the Stars are threaded,
strung as to necklace heaven
suspended in autumn sky.
pearls i can’t afford,
but i’ll gladly snip their string
if you will hold out your hands.
best of
Trio: Season 2, #1
trio: season 2, #1
(just an) Excuse, Splinter, Supposed to Be
(just an) Excuse, Splinter, Supposed to Be
04. “Enjoy the Silence” is a song that is immediately recognizable as a swirling eighties trance, and here Tori has stripped it bare – all the way down to the most martial of bass progressions and flowing lines of melody inbetween; the only graces that are left to it are some synth strings and a higher Tori singing wispy harmony. I don’t think i’ve ever thought of this song as one written to a woman so much as it is obviously about a relationship, but here Tori turns the tone into almost a threat that “words are very unnecessary” even though they are supposed to be the things doing the harm. The whole world is wrapped up in the world between her arms, and you have to wonder if each world Tori mentions in song is its very own universe or if they all somehow overlap… both “Upside Down”s little blue world and “Black Dove”s grey winter galaxy, but the wrong-fitting world of the previous track as well. Maybe words are meaningless because Tori keeps defining these tiny imperfections of fit with them when they are meant to be left untouched, and the truth is that a world is all that you can hold onto with your own arms… all you ever wanted and needed.
The strip search of this song seems to be a violation at first, but we are a culture obsessed with accessories. Try to just grasp the beauty of the naked human form.
So, now it is the morning after and more tiny details are creeping out about cell phone calls and arrests in Florida and etc. However, i won’t be linking the majority of this day two news, and i want to talk about the reasons why.
I am a student of Journalism and, while i lack a vast majority of the knowledge i will (hopefully) eventually be in possession of, i am both very aware and very critical of the dissemination of information in America. In fact, that is probably part of the reason that i am so continually interested and involved with personal publishing.
I am of the very concrete opinion that in a crisis of national importance the networks over-report the most basic and inconsequential of details and too often ignore the most basic facts of an investigation. What is excellent about obtaining breaking news online is that while news can be continually updated it doesn’t have to be continuously live. This means that the facts of a situation can continue to be present while the latest news can be appended to the top of the file.
Despite this fact, the major news outlets with normally reliable websites remained wholly ignorant of how to report such an important situation online. Simple facts like the time of impact were wholly absent from early versions of the story, and i had to view four different news services before piecing together my initial post with the NBC news photo.
I won’t touch upon the inadequacy of internet servers to handle crucial amounts of traffic because the situation became all-too-evident yesterday as CNN and MSNBC pitched all of their various bells and whistles overboard to save on bandwidth. I am primarily concerned with the way we report news, and what we report. Today coverage is focusing on individual families and acts of heroism, and this is totally appropriate and puts a human face on such a mind-boggling situation. However, in the early hours of a tragedy it is not what the general public most needs to initially see and hear.
Essentially, when an entire nation brings their focus to bear on a single state, city, or square block, the news media should be concerned with providing and maintaining an accurate narrative, correct and up-to-date statistics, and reliable eye witness reports. This does not include bringing in blood-thirsty “military experts” who are practically volunteering to deliver bombs themselves to “whoever” is responsible. It does not include repeatedly asking for the obviously unavailable casualty numbers throughout the early afternoon and into the evening. It does not include asking any and all New Yorkers to contribute yet another description of one of the airplanes’ impacts with the World Trade Center.
Human interest is definitely a point of any breaking news story, but my primary concern yesterday was to distill all of the news that had emerged so that anyone could see a single picture or read a single paragraph and glean important facts. The network coverage on ABC and MSNBC broke reports of the flight numbers and the names of the aircraft carriers shortly after noon yesterday, yet the flight numbers didn’t reach a rapid rotation in the coverage for well over an hour and this morning news outlets are reporting the presence of the aircraft carrier as though it slunk it under cover of night. There is a certain something to be said for continuously involving the viewer in the events so that they feel as though they are part of the journalistic process, but i find it disturbing that we have so few high-end news outlets in America when there is obviously a whole nation who are not hungry for death tolls or perpetrators, but who just want to know what is happening to their friends & family in other parts of the country.
Networks are afraid to cut away from coverage for any reason, and rightly so; there is always the chance of more breaking news and always a fresh viewer tuning in. However, not everyone wants a continuous feed of repetitive news, and that is why i turned on my computer at work before i turned on a radio or a television. As was pointed out by various sources yesterday, the internet is truly amazing because it is an entirely decentralized means of obtaining information, and it was this decentralization that provided the most important details as yesterday progressed. However, it is not unreasonable to expect a few reliable sources to be intermingled with this rush of facts from all sides, and i suppose i’m just surprised that the most consistently reliable source that i have found so far is not necessarily a formal news site, but the personally owned public forum at MetaFilter. Perhaps i simply need to change my ideas about a reliable source is, but i think that we all equally need to change our ideas about what we should be expecting from these sources.
I have no personal response to yesterday’s events yet because at the very root of me i am still numb about it all. However, just as yesterday morning my first instinct was to physically confirm news and then distribute it to my co-workers, my primary continuing concern is the inadequacy of some of the reporters and news services who we were relying on to inform us of the most basic details about this national emergency. I suppose in the face of such a disaster the only way i can feel like i have an impact on anything is to do this.
Blagh.
I’m attempting to construct a timeline.
This morning at least four commercial airline flights were hijacked, though it remains unclear at what point in their itinerary their paths were diverted. The flights were American Airlines #11 (Boston to LA) and #77 (Dulles to LA) as well as United Airlines #93 (Newark to SF) and #175 (Douglas in VA to LA). The contact numbers for the airlines are 1-800-245-0999 and 1-800-932-8555, respectively. Flight #11 was on it’s regular flight path until it took a sharp turn in upstate New York. A flight path indicator shows that it made a beeline for New York City. Despite initial reports that may have been to the contrary, three of the planes were Boeing 757 and 767’s.
At 8:42 AM there was an explosion that was the result of a plane colliding with one of the World Trade Center Towers. Immediately people were told to evacuate, but in the unaffected building the evacuation order was rescinded and people returned to their offices. Under a half hour later (roughly 18 minutes) a second passenger airplane appeared on the skyline and collided with the second largely unevacuated tower. This was broadcast nationally on live network television.
Shortly thereafter (before 10:15am) a third airplane slammed into the Pentagon, entering in it’s E-ring, and penetrating into the 4th and 5th corridors of the C & D rings. Debris spread as far as the E ring. No specific office in the Pentagon appears to have been targeted. There have been scattered reports of a car bomb at the State Building and an attack on Camp David, but to this point they remain unconfirmed. However, a plane carrying 38 passengers, 2 pilots, and 5 flight attendants crashed in midstate Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh. My local Fox affiliate reported that someone inside the plane called local county dispatchers and claimed that they had been hijacked shortly before the crash. There is still little speculation on where this flight had been headed or if the unplanned grounded was a result of a herioc act by the crew. There are no reported survivors.
All told the plain crashes themselves involved over 260 casualties.