Lest We Remember in the Cheesiest Way Possible

Not having a job in the summer gives one a shitload of free time, as I well know. With some of that time today, I’m going to take a look at the cheesiest shit you will ever see.

I’m sure you’ve seen the September 11^th gifs and jpegs out there, either on some Geocities site or an email forward. And if they have tugged at your heartstrings, please stop reading my blog immediately. If I was dating someone who was genuinely touched by a jpeg of a crying eagle that was reflected in a wavy java applet underneath, I think I would have to break up with her.

Now, I’m going to pick the best 3, but you can rest assured there’s a ton of shit I had to leave out, for brevity’s sake.

This one might be familiar to you, because of the crying eagle. You’ll see him crammed together with a bunch of random "patriotic" elements in a number of bad 9/11 Photoshop jobs. If you’re lucky, you might even find the crying eagle animated gif, though I haven’t run into that in years. Here he’s been matched up with the Stars (not so much the Stripes, but don’t worry – they’ll make an appearance elsewhere), an exploding tower, the Pentagon and a lady being helped by a doctor. You can tell he’s a doctor cause someone photoshopped one of those shiny metal circles on his forehead that doctors haven’t used since the 1930s. Subtlety, as you’ll notice, is not a quality shared by many of these things.

Here’s an animated gif, and I hope it shows up properly. To me, it says, “I care that 3000 people were killed on September 11^th, but not enough to make a public expression of this feeling that is meaningful or nuanced in any way”.

And, Jesus, it musta been tough for this person to choose between doves or angels to surround the sparkling heart. Probably a lot like deciding which of your kids to save from the Gestapo.

Eagle? Check. Old Glory? Check. War imagery? Check. Juvenile call to incite violence? Oh, you betcha. Yep, this one has it all. I don’t know Todd Beamer’s politics, but if I know that if I died under really tragic circumstances, I’d be pretty pissed that Bush was using my last words to kick off a war or two (warning: political commentary) … or three. Equally annoyed would I be to find that single, 30-something, probably overweight receptionists with bad perms were forwarding these last words superimposed over a terribly unoriginal background all in the name of “remembrance”. But that’s just me.

I could go on. There are so many to choose from. I’ll just add a few more honourable mentions for your enjoyment. Click for full size!

One site called them “digital paintings”. Before that gets spread around, let me just say that, no, there is no such thing as a digital painting. There is such a thing, however, as a tacky, infantile digital “memorial” to dead people who, more than likely, would be embarrassed to hear that they’re being commemorated in such a fashion.

PS: It goes without saying that about 50% of the sites I grabbed these from had patriotic MIDIs embedded into the page, if not some country song in *.wav format. Way to make the Internet usable, you backwater, jingoistic hicks!

PPS: No comments on the Smash Bros. sequel? Man, I thought everyone would be going nuts for that one!