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My sister, who is home sick today, called me to say she just watched a special Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on television. Apparently for the first time ever they altered the ceremony and played the U.S. national anthem. A lot of people have been gathered there and at the U.S. embassy to mourn. Books of condolence have been set up. I wish I were out there instead of in here.

(On a more light-hearted note, that picture of Brendan Fraser is pretty funny. I mean, he’s looking right at the photographer like, “Don’t take a picture of me. I look like hell. Don’t take a picture of me.” I mean, I’m not laughing at him, but rather at the fact that the BBC used it anyway.)

I just got the Nostradamas e-mail forward again. Thank God for Snopes.

Giuliani’s the man. I couldn’t agree more. While I’ve never been a big fan of the guy, he’s holding the city together right now and he’s encouraging a lot of people to get on with their lives. He’s a lot more reassuring than Bush, anyway.

The dinner went well. Snookums settled the menu question by asking for chili, since he likes it a lot. So I made chili and corn bread. The Americans were both from the South and the tragedy didn’t seem to affect them much. As for Jann’s “getting hammered” idea… Ugh. I’m hungover. I hate the world. Thanks, buddy.

Choire has pictures from today. Go there now.

Nice to see that even during an international crisis, there are still those determined to get their daily share of porn. Ugh.

Just got an e-mail from my Dad. He’s writing from our home town of Lagrange, Indiana, which is just about as “middle-of-nowhere” as you can get. He says:

“You should have seen the gas stations around here yesterday. People were panicked and the cars were lined up 30 and 40 to a station. The Shell station in LaGrange pumped dry… Some of the stations started price gouging by raising the prices to any where from 4 to 6 dollars a gallon. I also
heard on the radio this morning that there was a fire in Topeka and the Life Care helicopter from the hospital was grounded and a little Amish girl died because they couldn’t get her to the hospital in time.”

Everybody’s affected. Everybody’s panicking. Those planes didn’t just hit the east coast. They hit America.

I’ve been listening to Capital FM all day today. (It’s the big “Top 40” station in London.) They’ve been pretty good about giving news updates. It’s their playlist that I’m having a problem with. They claim that they’re taking requests and only playing stuff that fits the listeners’ mood right now. So far I’ve heard Gabrielle about fourteen times (nothing out of the ordinary there), Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone”, and that “You’re Makin’ it Hard For Me” song that was big in the States, like, five years ago (the one my mom calls “That Erection Song”.) What the hell? I hope to God that’s not the prevailing mood in the capital right now. They did just play “Everybody Hurts” though, and the DJ said it was the most requested song of the day. I suppose the others can just be attributed to weird people calling in.

*Trying to get back to normal*

I was excited to see that Amazon has a new Computer Store that sells Apple machines! Now whenever somebody tells me that Apple’s out of the question because they don’t know where to get one, I’ll have an answer.

Amazon’s accepting donations for the Red Cross. They’re waiving all the fees. Just go to it. I made my donation and then went back to refresh the page to see the total go up. It jumped a lot more than I pledged. It’s over $280,000. There’s a lot of people helping out.