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What did I do to deserve this? There was no notice. I'm usually notified about everything - your post was moderated, someone replied to your post, your moderation was meta-moderated - but there was no notice that, "Hey, someone just decided they wanted to be your friend." Seems like that, above all else, should be something your attention is drawn to. How many friends do we ever truly have? I believe you can never have too many.

I'm still somewhat taken aback. I feel the need to go and search out everything I can about these people. I want to ask them why they chose to befriend me. What are they like? Are they someone I could be friends with in real life? Am I really worthy of being their friend? Are they really worthy of me?

I also notice that I've got a couple of freaks - i.e. people that have chosen me as a foe. What did I do to deserve that? I guess since my fans outnumber the people that consider me a foe, I should be happy. I've been known to be somewhat cantankerous. I can't always be nice in the face of blatant stupidity. It's nice to know that some people can see the nice guy below the gruff veneer.

OK, now I'm getting maudlin. Time to get back to work. Thanks, Friends.

1. At this point, I don't believe Bin Laden did it. Might have known about it, but I don't think he masterminded it. I could be wrong about that. We'll see.

2. Stuff like this can happen at any time. Anyone can load a truck up with fertilizer and such and park it in front of a building. Also, there's a long border between us and Canada and Mexico. Impossible to patrol all of it all the time.

3. The next time a plane gets hijacked with knives, there isn't a chance in hell the passengers are going to let it go on. You might kill the first one or two of us to get to you, but it's still only a knife. As a caveat, I was in the Navy for 10 years and knew some SEALS. A really well-trained man with a knife could take out 10 of me. In the crowded space of a plane, though, I'd just throw myself at him, let him kill me, and figure the rest of the passengers would pile on. Better to die in a field in Pennsylvania than in a building in New York. More peaceful. :)

4. I'm not particularly angry at anyone. As an atheist, I don't have any religious hangups about revenge, retribution, and such, but I can't get too upset about this, for some reason. In the 1950's, the CIA executed a coup in Iran. The Iranian people didn't like who we put in charge and a few years later, overthrew the Shah and installed some people who didn't like the US at all as leaders. Then, we built up Iraq in it's war with Iran. We all know how that turned out. In addition, we support Israel (which I'm fine with), but they've been unable/unwilling to make peace. So we're helping their enemy. Lots of people over there hate us for the above reasons and others. Can't say that their actions are justified, but I believe their emotions have some validity. So they attacked us, which BTW, there have been warnings for about 2 months. We chose to ignore them.

I guess there's some other stuff I could rant about, but I think that's enough for now.

Well, it's the first Monday after the new slash code, so of course I have to try this out. Wonder if there's an archiving feature, or if it's just going to be one long page after a while.