for those who are interested,

for those who are interested, my last couple days went something like this:

up at 5ish monday, went out to a chinese food restaurant with Scott & Annie, Steve, KT, Jester. We ended being in the back room, like you see in yakuza movies, alone. I kept waiting for the band of ninja to jump out and assassinate us.
then we headed over to Steve’s place for Seven Samurai, which I and Jester watched all the way through(having never seen it before(it rocks!)) but Steve/Scott/KT/Annie all were drinking and had seen it and got bored. Things ended badly for Steve and we all left feeling kinda sucky. But overall, I’d had a good time, eaten well and seen a great flick. Rather than, say, sitting around at home alone, again. So evening well spent.

As is my usual wont, I got home, watched some TV(taped MVH as usual) and then got online for too long, checking webcomics and half a dozen message boards, etc.

Around 7am, Scott comes down to my cave(the basement), unable to sleep, having come up with a humorous post about the previous evening he wants to type out before he loses it. While I’m waiting for him to finish up so I can go to bed, I flip on the TV. Nothing on VH1 or MTV, I start surfing. And stop on ABC when I see the World Trade center and the Pentagon smoking, and Terrorism! or the like written. Peter Jennings(who kept his cool all day long, good reporter) was in the process of reiterating that New York was not burning, that only the two World Trade Center towers had been affected. That they had both been hit by planes, apparently hijacked planes. That all planes nationwide were being ordered down. That a third plane had hit the Pentagon.

This was not good news. As we both sat there in shock, trying to process this, watching the twin towers, burn, one of them fell down. My first reaction was that it didn’t collapse straight down like you see in demolitions: it fell onto the street, undoubtedly onto the rescue personnel milling about down there. Bad bad mojo.

Immediately Scott went upstairs to tell Dad, who was in the process of getting ready for work, what was going on. He came incredulous: ‘they did what?!’ He called work, the network was down, they needed him, so he headed in.

As Scott and I are then standing in the kitchen watching the remaining tower burn, as Peter Jennings is relaying that the rescue workers are afraid the second tower would collapse, it did.

And of course, you all know the rest of the story. Annie got up, headed to work at Americorps, they didn’t need her, so she came back and we all headed over to the blood bank. Got there at around 11am, we were numbers 105-107, and within ten minutes they were in the 200s, line out the door, telling people to come back in a few hours unless they don’t mind waiting.
so we spent the next hour and a half standing in the waiting room, eating a cookie each time the lady with the cookie tray came around, drinking water, and watching the news. Multiple angles of the second crash and both collapses, lots of talking heads. Everyone was pretty well in shock, but I was happy to see everyone was in a fairly decent humor. One guy came back in, having just been interviewed live on TV, everyone greeted him with applause: you were just on TV! When his number was called he got another round. People cheered when their numbers were called, etc…
Then my number was called, did the paperwork, the evil pin prick for the blood test, and then into the next room, for another bout of waiting and cookies. And ice cream this time… I didn’t take one right away, having already had like a dozen iced molasses cookies. But after half an hour, sure, why not.
News crew was wandering about, when I finally got plugged in and was doing the seven minutes of hand pumping, they snuck up and interviewed me. I didn’t mention that twin brother Bread is in NYC, because he was fine and I didn’t really want to be on TV. (I was on later, I found out…)
Then more cookies, water, snagged a burger from the snack bar, and we went home again.

At that point, I’d been up for almost 24 hours, and even so, the only reason I could sleep at all was that i’d just given blood. And even then, only for about four hours before I woke up again and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Went upstairs, nothing much new except fighting in Afghanistan. (or had that started before I went to bed? i forget…)

And then I kind of killed time in a daze, didn’t do much of anything. Watched Sports Night in an attempt to cheer myself up, but as soon as it was over I felt guilty. Got online but just sort of milled around. All my friends on various message boards are mostly US citizens so they were all just as dazed and in shock. Lots of ‘oh my god, how horrible, best wishes to the victims…’ and ‘let’s kick some ass!’ posts.

At this point, I’m not sure whether I’m more afraid of the probable backlash from stupid white trash americans against muslim/arab citizens, or the probabality that we’re going to war soon.

Got about six hours sleep, went in to work at the KOIN Cinemas. We had maybe 30 people for the 7oclock set, four of which were people trapped in town due to the airport shutdown. Again, all the customers and my coworkers seemed to be in good spirits, but everyone’s kind of half awake, like we all just woke up. Which we did in a very real sense. I mean, at the point that Russia and Cuba are taking our side and condemning the actions, the world has changed dramatically.

As i know you all do too, I have to keep reminding msyelf that it really happened, that the world trade center twin towers are down, and it wasn’t Godzilla or angry aliens who did it, it was real people with real planes, and these aren’t cgi people who are dead, these are thousands of new yorkers dead and gone.

The only good thing, again, is all the people pulling together as a nation to support each other and help people out.

Heh… Maybe the cops will lighten up on Dignity Village for a while? (local story, see www.willametteweekly.com for more on that…)