Osama Bin Laden Is Dead: My Reactions, by Matt Shirley

7:58 pm:  We enter a poorly lit Culver City bar after inhaling Chipotle chicken burritos.  I order an eight-dollar beer, curse the establishment, and vow to never return, then look up at the two TV screens above the bar.  “Osama Bin Laden Killed.”  I take a second to digest this news.  Then after digestion, I take a swig of my expensive beer.  Who really cares?

8:01 pm:  I search the bar for good-looking girls.  There aren’t any.  I wonder if this will be like when they ask where you were when you found out about 9/11 or Kennedy’s assassination.  If so, I’m going to try to remember this time.

8:04 pm:  I watch TV.  Man, the news networks really have their B-squads going tonight.

8:09 pm: I drink beer.  This IPA is very IPA-y.

8:11 pm: I get my first text about the incident:  Holy shit!  Osama dead!

8:12 pm: I think of my first sarcastic tweet about the incident: Osama Bin Laden dead!  Terrorism solved!

8:15 pm: I watch more TV. I don’t remember OBL being quite so hairy.  I guess he hasn’t had much airtime in the last few years.

8:17 – 8:25 pm: My brother Paul sets about thinking of, writing, editing, rewriting, re-editing and posting his first tweet on the subject.  I play brickbreaker.

8:25 pm: I compare. I think I’ve had a package of Rain-blo in my top drawer that’s ten years old.

8:28 pm:  We take our last swigs of expenso-beer and hit the bricks.

8:30 pm:  In our search for a less expensive beer dispensary, we notice a crowd gathering outside a wine bar.  The owner realizes it’s his civic duty to turn on the outdoor speakers so the crowd can hear what the president is saying.  This seems unnecessary.

8:35 pm: President Obama is saying things.  He pontificates about justice and freedom and stuff like that.  I make a joke about how awkwardly long his walk to the podium was and play more brickbreaker.

8:37 pm: I hear a cheer from a block away. I wonder if they will use footage of stuff like this—Americans cheering the death of a madman—to fuel the kinds of things the madman did in the first place.  I wonder if that’s exactly what we do with our footage from over there to fuel our madman-ish behavior.

8:40 pm: I watch TV.  Obama looks approximately 34 years older than when he took office.

8:41 pm: I think.  I hate bias.  Just because your team gets a foul called on them, doesn’t mean that foul is unreasonable.  And just because your team was in power when the crazy guy was killed, doesn’t mean you should get the credit, or that the whole plan to kill him was a good plan in the first place.

8:43 pm: I’m bored.  I’d like to drink another beer.

8:48 pm:  The President is finished talking.  The people around me cheer as he leaves the podium.  I’d like to be happy like them.  I like being happy.  But my life hasn’t changed.  That Navy Seal killed a symbol.  Like if I burned a cross and thought I conquered religion.  Terrorism still exists; our pants are just a few trillion dollars lighter.  It’s not a bad thing that he’s dead, it’s probably good.  But it’s not great.   And it certainly doesn’t affect my life.

8:49 pm: I conclude. I guess it’s like anything else: revenge is never as satisfying as we’d like it to be.

*****

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