Thursday, September 11, 2003 9/11, on paper I don't have any "on this day in 2001" blog or journal entries to link to; I was in paper-journal-only–mode then. I've been feeling like I should type up some of my paper-journal entries, and I guess 9/11 is as good a place as any to start. Herewith, exactly what I wrote...
9/11/01
I don't think I've ever seen a sky without planes.
Popol i Diamant aside, lighting vodka doesn't seem to work.
Oddly enough, my spoken-aloud salute/toast/whatever was almost entirely not in English. Egyptian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hebrew, yes; in English, only "Peace" and "Amen." Which sums it up, I guess.
Oh, and Latin.
Requiem aeternam dona eis domine.
You know you're in trouble when they evacuate the Speaker of the House...
On the bright side, as J. pointed out, we're a hell of a lot more secure right now than anyone in Afghanistan.
I seem to be somewhat of a wimp. Just as the reaction I imagine myself having on the Titanic is inhaling a lot of water right away, the reaction I imagine having to a current disaster is swallowing every pill I have on me and hoping it knocks me out.
Well, not much I can do about being an inherent wimp, I guess. And drug-induced unconsciousness strikes me as being a better way out than jumping from a 100th-floor window.
It takes a surprisingly long time for a very tall building to collapse. And all you really see is the dust cloud going lower, as if it were climbing down the tower.
This is why it's a good thing we don't have earthquakes and tornadoes along the Eastern Seaboard. Our cities aren't built for disasters.
9/13/01
This is all very good for Gary Condit...
I suspect I'm going to get very sick of the phrase "war on terrorism." Can you even have a war that's not against a state? And you can have a war against Osama bin Laden and not even touch the Basques or the IRA or the Michigan Militia.
I think the most disturbing thing I've heard since Tuesday is a 14-year-old Muslim girl saying "I thought they were going to beat me with my own flag."
Must remind people that you can no more blame all Muslims/Arabs for this than you can blame all white people for Oklahoma City...
You know, it's almost kinda too bad that McVeigh isn't around to see himself get totally eclipsed. After he died congratulating himself for the deadliest terror attack on US soil. Well, maybe they have TV in hell. (In fact, I'm pretty sure they have TV in hell.)
9/14/01
Dad: Well, your brother's got the career of the future.
Me: So he still wants to be a New York City cop?
Dad: Openings, I guess.
Me: Aaahhhh...horrible but true.
9/15/01
You can tell it's getting back to normal when there are commercials on TV again.
9/19/01
"Operation Infinite Justice"? Who names these things?
(J.'s suggestion: Operation Smoke a Camel.) (And also: Operation Hot Date.) (And: Sand Blast and Rock the Casbah.) (Me: Operation Whack-a-Mullah, but don't tell anyone I said that.)
9/20/01
J.'s reaction to Bush's speech: "So to sum up, we're the world's policeman and God is on our side."
My reaction: getting "Deutschland über Alles" stuck in my head. Doubtless not the patriotic response I was supposed to have.
That's about all I wrote back then...for one thing, I lost the journal under a table for a while, and on 9/25/01, J. and I got engaged, which provided other things to write about.
One of these days I'll type up my Iraq War journal entries. (I actually started blogging with the intention of writing a war blog; but by the time I got started, the war, apparently, was over. Or at any rate it was out of the headlines and they were showing other stuff on MSNBC...)
