Culture. Of. Death. Literally.

I wish I could say I was shocked.

But what do you expect from a culture so in love with death -- from abortion to euthanasia to capital punishment to virtual murder sprees via video game . . . to flesh-and-blood mass murder by real-life terrorists on college campuses and in shopping malls bedecked in red-and-green Christmas cheer.

No, it's come to this, as reported by The Daily Collegian at Penn State:

All it took were a couple of pictures posted on the Internet. Mere hours after a Virginia television station reported that Penn State students had uploaded pictures of Halloween partygoers dressing as Virginia Tech shooting victims, criticism exploded from both campuses, with one Facebook.com group denouncing the costumes reaching 4,100 members as of 2 a.m. this morning.

The only publicly accessible picture, uploaded after Halloween, shows a woman wearing an orange Virginia Tech T-shirt smeared with blood and a bullet wound, posing jauntily. According to television station WSLS in Roanoke, Va., several other pictures showed a similarly attired man.

For Virginia Tech students still shaken by a tragedy not yet a year old, the pictures are a slap in the face from students of a university they once lauded for its sensitivity and compassion in the wake of their loss.

University spokesman Bill Mahon, who released a statement to the Blacksburg, Va. campus, said he was shocked by the pictures.

"I certainly find it appalling, as most Penn Staters would find it appalling," he said. He said he believes it happened "off campus, in a private party."

Caitlin Beckett, a sophomore majoring in finance at Virginia Tech, agreed. Learning of the pictures several hours before she was interviewed, she said it was too painful to join the group protesting against it. Her friend, Mary Read, then 19, died in the shootings.

"I just didn't want to think about it -- it's just kind of sickening," she said. "You would think that people, after what happened, would have more respect than that ... even if it happened after five years, it wouldn't be OK."

Virginia Tech freshman Krista Silano wasn't a student at the university when Cho Seung Hui shot and killed 32 students last April, but she remembers the wave of loss and grief that struck the town.

She attended a memorial service with her high school lacrosse team.

"It's going to affect everyone who was affected or even just goes here," she said. "I didn't think that would ever happen from any community. I didn't think anyone would make light of the subject."

TWO DAYS AGO, eight people who didn't deserve it -- as if anyone does -- got blown away by a madman in a shopping mall a mile from where I sit. A woman who has done my wife's hair for probably 15 years, and who has become a friend of hers over those years, hid in the women's room on the third floor of the Von Maur store as Robert Hawkins slaughtered people mere yards away.

This woman helped to fashion a tourniquet out of a man's necktie to stanch the blood flowing from his shot-up arm.

I have no sympathy for the "shock value" antics from a bunch of a**holes at Penn State University.

BY GOD'S GRACE, they laughingly apply fake bullet holes to their own torsos and heads, and coat their bodies with phony blood. By God's grace, they were not in Von Maur at Westroads Mall, nor were they in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech.

God is holy and merciful. I am neither. If it were left up to my grace. . . .