Mixed feelings re: 9/11

The entire mediascape is brimming with messages about remembrances of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

I have a variety of feelings and opinions about all this, and I kind of don't know how to sort through them.

On the actual day, I was a mess with the tears and fear.  Unlike so many of my friends, I didn't know a single person who died, so I wasn't personally affected, but I, like the rest of the country, was bereft.

Today, I keep crying thinking of all the people who died -- and all the people who love the people who died who have to make it through every single day without them. 

And I'm balancing that with feeling really disappointed in our leaders and how our country has changed in the last 10 years. 

I was really uncomfortable with the blind jingoism that directly followed the attack.  The people who waved the flag around all the goddamned time -- and couldn't follow the rules for displaying it -- burned my ass in a big way (and they still do, especially the flags that tucked into the car doors that waved as you drove and got filthy and tattered in short order).  And the erosion of civil liberties -- especially for people who aren't white -- enrages me (Dave Eggers' Zeitoun contains but one example of what I'm talking about).  And the part where my tax dollars are funding multiple wars that are killing thousands of our soldiers and untold thousands of innocent victims in theater makes me so sad that I have to pretend it's not happening so I can keep going on (we were attacked by exactly 0 Iraqis and 0 Afghanis, but we just can't seem to disengage in wars with "insurgents" in those countries).

This is a hard situation.  I have to hand it to Hilary Price, who totally nailed it today.  So many mixed emotions.  What can we do but howl?

Investing in the future

At this point in my life, I'm embarrassed to say (and yet not too embarrassed to reveal) that I no longer know how many times I've soiled my pants.  These incidents have become too numerous to count.

It started in 1991 when I was a girl of 15 shitting my pants on Easter.  I think it was the au gratin potatoes that did it, but who cares?  The only soundtrack to this day in history was the uproarious laughter of my cousins.  This streak (pun intended) continues to this very day wherein I shit my pants not 14 feet from the toilet in my own house (yes, Scott got out the measuring tape to get exact metrics on this).

The details, while hilarious, are not really appropriate for a public forum.  Suffice it to say that no one was more surprised that I was shitting my pants than yours truly.  Except maybe Scott, who was only a few feet away.  When I realized what happened, I turned around, mortified, to see old Count Scottula gazing at me with a mixture of shock and awe.  And by awe I mean horror.

Usually these kinds of incidents are preceded by a frantic retreat to our home.  A scurrying, if you will.  A race against time.  Not this time.  I was just mild-manneredly minding my own business, enjoying a game of online Scrabble, without the vaguest of inklings of what was to come when, KAPOW.

Friends, I am going to purchase stock in Depends forthwith.  For the future.  I may as well make money on this malady.