The Vintage & Handmade Market [Article already in progress] ... then he scowled and released the pitch. Naturally, I swung for the fences, but bad timing caused the ball to trickle down the first base line instead.
The first baseman charged in as I bolted out of the batter's box-both of us chugging down the line, head on, like doomed trains in a math problem.
In the aftermath-as I laid sideways in a fetal jackknife, clutching the area that was once a left knee-I was certain of so many things: certain that I would need surgery (which I did), certain to lose my bartending gig (I did), certain my girlfriend would leave (did-did-did-did-did) and certain that I was unequivocally, categorically, interminably, inarguably, divinely, irrevocably, ingloriously, absolutely fucked.
What I did not foresee-thanks to this new black cloud that hovered in my mental rafters like horse-farts in a hot barn-is that there would also be a shimmering, silver lining to that cloud.
Indeed, after the knee broke, and job gone, I was forced to vigorously pursue a dream career as a freelance writer.
And here we are.
It's the yin and yang, baby. Nothing is all-bad. Nothing is all good. Everything is a complicated concoction of both. The same is true for the events that occurred one year ago. You know-the Big Ugly Bad Day.
Anyway, since the rest of the media has chosen to focus on the tragedy of Big Ugly Bad Day-replaying the fireballs and the collapsing towers, softly narrated by Mr. Caring. Sordid Tales chooses to focus on all its unspeakable positives.
As for those who will undoubtedly feel it's much too soon to rejoice about anything related to the day Al-Qaeda bashed a baseball bat into America's vulnerable kneecaps, consider this: when we deliberate the positive-we reap the positive. Either way, you are free to stop reading now.
Ten Great Events that Resulted From Big Ugly Bad Day
1. God is Exposed as the Slacker He Is: God was so busy sitting on the couch in his underwear-scratching his moon-sized nuts and lost in the creepy tele-haze of a Walton's marathon-that he didn't notice anything peculiar on the morning of Sept. 11. (Of course, neither did the rest of us, but we aren't omnipotent beings).
2. Instant Sacred Ground: What happened on Ugly Day is one of the top 100 most important events to occur in the universe (rivaling Big Bang, the invention of the wheel and the release of AC-DC's For Those About to Rock). Ground Zero will be visited by millions of people for thousands of years to come. It will forever be a place of human introspection.
3. Great Art: Some of the finest pieces of art emerge from great suffering. Here, I'll write a poem for you right now-an instant masterpiece, thanks to the oppression of terrorism.
“Ode to Mohammed Atta” O' Mohammed Atta Certainly you are one stupid bastard. Tell me, As the inferno poached your eyeballs and your flesh washed down the elevator shaft Did you realize, finally, that you'd been duped?
4. Baseball Strike Averted: It may not have been the deciding factor, but at the very least, Big Ugly Bad Day created a climate that made it even more distasteful for self-indulgent, narcissistic titans to once again insert their enormous, gnarled phalluses into the collective rectum of the little guy.
5. Idiot Myths Debunked: Sept. 11 proved, once and for all, that disaster doesn't come in threes. It comes in bunches and bunches of ones.
6. No More Condit: (Hallelujah! Hallelujah! And he shan't reign forever and ever.)
7. Taliban Destroyed (sort of): Hallelujah! Haa-ah-lay-loo-yuh!
8. Cheap Flights: “Vegas baby, Vegas.”
9. Police Reputation Restored (sort of): After Rodney King, after Rampart, after Furman, after anal broomstick rapes, after hundreds of bullets in the backs of blacks-law enforcement officers are once again regarded as heroes.
Question: Given what we know about the volatile temperament of some police officers, isn't it probable that one or more of the hundreds of hero officers that raced into WTC, had-on some earlier date-brutally beaten a black boy for being in the wrong neighborhood? How could a man so terribly wrong, do something as pure and good and right as to rush into that conflagration? So are they heroes or just heroic? Was it the yin that rushed in, or the yang?
10. Heightened Awareness: Ugly Day did not change the world. The world is the same. Al-Qaeda just dragged us into it. America has been living shielded and oblivious to the rest of the planet; carelessly clumping our boot heels all over the globe, blissfully unaware of what and who we were clumping on. Ugly Day has made us see. And maybe what we saw will make us a little more globally conscious. Maybe we'll tread a little more lightly. Maybe Sept. 11 was really bad for America, but you know what? It was kinda good for the planet.
Oh Blaspheme!
