Month: September 2001

Not too long ago, while watching the opening scenes of the film Armageddon I idly wondered what it would actually be like if New York City was hit by fast moving flying debris that brought down skyscrapers. Now we know and I wish we didn’t.

I find it impossible to even begin to comprehend the kind of hatred that could motivate an act of this kind. An attack on the Pentagon is at least justifiable from a military perspective, but to crash civilian aircraft, packed full of innocent passengers into not just the heart of the US military but the largest commercial office block in New York City is an act so nightmarishly evil that I can hardly believe it’s true.

Like many other Australians I woke up to the news on my clock radio. I’ve been wandering around in a daze all day, waiting to wake up and find it’s all a dream. I went into work an hour and a half early just for something to do apart from watching it all on TV, or not watching it, and thinking about it instead.

Many people (including our own Prime Minister who is currently stranded in the States after the closing of all US airspace) have been quoting President Roosevelt over the last twenty four hours, and though I agree that this is indeed a day that will live in infamy, the words that are running through my head are those of Herb Morrison – a radio journalist who, four years before Eisenhower’s famous speech and not all that far from the site where the World Trade Center would one day rise, was sent to cover the landing of a German airship called the Hindenburg.

“It burst into flame and it’s falling, it’s fire, watch it, watch it, get out of the way,get out of the way… oh my god what do I see? it’s burning-bursting into flame, and it’s falling… all of the folks agree that this is terrible, this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world, ohh the flames are rising, oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky. It’s a terrific crash ladies and gentlemen, the smoke and it’s flames now and the frame is crashing to the ground… all the humanity… Screaming around me, I’m so — I can’t even talk, the people, it’s not fair, it’s — it’s — oh! I can’t talk, ladies and gentleman, honest, it’s a flaming mass of smoking wreckage, and everybody can hardly breathe… I’m sorry, honestly, I can hardly breathe, I’m going to step inside where I cannot see it… I, I can’t… listen folks I’m going to have to stop for a minute, just because I’ve lost my voice, this is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed…”

Dreams can be very strange things. I woke up this morning absolutely convinced that an old woman with a piglet on a leash came and messed with our fuse box on a nightly basis, under the impression she was delivering antibiotics. Make sense of that if you can all you self-styled dream analysts!

In other news I have had my more or less quarterly haircut. I knew it was time when I woke up on Saturday morning and stumbled into the bathroom to find I looked like Rod Stewart on a bad hair day. Eighties Rod Stewart. On the worst hair day of his entire bad hair day existance.

So I headed off to the local hair salon, where my flowing locks were deftly trimmed by the mono-thumbed hairdressing lady. I’ve always wondered exactly what happened to her other thumb. Was it lost in some horrific styling incident? Did she slip with the shears one sad day? Did she anger one of her teachers at hairdressing college so much that they grabbed a pair of scissors and snip? I’m too scared to ask.

Anyway she’s done her usual adequate job (no comment on her skills, I am one of those unfortunate souls who can only hope for an adequate haircut.), and I am now in my short haired geek phase, as opposed to long haired Beatle-style-but-without-the-talent-or-charasima geek phase.

There was one scary moment though. She did the front and sides first before tackling the dense jungle of the back, so I glanced up at one point to see myself the unsuspecting victim of a Billy Ray Cyrus super-mullet. Absolutely terrifying. That kind of thing can easily scare a year’s growth out of you.

And now Ted Mulry (of the Ted Mulry Gang) is dead! What the heck is going on here? Thankfully I only know one of their songs (the ubiquitous “Jump in my Car”) and for some reason it’s completely failed to lodge itself in my brain. Obviously not as catchy as the Skyhooks.

I got nowhere near enough sleep over the weekend. No, no exciting social activities or incrediable adventures, just general insomnia. My sleep deprived state has combined with the general Monday morning bleughs to make me feel truly rotten. I think I’ll be mainlining paracetemol and St John’s wort all day just to keep the spiritual weasels off my back. Urrgh.