june gloom on 11/9/2011 at 10:12

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So apparently it's been 10 years since about 19 20 19 guys got on a bunch of planes and flew them into a couple tall buildings and a field and a really big building that wasn't as tall but had a bunch of generals in it. A bunch of people died, everyone else about shit themselves, and nothing was ever the same again.

Lots of things happened since then. A small crater of a country got stormed; then another, slightly less crater-y country got stormed, and we've still got troops in both countries despite both countries seemingly wanting us out and wanting us to stay at the same time.

We found and killed Saddam Hussein like we've been wanting to do since the first time we stormed the joint. We had a couple of good Batman movies. Duke Nukem Forever came out. In a related incident, we killed Osama bin Laden like we probably should have back in the late '90s when he was featured in Reader's Digest.

The economy, for the love of god and all that is holy, started bleeding from its asshole and is seconds away from drowning in its own red life fluid like every god damn time you play Sonic and you're in the god damn Labyrinth zone.

We re-elected the guy who was in office when all this first started, despite everyone saying how much they hated him. Then we ostensibly elected his polar opposite, yet nobody's happy with him either.

Freedom fries, free speech zones, vampires, zombies, Snape killed Dumbledore, Don't Ask Don't Tell repealed, everybody hates the Dixie Chicks, Lady Gaga showed up, These Colors Don't Run bumper stickers faded nearly to white, why is there so much My Little Pony porn WHY, Baton Rouge becomes the biggest city in Louisiana, Hurricane Ike punches the east coast's power grid in the ovaries, hipsters become the new furries (and furries finally have Avatar fans to look down on), nobody uses a flip-open cell phone anymore, Myspace rises up and burns down and everyone's on Facebook now, except when they're on Tumblr, WATCH FULL SIMPSONS EPISODES ON YOUTUBE ! ! !, Google buys everything ever, apparently there's a bunch of pedophiles in priestly robes and it's all the fault of the victims/Jews/Lutherans/homosexuals/demons/TV/internet/porno/internet porno, Sonic and Mario are in the same fucking game what the shit, a bunch of people concerned about government encroachment band together to express themselves and then the brain perverts get involved, everything is wireless except when we're trying to keep people from hacking into our internet accounts to try to frame us for kiddie porn, we're not allowed to tape cops in public anymore, ARIZONA IS A NO MEXICAN ZONE, they made a cartoon out of Sarah Palin and the cartoon came to life and called itself Michele Bachmann, THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELLS YOU, ECONOMY!, do we still hate gay people?, Pluto isn't a planet anymore, a bunch of people with cell phones did more to overturn despots in the Middle East in a shorter period of time than a couple hundred thousand guys with guns, England got jealous and decided it wasn't going to let those dirty folks have all the fun, Farrah Fawcett picked a really bad time to die, BILLY MAYS HERE - whoops no he's not, Al Gore made a movie and so did Michael Moore, Enron went through the shredder, everyone bought a Playstation 3 because it was cheaper than dedicated BluRay players, we need another seven astronauts, wait no we don't, California welcomes its new Governator, leave it to an Asian guy to get the high score at school shootings, Bruce Dickensen came back to Iron Maiden!, Valve released Team Fortress 2 and spent the next 4 years running it into the ground, China is trying to be more capitalist than we are, and is discovering that drinking the same juice means drinking the same poison, they ran out of letters for hurricanes one year, Apple expands beyond its tweed jacket and patchouli roots into a lucrative rimless glasses and skinny jeans market, 4chan rises and falls in relevance, gets bored, trolls Scientologists, gets bored again and goes back to kiddy porn, Google now offers real-time, up-to-the-hour accurate street pics of you beating your wife in public, it only does 80710a06, nobody uses Netscape Navigator anymore, use Internet Explorer!, nobody uses Internet Explorer anymore, use Firefox!, nobody uses Firefox anymore, use Chrome!, nobody uses HURBGLRBRLRBLR, DirectX 8.1, 8.1a, 8.1b, 8.2, 9.0, 9.0a, 9.0b, 9.0c, 10, 10.1, 11, Jerkcity is not only still going but it has a Minecraft server, everyone plays World of Warcraft, nobody plays World of Warcraft, girls? in MY Warhammer 40k fandom?, IGN creates a reality show that's only slightly more watchable than 90% of cable TV, NO MOOSLEMS NEAR WTC, welcome to EB Games I mean Gamestop, Penny Arcade starts a charity and becomes this big huge thing despite calls for Tycho and Gabe to be buried in the foundation of a women's shelter, Jack Thompson finally shuts the hell up, don't taze me bro, Japan gets bukakked by Mother Nature and we nearly had a second Zone, Gulf of Mexico turns into BP's biggest open-air oil vat, Katie Couric took over CBS and nobody cared, all your old TVs are now obsolete, human beings discover internet comment systems, promptly fail the Turing test, the X-Files ended, Family Guy should have...

It's been an eventful 10 years. Of course it has. It's been ten years.

Count 'em. Ten. That's how many fingers you have. Toes, too.

Ten years.

It's been ten years since one event, a single, awful, crystallizing moment in which we all became very old, and very tired, an event that, while tragic, horrifying, saddening, unifying, and divisive all at once, has been shoved down our throats at least once a day every day since.

And we're now being called upon to mourn the dead who we haven't stopped mourning in ten years, but paying out insurance claims to the living or health care compensation to the first responders is un-American.

... also, we never fucking rebuilt the site. Let's all just go stare at the giant hole in the ground and feel like an asshole for being alive. Forever.

I'm going back to bed. |:(

Vernon on 11/9/2011 at 12:13

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YEEEEESTERDDAAAAY

ALLL MY TROUBLES SEEMED SOOO FAR AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Vernon on 11/9/2011 at 12:28

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Lynx, man. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)) Lynx

Syndy/3 on 11/9/2011 at 13:44

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No need to. After five lines I had the tune in my head already. Eat to the beat.

Queue on 11/9/2011 at 14:07

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A little while ago, a small squadron of four P-51s flew over from the west going toward Selfridge. I was already outside, getting my feet wet in all the dew, and watched them as they rumbled off to the east, directly into the haze of low clouds and early morning sun. And it gave me a small chill, one that I can't quite describe. Seeing these fighter planes from an era-gone-by reminds one of other moments in time, moments when all seemed to be going to shit, and words like, "The only thing to fear, is fear itself."

Now, I wonder if the things we must fear the most are division, over-reaction, ignorance and apathy. A lot has changed; changed for the better, changed for the worst -- depending on who's inciting today's decisions for the public's collective mind. There's a lot I can't stand about this country; about the increasingly moronic and ill-informed and uncaring-to-be-informed populace sloughing through existence, content to slack-jawedly exist as parasites lapping at the droppings of cheap consumerism and auto-tuning. I'm annoyed by those who would rather plunge the Republic headlong into a quagmire of anarchy waving the flag of a self-centered-self-important ideology and invocations of God and country; while forgetting what America really is. I'm annoyed by the grandstanders who do nothing but grandstand; the professionals who think that the designation "professional" means, "better than" and "privileged"; Americans who refuse to simply call themselves, "Americans", instead segregating their identity into groups of African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Left-Wing-Americans, Right-Wing-Americans, Christian-Americans, Left-handed Dentist-Americans, Ding-A-Ling-Americans, Can't-Spell-American-Americans; the lack of progress; the waste; the redundancy; the ridiculousness of it all.

And, today, as dethy pointed out, our uniting purpose is supposed to be centered around a big hole. It's hard to be proud of where we are in the world.

But, somehow, I'm tearfully comforted that those P-51s are still flying, and can still be heard long after disappearing into the cloud bank.



You forgot that we killed and buried the 'N' word somewhere in Detroit, so we can't say "nigger" anymore. In a way, it really is a kinder, gentler nation.