Five Years In The Making

I'll be happy when today is over, but that's only partly because reliving all of this is making me sick. The other part is: I just want to be able to watch television again without having to navigate through 900 channels, all showing September 11-related programming. It's fucking pitiful -- the worst tragedy that you and I will ever know in our lifetimes has been turned into a goddamned spectacle, fodder for TV movies no more sacred than JonBenet Ramsey or Elian Gonzales or the Y2K bug. If there is anything that hurts worse than remembering what life was like before that day, what it was like to have your entire life no longer make sense in the span of a minute, is that greedy, maniacal sonsofbitches have used it to further their powermad greedlust. And don't read too much into that, because I'm not just talking about the Bushes or any of their cohorts -- I mean everyone who has used the grief, terror, horror, and tragedy of September 11 for any reason other than respectful rememberance.

This rant is already getting longer than I wanted it to, so let me wrap up with some interesting reading for today:

• NYT has a great editorial on what September 11th means five years later and where we've come to


• Bill Maher has a good piece in the LAT about comedy in the face of tragedy and how it relates to the broader issue of truth vs. FUD


• Here's a reproduction of an e-mail from a friend of mine 3 days after September 11, recounting his experiences that day in lower manhattan. Still painful to read, to remember how raw everything felt back then

No more for now. Too much already.