It's that cosmic time in the universe again, boys and girls, ladies and gentleman, Tuesday after lunch, and your mission, should you choose to ignore other less important tasks in your meaningless lives, is to leave a comment here or at Internation Musings with your list of the ten most important things that 9/11 changed from among all the millions and billions of things that changed everything implies.
What??? You don't think that 9/11 changed everything? What are you, terrorists?
And you don't get credit for suggesting that everyone now knows that the CIA assassinated the father of famed Chilean novelist Isabel Allende on that day in 1973, inspiring generations of freedom fighters around the world to conduct and accomplish missions on that date to commemorate one father of South American literature.
Oh, when will we have a day to remember Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Whoever the fuck he is. Sounds like some dipshit needs to be subjected to extreme interrogation methods, if you ask me. Depending on where you live, you can quote me on that. Or not.
Years ago when I worked for a company that provided heavy equipment to Uzbekistan so that it could mine uranium and ship it to Iran for a peaceful energy program, long before my addiction to the detoxification and retoxification process that this great country is founded upon, I was invited to attend a leadership retreat at the Rippling River Resort on the slopes of Mount Hood, where I was part of a team assigned to an imaginary problem involving chipped pharmaceuticals that might have been the result of irresponsible cost cutting in removing the cotton padding from the little pill containers, but that's off topic, and my inner binary moderator has demanded I drop it, particularly considering the endless mass debation about universal health care that is controlled by the liberal media, big pharma, big insurance, and little minds, so I will. Not mention Toyota.
The consultant at the retreat was Eric Allenbaugh, Ph.D., who supplied us with copies of his book Wake Up Calls that he offered to autograph for no additional charge. I thought that was very white of him. Of course, I suspected that the autograph would devalue the resale price of the book when I eventually put it on e-Bay, and I was right.
Dr. Allenbaugh's premise is that most people — in fact, most human activity — is rote repetition from cradle to grave. We do things over and over and over without ever realizing what is actually going on. If you want to be a really great company or organization, you need to recognize this routine and take advantage of it, was my take away from that retreat. It could make you rich!
Years earlier as a graduate student in creative writing at the University of Arkansas, I heard Michael Yates employ a similar observation about the human condition (which is the title of one of my favorite poems by Howard Nemerov, but that too is off topic and will not be explored in this post) to suggest that since so much of our lives is spent in autistic as opposed to artistic perception, how can anyone be certain at any given moment that he or she or them or it is truly sentient?
Then again, I have never seen any reason to suspect that such distinctions really matter. In fact, I still prefer energy to matter, which is why I promote bringing on the bomb. Won't you join me?
Similarly, while in detox the first or second or third or fourth time (you can't appreciate retox unless you get sober first, but that's a topic I am currently too drunk to pursue), one of the sponsors offered the inane wisdom that insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again and expecting different results.
To summarize this post thus far: Tuesday after lunch, insanity, repetition, autism, wake up calls, change, the human condition, staying on point, 9/11, mission accomplished, Michael Yates, and Howard Nemerov, most of which are off topic.
Are we all on topic now? Show of hands? Who's that? Charles Bukowski? You're fucking dead, man. Sit down!
I think it was on the third day of the retreat at Rippling River that my father-in-law died and Mrs. Faustroll had to catch a plane back to South Carolina to be there, because people do that stuff. Even I do that stuff on occasion. I flew across the country to pull the plug on my father at one point, but you don't want to hear about that when you're working on your list about all the things that 9/11 changed forever. Isn't that right?
Back on topic, the entire point of the retreat was to get everyone to understand that there are always and continuously opportunities — change points — where people can choose to get off the carousel and do something different, to really do something, to make things different.
Dr. Allenbaugh tried to convince everyone that we were in charge of our fates and responsible for everything that happens to us. He even gave an example of one of his patients who disagreed with him by noting that she had been the innocent victim of a random terrorist attack in an airport while on vacation.
The good doctor proceeded to enter several items of evidence that indicated the terror victim was indeed responsible for her completely foreseeable lifelong wounds. He noted various watch lists and state department warnings that he suggested she should have heeded if she really wanted to be safe and secure.
But, fortunately, my father-in-law died, and Mrs. Faustroll had to return to South Carolina to pay her respects to a man who actually put his hand in his pocket the first time we met each other and I offered mine for a shake. I felt no need to pay respects.
I had to drive 80 miles from the resort to Idiotville and back 40 miles to the airport to put her on a plane to place she did not want to be, and when I got in my truck and the radio came on, a change point was being reported. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had just been bombed. Hundreds of people were dead and many times that were wounded.
I knew immediately that this bombing was a response to the endlessly growing stupidity within the nation of miserable fucks (NOMF™) that included such bloodbaths as Jonestown, Ruby Ridge, and Waco, but I wagered that ragheads would be blamed, at least for the first couple of weeks, and I made big bucks with my bookie. Hell, if I had thought this planet was worth birthing new kids on, I could have put them through school.
To be continued...
Hey, schmucks and schmuckettes, you get full credit for 5 fucking things that 9/11 changed if you answer at this point. I have your IPs. Start commenting, assholes.