#11/11/2001

[remembertheplunge]

"You've married into an intense family."

11/11/2001. 3:38pm Sunday The leaves have really turned “Fall” in the 50 hours we were in Paso (Paso Robles, California)

I lit a candle for Margie, Dennis and Ruth Ann. Tough, tough situations.

Jim's friend said to me “You’ve married into an intense family.”

Chat factor a bit more mellow this trip.

Dennis, Jim’s Dad, has declined dramatically since August. Margie said it happened over night.  Dennis doesn’t watch TV (he can’t see it due to cataracts.) He sleeps a lot.

Margie’s pills cause her to hallucinate. She thought a man came in her room the first night we were here.

3/29/2002 (Margin notes to above 11/11/2001 entry)

Jim talked to Dennis via phone yesterday. Dennis spoke of his brother’s Bob and Jim as being alive. They are both long dead. Dennis cried as the call ended. Jim cried as well.

Ruth Ann grows more ill. She cut a visit with us short 3/17/2002. Johnny asked us “can you see the difference ( re: her declining health) “What do I do?"

End of entry

Notes:

Jim was my gay partner in 2001. Jim's friend was out and gay.

Dennis and Margie were Jim’s parents. They lived in Paso Robles ., California. We were visiting from our home in Modesto, California . Ruth Ann was Jim’s cousin. Johnny was her husband.

Jim. Margie and Dennis have since died.

End of entry

Notes:

It’s interesting that in the 11/11/2001 entry, Jim's friend refers to Jim and I as being married. I his eyes, and, in ours, we were, marriage license or not. (Jim and I were never legally married).

Visiting the Wentzels, Jim’s family,  resulted in endless chatter and  laughter usually fueled by drinking. Jim and I called that the “chat factor”. For me, at times, it became a little hard to deal with. I would crave “Lew Time”.  Time to ponder and just to be. 

We basically never left Jim’s parent’s house during visits there.. So, in the many visits to Paso Robles, we never once visited Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where Jim went to school. We never saw the coast, or visited any coastal towns in San Luis Obispo like Moro Bay or San Luis Obispo. 

I have never seen those cities.

[yokelfelonking]

Post 9/11 Trivia

Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet.  But America went crazy for about a year afterwards.  Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:

There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why.  After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess.  (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)

On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.

People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.

As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.

Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"

People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.

"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything.  "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.) (This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way.  “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)

People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not.  If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole. My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.

On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices.  The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down.  I doubt any of that was legal.

Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED. (This wasn't a bad thing, but the power-hungry on the Evangelical Right saw this as a golden opportunity to grab power and influence.)

EDIT: By Popular Demand - Freedom Fries. I initially left these off because they came a couple years after the initial panic and most people thought they were kind of absurd (and I don't recall anyone really going along with it other than maybe some local diners here and there). France didn't want to get involved in our world policing so some folks were like "TRAITORS!" and wanted to call french fries "Freedom Fries" instead, so as to stick it to the French.

Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)

And if all of this seems batshit...well, it was. But I want you to think for a moment how people react today over even trivial shit. People send death threats over children's cartoons. They call for blood if the maker of a video game had an opinion they don't like. If someone made a racist joke a decade ago when they were a teenage edgelord, folks will go after people who even associate with them. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ALL THE HARM THEY'RE DOING!?"

Now take that same level of over-the-top histrionics and apply it to the unprecedented event of passenger planes crashing into crowded buildings in America's most populous city and killing thousands of people all at once. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WE WERE ATTACKED!?"

[xxskyethetiredemoxx]

Gerard Way at 9/11, the event that started it all

TODAY IS THE DAY MCR WAS CREATED 🥳🥳

HAPPY 23RD ANNIVERSARY (with a 6 year break) TO MY FAVOURITE BAND

(Edit: some people have made me aware that this post can appear insensitive or inappropriate towards 9/11. That isn't my intent, 9/11 was a tragedy, and the aftermath was horrendous. This post is only here to celebrate the start of mcr, absolutely not 9/11.)

[featherwhiskered]

rest in peace adam stanheight you wouldve loved mcr

[damailbox]

November 2001

[britanniabay]

I have to take a moment to pause and post this as it hits so close to home for me personally.

I am electing to "borrow" and repost something I saw posted last year as it is so poignant. I hope you take a few moments in the next few hours to reflect.

On this day, 22 years ago (9/10/2001):

🔹️246 people went to sleep in preparation for their morning flights

🔹️2,606 people went to sleep in preparation for work in the morning

🔹️343 firefighters went to sleep in preparation for their morning shift.

🔹️60 police officers went to sleep in preparation for morning patrol

🔹️8 paramedics went to sleep in preparation for the morning shift

None of them saw past 10:00am on Sept 11, 2001.

In one single moment, life may never be the same.

As you live and enjoy the breaths you take today and tonight, before you go to sleep in preparation for your life tomorrow, kiss the ones you love, snuggle a little tighter, and never take one second of your life for granted.

[dosesofcommonsense]

Rumsfeld was going to tell Congress about the missing $2 Trillion. The next day a missile hits the World Trade Center and causes a controlled demolition. Another missile hit the one place that financial record was stored at the Pentagon. What happened to the missing money? No one knows. We went to war against Iraq, and the CIA got to play regime change again. Who’s at fault? The Bush clan. Not just anyone can Auth a missile strike on American soil. We went to war to cover up the Bushes laundering money.

[striderisms]

HAPPY 9/11 YALL. Something I made to celebrate XD.

[kugisakiss]

watched m26 hehe, sorry for the word vomit

if anyone was wondering how i was counting how many movies they appeared in, i made a little timeline when i was trying to figure it out for myself ↓

all dcmk movies are released on golden week which is in april. shout out to the detectiveconanworld wiki i couldn't have done it without you x

the real enemy is conan because he's got a perfect 100% movie spotlight

[candicebella]

Paige Payne

[adauntlessjourney]

[nocternalrandomness]

[phoenixyfriend]

(There's an extra answer at the bottom that should have been 2nd instead of 12th, but I can't edit it in)

*NYC metro area is NYC, Long Island, about half of NJ, and several counties in CT and the absolute bottom of "upstate" NY. You can look up a map if you're unsure.

**That is to say, you were a journalist, worked in international relations, were in an airline as a pilot or flight attendant, and so on. Basically, you were told with urgency because everyone knew you were going to be involved in the ramifications for the foreseeable future, regardless of WHERE you lived.

EDIT: Someone pointed out that this doesn't include the Pentagon, so those of you in that zone can hop in on metro area.

"Nearby" means Canada, and MAYBE Mexico or the Bahamas. I'll leave it up to you to decide for the Caribbean, but Europe does NOT count.

I was just under six years old and it's one of my earliest clear memories because I was living in Queens at time, so it impacted almost everyone I knew very directly. I had been really excited that morning because it was my friend's birthday, and all that excitement got quashed as inappropriate because of the Events.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Michael Hingson was in Tower One of the World Trade Center on the morning of 11 September 2001.

What sets his story apart is that Hingson is blind and was guided to safety by his guide dog, Roselle.

They were on the 78th floor when the plane hit.

Despite the chaos, Roselle remained calm, leading Hingson and several others down 1,463 steps to safety. The descent took about an hour.

Remarkably, just moments after they exited the building, Tower Two collapsed, covering them in debris. Both survived.

Hingson later said:

"While everyone ran in panic, Roselle remained totally focused on her job, while debris fell around us, and even hit us, Roselle stayed calm."

Once clear, Roselle led her owner to the safety of a subway station, where they helped a woman who had been blinded by falling debris.

Once they arrived home, Roselle immediately began playing with her retired guide dog predecessor, Linnie, as if nothing important had happened.

Hingson's story became widely known as an extraordinary tale of trust, teamwork, and the human-animal bond.

He later wrote a memoir, "Thunder Dog," detailing his experience.

In 2004, Roselle was diagnosed with immune-mediated thrombocytopenia, but medications were able to control the condition.

In March 2007, she retired from guiding after it was discovered that the medication was beginning to damage her kidneys.

Roselle passed away on 26 June 2011 at age 13.

Roselle (March 12, 1998 - June 26, 2011)

[pugzman3]

Remember 9/11? Yes.....

REMEMBER (how we were lied to by politicians of both sides about) 9/11

REMEMBER (the people who orchestrated it are still walking free and will never face persecution for) 9/11

REMEMBER (20 years of war based on a lie that is called) 9/11

REMEMBER (how global surveillance and went rampant after) 9/11

REMEMBER (how even today all politicians will "pay tribute" and carry on the facade of) 9/11

REMEMBER (how countless people were offered up for a luciferian sacrifice that started on) 9/11

REMEMBER (how countless families around the world were torn apart from what started on) 9/11

Remember 9/11? Oh I REMEMBER (falling for it and deploying over and over and over and over again thinking I was serving my country because of) 9/11.

[mychemicalfanblog]

happy national mcr day!!!

9/11 is a VERY important day for the emos :3

EVERYONE CHILL AND ENJOY!

oh and..

FUCK AMERICA