I wrote this hours and hours ago, after the forums collapsed. I'm posting it here now.



---



To those familiar with Something Awful: The SA Forums have utterly, utterly collapsed.



It was my only source of news. I'm on a 56k connection, I couldn't muscle myway onto CNN.com or BBC.co.uk. A NYC Forum Goon with a webcam wasbroadcasting images of the burning World Trade Center. The thread reached over 15 pages in under half an hour before it came crashing down on the rest of SA.



I went in to work today, and came home fifteen minutes later. The Loop area, the center of Chicago, has shut down. The colleges, museums, stock exchange, government buildings and businesses are closed. Games have been cancelled. Public transit passes are free. The trains are packed.



Everyone is going home. I came home half an hour ago.



I'm a soft touch. I kept it together long enough to make it to the CTA station, but I cried on the platform. I blame some fuchsia-haired kid freaking out into his cell phone. "IT'S WAR FOR SURE! IT'S WAR FOR SURE!" Couldn't maintain composure, sitting next to that. When I started up, everyone thought I was a 17-year-old late for school (I look young for my age) or I knew someone in New York. A sympathetic lady gave me Kleenex. And then, out of nowhere, a stranger appeared, snapped my photograph with an expensive-looking camera, and disappeared again.



If a photo of a blonde, pregnant woman in a blue cotton shirt handing a small, brown girl in an olive-drab jacket a tissue shows up on the wire services on in the papers, let me know.



New York doesn't look like New York anymore. The skyline is gone. The WTC is dead. This is like the plot to a movie I would refuse to see, on account of a ridiculous premise. This our Pearl Harbor. Our generation has been defined by this, and onyl then. In a hundred years, this is all they will remember of us.



The Legendary Assholes of the Internet, from Kyanka to Stile to Chez Noir of PoE, have suddenly decided that now is not the time to be an asshole. They're asking for blood donations. They're pulling their pages offline as a sign of respect. It's surreal. These are good, decent people who can feel sympathy for the pain fo others; I've always subconciously known that. But the sudden breaks in character are as disarming as they are touching.



Soylent from Rotten.Com has posted a series called "Swan Dive." These are people jumping from the burning World Trade Center, floor 60 and above. I have seen Stile's kitten video. I have seen videos of castrations. I have seen "Train Girl." And these three blurry, still photographs are the most horrible things I've ever witnessed. Soylent also claims that the forth airliner, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania, was shot down by a military jet. That, so far, is unconfirmed by the BBC.



That's it. I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry this happened. I'm sorry for everything. No one deserves this. And no one deserves what's to inevitably come.

__________________



-Huh?-