So... i really want some Cadbury eggs right now. Weird how easter candy is generally better than halloween candy. Religion totally one-upped over those silly pagans.
New York truly is filled with all sorts of people. (wow brilliant insight right?....) There is a certain ignorance to the real world you develop after being on campus for too long. The same holds true I think if you're just commuting around the city going from point A to point B. There is something almost impersonal about New York City, where everyone is doing their own thing and hustling to get from here to there and does not pay you the slightest attention. You kind of get used to that. As for being on campus, you kind of get used to people restraining themselves from making blatantly inflammatory comments or at least someone will protest it.
I finally got a smack back into reality yesterday morning. I was on the 1/9 going down to Chinatown to meet up with my mom and little brother who had flew up to see me and we were going to get some lunch and wander around. On the 1/9, I find i'm on the same train as Jennie Cho, as some would know as our LLC CPA. We're talking, she starts me listening to the new Modest Mouse cd (which i declare to be very good), and one of the subway usuals starts looking for donations.
This isn't just any donation though, this is for Big News, the newspaper supposedly written and distributed by men and women that are trying to constructively and proactively get out of their rut. So the man walks around the train and goes through his intro about big news and how it is non-profit and how he is currently homeless. I look at this guy, I read faces pretty well, he's an asshole. The only other thing I noticed right off the bat was that he was wearing a new pair of Jordans. So nobody is immediately taking up his heed for donation to non-profit and assisting the homeless, so this is what happens 2 seconds later...
crazy man: "fucking mexicans, fuck them, girl (to Jennie) do you know what non-profit means?"
Jennie: non-profit is an organization... [abruptly cut off]
crazy man: fucking immigrants come to our country and don't even learn the fucking language fucking piece of shit
Jennie: hey I was born in this country [born in foxboro right behind the stadium mind you]
crazy man: stupid fucking immigrant
Jennie... at this point i thought she was going to rip that guys face off I was considering having a little talk with him and getting in a fight, but then i started seeing images of westside story style knife shit and i decided against it.
crazy man: walks up to this black guy next to us "do you know what a "... (i forgot what he said)" is? It's you asshole"
At this point I thought the black guy was going to get up and beat the shit out of him but he also showed restraint and had this bewildered look on his face, you know.. the WTF mate face.
Being an asshole and being xenophobic or racist or whatever, that's not even quite as disturbing as the fact that this man was a representative of a sort of charity. is this the way to go about garnering sympathy or goodwill in people? people like that, i honestly don't want to see them reintegrated back into the "real world". For all I care he can eat shit, and he probably does, I thought it was funny when I saw him when we got off the train and he was wandering aimlessly around the station walking behind girls and going "damn girl you got some good shit back there".
then comes the realization that the kind of people you meet at Columbia are on the whole creating a optimism about the general disposition of people. You don't see quite as often the blantantly racist or the hypocrisy and unfounded beliefs of the everyday. Maybe we stay this way, moving on to jobs and opportunities which place us in another similar social sphere where we are for the most part oblivious to the real world and the bullshit that's there. on a final note, someone get me some Cadbury eggs and fuck you subway guy....
+ other stuff to be retyped.
In his first comments since the release of the presidential daily brief, Bush said the document contained “nothing about an attack on America.”
“I’m satisfied that I never saw any intelligence that indicated there was going to be an attack on America,” Bush said. He said the memo did not give the time or the place of an attack.
Are you crazy sir? Al Qaida is not some James Bond super villain that details his master plan as he is laser slicing your crotch off. Bush basically says that he did not find the memo compelling because it did not specifically say,
cc: from Al-Qaida to ....
"Dear America and President George W. Bush,
We would like to inform you that we will be attacking the United States at 11 am, September 11, 2001. We will do x, y, and z, and do it by means of a, b, and c. Just wanted to let you know, ciao!
Best wishes,
Osama. "
I mean give me a fucking break. If the memo tells you that
1. Al Qaida operatives are in the US
2. They have established a support system for their operatives
3. Suspicious activity points to a hijacking threat of some sort
4. PDB to Bush details Al-Qaida's wishes to attack the US for 6+ years
Does the memo that bush got need to entail exactly what is going to happen to constitute adequate reason to strongly prepare and look into a terrorist threat. Looking into is not walking out of the oval office taking a glance left and a glance right and saying, yep we're ok here. But seriously, I don't want to say that this memo was thrown aside and not considered that would be a bit ridiculous, but I do think we are able to say that not enough attention was placed on the implications of the memo. It would be one thing to know, to respond, and to fail, but to know and not give a full effort is utterly ridiculous. This is just intial response to this and I'm sure more will come out and more will be explained so this isn't to be taken as a final opinion. But judging from Bush's response that basically says that the memo doesn't explicitly say anything points to his administration not or not wanting to put two and two together.
