I woke up relatively early and was surfing the net when Melody called to me from the bedroom saying an airplane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. I said “Bullsh-t”. She got indignant over that. I came to the bedroom, shut off the radio and turned on the TV.
It was on one of the broadcast networks which had video but not audio of the first Tower in flames with the voice-over speculating it was really bad piloting, it may or may not have been a private plane or airliner. After a few minutes of this another plane silently entered the screen and flew into the second Tower.
I had a hard time grasping it was intentional. At first I thought it was a really incompetent air traffic controller. But it was a coordinated attack. I could have sworn reports had it at five planes involved, two in New York, one in the Pentagon, one in Pennsylvania with another one unaccounted for. There was a rumor the Capitol if not the Supreme Court were hit. Another rumor had it that President Bush did not immediately fly back to the White House because a former Clinton staffer could betray his position to the attackers.
As it all sank in, I became angry an actual, real country governed by an actual, real government (Afghanistan did not qualify) was not behind the attack. At least the Japanese had the courtesy to own up to Pearl Harbor instead of contracting it out to, say, the Yakuza. It would be far easier to bomb the living sh-- out of a country than to hunt down some Pol Pot wannabe in or near the Khyber Pass region of Pakistan. I then came to the realization that the only satisfactory conclusion to this event would be the live pay-per-view broadcast of the execution by torture and dismemberment of Osama Bin Laden (aka Usama Binladen, that evil motherf--er, that useless pig-uck-r, that ugly sh-tstain, etc.), preferably at the hands of representatives, chosen by lottery, of the NYPD, FDNY, the four branches of the Military stationed at the Pentagon, and relatives of Flight 93 victims. With what was left of his head posted on a pike in front of the United Nations Building in New York. I have softened somewhat since then: Now I just want to see him dead.
The Onion put it best when it termed coverage of the whole event a new genre of TV programming: Surreality. Things were happening on TV that would be too over-the-top for a Jerry Bruckheimer action movie.
We got Jack (then nine and in fourth grade) to watch it with us. We were telling him over and over again this would be a day he would always remember, just like the assassination of John Kennedy and Pearl Harbor. That afternoon I picked him up early from day care.
Whatever effects the massacre – and that’s what it was – had on me I tried to work out through a bunch of web postings:
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/rant.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/duelingcanadians.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/911dead.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/flagmain.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/bioterror.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/rebuttal.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/afghanletter.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/wtcbynation.html
https://tcotrel.tripod.com/emailspoof.html
This was before blogging. I figured I could help document the event online.
