September 2001

It’s 5:00 on the day after and for what seems like the very first time since yesterday morning, the local TV stations have paused long enough to offer a weather report. I’d usually criticize such non-stop attention to one topic (like during the presidential “election” last fall), but I can’t this time…

Now it’s 10:00 and I still don’t know how exactly to react to all this. I don’t think I’m in the minority. I’m having a hard time summoning all the anger that so many other people have demonstrated, although it appears briefly here and there. I’m still more trapped in fear and anxiety about what happens next. And I think I’m still focusing on the horrendous physical tragedy rather than the frightening and even more serious political implications…

And I’m wondering just what makes people so self-righteous and arrogant and callous as to think that their opinion of a country’s policies justifies the brutal murder of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of random innocent people. And being relieved that most people in the world are not psychotic and therefore don’t have such strong “faith”…

I’m worried about bigots (here and abroad), and about terrorists (the kind who hijack planes and kill people, and the kind who cause panics at gas stations in Oklahoma City), and about the next group which thinks ramming a plane into a building is just a spiffy way to make a point now that you mention it…

Words fail me. Maybe some random thoughts while I continue trying to figure out how I’m reacting to the past two days:

• I still can’t call New York City, although I have received one call FROM there.
• San Francisco buses and the stores are eerily quiet. If you’ve ever ridden a 14-Mission bus, you’ll know that it’s usually not a particularly peaceful experience, but it was last night.
• By lunchtime, it was almost impossible to buy a newspaper here.

And on TV coverage, while I’m at it:

• ABC is far and away doing the best live coverage of the broadcast networks, while CBS seems to have the best taped reports. CNN seems to have the edge over MSNBC on cable.
• You knew this was something big when MTV and VH-1 replaced their programming yesterday with a feed from New York City’s CBS station (but not from the network itself, oddly enough).
• Where did Fox dig up their news crew? Could they possibly send them back to whichever small town talk radio station they came from in exchange for some real journalists?
• At what point did Dan Rather surrender all his dignity and credibility to Peter Jennings and become so jarringly painful to watch?

It’s creepy even in San Francisco. People on the street look troubled, the McDonald’s on Bryant next to the police station is almost deserted, and downtown is supposedly shutting down for the day…

And still CalTrans keeps pouding those fucking pile drivers for the freeway retrofit. The backdrop to the horrifying news is a constant loud pounding sound which makes my building vibrate each time. What the hell are those idiots thinking?

And my god, what must it be like in New York. I’ve had a couple of pieces of email, but I can’t get a phone call through right now…

Firsthand sightings at Ultrasparky and Andy’s Chest…

Is it just me or is spam getting much worse the past few months? It’s now way past the 5-10 per day I used to get; my junk mail is now outnumbering the legitimate mail by a factor of five or six to one on weekend days…

There hasn’t been an email address on this site for a couple of years, I never post to newsgroups or message boards without using a throwaway Yahoo address, and I even use customized addresses (“amazon@”, for example) when I buy online so I know who’s selling addresses. I use Eudora, which isn’t fully HTML-compliant, so “web bugs” (those graphics which let the sender know that you’ve read his mail and set you up for even more) aren’t an issue. But still it’s getting worse and worse…

The disturbing thing is that more and more of it seems to be coming from “legitimate” companies, like Belk Department Stores, a company which has already fielded several irate calls from me and will never have to worry about my being a customer again, even if I should happen to move back near one of their stores. I’m really aggressive about letting companies like this know that their tactics are completely unacceptable…

I’ve become adept at filtering messages, so only about 15-20% of the garbage lands in my inbox, but it’s still gotten so bad that I’m even thinking of deleting my main, most-used email alias and broadcasting a new one to friends I want to hear from. And until there’s a system by which these slimewads have to take some responsibility for the “free speech” they exercise, it will only get worse…

For anyone who may have had his irony detector disabled yesterday, the answer is no. I was not really upset about missing Burning Man. I’ve already spent two days this year in the hospital with tubes sticking out of my arm; that’s quite enough fun for one year, thanks. Adding the joy of coping with annoying, smelly people on drugs in the middle of a desert might result in a pleasure overload. Really…