So it's been five years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Five years since the re-crowning 0f the Empire State Building as the tallest building in New York, like how tall or how big something is really matters (unfortunately for a large number of people it does - yeah, I'm talking to you, Hummer drivers!). Less has changed than we thought it would in those first few hours after the attacks. A whole new generation of conspiracy theories were born. Who knows? - maybe some of them are true. Our government certainly has come up with a series of whopping lies since then, using the events of that one day to justify a whole slew of actions. More people have died, and continue to die, as a result of this than did in the original attack.

Symbols and grand ideals continue to rule the airwaves. Human beings continue to die. People continue to hate. Everytime somebody dies, somebody somewhere hates a little more. It's twisting us all into little knots so tightly tugged that they're just going to remain tied until doomsday.

None of this is new other than the fact that we keep becoming more efficient at killing. I came across an old bumper sticker in a drawer the other day that reads, "efficiency = death." Boy does it ever, in so many ways...

I know that there are decent people out there. Millions of them, I'm sure. It's just that there voices are lost under all of the blustering and inane babble of the puppets with their prepared speeches.

The world has grown too small. Everything happens too fast. We're running out of space to escape to when the walls close in. We are billions, and so many of us are all alone

The more of us there are on this planet, the less human each individual becomes. It's as if we've passed the carrying capacity of caring. I really do feel that it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.

Being vulnerable like only a parent can be, that makes me really sad.

Bastards! I leave you with a couple of quotes from Edward Abbey, who died fifteen years before the attacks, but whose words live on:

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

and

Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.