Frontpage La Floridiana Movie Review The Enlightenment Matt's Rail Mike's Rant Deadguy's homepage PCR Archives 2002 2001 2000 Crazed Fanboy homepage PCR 2002 Home

The Dementia's last look back at a very dark year.....

Echoes of Ground Zero
Another year gone by. Item for item, this wasn't a good or bad year, it was more like a year's worth of much-needed recovery time for our country, and a year's worth of dreaming and missing goals, for me. At the beginning of the year, it was still a country reeling from 9/11 and ever-wary of potential Anthrax contact. People began noticing, and reacting, to their environment like never before. The first half of the year seemed to be spent watching the skies whenever a plane engine was heard overhead. It was a season of fear, false starts, and a wavering uncertainty of what the future held for any of us. Hearing threats of terrorism was no longer something we could choose to ignore.

A mere 5 days into the new year, a 15-year old Tampa resident decided to proclaim his support of Iraq, and Osama Bin Laden, by flying a plane into the side of a building in downtown Tampa. Luckily, the building was essentially empty, and no one was hurt except the boy's friends, and the boy's family. No, they weren't in the plane, but they were the only ones truly hurt by the wannabe terrorist when he splashed himself onto the mercy of the concrete building in his attempt to hurt folks that weren't even working that Sunday.

Eventually, we did what we had to, and kept moving forward. Each of us heard the warnings that our way of life would never return to what it was, pre-9/11, and as the year progressed, we perhaps realized the importance that we NOT return to that time. We watched the news anxiously, looking for warning signs that our lives were going to change even further. When we saw another plane go down in New York, we panicked and assumed the worst. It would seem that Osama's threat of "raining planes on America" may not have been an empty one. After investigators determined that it wasn't a terrorist act, it disappeared from the news entirely, as Americans waited for the next big one. There was a great surge of patriotism throughout the country, and stores couldn't keep up with the demand for flags. It seems like everyone wanted one. The gas station down the street had lots of American flags surrounding the front of his property. I asked the guy how much he was selling them for, and he just glared at me. Turns out that everyone asked him that, and of all of those he'd turned away, at least some of them just went ahead and stole some of the flags anyways.

We heard from activists that declared we shouldn't use violence to combat violence. Pacifists, and "peace experts" agreed, while the church itself remained curiously silent. I think even Quakers were ready to admit that, like a spoiled child, Osama and his merry bunch needed some heavy disciplining. I think we can all kind of agree that violence is wrong, but at the same time, we weren't ready to uphold that ethic in order to let a worm like Osama get away with what he did. I haven't hit a man in anger for about 10 years, but get me Osama, and see if anyone will be able to recognize what's left of him.

Osama's airplane threats failed to materialize, and Anthrax was detected on letters within government buildings, but jackasses decided to play around and create hoax threats that would land them in jail for a minimum of 5 years, each claiming that it was "innocent fun" in their own bewildered way. Ironically, it may have been their inability to cope with the magnitude of the post-9/11 insecurity situation that created a need in them to "act out" like that, and the severity of their punishment was determined by the same forces at work.

One guy in Texas spotted an Osama Bin Laden dummy in a bar and immediately took out his 6-shooter, shot it 6 times, and just stood there, pulling the triger repeatedly on an empty gun. I think we all kinda' felt that way, where if the enemy could be reached, we would teach them a lesson, and as our armed forces were embroiled in the fighting, trying unsuccessfully to bring Bin Laden to justice, we all felt the same mounting frustration.

We had movies that took us away from reality, such as "Spider-Man", that was still tainted by the reality surrounding New York when the decision was made to remove a movie trailer containing the Twin Towers, and possibly remove them from within the movie itself. Other movies did the same thing, with a few bold exceptions, one, "Vanilla Sky" even declared that the Twin Towers remained in the end sequences of the film because the scenes had already been shot, and no one had the heart to remove them from the city skyline once again. Other films, like "Collateral Damage" even attempted to capitalize on America's 9/11 grief through related storylines. They claimed that the movie had already been filmed, and that it had seen a delayed release due to the attacks, yet I believe the movie contains footage of a post-9/11 city skyline, and one of the scenes, involving a bombed office building, showed rescue workers moving through the aftermath in a fashion that the director even claims (in the DVD commentary) was derived from the 9/11 footage they "poured over during production."

Earlier this year, people would see the Twin Tower buildings in the New York skyline in commercials, movies, and tv shows, and they'd nudge each other, and say: "look.. they left them in." In, or out, it seemed to mean a great deal to folks. I still point them out when I see them, I guess, but not as actively as I used to.

Fatal road accidents are up 40% this year, as compared to last year. Road rage is believed to be the primary culprit, but need anyone ask where is this rage coming from? Businesses are still downsizing, people are losing their jobs just in time for the holidays. Money is becoming increasingly difficult to hold onto, as the market continues to be affected by the events of 9/11. When the market drops, confidence is shaken. People are simply still not investing as they have in the past. When the economy takes a hit like it did last year, all violent crime increases notably.

Recovery
Surprisingly, the things that were going to return to normal, did so relatively quickly. I was hired onto a new job, in a high-wage bracket for that position despite market instability, in mid-February. When my income tax return came through in March, I went ahead and bought a new computer with it. I was living with Kristin and her son, and we were getting closer all the time, due in part to the relative insecurities of 9/11. I was using the computer to work on my 3D art skills, and 3D game-level design. I was even showing some real promise when I made a small scale level using the current "state-of-the-art" programs and distributed it to a few folks to playtest. It felt good to be moving forward with past dreams of getting a job in a 3D gaming company. I started investigating formal schooling because a common pitfall I run into is that I'm 99% self-taught when it comes to computers, so although my resume says that I can create/modify/texturize/skeletonize/ and animate 3D synthetic constructs with dynamic inverse kinetics, I have nothing that I can state as where I learned to do stuff like that. It's similar to hiring an accountant that has a resume showing he dropped out of high school, but brings in a piece of paper with sums scribbled on it, and claims to be able to balance a checkbook. You'd be an idiot to hire the guy without proof of their abilities, and these days, even portfolios are suspect. In fact, a guy was even caught submitting a partial game level for review by Lucas Arts, claiming he'd made it himself, though it turns out he stole the level from a gaming group I used to work with. He was only caught because one of the editors had hidden their email address within the level, and the reviewers were able to spot it.

In any event, by May, even though there was still some hesitancy whenever planes flew overhead, a decent movie, like "Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones" could really transport you to a place far, far away. Unfortunately, the money situation was getting worse for me, rather than better, and I knew I needed another source of income if I was going to afford any additional schooling. I'd also determined that it was time to propose to Kristin, and start inking the future details that we'd previously only pencil-sketched together. In June, she accepted my proposal, and we started making tentative plans for a Las Vegas Wedding in November. Now the impetus was on to make more money and find a way to fund our wedding. As I searched about for ideas, I also realized the scope of improvements I needed to make on Kristin's house, in order to sell it once we got married and started entertaining thoughts of having children together. As a possible solution, I finally decided to go ahead with my previously idle plans of selling plastic medical skeletons over the internet. I went over the skeleton plans in my head, and through conversations with my supplier until I'd worked out most of the bugs. I also discussed working at Howl-O-Scream through Halloween to make some more money that way.

By the time August rolled around, I had laid the groundwork to begin selling the skeletons, and had several school flyers for classes relating to my field of interest. I had done more game-level editing, and even did 3D work for my real job, and was becoming fairly proficient. I auditioned for Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens, and successfully got a place in one of their haunted houses. If I were asked at that time, what the year meant to me, I'd have said it was a year of rebuilding, and preparation for better things to come.

By the time September hit, I was actively selling skeletons through Ebay, and trying to develop a site that would incorporate the skeletons, along with the ghost-hunting hobby I'd started the previous year. Ghost hunting proved to be problematic, as people claiming to be "ghost hunting" would get drunk and inadvertantly set fire to the places they were supposedly investigating. It happened primarily out in Texas, where a wooden jailhouse holding the first gas chamber was burned to the ground in this manner, but followed closely by people getting caught "vandalizing" property while "investigating" all over the country. Now I had a bit of a problem, because the ghost hunter section of my site incorporated over 100 reportedly haunted public-accessible places throughout Florida. I had spent quite a bit of time on it over the past year, but now I could see it would prove to be a liability if someone used it as a guide to go "spook-up some ghosts" while getting drunk. Not only could they potentially point their finger at me, but it would also only serve to put ghost hunters in an even worse situation, publically.

I made the decision to drop it, after spending over a year in research on it. It was disappointing, but made sense. I basically began withdrawing from the ghost hunter community as a whole, as I became disillusioned by the way the "American Ghost Society" seemed only geared towards commercializng hauntings in its "hometown" of Illinois, and promoting the books that the society's president had written. I was also disillusioned by the way most ghost-hunting groups had a tendency to hop from case to case, rather than actually studying and recording what they experienced, over a period of time. This wasn't research, it was a case of "let's go spook ourselves silly," or show others how cool we are by walking straight into "haunted" situations armed only with a flashlight and camera. (And credibility issues remain a problem with ghost-hunter and UFO activists around the world due to the actions of these negligent, sophomoric groups, and a few loud hoaxers. Skeptics often cite lack of credentials as to why paranormal investigation can never be elevated to more than "hobby" status, and you can see why. While credentialed scientific methods of research are always preferable in these situations, they remain outside the approachability and affordability of many sincere inquirers, so lower-qualified, but sincere "researchers" fill in the void. Unfortunately, too many groups that start out with good intentions too often become bored with the work and use their field trips to entertain themselves at the expense of others.---Nolan)

By the end of September, I was going to work, then sometimes coming home to sell skeletons and work on the website, and other times I was required to go straight to my other job at Howl-O-scream. Projections looked good for that Novemeber Vegas wedding, followed a month or two later, by me getting some official online schooling for the 3D stuff. It all looked great until we suddenly found ourselves up against some hurdles: Kristin's grandmother was ill, meaning that her mom couldn't guarantee that she could go to a wedding date, because she might have to fly off immediately to be with her mom. We postponed the wedding tentatively until January. When Kristin's grandmother died, we determined that we could probably still manage to pull off a November or December wedding

Then, in October, my uncle, Sir Jan de Hartog, a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, and famous Quaker, died in hospital. I drove to his memorial service in Houston, causing me to lose the Howl-O-Scream season-end bonus I had been "banking on". I incurred expenses for the trip, and missed wages from both jobs even though I was only there for a day and a half. The impact meant that we'd have to do a December, possibly January, wedding. Skeleton sales were still doing well, and I dropped out of Howl-O-Scream, rationalizing that the increased skeleton sales would MORE than make up for the paltry Howl-O-Scream paycheck, and without the bonus check, there wasn't a point to stringing myself out any more than I had to. However, what I didn't forsee was that during a Company downsizing move, Kristin lost her job, and her entire claims department was put out to pasture.

A few days later, I realized that her 4-year-old son Jordan would only have health coverage for another week or so, and that a lapse in coverage would mean he'd get pulled out of the special classes he was taking, putting him back on the waiting list once we could get coverage established again. Even if Kristin's field was starving for people, it would take 3 or 4 months for him to be eligible for health benefits. That meant Jordan needed to be put under my insurance coverage and the only way to do that was to get married....immediately.

We got married the day after my birthday, and two days before Halloween, in a courthouse, with a notary as the officiator, another notary as the witness, and Kristin's parents as guests. We were married, exchanging $12 rings purchased from Wal-Mart on the way home from a costume party we had gone to a couple of nights earlier. I formally gave up my decision to pursue a career in 3D game design, and we made a vow to each other that we'd get to Vegas, somehow, next year.

November was spent re-evaluating our situation, and included a half-hearted attempt to sell off everything I have in storage, while money continued to drip away. I began working on a new website to sell skeletons throughout the year, and received professionally-made banners for the site, freely given by a skeleton customer of mine. It was all I needed to get back into it and really start making that site happen. Kristin decided that the job market in her field was so weak at the moment, that it seemed like a good time to pursue another field: Forensics. Further reasearch determined that she could go to school for the next two years, and come out a forensic scientist on the other end. It's something she's always been attracted to, and I indicated my full support. She and I also discussed the possibility of me pursuing a writing career as a novelist. I've shown some aptitude for that sort of thing, and it was something my departed uncle thought I'd be good at, despite his normal ravings that most folks should never try it. I always took that with a grain of salt, but at the same time, I've been interested in writing a book for years. I've never had the time to really investigate my options on writing, and aside from the PCR, did very little of it. (And we're grateful to have gotten that output!--N) So I developed a storyline concept, and then set about doing some required research into some of the story elements.

December, we paid off the toys we'd put on layaway for Jordan, and I made an agreement with my parents to not buy anything for each other for Christmas. I continued to labor on the site, and felt I was moving forwards in leaps and bounds, until a day ago, where Nolan and I were discussing aspects of it, and I discovered that the basic concept I'd used in designing my site wasn't compatible with a sizable chunk of browsers out there. To the incompatible browsers, my site was going to be an unintelligible mess. (Hazard of this game, to be sure, as I learned the hard way in 2000 and 2001. Glad I could help.---N) So now I'm starting off from scratch again, with only a rudimentary plan in my head.

The Future
Similarly, I'm approaching the new year the same way. My resolutions are pretty hardnosed, and have to do with closing up my storage, repairing water-damaged walls in my house, among other various home improvements, and being a firm foundation for my wife and son. There's also a resolution to get the latest (3rd) version of the skeleton site off the ground as soon as possible, and to get a novel well underway within the next few months. Vegas... well... Vegas seems to be a few years off now. We've discussed possibly going on a cruise in March or April, depending upon where we are financially, and sort of do a short honeymoon thing, but we'll have to wait and see, I guess.

America's new year seems to be in about the same kind of shape. We've resolved to have anti-missile systems in place before Iraq is capable of directing a missile attack at us. In the past, we've always kind of skirted that one, including Former President Reagan's "Star Wars" proposal for a satellite-based anti-missile system, that everyone on Capital Hill seems to have forgotten about.

The CIA has received a list of "Kill if neccessary" targets that are being searched for throughout the Persian Gulf area, which is an aggressive tactic stating that they've now got a limited "license to kill". Although many folks suspect that the government already had a kill list like this, the government's formal publicity on the matter is showing a trend towards a less "politically correct" approach, and a more aggressively direct one.

The country has changed, there's simply no going back to the complacency that allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen in the first place. (Complacency in that we didn't hold the intelligence community to higher culpability standards, but that's another topic...N) I don't think this country will ever soften back to what it was, and I believe it will begin to speak FIRMLY and carry a bigger stick. It would seem that the "speaking softly" stuff is a thing of the past, and a more assertive nature is called for.

GOD HELP US ALL.