Tuesday, October 30
Manhattan in time.


I'm coming to this a bit late, I'm sure, but this essay quite perfectly sums up why the American public school experience is a nightmare.


Bush for Dummies.

Because we should never forget that this man is a moron and is not to be trusted.

Tuesday, October 23
George Bush, speaking in New York, two years from now:

"And now, Osama bin Laden, you will witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Battle Trade Center."

Friday, October 19
Anthrax needs to record a song called Osama bin Laden. Worldwide headlines would confuse the shit out of people:

"Anthrax releases bin Laden worldwide"

And Christ, if it was with Public Enemy again the possibilities are just wonderful...

Thursday, October 18
jitterbug fantasia - a pillow-fight between creativity and schizophrenia

Here goes your afternoon productivity...

Friday, October 5
I'm supposed to fly to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday for a week. I have terribly mixed feelings about this.

While I agree, intellectually, about not living in fear, my emotions are a different story. I've finally given up on pretending to be an agnostic. I firmly believe that there is no God, no special force in the universe, and absolutely no afterlife. In fact, I find the whole notion of a soul to be ridiculously naive. Add to this my complete terror of dying. I have so much I want to do, so much that I enjoy about living, that dying just isn't part of the plan.

My fear of death has never caused me to stop living. Quite the opposite, in fact. The inevitability of dying is enough to frighten me, and it is one of my primary motivators for accomplishing things. Quite literally, it is a deadline I cannot postpone.

All of those ideas are easy enough to table. I'm 26. Done a lot so far, will do a lot more if I live. But this is the first time I've ever actually felt like I was doing something dangerous. Besides getting into a car while the driver was on acid and shooting down Laurel Canyon boulevard (well, we were all on acid, let's be fair).

I imagine that people living in New York feel the same, walking around a giant target. D.C. frightens me more than New York, mostly because it's an unfinished target. The news reports varying stories about cautioning people that there will be new attacks, and not panicking them too much since we don't have conclusive information.

My girlfriend has no fear of death, and she too is a rabid atheist. But where we differ is that she finds comfort in the finality and end. All she wants is her demise to be painless. She hates pain more than the idea of nonexistence. Whereas I can be crippled by the idea of death.

Oh, sure, I can tell you where it all comes from. I spent my childhood figuring out how to survive some pretty horrible situations, and survival became my guiding mantra. Now as an adult, I can control my emotions, control who can cause me emotional damage, and recognize dangers before they control my life. Except death, which I have no control over whatsoever. It is the powerlessness before mortality, and therefore the frustration and fear of losing control over the one thing that formed my personality.

Not that I've spent any time thinking about this.

The point is, I haven't cancelled my plans. I'm still flying into D.C. I'm still going to visit my sister. I'm still going to relax and let my parents wine and dine me. I deserve a vacation. The script I worked on for a year is suddenly dead in the water for at least six months. I need a break before I start my next one.

Am I alone here? Are many of you going about your daily lives while trying to ignore the reality of this new world we live in? I'm not talking about the intellectualization of terrorism. We've all been reading about it. I mean emotionally, how are you feeling about this new environment? How is your personal morality affected by this? I want us to kill a lot of bad people. But I also know the moment we start doing it, we're going to see a violent response.