So yeah, it's that day again.

Lemme' tells ya a little something, I read a lot of info-mation on the internets, and a lot of it happens to be news from around the world, and bloggy-deconstructions of actions from the U.S. National (and to a lesser extent State) governments. This is a place that I keep nearly all of that stuff out of, not because I don't understand it, (I gots me a Political Science degree from the University of Minnesota - don't ya know) and not because I think you wouldn't understand it. (cause I know yer as smart as you are attractive) I just figger there's a place for it, and it ain't here.

But I will say this today, of all days, you can't know what it means unless yer a New Yorker, or were one (or were in the Big Apple) when 9-11-2001 happened, you just can't know. No matter what you felt, through what you saw, or heard, or had to deal with that day, you just can't know.

My small powers of perception have allowed me to make this statement because whenever this subject comes up around a New Yorker, the conversation moves from a simple "what I saw made me feel ____" to suddenly dominated by the NYC's "You don't know shit because _____ is what I LIVED THRU!" And after you see the transformation that ripples through a person, you realize that the news and video and what-the-fuck-ever information you got from that situation has nothing to do with what someone who was there felt, watching innumerable masses of dust-stained workers from Manhattan trudge past their apartment windows. Watching the biggest landmark in their city disappear under a gargantuan cloud of smoke. Seeing posters of missing people go up in uncountable numbers all around them. Once you see this, you'll notice it wasn't so much the United States of America that was attacked, as New York, since, that's where it happened. (yeah, allright, there was also that Pentagon and P.A., thing - but pale sideshows to the main event.)

I'd be happy to tell you the most remarkable things about people coming together in L.A., - total strangers bonded by only by their ability to see their fellow American. Of strangely magical conversations I had with random people on the street that gave me faith in the goodness of my fellow Humanids. Of the odd proud feeling I got as a L.A.F.D. truck rolled down the street with a huge U.S. flag streaming behind. And of the stories I heard from nearly every one of my friends expressing the same things.

But out of all that, I at least now know this. No matter how they broadcast it to an audience, no matter what the politicians say, no matter how it was used to justify the gut-wrenchingly horrible response from the people who ran (and still run) U.S.of A., and no matter how they want to "honor" this day, of all days, they don't know.

They don't know because they weren't there. And until you sit down and talk to a few people who were, please, don't even try.