In honor of 9/11 my hotel is offering free coffee and mini-muffins. — Drink and Fight (@eclectrica) September 11, 2013
TBH I was even slightly offended by Google's black ribbon. A company is a company. A company is not your friend. A company is not your neighbor. It isn't necessary at that any company reach out and express anything related to September 11th. It is a false expression. Even if the CEO really thinks that the expression is sincere, it is not. That is a delusion. A company cannot sincerely express anything to me about 9/11 because a company is a company. If I tried to call the CEO of AT&T yesterday to tell him "Never Forget", I would have not been put through. Randall and I don't have that kind of relationship. Randall runs a company. It provides my cellular service. I pay his company for that.
Logan International held a fire drill with actual fire?! Hooooooly shit. That's gotta rank as one of the worst ideas of the year. http://news.yahoo.com/boston-airport-apologizes-fire-drill-1...
Day off the buildings collapse I was waiting tables at an italian restaurant. We served a cannoli that was not tubular but rather ricotta fililng between stacked wafers. It was a "cannoli tower" so to speak. I served one to an idiot at one of my tables and he took his fork, knocked the cannoli tower down and said "look, the World Trade Center" and laughed. It had only been hours. -Bad taste knows no bounds.
My highschool did this Explore America trip when I was a junior. All of us mid-west kids got to fly out to the east coast and see what Boston, Philadelphia, D.C., and New York had to offer. In New York City we visited what was then the Freedom Tower's (that what it's called?) hole in the ground. Near Ground Zero there was this little 'Church That Stood'. Some old church that had been showered in heavy debris from the Twin Towers but survived. I figured it would be this serene memorial but inside they were just selling 9/11 keychains and bumper stickers. Yikes. The price of never forgetting... six fifty, plus sales tax.
i'm playing devil's advocate here but for how long is America going to commemorate 9/11? Other countries have been victim to terrorism in the past too but there is no big date made out of it and there is no systematic regurgitatution of phone messages and victims' photos like with 9/11. Why does America feel the need to do that to itself?
It'll be commemorated for a long time, I'm sure. "America" is not of one mind, of course and I think that may be a part of the lasting power of 9/11: it feels like something that happened to everybody in America. In a country as varied and piecemeal as America, experiences like that-- genuinely unifying experiences, experiences that were not constructed to promote unity-- are rare.
I don't care for these displays of remembrance for any cause. I'm not against people expressing their emotions in public or taking the time out of their lives to reflect on things, but it seems to me that it's very much a way of avoiding that by putting a ribbon on something, thereby letting others know, or give others the impression that one "truly cares" about "issues" and that one is "sensitive." It would be one thing if people made their own ribbons for whatever. That at least, would be a greater indication of dedication to whatever it is people would wish to commemorate. Better yet, why not simply take time to reflect on whatever the event or cause is, or take the time to talk about it with friends and family, rather than broadcasting it?
Just finished cranking through Bible and Sword which sort of revised my understanding of civilization. It sort of works like this: Judaism - there is one true god, all your gods are wrong. Christianity - There is one true god, and you Jews misinterpreted all that shit. Islam - There is one true god, and you Jews and Christians got a lot of it right but not enough. Protestantism - There is one true god, Jews and Muslims are heretics and the Catholics lost the script. Anglicanism - There is one true god, and while the Protestants are heretics and the Catholics idolaters the Jews are pretty badass. But also wrong. Puritanism - The Anglicans are the most corrupt of all but they were right about the Jewish thing. Except Jews are icky. Pentecostalism - Everybody's wrong but until the Jews are back in the Holy Land Baby Jesus ain't comin'. Lather, rinse, repeat.
My first experience with ribbons was the Gulf War. I remember the yellow ribbons that everyone was wearing, tying to trees, etc. Even as an 8 year old I thought they were dumb as shit (although I did collect Gulf War trading cards, which I still have, and which are awesome). Were ribbons of support a thing before that? I assume so, but Gulf War was the first time I was old enough to be aware of the world during a conflict.