WIGGUM DAILY

 

This is by far the longest video we’ve brought you on WD timing in at 26 minutes. But it’s compelling viewing and worth the time to sit there and watch it. This home video of the Sept 11th 2001 attacks on the New York City was taken by "Bob and Bri" from the window of their 36th Floor Manhattan apartment, located less than 500m from the two towers of the former World Trade Centre.

 

The video starts out a few minutes after the first plane hit the north tower. Resist the urge to skip forward through the video. It’s really interesting to watch it from start to finish. Made more so because We in 2007 know how it ends, yet these people are not sure what to make of it all in this video.   Observe how their state of mind goes from "Just another crazy day in New York… I hope I can still make my hair appointment in time…"  to… "That fire is going to take ALL day to put out…"  to  "Oh my God..  Oh my God… Oh My God… what the heck is happening…are these windows sealed…"

 

I think the essence of the unprecedented and unbelievable nature of those events, to those who watched them at the time, can be summed up best by Bri who is on the phone talking to someone in the first 5-6 mins of the video and she naively says at one point "No no.. it’s OK, they’re only attacking the World Trade Centre… not us…". 

 

 

The first few minutes are in "silence" with just the voice of Bri talking on the phone and to another person in the room. It’s surreal when she opens the window of the apartment and the NOISE that floods in from the streets below.  And when she zooms in on one of the first fire trucks arriving at the base of the tower. You think… those guys in that truck would all be dead now. Being first on the scene, they would have gone straight up the tower to the scene of the fire… never to return.

 

In a footnote to this video, I would like to add that the USA’s response to this attack by fundamentalist Islamic extremisits, was to round up a posse and invade the Arabic country of Iraq. Shock and Awe said the poster. In and Out.. Home By Christmas was the sentiment.  That was in March 2003.  Flash forward to June 2007 and they are still there. They have NO idea how to get out. Or even when. Meanwhile the death toll on the USA side has long since raced past the 2993 official death toll for the Sept 11th 2001 attacks. 

 

When I wrote THIS article in March 2007 the Iraq/Afgan USA military death toll was 3597 killed. It’s been 85 days since that was written, and the official USA death toll for soldiers killed is now 3927.  That’s 403 more killed in the 85 days since March 31st 2007, or FOUR soldiers killed per day, everyday of the week. Or to put in another way, 2.49 USA soldiers have died on each and every of the 1575 days since George Bush’s 2003 botched and mismanaged invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

No WONDER they had to come up with a recent "plan" to send more troops over…

 

 

 

 

 

Especially for long time WD reader Bobba, who’s been telling anyone and everyone at work all week about this video and pestering me to put it up… here it is. Not sure what’s up with the judge on the left of screen. He’s either dead, or on horse tranquillizers.

 

 

What an awesomely powerfull set of pipes, for ANY singer, let alone one so young in years. Fairly sure she made it to the final and got beaten by the break dancing robot that caught on fire.. or something like that.

 

 

I‘m not sure what you have to be ON to do this, but I’m sure it has some level of skill that transfers across to the REAL world somehow… 

 

 

 

In honour of the pure awesomeness of THE CURE, here’s another of the all time classics. Sporting one of the all time great bass /keyboard melodies of anything written in the last fifty years, it then tops that at the end with trumpet and sax dancing all over the core melody right to the very last note… Genius stuff indeed.

 

 

The self loathing, sad sack, pathetic goth wannabe, emo try-hards that frequent a supermarket razor blade aisle near you would do well to study these guys hard and see what they COULD become… if only they had talent and drive and…  actually…any emo’s reading this.. forget it… you’ll never be as good as Bobby and the boys… why not do us ALL a favour and just end… anyway,  I didn’t mean to lose all touch with punctuation, or sentence structure, but it’s working OK so far,  so I’m gonna run with it for the rest of this… and before I digress any further and draw away from the awesome force that is THE CURE…

 

 

 

 

We bring  you today the first in what will be an ongoing series of weekly video newsletters courtesy of the crew from This-Is-True.  Those of us who read the newsletter know it simply as "True" and you can subscribe to the free weekly email newsletter yourself here at the This-Is-True homepage. WD has been a reader for many years, recently upgrading to the paid version.

 

 

The video below, which we will bring to you each week at WD, is the sit back and relax, video version of the free email newsletter.

 

 

 

Wiggum Daily was up in the city on Saturday for various appointments and did lots of walking around the CBD. Was in no particular hurry, having planned way ahead, so that afforded me some time to stop along the way and breakout the trusty WD Phonecam. Got these three panorama pics.

 

   

 

Given the obvious limitations of the WD Phonecam - low resolution of just 1MP, and slooow cycles times between shots of 12-15 seconds, I particularly like the flag stadium pano where I’ve manage to successfully capture the flag in mid flutter, which became the key-frame of the pano. There were 18 individual phonecam  photos taken, two layers high, to make that one. Click HERE to view a slide show of the original phonecam photos.

 

You can click HERE and HERE to view maps of the exact places these pics were taken from. One day I’ll get motivated and venture up the track to the city and take a REAL camera along.