THREE YEARS AFTER: The Fizzy One Looks Back
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh no, here we go again, another overwrought send-up of those terrorist attacks.” And I would agree with you. I hate almost anything overwrought, so hopefully, this will be pretty brief and to the point. Hopefully, anyway. I don’t know, because I haven’t written it yet, see?
But there are some things I want to say on this, the third anniversary (although that is too happy a word) of the event that has come to be known as 9/11. (Wonder what they’ll call it in the history books our grandchildren read.) And I think these things NEED to be said, amid all the hand-wringing. And so, as Lynyrd Skynyrd sang, “all I can do is write about it.”
“Where were you?” asks one of the many mawkish country songs written for the occasion. Well, I had just started another year of college in York, Pennsylvania. I had just turned 21, had recently taken up more than a passing interest in drinking (because I could!), had just made some new friendships (some that would be lasting, and some that would prove disastrous). Things were looking up. It was another Tuesday. New music released that day were albums by Slayer and Tesla, both of which I wanted to get my hands on as soon as possible. and I didn’t have class until 12:30, so naturally, I was still in bed. I woke up to a phone call from my sister at around 11:30, after the damage had been done for over an hour. Of course, I knew nothing of it, and neither did my buddy, Caveman Dave. So we put the TV on. And shortly thereafter, our buddy John came in, having heard only vague rumblings about what had happened. He’d been in class all morning. Ironically, one of those classes had been “Introduction to the Middle East.” (He immediately began referring to it as “Intro to [racial slur rhyming with “clam diggers"]".)
Interestingly, my college did not cancel classes that day. They may as well have, because few people bothered going to class. I know I sat rooted to my chair, watching the aftermath and thinking over and over, "Holy shit!" You might say it was the JFK assassination of our time, although I liken it more to Pearl Harbor.
But countless people assured us that we would "move on," and move on we did, and so here we are, three years later. And what have we learned since then? Well ... not too damn much. We're still bickering over whose fault it was, when ALL of us were to blame. The country is more divided than it's been since the Civil War. Right now, the pissing match rages on to decide who will be the next president: the phony-baloney elitist or the half-wit Jesus-freak. Who’ll be commander-in-chief the next time some gangsters in turbans decide to take their circus stateside? Will it matter? You want to tell me we can’t beat a bunch of assholes still living in the Middle Ages?
There was lots of talk in the fall of 2001 about how the attacks would “bring people together.” Yeah, that lasted about five minutes, didn’t it? And now, we’re back to the same old petty squabbling that we were before, only worse. Meanwhile, terrorists continue to go about their business pretty much as they please. Witness the Russian school massacre a couple weeks back. Nope, not a lot has changed. I guess some of us didn’t learn our lesson well enough. If we had this kind of setup in World War II, we’d be in deep shit, I can assure you. I know everybody'’ tired of the World War II comparison, but I don’t care. It’s an apt one, but for the fact that we’ve become a nation of lazy, whining, fat slobs with no balls in the intervening sixty years, that’s all.
So what do I want you, the Fizzbunker visitor, to take from this column? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe just to realize that it happened once, and it can very well happen again if we aren’t careful and vigilant. People whine and complain that we’re not being “sensitive” enough. Well, shit, this ain’t kindergarten! What the hell do these people want? I had planned to say that if I were president when a fucker like Bin Laden pulled a stunt like that, he’d be a DEAD fucker in no time flat, but I suppose that’s a rather useless thing to say, even if it were true. So hey, vote for me in 2016, if we’re still a free country by then!
On a lighter note, I’m sitting here writing this in my American-flag boxer shorts, and it occurred to me: is that proper? Is it wrong to be wearing flag underwear? Farting on the Stars and Stripes? Never mind!
Today’s inspirational song lyrics are brought to us by S.O.D.:
“Fuck the Middle East, there’s too many problems. They just get in the way, we sure could live without ’em! They hijack our planes, they raise our oil prices. We’ll kill them all and have a ball, and end their fuckin’ crisis!”
