Mood Whiplash: The LJ Post.
Let's start this on a happy note: Happy 19th birthday to my younger brother (and best early birthday present ever) Peter! You've come so far and I can't believe you're a freshman in college now!
And now for something completely different.
I'm currently watching MSNBC's 9/11 As It Happened special, which only shows the NBC footage from that day with no additional commentary, and I didn't expect it to have such an emotional effect on me, but it has. I'm not a super-patriotic person and I certainly don't agree with everything our government does at all, but this is very hard to watch, for two big reasons:
1. It conjures up the feeling of absolute confusion and mayhem and I'm suddenly almost-12 years old again. I remember that my spontaneous little mantra that day was "We just celebrated Peter's birthday yesterday." It ran through my head over and over---I think it became a wild grasp for normalcy.
2. Since it's only that original footage, there's this terrible dramatic irony when they say things like, "We don't know who is behind these attacks," and when they wonder if Yasser Arafat was involved. It's like being Cassandra during The Iliad---it would be nice to scream the answers at the TV, but that won't change anything.
...And the second tower just fell. Shit.
Maybe I'm the only person who feels affected by this, but I had to type this. It was a pretty defining moment for our generation. Our grandparents had Pearl Harbor, our parents had the Kennedy assassination, and we have this.
And now for something completely different.
I'm currently watching MSNBC's 9/11 As It Happened special, which only shows the NBC footage from that day with no additional commentary, and I didn't expect it to have such an emotional effect on me, but it has. I'm not a super-patriotic person and I certainly don't agree with everything our government does at all, but this is very hard to watch, for two big reasons:
1. It conjures up the feeling of absolute confusion and mayhem and I'm suddenly almost-12 years old again. I remember that my spontaneous little mantra that day was "We just celebrated Peter's birthday yesterday." It ran through my head over and over---I think it became a wild grasp for normalcy.
2. Since it's only that original footage, there's this terrible dramatic irony when they say things like, "We don't know who is behind these attacks," and when they wonder if Yasser Arafat was involved. It's like being Cassandra during The Iliad---it would be nice to scream the answers at the TV, but that won't change anything.
...And the second tower just fell. Shit.
Maybe I'm the only person who feels affected by this, but I had to type this. It was a pretty defining moment for our generation. Our grandparents had Pearl Harbor, our parents had the Kennedy assassination, and we have this.