(no subject)

There's this phenomenom that I'm going to call the "Ninety Minute Expert" phenomenom. It's where, if you watch something on television--a sports game, a marathon of a series--by the hour-and-a-half mark, you're an expert. Not really an expert, but you start behaving as if you were one. In Australia, two guys I knew became curling experts through this method.

Most recent case in point: a group of folk were up at our apartment this weekend and we watched two back-to-back episodes of Project Runway, and by the time they got to the judging for the second episode, not only were we hooked but we were shouting out opinions and judgments of our own ("Well, I like Kayne's dress, but it won't work because that's not couture"). Like any of us had been watching it all this season. I've never actually watched any of this show (and if Heidi Klum really just sits there and says the same damned things every episode, I might not be able to stand watching more), but it was addictive. I can see the attraction.

But Lisa-former roommate came over today to do crafting, and we started commenting on each other's works in parody, and it was eerie how easily we could lie and exaggerate our understandings of the crafts we weren't doing in the style of Project Runway. Because we'd each watched about ninety minutes of the show and were just that savvy for it.

On a more serious and auspicious note

We all know what tomorrow is. I don't have plans to commemorate, commiserate or even cry. I rather wonder, if not for the fact we are being told to hang our heads in silence if half the people in this country would even remember what happened five years ago. I've had such a lovely weekend and I'm quite tired out from it--if not for a link I got from a friend's journal (the link to a story that discusses Pearl Harbor is here), I might easily have forgotten myself.

I haven't forgotten what happened, of course. As is the curse for many, I remember all too well the disorientation, the confusion, the horror, the disbelief, and the surges and fits of wanting to help and feeling helpless. On the sliding scale of geographical involvement with September 11th, I am one of millions who was all to close to the disaster. On the personal level, I am closer than some, but luckier than many; I knew and am related to people who worked in the towers, but none died. I do still get teary thinking of it, and God knows, propaganda issues aside, I still wouldn't touch that fucking piece of trash ABC "docu-drama" (a new buzzword for "lies told about real people"). I don't need it. Tomorrow, I will probably avoid every blog I tend to read and not refreshing a single news source online.

( Because I haven't forgotten: My 9/11 story )

And what else is there in the after? A book of short stories I read, Twilight of the Superheroes talks of people in transition, waiting for that Tuesday to go on where the world didn't end. I'm not mired in that, thank God. I knew terrorism was a fact of life when I found my father--never previously seen home before eight in the evening--walking towards me and my mother coming home from elementary school in 1993. He had blackened tissues--the kind that were balled and crumpled because they were really napkins he just shoved in his pockets--from wiping his nose as he walked down forty flights in smokey darkness. I, unlike most, knew there was danger. I got lucky both times, so I admit to there being some simple denial at work, but I am not mired in the need to rehash the thing. Does it disturb me? I think hslayer and viridian remember our trip to Fahrenheit 9/11 well enough to support me in saying yes.

Do I denigrate other ways of remembering or recognizing? No. Do I wish to do, as I have for four years previous, to think on the day, lament it, and wish not to let it cast a pall over my entire day? Absolutely. Remember, recognize, but do not rue.

What about the rest of you? Who wants to tell their story? Who will formally pour a 40 for 9/11 tomorrow? Sound off, I want to know how you, my friends all, will treat, ignore, or otherwise tread tenderly around tomorrrow.