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9/11 redux

It’s been a month since we watched the World Trade Center fall. I’ve struggled so much with what to say about it , that now it seems redundant to do a whole essay on it. So I won’t. I have a couple of things to say, but I’ll just use that as a preface to some other stuff that I’ve been working on.

As the Constant Readers know, I’ve been in the middle of some life changes since before the attacks. When I got the call from my mother on Tuesday morning and I saw the towers crumble to dust with all those people inside, I felt a shift in my mind, my body and my spirit. Right then I knew that I was no longer going to be an apathetic American nor was I going to let my life continue on its undirected path.

After a week of crying and feeling totally helpless, I finally got on an even keel again and I started reading about the things going on in the government in relation to the terrorists attacks and I got severely addicted to Metafilter.com. Lots of different people log on to mefi and it gave me some perspectives that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. For instance, a guy who goes by JISH did a really documentation of images [that no longer is up, sadly – ed.] and quotes from Tuesday, September 11 and I wouldn’t have seen it if not for a random mefi link. I also had CNN and ABCnews on all the time. I tried a couple of other news sources, but I felt they were too preachy (hello, FOX!). That part of it has calmed somewhat, but now that we are finally bombing Afghanistan, the news is on most of the time in my home. So, I am now an involved American and I will definitely use my votes and my pull as a voter to keep politicians in check. I hope everyone else will do the same.

I am still not pursuing any Mac work or web work, but I’m not turning it down, either. I have put out about a dozen retail applications and I hope to have a retail job by the end of the week. It’s not what I want to do forever, but it’s something that I have 10 years experience doing and it will help pay the bills that are pushing our finances to the edge. I accepted a new Mac client today. It’s a very small gig, and I need the money, so I’m gonna do it. But I won’t like it.

I’ve let the California dream go for now. When it’s time, I’ll know. It is not productive for me to pine about moving when it’s obviously not going to happen soon. I suppose I still have stuff to accomplish here. I think it could be that I need to get into herbalist activities, and the American Herbalist Guild is located here in GA, so perhaps that’s why I’m still here. In that vein of thought, I found out that the AHG is having a seminar next month in Helen, GA and I plan to attend the one day intensive. We’ll see where that leads.

In addition to the herbalist and aromatherapy stuff that I can do, I also got a hint that perhaps I should revive my online store. I guy called me about Cedant, my host to whom I gave a testimonial, and he is a web marketer. He was asking about raw logs for sites at Cedant and in the course of me looking that up for him, we started talking about online commerce. He said that using GoTo.com’s (now Overture.com – A) pay per click program is the best way to drive hits to your site besides having specific META tags on every page. That rang a huge bell with me, since a friend of mine who has an online store (The Blessed Bee) was telling me just a couple of months ago about how great GoTo has been for her business. So, I have been looking up various stores that would be my competition as well as using GoTo’s tools to look up how things are listed and I think I really could have a chance with a specialty shop. Do you think that yet another shop that sells pagan, witchy, Indian, jewelry, oils, incense, decor, henna and maybe astrological charts would be successful? Email me your thoughts.

I’ve also been drawn to various inspirational books and ideas lately that have helped me along my path. I’ve read Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and The Life You Were Born To Live by Dan Millman. Both books been very helpful to me. I also read Disobedience by Jane Hamilton and I really enjoyed it.

So, that’s the State of Angela for now. Later!

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9/11: In Defense of Freedom

“We should resist the temptation to enact proposals in the mistaken belief that anything that may be called anti-terrorist will necessarily provide greater security.” – In Defense of Freedom

“America will find an appropriate way to mourn. But if we must have a shrine or monument for our remorse, let’s put it on the 200th floor, right next to the antiaircraft guns.” – Jonah Goldberg, from the National Review

11:55pm MetaFilter really IS more addictive than crack. I find the discussions there to be well rounded and very diverse. I put in a thread about having kids say the Pledge of Allegiance in school and I got tons of great comments back. I’m currently embroiled in the thread about whether or not we should have a National ID card and how far we should allow our freedom to be eroded because of the attacks. After the initial shock and fear, I now am very concerned that all this talk about giving free reign to the gub’ment to ID us and DEMAND papers whenever and where ever they please is not a very good idea.

The frantic scramble to “secure” the airlines is also appearing to be slamming the barn door after the horse got out. As an Atlantan, I’ve dealt with Hartsfield Int’l. Airport for years. Security? Yeah, riiiight. If you call a posse of silly black girls with purple hair and 2 inch long fingernails making $10 an hour security, then we sure had it. Is it really a surprise that a guy got on an airplane at Hartsfield with a loaded .22 pistol a couple of days ago? Not to me it isn’t. I think it’s silly to confiscate nail clippers and key rings, folks. It’s also irritating and useless to ban all carry on luggage as well. If the goddam airlines could get our fucking luggage to our destinations WITH US in the first place then we wouldn’t be carrying 4 tons of shit ON THE PLANE, now would we? I mean, come ON. Does all this mean a fucking thing now anyway? The deed is done. DONE. OVER. FINISHED.

And as far as bailing out the airlines goes, well, I think it’s a necessary thing for the economy, however, the spinoff industries such as travel agents who are now holding out their hands and using this situation to get free government subsidies – they should bugger off. They were already nearly dead thanks to the online ticket sales explosion and this is just an excuse to get bailed out of a situation they were already in. Hey, people, things are tough all over, get over it and get a shitty new job like the rest of us.

I think we are making ourselves miserable and giving away our freedom and way of life at a time when we should be staunchly grasping it. Meekly standing aside and allowing ourselves to be undone by what has happened is not the way. It is exactly what bin Laden and all terrorists want! They can’t take away our way of life, but they know that we can, if we are scared badly enough. We MUST defend our way of life. Once we’ve let these liberties fall away, we’ll never get them back. Look at what has happened historically when we get scared and lose our heads.

Is it worth it? Do we really want them to win?

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9/11 Memorial Service

8pm: I have no new quotes or really, no new anything to say. I attended the memorial service at the National Cathedral today, via TV at a local church, but unfortunately I left before GeeDubya’s speech so I don’t know what he said. We have our candles burning on the front porch for the 7pm thing, but no one seems to know if it’s 7pm local or EST or PST or what. In any case, I’ve had a candle burning since Tuesday.

I’m happy to say that I’m not bursting into tears anymore, but I am still a little edgy and kinda pissed off that we’ve not launched an attack yet. Yes, I know, I know, “we’ve got to find the person(s) responsible”. Grrr. Whatever. I had violent dreams last night, one of which involved my being shot for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think it simply reflects the overall feelings I’ve had for the last week: it could happen to anyone.

And it is nice to hear airplanes buzzing overhead again – although I now notice them a LOT more than before. I really do hear every single one that goes over the house. Weird.

Now I’m going to have a semi-normal Friday night: pizza, beer and the SciFi channel. I’ll try to only think of the terrorists every other minute.

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9/11/2001

9pm

I’ve been too upset to say anything today. I’ve been glued to CNN for 12 hours now, like everyone I suppose, and I am just now able to come to my Mac and write.

As everyone who is conscious knows, today is the 21st Century’s “day of infamy”. Our own soil has been attacked by gutless cowardly terrorists who used our own planes and passengers to attack our World Trade Center and our Pentagon.

Those of us who are in our 30’s can’t even remember any wars of consequence. We’ve never seen the draft or had our country violated in any way. I guess we never thought it could happen.

We were wrong.

As I watched the twin towers fall this morning, I felt a deep fear stir in me. I felt ill. I felt like I was witnessing a pivotal moment for this country and we 30-somethings would never be the same for it. I am deeply affected by this act of war. Nick and I have shed tears for all those innocent people who were just minding their own business this morning – only to have their planes hijacked or to have their offices explode in flames.

I sent out frantic emails this morning to my friends in New York and DC and I am so grateful that our infrastructure got their replies back to me quickly. I cried from relief, and I am grateful that the internet is up and keeping me in touch with the people that I take for granted.

Despite ATT’s admonitions to stay off the phones today, I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve talked to my NYC friends and my family and Nick has called his family as well. I just wanted to be sure they were safe.

I hurt for this terrible evil that has happened to us.

And I want blood.

Where are the bombers? Why isn’t Afghanistan a greasy spot? Why isn’t Pakistan just a memory? I think we should bomb now and let allah sort them out. It’s clear that this was done by Islamic extremists – hell, they’ve been after us for years. We all know that Afghanistan is protecting Bin Laden and we’ve all seen the tapes of Palestinians and other fanatical militant Muslims celebrating the mass murders that occurred today.

I say they should all burn. We have the firepower and we definitely have the desire to eradicate the scumbags who promote and support terroristic acts around the world. Let’s just DO IT. Would anyone on this planet really care if the troublemakers were terminated? I think not.

I suppose the question is: does GW have the balls to do it? Will he be able to carry out the retaliation that is necessary? Only a severe strike will do. Terrorists must be stopped and they must know that we will not be fucked with.

I hope tomorrow will bring forth the collective balls of our government and I hope the camel riding terrorists of the world will feel our wrath.

9/11

World Trade Center, 9/11/01
World Trade Center, 9/11/01

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Now, I Find…

…I’ve Changed My Mind – Drowned World by Madonna

My trip to California was not at all what I expected. First of all, I didn’t get any job offers. Secondly, I didn’t want any of the jobs I interviewed for in the first place.

That may not seem to be such a big deal, but believe me, it was – it IS – a big deal. You see, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a tech any more. I still totally love my Macs and I will always be a geek, but I just can’t do it any more. I can’t hear one more user whine. I can’t be asked one more stupid, unimportant question on an interview. I don’t give a rat’s ass what the IEEE number of USB or FireWire is, nor do I care if I score well on a random test that some schmuck of an HR person relies on to quantify candidates because they don’t have a clue about the job they are hiring for. I can’t deal with one more person trying to quantify me and shove me into what they think a good support tech should be. I just can’t.

So, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve redone my resume to reflect more admin stuff and less tech and I’ve removed my tech resume from Monster.com as well. I’m applying with as many nonprofit corporations as I can find and hoping that I can find someone who will believe that I actually have done other things besides be a Mac tech. So far, it’s slow going, but I feel strongly that this is the right path for me.

While I was in CA, I really did feel that I was having some sort of crisis, like a pre-midlife crisis or something. But as I thought about it more, I realized that I’ve not really enjoyed doing support for about a year. Every call I got made me cringe and even doing a marketing mailer was no fun at all. In my heart of hearts, I knew that I didn’t want to do this any more, but I felt that I had no other marketable skills. I still feel that way to some extent, but I’m willing to be open to other opportunities that I’ve ignored until now. I really enjoy web design, but that’s not the best field to be in right now, so I think I’ll do some generic office work until I decide what I want to do.

I would like to go back to school for something, but I’m not sure what. I have such wide interests that there is no telling what in the world I’ll end up doing! For instance, I’m considering some sort of holistic healing (herbalist?), art restoration or culinary school. I’m currently enrolled in a Chinese brush painting class and I hope that it will jump start my creativity and perhaps give me more ideas about what to do. I’m also still considering doing some an online shop of some sort. [I did in 08! An Etsy shop! -A]

Aside from the career change, I’ve also changed my mind about some blogs that I’ve been reading. As I was reading yet another snide, narrow minded, holier-than-thou proclamation from one blogger, it occurred to me that that person has a teeny tiny world and that person will always have small thoughts until s/he opens up to the magic of the uncertain.

I will not read any more negative blogs done by narrow minded people, period. I still want good rants, mind you, but I don’t need to hear about how much smarter than everyone else someone is, even though s/he can’t tell the difference between cuisine and soda pop or a large city and a small town. I also don’t want or need to hear about how everyone who goes for clarity is an asshole, since it’s obvious that the blogger is beyond reproach and no one should DARE to correct an incorrect statement or bad grammar. Nuh-uh, baby. No more. Those people “should have went” [a common quote illustrating the grammar used in some blogs] to college or something rather than clog up the internet with bad attitudes and even worse grammar!

Deepak Chopra says that being willing to be uncertain is one of the main tenets of finding your own kind of success. Well, I’ve decided to give that a try. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.