“Screw you Mr. Osama bin Jerkface or whatever your name is–if Gabriel wants to rollerblade, GABRIEL ROLLERBLADES”

The tenth anniversary is here! The tenth anniversary is here! It’s crazy how long it’s been. It’s crazy that my students were EIGHT when it happened. I wonder how it appears to them in memory. Hazy and bizarre. Like my memory of the Challenger? I remember all the high schoolers crying. “Now class, we will watch TV together in this special assembly so we can show you what heights America may soar to when she dares to dream of a brighter OH MY GOD NO, THE HORROR”

I remember I didn’t know what the Challenger was, and then when I asked someone why the high schoolers were crying that person said “a space ship blew up” and I thought immediately of Star Wars and was AMAZED.

On 9/11 I was luckily unemployed so I got to stay home all day watching TV while Jona went to work, something I now intensely regret. Fighter planes flew over my apartment, which was incomprehensible and scary. People immediately started talking about murdering all the Arabs on the earth. This was before the lucrative 9/11-based bumper sticker industry became what it is today, imagine! We were so innocent…(Calvin peeing on Osama bin Laden)

“Screw you Mr. Osama bin Jerkface or whatever your name is–if Gabriel wants to rollerblade, GABRIEL ROLLERBLADES”

Anyway. Best not to turn on the radio right now–yesterday I accidentally caught the opening bars of Toby Keith’s wonderful song about 9/11. “Where were you when the world stopped turning?” Oh Toby Keith, I was BILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE FUTURE when that happened.

My old man is excited because he’s illegally watching football on his laptop. I can think of a couple of things I’d enjoy less, I guess, all of them involving physical torture and/or evangelical church service.

However, to be fair, I am plugging away at a book on musical philosophy that I intensely do not enjoy. All these attempts to define music get so convoluted and full of rage, and always dead-end somehow at 4’33”. I love what an epic wrench John Cage threw into musical ontology. I mean, I guess that was the point.

I need to get through two more chapters of this before I can do anything else. I’m gonna do it! I can do it. Then:

1. Lesson plan
2. Job search
3. Gym

Catching up! Yesterday was a good day. I caught up so heavily and also ate nearly appropriately. Read SO much philosophy; organized my folder; made a cool week plan. Caught up on all the Aristotle I was supposed to have been able to teach on Thursday. Then I went out to my friends’ show and it was so great. Love to see my loved ones making such a huge enlivening spectacle onstage. How our lives have diverged over the past 8 years! So proud of all those dudes. Love to watch Steve make balloon animals onstage. Love to dance with my friends and lover. Wore an octopus hat made of balloons. Drank two beers. Got home at 12:30 UTTERLY EXHAUSTED, laying in bed in pain with tiredness. Maybe I have an illness. I woke up with my face sore from scrunching up from sleeping so hard. Had a dream I was trying to avert a school shooting, every teacher’s worst fucking nightmare. I kept turning back time but still failing to stop it over and over again.

I’d like to wish everybody with 9/11 birthdays a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! My sister-in-law has one. It’s the new D-Day birthday. My friend Julianne is born on D-Day and loves to say “the Day that shall live in Infamy.” I guess if you have a 9/11 birthday your birthday slogan is “NEVER FORGET,” which is also pretty good. Indeed, probably no one will ever forget your birthday again. No old people, anyway, I mean, who knows when D-Day is, anymore? I mean, I do, but really. Wait, is it December 7? OH SHIT WHAT’S JULIANNE’S BIRTHDAY????????

*I just heard the old man muttering in the bedroom: “…from their OWN ten yard line. Fucking idiots.” I am NOT going in there