50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
Check out this cool button that was made for me by MizRedHead:
And check out this one, made by Steve Albright:
If you’d like to make a button, I think that’d be cool, because these are already cooler than anything I could have com up with. If you want to, it should be a .gif file, no larger than 3K, and no bigger than 35×100. email it to me, and I’ll post the ones I think are the coolest, along with the aforementioned hellamadprops.
I wasn’t going to talk about this, because it’s all anyone is talking about. I mean, I turn on TLC to get away from it, and they’re just running a feed of FOX News. Same for Discovery. Even ESPN has a ticker with updates scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
So since I can’t get away from it, I give in. I will write about it. Because I am scared. I am distraught. I am upset. I am depressed. I am angry. Mostly, I don’t know what to do, and I’m not quite sure how to feel. It reminds me of when my friend hung himself. How helpless I felt, how angry, sad, scared, etc.
But the thing that really pushed me over the edge, the thing that made me sit down here tonight, was when I took Ryan to the mall tonight to buy a book for his book report. On the way he asked me if our local mall was popular. I looked in the rearview mirror, and told him that it was. Lots of people go there. He looked back at me, and asked me, “does that mean they’re going to bomb our mall?”
So I spent the next hour explaining to him what had happened, and why (as best as I understand it, which is not very).
And I don’t have much to say, really. I just know that when my dad got sick, I wrote about it and felt better. And when I got the shaft on the movie, I wrote about it, and I felt better, and when the bastards came for me, I wrote about it and I felt better.
And I really do want to tell all about Vega$ and the convention, but I can’t, until I get this out of me. So here goes:
My wife woke me up Tuesday, much earlier than we normally get up, because my mom had called, and told her about the attack on the WTC. So sat up, turned on the TV, and watched in horror as that plane crashed into the tower, over and over and over and over.
I felt like I was watching a bad Steven Segal movie. I mean, this just doesn’t happen in real life, right?
Anyway, I’m not gonna rehash the whole thing, because we’ve all been doing that, and I don’t want to turn into what the news networks are all doing: just saying the same thing, over an dover, with a different pundit to agree with them.
But here’s the deal: I can’t cry. I really want to. I feel it well up in my chest, but the tears won’t come. And that is the hardest thing, so far. That and the fear.
I was walking Ferris last night, and I kept getting this completely irrational fear that something awful was going to happen while I was away from the house. Didn’t help that she kept stopping, and looking behind us, like there was something there.
I am supposed to travel at the end of the month to the east coast for another Star Trek Convention, and I really don’t want to go now. At all. I know that is totally irrational, and totally lame, and exactly what the terrorists want, but I keep imagining what those people on those planes were feeling, knowing that they were going to die. I wonder what I would do if that ever happened to me…?
So, here I find myself at an uncommon loss for words. I don’t think I really have much to add, so that’s it for tonight.
Hrm. Worst. Entry. Ever.
This comes from John Perry Barlow, via Loren, via Scripting.com:
As most of you know, I believe that the United States has gradually, subtly, invisibly to most of us, become a police state over the last 30 years.
This morning’s events are roughly equivalent to the Reichstag fire that provided the social opportunity for the Nazi take-over of Germany.
I am *not* suggesting that, like the Nazis, the authoritarian forces in America actually had a direct role in perpetrating this mind-blistering tragedy. (Though their indirect role deserves a much longer discussion.)
Nevertheless, nothing could serve those who believe that American “safety” is more important than American liberty better than something like this. Control freaks will dine on this day for the
rest of our lives.
Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little – largely illusory – safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously.
I beg you to begin NOW to do whatever you can – whether writing your public officials, joining the ACLU or EFF, taking to the streets, or living visibly free and fearless lives – to prevent the spasm of
control mania from destroying the dreams that far more have died for over the last two hundred twenty five years than died this morning.
Don’t let the terrorists or (their natural allies) the fascists win. Remember that the goal of terrorism is to create increasingly paralytic totalitarianism in the government it attacks. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
Fear nothing. Live free.
And, please, let us try to forgive those who have committed these appalling crimes. If we hate them, we will become them.
May God – or Whatever you want to call It – bless us all. We’ll need it.
Barlow
It’s all anyone is talking about, so I’m not going to say much beyond this:
The World Has Turned, and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I have this feeling that things will never be the same.
Here’s my number one fear: I fear that Bush (who disgusts me, so just know that, and save your flames for someone who cares) will see this as an opportunity to look “Presidential”, and bomb “Them” back to the stone age, and figure out who “They” are later. Sure, I think that we should find out who did this, and deal with them…but I fear the way it’s going to be handled.
Loren makes a great point: there is all this talk about how our intelligence missed this, and whatnot. I greatly fear the laws that are going to come out of this thing. I am really afraid of what’s going to happen to our privacy because of this. Just something to think about, while we all try to process this stuff.
This site seems to have a good timeline, if you’re interested, and Slashdot has a good discussion going. I suggest listening very carefully to what you hear on the news, especially as there is less new info to report, and the carefully coiffed anchors begin speculating and exploiting, in an effort to hold your attention. I suggest reading IndyMedia and CommonDreams, as good alternative sources of information, free of spin and agenda.
In the mean time, please go and give blood. Especially if you’re O-. I know that the thing I feel the most right now is helpless, and giving blood is something, however small, that we can do to help out, and maybe not feel so helpless.
Okay, I’ve said enough, which is more than I wanted to in the first place. I have cool Vega$ stories to tell, but I just don’t feel like telling them today. Maybe tomorrow.
Hey hey!
I am back from Vega$, and one of the coolest conventions, ever! Here’s the deal (or the dilly-o, as the damn kids today say. But since I am so not cool, I won’t say that. Ever.)
Okay, so here’s the deal: I have 5 days worth of cool stories to tell, but I am ex-freaking-hausted now, and my back is completely fucked from signing close to 7500 autographs, so sitting here typing is extremely painful, so that’s about it for this entry.
But boy do I have stuff to tell:
The Server Hack
Vega$ (Gambling, losing, losing some more, winning, giving it back, and the rudeness. Oh, the rudness)
The Con: My talk (they hate me! they like me! they hate me! they like me!) My sketch show: (One of the best sketch shows I’ve ever done, and, apparently, the highlight of the convention, according to some fans) The Star Trek Experience (seriously. one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.)
I have much to say, and I have gone back and forth today, deciding if I’m going to write this stupid little “I’m back” thing (which is extremely lame, I think), or just wait until tomorrow and tell all the stories. But I think I wanted my closest friends to know that I was back, and alive.
Tomorrow is a wasteland.