little ms. "sweet and innocent."

Tuesday, September 18, 2001
Web Archivist
The above link is part of a collaboration to identify and archive pages and sites related to the attacks. If you're interested, go here and start bookmarking/sending links. I think I'll send myself first ;)

This is sad: "The nation's media outlets will stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising this week as they provide expanded news coverage of the terrorist attacks. The major broadcasters--NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox--dropped commercials and all regular programming Tuesday and Wednesday to provide nonstop coverage of the catastrophe. Newspapers across the country printed extra editions even as advertisers pulled their business because of the crisis. Analysts said the crisis could extend the advertising downturn that has forced layoffs and belt-tightening this year among publishers and broadcasters.
"We were expecting a recovery in advertising in the second half of 2002, and now I can't imagine that it will happen any sooner," said Jessica Reif Cohen, a media analyst at Merrill Lynch."

"My journalistic life has been forever changed. Like everybody else I know, I'm still numb from the horrible catastrophe, mesmerized by what I see on the television screen. I keep watching Mayor Giuliani and all our firefighters, and that's all I want to do, unless I can write something that has something to do with it.
I don't want to write about anything unless it has some bearing on what happened to us on Sept. 11." For those wondering, yes, I have to write about other stuff this week. My boss is all psyched about UCD getting the largest amount of money ever tomorrow, and I'm like "Whoopee. I care so much." But she wants to put good news in.

Media obsessions that no longer seem very important.

For those of you wondering what air travel is like now. (check September 18th.)

Deciding on a holy war this week.

"The Taliban might be prepared to hand over bin Laden, who is reported to have denied any hand in the attacks, under certain conditions, according to the reports in the Nation and Jang newspapers. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
The conditions included the trial of bin Laden in a neutral Islamic country, the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, economic assistance and suspension of foreign aid and military supplies to the Afghan opposition, said the reports."

"Peace groups in the San Francisco and Sacramento regions are gearing up to push public opinion toward a response that avoids military action." I really wish I'd gone to that rally now.

"According to a New York Times-CBS poll yesterday, only 6% now oppose military action and a substantial majority would support war "even if many thousands of innocent civilians are killed".
Opposing voices have been muted and marginalized. There were peace protesters on the streets of New York at the weekend, but the numbers seem to have been tiny. There has been little focus on Barbara Lee, the California congresswoman who cast the only vote on Friday night against giving the president carte blanche to retaliate. Mary McGrory, a long-time dissident, reported in yesterday's Washington Post that journalists who have asked skeptical questions have been "inundated with furious calls calling them a disgrace to their profession and even traitors". Nice.

Yay! Ironminds is back! " But maybe if the suicide terrorists of whatever country they came from were allowed to say, "My country sucks donkey dick," every once in a while, this wouldn't have happened. When you're not allowed to criticize your country and all of this negativity is never focused at its source - destructive things can happen. And a lot of countries focus this rage directly at America. So it's no surprise there are people willing to give up their lives for the sake of killing a lot of Americans.
They hate us because they've never been allowed to publicly hate themselves. You can't love a country without hating it too. Without the checks and balances of love and hate working together, either emotion alone has no meaning."

"Bottom line: enemies who look different, speak a different language, or practice a different religion are lots easier to view as the "other." As somehow cutoff from the common humanity of which we consider ourselves a part. And so we speak now of killing Arabs indiscriminately, of not differentiating between the guilty and the innocent (ironically, the precise mentality of whomever carried out last week's attacks), and winning a war, which we claim has been officially engaged. But we would have said none of these things had the perpetrators been internal extremists. We said none of these things about those who fit the descriptions of Tim McVeigh, or Terry Nichols. We would never have heard columnists calling for profiling of white men, the way that reactionary crank and wanna-be pin-up girl of the right, Ann Coulter, called for the same against Arabs and Muslims this week.
It makes me think back to what Barry Goldwater said about Falwell in 1981, when the rotund little preacher asked all "good Americans" to rise up in opposition to the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court (since, after all, the Court was no place for a lady). "All good Americans,' Goldwater intoned, 'should rise up and give Jerry Falwell a kick in the ass." Precisely, and now two decades overdue.
Funny how all the discussion of religious fanaticism among certain followers of Islam has led us to overlook the fanaticism of certain Christians who are now calling for blood. One has to imagine that if Jesus was here today they would call him a pussy for all that "turn the other cheek" stuff. And while I can't answer the question that so many self-proclaimed followers of Christ ask when they wear their "What Would Jesus Do?" armbands, I feel pretty confident that I know what he wouldn't do. He wouldn't be saying things like: "let's shove a couple dozen cruise missiles up their ass," or going out and spraypainting "Fuck Islam" on mosques, or screaming about the "sand niggers" while guzzling beer at some sports bar. And for that matter, he wouldn't be standing around chanting "U.S.A, U.S.A." at a memorial service, in an attempt to turn it into a jingoistic pep rally."

"Authorities have grown increasingly certain -- from intelligence intercepts, witness interviews and evidence gathered in hijackers' cars and homes -- that a second wave of violence was planned by collaborators. They said Sept. 22 has emerged as an important date in the evidence, but declined to be more specific." Now I'm worried about that day.

Will the terror offensive against America inspire a massive wave of young patriots to join the military? The Department of Defense reported that the number of recruitment queries doubled in the last week, but it will be at least a month until the military can determine whether those queries translated into actual enlistments.
A random survey of fighting-age college students from San Francisco to St. Louis suggests that many young Americans remain reluctant to throw themselves into combat.
While they were shocked and angered by the attacks on high-profile American targets, a number of those interviewed expressed uncertainty about the exact nature of the military mission and the enemy American soldiers will be facing. Others, raised in a period of comfort and security during which U.S. military actions have been limited to high-tech air strikes, recoiled at the idea of bloody ground combat. Still others, educated in liberal classrooms on the works of U.S. government critics like Noam Chomsky, are suspicious of the Bush administration and its motives."

Oh, how I relate to Emily lately: "I don't know what to say. I don't want to not go on with my life, with my normal everyday activities. But it feels kind of selfish and wrong to ignore everything.
But I don't know what else to do."
I felt frustrated along with her reading about her friend: "He is excited. He is excited at the thought of going to war. Not at the thought of fighting for his country, or defending peace and the ability to just get through your goddamn work day without being killed, no, he is excited about going to war.
And I don't know what to say to him, besides to ask him who the fuck he is and what he's done with my friend, my friend for longer than anyone else, my oldest friend."

And about five minutes after reading her, I read this: "One of the stories that really struck me, was the difference between boys that had seen combat and those that had not. The ones new to combat were not overly stressed, possibly even excited -- anxious to fight for their country. They spoke with each other, played cards, and made friends.
Those that had seen combat knew what was coming in the days ahead. Largely they kept to themselves and were quiet. They did not make friends they knew they were about to lose.
So when I asked him if he thought we should invade Afghanistan his response was, "Hell no!" You don't get more patriotic than my dad. But he also has that perspective one can only have after combat.
"We don't have enough people to take, or hold, Afghanistan. It would be a thousand times worse than Vietnam," he continued. More and more, I realized that I had been missing this important perspective. He went on to say he thought we were premature in calling this a war, because there is nobody to fight. He pointed out that people were angry after Pearl Harbor in World War II. People lined up to enlist like we lined up to give blood. But back then, there had been someone to actually fight."
I'm liking Sushi's war journal, think this is a site I need to bookmark.

More about the flight that crashed and what they did about it.

"I turn on the news first thing every morning now. Every morning, I wake up fearful that it's happened again, that this time it will be Chicago or Denver in flames, and that my family and friends won't have escaped unscathed a second time.
Saturday night, Kevin's parents had a party to celebrate being alive. Everyone seemed emotionally exhausted and no one was in a particularly celebratory mood, but we turned off the television and cranked the blues up high. There was a moment that night when we were all gathered together in the kitchen and I looked up to see everyone dancing, even Hadden, grinning a wide, innocent grin from his spot on my lap. It was beautiful."

"Nothing will ever be the same again, we say, and it's both grim observation and solemn pledge. The pledge part insists we can't let things be the same, or else the same will happen again. We now wait to find out. Those of us no longer hovering over the phone have transitioned into a more general floating. We move around the house, wandering from room to room, maybe cook an egg. The plane doesn't stop slanting into the tower, slow then fast, slow then fast, and at the end of each day we clench our fists a moment then fall asleep as fast as possible. It's from an odd place that we wait to see what changes -- somewhere between the familiar and the stunningly new.
"We just don't know what this will all mean," said a passenger on San Francisco's BART train Thursday. "I'm sort of impatient to find out."

Monday, September 17, 2001
L'Shanah Tovah (Happy New Year)
No, I'm not Jewish, but it seemed a nice thing to wish people. Here's hoping things get better.

If any of you actually read the paper I work for, specifically Sunday's editorial page, my apologies. Somebody (presumably my boss, who was working the weekend shift, but we don't know for sure because she was off today) decided to reprint the infamous Canadian praise thing in our paper AND put that it aired last week. The victim of yet another forward...I'm so embarrassed. The angry letters, lemme tell ya, were pouring in. We could really use more net savvy people besides me there, I suspect. Anyway, just in case anybody didn't know, here's the WTC Urban Legends Page.

My opinion of Amy Reiter has gone up: "Thursday, as I worked to rewrite a piece on the New York City firefighters who have risked -- and in some cases given -- their lives in this tragedy, a colleague rushed in: Had I heard the rumor that Whitney Houston had died of a drug overdose?
"Who cares about Whitney Houston?" I said.
But turning back to my computer, I noticed that two e-mails asking the same question had popped into my in box.
With no relish, I looked into the rumor and found out that Houston's publicist was denying it. Whitney was just fine and home with her family in New Jersey.
"I've just spoken to Whitney," Nancy Seltzer told the press. "She is perfectly fine and does not understand why, with everything going on in the world right now, they have to find new rumors to dig up."
To tell you the truth, I'm with Whitney. I can't really understand it either. And I certainly don't know how, as the smoke from the World Trade Center continues to drift by my office window, I will turn back to Nothing Personal, to delighting in relaying and debunking such rumors and cracking wise about celebrities.
But while now we busy ourselves giving blood, supporting the rescue workers, and doing what we can for the victims and their families, at some point, this will recede into history and we'll manage to absorb it as we have other atrocities. While now it seems inconceivable to laugh and to snark, at some point it will again seem essential.
In the meantime, I'd like to invite you to share your thoughts as we attempt to return to normal. Tell me about an instance when humor, reading about the lives of celebrities and other trivial pursuits during a rough time have been just what you needed. Tell me if you still care about gossip, celebrities, Britney and Pamela, Tom and Penelope, Russell, Nicole and the rest. Tell me if you think you never will again."

"Suddenly, Bush-haters have toned down. He's the only president we've got." Yes, I'm attempting to not make a lot of Bush comments for that reason. I don't know how long that'll last, though.

"President Bush and his senior advisers told Americans on Sunday to prepare for a new kind of global war that could last for years, require unconventional means and test the patience of the public and its leaders alike."

*whimper*

Keith of llamalicious:"You're sitting in your local McDonald's a few months from now with a couple of friends, you've stopped by to pick up a couple of cheeseburgers and some fries either after work or after class on your way to the gym. You're all in the middle of a conversation when shouting and screaming erupts from the front of the place near the registers. A rather indiscriminate-looking man you didn't even see walk in has opened his trenchcoat to reveal the ten large packs of C-4 he has strapped to himself. You dive under the table as the man depresses the detonator button, exploding the C-4 with such force that it not only destroys the restaurant but weakens the small building's structural integrity to the point where the roof caves in and the buildings on either side catch fire.
You're all dead. That is terrorism. Can you fight a war against that? Can your army protect you against that? With terrorism, everywhere is a potential target and the war is fought on city streets. The next hit could happen at any time without any warning, and it could be your local supermarket, or a movie theater a few blocks away, or a downtown office building where you or someone you know works, or the donut shop down the street, or the hospital in the next town over, or your favorite video store... the possibilities are endless, and they're all vulnerable. Think about all these places, then think about how often you or someone you know visits them, and then think about how fairly effortlessly a terrorist could carry out a variation on the scenario I just described."

How sending a message to terrorists doesn't work.

"After all, a conventional war-a conflict between states or groups of states-is pretty straightforward. There is a clear-cut objective (control the other guy's territory) and a clear-cut methodology (kill the other guy's soldiers-who, conveniently, are dressed in distinctively colored uniforms). Once you've obtained the objective, you can relax: Your enemy surrenders, and the game is over.
Suppose that, as part of our metaphorical war against terrorism, we declare an actual, literal war on Afghanistan. The average American will realize that, this being war, the enemy will fight back, and American soldiers will come home in body bags. But the average American might not realize that the enemy could also fight back by parking truck bombs in American cities-that Americans who are already home may wind up in body bags.
Admittedly, President Bush has stressed that this is a new kind of war. Still, he has singled out our men and women in uniform as the ones who must gird themselves for combat. So when he stresses that this war could go on for years and involve great national sacrifice, pretty much everyone imagines the "greatest generation" kind of national sacrifice: Troops go off to die, and the rest of us plant victory gardens-and arrive at airports three hours before scheduled departure. Almost no one is imagining America turning into Israel, a place where every loud noise scares you to death. But it could well happen if our "war" on terrorism sufficiently inflames Islamic radicals.
I can hear the replies to this column now: Don't you understand? They're already killing American civilians. That's why we have to stop them!
Yes, we do have to try to stop them, and this may well mean taking military action. But note that this whole line of rhetoric-they're already killing us, and we must stop them-is itself a warped byproduct of war-think. It uncritically assumes the binary nature of conventional war. In a conventional war, once the killing begins, the enemy is fully committed to your destruction, so there's no need to worry about further antagonizing him. And completely stopping the enemy-winning the war, once and for all-is plausible. Neither of these things is true today.
Radical Islamic hatred of the United States is a variable that can go up or down. The commitment of the "enemy" to killing us isn't now anywhere near its theoretical maximum, and it may never reach zero. So one of our main jobs, for years and probably for decades, is to manage that variable. As we proceed on the various fronts we must now proceed on-including the military front-we have to keep radical Islamic hatred as low as possible."

"But Afghanistan is not difficult to invade merely because it is remote. Afghanistan is difficult to invade because its geography makes it almost impossible to control, even using modern methods of warfare. The high mountains and narrow river valleys are laced with underground tunnels, which partisans of various kinds have been using for generations. Satellite photographs, heat-seeking missiles are all useless in this sort of terrain. So, for that matter, are tanks. Bombing cities to terrorize the population wouldn't do much good either: The cities, such as they are, hardly have any infrastructure to destroy, and the population is numbed to terror. The only kind of anti-terrorist operation that would have any chance of success in Afghanistan is a commando operation, led by the people who know the terrain best: the Afghans themselves."

This just Pisses. Me. Off. How dickheaded is this? I honestly just want to smack her. "This should be a time when young people are lining up outside military recruiting stations. But it's not. "It's pathetic. We're getting calls from baby boomers in their 40s asking if they can sign up, but we are not hearing from the people we need, the 17- to 34-year-olds," said Maj. Isabella Mayo, who commands Sacramento-area recruiting offices for the Army. "I saw young people at Sac State saying how they would love to do something in response to the terrorist attacks. Well, we have a two-year enlistment plan. That would give them plenty to do. They are waving flags, which is great, but they aren't willing to serve." The major said several local recruits actually tried to escape their commitments last week. "They are afraid of having to fight," she said. "I understand it. But someone has to fight." Right, Major. Someone else. ..." So it's "sure, you're afraid, but you'd BETTER do it anyway? Especially if you're not being forced to? This is so rude and disgusting for her to bitch like this.

I probably shouldn't be linking to these in the first place. They're both cute and yet totally disturbing given recent events.

Stop World War 3.

"She's in ICU a day after this amazing trauma," says Dr. Ginsburg. "She's had 30 units of blood. She has a tube between her vocal chords and can't speak. [She'd had this] devastating injury and the fact that we've changed the shape of her backside and she was desperate to get a tablet and writes to me, 'So doc, my butt's smaller?' And I said, 'My kind of woman.'"

"Cell phones are no longer being seen as a frivolous expense, but as something very important for security," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, a trend consulting firm in Charleston, S.C. ``I think most parents who were resistant on giving their kids cell phones will now change their mind.''
`I expect to see a surge in demand,'' said Peter Skarzynski, a spokesman for Samsung Telecommunications. ``People are now seeing cell phones as more of a necessity, rather than a luxury. It will be like your wallet. You can't leave home without it.'' (I'm still debating the issue. Right now I feel like I MUST get one...but I really really don't want to pay for it, or pay that much for a guaranteed year when I don't want to even really use it *whine*)

I like this picture posted on Q Daily News: a light sculpture temporarily replacing the towers. I am all for that.

"Just one question. When Bush says that the nation should prepare for sustained assault, what does he mean? Do I need to go to Price Club and start stocking up on water and toilet paper? People keep saying that we should go on as usual, go on with our normal lives. We may pretend to be going on, we may go through the motions of food shopping and laundry and playing baseball, but there is a tension sailing through the skies that will not let up for a long time. And we try to dissipate that. We light candles and wave flags and sing songs and it does make us feel better. The unity and strength we are seeing from Americans goes a long way towards keeping down the feelings of fear."

"I don't know what kind of world we're in now. I don't know if the American flags now hanging from windows and cars will stay up, if two months from now I'll still have the guts to comfort a crying stranger, if people will still remember to be nice to their cops and firefighters. I don't know if I'll remember the vows I made in the past week to give blood as soon as it is practical to do so, and give money to the Red Cross and this fund. We've all received this burden of memory - not to compare this tragedy in size or scope with the Holocaust, but I'm finally starting to understand why keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive is so important. It's not the event itself; it's about responding to the event, keeping the event in the back of your brain, reminding you to act for the better."

Sunday, September 16, 2001
The Handmaid's Tale
My apologies for droning on and on about the same subject and turning this page into much more of a journal than I normally would do. I'm sorry, I know everyone else is starting to want to go back to normal and give me funny and all that, but I just don't have funny in me right now. Things are no longer normal and I can't fake and pretend that they are and even enjoy a humorous anything these days. If you're sick of reading this, you could just sign up for the notify list and I'll let you know when I go back to all silly, all the time, but it's up to you.

I mentioned previously that Under Sedation was having a show on this last night. Wow. Emotional stuff. Two out of three hosts sounded near to crying at the start (the third, despite having a horrible week, sounded amazingly chipper). They finally got an 800 number, so several of the regulars (including me) called in. They played patriotic music. It was a good experience.

I did my part for the economy by hitting the bookstore today, and ended up taking home (a) a bunch of Star Wars novels, and (b) The Handmaid's Tale. Gee, can't guess what's on my mind there, can ya? Well, at least most of those should have happy endings.

The copy of Handmaid's Tale I got has this reader's guide in the back of it. I read this section and was chilled at it:
"Q: How would the creation of your imagined republic of Gilead be possible?
A: First of all, ask yourself the following question: If you were going to take over the United States, how would you do it? Would you say, "I'm a socialist and we're all going to be equal"? No, you would not, because it wouldn't work. Would you say, "I'm a liberal and we are going to have a society of multiple toleration"? You probably wouldn't say that if you wanted mass support. You would be much more likely to say, "I have the word from God and this is the way we should run things." That probably would have more of a chance of working, and in fact there are a number of movements in the States saying just that, and getting lots of dollars and influence."

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

There was a peace rally being held down the street from me this afternoon. I really wanted to go. But my roommate came back home, as usual she wanted some company and isn't into discussion of this...so I didn't go. I'm rather kicking myself for it now.

I'm agreeing with Lynda lately: "Do not tell me you want war unless you've just come back from the recruiter with signed enlistment papers. Feel free to scan them and email them to me - I'm familiar with what they look like. Then we'll talk.
Do not sit in your little cubicle calling for bloodshed you'll never have to see or smell - or heaven forbid, actually SHED.
You see - if you were thinking clearly you'd realize that the buckets of blood you're envisioning are hardly just theirs - it's ours too. It's the blood of my children because it will be long, it will be protracted, it will be bloody and it will necessitate the draft - and Miss Thang? This time, I'll guarantee you the draft is co-ed too. How old are you, girlfriend?" If you're not willing to pay the price personally, how can you ask that of others, in a way?

This is disgusting: people are posting fake okay messages online.

Some also put the names of the missing instead of the names of the found.

Pakistan's government was preparing to demand that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden within three days. CNN learned Sunday that Pakistan will threaten massive military action led by the United States unless Kabul complies."

Stress-relievin' target practice, if you're so inclined.

"The ruling Taliban promised revenge on Friday if the United States attacks Afghanistan for shielding suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.
"If a country or group violates our country, we will not forget our revenge," Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Muttmain said in telephone interview with The Associated Press." Oh, so it's perfectly fine for you to violate ours, but heaven forfend anyone do unto you what you have done unto others? GAH.

"I wore my hair in pigtails and swapped my nose stud for a nose ring. I also tossed on my barf green Versace jacket, since it's cold today. I probably looked like a Britney Spears wannabe in denial that she's turning 30, but at least I didn't look Muslim."

"Terrorism seeks to create what one might call a second-hand Stockholm Syndrome, with a goal to lead the larger population into an identification with the aggressor. Its goal is to make citizens fall back on wishful thinking, and say, "Maybe if we appease the terrorists, listen to their demands, they will stop. Maybe they can be reasoned with."

How did we get into this mess: the long version.

I meant to link to some Fray stuff this week, but today I'm just linking to this: Missing Pieces.

Another who escaped the WTC.

Look, a little antenna flag for the car!

And finally, a proposal. "There is nothing so precious and fragile as life and love. I didn't need a ring to tell Amy how I felt at that moment. All I knew was that I didn't want to wait another moment, another second to tell her how much I love her and how much I want to be with her. So I pulled her aside, dropped to my knee, and asked her to marry me. She said yes. A hastily acquired Ring Pop will hopefully serve as a sufficient substitute until I can get her the real ring.
Life is short, and it can be taken from us in an instant. Don't wait to tell someone you love them."

Saturday, September 15, 2001
The bad news and the good news
Was going to update last night, but pitas wasn't working and I got too tired. Not that much to say personally. We set a record number of people at the fundraiser Thursday. My boss's brains were turning into spaghetti (and I hope she slept in today, but I doubt it). I ended up working late. I put up our paper flags in my window and wore a red and blue outfit. Pondering going to a peace rally tomorrow.

I'm trying to force myself to do non-attack-related things sometimes, but I'm still not paying that much attention to them. I barely got through the Harry Potter Vanity Fair mag I'd been hunting for frantically last week (though the pictures from the movie of the characters are SO WORTH IT, if you like Harry). The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay has become slow going (sorry, Jessica, if you see this), given the subject matter. I'm taking an online class right now and managed to force myself to finish the book for it finally, but as I did back in the old school days, a lot of it was read with glazed eyes. I know a lot of people are getting pretty sick of this and are taking breaks, but I don't feel up to it yet. It's not leaving my head much when I try. I may try to force myself to go back to silly linkage next week, but we'll see if I'm in the mood then.

By the way, Under Sedation Live (the one talk radio show I actually listen to) will be doing a show on this tonight at 6:30 Pacific (go to the link to see how to connect). I'm curious to see what they'll come up with, especially since one of the hosts used to be in the military.

We'll start with the bad stuff that I somehow feel should be talked about, then finish with the cheerier, how's that?

"Terrorists don't have the technical assets that states enjoy. What they have instead is the advantage of surprise, by virtue of their willingness to defy moral expectations. If you can't imagine that they'd target children, they'll target children. If you can't imagine that they'd use your bus to do it, they'll use your bus to do it. If you can't imagine that they'd fly your plane into the World Trade Center, they'll fly your plane into the World Trade Center. Your conscience is their cover.
After a terrorist attack, everything looks different. You realize that every plane is a potential guided missile and that every hijacker might be a kamikaze pilot. Yet nothing has changed except the range of your imagination. You can't blame others for failing to imagine these things, any more than others could blame you tomorrow for failing to realize that the bus you were riding was an excellent weapon for committing multiple homicides.
Today, the airwaves are full of talk about fixing airport security so that terrorists can't commandeer planes so easily again. That's a good first step, but it's not enough. The next terrorist strike won't involve the use of a hijacked plane as a guided missile, precisely because Tuesday's attacks brought that scenario into the realm of moral expectation. Next time, passengers will depressurize or crash the plane rather than let hijackers fly it."

"The people who did this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people."

"Declare war?" War against whom? One guy in the desert whom we can never seem to find? Are our leaders telling us that the most powerful country on earth cannot dispose of one sick evil f---wad of a guy? Because if that is what you are telling us, then we are truly screwed. If you are unable to take out this lone ZZ Top wannabe, what on earth would you do for us if we were attacked by a nation of millions?
Back in May, you gave the Taliban in Afghanistan $48 million dollars of our tax money. No free nation on earth would give them a cent, but you gave them a gift of $48 million because they said they had "banned all drugs." Because your drug war was more important than the actual war the Taliban had inflicted on its own people, you helped to fund the regime who had given refuge to the very man you now say is responsible for killing my friend on that plane and for killing the friends of families of thousands and thousands of people. How dare you talk about more killing now! Shame! Shame! Shame! Explain your actions in support of the Taliban! Tell us why your father and his partner Mr. Reagan trained Mr. bin Laden in how to be a terrorist!"

"We are not at "war" with Bin Laden. The U.S. does not go to "war" with individuals, let alone a demented fanatic intent on spending a $300-million inheritance to finance acts of mass terror. To declare war on Bin Laden is to elevate him to the level of a state. He is a criminal and nothing more.
Commentators have stressed that we have greater flexibility if we treat this threat as a matter of war. Of course, we do not have Bin Laden's "flexibility" because we are not terrorists. It is, in fact, our laws that define us as a people and give legitimacy to our acts as a nation.
This does not mean that we must declare war to take action against this terrorist or his organization. For example, one of the complaints is that a law prohibits assassinations while a state of war allows for such personal retribution.
In reality, neither federal law nor the Constitution prohibits the president from ordering the assassination of a foreign national who is a threat to the United States. It is not a law but an executive order that prohibits political assassinations. This order was signed in 1976 by President Gerald Ford after years of abuses by our intelligence agencies.
It may be time to revisit the question of the limited use of assassination. We can craft and monitor a law that allows for such a response in highly restricted circumstances and with the consultation of the congressional intelligence committees. Such a law could actually reduce deaths and increase controls in combating terrorism."

(Okay, this next bit is likely to be offensive. My apologies in advance.)

Oddly enough, the more this goes on, the less I feel like God really gives a damn. I should be feeling otherwise, but, well... If guys like this are the ones telling me to be with God and love God, then boy, does that make me not want to, if you know what I mean.
"There's a reason why I distrust many organized religions. I know better than to get involved with abusive relationships.
I was hoping it wouldn't happen. Every time there's a tragedy, a handful of religious nuts come out and claim that it's because we've turned away from God and embraced such horrible things like abortion, homosexuality, secularism, evolution, etc. I was hoping that this tragedy would be so large that these people would be too cowed to respond with their smug religious explanations.
We made God mad, folks. We weren't loving him enough. So he let some terrorists blow up a bunch of buildings and shut down the entire nation.
These people honestly don't understand the concept of "love," and given the way they describe a "loving" relationship with God, is it any wonder? If the God that Falwell and Robertson believe in was a human being, you would warn your friends away from dating him. They see love as a duty. You love God because you're supposed to, or you go to Hell. And to them, loving God means obeying His every order, or else. And because of this, these guys actually don't love God at all. Love does not come from threats of eternal damnation.
Most of all, I hope that God really is a superior entity to us, because if he turns out to be the way these men describe, then Heaven can't possibly be considered a paradise, because it's full of people who surrendered themselves to an abusive relationship to get there."

"But they're a little scary nonetheless. They are America's counterpart to the Taliban, and let's be clear: If they had their way, this would be a Christian state. They'd make common cause with the Taliban to strip women of many rights, persecute gays and punish godless infidels."

Naturally, I don't believe Falwell's apology worth a damn.

I'm actually not an atheist (I may not like religion, I may not believe we have a loving, caring, all powerful God, but I think he exists), but I'm relating more to those who don't.

"To me, this rain is proof that there is no God," she said on the phone from Boston. "People say that God can't help terrorism, that he gives people freedom to act as they choose. Fine. But a God who would hinder the rescue workers with rain? If God can't control nature, then what's the point? How can anyone believe today?"

"On the radio, the President refers to the 23rd Psalm. "Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for Thou art with us."
The President is wrong. I fear evil. No rod or staff can comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy have turned their backs on all of us today. I have no interest in the house of the Lord." I can only assume blind faith is what gets a lot of people through, because there sure seem enough reasons to doubt.

Don't count on the black boxes giving us new insights.

"It's over for us now. Muslims are done for."
Every time I hear of an act of terrorism, I have two prayers. My first is for the victims and their families. My second is, please don't let it be a Muslim." Canadian Muslims are being told not to leave their homes if at all possible.

And finally on the bad news side, we have this. You may have already read it, but I'm sure it'll be passed around to everyone in the next day or two. The promise of World War Three.
"Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of 'having the belly to do what needs to be done' they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.
And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this."

And now, for the cheerier things.

"Will there be a draft? Not before an escalation in conflict that is barely imaginable at this point." Phew.

More on my favorite headline: "I knew everybody was gonna do `Terror' and `Horror' and all that stuff," Burgin said Wednesday. "`Outrageous.' But I thought it had to have more vitriol, more bite to it, a little more fist shaking. I tried to imagine what they said at Pearl Harbor and `Those bastards' is what I kept thinking. I just took off the `Those."

"For the rest of my life I'll carry a roll of quarters."

How to prevent all commercial air hijackings using a panic button.

He wants to rebuild the WTC. "He says he also feels a moral obligation to rebuild. “The city is not dead and can’t be allowed to die,” he says. “We owe it to our children and to our grandchildren.”
Other real-estate executives have questioned whether any tenant will ever want to locate in such a tall building after Tuesday’s terrorist attack. Mr. Silverstein said whatever replaces the World Trade Center won’t necessarily have to be so high. He said a memorial for the victims also should be on the site."

According to reality blurred, a survivor list includes Angel from Small Town X as "okay"; but reports are submitted by the public and may not be accurate.

More people who escaped the attack. I think these are important to link to, signs of hope, you know?

"Agencies that had requested new volunteers are now reporting they have sufficient numbers of volunteers to accomplish their work. Agencies that have requested in-kind donations of goods and supplies have likewise received as much material support as they can immediately manage." Have you EVER heard of such a thing in an emergency situation before?

Janey Garnet is selling garnet beaded jewelry on eBay, with profits going to the Red Cross.

Now you can light an online candle if you're so inclined. Or send a message on the Times Square news ticker Sunday. Not that I'll get to see it, but I sent in "We honor those who made them crash the plane."

10 things to do to fight back:
"1. Keep your money in the stock market; leave your investments where they are. Show your faith in our economy by making a new investment when the market opens. Don't think for a moment that the terrorists didn't have a keen sense of the timing of their actions.
2. Fill your car's gas tank as you normally would.
3. Buy things - anything, no matter how small. Don't put off purchases that you have planned because of this incident and fear for the economy.
4. Fly the American flag.
5. Withdraw cash from the bank as you usually would.
6. Use transportation systems. Make business and travel arrangements as you normally would. Book a flight as quickly as you are able in order to show your confidence in our airlines, the new airport security guidelines, and our public safety system.
7. Conserve energy.
8. Write your state and local representatives and members of Congress to demand more funding for alternative fuel research. Our dependence on foreign oil is a huge vulnerability. If the United States decides to take military action, our oil supplies may be affected. By reducing our dependence on foreign oil, we enable our government to do what is deemed necessary.
9. Help unify this country by engaging your neighbors and community.
10. Get back into your normal pattern of work and living. Do what you can to continue your normal routines. Embrace the new security guidelines in airports and other public places and don't complain. Support the airport security personnel and let them know you're proud of what they are doing. Embrace the new security guidelines in airports and other public places and don't complain. Support airport security personnel and let them know you're proud of what they are doing. Don't be frozen by shock and fear: that was the terrorists' objective. Fight them by continuing to live normally in our free and open society."

Thursday, September 13, 2001
Day 3: Off and On
One of my editors remarked this morning that the headline sizes were going a few points down each day.

I'm proud of the work we're turning out on this so far. Annoyingly, none of it's making it online (WHO CARES ABOUT THE CITY BUDGET NOW?!), but nothing I can do about that. I don't even know who selects the stories.

I spent most of the day doing relatively minor typing tasks and calling up a bunch of columnists (or in some cases, would-be columnists) trying to get columns out of them for tomorrow. I could handle that stuff. I will admit to finding it still hard to work on actual like, note transcribing like I was attempting to do from yesterday's interview.

We had a story in today about a local girl who didn't take the crashing flight home. I've heard a rumor that someone from this area with a university connection died in the crash, but I don't know this for sure. Dreading that story if it's true.

I'm proud of our paper for printing paper US flags tomorrow to put in windows. I wish I could put mine up for all day tomorrow, but I probably won't be home till late anyway. I'm also very proud of them for not being sleazebuckets like these bastards.

Tonight was our paper's yearly fundraiser, Dinner at the Dump (yes, we're very weird here. We eat in trash. Okay, not really, it's in a parking lot on the waste removal property site). In most ways, it was pretty much like last year's. I was supposed to do work and didn't do that much of it- my assigned job was "troublesolver", i.e. supply girl, and everyone had a lot of supplies, though I did volunteer to dish some pasta at the end- I went around eating and hanging out and talking, etc. It's a big foodfest. And it made me forget a lot of the time, it was like slipping back into the normal world.

But one of my coworkers had bought some flag stickers, and he was passing them out to all of us. There was some discussion of our heinous future. The coworker with the stickers was going to fly out finally after all tomorrow, so we talked about that. The PTB (i.e. our publisher and some dude that I think was a reverend or something) attempted to make a speech/do a prayer/have a moment of silence, but the morons around us wouldn't shut up. Each time one of those reminder moments happened, it was like "oh, wait, that's the real world now. I forgot about that." Yet how do you forget?

I'm trying to not go through and link EVERY SINGLE good diary site because there's just too many and I've already linked you to better maintained lists, but I have to show you this: written by someone who escaped from the higher floors in the WTC. This whole thing really makes you rethink the cell phone issue. Now I'm really not much of a fan of cell phones with regards to myself. I don't want one, I usually don't need to get ahold of people on the move that quickly, if I'm not somewhere that's near a landline I probably am not in a position to talk to someone on the phone anyway, I don't talk on the phone all that much so it'd be a waste of money, I don't want Mom to call me 24-7, etc. Lots of reasons why I don't want to. It's one of those things that I figure someday I'll be forced to have, but that I want to put off having for as long as possible.

"For years I've been saying that I'll never buy a cell phone. They're intrusive, they're a nuisance, they're a safety hazard, they're used irresponsibly by a large and annoying segment of the population. Besides, I said to Jaymi just last week, The only people who would call me on a cell phone are people I wouldn't want to hear from anyway. [I was referring to co-workers and telemarketers, mostly ... although there is a Relative Who Hates Me or two who wouldn't be big buckets of fun to chat with while I'm grocery shopping, either.] I just didn't want to become one of those annoying people who walks around with a cell phone clamped to her head 24/7, oblivious to the world around her ... or to the woman in the next bathroom stall.
But all I can tell you is this: I'm rethinking the whole cell phone thing today."

Anyway. I'm not getting too profound tonight, let's get to some links.

We compare it all to the movies.

Looks like the winner of Small Town X, a NYC firefighter, was one of the first ones at the WTC and is now missing. How sad. Also, it turns out that Monica's cousin is missing after all, not injured as claimed yesterday. Hmm, suspicious there? And speaking of suspicious, why was Willie Brown saved?

Depressing - Why they'll never catch Osama bin Laden.

I don't mean to sound like a crackpot or anything, or link to er, a site like this normally (I did have a better picture, but their site was slow as shit), but check the weird face that showed up in the smoke. I wouldn't say it's the devil myself, but it's damned spooky coincidence.

Here's a nice version of a new WTC, our collective response.

He's declared war. Oh crap.

Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Hard to believe it happened today
"Many of us probably are thinking the same thing: Did that awful day really happen? Can it be possible that an airliner crashed into the Pentagon and two more leveled the World Trade Center towers and a fourth plunged into western Pennsylvania? That we're in a state of war against an unseen enemy?"

Amazingly, I did not have plane nightmares last night. In fact, despite going to bed late, I slept like a baby, and had some weird dream about going on a date with that guy who played James Leer in Wonder Boys. He liked me at first but got sick of me as the date went on. Now why the hell would I dream about THAT?

Anyway, it was hard to believe when I woke up that what had happened really had happened. Did it? Was that a dream too? But I went to work, put the finishing touches on my blood donation story (which annoyingly isn't online), waited around for people to send me a ton of stuff that was due today. So far that I know of (as of about 2:30 p.m. when I left the office), not much had come in. Since what I had due was (a) a bunch of religion briefs and (b) a bunch of school columns, I'm thinking maybe the religion brief writers were rewriting to add extra services or something and the schools writers were er, distracted. I can wait until noon tomorrow before panicking on those, really.

It's horrible to say, but today wasn't a bad day for me. Our paper came out and it was good, one of the publishers went around literally patting us all on the back, and an editor managed to get the paper to pay for a big pizza lunch for us all. We watched TV during it, of course, but the gallows humor was kicking in and a remark comparing the WTC's fall to playing Jenga got big laughs. One guy was at work because he was supposed to have flown to Seattle today, and he kept griping and wondering if he'd be able to go tomorrow or not (I suspect not).

"It makes no difference if no one we knew could possibly have been hurt in New York: the sense of danger permeated every house, every neighborhood in the country. We were all hurt, in one way or the other.
And we in San Francisco don't know yet what friends of ours were in the jet that was bound for San Francisco, diverted from God knows what target, and crashed near Pittsburgh after God knows what act of heroism that kept it from reaching its target."

I wondered if we'd be handed another bunch of followup stories to do on this, but we weren't really. By god, we may have actual local news on the front page tomorrow or something. Which doesn't seem right to me to have. I was annoyed that we'd put any local news at all in today (we had a second front page inside), because who was going to care about budget meetings right now? What I'm worried about is what if one or more passengers on the SF flight was from this area? I don't want to be the one who has to harass the parents. I probably wouldn't draw that one, but I know I'll be the one who has to deal with their obituary. I hate having to mine the dead person's relatives for a story.

As for my postponed interview today, we all managed to stay surprisingly well focused on the subject at hand, though they were a little babbly after the whole thing. Weirdly enough, a girl I interviewed at the blood bank yesterday worked there and while she looked familiar right off the bat, I didn't place her. Then again, since all I got to say to her upon walking in was "I'm here to see (interview subject #1)?" and then interview subjects #'s 2 and 3 came in and grabbed me, maybe she didn't notice. I started babbling about it during the interview later on, but I don't think they minded.

It was weird to think about other things in the world, like life was still going on the same as ever.

"For myself and many people I've talked to, what comes next is this need, this almost automatic instinct to seek out the small and the beautiful and the safe, to put on classical music or paint a picture, something clean and pure, to delve into those things which seem to be relatively free of death and destruction and human meddling, things that don't have any outward potential for pain and devastation and which remind you how the world is still capable of creating beauty and joy and solace.
Or maybe it's a personal craving, something intimate, like the need to snuggle up in bed with a loved one and turn off the TV and just forget for a few moments, just be, as you quietly notice how everything but the essential human connections is instantly drained of all relevance and weight, it just falls away, rent and work hassles and stress and your in-laws coming to visit, all light and easy, and you're glad for what you have and where you are and that you can grieve and feel and care.
Or maybe it's as simple as stepping outside into the daylight to look around and take it all in, really look at the trees and the houses and the people and reassure yourself it's all still there and still functional and the world is still spinning, more or less, though sadly hobbled, somehow that much more ethereal and strange, that much more fragile than before."

But at least nobody got blown up/burned up/crushed/what have you today.

My roommate (on her quest for normalcy still) asked if Big Brother was going to be on tonight (no), and while checking this for her I found out that those still in the house only sorta know what went on. They got free sandwiches and Monica (from NY) was told her family was all right, though it says here one got injured. Will apparently also has friends in NYC. Honestly, that is so not fair and I think the game should either end or at least let people out or be able to contact people or SOMETHING. It's wrong to keep them in the dark about THIS. Can you imagine how they're going to react when they find out what happened a few weeks later?

Yes, I know that was damned trivial to comment on. Oh well, what the hell. It may be about as frivolous as I get on the weblog for the rest of this week.

"Almost precisely 10 years ago, the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in an unprecedented period of social and cultural frivolity. With the threat of nuclear annihilation diminished and the need for military spending reduced, the ’90s were a time of wealth, fun, and disengagement from public life.
No institution was more affected by this new decadence than the media, which — to oversimplify — devolved from the heroism of Vietnam and Watergate to the hedonism of celebrity scandal. From O.J. to Princess Diana, from JonBenét Ramsey to Monica Lewinsky, the media elevated the trivial over the serious, exalting pop culture to the detriment of the public interest. Our national symbol was Bill Clinton, who may have been a policy wonk at heart, but whose wandering penis was always more interesting than his tedious 10-point proposals. Yes, there were terrible moments, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the various school shootings. Yet even these were subsumed by the media beast. They came to seem more like made-for-television dramas than like actual events.
But you could tell that the ’90s — which no doubt will be remembered as a wondrous interlude — were running out of steam when the media horde closed in on Gary Condit. There was something old, tired, perfunctory about it. It’s not that Condit was caught up in something more awful and therefore less entertaining than the deeds that had ensnared his media predecessors. After all, no matter what may have happened to Chandra Levy, it was surely no worse than the fate that befell Nicole Brown Simpson. Rather, it was that the cultural moment had passed, even if we hadn’t yet realized it.
We realized it this week, when the ’90s finally, emphatically, sickeningly came to a close. And we entered, blindly, a terrifying new century."

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Yet another weblogger sounding in on the plane attacks, late.
Ironically, I had a busy week last week with a bunch of last-minute stuff, and was thinking yesterday "Well, this should be a more relaxing one."

I found out what happened on the bus today- the driver had seen it on TV before his shift. I found it hard to believe that was real- the towers part, anyway, which was what I heard- and then it started raining as I was walking to work from there. Pretty depressing. Appropriate. Knew I'd have a busy day at work, much like this one. But as many people said today, this SO seemed like a movie or some other macho work of fiction.

"I had never considered airplanes as criminal vehicles. Clearly I hadn't read the Nelson DeMille novel, "The Lions Game," in which a bad guy travels untraceably in small airplanes, flying below radar and landing secretly to do his dirty work. Nor have I read the Tom Clancy thriller that ends with a suicidal airline pilot diving into the Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress. And apparently, according to Slate's Tim Noah, the white supremacist tract "The Turner Diaries" features an anti-government lunatic flying his plane into the Pentagon.
And the only way a commercial airliner would fly right into a building, I knew, is if the crew were dead.
Pilots are trained to save the ship first. If that's not possible, they concentrate on saving the passengers. If it's clear that everyone on board is doomed, then their last goal is to avoid killing anybody on the ground." (more on possibiliites with regards to the pilots)

At work, I was SO distracted. I had to type up a ton of sports scores and other random crap that I knew would probably not make the paper, and I couldn't think and I'm surprised I didn't typo more, given the way I was going. I didn't know how I'd function given that I had an interview that morning with regards to something like this, and then she called to cancel because her parents were stuck at an airport and they were trying to figure out how to get them out of there. An editor asked me to work on a story for the end of the week, and I couldn't stop thinking "I can't deal with this right now! I can't deal with anything NOT this!" I'm glad I wasn't sent out to get the reaction stuff with pretty much everyone else; I don't think I was exactly up to it. I spent the morning on 3WA chat checking to see that everyone was still alive (they are). Then I freaked out when my mom vaguely mentioned Lawrence Livermore Lab possibly closing, and it occurred to me that if and when we do go to war, guess what town (i.e. Nukeville) is a target? I remember Mom saying casually once that they didn’t bother building bomb shelters here because we’d be gone immediately if bombing started. Nice to know Moscow had their sights set on YOU.

"We're at war now, although we don't know yet know with whom."

"We have been told that our National Guard has been called out, several of whom are my students at the community college where I teach. They are so young, barely 18, and yet now they head off in to a veritable war zone of destruction. The term "acts of war" is being bandied about now, and every time I hear it my stomach flops over in horror. I talked to an older woman whose son is my friend; she was in tears because already my friend talks of enlisting, in fighting whoever or whatever evil has done this. She is in tears because she could lose her son, and because he does not seem to understand that the concept of "an eye for an eye" is quite possibly what brought us here in the first place."

And that’s what freaks me out. What if they do a draft? What if they take my friends? What if they do more bombing tomorrow? In California? I figure I’m okay since I live in a poky little town (and now I actually see the benefits of this), but what about my parents in Nukeville? What about my best friend in San Francisco? What about the relatives back East (none of whom live in New York or DC, fortunately)? What if this starts WW3?

"Life goes on, even though it seems like it shouldn't."

"Tomorrow, I will get up, shower, and go to work. I’ll try to perform my job and act as if it’s a normal day. But if today is any indication, that’s going to be very hard to do.
People have said that we need to go back to our routines; we need to pretend everything is OK. If we crumble and let grief dictate our actions, we “let the terrorists win.” We need to be strong and go on with our lives as usual.
I strongly disagree. In fact, I think that attitude sucks.
It’s like a slap in the fact to those who have lost everything- their lives, and the lives of their family and friends – to try and pretend everything is OK; to pretend it’s just another day. Because it’s not. It’s not OK and I don’t think it ever will be totally OK again. Those terrorists didn’t only destroy lives, they destroyed our faith. The faith that we live in a country where nothing “this bad” could happen. The faith that the rest of the world honors and values human life in the same way that we do. The faith that we can get up every day and live our lives and at the end of the day, we’ll still be there, surrounded by the people we love."

To me, it's like the world is stalled in this. I don't care about anything much else going on in the world right now. I don't much want to deal with my postponed-till-hopefully-tomorrow interview. A lady came in to complain about how an AP report on her dead daughter was all wrong, and I couldn't really concentrate or care, I just gave her our cops reporter's number. Thinking took great effort and still is, as does writing this. I wanted to go home, like most other people were doing (the ad staff all went home early- nobody's gonna want to buy an ad today), but obviously that doesn't happen in the newspaper biz.

I’m rather amazed at how my roommate is acting like things are normal. She’s watching movies, perfectly calm, and I can’t concentrate on anything else. I'm trying not to act like a basket case around her, but well, I am. I'm so on edge and tense. Not crying, but freaked. out. at the possibilities.

After deadline, we were all set out to do various local angle-y things (track down pilots, war vets, professor experts, cover meetings, yada yada). I went out to the blood bank, and I can tell y’all now, WAIT TO GO TO THE BLOOD BANK. Make an appointment, if you can get through to someone. Presumably I might link to these things tomorrow.

I have a enormous pile of silly kooky links to put up, but I am so not in the mood. Nor am I in the mood to check news sites any more. Instead, I shall link you to various journal entries/firsthand accounts/photos, which I'm not sorting through much so y'all might as well get different POV's, without a whole lot of blather because I still can’t concentrate much beyond a few cut and pastes.

WriterGirl, ravana, Byrne, Mike, Omar, Albie, Alisa, Aziz, Jan, Rich, Herb, Wil, David, Michelle, Gus, David, toothpick girl, lackadaisical, Susannah, Dan, Allen, JuliePamela, Cameron, saranwrap, Jami, Jeff Keith, Kim, Renee, Tom, Jeff. I'm tired now, for more journal links check here or here.

Monday, September 10, 2001
Life on Mars?!?

Monday, September 10, 2001
Having too much experience generally means you're older - and if you're over 30, your career is already ending

Monday, September 10, 2001
I've never liked Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
I swear, I thought I was the only one. And this guy apparently thought the same things as I did.

"And from my earliest days in front of the tube, I never really got Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. But I think it's something deeper. I just felt that Mr. Rogers wasn't talking to me.
The simple songs. The sweater. The ritual of changing into sneakers after walking in the door, like some dad I never had. His gentle, soothing way of talking about everything from divorce to getting a needle shot just didn't connect with a kid who was reading Isaac Asimov novels by age 9."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Paper dolls

Monday, September 10, 2001
Partnering
Oh, how I relate to and have thought this myself.

"Could someone please explain to me when and why "partner" overtook "significant other" as the preferred PC parlance? "Partner" makes me think of square-dances (Now do-si-do your partner), tennis, and law. I mean, isn't your "partner" the oogy person who drew your number on Field Day that you're stuck doing potato sack races with? Isn't it Tonto?" (I also tend to think of business partner, as well as "partner as euphemism to try to indiate gayness without being obvious about it." But the term's so general and nonspecific I don't always know what people are talking about when they use the word. They could own a business, could be a gay couple, could be a hetero unmarried couple rebelling against the patriarchy. Or whatever. I'm all confused!)
"Significant other" definitely has a syllabic disadvantage (6 vs. 2) but at least grants your spouse/ boyfriend/ girlfriend/ affianced person/ FB/ occasional companion/ stunt date/ etc. some kind of interpersonal status, and it signifies, that is "subtly or indirectly conveys meaning; suggests; implies". I remember a bunch of polyamorists at Organic getting up in arms when someone suggested at a meeting that their "primary" didn't really qualify as a "significant other", cause then what did they call their secondary, tertiary, auxiliary, pinch-hitter and so on. Nonetheless, I was just getting comfortable saying "Ess Oh" when I caught on to the new/old terminology. See, I thought "partner" as designation had died back in '91."

Monday, September 10, 2001
The Bride Stands Alone
In which a bride wanders around alone doing her normal daily routine. It’s art, donchaknow. On a similar note, someone made a ball gown out of 6,000 contraceptive pills.

Monday, September 10, 2001
Tech. Support. Sucks. ASS!
What's even scarier is realizing that no human is actually reading this guy's e-mails.

Monday, September 10, 2001
They love the Onion too
"During the American elections, the paper ran a now-celebrated story headlined "Bush Reaches Out To Hispanic Community With Generous Tip". The intro read: "Bush extended the hand of friendship to the nation's Hispanic community after leaving a larger-than-customary tip for waiter Ramon Gonzalez after eating at La Galeria, a trendy Chula Vista Bistro." HAH!

Monday, September 10, 2001
Choose Life on your license plate
"It was pro-choice vs. "Choose Life" Tuesday, as Planned Parenthood's South Carolina chapter sought to ban state issue of a license plate they said was unconstitutional. Arguing before a federal judge, the abortion-rights group said that in issuing license plates that feature the words "Choose Life," the state violates free speech by providing a forum for one political view but not another."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Censorship begins at home?
"Stymied by his failure to obtain an outright ban on Catcher in the Rye in Dorchester, South Carolina Schools, school board member Howard Bagwell simply checked out all the copies and then failed to return them. Mr. Bagwell says he's willing to just pay the fine if it means he can prevent students from being exposed to such a 'filthy, filthy book.'" Oh brother. Let's hope this guy's idea doesn't catch on.

Monday, September 10, 2001
In Bolivia, everyone's locked up while they do the census

Monday, September 10, 2001
The homepage has become the weblog
I have to admit that I found this one amusing and making quite a bit of sense, though I gotta say this hasn't er, exactly happened to me so far :P

Do you find yourself without a partner? Solo? Don't want to be?
What Miss Lonelyhearts advises is to get thee to blogger.com and get thyself a weblog, zippity pronto. I personally know of no less than 14 20 webloggers who are now involved with other webloggers.
Now why are weblogs surprisingly good e-yentas when match.com is not? Well, weblogs are like inviting 10,000 prospective dates into your living room where they can read the titles on your bookshelves, listen in as you slurp your soup, slap their knees when your jokes are hilariously funny and not lose face if/when you dis them. You can check out their online resume and assess their position on the fiscal responsibility vs. slackitude continuum. You can notice that they have good hair, or enjoy Donkey Kong. That they attend church. Groom their unibrow. Eschew housecleaning. Assuming he or she has a weblog too, you don't have to worry about devising your end game strategy after the third date when you belatedly discover they worked at the G.W. Bush campaign headquarters in 1999. Weblogs prevent such ugly surprises."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Racial issues
"Recently I received email from a white reader who responded to a previous article of mine by saying, "Why do black people always have to talk about race? White people have moved on," he claimed. "If black people would do the same, then there wouldn't be so many racial issues today." I responded by paraphrasing the great writer James Baldwin, who said that he didn't choose to write about race. He wrote about race because it was a door that he had to walk through every day of his life."

Monday, September 10, 2001
No one's using condoms these days

Monday, September 10, 2001
Oh for crying out loud in a bucket.
Speaking as both a Northern California native and resident (albeit now a bit higher up than where I originated from in the Bay Area), I am annoyed as hell by this. It just sounds so stupid and I don't want to be looped into this. Realistically, who's going to go divide up California even more in their references? Come on.

"Don't call it Superior California. Don't call it Alta California. And whatever you do, do not call it Northern California.
After decades of obscurity in the shadow of image-rich San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the rolling wine country, the 20 northernmost counties of the Golden State -- that New York-size chunk between Sacramento and the Oregon border -- have decided to break out a new identity.
Say hello to Upstate California.
"We're changing our name," said Robert Berry, a development specialist in the state's trade and commerce agency and president of the Upstate California campaign. "We've had an identity problem. We're commonly confused with other parts of the state that label themselves as Northern California." (Uh, because they ARE part of Northern California too?) "We need a distinction for businesses looking to invest and create jobs."
This is not the first time a group of Californians has tried to break out from the herd. There have been secession movements, efforts to divide the state into northern and southern sections, and even an abortive attempt by some area denizens to dissolve their California ties and merge with southern Oregon."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Here's a boring job for ya.

Monday, September 10, 2001
Laura Bush's Diary
"Like I've told him a thousand and one times, that "Shucks, I thought that was my water!" excuse is only good for the first gulp - after that, folks get downright suspicious.
You know, I am not asking the media to do anything unusual - or difficult. I am only asking them, when it comes to my daughters, to just do as I have always done --- ignore them."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Elsewhere

Monday, September 10, 2001
Chillin Woman
"You don't belong here and you do not participate. You are the dullest kid in the classroom -- there's always somebody there who’s thought up something you never even considered. You're there to breathe tupperware. Imagine a nice young bachelor grilling burgers -- on the grass. Imagine the Woman, greeting you, blue mystery and ambivalence, watching over the non-community. You're here to join a conformity that doesn't need you and doesn't rely on your womanhood.
You're here to survive. What happens to your brain and body when exposed to 57-degree heat, foggy moisture kissing your cheeks and chillin' you within minutes? You're here to imitate. Since everybody at Chillin' Woman is a spectator, you're here to copy other people's conformist world. You've bought a chair for chillin', a suit made of Polartec™, and a ball to toss. You're wearing a straw hat and a string of pearls, or maybe Timberland™ walking shoes for the first time. You're listening to Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys on your headphones."

Monday, September 10, 2001
You knew it was coming...Goldmember
"He'll also play title character Goldmember, a villain who, aside from providing the James Bond-spoofing title, has some unusual qualities that Myers and Roach will try to keep secret until the film's release." Gee, ya think one of them's gonna be that he has a gold...

Monday, September 10, 2001
Parents are stupid!

Monday, September 10, 2001
Oh, gag me. This one's ugly.
"There is nothing newsworthy about consensual sex between two unmarried adults, even if one of those supposed adults, acts badly. But, when a high profile public person stakes out the moral high ground, that person had better not be standing on quick sand." And it's not even about Condit or Clinton this week. The list of crimes: "Initiating a sexual relationship with Morgan Pillsbury, the daughter of his former lover; Impregnating said young woman, twenty years his junior; Abandoning her when she informed him of her pregnancy; Tacitly approving, despite his strongly-expressed pro-life views, of her decision to have an abortion."

Monday, September 10, 2001
It figures.
"Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Thursday that President Bush did not know how many of the 64 existing stem cell lines were fully developed and ready for research when he decided to limit federal funds to these lines.
Thompson said the president's decision was made on moral grounds, and would not have changed had Bush known that fewer than half of these cell colonies are fully developed today. Thompson's comments come a day after he met critics on Capitol Hill who argue that research may be hampered if there are not enough stem cells that qualify for the funds. Thompson acknowledged for the first time that just 24 or 25 of the 64 lines are fully developed."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Measuring penises in class?!?
Continuing the theme of fun in school, a headmaster has to pay a fine for keeping track of which of his students were still virgins. EW!

Oslo gets the Good School Samaritan award for "introducing late opening schools for 'lazy pupils' who want to sleep in until the afternoon. The City Council of Oslo is offering students aged 16 to 18 'late starts' at certain schools. They will start classes after noon. Officials think pupils will do better academically if they are not forced to work while still half asleep in the mornings." I shoulda grown up in Norway!

And anyone remember my mentioning an article about a principal who changed gender and people seemed surprisingly okay about it? Never mind. "I'd like to see enough pressure put on Dr. Reed to see him bow out gracefully," he said." Ack!

Monday, September 10, 2001
A million youngsters have jumped up and down on the spot to try and create a small earthquake.
"We generated something like a hundredth of a serious earthquake -- that's not an enormous amount of energy but it's significant."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Going to the funeral home and we're gonna get married.
"The couple say it is the perfect place to get married and have jokingly said they should be carried down the aisle in a casket."

Monday, September 10, 2001
Works of art created from human body fluids
Don't even need to say anything here, do I? Except drink cow urine!

Monday, September 10, 2001
Very scary
There is no god
The vampire thing is impressing no one

I'm not even gonna try to explain. It's all just very weird.

Monday, September 10, 2001
The Lord finally gives shoutouts to his niggaz
"Right about now, I want to send a shout-out to each and every nigga who's shown Me love through the years," said the Lord, His booming voice descending from Heaven. "I got mad love for each and every one of you niggaz. Y'all real niggaz out there, you know who you are. Y'all was there for me, and it's about time I'm-a give some love back to God's true crew."
Based on estimates of the number of rappers who have thanked Him in liner notes over the past 20 years, hip-hop experts say the historic shout-out is likely to continue through early next week.
Thus far, God has not played favorites, thanking such fallen-off acts as Hammer and Vanilla Ice in the same breath as vital artists whose careers are still going strong.
Despite the overwhelmingly positive response among rappers, the Lord is drawing fire in certain circles for His use of the word "nigga." On Monday's Larry King Live, conservative activist Rev. Calvin Butts, a longtime ally of the Lord, blasted Him for His "shocking, unexpected use of the racially loaded N-word." Some concerned parties, including decency crusader C. Delores Tucker, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and members of the San Francisco-based What About The Children? Foundation, are calling for a boycott of church services until God issues an apology."

Monday, September 10, 2001
The return of the long lost gay guy
"Johnston, whose For Better or For Worse comic strip appears in nearly 2,000 newspapers in 25 countries, is expecting another round of angry letters and canceled subscriptions -- all over a guy named Lawrence who's 2 inches tall and exists only on paper.
Until this latest series of strips, Lawrence hadn't been heard from for several years. From her home in Corbeil, Ontario, Johnston said she simply saw an opportunity to re-introduce the character. Despite the risks. "I wanted to broach it again, and enough people, including people who write to me, were saying it's time," she said. "And it's only fair that Michael (the groom) ask one of his friends to be his best man." (All I ask is, where the heck has he been for all those years?)
"If the mother (of the bride) is as wacky as she's turning out to be," Johnston added, "well, she has her own problem that'll be revealed later." I suspected that.

Here's an example of the lame alternative strip some papers have made her use. Which makes little sense.

Monday, September 10, 2001
I think I love her.
"Millay broke every rule and never paid the price for doing so. She was brainy and professionally successful and still men chased after her. She was shamelessly promiscuous and yet she ultimately found a husband who cherished her. She put her work first and never wound up alone and bitter because of it, having never, it seems, expressed the slightest regret at not producing a child. If there's any lesson to be learned from her life, it's that charm counts for more than virtue and that the best method for getting your way with men is not to put too much stock in them to begin with. Millay believed that romantic love was inevitably transitory, and this hard-headed attitude, despite the scenery-chewing she did when in the grip of her passion of the moment, was no doubt behind her choice of Eugen Boissevain."

Monday, September 10, 2001

"Don't you think it may hurt her deeply to hear you say that you were crazy until after the day you two broke up -- and now you're 'elated'?" NO kidding. And now she's also pregnant. I'm scared for that kid, lemme tell ya. Meanwhilel, poor Steve Martin seems to be trying to claim amnesia with regards to Ms. Voices In The Head. Boy, I bet he wishes he hadn't dated her by now.

Monday, September 10, 2001
Interview with the Waffle Woman
"MANAGER: Bonding with latex weasles??
WW: Yes. (brief pause) It's a hobby, everyone needs a hobby. It won't interfere with my job.
MANAGER: I'm having a hard time reading your application. Didn't you have a pen or pencil with you?
WW: I don't usually carry any pens or pencils, but I always carry Sparkle Crayons, Sparkle Crayons and Fruit Loops. I was going to use the blue Sparkle Crayon, you know - to match my cloak - but I decided to use the black. I think black's more professional. Don't you?
WW: If I get the job, will I be able to wear my mask and cape?
MANAGER: The cloak is probably a fire hazard...
WW: But what about the mask? I *don't* take off the mask.
MANAGER: I think we can work around that."

Monday, September 10, 2001
The funniest and yet most obvious article on its particular topic
No hookers, no porn in nursing homes in America. The men'll have heart attacks, and the women aren't going to want to help them out. Really, who came up with the idea to do this as an article? Presumably for its humor value (one woman literally runs out screaming at the idea), but it's such a DUH subject, you know?

Read it anyway. You'll laugh hysterically.

Monday, September 10, 2001
Never mind the dating, let's just get engaged like the good ol' days.
Apparently this 20 year old and 14 year old think it's better to just get engaged first and skip the heartbreak of dating and getting to know each other at the same time. Um, what the hell? If y'all don't get along that's not going to prevent you from breaking up.

(This is not linked to the actual NY Times story because it goes against my principles to link to "free registration" bullshit, but the Plastic discussion here is pretty funny.)

Monday, September 10, 2001
12 Latex Condits!

Monday, September 10, 2001
Nicole's husband Jeff says y'know a lot.

Monday, September 10, 2001
Two's a crowd
"A nightspot manager has solved the problem of queues in the ladies by putting two toilets in the same cubicle.
Mr Wilkinson said: "We weren't able to split the partition to create a third cubicle, so we put two toilets into one.
"We haven't had any bad responses. We did a survey beforehand and found out that a lot of the time, women go to the loo in pairs anyway."

I gotta say, ugh. Yes, I know we all go to the bathroom in groups, but I don't bloody want an audience while I pee either.