9/11: Forbidden Thoughts

wait wait wait, when did HOOS return?

I'm just surprised that those photos haven't leaked and become more widely available. Not that I want to see them.

Now that I think of it, another "forbidden" thought I had on 9/11 was a curiosity about the carnage.

HOOS was zorn_bond.mp3 and is now back under his old name temporarily

DUMPLINGS! - just out of curiosity (not to be a dick, honestly), but did you forget you had posted the Taliban-spiking-cocaine story in the thread revive when you mentioned it again 40 minutes later? I ask because I did the same thing the other day and it struck me as a sort of exclusively ILX-related symptom

I don't know why it capitalized your name that way. I didn't write it that way, with the exclamation point. Weird.

basically there is no way i ever want to see anything more about 9/11 footage-wise and i'm leaving the actual carnage to the imagination forever. not a fan of fiction or cinema or music that "grapples" with 9/11 either or inserts it in as the big foreboding event to come or the event from the past driving the narrative.

Omar just summed it all up for me.

also when i have seen footage on tv in recent years, they always--no matter what it is--do something like show the plane flying towards the south tower and then fade or freeze before the impact, or show a person slipping or jumping from an open window and then doing the same thing. that kind of refinement weirds me out.

WTF. When I posted it the second time I thought I had only been thinking about it or that I had said it aloud to someone earlier. I'm pushing 36 here, so cut me some slack!

On ILX the word DUMPLINGS! automatically gets capitalized and exclamation pointed. That's not a joke, it's true.

well it's actually a joke too

Omar is OTM, but I can't stop imagining what happened inside the towers. I think a lot about the stockbroker checking his e-mail in his corner office, glimpsing out of the corner of his eye an airplane flying across midtown Manhattan. I try to put myself into the shoes of someone who 60 seconds later became human remains on a sidewalk and conjure up what their last thoughts may have been.

These people are like JFK. Fifty years later, there will be talk and movies and discussion and rude gifs4you, and Kennedy's the only one who has no idea what happened next. The Pentagon, Flight 93, Bush, Anthrax, Iraq, Afghanistan, no Cokes on airplane flights.... all those people in the first tower knew was that their lives were about to end. And then nothing.

It's like I'm writing horrible slash fiction in my head, which I figure qualifies as a 9/11 Forbidden Thought. But I can't help it.

yeah, PP's first paragraph applies to me, too.

I remember saying something like "we're fucked" b/c W. was our president.

i went through a roller-coaster on this emotionally. the day of the attack, i wished that clinton was still president (especially watching the footage the next day of him comforting people in NYC). a few days later, i was impressed with how GWB handled himself -- perfect for the moment (arm draped over the firefighter, megaphone in hand, talking to the crowd). then, there was the unfortunate next 7 years of his tenure.

WTF. When I posted it the second time I thought I had only been thinking about it or that I had said it aloud to someone earlier. I'm pushing 36 here, so cut me some slack!

I'm 35 and this just happened to me a couple of days ago as well. I don't know what to make of it.

Anyway - I remember on that morning I has just arrived to work in Midtown Manhattan and after they closed our building, I had to walk home to Brooklyn (along with hundreds or thousands of other people). At some point I realized I was walking alongside someone I admired from a band I liked. I got kind of excited for a couple of minutes, then I felt really guilty. Whenever I hear that band, ever since then, I can only think of that morning.

My other memory was stopping somewhere near the Brooklyn Bridge and buying a smoothie from a shop that was open. I also felt guilty about that.

A celeb sighting in NYC on 9/11 would be sort of surreal.

vaguely vaughn meader moment - i was working at wuxtry, this record store in town, and i remember this local synthpop band 'i am the world trade center' were supposed to play a show that weekend, and we were talking and wondering 'so...what are they gonna do?' and our boss suggesting ppl should go to the show and throw paper airplanes at them and this is pretty definitely the first time i was able to laugh 'at' 9/11. this would've been on 9/12.

After going through the initial shock/sadness/rage -- not just at what happened, but also at the coming racist bullshitstorm headed towards people of Middle Eastern descent in the US -- I was glad that I'd bought an import copy of Mercury Rev's All Is Dream the previous Sunday (it was released in the US on 9/11), so that I didn't automatically associate those songs with 9/11. But I do anyway.

This isn't really a "forbidden thought" but I just want to write down somewhere that in spite of all my good sense I've been having this terrible, anxious, irritable feeling all day and thinking "something bad is going to happen" without realizing what day it was, and I even had this very bizarre moment at my daughter's preschool orientation where there was one dude who for some reason just looked slightly shady and undadlike to me and I had this dumb thought "maybe he has a gun" and then my veins started pounding and I could feel heat coming off my neck.

I think actually the Syrian refugee stories are affecting me as much as anything (though it's all connected), just keep thinking about the tenuous nature of our society and all that fun stuff.

i work less than a mile from the WTC now, really hope i don't run into a single commemorative thing all day tomorrow, and really think the USA needs to get the motherfuck over it after 14 years.

i've also convinced myself that going down to Brooklyn Heights that evening and breathing in the dust eventually gave me cancer, so there's that.

I keep thinking about how the onslaught of "I had just stepped inside after walking my dog when suddenly I heard the news" posts are about to pop up again tomorrow and cringing.

I actually forgot all about 9/11 and not a single person I know has mentioned it.

I mean er, I forgot thats what today was.

I keep thinking about how the onslaught of "I had just stepped inside after walking my dog when suddenly I heard the news" posts are about to pop up again tomorrow and cringing.

If people still need to work through shit 14 years after the fact, I'm not gonna shut them down. I was 900 miles away in Nashville where nothing happened and I still think about that day all the time.

Everyday life for people like me is pretty banal, and big shake-ups can be fascinating.

Truth. The huge electricity shut-down/blackout of 2003 was a pure guilty pleasure in that way. I was grateful that there hadn't been a attack or a massive loss of life so I could just enjoy the hell outta the disruption.

That poor Columbia crew. I remember watching that white streak across a blue sky one Saturday morning and thinking, Motherfuck, they got that one too.

And then when it turns out that it wasn't terrorism, just a 20-year-old space plane on the wrong side of its warranty, everyone just went whew! and went about their lives. But no one temporarily banned the word "space" from sitcoms or took Ziggy Stardust off the radio like they did in '86.

If people still need to work through shit 14 years after the fact, I'm not gonna shut them down. I was 900 miles away in Nashville where nothing happened and I still think about that day all the time.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, September 11, 2015 8:16 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

People can do what they gotta do, I'm not going to attempt to tell them they're silly for it or try and stop them from doing it. I just won't read them or participate myself because to me, it's tiresome. doesn't mean I wasn't transfixed with fear when it happened and that I don't still lament the trickle down effects of what happened years later!

I'm certainly not claiming victim status or ptsd or anything, generally I am
pretty nonchalant about the day. And I regret our response to it more than I regret the event itself. But I guess deep down something about it scares the crap out of me, return of the repressed etc

I think for me 9/11 (combined with the disastrous) and Katrina (combined with the disastrous response) are these twin events that also coincide with my dad having health problems and losing his job (even though I was in my 20s and not dependent on him) that just generally upended my sense of ease in the world, building into the financial crisis.

Basically living in W's America really undermined my illusions of security.

Anyway, here is a creepy memorial from Somerville NJ that I often think of:

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/large/26a51946-d1f2-45a3-a131-d04918d8de35.jpg

This is probably terrible, but my abiding memory of 9/11 is some kid in front of me in the queue at an independent dvd/video rental business in Dewsbury saying "Fucking 'ell, t'news is going to be on all neet now!"

I am so fucking happy Facebook didn't exist on 9/11

even without it, being in college in FL I was daily pelted with

1) the fake Nostradamus quotes that *predicted* 9/11 getting circulated
2) the assloads of chain emails I got about upcoming 'terror' attacks ie at the mall
3) people saying Afghan citizens weren't innocent because they should have overthrown their government
4) everybody predicting WWIII

https://scontent-lga1-1.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xaf1/t51.2885-15/e35/11899615_1488864238080626_1386440220_n.jpg

Apologies for the size. This is from The 80s: A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade 1980-1989, published in 1979.

i don't think that's such a "forbidden" thought. everyone knew -- that day -- that 09.11.01 drew a line between the sunny 90s and the darker new century.

don't really think everyone knew this. i didn't. i thought people would be freaked out about it for a month or so and after that it would no longer be something that people thought of as a big deal. i told a friend this and he was like "you're crazy, this is a major historical event" and in retrospect my friend was right and i was wrong. i was almost 100 miles away from new york and it felt like a pretty normal day. in retrospect you read articles that say "amazingly, there were some people so inhuman and weird that they just did their job as normal that day" but that's what i did and so did everybody else at my job. so maybe that was my forbidden thought, not having a lot of thoughts.

I recall feeling like it was a definite "line in the sand" type day mostly because it felt so open-ended, it felt like it could be the first in a line of succession of attacks against us. the word 'surreal' was used a lot that day and I remember being terrified that we'd be attacked again in coming weeks or that the attacks would be used to justify some heinous behavior on our end (and we know how that turned out).

work was still on (I was off, but I stopped in to get my schedule), but the play I was doing at the time cancelled rehearsal and I think school was closed. I recall being pleasantly relieved that there was no follow-up attack within the month, there was so much disinformation going around.

http://i61.tinypic.com/2gv3khd.jpg

I think those of us in NY are going through the motions now with commemoration. 10 years was something, and 20 will be something less.

In terms of forbidden thoughts: I had dreams for months after of looking out my window (29th floor, FIDI) and watching buildings crumble without explanation. In my dreams, it was sort of inevitable, and sort of epic to see towers come down everywhere - almost like something that made me sad, but that I knew was coming. The Villalobos remix of Shackleton's Blood on my Hands seemed to, eerily enough, capture this dazed sense almost exactly. It wasn't unexciting - when I was quickly walking uptown from Reade St to Central Park that morning, there was part of me that hoped for many more strikes. The Empire State Building seemed like a natural candidate, and I kept it in view while listening to radio reports on my walkman (and yes, this was Walkman era).

Some time in the year after 9/11 I remember being on an NJTransit train with a young co-worker who happened to be Pakistani and I guess we were having a little too loud a conversation about Bush and I said that Bush "basically got lucky with 9/11" -- oh man you could feel the hardness of the stares.

lmao maresnest

https://celebrity.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/melissa-joan-hart-blasts-9-11-news-coverage-if-kardashians-can-be-covered-24-7-why-can-t-the-victims-get-one-day-160055763.html

Actress Melissa Joan Hart — a staunch conservative who has appeared on Fox News — called out the network, as well as CNN, for not having continuous coverage of the Sept. 11 memorial on Friday, the 14th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Making a good point, Hart, who does a lot of work with military wives, said that one calendar day should be dedicated to the victims, especially since we live in a time when 365 days of the year are devoted to the Kardashians.

for some reason this strikes me as the most annoying opinion imaginable

lol what a dolt

I don't profess to speak for any of the families of the victims buuuuuut I'd wager not all of them necessarily want what Hart is demanding.

also fuck Clarissa, she should live inside Kim's ass

also, MSNBC already does a real-time rerun of 9/11 every year, which I find pretty distasteful and pointless and creepy. i mean, anyone is free to go on youtube and watch the networks as it happened.

doc's waiting room tv had a History channel thing abt 9/11 yesterday & everyone was watching it & there was this one dude who *stood* & watched it & i just wanted to run out of the room

i don't mind the memorials & remembrances & i still get legit upset thinking abt the people & rescuers in that building

...but there's something about the *idea* of 9/11 & everything packed into that idea that just feels so fetishized now, people go right back there in a heartbeat, camp out there & idk it creeps me out a little now

Emotional pornography

and my other forbidden thought is comparing the national shame of domestic terrorism ie Oklahoma City bombing

no 4.19 memorials or a twenty year special, 168 lives lost there, no war to show for it. those ppl were all just going to work too, i wish we honored them more than they are

idk apples to oranges but it sticks in my brain sometimes

on one hand 9/11 seems recent but on the other hand, it's been 14 years. 14 years after pearl harbor WW2 had been finished for ten years and the korean war had come and gone, too. people still cling to it because it was just such a fucked up event psychologically, combining 3 or 4 major nightmarish fears into one horrible mess.

The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 was going to be an inside job but it was moved to an outdoor venue due to COVID concerns.

guys do you want to summon the 'Lorax

https://s3-prod.adage.com/s3fs-public/styles/800x600/public/20200803_WilfordBrimley_3x2.jpg

i know this is the forbidden thoughts thread but can we please not do inside job talk this week

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, September 13, 2021 9:10 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well I guess so many in the US have ignored glaring and obvious reality for the past twenty years, what's one more week.

xpost to table

i expressed myself poorly, i didnt mean that anyone who wasnt there wasnt affected. apologies for any offence caused to you or anyone else itt

9/11 was an inside job by Jonathan Safran Foer so he'd have something to write about

Leo Phoenix lives

Hi VG, I wasn't offended, I just get very...uh...polemical about how the reverberations of this event have quite literally led to the deaths of millions. 3100 people dead is a horror, of course, but millions of people? Unbearable to think about, but we must.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkSMSbFV_q0

shameful lol

so why did saudi arabia participate/primarily drive the attack? i am completely ignorant. certain faction of religious zealots in the govt? trying to get us more mired in the middle east to aserve their interests?

I don't think there are good answers. The long game of inciting a war that eventually gets us to take out Saddam (only to be replaced with a state in Iran's orbit?) feels like a big stretch. I'd guess more along the lines of some religious radicals wanted to do it and the people above them couldn't afford to piss them off/stop them.

Norm Macdonald setting up Andy Dick to laugh at a 9/11 joke... 😂😂😂#NormMacDonald #911remembrance #NeverForget911 pic.twitter.com/LGZcGdX2qy

— Zombie🤬Sexbot (@ZombieSexbot) September 12, 2018

I don't know if this is just the media bubble that I've created for myself, or possibly because I'm in the UK rather than the US, but I feel like these days, about 90% of the time when I see a reference to 9/11 it's in the context of an intentionally edgy/bad-taste joke? Or that 9/11 has become almost the default go-to subject for tasteless jokes (maybe the Challenger space shuttle disaster filled a similar place for an earlier generation?) It's maybe a 'safe' subject for edgy jokes because it's obviously inappropriate to joke about but it's not obviously racist/sexist/ableist etc?

I remember people I knew making bad-taste 9/11 jokes almost straight away (I was 16 at the time, so maybe my peer group was more likely to contain people inclined to make offensive try-hard jokes?), but in media anything less than absolute solemnity seemed verboten for quite a while - it's maybe the memory of that period when it forbidden to openly joke about that is why there are so many jokes now? I wonder a bout people who are too young to remember it first-hand, if they'll encounter 9/11 primarily as a thing that people tell jokes about (I feel this was my experience with the Challenger disaster?)

idk if Giuliani's descent into disgrace and buffoonery has anything to do with it (I know a lot of people always realised he was a buffoon, but he used to get a lot of respect across the centre-left and centre-right as well, right?) Or more generally, the Iraq war and the 'war on terror' more generally where there's a consensus view that sees them in retrospect as follies?

9/11 conspiracies and 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams' must be another factor in making it into a farcical subject? or just how the contemporary internet immediately makes anything and everything into a joke

Can confirm, my 1st grade class started making Challenger jokes almost immediately.

yeah I think how the attack was leveraged for just the dumbest and most evil stuff in the succeeding years definitely contributes. as does our response to “a 9/11 every day” in the Covid era.

https://ifunny.co/picture/the-flu-kills-more-people-every-year-lol-CMNd2bdq7?s=cl

eh fuck it

https://img.ifunny.co/images/eb0dac5efff12b9e090cd7779805afed151fb46cadbde1b4f9de7b76bed5cbc2_1.jpg

yeah I think how the attack was leveraged for just the dumbest and most evil stuff in the succeeding years definitely contributes.

Correct. Meanwhile the right wing have gone for conspiracy shit so much in the ensuing decades that their apetite for harping on an event where the conspiratorial pov is not to their advantage isn't very strong.

i think the constant solemnity in the media mentioned cultivated the urge, coupled with the growing cynicism that comes with being lied to 100% of the time by the president as he starts more and more wars

I did lol when I heard someone refer to the burning of the Fox Christmas tree as "Pine/11"

I will say that the 9/11 jokes in my last book always went over really well— even when I read from it in Lower Manhattan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mvikSQteQ

the real 9/11

pic.twitter.com/Rd4sT5kd4Z

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) February 4, 2022