There is no smoke in the noon day sky. Jets skate the flight path down the Hudson. People around New York go about their business. It's twenty-four years since 9/11 changed America by taking away our rights and giving many of us new fears.
Not me.
I'm only scared of those who fear more than they hope.
9/11
2025 and the skies are clear.
And that's a good thing.
Twelve years ago
June 17, 2012
That morning I was at work on 47th Street and my coworker at the diamond exchange said there was a big crowd before the NHL store.
I realized that the Bruins might have come to show off the Stanley Cup. My boss Manny asked where I was going. "Personal business."
Sure enough inside the 6th Avenue store Bergeron, Chara, and Tim Thomas stood on an interior balcony. Bruins fans were ecstatic. The trio descended to leave and as Chara passed I asked if I could touch the Cup.
"Touch it. You can hold it."
He handed the trophy to me and I kissed it. Tears of an eighteen year old remembering #4's goal against the Blues.
Tears of joy.
Five Super Bowls appearances resulted in three championships for the New England Patriots during the early Belichek-Brady era, although both post-season losses came in the last minutes at the hands of Giants quarterbacked by Eli Manning in the last minute by the quarterback'sspectacular passes against a weary secondary and the result in 2012 mirrored the defeat of 2008, but in reality this year's match-up was determined very early in the 1st quarter by an intentional grounding call against Tom Brady, which resulted in a safety and a punt to the
Of course my sister calling during the game was the kiss of death.
"Are you watching the game?" I sat the game with a long-time friend in the West Village. Bill was a Packers fan. We had $20 on the game. It was a friendly bet.
"No." She was working on test papers for her college students.
"I can't talk. It's bad luck to speak with someone not watching the game." The damage had been done and then I looked over my shoulder at Bill's Italian wife. The director from Pescara was busy writing a film proposal. Two negatives made a positive and I relaxed a little with the Patriots leading by a point into half-time.
Madonna's greatest show on Earth was a disaster. She opened the set with VOGUE, her smash hit from the last century. Her dance routine reminded me of an aging quarterback running from a blood-thristy linebacker. She was slow. Faster than me, but I wasn't on stage before a billion people. When play resumed, I wallowed in a quiet calm with a Brady score.
It wasn't enough and the clock ticked away with the Patriots. The Giants had the ball and marched down field.
I bit off three fingernails and gnawed them smooth, then the Blue scored a TD with 56 seconds to go.
Damn the safety, damn my sister, damn VOGUE.
I couldn't get it out of my head.
Madonna, that old witch had ear-wormed me and maybe the Patriots too.
Brady's Hail Mary pass into the end zone resulted in nothing.
Game over.
The Giants win.
I can't remember the score, but I rode home to Brooklyn on the A train listening tomesctastic Giant fans recapping the Superbowl. I really didn't hear them, because my ears were ringing with VOGUE.
The curse of Madonna.
The bitch.
Back at FortGreene I put on some MC5. Soothed by HIGH SCHOOL I told myself it had just been a game. It was easy to believe the lie.
To hear the instrumental version of the MC5's HIGH SCHOOL please go to the following URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6XV2OblHvo
Back in 2012 Thai police backtracked the Iranian Bangkok bomber's trail to Pattaya, where the three men spent several nights in the notorious city's Arab quarter partying with several escorts. They played billiards, drank beer, and smoked hookahs in the Bali Hai bars. According to one of the women her Iranian showed no signs of being on a suicide mission, but this visit to Pattaya revealed a crack in the myth of the seventy-two virgins as a reward for a suicide bombing.
These men sought their piece of heaven on earth.
And Pattaya provided that celestial satisfaction, for in truth the reward of the 72 virgins is a propaganda device by Shin Bet to deflect the purpose of suicide bombers from revenge for Zionist repression to lust-filled death wishes. The Koran or Qur’an condemns suicide. Paradise or 72 virgins is forbidden the suicide. The legend comes from a single passage in a Hadith.
“The smallest reward for the people of Paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives."
Wives not virgins, because sex with an sexually ignorant virgin is always a trial.
A virgin had no idea what sex is.
So the gift of 72 virgins is as much a curse as 72 wives.
Of course 72 houris or companions of pure delight are another story in entirety and finding 72 houris in Pattaya is not a challenge for any man living.
The city had been paradise on earth.
And a houris is always a pleasure and maybe so in the soul of a houri.
This week the World Meteorological Organization announced that Atmospheric volumes of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change hit a new record in 2012.
"For all these major greenhouse gases the concentrations are reaching once again record levels," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud told a news conference in Geneva at which he presented the U.N. climate agency's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. "This year is worse than last year, 2011. 2011 was worse than 2010," he said. "Every passing year makes the situation somewhat more difficult to handle, it makes it more challenging to stay under this symbolic 2 degree global average."
Greenhouse gas emissions are set to be 8-12 billion tonnes higher in 2020 than the level needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees, the U.N. Environment Programme said on Tuesday according to Reuters. Global Warming denialists were not shaken by these findings and wrote on Huffington Post the three following opinions;
1.) Eventually it will become clear to all (or most), that anthropogenic global warming is essentially a hoax. And it is a hoax that is all about taxation, wealth distribution, and the fleecing of the public. Unfortunately, believing in "climate change" has become a religion for many so I suspect it will be many years before some folks begin to realize they have been hoodwinked.
2.# Cool. I've been enjoying the mild winters and summers. No droughts or hurricanes this year. If this is Global Warming, keep it coming!
3.) Let's not overreact. This was a sign of progress one hundred years ago. We have at least 1000 years to watch things. So, in 3013 we can sit down and talk. There's places to go, golf to be played, and fun to be had. Spring 2014- taking two oldest grand kids to Disney World. Will also go Punta Cana or Cancun for an all inclusive vacation. Many seniors known as snow birds maintain a winter residence in Florida. People in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela don't live this way. we are Americans. We do.
They like the rest of their kind are blind to the changes in the atmosphere.
Last year I went to the local fishing pier in SriRacha Thailand. I have been living there for 20 years. The sea was over the pier. I had never seen the sea that high and asked the fisherman if they had. No one had and an old salt said, "Too much ocean."
Denialists can wrap themselves around the comfort of ignorance, but something has changed and not for the better.
Two years before the entire center of Thailand was flooded under 3 meters of water for months.
No one had ever seen it that high.
This year the nam-tuam was only 2 meters.
Last year I was in New York for Sandy.
No one had ever seen anything like that.
Welcome to the new world where the ocean swell swarms the coastal communities to baffle resort realtors' old claim that they aren't creating new beach front properties.
So drive your SUVs and eat your potato chips watching football in front of flat screen TVs in MacMansions that don't make you look fat.
For better or worse we're doomed and it's too late to do anything about it.
Te morituri salutamus.
Ago tibi gratias
ie those who are about to die salute you, but I will ignore your ignorance.
World population 2050 - one billion.
I walked by CBGBs in the Autumn of 1976.
I heard a band playing a cover of CALIFORNIA SUN by the Rivieras.
It was the Ramones and I went to CBGBs every night for the next two years.
Yes, I was a lucky man, because this movie can't ever come close to the truth of that era of errors, but Alan Rickman looks like Hilly.
It was a beautiful time and I remember a lot of it.
To view the trailer of CBGBs The Movie please go to this URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ZNfaOpqKo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Last month New Yorkers were happy to not be involved in the Great Midwestern Heat Wave, however this week the Eastern Seaboard had been subjected to fury of 90+ temperatures. Every morning the thermometers start at 75 and then rise toward 100. So far we have been spared the triple-digit torrid torment, yet each day the baked streets, buildings, and sidewalks radiate merciless heat and the hot spell is predicted to last through the weekend.
This afternoon I rode my bike past the McCarron Pool. The watery vastness was packed with humanity and I sought relief through drinking two ice green teas, several liters of water, two beers, one cider, and I fully intend on hydrating myself throughout the evening.
And I'm dead set on eating a good hunk of watermelon.
Tomorrow is day six.
I'll be working at the metal shop.
There is no air conditioning.
Only sweat.
And beer thereafter.
Doomologists have pinpointed the end-date of the Mayan's 5,125-year-long cycle as 13.0.0.0.0 or December 21, 2012 without predicting the cause of Armageddon. Various options for the B'ak'tun have been offered by opposing camps. Fundamentalists are hoping for the Second Coming of the Messiah and survivalists are arming up for collapse of the New World Order, while New Ages search the cosmos for an errant asteroid or black hole. The apocalypse was supposed to start May 21 and culminate with a cataclysm on 12/21/12.
Last evening I had a dream in which I was staying on the 8th floor of a Honolulu high-rise. The waves surging into Waikiki grew larger and larger, until a surfer duck-dived under the crest of a monster tsunami. The wave crashed into the condo and water splashed against the terrace windows.
I looked out the window.
An even bigger wave surged towards the submerged beach and I backed away from the window in time to escape the wave shattering the glass. The sea was only two stories below our floor. Another wave was coming and it was huge.
I woke up with a start and looked around my room.
Dreams about tidal waves are often the result of life's overwhelming pressures and our tendency to not dealing with our problems. I have to admit that I don't have everything under control, however not everything in the world is about me and I got out of bed to look out the window. It was still dark and no wave rose over the skyline of Brooklyn, but I don't really have to worry about a tsunami.
Fort Greene is only 104 feet above sea level and the doric column of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument adds about 149 feet of elevation. This added height would provide sufficient elevation to survive a tidal wave of epic proportions, but I would only be one of hundreds of Brooklynites seeking refuge from certain doom.
A jug of moonshine is under my kitchen sink.
It was a good back-up plan for doomsday and I went back to sleep content that the world was not ending today.
Ka xi'ik teech utsil, which is Mayan for good luck.
We'll be needing in the months to come.
Reuters reported that 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think that the end-date of the Mayan calendar will signal a planetary cataclysm on 12-21-12 according to a poll of over 16,000 people in China, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, the United States, Argentina, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, France, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Great Britain, Indonesia, and Germany.
While many westerners are influenced by the end date of the Mayan calendar, other pro-apocalyptical respondents are leaning toward the Hand of God, asteroids, or natural disaster. Russians and Poles were the most positive about Doomsday.
My old co-worker Ava called me this afternoon and asked if I wanted a job.
"Not really."
"Why not?" Ava was a born-again Christian.
"Because the world is coming to an end and I'm not going to waste my time at work."
"You don't really believe that?" She was very familiar with my non-belief in God.
"No, but it's a good excuse." I took the number from her, because if the world doesn't end on December 21, 2012, I'm fucked.
