All right, everybody. Settle down. Those three brown people in the restaurant were simply trying to enjoy the liver and onions. Let’s not go making a fuss, now. Brown people are all over the place. Maybe not at Shoney’s, sure. But even so, as yet we whiteys have not rounded them up into camps, and so they are free to roam the country as they like, with the exception of airports.

A few days ago I had to find an Ace Hardware store, so I went to their website. It happened to be on September 11, and Ace Hardware had replaced their regular front page with a white on black message saying, “We Remember September 11″. Hey, no shit. I remember it too. It was a pretty horrifying day. It will never be forgotten. So you remember it. Great. Have a cookie. Where the fuck is your store locator?

I’ve been seeing these messages everywhere. It’s not the sentiment that bothers me so much as the wording. “Remember” is not the right word. It is right to say “we remember the events of September 11″, but that connotes a minute-by-minute replaying of the action. We can remember those that died in the attacks, but if we don’t know anyone who died in the attacks, as I suspect the majority of Americans don’t, then we can’t really remember things and people we never knew. It’s really more like sympathy and grief. I guess “We Still Sympathize with the Survivors of Those Who Died on September 11″ isn’t as punchy. But who am I to give people shit? They don’t know what to say on the one year anniversary of the day the world blew up.

Well, other than “Hello, FBI? There are three suspicious Muslim-type guys in the booth adjacent to mine! Send help!”

I could go for some Shoney’s right about now…