A 9/11 memorial tribute took a turn for the tasteless metaphorical when 80 birds released from a tower didn't, in fact, know how to fly, and fell to the ground.

It turns out that the planners, upon discovering that all the companies offering trained dove and homing pigeon services were booked up, went to the livestock market and bought 80 squab.

The squab, bred for the soul purpose of becoming soup, had never been out of their cages in their brief lives, and knew as much about flying as a rock knows about floating.

In reaction to the mishap, one of the planners qupped that he saved the birds from a better fate than they would otherwise have had, but vets at the animal clinic, treating some of the birds who managed non-fatal landings, if not soft ones (some on people's heads), would beg to differ.

The irony becomes even more palpable when we consider that a memorial statue of a nude, falling woman was draped and removed from Rockefeller Center for being in poor taste.

Now that the anniversary's past, a lot of people feel that the the mourning period is over, and about time, while others throw political correctness to the wind and share their real thoughts about September 11th.

This last link I find really interesting, because the most disturbing thing for me about 9/11 was the dichotomy between horror and fascination. Movies and TV haven't acclimated me to things like murders and violence, but cinema is the thing that's prepared me for such extreme devastation, and so watching TV on 9/11 last year, it was easy to fall into a mode of "What's the next plot-point?" The scariest part was that there was a next plot point, and another, and another, each hit, each collapse perfectly timed to keep us entranced.