graceland's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yippee Ki Yay Today was an incredibly sad day for most of the world, myself included. I started off my day with the usual hardships: woke up late, rushed to get ready for the day to find my elevator broken. I walked (slowly) down 10 flights of stairs with a busted ankle and proceeded to try to catch a taxi as I do everyday. The streets had more than the usual number of people trying to hail a taxi. After about 15 minutes, now very late for work, I began walking toward work. Slowly, with my wrapped up ankle. I walked about 10 blocks and then realized I should call work and let them know I was on my way. I took out my phone and saw I had missed two calls just moments before. It was my brother, that's strange, he usually calls me at work during the day - never this early and not on my mobile. I called him back to find out that my mother had just reached him, frantically trying to track me down since quarter to 8 this morning to tell me not to take the subway or buses. "What the heck is she talking about...I never take the subway, it's a target for crying outloud, and I've been trying to hail a taxi for 20 minutes...what's going on?" I asked. "She's talking about what happened in London," he said. "She thinks it's going to be a multi-city attack. She says not to get on the subway." "What happened in London?" I asked. And so it began. I did finally get a taxi and then my mother reached me on my cell, breathless and telling me to "Stay home! Don't leave your apartment. You can't take the subway or buses during rush hour!" I explained that I always take a taxi to work and up until this very day people have told me that I am insane, but guess what, I'm not looking so insane now, am I? I spent the rest of the day holed up in my office building. We're across the street from the British Embassy, so our building was placed on high alert with special security. That means, once you're in, you're in and nothing is going to be delivered beyond the guarded lobby area so if you order something or have a shipment coming, expect to go down and retrieve it. I glanced out my window a few times at the Embassy and saw they had a 3-horse Calvery outside. I thought it was a scene from "Glory." What the hell is a 3-horse brigade going to do against a planned bombing? They'd have been better off sending that 3-horse team back to whatever 3-horse town they came from. Talk about absurd. Needless to say, I feel nothing but empathy to everyone in the UK. Regardless of their experiences with attacks from WWII to the IRA, it certainly must evoke the same feelings of shock, fury and sadness when it happens anew. I felt some of that I watched the footage from across the pond and my heart goes out to them. A small ray of sunshine in this mess was the class and dignity that Tony Blair brought to the aftermath. His grace and strength are aspirational and his words - barbaric act, indeed - were fierce and heard. In the spirit of NYC, we continue on here, genuflecting to those innocents attacked oversees and going about our daily business. We certainly won't let these terrorists win; we will not allow them to change our Western way of life via terrorism. Or as a close friend of mine would say, "YIPPEE-KI-YAYYYYY, MOTHERF*CKERS!" See you in hell. 9:45 p.m. - 2005-07-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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