On Sept. 11, 2001, I awoke at about 9:00 a.m. local time. I was living with my brother on Samuel Street in the Heights.

I stretched, wandered over by my computer and went to a Usenet newsgroup I visited regularly. Not much in the way of daily messages. I found a few cryptic messages to “turn on your TV.”

I didn’t think much about them.

I eventually wandered over to the TV and turned it on. I was perturbed that the morning news shows were still on. They where showing what looked like a big huge plume of smoke. I listened for a while and tried to figure out what was going on.

Apparently, these air-heads on the TV believed some some airplanes struck the World Trade Center and knocked both buildings down. What a bunch of dummies, I thought. There’s a fire and the smoke is covering the buildings and they have jumped to a conclusion.

And then the wind shifted or something, and then I could see that there was … nothing there.

Then I watched and learned about Flight 93 and the attack on the Pentagon.

The rest of pretty much a blur. I remember trying to find a way to sign up. Yeah, a then 38-year-old pacifist, overweight with high blood pressure and diabetes, trying to enlist. I remember standing at my job, watching the TV coverage, not really helping anyone. I remember standing in the parking lot watching the planes making their long looping curves into the air base.

I don’t think I was back to normal until about two years into the invasion of Iraq. I was pretty much willing to kill them all and let God sort ‘em out. I was still preaching that “we’ll find weapons of mass destruction, you’ll see.”

I remember crying for no reason. A lot of people did that.

Yeah.

But I was never really bought into the anti-Islamic mindset that so many people went for. I didn’t believe all or even most Arabs wanted to kill us. Hell, I worked next to Muslims at work. These people weren’t killers.

And here we are. Ten years later and some people won’t give up the hate. We’ve invaded TWO countries. We are participating in NATO air attacks against a third.

And we just killed Osama Bin Laden. Sure, it felt good. But is that what we’re supposed to feel?

I dunno.

Anyway, I started my blog for good a few months later, on which I said a lot of dumb things

And so it goes.

I’m just waiting for someone to declare victory and say we can go home. Finally.

Stupid penguins

I hate stupid commercials. But this one I find especially disturbing.

The spot opens with a guy sitting in a chair watching TV. The room is filled with penguin crap. The shelves are covered with little penguin statues. He reaches for the remote and knocks over a little ceramic penguin statue. There’s a picture of his wife holding the same penguin.

Meanwhile, two of his three kids react with horrified expressions.

‘OMG! He knocked over a penguin! There’s going to be blood!’ They are so horrified they cannot even speak.

But his oldest kid stands there with a smirk on her face. She knows how to play this to her advantage. Next scene, he’s taken the entire brood to Steak ‘n’ Shake where he has bribed into silence them with cheap food.

Now, this is what gets me. He’s bribed the kids into keeping his secret. But the wife is STILL going to notice that the friggin’ penguin is missing. Now the guy can claim that he has NO IDEA what happened to the penguin. He’s the adult, so who is not going to believe him? But his wife is going to blame someone, probably one of those kids.

So, some little kid is going to take an ass-whipping from the psychotic penguin lady. I just hope it’s the oldest kid, the one who knew how to bribe her dad.

This is a dark, dark commercial.

Somewhere in Peoria, there is someone who knows he caused the death of an eight-year-old boy

You know what I hope?

I hope that the person who fired the bullets that killed that eight-year-old boy on East Behrends feels something.

It may be too much to hope that this person feels really bad about it. I mean, someone who took a gun and fired bullets into a house is obviously hoping to kill someone. But I hope that this person was hoping to kill another adult, not a little kid. Perhaps knowledge that he killed a little boy caused him some amount of anguish and grief.

One hopes.

But sadly, the shooter is just another worthless scumbag gang member. He probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass who he killed. Just as long as somebody died.

No doubt the shooter will be found out and face the criminal justice system. Well, at least until the 3rd Appellate Court releases him for some God damned reason.

It’s a sick world we live in, isn’t it?