Contra Condi, it turns out anybody could have predicted that people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center. First it was advertisers, now writer Susie Felber shares her 9/11-predicting mug collection, purchased in "downtown Manhattan the week after 9.11.2001." It's almost too sick to imagine, but has anyone measured sales of WTC snow globes since 2001? We heard all the beanie babies in tower 7 were evacuated on 9/10. [Felber's Frolics, Previously]

Here's a "1979 ad for Pakistani Airlines promoting its flights to New York City." Can't you just picture a young, fresh-faced Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stumbling across this in a Baluchistan newspaper, some dim flicker of a terrible plan taking hold, just before he books his own flight to the US for his formative education? Yes, it really would explain a lot—if it weren't for the fact that we all know CHENEY DID 9/11. Still: eerie. [AdRants]

Ground Zero—will you ever stop being a nuisance? Now, due to open sewers at the site coupled with some heavy rain, luxury cars belonging to residents of 90 West Street, a luxury apartment building, are floating in doody. "I don't know what to do. I'm livid," said 27-year-old student Roe Williams, whose brand-new Mercedes-Benz G55 was in the garage that got flooded with 15 feet of sewer water. "I haven't even had it for two days. Someone's going to pay for my car." Of course they will, hon, and those people are called Iranians. [NYP]

John Orlando, the only real-life firefighter who likes Rudy Giuliani, mysteriously got paid by Rudy's campaign for "political strategy consulting" three months after he alone praised America's Mayor in a Times article about how all the firefighters hate Rudy. We are thankful for Rudy's spokesman's response to HuffPo's investigation: "Are you suggesting that firefighters aren't capable of political strategy?" [HuffPo]

James Zadroga, the (non-smoking!) city detective who spent hundreds of hours at the World Trade Center site following 9/11 and then died mysteriously with a shitload of "foreign material" in his lungs, didn't die from inhaling the "toxic chemicals, fiberglass and pulverized concrete" that are killing everyone else who worked at Ground Zero for extended periods of time. Seriously! New York's chief medical examiner says so. Zadroga just died of some other lung thing, OK? Maybe he got it from breathing the HOT AIR of America-haters like you. [NYT]

Globe-trotting taker of conclusions from anecdotes (and New York Times columnist) Thomas Friedman has been to some (four) college campuses! There he has seen that the kids of today are doing the good work, that they travel the world building hospitals abroad and snuggling babies with AIDS and just generally building a wonderful future—"in record numbers," whatever numbers those might be. None of these colleges were in New York, by the way—you selfish, future-hating children of N.Y.U.! This trip comforted him: "One of the things I feared most after 9/11—that my daughters would not be able to travel the world with the same carefree attitude my wife and I did at their age—has not come to pass." You know, funny, that did not even rate on my list of greatest fears after 9/11! Was more worried about the smoke getting in the windows through the wet towels, and the Team America world war that followed, but yeah, carefree attitudes for tourists sounds nice too.

A question: "I'm teaching a lit class soon and would like to incorporate some short stories/poems about 9/11. Please help me with a reading list!" Answers are running 2 to 1 in favor, somehow, of Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." [Ask Metafilter]

It's another superfun 9/11-themed ad! We bet Modern Love 'artist' David Chelsea is fuming right now! [Copyranter]

Last night our new favorite TV show "TMZ" sent a correspondent to the hotspots of L.A. to see how well Angeleno clubgoers remembered the terrible events of September 11. The results will not surprise you in the least, unless you think Angeleno clubgoers are some sort of species of meth-snorting Einsteins.

Hey, that crisp blue 9/11 weather came on 9/12 this year!

You won't find it on the Wayback Machine's copy of the New York Times' September 11, 2001 front page, or on the Times' own September 11th "Times Topics" page. You won't even find it on Nexis, and you can barely find it on Google. But here is what we believe to be the first full story on the World Trade Center attacks by the New York Times. It's rough and unusual—a fascinating document. [NYT]

It's a 9/11 Christmas for everyone who isn't America's Mayor: "As Rudy returns to Ground Zero on his favorite holiday in search of political gifts, it's an opportune time to do the country a favor and list in one place all the reasons he should never, ever, ever become president." [PowersPoint]

Daniel Radosh rounds up some of terrible writing about 9/11. [Radosh]

Yikes! Joyce Wadler unloads on the Times blogs about 9/11 stories: "The thing about these 9/11 stories, they seem to me to have become war stories, entertainments, the thing you trot out at a dinner party. What will it be, the time Mel Gibson told me to buzz off in New Zealand, or the one about standing there with the guy whose girlfriend was trapped watching the towers collapse? Not that I can bear talking about the towers. Too painful. O.K., twist my arm. I'll whip right along as fast as I can to the bodies, because that's what everybody wants, in the movies or in life, the bodies."

94 years ago, liar H.K. McCann launched his NYC ad agency with the slogan "Truth Well Told." That was a big fat lie. Advertising copywriter Copyranter brings you instances of advertising lies and the lying liars who sell them.

From the mailbag: "Just as the heavy wooden doors opened today at FENDI for business, there was OPRAH, zooming in, entourage and body guards in-tow, as she declared she had misplaced her FENDI sunglasses (the super fab dark ones with all of the logo F's on the sides) and she NEEDED to replace them immediately! 'We only have this one last pair,' says the Italian saleswoman, 'I'm sorry there are no others in the back.' 'PERFECT,' says Miss O, and off she lopes wearing them out of the store. (Entourage member then stays behind to pay....)"

Britney Spears' performance at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards show remains the nation's only important topic of conversation. The poor thing was exploited by MTV, says Kanye West, who certainly has no axe to grind with the network even though they haven't given him one of those idiot moonman statuettes for two years. While her performance has been compared to a variety of both natural and man-made disasters, including "a catatonic reenactment of an Ambien overdose," a "partial-birth abortion as performance art," and "The Holocaust," the singer still has some defenders.

Two ladies are walking down a street in Brooklyn when they see a strange light in the sky.

Found in the local store: These nifty "deluxe filter masks," made in China and designed, we assume from the packaging, for when the World Trade Center falls down again. That will come in so handy! (I bought all of them, so guess you're all screwed.)

"By our count, [Rudy] Giuliani spent about 58 hours at Yankees games or flying to them in the 40 days between Sept. 25 and Nov. 4, roughly twice as long as he spent at ground zero in the 60 days between Sept. 17 and Dec. 16. By his own standard, Giuliani was one of the Yankees more than he was one of the rescue workers." Yeah, but c'mon, they were in the Series! Priorities! [Salon]