Well, I was going to write today about my drunken adventure last thursday night, but after opening the blog page and realizing what today is, I changed my mind quickly. So I must first ask all of you out there in internetland: do you know what happened exactly 6 years ago today? I'll give you a second *tick tock tick tock*

I remember fondly. In fact, it's one of the few things I remember fondly. My average high school day started out with a 6:30 AM marching band rehearsal. Yes, I'm a geek, but hey, the band geeks become rockstars, and the cool jocks become...well I don't give a damn! Anyways, after 2 1/2 hours of early morning music and exercise in damp morning grass, the band made our way back into the classroom to get ready for the rest of the school day. Then suddenly on the intercom, there was another one of those hardly understandible, yet somehow very important announcements. As we strained to make out what our principal was saying like a bilingual drive-thru attendant, I heard a few key words: attack, New York, airplane, etc, etc. Okay, being another typical high school dumbass, I quickly wrote off the news as "out of sight, out of mind." Little did I know what this day held in store for the future...

Of course the majority of the students at my school, and probably across our educationally inept nation took joy in this excuse to watch the news in class all day, myself included. I remember watching the footage over and over. Can you remember where you were when the towers fell? If you're old enough, can you remember where you were when JFK was shot? I've been told that Americans compare these events, because everyone can say EXACTLY where they were, and what they were doing at these times.

Well, like I already said, I was in marching band class when the planes hit, and when the towers fell, I was watching live TV in English class. I can't really remember what the reaction of my fellow students was, I think we were all engrossed in the boob tube. But from this one eye-opening day, much of America was bombarded with an entire global region's worth of issues, concerns, policies, fears, and paranoias that we were much more content letting the government quietly and inadequately handle. Obviously inadequately, since we let a couple idiots with box cutters take over four airplanes full of hundreds of people! Tell me there was at least one black belt in there...

Well, enough of pissing people off (for now,) we'll fast-forward a few years, to 2006. I had matured a little bit, screwed up and learned lessons, got in trouble, partied, recovered from said parties, and "In Time," I found "My Calling." I joined an amazing family of musicians which would later be dubbed The Zoo Human Project, and seemingly out of nowhere, I found myself on tour promoting a CD on the opposite side of our great nation. One late night after a show in Manhattan, we decided to visit the so-called "Ground Zero." Picture this: New York City, the craziest city on earth, one filled with high rise buildings, cramming people into tiny boxes above and around each other, all charging WAY TOO MUCH MONEY for these little things. Must I say, I started feeling claustrophobic just walking down the street and imagining what an X-ray of one of these buildings would look like...

But anyways, my disconnection with the events of 6 years ago today was washed away, for that day in 2006, I was there, standing at the front door of an amazing icon that ceased to exist in one day. It took millions of dollars and amazing manpower to construct it, but a few retards with box cutters is all it took to bring it down. As I stood at the base of the hole in the ground, I looked straight up into the sky, in an attempt to imagine what these massive buildings might have looked like. I couldn't muster up the imaginative power to actually visualive what once stood there. I must say, at that moment, a spectrum of emotions swept over me. Grief and sadness for the innocent people that suffered on that day, hatred and anger towards the people who believed it was their duty to destroy in order to preserve, exposure of all my weaknesses, the notion that the mighty USA might not be so mighty after all, and union with everyone else who felt these emotions wash over them, 6 years ago today...