#September 11 2001

[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.)

[candicebella]

Paige Payne

[oldguardleatherdog]

The Anniversary: Once More, With Feeling

This year's reflection on the 23rd Anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Now it's the 11th, the 23rd Anniversary of that day.

Each year, I approach this day with caution: I never know how it's going to affect me or in what manner it will manifest, and some years have been brutal, but the past two have seen more blessings come my way than brickbats. The passage of time has helped, as have my ongoing PTSD therapy sessions provided by the World Trade Center Health Program.

This time, I feel as if I'm controlling the event far more than it's controlling me, and I think that's due in large part to the performance art collaboration with the guys in Berlin (the queer performance collective ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS, who are now in Finland north of the Arctic Circle making amazing art and performance on the Finnish government's dime) that's been going on for more than a year, including a three-month research intensive called "Finding Animal" (https://www.oncewewereislands.com/Finding-Animal) over the winter.

Last summer, after they extended the offer of collaboration, they proposed that our work together should focus on how I returned to life and art after losing my Lower Manhattan home that day, along with my entire performance archive and any record of it - it was as if Animal J. Smith had never existed, no record that I had done or been anything at all. I was shocked at their proposal, to be honest, but their idea for collaboration was persuasive: that my story was bigger than just me, that it had resonance in a larger way about the survival and meaning of queer art and artists, about whether it's possible to recover from the worst thing in the world. So, as our work continues, I think that my being compelled to examine my long road back as both participant and observer through a performative/creative lens has synthesized much of what I had left unexamined, forgotten, buried, denied, absorbed, leading to clarity about who I am today, how it affected, shaped, changed me, and whether I have in fact "recovered" from this giant detour, this dinosaur-extinction-level meteor that got dropped on my life plan.

I don't have an answer yet, I'm still writing and making art about it, but as I mark 23 years today, I can say that sticking it out all these years has been the right thing to do, that I intend to continue waking up each day and engaging with life.

I am alive, and I am fine.

[embie-mint]

REMINDER: today it has been 23 years since Gerard Way was inspired to form My Chemical Romance

[hindbodes]

[a-moment-captured]

[thatsrightice]

F-14 FUN FACT OF THE DAY #69

Brian "Moose" Sweeney served in the Navy as an F-14 Tomcat RIO during the Gulf War, having graduated top of his class at the Naval Officers Training School. He served in several squadrons, such as VF-2 Wolfpack and VF-211 Checkmates, even going on to be an instructor at TOPGUN in 1995 and 1996. His callsign was awarded to him as a reference to his impressive stature, measuring 6' 3" and 260 Ibs. Brian's flying career came to a premature end in 1997 when he suffered a neck injury during a maneuver that left him partially paralyzed. He went on to work as an aerospace consultant in the private sector for the Department of Defense and companies like Lockheed Martin. Brian rebuilt two jeeps, one of which was a 1968 Jeepster Commando with an F-14 Tomcat joystick in place of the shifter.

He was a passenger on United Flight 175 flying from Boston to Los Angeles for business when the aircraft was hijacked on 11 September 2001. He was described as being an amazing squadronmate and friend.

[stopiwanttotalkaboutcheese]

My favorite part about the world trade center wikipedia page is that 9/11 is not included on its list of major events

[thecrossroads]

[thezombiegeekinthehawaiianshirt]

Medical examiner Judy Melinek identified hundreds of 9/11 victims, often from mere fragments of flesh or limbs. In August 2002, nearly a year later, she was called in after a foot bone was discovered atop a skyscraper a fifth of a mile from Ground Zero.

[tyiaunia-harris]

September 11, 2001. #NeverForget911

[transparentgentlemenmarker]

[noexcitment]

I didn't understand why every single celebrity from 2001 has a story about needing to at twin towers on 9/11. Like girl why did y'all need to be there on that DAY and why did y'all not make it? was the Diddy party cancelled or something ???

[lacathhtf2023]

9/11

NEVER FORGET.