Reservations. And Plans.

I have no patience for this hyperemotional response to September 11th by people who were never in any danger and now go around wearing t-shirts with pictures of burning buildings. If that's you, just fuck off. Few things are more puke-inducing than watching an idiot wearing one of those It's On Fire shirts run into a person whose wife, husband, lover, parent, son or daughter burned to death in Windows On the World. You should be ashamed of yourself. Throw away that t-shirt and promise you'll never give another cent to the ghouls who made a tourist industry of disaster. And keep that promise, no matter how enticing the offer of morbid commemorative It's On Fire coins, plates, baseball caps or potato peelers, for all I know.

There are ways to mourn and remember that offer catharsis and promote healing. Unfortunately for all of us, the Pentagon has eschewed good taste and planned a party. You can, if you're feeling especially jingoistic, sign up for the march and the concommitant background check. Let me repeat that point: you can't just go, should you feel a rather shocking lack of revulsion for this soiree. You have to pass a screening. I guess that will weed out anyone who's actually thinking about what they're doing.

The families of those lost on September 11th have ideas of their own. Many memorials are local and personal, which may not be accessible where you live. Fortunately, they also favor constructive recognition and remembrances of a more locationless variety. One of the best is One Day's Pay, an organization that asks you to turn September 11th into a day devoted to service for others wherever you are, rather than horror and loss. Or you could contribute to the care of search and rescue dogs. That's marvelous, really. Search and rescue dogs played a crucial role in survivors' survival and giving victims' loved ones the consolation of burials, and the only thing they ask is that we care for them, which is not too damn much.

The last thing anyone needs is useless, revolting souvenir crap - unless you wonder why nothing in your living room gathers dust in that saccharine way only September 11th memorabilia can. And Oh. My. God. Rumsfeld's going to give me an aneurysm yet. What an ass! This vile trampling on and profiting from the dead is undignified and disgusting, and proponents need intensive de-programming or...a rolled-up newspaper to the snout.