september 20 and I know what it is that made us live such ordinary lives Life, as it tends to do, slips back into ordinariness.
At the same time, there's a lot of uncertainty and uneasiness in the world these days. Here's some proof that at heart, people are good, here's some proof that Americans (well, these two idiots in particular) are no better than the terrorists, and here's some rational thinking we can only pray the government has also seen. The Princess and I had a chat at work today about all of this and she pointed out that there really is shit all we can do, really. You can't just go bomb a country; a country didn't do this, even if the country is run by the despicable Taliban. (They'd just pick up and leave first and the poor peasants would be left to then hate us.) And we don't actually have much proof it was Bin Laden. So what do you do with all of this anger and hate? God help us if it turns into a war. You just don't want to do it. I noted to her that the US seems damned if we do, damned if we don't -- if we ignore the poverty and suffering in a particular country and go all Prime Directive on them, we're heartless and "oh, how could you." But if we go over there to straighten things out, it's all "get out of our business! You know nothing about what is going on here!" But no matter what we do, there is one common cry: "Please leave your money." A lot of the world often feels like your greedy cousin Donald, who sends letters every so often, saying, "Please leave the money on the doorstep and go away thank you."
It just is the topic of conversation, you don't even have to preface it with the name of the building or the day or anything. You just start in. Meanwhile, there's all sorts of money flying to all sorts of sources -- I hope nobody's getting fleeced. It's nice that all of this money is coming in for the families of the survivors, but I sincerely doubt there are any families out there thinking, "Wonder what my cut's gonna be?" Some store I passed by today indicated that "10 percent of our sales go to families of the victims." Ten percent? Starting when? Ending when? ALL sales? Crikey. And who's going to hold them to that, anyway? Then there's going to be a telethon on Friday night with celebrities and so on, all of which seems nice, but to my cynical ears just feels tacky. Money isn't going to bring these people back. If you really want to prevent this shit from happening in the future, use the money to beef up security, pay spies some good dough, and then give massive relief to the Afghanis who are not part of the Taliban. Bin Laden may be a "hero" to some over there, but he's hardly doing anything practical for the people who worship the name. Does he put food on the table? Does he provide shelter or medicine? Fat freaking chance.
Another topic. Went to the Jackson Diner for the first time tonight with married friends Peter and DeeDee, who is expecting either little Benjamin or little Grant, they haven't decided yet. "Sounds like a soap opera name," she grinned at me. I'm a little leery of Indian food (I'm a spice wimp and plus, most meats are off limits) but the JD has been voted best Indian in New York for about five years running. Funny name -- it is kind of low-key like a diner, but it is all Indian food. I got something that looked like veggie meatballs in a brown cream sauce. Sopped all of that up with the nan bread and had a piggy old time. For someone who's only eaten in an Indian restaurant perhaps twice, I made a good choice. As we ate, the place filled up, but before it did the waiters stood around watching the big screen TV suspended on the far left hand side of the restaurant, watching CNN. It's inescapable, I tell you. Naturally, we talked about what happened, and they both seem pretty assured it won't all go to hell; me, I'm scared we're going to start the last world war. I expressed this to D, who is too busy to do much emailing right now, but is still as reassuring as he thinks he can be. The network likes his music, so he's all deep in the sounds. 
We sat in the table with a very tall-looking fellow sitting up in it; there's a white triangle in front of him. Not in real life, just in the photo.Afterwards we came back to my place and listened to the rockin' sounds of a Parasol Records sampler (Jenifer Jones, which I may have mentioned before, rocks!) and while DeeDee paged through a book of mine Peter looked at my computer, which has been doing weird things like flashing blue and yellow on the monitor. He says he can help. Superman, to the rescue. He also took a zip disk of (embarassing) MP3s I stole from Napster before that thing went to seed. He's going to burn them onto a CD so I can make a mix tape. How useful! They're both really nice people. Peter's been on the Ivy Vine for ages, and we finally met up last year when the band requested an "audience" for their video shoot. We were the only three to show up -- asking anybody to come out at 7:00 AM on a Saturday takes a kind of fan the band clearly don't have yet. I also met Tom that day, and that's another story for another time. Anyway, we get together on and off. A lot of my friends are married and the spouse seems to usually come along for the ride. I was home recently, though (for the Rosh Hashana holiday -- again, another retelling for another night) and wanted to go to antiquing in Frederick. Aha, thought I, a good chance to hang out with Rebecca solo. (I like her husband, Paul, but hell, there is a difference between going out with your good buddy and going out with a couple, and I thought I'd picked an activity there was little chance he'd want to participate in.) Wrong! Anyway, I'm used to hanging with couples. But I think it should be okay to hang as singles, too.
I am disagreed with on this note, it seems.
More on going home next time.
