Month: September 2003

US troops in Afghanistan have to shell out own money to get decent gear. That makes me SO optimistic about Washington not bungling that “War on Terror” business…

Old war propaganda posters updated for our times. Some of these were meant to be funny, but the reality of Bush & Ashcroft makes them scary.

It was inevitable: some scam artist invents the penis-enlargement patch! Feel free to visit, but please don’t spend any of your money on that crap…

When you pull the pin from a grenade, don’t put said grenade back into your pocket. Of course some people just have to learn the hard way.

The real 9/11 conspiracy. Makes 50% more sense than the next leading conspiracy theory!

Asinine lawsuits: the insanity continues. If some idiot can get $700K from Disney, what can I manage to squeeze from Starbucks?

Tristan Louis over at TNL.net came up with a pretty good idea a couple of weeks ago, which was to ask that very question: who were you on September 11th?

That is to say, I’m sure everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they became aware of the horrible events of that day. One thread seems to come out of news reports, however — the idea that “the world has changed” on that day, and America in particular. Is that true? Is America, under Dubya’s stewardship, really different now than it would have been had that event not occurred? It’s certainly a question that bears asking, though one has to wonder about the scope of the question. The US, like any other country, is to a great extent the sum of its parts; if one is to say that ‘America has changed’ this must be the result of individual Americans having changed on that day.

Even that does not quite cover it however. Not everyone in the US is an American, for starters, and this is even truer of a large metropolitan area such as New York City. I for one am not an American, nor am I likely to embark on that proposition until such time as I have some $10K burning a hole in my pocket (I just checked, it’s not there). This can serve to explain why there are thousands, if not millions of people in the US who have been here for several years, some of them decades, without making the citizenship leap.

But I digress — who WAS I on 9/11/01 anyway?

Speaking for myself only, I can say that I am pretty much the same now as I was then. Seriously, there really hasn’t been much of a change in my life since “the day America changed”. Back then I was a rather listless 30-year old working as a web designer for a major financial institution, and now I am still-listless 32-year-old working as a web designer for the same financial institution, and ingloriously as it may sound I am still working with the same people as before, and for the same compensation (the dotcom world ain’t what it used to be).

Some people have lost many friends on this day two years ago; you certainly can’t have some 3000 souls wiped out in the blink of an eye without any repercussions. However I didn’t know any of those whose flames were extinguished on that day; I guess that’s the positive aspect of not knowing many people.

Do I do anything different since that day? I must admit to having the urge to look up whenever I hear a plane going by, which, in an area with 3 major airports, is fairly frequently. Also I have become skeptical of beautiful days, because that’s the kind of day September 11th was — unseasonably warm, sunny, with nary a cloud in the sky and barely any wind, very much like today in New York. In fact whenever I hear U2’s Beautiful Day I definitely get the creeps — especially considering that the video for that song features a lot of airplanes flying about — but then it’s a pretty old song by now and it’s not heard that often.

In that sense I suppose that one can’t say there’s been absolutely no change in me as a result of having lived through that day a mere couple of miles from the site of that crime. But then no man is an island, not even I. The experience becomes as much a part of myself as other things I have lived through. One cannot remain completely unaffected by such a large-scale event.

That being said I can’t say that the change goes much beyond that. Perhaps I have the silly notion that I’m nowhere near my appointed death-time, if there is such a thing, but I don’t feel any more palpable risk living in this area than I did before. I didn’t rush to buy a Hummer with a complete survival kit stashed away in it, or the urge to ship myself out to the suburbs, or any more or less inclination to go to the City either at night or on weekends.

Some people reportedly began feeling depressed after the incidents, but I can’t say that it was any more pronounced with me than before. Same for my inclination for inebriation, which was already very, very minor to begin with. And as far as terror sex goes, well, I am firmly of the opinion that it was all a bullshit act by the press, because I sure as hell didn’t get any of that either.

So, did I change fundamentally as a result of the events? I would say no. Did I suddenly become aware of terrorism while ignoring everything about it before? Nope. In fact I recall having a discussion about the potential for terrorist incidents in New York on the previous Friday, which is rather creepy, but then the discussion did not revolve around a risk to the towers, even though my workplace sits right across the Hudson from the site (used to have a great view, too).

Sure, I have changed a little. Just a little. Skoshi.

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Update: while I was at lunch I do remember something not previously mentioned. I used to be very keen on photography, especially during my brief period of unemployment in 2001, and would very often lug around my fairly heavy kit in the city just to take pictures of things I thought were interesting. It strikes me that this interest, which used to consume pretty much whatever resources I could muster, has almost entirely waned since, even to the point where if I do this occasionally I am struck at how cumbersome the activity proves to be.

Perhaps it’s because the World Trade Center used to be one of my favourite, if not MY favourite subject. Then again you would think that this would cause even more interest in taking pictures of things which might disappear.

I guess it goes to show that perhaps I am not so unchanged as I think I am.

Brothers kill sisters with axes, have the gall to associate that action with ‘honour’. Yup, it happened in the Middle East, to no one’s astonishment.

Not content to sue 12-year-olds, RIAA now exploits child porn for its legislative profit. Scaremongering is not the last refuge of scoundrels, it is the very first.

One in 7 PC users need help with the on/off switch. It’s a BOFH’s world after all…