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Tag Archives: 9/11

Beth Emet Service

Really nice service at Beth Emet last night. Two speakers stuck out in my mind — a Lutheran and a Baptist. Go figure. Or maybe the first was a Methodist. Lord, I they all look the same to me. Forgive me.

But she was talking about remembering not only the people who died in the WTC but remembering the people who died as the result of the violence of the war. People are all people. Ya dig? You dig, for sure.

And other than being hysterically funny, the Baptist preacher man just had that voice that stirs you into action…or at least the desire to act. Or something.

I’m being ineloquent. But that’s cuz I’m thinking about other parts of last night that I’m not going to even begin to talk about. Sucka!

More 9/11

Jon Stewart brilliant last night.

“First Lady Laura Bush has said that young children should stay away from the television tomorrow. I’d also like to encourage adults to stay away from the television. And teenagers. And old people. And I like good tower collapsing footage too. And I’ll accept your tributes from CBS and NBC and ABC and MSNBC and CNN…even a ‘very special’ Will and Grace. But a ‘very special’ Access Hollywood?”

or something like that. If Jon Stewart agrees with me, hell, how can I be wrong?

Checked www.cubs.com this morning to see what time their game was today, and greeted on their site by images from NYC: the twin tower light dealie they did a while back. ESPN.com with pictures of baseball fans and flags. The Sun-Times a picture of a huge American flag with the caption, “Let Freedom Ring.”

Let Freedom Ring? Today? How bout a better headline of “Please don’t fly our own fucking planes into our fucking buildings again?”

Can I even listen to the ballgame today? Surely Pat and Ron won’t go overboard…but they won’t fail to mention it. How baseball is insignificant in the scheme of things; how baseball helped heal the nation; how….blah blah blah.

We have no obligation to this. If there was footage of the last time the World Trade Center was blown up, or Oklahoma City, or…Jesus, we’re too close to this. Jon Stewart again:

“People re-enact the Civil War….but they didn’t do it in 1865.”

And that’s what I’m saying. Why should I see the same footage of the same planes crashing into the same buildings that I’ve seen every day for the past year? It’s burned into my head. It’s in there and it’s not coming out. It’s pointless for me to watch it again. And I think it’s pointless for people to say “let’s roll” and “let freedom ring” today. What’s going to happen next year? The year after? I mourned that week. I mourned that whole month. I’m done doing that. Stop making me cry about this. Stop squeezing my heart. We were supposed to grow up and move on.

Okay okay — I know. If this whole nationwide grief/mourning/whatever helps with some closure….fine. Great. Good. If people aren’t feeling better tomorrow…. How long can we let it kill us? What does happen on September 11, 2003? 2010? If the networks are still showing that fucking footage, I’m going down to the stuidos and…. You know?

Am I desensitized? I don’t think so — not when any piece on NPR has the ability to make my morning drive a bit more exciting for the tears in my eyes. Not when any public display of emotion or enthusiasm (except for chanted “USA! USA!”) can choke me up. Am I denying these feelings? Am I denying them for others? Am I just sick of feeling sick?

There’s no answer, no good answer. Just a real deep need on my part to keep away from all of it. It’s a beautiful fucking day out there, and we are alive…and some are not, but that’s always been the case.

Television

….because television is manipulative. Because television is another shot of the same footage that made me ill a year ago. Because television is the cover of the Chicago Sun-Times (tabloidis en extremis.) Because television is thinking that a t-shirt that says “Let’s roll” is somehow a tribute, somehow not mocking, not cashing in. Television is making money from tragedy, making ratings from tragedy, making a fool of me. Because television is a dark box that doesn’t care what I think or what I feel just as long as I think and feel what it wants me to. Because television is a “cathode-ray nipple” that I’m sick of feeding on.

And it is not the dragonfly with its weird appendages that is flying in place, flying sideways, the wind wreaking havoc on its abilities, with me shading my eyes from the sun to see it, to try to figure out what those weird appendages are, is that dirt? a tree leaf? Spider Man’s webbing? Does not encourage me to deal with things, because once I’ve dealt with them, will no longer need it.

9/11

It seems to me that this Wednesday, September 11th, is a perfect day to go media-free. No news, no networks, no papers, no CNN.com…. This is probably the hippiest thing I’ll ever say, but I really can’t handle the way I know that the media is going to try to manipulate my feelings.

Has there been enough time that I can say, “I don’t need to see or hear another thing about this?” And that’s not to say that I want to forget it, not at all. I would like to attend a memorial service. I would like to remember and think about 9/11/01 and its impact and its victims and everything…but without the help of television, and without that sort of slant. Without commentary, without dramatic voiceover, without another fucking shot of an airplane flying into a building.

It reminds me of Maus and Art Spiegelman’s worries that too much has been said about the Holocaust and do we need another work about the Holocaust and haven’t we had enough of the Holocaust already? Of course, nearly 60 years have passed since then and there has been more time to mourn, remember. And admittedly, the Holocaust didn’t happen here, in our biggest city, to two of our biggest buildings, with television cameras filming the whole time.

If we’re going to cry about this on Wednesday, why aren’t we going to cry about the Holocaust? Why aren’t we going to cry about Hiroshima? Have you ever cried about Hiroshima? What about those two guys that were pulled from their truck and beaten to death by a mob on the south side last month?

So I’m meandering a bit here, but maybe one or two of my points are there. I recognize the importance, the impact, the devastation…. And I don’t know what to say…and I don’t think anybody else does either.

Beckett said:

“Any word spoken is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

(As pointed out in Maus: “But then again, he said it.”)

And, he also said, “Words are all we have.”

And I said, “I’m sick of you pretentious and/or condescending and/or greedy and/or psuedo-intelligent and/or noisy bastards.”

[edit]See? This is what I’m talking about. The Onion always says what I can not.

intense shit going on

It blows my mind that right now, there is some very intense shit happening…. It’s ALWAYS the case, obviously, but I can just imagine the shouted orders, the tense pilots, etc. etc.

Perhaps I’m just buggin’ cuz I wanna be in one of those planes jukin and jivin and shoutin “Strike 1, Cobra 4” as I launch missile after missile into the hearts of terror.

We’re just kidding.

Check out americandesignlanguage for some neat (and some not so neat) things. Also, the daily probe has caused many a great laugh riot lately.

And I think the onion should win some sort of brass balls award for being the first to make great non-tangential humor about the whole terror deal. Kudos for breaking the ice.

fruit flies in a post-9/11 society

I feel like I should reason with my fruit flies that the world is no longer the same one they knew when they invaded my apartment, in their act of domestic terrorism. That everything has changed with today’s events. Their presence will no longer be tolerated. I will do everything within my power to rid my apartment of their evil.