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September 11, 2011
Unremarkable Memories of 9-11-01What can I say? It was any other Tuesday. I got up, showered, and hopped in the car for the commute to work. At the time, I had an 8-block commute to the office (it's up to a mile & a quarter now), and I already had a CD in the player keyed up and ready to go, so no radio for me. I had no idea what was going on at the time. Since I'm in the Central time zone, my commute took place between the two plane strikes. I got to the office, turned on the radio, and while I was organizing the tasks on my desk I heard a lot of excited talk in the background. Something about plane crashes? And a fire? WTF? I hopped back in the car and drove home to turn on Fox News, and while I was watching the first tower fell. All I could think of was "How many thousands will be lying dead in that rubble?" I kept watching the other tower and trying to remember all the facts from my Steel Structure Design class back in the late 80's: Fireproofing materials sprayed on steel beams can only protect them for 30 or 45 minutes, and when structural steel gets hot it starts to deform like cooked spaghetti. And then? Well, you know what happened.
Honestly? My guesses as to the death toll were nowhere near 3,000. I was thinking 10, 20 even 50 thousand New Yorkers were going to be buried in that rubble. I remembered thinking that Tom Clancy was going to have an especially bad day because he used a jumbo jet kamakazi attack against a Presidential address to a Joint Session of Congress at the close of one of his novels. It's funny how some thoughts stick in your head. And then we heard about the Pentagon. How many planes were still up there rocketing towards targets? Holy shit, this is really happening. And then the gloom set in. What about follow-up attacks? You can kill people with one bomb; but if you want to kill a shitload of people, set a second bomb off an hour later to take out all the first responders and volunteer aid workers. What about releasing sarin or mustard gas onto the bridges leading out of Manhattan? All those people walking out of New York in a daze were just ducks waiting to be shot. I don't remember thinking "Thank God Gore didn't win the election", but I'm sure it did occur to me sometime that day. Not really a day for politics, just uncertainty. One thing that I saw that day didn't hit me until hours later. Mid to late-morning, I remember looking to the South and seeing one plane traveling East to West. That's not unusual, since we're pretty much directly on a line between Des Moines & Omaha & most of the Eastern traffic flying into Omaha flies close to Winterset: but didn't the Feds close down air traffic completely after the second tower strike? Well, yeah....unless you're flying Air Force One and you want to get the President to NORAD's command center West of Omaha. One of the gas stations in town jacked up their prices from about $1.30 to $2.50 by noon, but by dinnertime they had sheepishly lowered their prices back to the original amount....and the manager had a letter to the editor published in the next week's local paper apologizing for their reaction to the tragedy. Small towns, eh? I do remember thinking "Who could have done this?" for a second or two, but then I remembered "Oh yeah, Muslims! Duh." The USS Cole was still a fresh memory. So I'm a racist. Whatever. I do remember some dark thoughts about how to respond that popped into my head that night. Nukes? Yeah, I went there. Looking back ten years later, I thank God that my pessimistic death tolls didn't come to pass. I thank God that there were only 19 suicide bombers instead of 190. I thank God that sarin gas, ebola or even a dirty bomb laced with cesium stolen from hospital x-ray equipment didn't make an appearance that day. I thank God for all those who ran towards the fire & smoke that day, and for all the others who came in later and busted their asses trying to pull even one survivor out of the rubble. Especially after a couple of days, when it became clear that a rescue operation had turned into recovery of bodies & body parts. I thank God for the passengers of Flight 93 who decided that whatever else happened their plane was NOT going to become a human piloted cruise missile. Most of all at the time, I thanked God that my family and I were safe. Because I'm human. | Recent Comments
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Saturday Afternoon Chess thread 01-16-2021
Ace of Spades Pet Thread Saturday Gardening and Puttering Thread, January 16 [KT] Thread before the Gardening Thread, January 16 [KT] Saturday Morning Coffee Break EMT 1/16/21 Sing For Your ONT! Quarantine Cafe: The Grifties Edition Matt Gaetz Reads Insurrectionist Democrats the Riot Act As Fox News' Ratings Fall Below Those of Disney's "Pedophile Picnic" and Bravo's "AIDS Roadshow," It Leaks Word That It Might Fire Its CEO Search
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Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |