousins use "dime" to refer to a ten cent piece and also to ten dollars, context being everything. Disturbing visions passed across my mind as I thought of the consequences of proffering ten cents in a dark allyway for an adequate supply of sativa...perhaps this is just a ghost memory of a scene from a moving picture or something?) which certainly shows how inflation has changed matters. Back in my day we used to ask for a groat’s worth of Mary Jane in a twist. Back then there was also a thought that the whole thing was a plot to get white teenagers to sleep with negro gentlemen and while it never actually affected me in that manner I do hope that Mr. Darrell’s christening did not affect him in that way either.
There may be some trivial details that I have got wrong in this brief foray into the modern world but I have no doubt that they will be corrected by attentive readers. I would just like to emphasise that no, the murder of four people is not funny and is not a joke. One can (and I prefer to), however, make a joke about anything and everything, for that is not the same as making a joke of something.