Americans to Commemorate Sept. 11th by Bitching About Minor Inconveniences

ext Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a day of tragedy that made Americans pause from their normal lives and rally together in support of the victims. In addition to fears of new terrorist attacks on the anniversary, most Americans are uncertain how to commemorate the event. Already, however, most are expected to resume their habits of complaining about the smallest of problems.

"I hope they give us the day off at work," said Texas cell phone salesman Bob Whiterich. "It's like a national tragedy and crap. How are people supposed to work on a day like that? And if I knew I could take a couple of vacation days Monday and Tuesday and head to the beach with the family."

Most companies and government agencies have decided against imposing a holiday, feeling the anniversary would be spent better keeping businesses and services functioning as normal. Even plans for restricting air travel on Sept. 11^th have been declined, feeling the statement to the rest of the world, including Muslim extremists believed to have launched the attacks, is a stronger exclamation of solidarity and a country affected, yet not shaken in their resolve by terrorism.

Mark Turnskit, a 42-year-old UPS driver and volunteer fireman in Piermont, North Dakota, however, thinks that is bullshit.

"It's bullshit, man," said Turnskit. "We need a day to remember the importance of it all and stuff. I have a lot of friends back east, in Ohio. A cousin of one of them was married to a firefighter and I think he may have been in the World Trade Center disaster and stuff. I haven't talked to them in a long time—I don't write letters and all, you know, and I don't have their e-mail address or anything. The worst part is not knowing."

Added Turnskit, "I'm a firefighter, so I know what it's like. I could have been in that place just as easy as all the guys who were."

California telemarketer Steve Gerber has made no change in plans for Sept. 11^th. "What is that, a Wednesday? I don't imagine I'll have time to think about the loss of lives and how great it is to live in a country that is still the most secure and wealthiest on the planet. Maybe some time in the evening, after work, if there's something on the Discovery Channel talking about it or—aw, shit. West Wing is on that night, right?"

"I would take a minute or two to stop and think about life and death and all that," said Howett, Tennessee factory worker Milt Darling, "but the Dodge has been crapping out on me a lot, lately. I'll probably have to worry about getting a ride to work. Life's so fucking unfair, man."

Decatur, Georgia realtor Shari Cartier summed up the feelings of most Americans on the subject: "It will be a dark day. This has been the greatest tragedy in history of all time. Something like 6,000 people died—that's more than died in Vietnam, you know. But, c'mon, I got my own life to worry about. Those damn Peel St. properties aren't going to move themselves. And the kids can't take themselves to karate."

The most significant commemoration of the day, outside of New York and Washington, D.C., is likely to come from Perkins, Nebraska, where button collector and local crackpot Vernon Heston is planning on building a scale model of the World Trade Center towers out of Popsicle sticks. Although, according to Heston, if the price of Popsicles continues to skyrocket, the whole thing will be scrapped.

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I have important matters to discuss. How important? I don't even have time to talk about my favorite conspiracy (World's Biggest). No, this concerns matters of the laws of nature themselves.

I'm talking, of course, about evolution in Kansas. That's not an insistence that evolution did happen in Kansas—my last drive through Kansas, I doubted evolution had occurred there at all. But it's not up to me to decide such matters, sir, and I think everyone who's not a science teacher should stay out of it. Yet in Kansas, evolution and creationism is once again a political battle between the hardcore fundamentalist Christians and normal people.

Why involve myself, you ask? It's not hard to figure out. Everything we teach in the science classroom is fact—am I right? Of course I am. Years ago we started teaching evolution. It was in all the papers, you might have read about it. The teaching of evolution gave the theory validity. And I'm scared shitless about teaching Creationism in science class. What happens if we validate "intelligent design"?

This is crap we don't need. God is dead—haven't you read the papers? If you want to go to your church and chat up the ceiling, that's perfectly fine. It's in the Constitution, I understand, though I think I may be paraphrasing. But you make God a part of my science class and that makes him real again. The last thing I need is God to come back, all pissed off about our erasing his existence by not teaching Him in science class. And how do you think He'll feel about the rest of the world and the state it's in? He probably won't even care about the evolution business, too busy freaking out about subjecting the third world to poverty and the stockpile of nuclear armaments. He got pissed about eating a single apple off his tree, how do you think he'll feel about destroying the world?

I've traveled to Topeka to take part in this state argument. It's not like everything's going to topple if the unintelligent "intelligent design" forces win Kansas—halfway there already, you ask me. But if they get encouraged by their victory, the Creationists will probably take their fight somewhere more important, like Fly Creek, Alabama, or the Bayou. If they conquer enough school boards—or worse, the hearts and minds of the America itself—science will be forever changed. God will return, wished into existence by the demon we call science, evolution will go the way of the dodo, and science will be subject to extremists, instead of hard-thinking, boring scientists. What will they go after next—gravity? That's all I need, all my papers going flying around and my entire staff falling off the surface of the earth. Which will probably be flat again, by the time all this is over.

To prevent this paradigm shift, I'll no doubt make this argument to the Kansas School Board itself. But if I go as myself they'll surely recognize millionaire playboy/publisher/conspiracy-buster Red Bagel. Fortunately I've had a lot of disguise experience lately, so I'll be making my arguments as other personas. I plan on playing Edgar C. Bummington, an esteemed Professor of Evolution from England (my accent is top-notch), arguing the case for evolution and against Creationism. I also plan to play concerned parents Bill-Joe and Marjorie Cutler (both roles, though I'm not sure how I'll pull that off just yet), and, time permitting, the precocious show-stealer Joe "Stinky" Bagel, arguing it from a kid's perspective. Sure-fire ways to convince Kansans to respect science and keep evolution? Maybe not, but I'm giving it everything I've got. I've come to like gravity too much to give it up.

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It's been a rocky road since last year's election. Some would say we live in a different world now, even though we've agreed to keep calling it the same name. It's common knowledge the country has been split in half since the election—and I've, for once, been on the winning side. Eat that, elections of '92, '96, and 2000! But the time for gloating is over, or at least should be in another couple of weeks. The time for healing has begun.

Saying this as delicately as possible, you know who has the healing to do—yep, our liberal cousins. After all, the right's won the election, fair and square, at least as far as all the legitimate courts claim. It's time for the left and the right to come together, come together over where the right is. It's only fair. They got behind the Clinton administration when he won his victory in the '90s.

I don't think the reactionaries on the left have really considered the possibilities of an extreme-right government. Sure, they talk on and on about how many wars we're going to start, how the U.N. is falling apart and our old alliances becoming impedances on our path. You may have to put up with a lot of religious extremism, and moral watchdogs making life damn near intolerable on a daily basis—no enjoyable TV or radio, everything gone from 50 Cent to Spongebob. But look on the bright side. Or, if you're a religious fanatic, Mel Gibson-style, I guess that is the bright side.

Embrace the right side. At the very least, you won't feel guilty for being part of the richest nation in the world anymore. Hundreds of years of oppression, the genocide of the indigenous people, and lest we not forget all the crap we have to put up with about treating women as second-class citizens, and we didn't even start that. Our liberal consciousness, as instituted and maintained by the television set and virtually every other media source, can lay off already—we're right again.

No more feeling bad. It's time to feel good about being American again. Who cares if they hate us when we step on foreign soil? We don't need to go anywhere, really. The soldiers do—by the plane, truck, and boatload. Boy, do we need more soldiers, and quick. But us just normal folks, who have enough money where we don't have to join the military, we can stay safe and happy in our beds for the rest of our life without being exposed to the malice of the non-United States world. We've got everything we want here in the states. What do they have we don't have more of, and made better? History? We've got history. We don't even want what they got. Castles? We got White Castles. The only good thing they had that we didn't was The Office, so boo-yah! Now we've got everything.

I remind you liberals, you had 8 years with Clinton. It's only fair the right have its own 8 years to set everything back to zero. Personally, I think it's kind of fun. We move things a little to the left, then a little back to the right, and therefore keep ourselves in the exact same place for centuries. Which is what we all secretly want anyway, correct? Change is scary. All any of us want is for everything to stay the same from day to day, while we still have it figured out. You've never seen a normal person out in the street yelling for change, have you? It's always the leather-clad homosexual with his face painted and wearing the cornrows. If those kinds of people had their way we'd welcome just about anything people want to do as perfectly acceptable behavior. Next thing, we'd all be dressing like freaks.

I believe that's what happened in ancient Rome. One minute, someone makes an impassioned plea for letting people wear togas with no underpants. Next thing you know, the whole empire's crumbling.

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