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Fine. You win.
The verdict is in and most people hate this new look.
I'll put the old layout or something like it back in the morning and go back to the drawing board.
Now leave me alone while I go contemplate why I spent five hours or more working on this today. First person who says it was a learning experience gets a foot up their ass.
At least those who took the bet.
I do believe the bet was for two out of three which, as you know, the Yankees took. Yes they did.
I'll be checking your blogs tomorrow to make sure you are 1) linking to me and 2) saying nice things about the Yankees.
Enjoy. Hey, enjoy your September, too.
Well, it's a work in progress.
This is way different than any design I've ever had in two and half years of blogging. Not only that, I did it on my own, mostly.
I took the template from Voices (you did see the design there, right?), which came from Miz Graphics and modified it until I had basically what I was going for. Something with a touch of fall and a drastic change.
That photo of that guy was taken by me, last Halloween in front of my house. Freaked us out, he did.
Anyhow, I just want to thank Stacy for teaching me everything I know, including patience.
There's some tweaking to be done, of course. But let me tell you, after the emotional days I've had this past week or so, working on this all day was great therapy.
And yes, it's true. Lenore, the little dead girl, is gone for good this time. Sorry to those of you who loved her so, but you can always purchase all kinds of Lenore stuff if you are so inclined over at Spookyland. When it re-opens, that is.
Now, back to blogging.
[Note: I still have to work on the comments templates and archive templates, so please don't say anything about the ugly black background]
UPDATE: Apparently this layout doesn't render well in Mozilla and I'm just too tired to find a hack for it right now. Sorry to those using that browser, but I just don't have the skills necessary to make a website work right in every browser that's out there and I'm afraid that at this point, you'll either have to deal or, like one guy said in an email, take this site out of your bookmarks.
There's a reason I haven't been blogging today.
Big changes coming.
So is Halloween.
I've been working on the design for the Voices site all morning - I wanted to have a design I like before I started putting up all the entries.
Yes, I am aware that things are buggy around here.
Word of advice: When working on one site, make sure the editing window of your other site is not open as well. Hilarity ensues. Stay tuned while I go stab myself with a fork.
It wasn't until hours later, after I left Faith, after the train ride back to the Island, after getting home and watching a movie with my husband and not until I put the discs in the computer and looked at the photos that I took today that I cried. And here I sit now, crying and typing and uploading those pictures.
I'm writing this straight from my head and my heart; no previewing, no editing. I just really want to get back on the couch and have a glass of wine with my husband and maybe watch a funny movie. So pardon any stilted writing or disjointed phrases. I've done this photoessay style, which turns out to be much better than just putting up pictures with captions because sometimes a photo deserves more than just a caption, sometimes it deserves a story or an emotion.
When you are standing there, looking down into a pit that used to be the foundation for two enormous buildings, and the last time you stood in that spot those buildings were still there, still alive with people, it's just hard to comprehend. All you see is a hole and dirt and the the facade where the subway used to be. And you see workers moving around and Caterpillar trucks driven by burly men smoking cigarettes and wearing hardhats and you think, ok, this isn't so bad, they've rebuilt so much already and maybe, just sitting here watching these men work, I can feel hopeful about what will rise here.
And then you look at the girders that surround the steel fencing that keeps you back from the site and you see the writing all over the girders, black Sharpie marks in a thousand different handwritings and so many different languages, some written by children and it breaks your heart in two. I had to swallow that lump in my throat and take my eyes off of the words of sorrow and the blessings and the poetry that read like a funeral dirge. And then you see the cross and you avert your eyes but youturn back and look again and your stomach does this giant leap into your throat.
And no sooner do I stop looking at the scrawled messages then I look up and see the big boards, the ones that look like marble but maybe aren't and they've got the names on them. The names of every victim, every person who died in and around that building, the workers who never saw it coming, the emergency workers who saw it coming and ran towards it, as is their life's work to do so, the people on the ground, all of them. So I take my camera and point it upwards and walk carefully, slowly towards the G's and I snap one, two, three, I don't know why I kept snapping those photos, I just did. And then I walked towards the R's and looked for Claude Richards and there he was and I snapped again, just two this time before I realized that I did not want to look for any more names of people I knew, people my father knew because - just because. We walked around and Faith was so patient because she had done this before, more than once and I know the last time she was there it was raining and she cried and she was hugged by a stranger and I know it was hard for her to do this again, to be my tour guide of sadness, but she did and she waited while I leaned my face against the fence, my fingers entwined on the metal grates and I stared. And stared. And I still could not comprehend that there used to be two towering buildings there.
We walked further and there were people selling things; trinkets and photo albums of the dead and dying, photos of the smoke and fire and little crystal replicas encased in plastic and I saw one man tentatively pick one of those trinkets up and the man who was selling them, who did not speak English, smiled at the other man and flicked his finger against the plastic case as if to say hey, this World Trade Center is fortified with polysomethingorother and look, it won't fall down! and I felt a bit sick at that.
A few more steps down, next to the people selling FDNY t-shirts and I Survived The Blackout t-shirts, there was a table of more, a sea more, of those plastic trinkets and behind that plastic garbage were three laptops with DVD players and they were all going loud and strong, music with the words of newscasters talking to the beat and the images, all those images, the planes crashing and burning and people running and sobbing. Why? Why would they play that right there? Would it make people by more plastic towers? Why didn't I take my arm and sweep it across the table like someone in a movie would do? I had this sudden image of that scene in Jesus Christ, Superstar, where Jesus goes into the temple and knocks all the wares off the tables and I just choked back my anger and moved on.
We walked some more, I think we were on the west side of the pit now, I'm not sure but on my left were the buildings, the lesser known buildings in this act, the minor characters who still played an impact, which I think is called fifth business in some industry or other. I could see the scars on the buildings and this one was draped in black. Have you ever seen a building draped in black? Like it was in mourning. On the next building there was a mural and I went snap, snap, snap again, just shooting and thinking and maybe keeping myself from looking the other way, where you could still see parts of the concrete of the original foundation and I needed to keep my mind from going in the direction it was headed, which would be the direction where you start thinking about that day and all the strewn pieces of whatever once laid in a heap down there.
And then we were done, I didn't want to see anymore. I had enough. I had enough of the smiling tourists asking people to take their pictures while they held their girlfriends hand and smiled in front of those girders and the workers and right under the plaques with the names of the dead. Enough of the people lining up to buy their photos of fire and their books of the dead with labels like Tragedy! Horror! and enough of the messages of hope and love and Jesus Saves.
And now I'm home and looking at the pictures and I still can't help but wonder why. I mean, even if I know why, even some people think they know why but they don't, I will never understand it and I don't think I want to.
But if feels good to cry. I don't do that enough. I think I'll have that glass of wine now.
I'm here at Faith's apartment in New York City. It is orange. I mean really, really orange. Even her toilet bowl is orange.
She wanted me to blog from her computer because she thinks I have some magic power that will rub off on her.
More on my day when I get home.
This has been a message from the Blog Away From Home system.
Blogging will be non-existent until later tonight.
I am going into NYC today and meeting up with Faith. And then Faith is going to take me by the hand and lead me over to Ground Zero. I have never been there. I just could not, in almost two years, bring myself to view that place.
I know it looks remarkably different now than it did even one year ago. But I am not going so I can see it, I am going so I canfeel it. It's just something I need to do, and there is no other person I would have standing there with me than Faith.
I just want to thank Faith and the wonderful Rossi for being something akin to soul sisters to me when it comes to this subject. They've held my hand for a long time in regards to 9/11 and my never-ending sorrow, anger and grief. They know, because they feel it, too.
Working on the Voices project is a daunting task. I still have 45 emails yet unread, contributions to this gathering of stories. I will get back to each and every one of you and I will begin in earnest tomorrow getting the stories up and the site ready for the anniversary.
Thank you to everyone who has sent a story or linked the project. It's going to be bigger than last year (which had about 100 contributions) and in many ways, the stories this year are more hopeful.
I am closing the comments over at Voices for various reasons. I don't want such a personal place to turn into a political or ideological debate and I certainly do not want anyone's memories or words tarnished by trolls flinging hurtful comments around. If you do want to leave your own story in the comments instead of sending an email, do it right here or, as many people are doing, email me.
I'll be back tonight with plenty of pictures of Faith and myself romping through the city, a little bit of sorrow and hopefully, a shopping bag full of comic books.
Meanwhile, share your voice.
Operation Help Nina's Brother
Nina's brother is in the army in Afghanistan (10th Mountain Division) and they're currently stationed on a base and bored out of their minds.
They could use some reading material from us here on the home front. He requested Maxim, although I'm sure FHM, Stuff, Gear, Razor or, frankly, any other magazine would do. Or books. Or anything at all, really, although I'm not sure how Knitting Quarterly would go over.
Apparently, they also have a playstation and so if you have any old games you're done with, we'll be happy to forward them as well.
I'll be sending some books, games and magazines. What about you?
Go see Swerdloff about it.
You don't see me belting out an opera tune, do you?
Please remember that the bet was for the series, all three games.
I'll let you in on a secret: I used my special voodoo power to make sure the Sox won last night's game. See, I think it's really very amusing to watch Red Sox fans get their hopes up so high and then...well, you know what happens after that.
Round 2 today.
Dean Esmay on Judge Moore and CommandmentPalooza:
Because America's a good, decent place, and future generations will likely be appalled at the anti-Christian paranoia that's led to to ordering him to take those words down.
This has nothing to do - at least on my part - with being anti-Christian and I am insulted that Dean thinks that is where my feelings on this come from.
Judge Moore put that monument there in the middle of the night, without permission.
Judge Moore is a carnival barker, playing this for all he can, getting those born-every-minute suckers to genuflect before a hunk of stone while he does his proselytizing before the television cameras.
It wouldn't matter if he were Jewish, Wiccan or Buddhist - it wouldn't even matter if he were an atheist Secular Humanist touting his beliefs by propping them up on the courthouse steps.
What Judge Moore did was wrong and he was called on the carpet because of it. I, for one, think that this is what Moore wanted all along. A grand circus playing out before him, his fifteen tv minutes where he and his followers can cry about freedom of religion while I sit there and yell at the tv about my freedom from religion.
The bottom line is that monument had no business being placed there at all, especially in the sneaky manner in which it arrived.
I am not anti-Christian. I am anti-people who think they are above the rules and laws. Note, I said rules and laws, not commandments. The commandments are not legal matters that I am beholden to. I do not have to worship that one God that other people do. That makes the rest of the commandments moot for me which is fine, because I have the laws of this country to follow.
It is not "anti-Christian" paranoia that led to the graven image being removed; it's simply a legal matter that a man who is a Judge should think about obeying without putting up a pathetic fight.
Tell me, Dean, would you be so eager to defend a person who wanted the basic ideology of the Koran carved in stone and placed in the Courthouse?
Voices: Stories from 9/11 and Beyond.
Contribute. Read.
[Please pardon the way the Voices site looks while I break tinker with it]
The kids will be home from their trip to Boston soon (I hope, it seems the deep fog has made traffic in and around NYC dreadful) and I have to do all that travel laundry and pack them up again so they can leave for Toronto with their dad tomorrow.
I don't want them to go. Besides the fact that I really miss them, I just feel bad that they will get home tonight, spend a few hours sleeping in their own bed and then get back in a car tomorrow for yet another trip. I know they will have fun once they get there (maybe) but I just feel sorry for them because by the time they get home on Tuesday, they'll be getting ready for school which starts the next day.
Natalie just called from the car and she's in a mood. I heard DJ screaming in the background, stop looking at me!
Well, they will certainly be exhausted and incredibly whiny when they get home tonight, so I guess that will make it easier to see them off tomorrow.
Kids, can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em.
This is Jeffrey Lee Parson, also known as teekid, also known as the guy who wrote the code for the Blaster virus. Here is a screenshot of Mr. t33kid's website, and another, from the Google cache. He is a l33t hax0r. Or was. On his former website (which now just shows an Apache marker), you could actually download viruses (virii?) so you, too could spread them around the internet and cause havoc and mayhem.
Oh what fun it must be to be a l33t hax0r! To sit in your basement all day, sweat staining your t-shirt, mom bringing you big glasses of Jolt soda, making jokes with your other hax0r friends. What a life!
I really want to smack this shitstain upside the head. I mean, look at him. Did this kid ever get out of the house? You can tell from a black and white photo that he has that pasty skin that people who never leave the house often have. Obviously, the only exercise this guy got was doing keyboard push-ups.
As my battle cry says: "I'm going to flog you until the laws of physics are violated!"
I really hate hackers. Though I think we are supposed to call morons like this crackers and not hackers. Whatever, I still want to kick his ass. Being that I can't do that, I could just ask you all to take your Photoshop skills to his picture and be mean about it.
UPDATE: Ok, since someone mentioned Jabba:
There has been much ado about Indymedia on this site lately. And not just here. It seems some of the folks within Indymedia, specifically the NYC site, are getting a little fed up with all the self-moderating that goes. Though Indymedia claims to have rules and regulations for hiding or eliminating posts, it seems that most of the deletions are driven by the agenda of whoever is moderating that particular site at the moment.
One of my big issues with Indymedia is Latuff. For the past few days, I've noticed that many Latuff posts are getting hidden. The Indymedia folk seem to be running scared and getting rid of Latuff's anti-semitic, hateful, bloody posts soon after they are posted.
However, the question remains among the denizens of Indymedia: Is Latuff anti-Semitic? In my eyes, there is no doubt. But that is neither here nor there.
As written here by an IMC moderator, some of their rules for banning a post are:
- Posts that contain generalized and negative assertions about any race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc.-
Posts that advocate the mass physical elimination of a specific race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc, or that link to websites that advocate the same.
Take a stroll through Indymedia on any given day and you will see plenty of the above. Latuff, who has been quite the subject of controversy on IMC and, until this week, has seen pretty much free reign on the American IMC sites.
Latuff does not just hate Israel and its inhabitants. He hates America. But that's not a big issue, as (a) Latuff isn't even American and (b) it's pretty much in vogue to hate America now. It's how he carries out his statements that bother me so much. He doesn't just want America to lose the war in Iraq - he wants the U.S. soldiers dead. He wants Israelis dead. And he makes no effort to hide his sentiments. Meanwhile, IMC lets this all go on, declaring that no, Latuff isn't being anti-Semitic at all! He's just pro-Palestinian.
I like to think that I had something to do with the subtle earthquake taking place on some of the IMC sites right now. I called them out, and others followed. A stream of posters went from this site to various IMCs and took them to task for the censorship policies when they are, in fact, supposed to be against censhorship.
So, let's back to the question of Latuff. Is he just an artist expressing his views without really calling for violence, without really being anti-Semetic, or is he a hateful man who wants to watch his enemies bleed and uses IMC to put those views across?
Your call. Click each for bigger image. And there's more where these came from.
[via Nukevet]
Scott Brodeur of Mass Live has taken the Red Sox/Yankees challenge one more step:
Emails Scott:
I will take you up on your Sox-Yanks bet thing. And what about this
sweetener? If there is a sweep, the fan of the losing team must post a
digital photo of her/himself on their site in a garment bearing the
insignia of the winning team?
You're on. Looking forward to seeing you in a Yankees cheerleading outfit. Or maybe just a cap.
Anyone else? Think about it carefully. Do you really want to mess with a higher being?
[Scott also has a bit up about Freakies cereal, the coolest cereal ever - besides Kaboom]
And speaking of sports, I have joined Kevin's excellent sports blog, where I will be musing in OpEds and covering local teams. Go, look. He's done a great job putting this blog together.
[I’ve been trying to get in touch with the author of the comic referenced below. My email to him was bounced back and his site seems to be gone. If anyone knows anything about the whereabouts of Jon “Bean” Hastings, please contact me]
There’s a trade paperback titled 9-11 Emergency Relief. It’s a collection of comics by rather well-known comic artists and writers sharing their stories of September 11.
I’ve read it at least ten times. It’s poignant, it’s sad and at some points it is hopeful. I took it out again yesterday after I became emotionally beaten down while reading all of the stories sent to me for Voices.
I was struck by this one entry from Jon “Bean” Hastings. I don’t have a scanner handy at work, so I will just reprint the relevant words:
Basically, it starts off with Jon himself sitting in front of the tv, watching the news on September 11, 2001. A face that extends from the tv is yelling at Jon telling him that his cartoons are no longer important in the face of all that has happened.
How can you draw your ‘funny books’ with all this carnage and sadness and pain and ruin?! the face shouts at him. To which Jon responds: Why ever bother picking up a pencil again? And then:
Because...
Because stories give us hope.
Expressing our thoughts and feelings is what gives us our humanity. Through stories we can share our grief, our outrage, our horror, but also our dreams, our memories, our hopes for the future.
That’s what they can’t take away and that’s what they don’t understand. We are all more alike than we are different. We are connected by stories.
[Images of Jon turning off the tv and sitting down at his drawing table and these words above his head]:
---- All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story....
—Isak Dinesen
This is what I had in mind when I created No Ordinary Morning last year and decided to carry on with Voices this year.
Because stories give us hope.
I wanted to get permission from Jon Hastings to use his comic on the Voices page, but he seems unreachable at this point.
Just go buy the book. There’s so much more you should see in those pages.
Yanks. Red Sox. Three games. Fenway. September approaches quickly and the Yanks are up by 4 1/2 5 games over the hated Sox.
Jim, a vile, disgusting Red Sox fan (is there any other kind) has offered up a little wager. He wants to bet that the Sox take two of three from the Yanks. Winner gets a daily link from the loser, plus the loser has to say nice things about the winner's team.
What a sucker. He's on.
Any other Red Sox fans want to take this bet? Solly? Ed?
Sure, I may eat my words later, but what's a little fun between friends to break up the dread of September?
"You got a guy here. People stuck in the stairway. Open up the goddamn doors!"
Imagine my horror when I went to the CNN page this morning and saw an image of the Word Trade Center towers, smoking, burning, on the verge of collapse.
My stomach clenched and my heart stopped, briefly. Of course, the towers couldn't be burning again, because they are no longer there. Still, seeing that image jarred the most basic part of my memory from that day. That entire sinking, drowning feeling hit me with full force.
I recovered within seconds and my stomach eased itself back into place before it went into a tailspin all over again, reading the transcripts of the Port Authority radio and phone transmissions from 9/11.
Christine Olender died along with 72 other Windows on the World employees and nearly 100 people who rode the elevators to the 106th floor restaurant for breakfast that morning. Among the diners were stockbrokers who worked in the towers, executives attending a conference and Neil Levin, the executive director of the Port Authority.
"We're getting no direction up here. We're having a smoke condition ... We need direction as to where we need to direct our guests and our employees, as soon as possible," Olender told Officer Steve Maggett, a Port Authority police officer who fielded numerous frantic calls to a police desk based at the World Trade Center.
So much for that French hack who thought that he needed to make up the stories of the victims in that restaurant.
The argument today will be between those who thought it necessary to release these transcripts and those that are horrified. And, even then, there will be sub-arguments between those on either side. Should they have been released to get a better grip on what went wrong? Or was it so we would relive the horror of the victims so we would never forget? Perhaps the New York Times is just looking to be sensational or, and one can never forget the arguments that come flying at you from the far left, perhaps they were released by Karl Rove, in an attempt to get Bush to look sympathetic again?
Most of the families of the Port Authority employees - and the Port Authory itself - were against the tapes being released, and it's obvious why. The pain, still fresh only two years later, would now be compounded by knowing the dread, the fear and the sorrow of their loved ones last minutes.
“I agree with the PA completely. This isn't going to help anybody, and this isn't going to save anybody in the future - this is only going to hurt the people involved in it,” said Sonny Goldstein, whose daughter was killed on 9/11.
So why release this 2,000 page transcript? Does the New York Times think it will accomplish anything drastic in the field of emergency services by making the last words of the victims of a terrorist attack public? I'm skeptical that knowing these words and actions will do any good; mainly because the Port Authority itself is skeptical.
260 hours of disjointed phrases like:
"Yo, I've got dozens of bodies, people just jumping from the top of the building," a male caller said.
"They said another plane just ... flew by and hit Building 2."
"Evacuate the building! Hit the stairwells and get the heck out of here."
"Honey, when the building started coming down, I ran for my life, honey! I survived."
Perhaps these transcripts will jar the emotions of those who have become complacent or those whose mantra has become get over it, already. I'm not sure how I feel about these tapes but, then again, it's not father or daughter whose voices are heard on the tapes. I just observe. I just feel the same exact way I did on that Tuesday morning almost two years ago.
Nothing can bring these people back, but nothing can make us forget. I think we all need a little push into the frame of that day once in a while.
*From transcript here
I'm reading Fishticks: The Rise and Fall of The New York Islanders. Coincidentally, Metro TV was showing an Islander retrospective today, going back to the good old days of four Stanley Cups and the greatest team ever assembled on ice. Gillies, Nystrom, Bossy, Trottier. The ultimate team.
I was there when the Islanders one their second championship, against the Minnesota North Stars. Watching the team circle the ice with the cup held up high, standing right there watching it - that was one of my best sports fan moments ever.
I miss the old days of hockey. I miss the guys without helmets, Ron Duguay's hair flying in the wind, bare-knuckle punches landing on hardened heads.
I miss the bench-clearing brawls, sticks and gloves littering the ice, Billy Smith leading the charge from the opposite end of the rink, goaltenders locked in battle. I miss the old Flyers and Bruins, the ones who would climb into the stands to beat up on fans. I miss the rivalry between the Rangers and the Islanders, one that is just a shadow of its former self, with none of the vile emotion that used to carry it.
I can never get enough of watching Clark Gillies one-punch Terry O'Reilly into neverland. Old Time Hockey. Back when men were men and the Islanders uniform did not have the Gorton's fisherman on it.
Call me a neanderthal, I don't care. I miss Bobby Clarke and Dave Semenko and Dave "Tiger" Williams and Dave Schultz.
The Islanders were ruined by bad management and ownership who did not understand, or care about, the fans. Hockey was ruined by people who did not understand what they fans came to the game for. Sure, a smooth-skating, high-scoring game is exciting. But given the opportunity to watch Gretzky slink his way around the boards and try to evade being checked because he might, you know, break, and the opportunity to once again see a game that lies just short of something out of Slapshot, I'll take a combination of the two.
Old time hockey. Eddie Shore.
I'm not going to add my own memories to the Voices project; I do that here enough and that project is for everyone else to share their stories.
I've been going through the scrapbook my mother kept in the days following 9/11. I know, it seems weird to keep a scrapbook of such an event, but I guess it was my mother's way of coping when she couldn't console my father. It just hit me right now, two years later, that I was so concerned about how my father was getting through the long days of nights of bad news after bad news and funeral upon funeral, that I didn't realize my mother was probably as much of a wreck as my dad. After all, she knew all those firemen, too. I see by looking through her scrapbook that her heart was broken. You can tell in the care and personal touch she put into compiling every story of 9/11.
I went back and looked through my archives from 2001 and then from this time last year. If time heals all wounds, I'm not feeling it yet. I'll probably post a lot of repeats in the coming days. Just because I need to.
Written last September:
Three Years Later: Moving Forward
The thing I remember most about the early part of that day is the weather. It was a perfect day; the sky was a deep, cloudless blue and the air was filled with the comforting warmth that comes when summer starts slinking into autumn.
What I remember most about the moments after the news broke was my drive home from work. I fled my federal office building in a panic that day, still not sure if more attacks were coming, if they were happening elsewhere, if the world was ending. I drove east, towards my home, but kept looking back in my rear view mirror at the brown, smoky haze filling the sky. My hands were shaking and tears were streaming down my face and I was frightened, so frightened, because we didn't know. We did not know what would come next, or if that was the end. I looked at every car that drove next to me, at every other driver at the stop lights. They were all crying or wide-eyed or clutching their steering wheel so hard I could see their knuckles turning white.
When I got home, I woke Justin, who was still sleeping after spending all night working on a project. In my fear and disbelief, I blurted out something like, wake up the world is ending, and we turned on the television and stared for hours and I just remember this numbness going through me, the goosebumps of fear and horror that rose on my arms. Justin's mother called from Pennsylvania. It was her birthday. We talked to her for a while, assured her we were ok and then she told us to stock up on toilet paper. There was no point in wishing her a happy birthday.
What I remember most about the subsequent days is the sky and the silence. The roar of planes is a constant soundtrack when you live so close to an airport. But for those days, four of them I believe, there was not a sound coming from the skies. The silence was so huge, so cavernous, and the only thing you could see when you looked up to the sky was thin wisps of smoke rising from the west. Those days seemed like they were lived out in a dream world.
What I remember most about the nights are the candles. On the sidewalks and curbs, on stoops and porches and stairs and driveways, lined up like soldiers of flame. It was beautiful and sad, so very sad and I wondered how far a line of candles would stretch if we lit one for every victim, and the family members of every victim.
I remember these things because I never forget anything. I have never forgotten the night when my family stood out on the porch, flipping the porch light on and off in some odd celebration when the Vietnam War ended. I can remember what Natalie was wearing the day the Gulf War started - the day she took her first steps. I remember air raid drills in grammar school, questioning the futility of holding your head between your legs as bombs were going off and thinking that if it ever did come down to that, I was just going to run for it, out the front door of the school, up the slope, across the street and down the block all the way home where I would hold my mother tight and she wouldn't make me spend my last moments crouched in a hallway.
I keep every memory locked away, not just the big parts of the memories, but the little things too; the way the air felt, the way the sky looked, the smells and sounds that shared the moment with me. I write it all down, every last detail and I never forget anything.
What I remember about the first few nights after that day was hugging my children a little too tight, a little too often. I remember clinging to Justin and walking across the street to my parents' house every few minutes and just sitting there with them, not saying anything, just staring at the tv and crying. I remember feeling like one big walking cliche when I told everyone how thankful I was to have them in my life.
What I remember most about the next month is thinking how much this space meant to me at that time. How the people who read this weblog embraced me in my sadness and fear, how my words came to mean something to various people, how I had a place to get it all down, every last detail, every last sigh and tear, and how important it became to share. One year later, I still have that need, it is still important to me, and I will still continue to record every memory so that some day, I will remember everything; not just the funerals and memorial services and falling bodies and crumbling cement and steel, but the candles and the voices lifted in song and any glimpses of hope and love that lay among the rubble of the day.
I suppose the perfect thing to take my mind off of all the 9/11 stuff and Indymedia and Mars making people go insane for a while would be the MTV Video Music Awards. There's just so much to look forward to:
Christina Aguilera dressing like a nun
James Hetfield trying to growl like he used to but just looking very constipated
50 Cent singing out of the side of his mouth
Mary Kate and Ashley looking very grown up
Madonna and Britney swapping spit
Or I can just stick pins in my eyes and run my nails down a blackboard a few times. Should have the same result, with less time wasted.
Back to being a zionazi, then.
I'm trying to figure out a way to make the Voices project more readable than it was last year. I don't want people to have to scroll eight miles down a page to read all the stories because most likely they won't. Yet I want all the stories to be right there, at a glance, preferably with the author's name and a title for the story. I guess all as separate links so if someone wanted to link to a specific story, they could.
Is that making sense? Anyone have any ideas?
UPDATE: What I meant was I wanted to do it without MT tricks, because I didn't want to make each story and individual post. This is more of a design/creative question than a technical one, but I'm probably making sense only to myself, so I'll just go stand in the corner now.
[Thanks, Chris]
You guys really outdid yourselves on that caption contest. I'm still laughing over here.
Just how much do those Iraqis hate us for giving them freedom from Saddam? This much:
An Iraqi couple has named their 6-week-old baby boy George Bush to show their appreciation for U.S. efforts to force Saddam Hussein out of power.
"He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him," the baby's mother, Nadia Jergis Mohammed, told the Associated Press Television News. "It was George Bush who liberated us; without him it wouldn't have happened."
Notice they didn't name the kid Jacques Chirac.
Yep, they really hate us, don't they?
Even if I the gods of Mars have aligned to allow me brief access at work, it does not matter. I've been on a vacation for a week. Any idea what my desk looks like today?
I do have something for you to do while I'm hard at work, though.
Caption either of these two pictures taken in Alabama at CommandmentPallooza.
I've been having fun imagining just what that soul-enriched, commandment loving man in the first picture is saying.
Fake prizes awarded later. Have fun, entertain me while I slay the file monster residing on my desk.
I realize that the mood of this blog is cyclical, much like my own moods. You can pretty much check your calendar and figure out which days I will be writing angry, vulgar responses to moonbats and which days I will be introspective and which days I will find comic relief in absurd stories. Sometimes, I get fixated. I know this, as it happens away from the computer as well.
Once my mind goes in a direction, once I get the fire lit under my ass to delve into a particular subject, there is no rest for the weary. Or the wicked. I go in full tilt, sometimes obscuring everything else that needs my attention.
I've got a folder filled with links about the Yankees and comic books and those stupid little stories you find at Obscure Store or Fark. I've got a folder with ideas for contests and pictures to photoshop and people to pick on. But not today. Maybe not even this week.
I'll be stuck on the whole 9/11 issue for at least two weeks. I suspect that if it goes like last year, once that day passes I will emerge feeling relieved and and with a bit more sense of closure, though that closure will probably never fully be realized, a fact which I am okay with.
In addition to the raw, honest and nearly heartbreaking emails I've received about the Voices project, I get mail that says things like Can you please write about something else, this is getting boring. Or, that's not what I come to your site for, you are being depressing. And the ever present, Stop being so self-centered. Get over it. Move on. The world is not about you or your feelings.
Oh, but guess what people? This blog is mostly about me and my feelings, so why don't you just turn the dial for a little bit, go find a blog where the talk is cheap, the girls are cheaper and the beer is warm and you can come back here next month or so for your bottle of Cristal and your thousand dollar hooker.
No idea where that came from. It makes no sense, but it was fun to write.
Of course, this could all be the product of PMS. Yea, just like a woman to blame her mood swings on hormones. Deal with it.
It's going to be one of those days when my teeth will remained clenched and the residue of last night's dreams will haunt me all day and people will just piss me off to no end and there will be nothing I can do about it because I go back to work today and, as we all now know, there is no internet access from work, so no venting, no spleening, no screaming at the walls of cyberspace because my sister, who normally would post my screeds for me when I email them to her, is on vacation.
I have my ways, however. There are way too many people who have a login to my Moveable Type. You cannot keep me down! I will not be silenced! I...
I better go before you all realize that today is the day I've completely lost my mind.
If I can't blame it on Mars then I blame it on seeing this.
Someone help me out with this, please. I'm just too weary to write anything but a string of curses.
Excerpts:
That what happened was a tragedy can't be denied. That it was a lesson that America needed to learn can not be denied either, and sadly, it was.
She's [meaning me] angry at the people who hijacked the planes, the people who sent them there, the people who paid for it, and mostly (it seems) at anyone who utters one "anti-american" word in reference to the events. I suppose that means she's gonna be angry at me too, and that's a shame...
The people who hijacked the planes, the people who sent them there, and the people who've paid for it all......they are religious idealists and bigots....to blinded by there own hatred to see what they are doing. Much like the American government.
But the instituions that comprise the American government, that's a different matter. They've committed far to many crimes to be forgotten. Literally millions dead at their hands, entire countrysides laid waste and baren due to their presence, sovereign nations and cultures interferred with to suit American purposes.
What I am saying, is that America (the governent) has waged war upon the world for a long time now, and America (the people) have done nothing about it. I'm saying that it's not surprising that religious and extremist groups are starting to do to America...exactly what America has done to them.
At the same time, there was an undercurrent of optimism. Now, at least, Americans would come to understand how people overseas felt when the US military came to town, when the CIA played with there goverments and their destinies. Now Americans would understand, and empathise, and hold there own leaders accountable. It didn't take long for me to realize the futility of my hopes.
You're right sweetheart, it was no ordinary day. It was a day when everything should have changed. And it did....alas not for the better. You are right to remember your dead, but unless you remember theirs, they will keep on coming back to haunt you.
I don't know what to say right now. Someone say something for me, please?
I'm completely exhausted and I have to stop working on Voices for the night or my mind will explode. I wore myself out mentally today.
Thank you to everyone who sent sent stories for the project. They made me cry, they made me feel warmth and they made me feel sorrow. And that's all ok, because as long as the warmth is there, as long as I feel like there are people who are willing to hold hands and share once again, it's ok.
I'll start putting the stories up on the page tomorrow night.
I'll be accepting stories right up until September 10. Please, contribute your voice, share your words.
Note to Spiderman (and his mom): Thanks for the postcard. You made my day.
I think I read this somewhere - perhaps it was one of those Nostradamus books, but I don't remember, so I'll just quote it as best I can from memory. If that memory serves me right, we are doomed.
"And so it will be that when the stone symbol is removed from its base and god is thusly murdered, on the same calendar month that the planet of Mars causes buildings to explode in India, in the same week Mars causes a shift in hormones that shall make women want to lay down with a monster called Frankenstein, then that is when the apocalypse shall come forth and obliterate us once and for all. And not a moment too soon, I tell you."
Scary shit out there, folks. Be careful. And whatever you do, don't look directly into the face of Mars or you will spontaneously combust. I think Nostradamus said that too.
I ask, she makes. What more could someone want from a master?
Feel free to steal it, but save it to your own damned server or I'll bust a cap in yo ass.
Don't forget, the friend of an enemy is an enemy as well, so that makes all of you enemie
