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Topic Review (Newest First)
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| Sep 12th, 2006 01:28 AM | |||
| Sethomas |
Yeah, you're right that I didn't want this to be about bickering over who's right or wrong. If your feelings aligned with your conscience, that's all I could ask for. One thing that touched me was seeing people more aware of blood donations, having people flock to give blood by the millions when only probably few thousand units were needed. Coming from a medical family, I've heard stories of my dad working the ER with the hospital having no blood to give people, and even worse when my mom would nurse at the operating table and they would run out of units after having already cut open someone. I really hoped that maybe a net amount of lives could eventually be saved simply by that little trinket of awareness. |
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| Sep 12th, 2006 01:18 AM | |||
| Preechr |
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I kind of avoided the "feelings" thing altogether, I guess. I was at work, and my dad called to tell us what he'd heard on the radio. I brought a TV out front, and the rest of the work day was spent glued to the tube. My initial shock stemmed from knowing absolutely nothing about why it was happening or what might come next. The anger I felt wasn't patriotism or bloodlust, though I let it out as such at first. I was angry at myself for my own ignorance and complete lack of context, though I expressed impotent anger toward "whoever was responsible." I never bought a flag in fabric, sticker or pin form. While I recognize some people displayed such things before 9/11, I didn't want to count myself among those that flagged up as if in prayer for some generic American answer to some unknown tragic question. I tried my level best to take responsibility for whatever my part in it was. That was the day I set out to learn to be an adult. Prior to 9/11/1, I knew nothing about government or the world out side my immediate sight. I felt like the world had suddenly become so small I could grasp it, and that's what I'm still trying to do today. I remember, more than anything else, an amazing feeling of wonder as I watched the events of that day unfold. I felt like a child to whom everything is new and unexplained. I've learned a lot since then, but today I still feel wonder more than anything else. |
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| Sep 12th, 2006 12:49 AM | |||
| Preechr |
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As for looking up obscure words I will probably never use just because someone else sounded smart saying them, I'm content being not as smart as other people until everybody gets to be smarter than me. At that point, I will start trying to catch back up. I still don't know what that word means. I really though he'd just mispelled sophmoric. Sue me for skimming... [kahl] "What does soplimastic mean? Are you insulting me?! YOU FILTHY DEPRAVED LICKER OF MONKEY GENITALS !!! Please tell me what it means..." [/kahl] |
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| Sep 12th, 2006 12:02 AM | |||
| DuFresne | I mean, look at all of us spilling our guts like this. This never happens! | ||
| Sep 12th, 2006 12:00 AM | |||
| DuFresne | Does anybody except feel that this thread really needs to be backed up? | ||
| Sep 11th, 2006 11:50 PM | |||
| ArrowX |
I remeber it pretty vividly because it was the first action of real life destriciton I'd ever seen fold out in front of me live, I woke up expecting a regular day of school and turned on the TV for a little background noise and watched as I heard them talking about how a plane had crashed into the WTC, then as if on cue of them saying that I see the second plane form the left and watched it smash into the other tower. The real weight hadn't really hit me untill I was sitting in school and EVERYONE was talking about it and a group of "hip, devil may care skater" kids were making jokes about how awesome it would have been to crash a plane into a building. The loudest one was then promptly fed a fist to his lip. I was suspended for 2 days. Fucking 9/11 Its been 5 years, I don't care anymore. In all senses the Terrorists accomplished what they set out to do, the american populace puts up this shield of self confidence and "patriotism" but they all cower and hide under the very same government that allowed this monumental fuck up happen in the first place. Just turn the middle east into fucking glass and stop whining. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 10:25 PM | |||
| ziggytrix |
Let's see - back then: complete and total state of shock. Everyone in the apartment complex gathered at a friend's apartment where we'd often gathered to watch movies, but that day we were watching the news. People kept coming and going, I guess some folks didn't want everyone to see them crying, but there wasn't a dry eye there... anyway 5 years later... It was a lot easier to remember what the date was when logging time at work today. I noticed a lot of flags in front of the businesses on our block. Some asshole friend of mine called the posters on another message board I read "pathetic" for not having made a 9/11 anniversary thread before he got home from work. Another day came and went. People are still dying all over the world, and somewhere a self-righteous jerk is yelling at people for not being mournful enough of the deaths he's thinking about at the moment. Not much has changed from a local perspective, except for the contents people's bumper stickers and an empty place setting at soldiers' families' dinner tables. I guess I'm lucky so far that everyone I personally know who's gone over there has made it back, though I did find out last year that some kid I don't remember from my graduating class was the first Arkansan casualty in Iraq. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 10:14 PM | |||
| Courage the Cowardly Dog |
I know most of us here have no feelings. But at the least it certainly made me think about our government's flaws and certainly made me think more abour Afgahnistan's war which i think it made me support it more considering. Iraq however it didn't change my mind much, I think it was something that really ought to have been dealt with although i'm not sure we had or have the manpower to see it through I still oppose immediate withdrawel now that we've bitten off so much o chew we have to finish it as best we can. The link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is of course non existant, but thats not the point this isn't a war on Al Qaeda we fight it's a war on all terrorist groups or regimes who threaten us. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 08:40 PM | |||
| DuFresne |
On 9/11, I was in 8th grade. I was home that day faking sick, lying in bed, trying to get some sleep, when mom rushed in to tell me to turn my TV on. A plane or something (or something?) had hit one of the Twin Towers, "but they think it might have been an accident" (like a plane's ever accidently hit a fucking modern world wonder, but hell, we were all naive at the time :/ ). I was watching for a while, I believe on MSNBC, listening closely to the reports and watching smoke billlow out of the co-tallest building in the world, when I witnessed a huge fireball burst from the other one. MSNBC hadn't had a good angle to see it, but I soon learned that another plane had crashed into the other tower, disintegrating any chance that this was a fucking accident. Although I didn't like Bush then, which had more to do with the simple fact that he was a republican than anything substantial, I reacted like you'd expect a thirteen-year-old to: I wanted to see our military, our invincible, greatest-fighting-force-ever-assembled military, to go into Afghaniturkmeniranistan, and show that bearded asshole that fucking with America is a not-so-good idea. We never got him. We cut and ran. We then launched that strike against Iraq, captured their leader, got stuck there, which brings us to today. I don't know if our government did or did not have a valuable role in orchaestrating 9/11, but it's appearant to me that they have indeed used the attacks to gain their necessary support for their war in Iraq, and I am quite disillusioned. Yes, SSpad, history certainly favors the cynics and pessimists in this world, but in the words of Leonard Cohen (not trying to name-drop, just giving credit): Quote:
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| Sep 11th, 2006 04:56 PM | |||
| kahljorn | Whatever guys don't you know that flowers grow out of george bush's anus? | ||
| Sep 11th, 2006 04:37 PM | |||
| KevinTheOmnivore | Yeah, I'm not buying for one second that those flowers are real. | ||
| Sep 11th, 2006 04:26 PM | |||
| Geggy |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 03:38 PM | |||
| mburbank |
It was the JUXTAPOSITION!! I'm all about the Juxtaposition. Twenty four seven, baby. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 02:25 PM | |||
| theapportioner |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 01:04 PM | |||
| kahljorn |
"it does not make them any less special or valuable either." That's true, and it's not like I hated the people who died or was glad they were dead or anything like that, I just didn't think it was as big of a deal as people made it out to be. I'm sure everybody remembers the response most americans had for this. It was kind of ridiculous. Really though, even to this day I can't start to put personal feelings into the event. It's just impossible for me to get my head around things like war, I try to explain them psychologically but still... The only feeling that comes out of it is outrage at humans or human animals. Also when I said that suffering and dying is everywhere I wasn't necessarily trying to cop out per se but merely get accross the fact that part of the problem with things is that humanity isn't perfectly human. It's not that terrorists or Islam is bad, but that humanity, and furthermore, the universe and nature is what's really causing these types of problems. I think the total lack of awareness for reality is perpetuating these circumstances as well, and if people want to lack awareness then they should expect problems from their ignorance and hatred. This goes both ways. Basically i think the response to 9/11 was animalistic and lacking any type of direction towards progression or making the world a happier place, as such, to me, it was lackluster and devoid of any relative meaning. We respond to animals by being animals, consequently we become animals in our behaviors and thoughts. As for vonneguht I think he's a good and creative writer, perhaps a genius would be appropriate but I haven't read enough of his work to know. He's so hilarious, though  Which books have you read, and which ones make you think he's a genius?The thing I like most about his books though is that they are kind of simple. His books are so easy to read, you can just flow through them. It's like reading robert anton wilson, despite the simplicity there's a level of complexity or deep story telling. AT A LAUGH SUDDENLY A SALMON EGG ESCAPED KILGORE TROUT'S MOUTH AND RESTED IN THE CLEAVAGE OF THE WOMAN |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 12:29 PM | |||
| Immortal Goat |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 12:29 PM | |||
| sspadowsky |
My immediate reaction was, "I hope much of the Middle East is turned into a smoking hole in the ground." I think that's verbatim. Then, I realized how stupid that was, and it occurred to me that humanity is far too fucking stupid to learn from history, and therefore, doomed to continue repeating its mistakes. Five years of clusterfuck later, I believe that humanity is far too fucking stupid to learn from history, and therefore, doomed to continue repeating its mistakes. Maybe I'm just an impatient person with a grim outlook on human nature, but ya know what? I'm pretty certain that history is on my side. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 12:27 PM | |||
| Geggy | How nice. Bush visiting his crime scene. | ||
| Sep 11th, 2006 12:15 PM | |||
| Chojin |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 11:09 AM | |||
| mburbank | That is gorgeous. | ||
| Sep 11th, 2006 10:55 AM | |||
| theapportioner |
The NY Post had this touching cover today:
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| Sep 11th, 2006 10:46 AM | |||
| theapportioner |
I was in my senior year of college in New York City, sitting in a thermodynamics class, when my friend broke the news that a plane hit one of the towers, then two. He had a sister working next to the WTC, and soon walked out of the class. Afterwards, I ran back home and saw the smoke and heard the terrible news. I remember how everyone bonded together in the days and weeks afterward, the impromptu memorials in Washington Square Park and by St. Vincent's Hospital downtown, and just how everybody came together. I also remember the sex orgies. Those were good. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 10:27 AM | |||
| mburbank |
"I had hoped that maybe we would become aware of not only our own mortality, but that which is shared by all of humanity." Perhaps that's a naive hope, but I think it's key, at least to the then/now question you're posing. The tragedy, violence and suffering of that day were awful (in the actual sense of the word). But when we began bombing Afghanistan, although I saw no real alternative and so 'supported' the response as much as I am personally capable of supporting violence, all I could think of is that where those bombs struck, human beings were suffering exactly, exactly the same tragedy, violence and suffering. And the survivors would live with the same loss and horror. To the people in an exploding building, the motivation of the people killing them is almost certainly meaningless. My guess is that for their survivors the knowledge that our killing was done in response, and with nobler motives and with the intention of killing combatants, is little comfort. I am tired (literally, not sarcastically) of thinking about Blowback, fanatical hatreds, past foreign policy, tribalism. It seems more and more to me that we are hardwired to make each other suffer and the only differences between any two people is how hard the fight that hardwiring or how deeply they embrace it. Kahl, while I hear you and understand your point about people all over the world suffering and dieing every day, and while I agree that the fact that that day those suffering and dieing were Americans does not make them more specail or valuable, it does not make them any less special or valuable either. But my sorrow on that day feels tainted by all the human suffering we have joined in bringing about since. Osama Bin Laden wanted a wider war and more people to hate America as deeply as he did. In both those respect, I believe he is winning. Abcdxxxx, from your post, I take it you were there. If you'd said this before I missed it, but I don't read everything here. Beyond that fact, while I think I might take your meaning I'd far rather you spelled it out. I don't want to adress things you might mean. Seth, you are always interesting. I was particularly intrigued by your mention of Vonnegut in connection with this. Initially hailed as a genius, public opinion came to regard him as... sophmoric? I'm not sure he's either, but I have been re-reading him and as a middle aged man find his world view moving and instructive, and I appreciatte him far more than my fan boy enthiusiasm when I read him as a teen. I find a comfort in his work that I failed to get when I was younger. I think he deserves to be taken far more seriously as a serious thinker than he generally is. And finally, I think (in fact I'm sure) Preech wasn't giving you shit. There may have been some level of sarcasm there, but it was his honest response. Although I can't believe he didn't know what a solopsist was. Hey, Preech; They invented this thing called a dictionary? They even have them on line. |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 10:01 AM | |||
| AChimp |
Then: "Some Middle Eastern country is going to be bombed to the Stone Age because of this." Now: "Wow, y'all sure fucked that one up." That's about it. :/ |
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| Sep 11th, 2006 04:11 AM | |||
| Sethomas | Awesome. Your medal's in the mail as we speak. | ||
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