Better use a memeaphore.

Haha! He's a PC!

How silly!

Reading that gave me a headache.

The second Fark loaded and I read his name, John Hodgeman's head popped out of a pizza box on my TV.

/srsly

What the hell is this doing on my Palin page?

San Francisco is full of symbolic gestures regarding 9/11:

Dang, that's some deep shiat there.

I knew he was funny & smart (love the list of hobo names in his book), but had no idea he was so pitch-perfect with the English language.

Thanks subby. That essay made my night.

There were no hobos in that article.

Dr.Zom: There were no hobos in that article.

But there are libraries smaller than that article.

I heart John Hodgman and McSweeney's.

Dr.Zom: There were no hobos in that article.

Trainwhistle Ernie Roosevelt, the President's Long-Lost Brother disapproves.

eastbaywatch: San Francisco is full of symbolic gestures regarding 9/11:

yeah, guess what? We're not idiots here in the Greatest City in the World. In fact, a lot of us are rather smart. We know well enough one lone quack doesn't make for a bad place. Many of us have happened to have visited San-Fran, and while it's no Brooklyn, and Sourdough isn't a replacement for a fresh Bagel, It's a lovely place with wonderful people and a great atmosphere. One schmuck doing something we don't like doesn't mean the city is a bad place.

I really like that essay. I just think it's interesting to look back to those first few weeks after 9/11 and see us wrestle with our ideas of comedy, art, literature, etc.

After the Holocaust -- and this is not the place to be comparing 9/11 to the Holocaust, though it would be an interesting discussion -- a lot of people wondered whether irony was dead. What Hodgman's trying to tackle isn't quite the same, but it's close: After something so unexpectedly and completely destructive, is there room for the kind of symbolic transcendence that Americans are so fond of?

It's too late in the night to be thinking such things.

saintstryfe: One schmuck doing something we don't like doesn't mean the city is a bad place.

a conspiracy of cartographers: It's too late in the night to be thinking such things.

How about this one from an old Calvin & Hobbes cartoon: Time is created by your inability to perceive everything at once.

saintstryfe: One schmuck doing something we don't like doesn't mean the city is a bad place.

That applies to the whole country.

Roger Arseways: How about this one from an old Calvin & Hobbes cartoon: Time is created by your inability to perceive everything at once.

Then I've got nothin' but time on my side.

a conspiracy of cartographers: After something so unexpectedly and completely destructive, is there room for the kind of symbolic transcendence that Americans are so fond of?

It's too late in the night to be thinking such things.

Sure there is. Everything softens with time.

9/11 is still a very raw scar on people's memory. I live in New York (Crown Heights, Brooklyn to be specific). You could see it walking around - people had their heads down, almost mourning.

But ya know what? Tomorrow, almost all of them won't. They'll raise their eyes up and look ahead. That's how New Yorkers work. We don't bemoan the past. We work in reality.

In an extremely sick and twisted way that even I can't fathom, I can't imagine many other places having a 9/11 and recovering from it like New York has. We've survived. Life didn't change a whole lot here. After the wounds scabbed over, we went back to work. A lot of us still have to look at a big hole in the ground. A lot of us still have bad memories and some sleepless nights as a result. But overall, we're ok.

I wrote this in my journal tonight, as I saw the people around me today, and I think it's fitting so I'll share it with you all. It might seem a bit corny, but hey, this is the home of Broadway:

"I'm very proud to be a New Yorker today. I'm very proud of how this city carries itself. I'm proud that we don't linger on this tragedy dead these seven years, we accept it, like how an actor will stand up and give a tearful performance, then the next night, be the jester. And we continue on.

Tomorrow, people will sit on Sheep Meadow in the Park, people will take the bridges and tunnels to work or back home, we'll curse when we swipe our MetroCard and realize we forgot to reload it, duck and weave across 8 lanes of traffic to get to that pizza place that has the perfect slice.

It'll be like every day. That's why I love this city."

eastbaywatch: saintstryfe: One schmuck doing something we don't like doesn't mean the city is a bad place.

You're cute when your obstinate. No, wait, not cute, what's that other term... oh yeah, horribly annoying.

While I don't agree with the Truthers, I don't get personally offended. I totally can understand why they wouldn't trust what the government says. I am skeptical myself, though I lack any proof otherwise, so I accept it as the best solution thus forth presented.

But the fact is, they can believe that. What they think doesn't hurt me or anyone else personally. And the guy with the flag towed behind... I can't say there weren't days where I didn't like this country a whole lot either. I think last Wednesday I could have gone for taking flaggy fido for a walk like that guy.

I don't really get what all those pictures were supposed to be. They're protesters. I'm not outraged by people using their gods-given right to express themselves in a free society.

Someone like yourself might be outraged when you see people voice opinions you dislike, but not I. I believe in America, son. I believe, as the lines from the wonderful movie "The American President" go, that America is Advanced Citizenship. Directly quoting now,

"You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free"."

It's too true. It might disturb you to see people expressing freedom, but when I don't agree, I can look at it and yell Huzzah and move on to the next thing in my life, because I won't let myself be defined by what I don't like.

Try it sometime, it's a fun way to live.

saintstryfe: Dr.Zom: There were no hobos in that article.

Trainwhistle Ernie Roosevelt, the President's Long-Lost Brother disapproves.

Ned Gravelshirt is too drunk off of brain shellac to care.



Also, in the 9/11 section of his book, one will find the only real anger in the whole thing. It's still funny, but because he makes fun of those that exploit the day with a cool, yet very chilling sarcasm. Especially evident on the audio book.

/John Hodgman has only masturbated out the window one time

Here is what 9/11 means to me:

My sister was a FedEx pilot in 2001. She was flying on 9/11/01. When I woke up that morning and saw what had happened, I called her at once to find out where she was and if she was okay. She was already at her apartment in Memphis and asleep. Turned out her plane had landed in the US 30 minutes before the first tower was struck. She was filling out her post-flight checklist when they learned of the attack.

9/11 is the price we pay for living in a free society. That's a nice thought in the abstract. That was the first time I realized that you might have to pay with your family's lives. I don't regret that, but I'm very aware of it now.

FTFA:

So if art cannot contain or describe this event, and if for now the suffering is too keen to be alleviated by parable ... if stories are for the moment not as critically needed, as courage, as medicine, as blood, as bacon, they can at least revert to this social function. As time goes on, this will all pass away into memory, into a story with a beginning and a middle and finally an end. And that transition from the real into fable will bring its own kind of comfort and pain. Now, though, we may gather and distract one another, take comfort in our proximity, and know that we are, at this moment, safe.

I said the same thing about the Roman republic earlier tonight.

\Bacon

eastbaywatch: San Francisco is full of symbolic gestures regarding 9/11:

Are you saying you love New York less without the towers?

All hail the Hoboverlord.

9/11 was a Death blow to the Constitution, a mortal wound to the U.S. government and knock on the head to the average American rendering them Retarded. Mission Accomplished.

And this administration knowingly let it happen. After the U.S. is done squirming like a wounded animal and just goes ahead and dies 9/11 should be a world wide Holiday.

Gyrfalcon
9/11 is the price we pay for living in a free society

No it isn't. Plenty of free societies don't have this stuff going on, and plenty of un-free societies do.

Roger Arseways: a conspiracy of cartographers: It's too late in the night to be thinking such things.

How about this one from an old Calvin & Hobbes cartoon: Time is created by your inability to perceive everything at once.

Wasn't that one of the themes in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five?

Death to America: 9/11 was a Death blow to the Constitution, a mortal wound to the U.S. government and knock on the head to the average American rendering them Retarded. Mission Accomplished.

And this administration knowingly let it happen. After the U.S. is done squirming like a wounded animal and just goes ahead and dies 9/11 should be a world wide Holiday.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn

Gyrfalcon:

9/11 is the price we pay for living in a free society. continually electing interventionist governments and arming our future enemies.