LBY3
The continuing adventures of Beau Yarbrough

September 11, 2001

Sunday, September 11, 2005, 5:46
Section: Life

The second airliner approaches the World Trade CenterI have to stop letting my brother wake me up early in the morning.

Joel did it the morning of the Challenger explosion (it was a teacher workday for us), and on September 11, 2001, he called me before my alarm went off to let me know that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Jenn and I got up and watched on television, confused as to what was going on, until an airliner crashed into the second tower.

Like everyone else in America, we didn’t know what happened next. So, I got in the car and drove into work.

Normally, my commute took me along some of the busiest highways in America — the 10 miles from our North Hollywood apartment to downtown LA, where the LA Times building is, for instance, can often take up to an hour driving the 101 during rush hour. Not on September 11. My car was one of a handful on the road; it was emptier than on Christmas morning. I scanned the radio as I drove, but no one knew anything more than they had known before I’d left for home.

It wasn’t until I was driving past the Orange County airport that I felt scared for the first time. Previously, I’d felt dizzy, disoriented, but now, driving along, I couldn’t help but wonder if one of the planes would be falling out of the sky, or diverting course on final approach to take out a densely populated Southern California city. I needn’t have worried: Like the roadways, the always-busy airways of the area were empty and eerily silent, but I had the strongest sensation of feeling a massive airliner suspended over my car by a giant hand, ready to drop when I was least expecting it. I even peeked up through the sunroof a few times.

When I got to Blizzard, the office was open — that is, it was unlocked and the alarm was off — but almost no one was there, other than a few people who lived outside Orange County and had a long enough commute that they had started driving before anyone would have been in the office to say whether or not the company was open today. Those of us there looked at each other a bit until upper management types (I honestly don’t remember who) essentially threw us out and told us to go home to be with our families.

Other than the five month period between me returning from Egypt and starting work at the Potomac News, I have never lived in New York for any great length of time, although we visited one of my father’s old fraternity roommates there regularly when I was growing up. But I find myself thinking about what happened on 9/11 all the time, especially the people aboard Flight 93 and the firefighters and police officers who died in New York City. I had been scared of imaginary airplanes falling on my head, but the FDNY casualties ran into a collapsing building, knowing they were going to die, on the off-chance of saving a stranger’s life. Those aboard Flight 93 knew they were dead, but chose to save the lives of people they would never know by facing it head on.

I wish I had some great revelation about what it all means in the long run, or that it had somehow transformed me into a better, more noble, more selfless person. But I think that mostly happens in movies.

But it’s still September 11 for me, nearly every day. I’m not scared now — indeed, rural America is a singularly unattractive target for terrorists — but I find myself mourning all the lives lost that day and the days after all the time.

Not forgetting is the very least we can do.



The Day After Labor Day Day

Tuesday, September 6, 2005, 12:06
Section: Geek,Life

So, it was a weekend of one videogame (where I beat up a lot of criminals and probably have a lawsuit coming my way from various supervillains) and another (where I shot so many orcs, trolls, undead and cow-men that I was made a knight) and hot dogs and steak and barbecue sandwiches and soda and generally goofing off. So, naturally, I overslept on Tuesday.

A black widow spider

  • And in other great news, the black widow population of Hesperia has finally found our home. After accidentally sticking my hand into a web this spring, I’ve been dreading this day. Somehow, poisonous snakes back east seem less threatening than teeny tiny spiders with non-fatal venom.
  • My baby brother Joel turned 34 this weekend. But he’s still not too big for me to kick his butt!
  • The New York Times calls World of Warcraft “a game that is easy for casual players to understand and feel successful in, while including enough depth to engross serious gamers, who may play a game like World of Warcraft for 30 hours a week or more.” The article discusses whether having the first mass market MMORPG is helping the market, by bringing lots of new players into the MMORPG genre, or hurting it, by snapping the necks of its weaker competitors. I have to say I think it’s a good thing — and if bad games don’t find audiences, stop making bad games. Good games will survive, and have. (BugMeNot NY Times ID and password: abracadabra605, pentape)


  • New glasses, part two

    Monday, August 15, 2005, 17:34
    Section: Life

    At long last, I’m using 100 percent new glasses, instead of squinting when not wearing sunglasses while I wait for these to arrive.

    OUT WITH THE OLD:
    My old glasses

    My old glasses are a pair of “ESQ by” something that starts with an R, but is just a squiggle. Google is no help, so it’ll have to remain a mystery. They were from a swanky glasses shop in Studio City a few years ago, but for all that they looked good initially, the tips of the stems both snapped off and the anti-scratch coating apparently came with a warranty that, when it expired, all bets were off.

    IN WITH THE NEW:
    My new glasses

    The new frames are from Sergio Tacchini and are my first foray into truly rimless frames. We’ll see how it goes. Unlike the sunglasses, with their curved lenses, these took the new prescription in earnest and my vision is sharper than it’s been in ages. I feel like Superman, other than finding Lois Lane really annoying and not at all attractive.

    If you missed what my new sunglasses look like, click here. Hopefully it won’t take five years to get my next prescription and new glasses.



    Under the knife, the scar

    Monday, August 15, 2005, 17:22
    Section: Life

    For those of you asking, the biopsy scar is healing nicely:

    The biopsy scar

    The scar tissue is still a little stiff, so at times I yawn or laugh or whatever and can feel it stubbornly not flexing and stretching like my neck normally does. But as a whole, it’s not intrusive to me, although it surely seems to distract other people, since it’s visible with any open-necked button-up shirt.



    Delays

    Saturday, August 13, 2005, 0:45
    Section: Journalism,Life

    If I didn’t know better, I’d say a certain nameless California governmental agency had consciously created a data dump so convoluted and so user unfriendly so as to force the media to rely on their canned spin on the report, whatever their apparent attempts to be media-friendly might otherwise suggest.

    In any case, Journalism 101 and the other stuff I hoped to post Friday evening will have to wait for a bit while my eyes stop burning from eyestrain. If you’re good, I’ll post a picture of “the scar,” so people won’t have to keep asking me how I’m healing up from my operation. (I wish I could remember what the operation was called. “Medial thera-something-oscopy” is all I can remember. Those painkillers were impressive.)

    And we’ll see whether the story about the nameless state report makes it into the next edition of the Star or the one after that.


     








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    Veritas odit moras.