five years

i am sick of 9/11. so sick of it i waited until 9/12 to post this. i mean no disrespect to those who suffered and suffer still, but is their very real pain and trauma not worth some more dignified (and permanent) memorial than this bordering-on-unseemly deluge of hype and political opportunism and in-depth bullshit media analysis that the day inspired? than these renewed justifications for an unjustifiable war? bush begged us to stay united in the "war on terror" -- the very thing that is dividing us, increasingly against him, in the first place!

we had also the silly ABC 9/11 movie, best put in its place by jon stewart, who sardonically observed that tv movies are so well known as bastions of accuracy.

i think al queda made some threat today, or maybe that was yesterday, but it is nine-eleven, dammit (or it was), and for once the media will not be diverted from its course of serious delving into where-are-we-now? merely to trumpet some terrorist threat. besides, osama is always talking shit. anyway, it is FIVE YEARS LATER -- one of those magical numbers that demands special reflection. like, a whole half-decade. so eff the latest al q blather -- give the people war-on-terror reverie. a rumination on how 9/11 has forever altered (or not) pop culture. a strangely surprised report on americans' resilient capacity for denial. or ... come to think of it ... an almost presciently timed bit of garbage about justin timberlake's new pop paradigm; it is a new world indeed, in which songcraft and authenticity mean naught. which is why everybody in the world is covering gnarls barkley's "crazy."

if there's one thing we've learned from fantasy adventure films and modern socio-politics, it's that strange times make strange bedfellows. and if we were really serious about wiping out islamic extremism or whatever, we'd have hooked up with saddam hussein instead of invading his country and killing so many of the people, or making it possible for them to kill one another, which they have done in great numbers -- more than hussein himself, o the bloody irony. axis-of-evildoer or not, the man had no love for al queda and wanted nothing to do with them. bush et al were looking for a smash-and-grab in iraq -- loot the oil, etc etc -- and now i guess they are just stuck with it b/c they can't admit they were wrong. well, actually, cheney admitted he was wrong that the war wouldn't last long. but it was still the right thing to do.

oh, well. tomorrow this will all be over, and we'll be back to the usual lies and manipulations and celebrity obsession. b/c otherwise, don't the terrorists win?