911

Kudos to The Onion

by

I just got a look at the most recent issue of The Onion, and I have to say that it’s very, very well done. If you’ve not read them before, The Onion is one of the more biting online humor sites — basically, they use a news-site format to skewer whatever is going on in the world.

This issue is their special issue regarding the terrorist attacks, and I really think that it’s an incredibly effective series of articles — using humor and irony to point out very serious, deep truths. Plus, it’s really funny — and it’s nice to see someone able and willing to take the initiative to look at some of the opportunities for intelligent humor in the wake of the tragedies. Sometimes, laughter really can be the best medicine — and The Onion is giving us just the right dose.

Some of my favorite quotes come from the article God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule:

“I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you’d get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important,” said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. “I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?”

“To be honest, there’s some contradictory stuff in [the Bible], okay?” God said. “So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it — My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it’s God’s will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall.”

“I don’t care what faith you are, everybody’s been making this same mistake since the dawn of time,” God said. “The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don’t even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ but you’ve been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades.”

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God’s shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

Anyway, go check it out. There’s quite a few different articles, and so far all of them I find well worth reading.

I don’t even know what to say to this

by

God Gave U.S. ‘What We Deserve,’ Falwell Says.

Casey told me about this while I was over at his place this weekend, and I just stumbled across a news article with the details. It may be the single most disgusting and infuriating response I’ve seen yet to last week’s tragedy, and all the more so because of the people it comes from — men who claim to be spreading God’s word on earth.

I’m not even sure how to react, or what to say right off. I was amazed enough when Casey told me about it, but actually reading what those two men had to say…it’s just reprehensible. I’ll try and come up with something more substantial later.

It all keeps getting scarier

by

My god — the radio just reported that NY Mayor Giulianni (sp?) has requested 6,000 body bags for the excavations through the rubble. Racial tensions are on the rise — there’s a report on the radio now about shots being fired into a Dallas Mosque. It was done in the middle of the night, thankfully enough, so no one was hit, but it’s still a pretty sad event.

Apparently the remains of the southern tower of the WTC, which had been jutting about five stories into the air, finally collapsed into the rest of the rubble. Hopefully there was enough warning before it fell that it didn’t land on anyone.

On a brighter note, there have been five people pulled from the wreckage of the WTC. Pentagon death estimates have dropped to between 100 and 200, from the 800 that was being estimated earlier.

Of course, that still leaves a stunning number of people killed.

Airlines are slowly being granted permission by the FAA to resume operations, though it sounds like it will be sometime Thursday before any of them actually do — and that service will be restricted at first, under heavy security measures. One of the new restrictions following the news that the hijackers had used knives to take over the planes is that no knives of any sort will be allowed onto an airplane. Apparently it had been within regulation to carry “small” knives — up to four inches in length — onto planes. Four inches? That hardly sounds very “small” to me.

Talk of war is still flying around, and seems to be getting stronger and stronger. NATO earlier declared that it would honor Section V of the NATO accords, declaring that an act against any single member of NATO will be considered an act against all, and the other member nations will stand with the U.S. should we initiate an offensive strike against those who struck at us.

That is, of course, assuming that we are sure who it was that attacked us. Osama bin Laden is definitely the prime suspect, but consensus is far from definite at this point. Senator Oren Hatch (sp?) seems to be practically foaming at the mouth in his zeal to go after bin Laden, but thankfully, there are other, calmer voices repeatedly advocating the need to hold back until we are absolutely sure.

So many things are so haywire these days. Since all airplanes are grounded, the skies above Seattle have been bizarrely clear and quiet since Tuesday. Normally I’ll see a few flights a day coming into Sea-Tac through my office windows, so seeing empty skies is a bit disquieting. Conversely, though, anytime a noise like a plane is heard — which does happen occasionally, as some military flights and some helicopters are allowed aloft — everyone instantly starts looking up, trying to figure out where it’s coming from, where it might be going, and whether it’s friendly or not. The speed that something as familiar as an airplane engine can become a trigger for paranoia and fright is just staggering.

I just called and spoke with my parents until my phone card ran out. Was a nice, and very welcome, little piece of normalcy in the midst of all this turmoil. It turns out that Mom was able to go with Dad to Grandmother’s funeral, and they said that it was a very nice service. Dad said that it seemed like the entire town of Martinsville (Indiana) came out to the viewing.

They also told me that the prevailing opinion among Dad’s side of the family is that stable, boring jobs can be found anytime, and that if I can get a chance at this DJ’ing gig, I should take it. That was great to hear. Mom’s parents, of course, favor my staying with the stable, boring job — but that’s much as I expected, and while it would have been nice to have their support in my wanting to run off to sea (my, how turn-of-the-century that sounds), it’s also comforting to know that Grandma and Grandpa are still, most stolidly, the G&G I’ve known all my life. Wouldn’t want ’em any other way.

I also tried to call Miranda to find out how she’s doing, and to see if all the turmoil is affecting her husband David in any way. Should the U.S. end up entering into a wartime situation, he’d be one of the people virtually gauranteed to hit the front lines, due to the nature of his job. Given that the two of them have been working hard at getting through their differences, I’d hate to see him suddenly get called away to a situation that he might very well not come back from. Hard as it may be for some to believe, my thoughts and prayers go out to the two of them (and, of course, to their daughter Lorelei, Queen of Wozzles) as to anyone else.

That’s it for tonight, though.

Fascinating, frightening, and touching: eyewitness accounts

by

Blogs from ground zero: Eclipsed (New York), Saranwarp (New York), East/West (New York/Oakland), UltraSparky! (New York), Andy’s Chest (New York), A Fire Inside (New York) (at least I think it’s from New York), Everlasting Blogstalker (New York), Fredosite (Washington, DC), Toothpick Girl (New York), World New York (New York) (this one looks really good), Lightningfield (New York), Mr. Barrett (New York), Mike Daisey (New York). I wouldn’t have had time to search all these out, many thanks to Blah Blah Blog Big Pink Cookie for originally posting most of them.

(11/25/2019 Update: In the time since this post was made, most of those links have gone dead.)

Political cartoons

by

Lady Liberty in distressIt’s interesting. There’s a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday’s tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes — Uncle Sam being surprised/distraught/enraged by the attack, terrorists looming over the US, and so on — but there’s one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. That is the theme of Lady Liberty in distress as she witnesses the city she stands over in turmoil.

Lady Liberty stands tallHowever, there is one cartoon that I found to be much more effective — and to my mind, a much more welcome sentiment. Simply clouds of smoke, with Lady Liberty’s torch still held high, cutting through the destruction to continue casting her torchlight across America.

I’m not normally exactly rabidly patriotic — I’ve had more than my share of differences with the directions that this country and her leaders have taken over the years — but it still stirs something in me to see expressions of hope and optimism such as this one. I only wish there were more — it may be sorely needed in the weeks to come.

Still can’t really believe it

by

First off, a brief recap of life since last Thursday.

Friday after work I got a call from Alex — turns out that it was his 23rd birthday, and he invited me to go out with him. Sounded cool to me, so at about 10pm I met up with Alex and his friend Melanie (who remebered me from The Lost Abby and Gig’s in Anchorage) at The Vogue. We hung out there for a bit until Nate showed up, then we all went over to The Mercury, a tiny little members-only goth/industrial club underneath an auto shop. I’d heard about it from Chad before, but this was my first time there — turns out it’s just about three blocks away from my apartment. Cool little place, too.

Friday night Alex and Melanie slept at my place, and we ended up spending all day Saturday bumming around town. That evening we went over to Casey’s place, and while neither Casey nor Chad were home, we spent a pleasant evening talking with Dez and ended up crashing out there.

Sunday I got dropped off back at my apartment (after a wonderful waffle breakfast compliments of Dez), and spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and relaxing at home. I did make one jaunt out to a local used book store and picked up Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hoftstadter. I’d tried to read dad’s copy years ago, and it was way over my head — now I’m trying again.

Monday was fairly uneventful all the way around — just another workday.

Today, however, has been all sorts of bizarre, for reasons which should be fairly well known by now.

At about 9am EST this morning (just as I was getting up, at 6am here), in an amazingly coordinated terrorist attack, hijackers took control of four commercial airline flights. While one apparently missed its mark, crashing in the Pennsylvania countryside, one plowed into the Pentagon, destroying much of one side of the building, and the other two were piloted into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, which both eventually collapsed.

Only nine hours later, reports are still coming in. The President addressed the nation about half an hour ago — I’m not sure I’m too thrilled with his speech. While not too terribly ludicrous, it was a little to militaristic in tone, and it’s too easy for me to see this escalating until we could be looking at a major war, if not handled carefully. This whole things got me extremely worried — it’s definitely going to be fascinating watching how events unfold from here on out.

My neighbor just got home — I’m going to see if I can watch the news on his TV as soon as he’s off the phone.

It’s almost 9pm now — about 15 hours after the first strike. I spent the past few hours next door watching the news reports with Damon. Scary, scary stuff — there was one video taken by a cameraman that just happened to be at street level and caught the second plane hitting the WTC. It’s amazing — you can watch the plane fly into the building, and at first (except for the speed), it looks like it’s just flying into a hangar as it disappears into the building. Then the explosions rip through the walls of the skyscraper and debris comes tumbling down to the street.

The video continues and cuts to the point when the tower started to collapse. At first there were the flames that had been shooting out of the floors that had been hit by the plane, then suddenly more dust clouds started shooting out as the top section of the building started collapsing into the lower floors. From there the building just fell floor by floor onto itself, sending huge roiling clouds of dust and debris into the air.

The cameraman kept filming until you suddenly saw dust clouds coming towards him just a block away, when he put the camera down and started running. The camera was still on and pointing behind him as he carried it, though, and you can see the conflagration literally chasing the camera’s view down the street. It looked for all the world like some of the destruction scenes from Independence Day — only all the more horrifying because you knew that it was real.

Current rough death toll estimates are upwards of 1300 at the very minimum — an estimated 800 killed at the Pentagon, 266 among the four hijacked airplanes, and there were around 200 fire, police, and rescue workers in New York that responded after ther first airplane hit, and were lost when the buildings collapsed. And adding those numbers up to roughly 1300 doesn’t even include the thousands of possible victims from the two WTC towers.

For the first time in history, the FAA today ordered the grounding of all airplanes within the United States. They did this as soon as it became apparent that the airplanes were being used as weapons in the attacks. It may be noon EST (9am here) tomorrow before planes are allowed to fly again. In addition to the thousands of stranded passengers across the nation, the disruption of shipping may create additional problems for the already struggling economy, and no-one seems sure what long-term effects that may have.

All and all, it’s been an absolutely incredible and tragic day. The single biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen, with repercussions that can only be speculated about at this early stage, and only the weeks to come will show where things go from here.

And on that note — it’s time for bed. I’m sure I’ll hear more about this in the morning.

How far is this going to go?

by

Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now about today’s attacks in New York and Washington, so I’ll refrain from rehashing it all (though if you’d like a refresher, or want to check for any new information, here’s a link to CNN’s Special Report on the events).

What’s really starting to worry me is just where this is all going to end. Too much has happened in too short of a time, and I’m starting to get mildly paranoid about seeing it all blow up in our faces — maybe a little more literally than I’d like.

First off, the mind-numbing attack, involving coordinated hijacking of four airplanes, three of which found their targets, severly damaging the Pentagon, and utterly destroying three buildings of the World Trade Center (and a fourth looks ready to go as I write this). Then, just about 45 minutes ago, reports started hitting CNN’s TV feed (though I’ve not yet seen much mention of this on their website) that there are explosions in Afghanistan, a country known to have harbored bin Laden — the terrorist most strongly suspected of masterminding today’s attacks. The U.S. is currently denying that these are U.S.-led counterstrikes (which makes sense to me — it seems a bit soon for us to be retaliating in force, without clear and definite knowledge of who we should be retaliating against), but it’s certainly not helping the international situation in the least.

Popular sentiment is rather ugly at the moment, also. Understandably enough, given the strength of the emotional response this soon after the attack, but if left unchecked for long, it could get really frightening. I’ve been following two threads on the Home Theater Forum, and it’s taken some work on the part of the administrators to keep it from degenerating into revenge-motivated hate mongering.

Even some articles I’ve found links to around the web make me nervous — for instance, while I have no idea what the general stance of the site The Ornery American is (I have yet to dig through their site), their article Can We Win This War? starts out with statements I had no problem agreeing with (“America’s leaders are calling for patience, for a measured response to the acts of war we suffered on 11 September. They are right.”), but by the end of the article, they seem to be crying out for an all-out dive into World War III. This is the kind of thing that really starts to get me scared.

Is this the proverbial beginning of the end?

I certainly hope not, it’s just far to easy for my (possibly over-)cynical mind to see retaliation after retaliation build up until we’re far past the point of no return, never having noticed when that point arrived and we passed it by.

My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today — not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair.