Bling Bling in the ATL

William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.

While IBM had introduced an electric typewriter that used proportional spacing by the early 1970s, it was not widely used in government. In addition, Flynn said, the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters "th" in phrases such as 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Bush's unit.

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9/11, 2001, I'd just come back from London and was staying with my cousin in Greenpoint, looking for an apartment and a job. I woke up around 8:30, went out looking for breakfast, was going to get on the L for manhattan to drop off resumes and follow up with folks. As I looked for a bagel shop, I noticed a weird cloud. It was on the ground, but the sky was otherwise clear blue.

At the bagel shop I got a coffee in an old fashioned plastic cup with a handle and a little saucer base attached to the bottom. The bagels were excellent, and I ordered another. Everyone was speaking polish, and I was watching the old polish geezers flirt with the young trashy waitresses. I started listening to the radio, and they were talking about the towers falling. I listened for a while, then figured it was some sort of war of the worlds thing. I turned to the guy next to me and asked if the report was real, or if it was a joke. He looked at me like I was an asshole and told me it was real. I laughed, said youre kidding, thats crazy, paid and left in a hurry.

For a while, I was kind of hysterically laughing. I called my parents and left messages, laughing, excited, and telling them I was OK, and I called my boyfriend M in London and told him to turn on the TV. He tried to get me to tell him why, and I just told him to turn on the TV. He asked me what was so big that it could be on TV here in North London, and then he turned it on, and we hung up. I went and bought a little camera and some postcards of the skyline and M called back and told me that much as he hated Americans, he felt badly about what was happening. I stayed in greenpoint, going outside, then running back and watching the TV, then going outside, back and forth. I wrote a postcard to my best friend A, who _really_ hates Americans (she spent the day toasting her friends) telling her not to laugh too hard. I stamped it but I never sent it, still got it somewhere.

Around 11 I followed the cloud down to the Williamsburg bridge, I had this idea of going to Manhattan and taking photos. Folks were standing outside on the street with TVs set up on their cars, in crowds, crying. the Williamsburg crowd were sitting on the riverfront near the warehouses.. there were some Japanese kids with a little yip yip dog and a boy with a 'Hunter S Thomas for President' t-shirt.

Down by the bridge, people streaming dusty and shocked off the bridge. Crowds of people looking for buses that wouldn't come, trying to make phone calls. A group of hasidic jews were standing at the base with gallons of water, offering people glasses and a place to sit. Its the only constructive action I saw all day. I took photos, and had strange conversations with people. I picked up some apartment advertisements. I couldn't get over the bridge, I thought to walk to Brooklyn heights, but it was a long walk and instead I wandered back to the river and watched the emergency vehicles flash down FDR drive. I took photos of the aircraft in the sky, and watched little silver fish school by the bank. I felt connected. My tie to the city was real. New York, like any city, like any society, disciplines and demands and deadens, and our investment in it feels more like a need than a choice or a want, but watching the city and its physical infrastructure unravel I felt the intangible city of human connections revealed. Around 4 or 5 I went back to my cousins house. His fiance had been working the fashion convention downtown, and she said that they wouldn't let anyone leave, and were annoyed by the interruption. She and my cousin had a small fight - I think they were too shocked to console each other yet.

I'd hated Guiliani; he saved the day. He saw death and destruction, and yet he ran the city and grieved with us and for us. I'd hated Bush and I still did and I still do. He was the false sympathy of a coward, and smug inside. Bush quoted that Tupac/Bible line about the valley of death, and I thought about the Hasidic jews I'd seen handing out water and Guliani urging tolerance. The 'America Under Attack' logo on the corner of the news screen seemed prematurly polished, but an accurate omen of the branding campaign that was to come. It seemed strange to me that the newscasters spoke of the towers as symbols, and the destruction of the symbol as what was real. Instantly, then methodically, the event would be coopted.

I stayed in Brooklyn for a week, til I found an apartment. For that week we grieved publicly and felt guilty for not doing enough. When I saw a policeman, I looked him in the eye and gave him silent strength and empathy. When a firetruck, or a dump truck rode by us at a restaurant, many of us looked and waved even though there was not much response. The 'lost' shrines at street corners were anti-tombs. Obituaries masked as lists of characteristics to identify loved ones; grief so deep it could not admit permanent loss. I didn't want to leave at the end of the week, but when I got on the Bonanza, I felt such a guilty relief and imagined the other passengers felt the same. It was like walking up the steps to the airplane leaving Saudi - freedom and lightness building with each step, and the urge to scream when I reached the top. As soon as I stepped off the bus in Providence the ground felt more solid underneath my foot and I started crying hysterically. I couldn't walk, and some boys going to a club started consoling me. I was babbling about the towers and they were arguing about whether I was crazy or not. It all seems pretty silly now.

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In other news, um, not a lot going on. I've gotta run to a conference in Lake Lanier where me and my partner in crime are going to harrass a bunch of government regulators.

The boy dropped his phone in the soup (I have a funny mental picture of this) so if he gets my email we may do din din tonight. Also hoping Umbrella is feeling fun tonight.. I need to go out and drink, or something. Had a long conversation with him last night about being boring, feeling bored, having nothing to do. Its hard when you're isolating yourself, you go home after working for 12 hours, and you realize you have no TV, no internet, no DVD player, and NPR has turned into classical music. Nothing to do but call up a friend and talk about being bored.

// posted by MMIMIKA @ 10:42 AM