Well it is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, so I figure I might as well make a post. The first thing that I would like to say is that I do truly feel for people who lost loved ones on that day. I know what it is like to experience the death of a close member of the family long before his/her time (which was my father, who died at only 38, and on Christmas Eve no less). The fact that so many thousands of people had that happen to them, all on the same day, and all at the hands of terrorists who just wanted a good ‘death count’ probably makes it worse. Especially since no one saw it coming.

When my Father died, as callous as it sounds, a lot of the family had been seeing it in the near future for a long time. He was not taking care of himself, not following his scedule for the insulin shots that he had to take for diabetes, in the midst of a court case that might land him in jail for a bit, not to mention having just gone through a nasty break-up with his girlfriend. Yeah, I guess it didn’t really surprise anyone when he died, even though he did die quite young. The thing is that I was still grief-stricken for a very long time, even though I knew it was going to happen, and knew that the choices he was making were only making it more likely.

The Families of the people who died in the 9/11 attacks didn’t have anything like that. There were husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, that simply went into work one day and never came home. People who were likely in good health, people who were going to do their job to support their families. Then a bunch of malicious people with razor-blades took the lives of thousands of them, and with that, took part of the life from everyone related to any of the victims. It was such a horrible, sickening thing for any being to do, that I can not believe that the attackers truly thought that what they were doing was in the name of any so-called God. Can I possibly be so naive?

Let me posit this: Most all current religions believe in a single God, sure there are other religions that still belieive in multiple gods, but for the purposes of this discussion I will say that it mostly focuses on one per religion. So, what if you get it wrong? Say you worship the father of Jesus, but it turns out that Allah is the real god, boy howdie, you would certainly be fucked then. Of course if you don’t believe in any god it is easy to make the call on your death bed, that is what I am banking on. I may make a quick 180 from my current postition when it does appear that I am dying, yet, I am not willing to kill myself in an attack on the world in general.

• It is not my goal to try to cheapen the anniversary of the death of thousands with a few words, nor is it my goal to try to do it with absolute silence. The thing is, the important thing is that people do move on. The families of those who did die in the attack on 9/11 are, likely, just starting to realize that they have to live without them. No amount of mourning will ever bring them back. People died, it was a tragedy for thousands of families, those lives are gone and will never come back. Just as the people who are coming to terms with their loss are starting to forget the pain and anguish, Bush decides to have a moment of silence for them… Way to bring up a really bad experience and make people cry…Now why don’t you call the parents of all the 1000+ soldiers that have died in Iraq, get them to go to a single location and have a moment of silence for them?

Do not scroll down

I don’t know if you are like me, but I skim my emails and open the ones that have only a single name (when it is the name of someone I knew ‘back in the day’). When I opened a particular email, which said it was sent by ‘Steve’, I thought that it could have been any of a dozen people that I knew, some of whom I would really like to get in touch with again. It turned out that the email was not from the ‘Steve’ that I knew in high school, nor anyone named steve that I have met after high school. Which sucks.

What followed was the most disturbing picture that I have ever seen.

The only way that I can justify this to myself is to say that ‘grandma found the machine that ices the donuts’. Any other explanation is simply unacceptable. I don’t really want to know why or how that photo was taken, what I want is to have it erased from my memory for all time. That is something that will sicken me every time I see it.

Unfortunately, the photo in question came with a little message that said, “want to see more photos like this, click here.”

I think I may quit looking at emails that have a friends name as the sender. That image is simply Burned into my mind.

The image of Granny finding the machine that puts the icing on donuts, that is.