What fun, I ask you, is a bag of Cracker Jacks without a prize inside it?
Month: September 2002
“The drums, of course, are beating. The Anniversary is coming up, and everyone is insisting not just that we remember, not just that we mourn, but that we do it The Right Way.” — Anil Dash
So many of us, I think, are worried that we’ll choose the wrong way to grieve tomorrow, that we won’t honor our dead with the proper respect, that our moments of silence, or singing, or flag-waving, or watching eulogies played out on TV would all be better spent doing something else, being somewhere else, or doing nothing at all. It’s easy to second-guess our motives, our intentions, our natural impulses. We have so little experience with this sort of thing. Everything that’s planned for tomorrow sounds like too much, or not enough, either cheap sentimentality or empty gestures. We want — need — to take steps to commemorate, but I think we’re stuck between not wanting this to be “just another day” and, in our hearts, wishing that it was.
I have no plans for tomorrow. I don’t intend to call in sick from work or leave early, and I haven’t purchased candles or flags to put in the window. I don’t know what I’ll do. A quiet moment, maybe, with some music or a book. I cannot honor the dead by listening to speeches or watching never-before-seen footage, but I understand why some people will do that, and their grief is just as real, if not more so, than mine. There is no wrong way to grieve, and you cannot take the wrong steps tomorrow if you act from honest emotion.
It isn’t how we honor the dead that matters. It’s just important that we do.
My friend Kim just sent me a list of “You’ve lived in Pennsylvania too long when…” jokes, and while thankfully most of them don’t apply (yet), I fell over laughing at #14:
“You can recite the four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and construction.”
I think we’re getting close to almost winter. Although, here in the valley, we usually get a few surprise attacks of summer just before it starts to snow.
Wrote another little something for 600 seconds. Sometimes, despite — or because of — the time limit, everything seems to fall together. I like this one.
Stealing a page from Maximum Verbosity,
Current clothes: Pale green polo shirt, off-white Dockers, black (and very comfortable) shoes.
Current mood: A little tired, a little bored, but otherwise okay.
Current music: None right now. But most recently, Actual Miles: Henley’s Greatest Hits. It’s what’s currently in my car’s CD player anyway.
Current hair: Still brown.
Current annoyance: The cancellation of Farscape. The cancellation of Witchblade also pisses me off, but the show has its fair share of problems, and it’s not as if they were promised another season, like some people.
Current thing: I dunno. Filling this out, I guess.
Current desktop picture: At work it’s this, and at home it’s this.
Current favorite group: Musical group? Probably the White Stripes. Those punk kittens have got me hooked. Before that, it was the Flaming Lips, primarily the first track from their new album.
Current book: Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. Before that, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Before that, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. All as excuse not to go back to The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein.
Current video in player: Yesterday, I watched the first few episodes “24”, which I missed during the show’s first run, but which I taped during FX’s Labor Day marathon.
Current refreshment: If you can call it that… I forgot my bottle of orange juice this morning, so I had to settle for a Pepsi from the copy room’s fridge. For awhile there, I was absolutely addicted to Yahoo, but I seem to have moved on to Kool-Aids of assorted flavors. My love affair with Gatorade (it was the only thing I could manage to drink after my week of strep throat last fall) seems to have finally come to an end.
Current worry: That I won’t be able to get episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sent to me this year. That I may have inadvertently offended some people by naming a column in this year’s Completely Different “Off My Medication”. That my boss will show up. That other people are growing bored with 600 seconds.
Current thought: Is it too soon to start whining again about the lack of comments here? 😉