dee - viscerate.com

GIRL
Diana Evans
called Dee
since May 25th, 1980
terrorising inner-city Melbourne
consuming flat whites
producing words, hers and other people's
contact dee [at] viscerate [dot] com

SITE
viscerate.com
consisting of personal reflections
photography by Amy Q
archives here

Thursday, September 13, 2001

See, I heard yesterday that the hijackers were only using knives, and that piece of knowledge clicked into the puzzle in my head quite nicely. Before then, nothing had made sense. It was not a sensible terrorist attack, though it very successfully created terror. They could have used supplementary technology to make the attack much worse, if all they wanted was to hurt the US.

But if this was some sort of ritual, cultish action, with no other purpose than to be a strike and a cleansing suicide, then it starts to come into perspective.

The information that the hijackers, in some recording the powers that be have, speak only English, and without accents, also adds to the mix.

(Don't I have anything else to talk about? Have I been thinking of anything else since midnight last night? Not really. My thoughts roam on brief journeys out from the centre - I watch Memento, an excellent movie; I read a bit of Dune; I study some German for the test today; I have a conversation that does not include this event. However, my brain still turns this in the back of my mind, and when the distraction is finished with, it returns to the front. It torments me because it is something so huge, so vital, and it doesn't make sense. But slowly, piece by tiny piece, things start to come together in a way that, while it does not deliver comprehensibility yet, suggests that it might occur.)

9:07 AM - link to this - (0) comments

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Awake, now, and the world is still the same.

My mind keeps circling around two questions: drifted off to sleep obsessed with them. They are inextricably linked and right now, for me, they are the only things that matter.

Who, and why?

Please excuse me while I think out loud for a moment, but I'd like to order some of these thoughts.

There must be a purpose for the attack, and that purpose is directly linked to who committed the act. Those capable of committing limits the potential window. The stupidity of it limits it even further. A state is out of the question, for that very reason. The United States is going to go beyond medieval - will go biblical - upon those it finds responsible. No state would survive, and they would have known that.

So any terrorist organisation with the organisation to pull this off would also have to know that America would not quiver in abject terror as a result of this action, but would come out with all guns blazing. Any group would be suicidal to claim responsibility with any sort of validity. Then again, the attacks themselves were suicide attacks...

If this is not a suicide bombing on a grand scale, then no one will claim responsibility for the action. However, a terrorist act is not just an act of terror. It always has a purpose. To further a cause, to protest something, to achieve an element of leverage. Because this act is unclaimable due to its size, it serves no purpose. People mention the anniversary of the Camp David Accords, talk about Osana bin Laden's quest of terrorism... but when the attack cannot be claimed, it serves no purpose in a campaign of terrorism.

The next thought: it had no purpose beyond striking hard at America. The only purpose was to inspire fear in American and Americans. To show them what it's like living with terror. To prove their vulnerability. Or just as a vicious attack of America itself. In which case, why was it not much, much worse than it was?

"Stop it!" Net-acquaintances shouted at me. "It was bad, can't you just accept that? Do you have to dwell on how it could have been worse?"

Yes. Because if the purpose of this attack was to cause death and destruction, why pull the punch? This attack, killing as many as it does, and causing the destruction it does, escalates itself from a minor (or even major) act of terrorism. And yet it stops short on a completely devastating offensive. How could it have been worse? The mere mention of biological weapons introduces a whole other range of possibilities. Not Saddam-Hussein-missile-weapons, but just the inclusion of, on those kamikaze airliners, an aerosal can full of something nasty.

I'm lost. I'm wandering through this maze of motives and culprits, and what's driving me, tormenting me, is the fact that it makes no sense. I can't see the point, and hence I can't understand.

All of this is not helped by questions such as 'What happened in National Mall, and why won't they tell us about it?' And 'How many planes were hi-jacked, really?'

I doubt we will ever, ever find out what really happened.

Today, Je and I will scour the papers, cross-reference the 'facts', look at responses, and try to reconcile in our own minds the why, and the how.

(Note: To all those directly effected, I extend my deepest sympathy. All of us are indirectly effected.)

8:42 AM - link to this - (0) comments

So where were you when you heard?

(Yes, I speaketh of the incidents... attacks... whatever in America.)

Jesus... I cannot begin to put into words how much this has blown my mind. The huge scope of it. The unbelievable brutal efficiency of it as a terrorist act. The complete incapability of any of these small Palestinian terrorist organisations to co-ordinate and pull off something like this.

This is huge. This is precision. This is a surgical strike. I don't even know if I'd consider the US Military capable of an operation like this. It must have been so long, and so many people, and so much planning in the making.

I keep coming back to suggestions my rational brain is not prepared to accept. The Illuminati do not exist; they cannot have been responsible for this.

I'm in shock. I can't think.

1:59 AM - link to this - (0) comments

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

I have, in the past, been told that in response to the inane question: "Whatcha doin'?" my usual respone of "Nothin' much" (or, on particularly loquacious days: "Bugger all, dear boy") is unacceptably boring. With that in mind, a list of other potential responses:
  • Pandering to the heathens.
  • Alphabetising my clothes by what I did in them last.
  • Desexing my stereo.
  • Full-contact origami.
  • Considering the viability of world domination.
  • Tie-dying my fridge.
  • Making reservations for the afterlife.
  • Playing Queen backwards, looking for Satanic messages.
  • Paying off Third World debt.
  • Taxidermy.
  • Tantric crochet.
  • Bringing about the Apocalypse.

7:06 PM - link to this - (0) comments

The essay is finished. For the moment, I am all out of words.

Except these ones: Bastards! Why can't I right-click in Internet Explorer in the computer lab? Alternatively, why does Netscape, in which I can right-click, not connect to the sodding internet? What sort of bloody use is an internet browser that doesn't connect to the sodding internet?

I am surrounded...

11:39 AM - link to this - (0) comments

Monday, September 10, 2001

Essay rough drafts. For when you really, desperately need to scribble all over something.



You have to use a pen, not crayon, but then again, I'm supposed to be a university, not a kindergarten, student.

3:32 PM - link to this - (0) comments

Sunday, September 09, 2001

The conclusion I didn't write for my essay, but that is too good to just disappear into that emptiness where the deleted words go:

So, then, the implications of exposing this limited reading of Machiavelli upon realism. To whit:
- Universality. Pisses all over that.
- From above: Change. Get some.
Having thus disturbed the fundamental premise of realism and suggested that it needs to get over itself and look at evolving into something more useful, I think my work here is done.

9:30 PM - link to this - (0) comments

"Like a child in this fantasy,
Punching holes in the walls of reality.
All my life I wanted to fly,
But I don't have no wings, and I wonder why
I can't break away."
"Breakaway", Big Pig. The only band comprised almost solely of percussionists? Go the 80s.

9:04 PM - link to this - (0) comments

You know, it's not often I lambast my own friends or close acquaintances, but this is a note to the two gits I associate with who just ran past my door:

Bleached hair does not an effeminate man maketh.

Honestly. I think my problem here is that I guess it is a common conception that gay guys bleach their hair and do 'feminine' things like that. However, my perception has been drastically skewed by having lived in college, where most of the males of my acquaintance (the straight ones) have bleached their hair at least once. J2 has certainly dyed his hair more frequently and more interesting colours than I have.

Maybe - actually, definitely - I associated with more interesting people than the majority of the world. I'm so lucky.

8:39 PM - link to this - (0) comments