ad astra!

Well it’s two weeks since all the shit came down, and since nothing else majorly tragic has happened except some yocals harrasing Arab-Americans, which is pretty shit but generally agreed upon to be the American Way–”intern” the Japanese, after all–the geniuses in government are trying to figure out the best way to prevent what’s happened from ever happening again. A few points:

1) You can’t get on an airplane with anything remotely resembling a weapon anymore. If it weren’t for the huge Bic lobby in congress I’m sure they’d even outlaw the pen on all major flights. No one’s going to crash into a building with an airplane anytime soon, unless the crew is stupid enough to take some idiot brandishing a rolled-up USA Today seriously.
2) What the geniuses in government haven’t quite realised is that the people who did this did it because they HATE the USA. This is the kind of hatred that feels like an airplane crashing into a building–it’s pretty fucking serious. No one at the upper eschelons of government has taken a moment to ask themselves why these people didn’t like us. It probably has a lot to do with our bully image… so bombing the hell out of afghanistan isn’t going to make things any better, in fact it will probably piss the Afghani people off a lot. Andy Rooney, as much of a whiner as he is, pointed out that the bombs we would use to blow up any building in Afghanistan are more expensive than the building we’d be blowing up. Let’s get real. Instead of, being the neighborhood bully, going down the street and beating the shit out of the kid who broke our toys, we should listen to our mother and say we’re sorry for being such a bully. Then we can start from there.
3) We’re in an ID card craze right now. I have an ID card here at college and had one in high school. I never carried my high school ID unless I needed to check out a library book because I didn’t think I needed a piece of laminated plastic to prove my right to be there.
Simon Davies, the director of the UK-based Privacy International (I’ve seen him on TV, he’s a fat shiny-headed guy who I personaly want to keep my secrets from) has said that an ID card in Britain “would flush out those who aren’t valid members of the British public.” In American terms, and even though we slaughtered the Indians and lynched the Africans, there’s an idea that anyone who comes here has the right to be here, to establish themselves, to prove themselves worthy of becoming American citizens, and as long as you’re trying your best you’re a fucking valid member of the American public.(so go fuck yourself, simon) I don’t think that this ID card would solve anything, in fact, I think it’s a shame and blasphemy of our constitution. My privacy is one of those inaliable rights–to be secure in my person and documents, etc–I shouldn’t be mandated to carry a card to get that right, I’m supposed to have it just by being on this soil, card or no fucking card. Furthermore, the infringement of our liberties only goes over that more to the other side, it only proves that there is terror, that we are afraid, and that that smoke coming from that building over there has me scared shitless. And that’s what the people who crashed those planes wanted, and that’s not the way it should be.

That is all–maybe

Right now I just feel sad, and like I can’t do anything to help what’s happened. I guess I can’t, really, except to not be afraid. I am afraid, though, especially for the Arab-Americans. They are not terrorists–they love this country just as much as the white guys do, otherwise they wouldn’t be here…

Keep safe, America…

Today(Wednesday’s post was done on Tuesday but Blogger was acting up), the day after the WTC/Pentagon attack, things finally began to sink in that all those people were dead, and that our country was a New Country, and that the world was forever changed. It does seem remote to us here in Michigan, I think anything outside of our town sometimes seems a million miles away, but it was real and it happened closer than, and with more devestation, than any other act of terrorism perpetrated against any country at any time, save the Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (maybe I’ll talk about that later, but not now).

What I did today was cry. I went to my creative writing class, and saw all of the flags flying at half-mast everywhere. Finally, driving to work on 28th st I was stopped at a red light and I saw one of the big ones we have around flying at half mast, a huge fluttering reminder that our country, our people, our very spirit of freedom had been attacked, forget about what I think about corporations and globalization, because everything that makes us a great nation was attacked along with everything that makes us bad. I bawled. I broke completely down, pounded the steering wheel and stared at that flag, the red-white-and-blue dancing in the wind, and I thought about the people who had jumped from the world trade center.

That first post was done on Monday, and Monday night I did work on that play… so much that I was still awake at 8:30am just before all the shit happened. I had dropped my car off to get looked at, and I was in my grandma loner car on Eastbownd I-196, and just coming into Grand Rapids traffic had slowed way down, and I realised what was coming from my radio. Then a few minutes later another plane had flown into the second tower, and later at home when I was on the phone talking to Brad in Las Vegas the third plane crashed into the Pentagon.

A lot has been said. Honestly, I think we had this coming; I’m not condoning the attacks nor am I saying they aren’t a horrible thing, anything that causes suffering is horible, but we in the United States have been trying to be the police force for the world, as well as trying to indoctrinate the rest of the world with what we call the American Way. This has made a lot of people in the world upset, and our refusal to acknowledge that other ways of life are no better or “worse” than ours, just different. Yes, this is a horrible thing, and I believe it is a threat to our freedom, especially our freedom from fear, but we must be careful what sort of retribution we take. So often we consider something that happens to innocent Americans a “tragedy” and our actions against the perpetrators to be “justice”, but a bombing of Afghanistan or wherever would no doubt result in innocent lives lost in that country, too, and that would be just as much a tragedy.

So this is my new blog thingy. I’ve been sorta meaning to do this for awhile, and thought I’d finally do it now that I have the least ammount of time in my life =) I always thought this was a self-important thing to do, kind of masturbatory if you will, but then I remembered that journaling is really for me and not for anyone else, sharing it on the internet is just a fun thing for me to do. And if Steve Schalchlin can do it, so can I.

My thougts right now are focusing in on a play I started on in April of 2000 that got abandonded, and now I’ve got a new vision for it and I will probably use it as a project for my creative writing class. I will post a scene or two of what I work on tonight provided the arthritis I’m too young to have in my hand doesn’t bother me too much.

I guess the other thing that’s going through my head is Pete Yorn’s musicforthemorningafter. Kate and her Bosnian boyfriend Harris told me they didn’t like it, and I thought almost for certain that Kate would, but I guess it’s her loss and not my place to tell her what to like. I still think it is one of the most entertaining/interesting albums I’ve listened to in quite awhile. And I really am not basing my music choices on Kate or Harris, worntorn nation or not.

And now I want to whine. My stomach has been SO upset since around 9pm tonight. I had to drive from Jenison to Cascade and back to get some Proventil Repetabs (asthma medicine) for a patient who absolutely couldn’t live without it for another day or something and I had a coffee at the coffee thing at that meijer, so I think maybe that upset it (who knows what was the date on the milk the little lackey used) either that or it was the motrin800 I took earlier on a mostly empty stomach for the aforemention arthritic hand. I hope I don’t have an ulcer or something. At any rate, I took some Pepcid� Complete� (lol) and that’s starting to kick in so I hope it’ll feel better as I have this work I must do.

More music: on that trip back and forth to store 50 (Cascade “meijer village” the ugly meijer thing at the end of 28th street past Woodland Mall/Patterson/the airport) I listened to Dave Matthews Band, Before These Crowded Streets, and boy is that a wonderful piece of musical artistry. The songs on that disc are so emotional and just all-encompassing I cannot ever get too much of that album. Kate likes it, too.

That’s all for my first post. Something inside me wishes it was a bit more significant, but nothing majorly disruptive is going on at this point in my life, for about the first time since I was a baby. Yay.