Well I was gonna go on a long rant about the media overkill surrounding 9/11, but I changed my mind. I turned on 60 Minutes tonight and saw that they were going to fill the show with stories on 9/11 and since I didn't want to see that, I flipped the channels and managed to catch what was on Datleline NBC. Datleline NBC had a story about Princess Di. Guess the people at Datleline NBC didn't see the irony of it. So I watched football, but it did occur to me that maybe parts of the media overkill isn't such a bad thing.

But because the anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and it's almost Federally Mandated that anyone who can has to write about it and Reflect Upon the Meaning of it All, I'm gonna write something. Besides, if I don't, I might get harassed by John Ashcroft (cough* asshole * cough).

First of all, I am not gonna write my story about how I find out. Besides being pretty boring (it involves strange rumblings on a radio in a liquor store and a crying yoga teacher), whatever happened to me isn't that important. I don't really like those stories because in a way, it's people trying to inject themselves into the drama of the day. Like people feel kind of bad that they weren't part of the awful events that day, so by telling their story about hearing about it on the radio, they'll somehow put themselves in the drama. Awful, horrible things happened that day, but not to me. And not to most people in this country. In fact, while everyone spouts off about how "everything has changed" since then, other than it might be making it harder for me to find work and being scared to death that the fate of the world relies on an overgrown Frat boy who probably never heard of Pakistan up until a year ago, it hasn't changed me at all.

My main thing is that with all that's gone on, it's like we're being told how we're supposed to feel and act. Which I hate because I hate it whenever somebody tells me I'm supposed to feel a certain way. What happened was too big and too awful of an event for anything to completely relate to people the wide variety of feelings that people have. But yet they'll try.

Salon is running a great article about people's forbidden feelings about that day. Like how a bunch of people just went out and had mad crazy monkey sex or how Firemen in NY became totally obnoxious in bars by constantly saying things like "I haven't been the same since my buddy died…." in order to pick up chicks. My favorite one is this one:

"I hated the New York Times profiles of all the deceased. It's just that everyone they wrote about -- all 2,000 people -- were depicted as really nice, really devoted parents who came home every night at 5 p.m. to make dinner, play with the kids, never missed a soccer game, and proposed to their girlfriend in a really sweet, creative way. I would read these profiles every day and think, yeah right. Was everyone in the WTC a super amazing person? Someone who worked there must have been an asshole." -- Female reporter at a major business magazine

I love the article because since 9/11 I know there's a lot more feelings out there like that than reports let on. I know, for instance, that when I was in New York, my friends would immediately start rolling their eyes whenever somebody on TV said something in tribute to New York. I also know too that people were starting to get sick of hearing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch of baseball games (which is why they stopped it).

Right now, there a lot of forbidden thoughts that I have. Like how I can't take another tribute or a moment of silence. Or that I'm tired of seeing Rudy Guilliani and wish he'd go away for awhile. And I hate that everything big that happens now has to have some sort of commemoration, like the All Star game or the opening of the Football Season. It's like when I saw U2 last fall and after the umpteenth reminder of 9/11 during the show, I wanted to yell out to Bono "shut the fuck up and fucking rawwwk!" (a common reaction, though, whenever you see U2 in concert).

Besides, you could also argue that in a country in which millions watched "American Idol" and that there seems to be no outrage that the President has managed to weasel out of every international accord, treaty, and summit, that nothing has changed at all. I'm not even gonna get into the whole oil dependency, SUV thing. Or John Ashcroft.

As for what I'm going to do this Wednesday, the Anniversary, I'm not gonna do a damn thing. Maybe watch the ballgame. Maybe rent a couple of movies or maybe go to a bar. One thing I won't do is turn on the TV and watch any part of what's going on the news. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to be told What We Learned and How We Feel.

And most importantly, I don't want to have to relive that awful day. No sireee. Having to watch all the footage over again is just too much. It's like having to relive a day in which you get dumped on video. You see yourself wake up and go through the day, all happy and unsuspecting and excited for the big date. Then, of course, is the dumping and you get to see that too, except you'll be able to see the exact moment in which you heart is shattered into six or seven pieces, all from five or six camera angels and in slow motion. Once that's over, you get to watch you go home and down a bottle of wine to kill the pain. That's all followed by the day the day after, when you wake up to go to work and can't really see the point in it and spend the week listening to Nirvana and really depressing mixed tapes that you've made. That is, of course, when you're not spending all your time on the couch watching TV and wearing out your video taped copy of the Buffy musical (not that I've ever been like that, I'm just saying). And that's what watching all the footage will be like.

So there's my 9/11 thing. Now I can get back to bitching about being unemployed.