This time, John Wayne Does Not Walk Off into the Sunset with Grace Kelly...

"Invisible" or "invincible," which one?

I guess each would have its advantages and disadvantages, eh? If you're invisible, then I guess you could sneak into the theater for free, which would be fine, until someone tried to sit in your lap. You could stand in a group and pass loud wind, and each person would blame someone else, while you slunk away chuckling. You could haul off and slap someone, then slip away while they freaked out! You couldn't steal anything, since it would likely look odd for objects to be floating across the room by themselves. Might raise alarm. Unless everything you were touching would turn invisible also. Guess that would have to be the case, if you plan on wearing clothing... a set of clothing walking around without anyone in them would look odd. You would walk around in the buff, I suppose, but then you'd get cold.

Being invincible would get boring after a short while, wouldn't it? Nothing could hurt you. That leaves two career choices for you: superhero or supervillain. Either way, you get to wear a costume, which would add a bit of excitement back into life. I assume you'd never die. Not exactly invincible if you can die of old age, yes? You'd live forever, like the elves in LOTR! Except in their case, they could die in battle for some reason. But not you; you're invincible! Like Wolverine! Except his invincibility is odd, since he can get hurt and feel pain, it's just he heals so quickly. So, which invincibility would you be? Like Superman, where nothing could injure you, or like Wolverine where you could get injured but heal immediately?

Oh, nevermind!

A third of September is done. Gone! In the books! One wonders what the next two-thirds will hold, eh? Hopefully, fun, excitement, shopping, football, turkey, stockings... man, I got carried away there... raced right into December.

As you know, Friday is the 8th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. As promised, I ripped a couple scenes from that 9-11 documentary I mentioned a couple days ago. Two clips, each dealing with a collapse of one of the towers. I just ripped the chapters as is, and didn't trim them to the exact spots, since that would have added a couple more hours to the process of getting them up here (ripping, importing into iMovie, editing, rendering, exporting to desktop, uploading to Viddler, encoding again...). So here are the chapters that contain the parts I wanted you to see.

Remember, the two French brothers were in New York making a documentary about a year in the life of a new firefighter recruit (a "probie") and the station they were attached to was 7 blocks away from the Trade Center. One brother was out with the truck filming a routine gas leak when the first plane hit - he went immediately with that truck to Tower One. The other brother stayed back at the firehouse, where he was left with just the probie, as everyone else had responded to the attack and headed for the Trade Center.

Warning: There's a sprinkling of profanity throughout both clips, but it springs from the moment, as these guys try to deal with the situation.

Clip 1: Tower Two Collapse



Clip 2: Tower One Collapse



Kind of sobering, to say the least. As strong as those clips are on their own, within the setting of the entire documentary, they are stronger still. If there's any way you can get a copy of the DVD, I recommend it.

I guess I could segue into some of the little things I found a bit odd about the events surrounding that day, but I think out of respect for the gravity of the occasion and for those directly effected by the events, I'll just move forward. Thought it's a bit hard to be light-hearted and goofy today.

In fact, I think I'll just let this post sit as is and pick things up again tomorrow. I've got more stuff I could share, but it just doesn't seem fitting.

Until tomorrow, remember, when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Benefits of a classical education.