I remember what I was doing five years ago today ... I had just arrived in Seattle for a visit with future fiancee Lori, freshly discharged from my lousy copywriting job in Chicago and ripe for reconciliation. I made my first trip to Scarecrow, the world's greatest video store and scored a handful of high quality trash, including Snuff, Invasion of the Girl Snatchers and Sex Psycho (which AMG is too timid to include in their database). Lori had to work that Monday, leaving me with her VCR, a bag and a bottle, so I had the ultimate morning planned, until some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground. My mother and stepfather were in the air that day, leading to several tense phone calls before finding them safe and sound in Minneapolis (true to form, my mother was more upset about the lack of hotel rooms than any potential apocalypse). After some six hours of obsessive NPR & CNN consumption, I was spent and finally decided to go ahead with my original plans, which were to get wrecked and indulge in the lowest form of American art ... while I must admit it was difficult to enjoy the sleazy aesthetic terrorism of my man Michael Findlay with so much real-life mayhem afoot, I did my best to muddle through, lest I allow yet another bunch of religious extremists to dictate my fragile, dwindling days.

Oh, by the way, no matter how many speeches blather on about freedom and sacrifice and freedom and true heroes and freedom and etcetera, the terrorists are winning. America has yet to look at itself with any kind of honesty since the tragedy everyone's talking about today, so we're doomed to expect more and more murder to be visited upon our shores. How d'ya like me now? Bring it on. Built Ford tough. Pathetic.