What, already?

This was an odd summer.

Around the end of june, the weather went from 70's and frequent rain (we had roads washed out around here), to 85-90 and sunny. We literally had that weather pretty much all summer, right up until two days before labor day, when it was 89 degrees. Then the sunday before labor day it was 80, and come labor day... 65. yep. Weather's gone back to normal for this time of year, meaning HELLO! It's fall now. Of course, tomorrow and tuesday it's supposed to be 80, but hey, 75 is the normal AVERAGE for this time of year, so that's fine. Almost two and a half months of above average temps was pretty nice, though, it's just REALLY hard to get used to it being colder now.

And of course, today is 9/11/2011, ten years after the 9/11 thing. I say "the 9/11 thing" and not "the terrorist attack" because I'm not sure al-qaeda was responsible. Sure, I get as paranoid about the power our government has as the next raving maniac, and you can call me a nutcase or a "Truther" all you want, but as a trained scientist (really, I have a degree and everything), you learn to weigh all the evidence for or against and make the best decision or conclusion based off of what data you have available. The story goes that two planes rammed the twin towers, another crashed into the pentagon, and another crash landed into the PA countryside, all hijacked by al-qaeda terrorists.

Now, I'm not disputing that the twin towers are gone, the pentagon was on fire, and there's a hole in the dirt in PA. What I am disputing is that there's no solid evidence to support the claims about what actually happened that day. From my recollection, and i know at times memory can be a bit convoluted (especially since i was recovering from surgery at the time), but what i remember is seeing footage of a plane hitting one of the towers and flames exploding outward... without breaking any of the windows nearby. I remember saying "that is the fakest thing I have ever seen." And maybe that's where my disbelief first originated.

However, in the ten years since 9/11, I've learned a few things. There was a lot of plastic explosive residue in the rubble of the twin towers. Building 7 seemed to collapse despite not having any damage done to it at all.. not even a window was broken when it practically fell apart in what closely resembled a controlled demolition... which is exactly how the twin towers both fell. I've seen a lot of controlled demolitions on the internet and on TV, long before 9/11. There's a very characteristic straight-down sort of fall they have. Why the twin towers should resemble a controlled demolition when a plane smashed into the side of it seems ludicrous. I also remember, on that fateful day, wondering why the twin towers, which were designed to sway in a stiff breeze so the whole building didn't fall apart when there was a stronger wind, didn't BUDGE when the 747 slammed into it going hundreds of miles an hour. At least, according to the video i saw, it didn't. On that day, according to the news, a photographer just happened to be taking video of the upper level of the twin towers, catching the planes in the act of collision. Yet, according to the internet, no such videos now exist. According to president bush himself, in a recent retelling of his side of things, no one had any idea who was responsible for the attacks at the time, and yet, upon setting foot on the ground mere hours after the attacks, he was already telling people it was al-qaeda. Al-Qaeda, by contrast, and totally opposite the characteristic behavior of most terrorist organizations, denies any responsibility in the attacks themselves. Now, if you are asking yourself, why would I believe a terrorist organization, well, it's usual for them to CLAIM responsibility for what they do. It's their only means of advertising their power, advancing their agenda of terror, and recruiting new members. Never has any member of Al-qaeda claimed responsibility for 9/11, and in fact, they vehemently deny it, and yet we blame them and invaded two countries using them as a reason (but hey, we took out most of a terrorist organization while slaughtering thousands of innocents, good for us). The hole in the ground in PA where supposedly a plane crashed, is completely uncharacteristic of most plane crashes. A straight round deep hole is not the usual pattern. No bodies, body parts, or anything that resembled an actual plane part was recovered from there. The only proof of any passengers was a cell phone call from a passenger, supposedly calling his mom in the middle of a hijacking, identifying himself and adding his last name as if his mother wouldn't know who he was. The hole in the pentagon is rounded... not oblong or with side damage where wings would have collided.

Now, I can't say for sure what happened on that day, or what the real story is, but given the sheer truckload of conflicting data, i can't really jump on the whole "the terrorists did it" bandwagon there. And being a person who relies on reason and intellect to make it through my day, I just can't make up my mind to ignore all that information just so i can wave a flag and have my world make perfect sense, no matter how conflicting the data is. I'm just going to keep an open mind about the whole thing.

But honestly, that's not really what this post is about. I just saw the season finale of True Blood, and frankly, it was horrible. Spoilers to follow! The rest of the season was pretty decent, they had a coven of witches facing off against a horde of vampires and our heroine, Sookie stackhouse, and sookie and her vampire friends were victorious! Last week. Where the season should have ended. instead... in early September... They added a Halloween episode, where everything just goes wrong. I mean, labor day was last weekend... A halloween episode this early? Seriously? And it didn't even make sense, for the most part. Sookie has been going after two vampires all season, now she breaks it off with both of them. Lafayette, a poor homosexual cook in a cheap bar, loses the only good man he's had in years. As if he's not had shitloads of bad things happen to him already, right? And the main witch from the whole rest of the season comes back from the dead, takes over the powers of a demon while in the body of a powerful medium, and she can't even break through a simple salt circle poured out by a two-bit wiccan in 30 seconds. Last week she had thousand year old vampires burning in a wall of sunlight, this week she is foiled by table salt. And that's not even what stops her... The spirits of the dead talk her into giving up and going to the next world. Yep, they just talk her into it. I mean, if she couldn't be reasoned with when she was alive and human, why the HELL would she listen to reason as a demon spirit? I'm all confused. And they don't even SHOW how she manages to overpower a cadre of elite human guards and put silver chains around two of the most powerful vampires in the local community without breaking a nail. Then, Tara, who has had so much bad shit happen to her that she makes Lafayette look like a blessed lottery winner, gets friggin shot in the head with a shotgun! And then sookie kills someone! Honestly.. i don't know what the holy FUCK is going on in those writer's head over there, but this shit don't make much sense now.

Only two good things happened pretty much in the whole episode, things that actually did make sense... Jessica, the young vampire, finally hooked up with jason stackhouse. Well, when i say finally, I mean, after jason finally told his best friend that he's been having sexual relations with her since she broke up with Hoyt. Which is pretty nice, Jason is a likeable idiot, and jessica is ... well she's fucking hot for a pale, pasty redheaded vampire. Yea, i know, i normally hate vampires, but if she wants to lay naked on a slab at the morgue while I play the lonely coroner's assistant in need of a good... Ahem. Well... uh.. Another good thing that happened was Sheriff Andy finally got off the V, and seemed sane and sober for the first time in... well, ever. Not even before the V did he seem sane, but I'll be damned if I didn't think he was actually sane enough to actually be trusted with a gun now.

I guess they were trying to make it some sort of a cliffhanger ending, but seriously, WTF guys. Makes NO freakin sense, and i hope you writers can repair all the damage you did with that last episode. You should have done it at the beginning of NEXT season, not the end of this one. Also, Russell Edgington seems to have escaped. Now here's something that confuses me too. Russell Edgington is supposedly 3000 years old. Which is a thousand years older than Rodric, who was eric's sire, and two thousand years older than eric. Rodric is a good old name, which would make sense if he was born 2 thousand years ago. Eric was a viking.. makes sense a thousand years ago. But.. "russell Edgington?" He's supposedly english aristocracy... England didn't exist 3000 years ago. The closest thing to england was the celts back then, and they didn't have names like russell edgington. In fact i think they were lucky to have names, since most of them would have been fur-clothed savages running around with clubs and beating up on greeks and gauls...? Why call him Russell Edgington? Unless that's an assumed name, which, just seems silly.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to look up the actress who plays vampire jessica and perv on her for a very intense 30 seconds or so, then sigh in that wistful way of mine and go play some minecraft to take my mind off her thighs. Sighing already. Sigh.