World Trade Center and Pentagon in memoriam

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
i was masturbating to the hot news presentator, but only came when i saw the fiery NY cityscape

I sincerely hope this is merely a illfated attempt at humor.

In any event, I remember it clearly. I got the call from my wife to immediately turn on the news and seeing replays of the second plane hitting and then the towers falling.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Japher


Never Forget.

[notyoueither]

I was going to work and listening to the radio when the second plane hit the other tower. I said '****, this isn't going to end well'.

[Dis]

I slept through the whole thing.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I followed Poly.. could bear to watch the news (and see those images over and over again).


JM

just the opposite. I don't think I posted in poly till the next day. Or maybe even the day after.

[Dis]

9/11 doesn't really mean much to me anymore. more people die in traffic accidents. Yes true, those are accidents and not intentional acts of violence. A better comparison would be to compare the yearly homicade rate of major american cities.

No one is truelly safe. It's just a fact we have to deal with. Death could come in the next minute.

The media has made the world a smaller place. But in reality, New York city has nothing to do with where I live. It really shouldn't impact me in any way (but it did at the time for some reason). Yes I felt compassion for the victims. But I can only have so much compassion for those who I don't know. The news media has really hardened me to all the inhumanities in the world.

As I said, the world is a smaller place. 200 years ago, it would have taken weeks for this news to travel accross country. Would it have had the same impact? I don't think so.

It was some scary **** at the time. I could just imagine myself in that situation. Pretty bad. I just can't muster up the tears for it anymore.

Days of rememberence always seemed weird to me. What am I remembering? Like I'm going to casually forget an event such as this. What, do they think I'm stupid or something? I'm not so sure living in the past is a good thing.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Dis
As I said, the world is a smaller place. 200 years ago, it would have taken weeks for this news to travel accross country. Would it have had the same impact? I don't think so.

One would think that directing a carrier pidgeon at a three storey building would have had less of an impact.

[Dis]

Originally posted by notyoueither


One would think that directing a carrier pidgeon at a three storey building would have had less of an impact.

true, but there were battles where over 3000 people died in one day.

[Elok]

Originally posted by notyoueither
One would think that directing a carrier pidgeon at a three storey building would have had less of an impact.

Nobody ever sees things from the pigeon's perspective...

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Dis

true, but there were battles where over 3000 people died in one day.

Of course there were. Now, take your pill, dear.

[Straybow]

Surreal is the best description of my feelings at the time.

I was working nights and had gone to sleep. I woke up around 11:30 and switched on the TV. That was odd, because at the time I didn't have cable so the only thing on would've been the network soaps.

At first I thought it was a movie trailer, then I realized there wasn't any screaming or trampling or other typical hollywood crap, just people moving away from the clouds of dust. After a while they found distant, wobbly footage of the second plane's impact (the network's outdoor cameras were on the wrong side to see it).

I was so tired I had to get back to sleep. Nothing I could do 1000 miles away.

At the time of the '93 truck bomb I worked on a contact where most of the people were in another company that had offices in a WTC tower. They all knew folks who were there.

So there is a chance that someone I knew from back then had been at the WTC on 9/11. I saw somewhere a list of companies in floors at and above the impacts but the contractor wasn't one of them.

On the other hand my brother worked in downtown DC. The company also had a WTC office on a floor just above the impact and 12 of 23 people were there at the time. None made it out.

He had been to that office and worked with them several times, the last just a month earlier. He also was active reserve and did his duty weekends in the Pentagon, not far from the impact area, and probably had met a few of those victims as well. It definitely changed his life.

[ajbera]

The wife and I were getting ready for work that morning. My colleagues and I were scheduled to go to the Chase building on Wall Street for a presentation.

I turned on CNN Headline News, and the first plane had already hit. As I saw the smoke billowing from the tower I thought of the plane that flew into the Empire State Building back in the 40s, and thought a terrible accident had occurred.

The second plane struck as I was driving to work (not Manhattan, but my boss's house on Long Island). The radio host was talking to someone who lived near the towers and was describing what he had witnessed, and then the guest said "Oh my God, another plane hit the other tower."

My stomach did a weird flip, and I wondered for a moment if a news chopper or something somehow managed to slam into the other buidling while covering the event. And then I realized that it was something much worse.

As I drove to my boss's home, I passed many landscaping and other work crews parked out front of the houses they were servicing, just huddled around the truck radios, all looking somewhat shellshocked.

At the boss's house, we just sat and watched the CNN coverage. My stomach did another horrible flip when the news feed of the first tower cut out for a few seconds, and then came back, the anchor saying "We've just received word that the tower has collapsed."

When the news of the Pentagon came, my boss walked around holding his head saying "We're at war. We're at war." My colleague took my boss's guitar and went outside to sit on the porch and play music. I couldn't move from the TV.

We called Chase, to see how they were, and told them we weren't coming in. Then I called and emailed everyone I knew in NY, to make sure they were okay.

Our meeting was moved to a different Chase facility on Long Island (it was reasonably important, I suppose), but my colleague and I told the boss he was on his own, we were going home to be with our loved ones.

Two days later the boss told us he was pulled over driving to the meeting. The boss is Italian, so he's somewhat swarthy, and we had had caps made up labelled with "Project X" (our Chase project, a collaboration with Sony testing the feasibility of a teen-oriented biometric payment device) that he decided to wear while driving his Jaguar towards the city with big black valises in the back seat. The cops didn't know what to make of him at first, but he managed to prove he wasn't a psycho or terrorist.

A very fucked up day. As bad as it was listening to that guy on the radio describe the second plane impact, I wonder how bad it would have been to see it live. I don't know what would have been worse.

I've rambled long enough. Time for a moment of silence.

...

[Solver]

[MOBIUS]

Unfortunately the number that died on 11/9 are likely to only be the tip of the iceberg to the many thousands of brave rescue workers and clean up crews that are going to start dying from inhaling the dust in the aftermath...

And if you really want to put things into context, more people died in Baghdad in July alone from the effects of the US' failed policy in Iraq...

Cause and effect.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by VJ

Pentagon was destroyed?

Yeah -- because we always think the buildings are more important than human lives.



You should have thought about it some more, before you posted.