I am so angry with PepsiCo that I could scream. As many of you know, I have an addiction to Livewire. I mourned when it went out of season last year, though I tried to keep it in perspective because it was going to come back this summer.

Except that it didn't.

PepsiCo re-released it, but declined to distribute it to the entire state of Idaho. The only times I've gotten to drink it I've been in Utah, Texas, or Louisiana.

This isn't simply a matter of stores up here electing not to carry it. Last year everyone carried it and this year nobody does. Someone, somewhere decided that Idaho was not worth selling to.

Sometimes I hate capitalism.

But then comes the kicker. Last year they introduced another variation of Mountain Dew called Pitch Black. It was, to say the least, a flop. I don't think I have ever seen a soft drink flop so badly. By January they were selling 20oz bottles at 5/$1.

But that they'd decided to try again. They've changed it up at least a little (it's Pitch Black II), but even so, there was almost nothing good about the original Pitch Black. Grape-flavored Mountain Dew just doesn't fly. There is no reason for it to exist and even less reason to dedicate precious shelf-space that could go to my beloved Livewire trying to rehash a failed experiment.

Sometimes I hate and do not understand capitalism.

Stupid PepsiCo.

According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, more motorists are paying at the pump with credit cards:

Convenience stores, which sell about three-quarters of all gasoline sold in the nation, have seen the use of credit cards for motor fuel purchases rise to 70 percent of all gasoline purchases from about 54 percent last year, according to the industry group.

Interesting stuff, but they move mightly quickly to supposing that it's an effort to stave off paying for gas:

And drivers are seen reaching into their pockets for plastic more often as they try to stretch their budgets.

"Consumers are trying to displace the pain for a few weeks," said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the group, which includes stores owned by oil companies.

Outside the Beltway's Steven Verdon and The Oil Drum take this and run with it. Verdon:

The article rightly notes that gasoline that costs $2.60/gallon can easily morph into $3/gallon if the balance is not paid off right away due to interest, finance charges, etc. So unless you expect to see some significant drops in the price of oil in the near future this might not be the best strategy for dealing with the higher gasoline prices.

When confronted with a disagreeing readership, he elaborates:

So this sudden surge in the use of cards (check, debit, or credit) is most likely due to something else. What has changed recently? Prices have gone up. So we have two hypotheses:

1. People are using their cards more just because.
2. People are trying to defer the increased cost of gasoline.

I think the second hypothesis is the more likely right now. Merely noting the existence of check and debit cards does nothing to weaken the second hypothesis because conditioning on this information applies to both hypotheses. In other words, the debit/check cards have been around before and during price increases and will likely be around afterwards. Hence, why should people increase usage simply because of the price increase?

There could be a number of factors:

3. With gas prices going up, people are less likely to have the cash on hand and therefore paying with a credit card makes more sense.
4. More people have been forced to pay with a credit card because they don't have the money on-hand (because what used to be a $20 refill is now $30) and have found it very convenient and have continued to do so.
5. Pay at the pump is ever-expanding and the requirement that people either pay-at-the-pump or pay-before-you-pump (which was rare when I started driving ten years ago) has picked up significantly in the last year. Partially, I'd imagine, in response to more drive-offs because of rising gas prices and the fact that each drive-off now costs the station more money.
6. Some combination of 2-5, all of which include the gas price hike.

I think the sixth hypothesis is correct. How much of it is deferred payment? Some of it, I'm sure. Maybe more than any of the other factors, but it's by no means the only factor.

This post was expanded from a comment I made at Below the Beltway.

As many of you know, Camille and I met on one of Kevin's famed float trips. The basic gyst of the trip is that you drink beer and float down the river. Nothing particularly challenging. One had to run in to some bad luck or work to get tipped. It turns out the rivers in Idaho are a bit less forgiving.

Camille and I went to Lava Hot Springs over the weekend. LHS is one of the few tourist towns out here, so named for and dictated by the hot springs that you can bathe in there. They also have a mega-pool with a 10-meter diving platform and water slides and a river to ride down.

One does not need bad luck or to work at getting tipped to get dunked. One must merely not know which falls to avoid. I discovered this less than ten minutes in the water by way of a black-and-blue-and-red-all-over knee and forever lost pair of sunglasses. I wouldn't recommend taking cooler of beer, but it's quite an adventure. Without busses to walk you back, quite the workout, too.

That's the funny thing about the trip: river-floating, water-parking, and hot spring soaking... one would not think that these would wear you out, but they do! The rafting mostly just knocks you around and has you walk back. The hot spring soaking just wipes you out. Then the water park... who knew that falling could take so much out of you. But for those not used to doing it, it does! All of your muscles just tense up. Then, of course, you hit the water. Ouch. The waterslides were fun, though.

The only real let-down on the trip was the food. Our service was so bad at the first restaurant that I considered going to the bathroom just to drink the tapwater after staring at an empty waterglass for half an hour. I liked the second place better, but found out that Camille very passionately dislikes burger meat that isn't well done.

"Strom Thurmond is dead, so electing him would be one way to achieve a government that 'governs best by governing least'." -Dr. Weevil in Jane Galt's comment section.

"We don’t care where people come from; we don’t mind what religion they’ve got or what their particular view of the world is. But if you want to be in Australia, if you want to raise your children in Australia, we fully expect those children to be taught and to accept Australian values and beliefs. We want them to understand our history and our culture, the extent to which we believe in mateship and giving another person a hand up and a fair go. And basically, if people don’t want to be Australians and they don’t want to live by Australian values and understand them, well basically they can clear off." -Australian Education Minister Brendan Nelson

Drudge apparently had a link to this video up earlier. The gyst is that a mob tore a woman out of a car and beat her. Presumably to death. It surfaced on Drudge, though it was apparently on "World’s Wildest Street Fights Volume 1 (2002)," which I gather is something like those sorority girls spring break video, minus the sex and plus blood. The video itself isn't remarkably graphic, though it's difficult to stomach under the pretense that it is real and that you are watching a woman being beaten to death.

I watched it a couple times and, though despite its size it is not the best barometer of things, my gut tells me that it's staged. The Oakland Police are looking in to it and don't have a match. Presumably the folks that released the video are going to be contacted. So if I'm wrong we'll probably hear about it.

Why I think it's fake:

1. It ended up on a video collection. The producers of the DVD - presumably the ones that added the narrator - likely would have contacted the police if they thought it might be real. The OPD would know about it before now.
2. Despite the graphic nature, the victim does not take any obviously hard hits. She certainly doesn't look comfortable, but the worst stuff is conveniently obscured. The timing of the tape cutting out is also mighty convenient.
3. Who is this narrator and how does he know so much about the story? This ties in to #1, I guess, but it seems to me that if this is going to be a commercial venture, you don't go behind the police's back.
4. The forced disrobing is at once convenient for sex appeal and conveniently obscured.

On the other hand, here are reasons I could be wrong:

1. There's a lot of shady folks out there. I don't know how big the release of this DVD was. It may have been a really small thing that they thought wouldn't make it any higher.
2. Who am I to say what is and is not a hard hit? And while she didn't take any hard hits, the car was destroyed. Would they really destroy a car for a 3:48 segment on a video? (Maybe, if it didn't run anyway).
3. They could have made the story up. So the violence could be genuine, but the context not so much. The explanation they give is the most obvious if given the raw tape.
4. The victim isn't an obvious leading lady. She looks a tad bit heavy. And there's an awful lot of people there. How would something like this get organized?

On the whole, though, I gotta think it's fake. We'll see. View at your own risk and all that, though.

[via XRLQ]

Update: My bad, it's apparently real.

Facts about America West Airlines:

• They are in talks with U.S. Airways about a merger. Assuming that it goes through (I think now it's just up to regulators), they will be dropping the America West name. The fact that a year from now they won't have a brand name to protect probably doesn't give them much incentive to provide good service. I think that might explain a lot of what has been going on.
• US Airways actually rates below America West, both in the bottom third of airlines.
• America West Airlines Sucks
• They're the only ones that leave Salt Lake when I need out. So it looks like I'm going to have to either pay more with Continental or take an extra half-day off. Boo hiss.
• I've thought about writing in to complain, but all they usually give you is money on your next flight. I sincerely doubt that there will be a "next flight," so the point is rendered somewhat moot.

America West Airlines
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Epilogue]

IGN puts forth its list. My thoughts on the ones I've played or been familiar with:

#100 River City Ransom
The only thing I really remember about this game is its similarity to... Double Dragon, I think? Maybe something else. I remember playing it, but I don't remember the features they were talking about. They were probably lost on me.

#097 - F-Zero
This is the ultimate reverse-drinking video game. Ordinarily you take a drink when you lose, but in this one it would be best to take one when you win. The courses were so tough and unforgiving that driving drunk was a very dangerous proposition. I only got to do the drinking game thing once on it, which makes me wonder if I wasted too much time in my younger years around sober people.

#093 - Quake II
I still play this game regularly. I know the levels extremely well and can bust through it pretty quickly in God-Mode. It's invaluable when one is pissed off at the rest of the world and ready to start busting (or blowing off) some heads.

#083 - Contra
I was a bit surprised to see this one on there. Not because it wasn't a really good game, but because I don't remember it being as 'revolutionary' as they seem to (and I should defer to their perspective, they're much more into it than I). The simultaneous two-player mode was pretty cool, though. I always thought it odd that Mario Brothers never did that.

#083 Baseball Stars
I never actually played this one. Extremely generic-looking stuff, but apparently it has team creation! How did I not know that this game existed? Probably because it was so generic looking.

#074 - Syndicate
I had this one on my old Amiga 500. It was an amazingly complex game for its time. Too complex for me, actually, because I didn't have the time to devote to it. But even now I'm impressed by what that game was able to deliver.


#058 - Super Smash Bros. Melee
I don't have a Gamecube, but this one would look awfully cool if I did.

#057 - Mike Tyson's Punchout
I will probably remember and mention Mike Tyson more in conjunction to this game than his floundering boxing career. It's one of the only NES games that I still find myself talking about. I remember when I finally beat Soda Popinsky and I literally jumped up and started dancing around. I forgot to let go of the remote and pulled the system out from the power supply, turning the game off.

#054 - Panzer Dragoon Saga
The game that I never played and yet had a profound effect on my life. The introduction to the game alone was impressive. Watching other people play the game was also worthwhile.

#046 - Super Mario World
I had tons of fun playing the ROM. When I eventually got the SNES, I never really played in on that in part because it didn't offer 'save state.' The same happened to the SNES version of Zelda.

#040 - VirtuaFighter 4 Evolution
I never played Evolution, but I was always really impressed with the whole series. It was the only fighting game I couldn't cheat at and it didn't rely on special moves as much as the others.

#039 - Doom
I wanna play it again some time. Soon. I doubt it'll be nearly as impressive as it was (or as Quake II is), but still.

#034 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
I've seen others play variations of this game, though I really do think they should add a helmetless crack.

#031 - SimCity 2000
The original was a classic. SC2K looked good, but more complicated, so I never really got around to it.

#024 - Tecmo Superbowl
I love this game. I hate this game.

#023 - Super Mario Bros. 3
It was a definite improvement over the first two in most respects, but I was ultimately disappointed. While the 'teamwork' aspect of it was nice, I was surprised that they never came up with simultaneous play. As a Luigi fan, I was also disappointed that they did away with the ability to select Luigi (or the Princess or Toad) - a step backwards.

#015 - Super Mario Kart
Absolutely! Fun, exciting, and addicting. Funnest multi-player game ever, in my estimation.

#011 - Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Like Super Mario World, this was mostly a ROM game for me. I can't imagine playing it any other way. Save State saved my butt. Very solid game, but... [see below]

#005 - Super Mario 64
To the detriment of my relationship at the time, I have played this game from top to bottom and it is very worthy of its place on this list. Even after you've solved it, it's still just fun to run around.

#003 - Tetris
No argument here, but where's Minesweeper?

#002 - Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
I've heard nothing but great things about it, but... [read below]

#001 - Super Mario Bros.
I salivated over the NES for years because of this game. It doesn't hold up as well as some of the others, but it inspired half of the stuff that does hold up!

Here are the ones I'm a little surprised to not see on the list.

Legend of Zelda (NES)
This game was huge! No disrespect to the Zelda games that did get mentioned, but how is this one not on the list. I can't believe the list could have overlooked this one.

Baseball Simulator 1.000 (NES)
Like Mario Kart, it took a pretty straight concept and added a fun dimension. While RBI and the like strived and fell short of realism, BS1K was just a fun game.

Bases Loaded (NES)
Where a lot of baseball games fell short, this one succeeded. You couldn't make your own teams or anything, but you did have full season play (didn't it?)

Adventure (Atari 2600)
Yeah, you're just a huge pixel, but the Atari 2600 produced absolutely nothing else like it! Okay, it's a stretch, but still...

Some time in your life, you will be confronted with That Thought. You will look back at a lot of unforseen expenses that have been following you around. You'll then look up and see that the dark cloud over your head doesn't seem to be there anymore. You'll punch numbers and realize that you're starting to get ahead on your saving again. You will then have That Thought. You will think to yourself, "by golly, I think the worst is behind me!"

When you are inevitably confronted with That Thought, I urge you in the strongest of all possible terms to avoid thinking about it. The thing about black clouds is that they can disperse into the otherwise blue sky without actually going away, just waiting for you to have That Thought so that it can combine all its powers and lay a big, brown, crapper on your day and follow you around some more.

Among the other things that I learned today, I learned that timing belts are expensive to replace. I also learned that my spark clubs are "in worse shape than [the mechanic] has seen in [his] 40-year career," that some other belt has visible cracks, and that having missed work today, my evenings are going to be filled up for the rest of the week catching up on lost time.

Cars are stupid.

We should go back to the horse-and-carriage. That way if there are any problems with the engine, the only costs involved are that of a bullet and a new horse.

"When the middle class dabbles in the sewer, the lower class drowns." -Martha Bayles

I should start a category for inane or funny fan reviews on IMDB. I'd start with the Carebears one, but ones like this - for The Substitute 3 - would also make the cut:

It seems that every other movie in this series is bad, I guess that means we will have to wait for a fourth outing to get any entertainment. Treat Williams returns in the third installment of the series that again has nothing to do with the previous two. It's the same basic story except this time Williams discovers that the school is giving their athletes steroids. Again there is lots of unnecessary violence and this time filmmakers are throwing in some gratutious nudity to go along with it. I sure hope the next one is better.

I've only seen the first installment of The Substitute movies, but other reviews have said that the follow-ups followed the same basic plot: Badass Military Man (Tom Berenger in the first, Treat Williams (?!) in the rest) inserts himself into a classroom and beats the living crud out of the thugs/punks/racists/baddies in his class and cleans up a school while getting revenge for this or that. Pretty basic stuff.

So if violence isn't your thing, and the basic plot doesn't interest you, why are you hoping that the next one will be better? Why does the next one even matter to you? Come to think of it, why did you watch the last two? Lucy isn't even swiping the ball from your legs at the last second, Charlie, she's indoors watching cartoons while you're just kicking at air...

KFC and Pizza Hut have announced that they will no longer allow smoking in any of their franchise-owned stores. I can't remember the last time I ate at anything approaching a family restaurant that allowed smoking.

My father and I used to have breakfast together every Saturday morning. Most of the time we would go either to McDonald's or Whataburger in Seabrook. Every time at McDonald's, there was a woman who would be in the corner chain smoking and working on a crossword puzzle. Since she was always there when we were, we figured that she probably spent her entire morning there.

Then, at some point, McDonald's disallowed any smoking at any of its locations. We never saw that woman at McDonald's again. Instead, we saw her at Whataburger, in the corner chain smoking and working on a crossword puzzle. Eventually when Whataburger banned smoking, we'd see her only occasionally working on her crossword sans the cigarette.

It's unfortunate that she had to change up her routine, but if Whataburger and McDonald's intend to be family restaurants, smoking sections just will not do.

Pocatello's culinary pickings are pretty slim after 9pm. We generally rotate between four restaurants: Applebee's, Perkins (cross between Applebee's and Chili's), Butterburr's (more of the same), and Jim's Diner (more of the same, plus greek food). There is a fifth restaurant called Kim's Poppa Paul's, but we never eat there because of the smoke. I've got little problem with smoke (obviously), but it does bother Eel so we just don't go there. Which is a shame because it's the only all-night diner in the area (the other above restaurants close at 10).

We'll pretend that Paul's isn't skirting Idaho's restaurant smoking ban when I say that, despite the inconvenience, this is the way that it should be. If we don't want to smell cigarette smoke, then we should simply not eat at those places that allow smoking. We should not petition Boise or Austin or wherever and inconvenience everyone else just so that we have more selection in restaurants. As the fast food places demonstrated before these laws really got started, when more customers want smoke-free restaurants there will be more smoke free restaurants.

The smoking ban that Paul's is skirting wasn't in effect when we first got up here. All of the other restaurants had banned smoking of their own volition because if they hadn't, they'd lose business to those that had. Even some bars in Houston are on the road to becoming smoke-free (The Mucky Duck, for instance) without being forced by the city. There was a growing niche for such a thing, had the busybodies let people sort it out for themselves. If Houston bans smoking in bars, the Duck would lose its comparative advantage. Likewise, sweeping bans prevent some places from finding that niche in the market that really wants to smoke when they eat. Even when I smoked, I didn't usually smoke at the dinner table so I don't understand the need to smoke and eat concurrently. But that's me. Some people really liked that and I think it's stupid that in cases where the restaurant makes money off of it and the customers enjoy it, they can't do it because someone else doesn't think they should.

A lot of people are pooh-poohing record industry complaints about piracy. I'm no fan of the record industry and so don't have that much a problem with it. However, in the interest of fairness and general anal-retentiveness, I do feel the need for pirates and their supporters from getting too high on their horses. To wit, Rebecca Blood:

There is exactly one secret to thriving in the marketplace: offer a product that consumers really, really want to have.

It actually requires two things: People have to want it and they have to be willing and able to pay you for it.

One of the prime errors of the record industry over the last decade is that they had no mechanism for online music sales. If someone wanted a music file, they had to buy the CD and then rip it themselves. That made getting the song illegal easier than getting it legally. The industry actually believed (and to an extent believes) that this would not backfire. They paid and continue to pay people that believe this. Even if willing to pay for it, they were unable to. They had to do it for themselves.

On the other hand, having the most compelling product in the world makes no difference if no one has to pay for it. If you are a musician and you give away CDs at a show, you are not likely to sell many CDs. You may make some sales, but you will not "thrive." As such, the record industry has a vested interest in making sure that people don't excessively easy access to free (or near-free) music. Their methods may borderline on crazy at times, but their motives are purely rational.

It's not really honest to state otherwise.

When I was sixteen or so, I was a regular at CD Warehouse. They were one of the few that would let you listen to CDs before you bought them and they sold CDs for cheap because they were used. I went there any time I had money to burn on a new CD.

Some days I would go in there and find what I was looking for. But I was picky and $8 was not a small investment at the time. So some days I wouldn't buy anything. At one point I was going through a slump. I'd gone three or four visits without purchasing anything.

The man at the counter gave me some grief about it. He asked if I was ever going to buy these CDs that I'd been listening to. I told him that I would when I found a CD I liked. He told me to start demo-ing CDs I liked so that I would buy one. As it turned out, the two CDs that day were losers so I didn't buy.

But because of our conversation, I never shopped their again. Which is a shame for them because eventually I was making enough money that $8 was not such a huge investment. Eventually I'd reliably buy two or three CDs every visit. But not CD Warehouse, because I saw that they saw me as an undesirable customer.

The moral of the story is that you have to be really careful when you single out customers. Yesterday's grussly-haired teenager is today's young professional. Today's thrifty college student will tomorrow be using that college degree to make money that he can spend at your establishment.

You have to target abuse, but don't target people unless you really gotta.

I'm almost a year late on this, but Best Buy has apparently decided that targeting people is a good idea. They've even gone so far as to label people angels and devils, depending on whether their buying habits gain and lose customers:

Best Buy's angels are customers who boost profits at the consumer-electronics giant by snapping up high-definition televisions, portable electronics, and newly released DVDs without waiting for markdowns or rebates.

The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts. They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay. They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge. "They can wreak enormous economic havoc," says Mr. Anderson.

Best Buy estimates that as many as 100 million of its 500 million customer visits each year are undesirable. And the 54-year-old chief executive wants to be rid of these customers.

Mr. Anderson's new approach upends what has long been standard practice for mass merchants. Most chains use their marketing budgets chiefly to maximize customer traffic, in the belief that more visitors will lift revenue and profit. Shunning customers -- unprofitable or not -- is rare and risky.

Risky indeed.

It is a bit ironic that they put all of these deals front and center in advertisements and then state that those that plan to hold them to their word are bad customers that they want to be rid of. Policies that are ripe for abuse (such as refund-flipping) ought to be tackled, for sure, but for the most part the loss leaders are simply those that are responding to the advertisements they put out. If it's costing you money, don't do it, but going after those customers that fail to fall for your bait-and-switch scheme by purchasing what you're advertising gives lie to the fact that it is, in fact, a bait-and-switch scheme.

But that's not the real problem I have with it all. The real problem, in my view, is that they are branding certain customers undesirable when those customers will not always be undesirable. Johnny Professional will not forget how he was treated when he was Johnny Student. All retailers use their customers for their wallets, but you don't have to be so danged obvious about it.

Almost as bad as they treat the devils will be how they treat the angels:

Staffers use quick interviews to pigeonhole shoppers. A customer who says his family has a regular "movie night," for example, is pegged a prime candidate for home-theater equipment. Shoppers with large families are steered toward larger appliances and time-saving products.

The company hopes to lure the Barrys and Jills by helping them save time with services like a "personal shopper" to help them hunt for unusual items, alert them to sales on preferred items, and coordinate service calls.

Best Buy's decade-old Westminster, Calif., store is one of 100 now using the new approach. It targets upper-income men with an array of pricey home-theater systems, and small-business owners with network servers, which connect office PCs, and technical help unavailable to other customers.

On Tuesdays, when new movie releases hit the shelves, blue-shirted sales clerks prowl the DVD aisles looking for promising candidates. The goal is to steer them into a back room that showcases $12,000 high-definition home-theater systems. Unlike the television sections at most Best Buy stores, the room has easy chairs, a leather couch, and a basket of popcorn to mimic the media rooms popular with home-theater fans.

So while the devils get shunned, the angels get annoyed. Besides price, one of the things I always appreciated about Best Buy over Circuit City is that their salespeople were not annoying. Circuit City had a commission-scheme for a while that made the salespeople get in your face while Best Buy help managed to be both helpful when you needed them and absent when you did not.

Even the process they have to sort people out seems annoying. Interviews? I don't like being asked questions about my buying habits. There's also the ambiguous tagging of folks by their behavior.

Some people look like they've got money and will be "good customers." Some people look like they don't and won't buy a whole lot. Disproportionately the first category are likely to be white and the second not-so-much. To suggest that this will not happen is putting an awful lot of faith in hourly help. They've actually gotten into a little trouble because of this before:

Earlier this year, Mr. Anderson apologized in writing to students at a Washington, D.C., school after employees at one store barred a group of black students while admitting a group of white students.

I'm not at all saying that Best Buy's leadership is responsible for that, but their new policies will lend itself to those kinds of errors being made.

Relatedly, I wrote a while back about Best Buy discontinuing rebates, a move that I applauded. I did not realize that this was all part of a larger scheme to abase, repell, and annoy. I'm still glad they did it, though.

The UK is considering a measure to end Last Call and allow round-the-clock drinking. As one might predict, this has met with some opposition. It also has unfortunately has to combat a report hyping an increase in alcohol-related deaths:

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, showed a North-South differential: in Yorkshire and the Humber, alcohol-related deaths rose by 46.5 per cent, and in the North East the figure was 28.4 per cent; in the East of England, the rise was 12 per cent — and in London drinking-related deaths have fallen 4.2 per cent since 2000. Rates of alcoholrelated death per head of population also reflect a geographical divide. Rates are the highest in the North East and North West of England, and the lowest across the South.

Charities that are campaigning against the licensing changes said that they expected more alcohol-related health problems when the drinking laws are relaxed in November. Alcohol Concern said: “The increase in alcohol-related deaths is deeply worrying but not surprising. Alcohol consumption has been rising over the past fifty years, and currently around eight million people drink above safe levels each year.”

I can't say that I care too much either way since it's the UK. As far as doing such a thing in the US, I have a couple of observations:

1. There are a total of three nights in my life that I do not remember due to inebriation. The first was my first time to ever get plastered and I didn't really know my limitations. The other two times, however, were almost explicitly due to "racing the clock," by which I mean that after a certain period of time I would not be able to drink anymore The first time I was actually racing against Last Call. We got to the bar late and I was slamming shots of Gold Schlauger (14 shots in all). The other was at a convention. I didn't want to mooch booze at some of the parties that I intended to go to, so I downed well over ten fluid ounces of straight vodka. While I'm open to being proven otherwise, I'm not sure that ending Last Call will lead to more alcohol-related deaths.

2. On the other hand, standardization has its advantages, too. Particularly in US outside of New England. Police interested in patrolling the streets have a clear window to start picking up likely drunk drivers (an hour till and hour after Last Call). That would not be the case if we had round-the-clock drinking. On the other hand, a bar that doesn't close doesn't have to push drunk drivers out the door.

Cromulent Pete puts up his perspective and is a bit surprisingly more skeptical of the perpetual bar than I am. He points to the Bourbon Street, though in my mind that may be the same as Last Call: Bourbon Street attracts chaos not only because of its relative chaos, but also because of the relative restrictions of other places. If you could get drunk 24 hours everywhere, Bourbon Street may not be quite the hub anymore. Then again maybe I've read one too many libertarian tracts.

Considering the whole adventure, it was Monday that was the strangest day and for which I reserved the title "Freaky Monday." As best as I can recollect, the following occured:

1. The baggage people were not on break.
2. The flight took off when it was supposed to (well, within half an hour).
3. It landed when it was supposed to.
4. The connecting flight was where it was supposed to be...
5. and took off when it was supposed to take off...
6. and landed when it was supposed to land.
7. My baggage was where it was supposed to be.

I'm still trying to make sense of Freaky Monday.
America West Airlines
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Epilogue]

"Academic material is not meant to be read. It is meant to be ransacked and pillaged for essential content." -University of Canberra's 'Academic Skills Online. Reading and Remembering'

The general well-wishes for my trip back to Pocatello was that it not end up like my trip from Pocatello. What were the odds, right?

An early afternoon flight out of Houston was going to land me in Salt Lake at about 7. Add on top of that a 2-3 hour drive and I'd be home in time for bed. When I made the reservations, I was under the somewhat faulty assumption that the times given for the flights were, give or take thirty minutes, actually relevent.

It's a solid hour or so from Seabrook to Intercontinental. He dropped me off at the curb with a dollar to tip the guy who was going to take my bags. I found the curbside check-in and waited behind an Asian women. After about five minutes or so a couple of handlers came out and took care of her baggage.

Then, for twenty minutes, nothing. A line behind me was forming.

"Hey, are you with America West?" a Delta handler asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm pretty sure they went on break. They usually do about now."

After waiting a few more minutes, I decided to go ahead and save the dollar and take my own bags in. Though it turned out to be a very short walk and no inconvenience, it would have been nice if they'd put a sign out that they were going on break. Oh well.

I waited in line behind a guy who was headed to San Diego to strut his BBall stuff. I thought was odd because San Diego hasn't had a basketball team since the Rockets left, but it made for conversation. He was worried about getting to the plane on time. I pointed out that we had an hour.

How, I naively asked in an amnesiatic stupor, could anything go wrong?

The gate was easy to find and, due to the line at the counter and waiting for the on-break baggage handlers, it was boarding when I got there. When on the plane, three thoughts crossed my mind:

1. Ashtrays. Damn.
2. It's no good to be on a full flight with substandard air conditioning for thirty minutes.
3. Crap. Shouldn't we have taken off by now?

It was 3:15 when The Voice came on to say that we had a bit of a traffic jam. "A bit," I noticed. They always say "a bit" even when, as The Voice said, we were back twenty planes. I noticed that my layover was only forty minutes. There was no way I was going to make my connecting flight. I consoled myself that they'd likely have another flight from Phoenix to Salt Lake.

Foolish me. At that point, I thought at that point that I would make Phoenix.

An hour or so later, The Voice came on.

"I have some bad news..." If being stuck on the tarmac for over ninety-minutes doesn't qualify as 'bad news' I'm worried...

"... maintenance issues..." Yawn

"... we've lost half of our hydraulic fluid while we've beeen waiting out here..." Excuse me? Even the flight attendent said "Dear Lord."

"... sit tight... maintenance looking in to it..." Looking in to it? I'm sorry, did you just say looking in to it? We're spitting out hydraulic fluid!

"... may be able to take off shortly..." Now okay. I don't entirely know what hydraulic fluid in a plane does, but I do know that I heard the flight attendant say "Dear Lord" and if a flight attendant is not comfortable with it, then ashtrays are the least of this plane's problems.

"... if you miss any connecting flights, don't worry. America West will put you up for the night..." Liar, liar, pants on fiar.

It took maintenance roughly an hour to determine that an airplane that loses half its hydraulic fluid in half the amount of time it takes to plane to get from Point A to Point B ought not try to make that flight.

Three thoughts occured to me:
1. Three of my four flights have been delayed at least an hour due to maintenance issues.
2. The fourth was delayed even longer for other issues.
3. The lack of runway space they keep complaining about has saved us from first circling the Nevada sky and landing to refuel and now flying in a plane that's drooling hydraulic fluid faster than a Water World waterslide spits out water. So then the best thing that's happened to me with America West involves... delays.

When they finally let us deboard, they asked us to stick around for half-an-hour or so to see if they could fix the plane. Foolish, trusting mortal that I am, I believed them.

They, meanwhile, dropped the flight from their listings and immediately used the gate to start boarding for their next flight. Calling my folks I discovered that they'd even dropped it from the website. I suppose "Cancelled due to reasons death-trap related" might not look good. Better to pretend the flight never existed, which is exactly what their website would tell you if you looked.

Eventually I hooked up with a couple of other passengers and followed their lead. That was when I saw it: The Line.

Now the line was probably a fifth as long as it had been in Vegas. But the Vegas line was bendy-backy-forthy and therefore not nearly this intimidating. I managed to get in about three quarters the way back in the line.

That lasted half an hour. After half an hour they sent a ticket agent down the line asking us if we'd collected our baggage?

"They took our baggage off the plane?"

"That happens with all cancelled flights."

"Oh, so the flight is cancelled?"

"Oh, yeah, we don't reboard deplaned flights."

"So then why did they ask us to stick around for half an hour?"

She just kept walking.

Now the conversations generally went as followed:

"Honey, you go get the bags while we do nothing but wait here in line."

"But sweetie, we have six bags!"

"We don't want to lose our place in line, do we, sugarbumpkins?"

"But..."

"Go!"

Now since I was flying alone, I had no such option. I had to lose my place in line. Otherwise, there'd be no telling where my luggage would be by the time I got through the line.

The line may have been a fifth as long as it was in Vegas, but the intimidation was justified. The line crawled. Periodically, a ticket agent would walk up and down and ask "Is anyone here not here because of Flight 186?"

There were, by this point, two lines. The other line we were in seemed to be reserved for folks on Flight 186, which was our flight. The other line was for those who were scheduled for later flights. While we could have called these the 186 and non-186 lines, we settled for the "Actually Get To Fly" line and the "Never Going To Fly America West Again Anyway So Screw'em" line. It seemed more descript.

I suspect that most people that were not on Flight 186 either weren't paying attention or didn't say so because they feared that they would be told to get in line somewhere across the airport or equally inconvenient. But when people stepped forward and got into a separate that was about four people deep (instead of 100), they'd flag her down. Suddenly what she had to say seemed a lot more important.

It seemed that the only time we moved was when someone jumped lines. Three hours later when I looked back I saw that there were all of two people behind me. I could have spent the entire time in line at the bar and have been only a little further behind.

The next two flights to Phoenix had come and gone. There was only one AW flight left out to Vegas. The chances of getting out that day were slim-to-none. Turned out that Slim carried the day and I was set to go by way of Vegas. Unfortunately, that would have had me driving from Salt Lake to Pocatello from 2-5am. For someone that was mentally exhausted and is not good behind the wheel tired, that was not good.

I got a flight out the next morning at 6am. I spent an hour or so at the bar, drinking $5 Shiners talking to a guy who boasted playing baseball for the UH Cougars in the 70's.

That night, when I got home, I checked for messages on my phone. There were three:

1. Flight 186 to Phoenix was on time.
2. My flight from Phoenix to Salt Lake would be delayed and leaving out of a different gate.
3. Flight 186 to Phoenix has been cancelled.
America West Airlines
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Epilogue]

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick sees nefarious motives in pro-life proposals (such as third-trimester bans and parental notification/consent) that would cut down on abortion. She believes, get this, that conservatives are proposing these things because they want to, get this, cut down on the number of abortions.

Well duh.

Pro-lifers do not want any abortions. This much is clear. However, that does not make limited proposals inherently dishonest. In fact, the public at large wants to limit these abortions, so why would the conservatives try to hide it?

To pick a liberal cause, let's take the death penalty. Capital punishment opponents do not want there to be capital punishment . If this sentence sounds redundent to you, proposals to curb certain kinds of abortions having the nefarious effect of cutting down on certain kinds of abortions seems equally so to me. However, to use Dahlia's logic, opponents of capital punishment trying to ban the executions of the mentally handicapped are a covert attempt to cut down on the number of executions. Well no kidding. Take the total number of people executed, subtract the mentally handicapped, and (assuming that there is at least one mentally handicapped individual being executed), the result will be less than the number of people originally scheduled to be executed.

The same is quite true for abortion. Take all of the abortions out there, subtract third-term abortions and those abortions averted due to parental notification/consent, and you will have less abortions than you would if you did not subtract third-terms and adolescent abortions (assuming, of course, that the subtracted value is greater than zero).

But, the question is, are these groups being dishonest by not stating that the goal is reduced overall abortions? Only if (a) that's what they were actually saying, and (b) they didn't have a particular interest in trying to target the specific abortions/executions that they are targetting. While I have no doubt that some opponents of abortion and capital punishment may be saying that this has nothing to do with limiting the number of abortions and executions, that's not typically the argument they put forward. But just as importantly, not all executions and not all abortions are created equal.

Let's start with executions. All executions may be bad, but most would admit that some are worse than others. There's a reason that they were out in full-force over Karla Faye Tucker and not Tim McVeigh. Similarly, a mentally handicapped individual is particularly undeserving of capital punishment because they are less likely to have been able to think through the consequences before they committed the crime. Their minds are less able to compute cause-and-effect. Therefore, even though they aren't winning the war, the smaller victories in battle remain gratifying. They may not be able to stop a serial killer from getting the needle, but they can stop someone that may not have entirely known what they were doing. That's an achievement.

The same is true with abortion. While there are those that believe that all abortion is murder, most draw distinctions. There is, for instance, the exception trifecta of rape, incest, and mortality. Similarly, third-trimester abortions are considered particularly heinus. A staggering majority of the public agrees with them on this matter. That doesn't make them correct, necessarily, but to suggest that 80% of the public is hoodwinked into seeing a distinction where absolutely none exists is not the argument of someone trying to influence public opinion. Let's put it this way, whatever unspoken doubts pro-life people may have about an implanted egg, they most assuredly to not have about an 30-plus week baby that is probably viable outside the womb.

Parental consent/notification is a tricker subject. Parental consent is an effort to limit abortions the same way that requiring parental consent for piercings (an example put forth by Ms. Lithwick) is an effort to cut down on piercings. In fact, I have never heard any other rationale. The number of kids that would like piercings minus the number that have parents that would not consent is going to be less than the number that wants them so long as the number of objecting parents is greater than zero. So yes, giving parents veto power over something like that is an effort to say that a kid is not equipped to make decisions about piercings is also not equipped to make decisions about terminating pregnancy and an effort to give those parents that do not want it to happen the power to make it not happen. You may not agree with those ends, but they're pretty straightforward.

Lithwick's best argument is for parental notification. Notification is not entirely an attempt to "open communication" between parents and children, but that was never the ends that was always the means. There are two ways in which this can present pregnancy: First, it gives the parents a chance to try to convince the daughter not to have an abortion. There is a basic argument that a parent ought to have the right to have input on such a large decision. You may disagree with that argument, but it's there and it's genuine. But secondly and I think more importantly, it means that they cannot simply make the problem "go away" by having an abortion. They can make the fetus go away, of course, but the notion of having an abortion to keep their sexual activity secret (as opposed to adoption, where it could not remain one) becomes a non-issue. This is, in the eyes of conservative Christians, a way to prevent an impressionable youngster from trying to make two wrongs (premarital sex and abortion) make a right (not disrupting the family).

Now there is a very strong counterargument that a young woman is equipped to make these decisions without the input of a parent. There is also an argument that they have the right to have an abortion simply to keep their sexual activity hush-hush, if they choose. There is also an argument that such cases are rare and poor cases to derive law from. But these arguments strike at the very core of the debate that Lithwick is saying is irrelevent to pro-lifers (the autonomy of youngsters).

For both sides, autonomy of the young is a battlefield, but abortion is the map. On the subject of parental notification, pro-choicers believe that the right to an abortion supercedes the right of a parent's control (or notification) of health care (a control they have in most other matters). Pro-lifers, on the other hand, believe that since abortion is too big and too important for an exception to be made in favor of those that might make an immoral decision for the wrong reasons. I'm hard-pressed to say that either side is being disingenuous -- except when they try to pretend that their side always discusses the issue with more honor and honesty than the other.

All considered, I slept pretty well. Both on the same Phoenix Flight, Mr. Sacramento and I talked as we waited for our 6:45 flight. 5:45. 6:00. 6:15. 6:30. 6:45. 7:00. 7:15.

"We're having some mechanical issues. We will be boarding the plane soon."

We boarded at 7:30, but I wasn't too worried cause I had a 90-minute layover in Phoenix. Maintenance trouble, they said. When we touched ground in Phoenix after a loud and turbulent flight, one lady yelled "If this is what it was like after maintenance, I'd hate to know what it was like before maintenance.

As we waited, three thoughts occurred to me:
1. I wonder if this plane came from Fresno?
2. This plane has ashtrays. Didn't they stop putting ashtrays in 737's a long time?
3. Why are we just sitting here?

9:15. 9:30. 9:45.

I raced across the airport.

I didn't make it.

The next flight was three hours away (boarding at 12:30). I bided my time in the bar, weighting the pros and cons of buying a new shirt so that I wouldn't feel so grubby. Con won.

12:15. 12:30. 12:45

My flight disappeared from the gate. It moved to a gate across the airport. I scrambled to make it and did.

At take-off time, I was informed that the plane that we were supposed to fly on was declared unsafe for flight. They were going to put us in a new plane.

As we waited, three thoughts occurred to me:
1. Thank goodness I don't have to make a connecting flight in Houston.
2. I'll bet the unsafe plane has ashtrays, too.
3. If they declared my scary LAS-PHX plane to be fixed, and it was previously in bad enough shape that it needed to be fixed, and the grounded plane was declared even unsafer than that... I need a drink.

Though an hour late into the cockpit and another half-hour wait on a runway, the Phoenix-Houston flight was without incident. Except, to my complete and utter unsurprise, that it didn't have my luggage on it.

When Dad and I met at the airport, I commented that I could barely keep track of what flights I was on and that, given what America West had put me through already, there was almost no chance that they were able to keep track. So when they cleared the baggage carousel without my bags on it, I could barely muster up any care.

What could I do? Threaten to never fly with them again?

They assured my father and I that it would take 6-8 hours to get my luggage to me. That turned out to be every bit as reliable as everything else they had to say said. When it did arive, a day and some hours later, I was just glad my camera was still in there. I was actually more surprised about that than I was that they had lost it in the first place.
America West Airlines
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Epilogue]

The New York Times has a write-up on the "exurb" phenomenon. Much to my surprise, they manage to conceal their contempt! But seriously, it's a good look at it all. I have a couple comments, one aiming for insightful and the other settling for snarky. I found this particular paragraph interesting:

The answer, the company decided, is that a house in New River must be $12,000 cheaper than the same house in the north Tampa suburbs, 15 minutes closer to downtown. And in Silverado, a community that KB hopes to build 15 minutes farther north in Pasco County, the house must be $12,000 cheaper than in New River.

In the greater scheme of things, $12,000 is not all that much money when you're considering a house. Of course, once you add in interest and whatnot, it comes to be more than that, but even so I find it astonishing that people are willing to trade so much time for comparitively so little difference, if all other factors are as equal as the article suggests.

Fifteen minutes farther is 30 minutes a day.
Thirty minutes a day is 150 minutes (2.5 hours) a week.
Two-and-a-half hours a week is 10 hours a month.
Ten hours a month is 120 hours a year over the course of a 30-year loan is 3,600 hours, or 150 days or almost half a year, spent in a car, for the exact same house.

Once you factor in the extra interest that you're paying on the $12,000 price difference (bringing the cost of the house down from $222,000 to $210,000 (on a 7% fixed-rate loan), in this example, here are the savings:

Principal borrowed: $12,000.00
Regular Payment amount: $79.83
Total Repaid: $28739.20
Total Interest Paid: $16738.80

So the savings is almost $80 a month, or $30,000 a year.

That same year, a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon and drives ten extra miles each way (at $2.50/gal) will spend an extra $50 a month in gas.

The result? They've traded almost six months of their life in a car for roughly $30 a month or, over the term of the loan, $11,000.

That, in my mind, is insane.

(If you're interested and particularly anal, I've included my (admittedly general) methodology here: [Read More!]

The following takes place from August 2nd to August 8th, 2005. The times of the flights are inexact, but as close to the actual time as I can recall.

Things were bad on Tuesday from the get-go, really. I started remembering all the things I forgot to pack for the trip I was taking to Houston. Bleh.

Thanks to a broken coke machine at work, I did catch a lucky break at work: a flat tire. The tire itself wasn't the lucky, but if it wasn't for my planned trip to get a Dew from the store, I wouldn't have noticed it until I was supposed to be hightailing it to Salt Lake City and my flight.

But rather than focus on the negative, I considered myself lucky that I could take care of it over my lunch break. If I'd discovered it later, I might have missed a flight.

Heaven forbid I miss a flight.

I actually got to Salt Lake earlier than expected, though I didn't beat the rain. Not wanting to wear a jacket all the way to Houston and back, I was soaked by the time I got into the airport terminal. But I was early so that was okay, too. Think positive, R. Alex, think positive.

Achoo.

Everything was according to plan after that. Checked bag. Tickets. Terminal location. Boarding. Sitting. Reading. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

For about half an hour, we were waiting for a runway. "These things sometimes happen," he said. Had I not just read an article on this subject recently, I might have believed him. "Sit tight," he said. "No one get up."

Someone didn't listen, however, and we missed our chance at a runway. We were back at the end of the light. "Let's everyone thank the guy in the lavatory for putting us further behind," he didn't say, though he might has well have. There was a sound and movement that gave us a brief hope that we might be taking off, but that was just everyone's eyes simultaneously rolling and grunting. It was that kind of atmosphere.

Ten minutes later,The Voice announced that the Las Vegas airport had been closed. Trying to look at the bright side, he said it was a good thing that we hadn't taken off yet because because if we had, we'd have to circle and land somewhere else to refill. Apologies to Mr. Lavatory, who'd kept us from taking off, were not forthcoming.

So we waited longer except that we could get up and move about the cabin at this point. If, that is, we didn't mind playing roadblock to the little kids that were sprinting up and down the walkway. I was thinking that it was unlikely that I'd make my connecting flight, though they were assuring us that flights both in and out of Vegas were downed, so we'd probably make our equally late connection.

Somewhere in Oklahoma, people waiting for a flight to Vegas were being told that if it came down to it, America West would put people up for the night in a hotel. Somewhere west of Las Vegas, a plane coming from Sacramento that did not have a Mr. Lavatory was circling the air and running out of fuel. Somewhere in Fresno, a plane hasn't even taken off due to mechanical issues, though that hasn't anything to do with anything. Yet.

About three hours - in total - past schedule we took off. Roughly 75-minutes later we landed in Vegas. I found out the first America West Lie in a short ten minutes upon landing. Instead of holding the outbound flights back so that people could make their connections, they sent them out half-full. In the meantime they were making preparations in the form of calling in what must have been every ticketing agent they have and alerting the federales that there might be a security issue.

The line was several hundred people long. Ten or so unconnected flights and a maintenance-deprived flight from Fresno.

While in line, a man asked if he could go in front of me. He said that he'd already been through the line, but he got faulty information so he needed to go through again. I let him. Same man was later seen cutting into the front of the line telling a federal security officer that he had gotten bad information twice.

"Sir, I strongly suggest you get to the end of the line," the officer said.

"You don't understand, I've been through twice," the agitated customer replied.

"Sir, I strongly suggest you go to the end of the line."

"You don't understand."

"Yes, sir, I do understand, and I also strongly suggest..."

Beaten, the man went to the end of the now-horrendously long line.

But earlier than that, and after his second trip, I got to talk to the ticket agent.

The Good News: They were going to fly to Houston again.

The Bad News: Not for another fourteen hours.

The Good News: I could take a connecting flight through Phoenix.

The Bad News: That was about six hours away.

The Good News: N/A

The Bad News: They don't provide free hotel rooms for those stuck overnight. That was lie number two. I was told by a passenger coming from Oklahoma that they'd put you up for free.

The Good News: They have a program with local hotels that I can get a room at a discount.

The Bad News: I discovered later from a passenger that had come in from Sacramento that the "discount" still amounted to $50 for a single and that it didn't include transportation.

The Good News: They didn't enforce the airport regulation that states that people not coming or going from a near flight must vacate the airport.

The Bad News: No fun.
America West Airlines
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Epilogue]

In reference to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier that's been stalking President Bush as of late, the Esteemed Houston Chronicle said thus:

Bush has not yet found it in himself to meet a grieving mother or invite her to the ranch to discuss his policies. Thursday Bush told reporters he sympathized with Sheehan but that pulling out of Iraq "would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace." Sheehan responded that the best way to show compassion would be to meet with her and other parents of soldiers killed in action.

Bush previously dispatched his national security adviser and an aide to meet with Sheehan's group, but that only increased the perception that Bush cannot bring himself to face his critics. Until the president addresses the doubts about the conduct of the war that Cindy Sheehan now symbolizes, the voices of the opposition will only grow louder.

Sometimes, when a formerly amorous romantic couple parts ways, both parties are not of the same mind as to whether or not the break-up should have occured. Strange, but true. Oftenly, in fact, one party wants to reverse the breakup and get back together. She believes that they fix whatever was wrong.. The other party, however, has absolutely no interest in resurrecting the relationship because he was likely unhappy in for some time before the breakup occured.

This can lead to an awkward situation. She wants something that he clearly cannot give him. When faced with conflict, it's pretty natural for people to go binary and see things in black-and-white. So, in her world, if he loves her then they should get back together. If he doesn't want to get back together than he really doesn't love her, even if he says that he does in a qualified manner. 'I don't love you that way anymore?' What the hell is that supposed to mean. You loved me that way six months ago. You're going to throw this all away because you've been in a funk for the last couple months? And you're going to say, while you're destroying my whole world, that you love you? You don't love someone and then not even do so much as to take their phone calls!"

And he's not taking her phone calls. He's been in this situation before, unfortunately, on both sides of the table. She called him because she just wanted to talk. Then she just needed to see him again. Given what he'd put her through, he owed that to her. And in his heart of hearts, he knew that he did. So he met with her. The problem was, as he suspected from another similar situation even before that one, that she did not want to talk to him on the phone. She did not want to see him and air her grievances. She wanted to get back together! The phone call, the lunch, they were merely means to that end.

I'm not saying that she's lying, though she might be. But in the more benign circumstances, she truly feels she can get closure by just hearing his voice or seeing him "one last time." Sure, she knows she wants to get back together with him, but she erroneously believes that she has accepted that she can't. The problem is that when she sees him, she wants to see him again. If he could do it once, why not more than once? If he can see her and be civil regularly, and he loves her (even if not in 'that way' whatever the hell that means), then they should get back together. And we're back to binaryland where he can only demonstrate that he really cares about her by pretending that he's in love with her (except that, even then, she would want him to stop pretending and do it for real). Except that now he's even further back because by relenting and agreeing to see her, he's giving her "mixed signals."

And that's in the most benign circumstance. In the least benign, she's trying to engineer a reunion, and she will use every tool at her disposal - including guilt and shame - to make it happen. She will fight to bring him closer, step-by-step. And she will be baffled and hurt and enraged when he reaches the point that he is not willing to take another step for the very reasons he walked away in the first place, whatever those reasons might have been. Despite all the "compromising" he's done by agreeing to talk to her and see her, he will still be the mean stupidhead that's hurting her even while he says that he cares about her.

And he can see all this happening all over again if he relents to her simple and quite reasonable request to see him again. As long as she wants to get back together again, they really don't have anything to talk about. Whether or not he will see her again is immaterial because that's not what she's after. And if the only way he can address her needs is by complete capitulation, and if he's not willing to do that, then finding middleground is a rather pointless venture and whether she realizes it or not, her claims for simple meets not being met are disingenuous because her overall aims are starkly at odds with what he wants.

“And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullsh*t! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism,”

Those are not the words of someone who is asking for lunch, closure, or anything the administration can really provide.

More:
blogHouston
Lonestar Times
Isolated Desolation [also]

Camille asked me a few days ago what I wanted for my birthday. I'm working like mad on getting my computers working again, but I can't ask her to learn enough about computers to get what I need. A car is a bit out of price range. Blah, blah, blah. I could think of one thing, but I suppose it's impolite to ask something to die for your birthday.

But really, I got dinner tonight at the Continental Bistro, I got Camille making my all-time favorie chocolate eclaire cake, I get to actually see her unencumbered tonight and tomorrow, and I have some checks from the family to work on my computer set-up.

Not much more I can ask for than that.

Except a dead laptop.

Vernors Ginger Drink not equal Ginger Ale

Vernors Ginger Drink not equal 50 cent price tag

Vernors Ginger Drink not equal Price tag minus 50 cents

Vernors Ginger Drink plus claim of "Bold Taste" on can equal techically true

Used motor oil equal "Bold Taste" also, I'd imagine

Vernors Ginger Drink equal a sink that is no longer thirsty

Vernors Ginger Drink plus cosumption equal an increase in sale of sugarless gum by a single unit

or "How I Got Free Water and 45 Cents"

Clerk: That'll be $3.67.
RAW: Huh? All I got is a gallon of water...
Clerk: Oh, sorry. That'll be $1.78.
RAW: That sounds about right. [hands over 4 dollars]
Clerk: Okay, let's see. $3.67 out of $4, here's your change [hands over 33 cents]
RAW: Alright. You have a good evening now.
Clerk: Wait a second, sir.
RAW: Yeah?
Clerk: I think you overpaid me.
RAW: I did?
Clerk: Yeah. You paid me the $3.67 that the man before you owed.
RAW: That's right. How much did I owe you?
Clerk: $1.78.
RAW: Here you go. [hands over 2 dollars]
Clerk: Great, and here's your change [hands over 12 cents]
RAW: So we're square?
Clerk: I... wait
RAW: Wait.
Clerk: I owed you money.
RAW: That's right.
Clerk: How much did I owe you?
RAW: $3.67 plus $1.78 minus the $1.78 for the gallon of water leaves the initial payment of $3.67.
Clerk: Minus the thirty-three cents I gave you in change.
RAW: Right.
Clerk: Okay.
RAW: Wait. No. That change was cause I gave you four dollars.
Clerk: Huh?
RAW: I think you owe me $3.67 plus $.33 minus the $.33... so...
Clerk: Here's your money back. [hands me $6]. Take the water. Have a good night.

A Pennsylvania school district had a security breach:

The trouble began last fall after the district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The computers were loaded with a filtering program that limited Internet access. They also had software that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens.

But those barriers proved easily surmountable: The administrative password that allowed students to reconfigure computers and obtain unrestricted Internet access was easy to obtain. A shortened version of the school's street address, the password was taped to the backs of the computers.

The password got passed around and students began downloading such forbidden programs as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool.

At least one student viewed pornography. Some students also turned off the remote monitoring function and turned the tables on their elders-- using it to view administrators' own computer screens.

The students are being criminally punished and parents are crying fowl. Parents believe that the district was negligent (security passwords were pretty easy to figure out) and are punishing the kids for their own shortcomings. The district says that they tried every other form of punishment and that this was a last resort.

Outside the Beltway's Steve Verndon is sympathetic the parents:

Personally, I think the school administrators should be charged with a crime for being so blazingly stupid as to leave the password taped to the backs of the computers. Hello, McFly...Think! Are the school administrators so stupid that they were worried they'd forget the password if it wasn't taped to the back of the laptops?

Verndon makes some really good points about the school district's negligence.

But even so, I think the school district really has a point. A quick story:

A friend of mine told me a story once about Internet implementation at an office. Apparently people were wasting too much time on the Internet and it was becoming a problem. They toyed around with the idea of installing an Internet filter. Eventually the president of the company said that they would do no such thing. If an employee was caught goofing off, he said, he would be fired because he wasn't doing his job. Not only that, but his immediate supervisor would be fired, too, because he too wasn't doing his job.

That may have been a bit overboard, but the point remains: that's more effective that Internet filter. Where is it written that they ought to prevent us from doing what we shouldn't be doing? It is in the district's best interest to have a secure network, but if they goof up that does not absolve the person going where they shouldn't be.

Simply put, if I leave my door wide open, that is not an invitation to be robbed. That the door was left open is not a defense for a robbery that has taken place. The second they hop the fence, however low the fence is off the ground and however easily hoppable, they should know they're in the wrong. The second that the students bypass a security, however lame that security is, they're crossing a line.

If we expect people not to take apples from a tree, we have to punish them for taking the lowest-hanging fruit.

I've been growing my facial hair back after shaving it all off a couple months ago. Part of my moustache is growing in a bit odd, with what appears to be a little bald patch on it. To move attention away from that I've been growing a full beard rather than my usual goatee.

Eel let me know last night that she prefers the goatee over the beard. I explained my rationale, though she still thinks that I should go ahead in that direction.

This reminded me of an interesting philosophical question: To what extent are we obligated to cater our look to our partner's preferences?

For instance, I believe that it is a husband or wife's duty not to completely let themselves go weight-wise. Weight gain with age is to be expected, though I also believe that a wife whose formerly athletic husband has become a 350-pound sloth has a legitimate beef. Basic health, basic grooming, and so on.

I also believe that we do not (or should not) marry someone with the expectation that they will remain a snapshot from the day we met. Weight gain is inevitable, wrinkles unavoidable, and so on. Besides that, we all grow up. The badass mohawk that seemed really cool at twenty loses its utility at thirty.

But it's the area in between that is more questionable. I should take Eel's view into account when growing facial hair or not. If something really matters to her and it doesn't to me, it's not productive to stand my ground just to demonstrate that she can't be the boss of me.

Similarly, as many of you know, I have a pretty serious aversion to nail polish. No one I've dated has ever had a real attachment to it, and the more serious ones made a point of not wearing it. I think that they did the right thing because it clearly mattered to me more than it did to her. Are my view on it irrational? Most people except myself would say so. But they're mine.

Of course, there are limits. I decided long ago that I will not have a bald patch in the back of my head or one of those little hair-patches in the front. Once it gets too uneven - if it does - I would prefer just shave it off. Or maybe I'll take Rogain. But this matters more to me than it could possibly matter to anyone else.

But the other half's point of view does really matter. When we get married or engaged or are trying to see if that's what we want, I believe that we are sacrificing some of our autonomy on even matters as central to us as our appearence.

"To be a conservative is to grasp that if you put a laughtrack on The Godfather it would be considered one of the great movie comedies of all time."

"A strong culture and weak government is better than a weak culture and a strong government, and those are the only two choices."

"Of course I harbor libertarian sympathies. All conservatives do. Who among us hasn't told a good-looking coed, 'I'm not really conservative, I'm libertarian.'"

"If three officers are going to hold someone down in the subway car while one of their number pumps 5 bullets into his head, they really need to make sure that they're right. Good call on remembering the suicide bombers should be shot in the head. Bad call on the execution style murder of the innocent. I suppose, though, that they could recast this as a victory in the war against illegal immigration. I know some Americans who would cheer them on, in that case."

"Every few years, there's another country that is held up as doing everything exactly right while we do everything exactly wrong. The tell-tale is that it is always a different country."

David Cohen of The Brothers Judd

A long time ago the Whitlocks had The Television That Would Not Die. There was nothing wrong with the television, which was its cheif problem. In a land where televisions almost universally had remotes and big-screen televisions were becoming increasingly commonplace, we were stuck with a non-cable-ready, unremoted, and unbigscreened set.

We waited and waited for that television to die, but it was, alas, The Television That Would Not Die. We watched it as though it were a pot about to boil, and like a non-boiling pot set to boiling temperatures under scrutiny, it would do nothing (except show laff-tabulous episodes of Gilligan's Island).

Eventually Mom caved and bought a bigscreen as a surprise for Dad. It was at least a year - I think more - before the television died an unceremonious death while in backroom service. It's death was as inconvenient as its prolonged life: we'd gotten used to have big television in the computer room and now we were without it.

Right now in Camille's apartment is a laptop. Like the above TV, there's nothing wrong with it. Okay, that's a lie. Unlike the TV above, there is everything wrong with this machine. It's running Windows 98, it's unstable, its network settings are still geared towards the LSU network, the modem scantly works, it's slow, it hasn't enough RAM, it has no USB ports, and no NIC. Right now it has a monitor that is not actually showing anything.

I've been giddily looking at laptop deals all morning.

Which of course means that her computer will be fine.

Because it is, after all, The Laptop That Will Not Die.

Update: It lives. Stupid undead laptop.

1. If you're wearing steel-toed boots, you can go ahead and take them off. You may think, like I did, that it's unseemly to take your shoes off while in a public airport, consider that you have to take them off anyway at the security check and consider it a way of letting security know that you pose no threat beyond the smell of your socks.

2. If you don't take your steel-toed shoes off, your ankles will hurt the next morning. You know this, yet you let it happen anyway. Moron.

3. CD cases make better pillows than do hard-cover books. Neither is great, but that's what you get for not bringing a jacket just because it's going to be hot the hole plane ride.

4. Las Vegas does, in fact, turn their slot machines sound off. Not the machines themselves, cause that might cut in to profits, but now they can profit from the mathematically challenged and desperate dregs of society in silence for those of us that wish to sleep.

5. Don't worry so much about setting off an alarm. You'll wake up every half-hour anyway during a particularly noisy item in the PSA queue.

6. If you're tired enough, none of the above matters.

7. The creases on your face will look like badass scars in the morning. Totally bad-ass.

As I hear new things about the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, I can't help but think of the relatively few Wonder Woman comics that I have. It was part of John Byrne's run earlier this decade. It was most notable because for the span I read it Wonder Woman was not actually in it and when she returned I moved on. So considering that the best Wonder Woman stories I've read don't have the starring character, this may be one marquee superhero movie I'll take a pass on.

Of course, I can't help but wonder a little bit what Diana's lack of appeal is, for me. Sexism? Maybe, but I'd see a Black Canary or Huntress movie in a New York minute. And the other marquee character that I have no interest in seeing a movie of, Aquaman, is quite male. One thing they do have in common is having a lot of roots outside the western world (Amazon for Diana and Atlantis for Arthur). But I'd see a Hawkman movie, and a lot of his history is off-planet. On the other hand, Thanagar is earth-like in everything except verticality. I'd also kill for a Martian Manhunter movie, and most of his history is on Mars. But then maybe the fact that his planet - like Krypton - no longer exists makes him more palatable to me.

For some reason I found myself gandering at IMDB this morning and there was actually a swath of interesting things in today's releases:

Earlier this year British newspapers reported Jude Law's fiancee Miller lost [of Edie Sedgewick in 'Factory Girl'] the part because she was not famous enough, although the English beauty insisted the film clashed with her role in London play As You Like It. But movie insiders claim Miller's celebrity status has been helped by Law's admission he had an affair with his children's nanny Daisy Wright three months into his seven-month engagement to Miller. The 23-year-old will now play drug-addict Sedgwick in the forthcoming movie, reports British newspaper The Daily Mirror.

Hollywood (as a representative of film overall) has this funny inability to figure out why there's so much hostility to it even as they continue to blur the line between notoriety and fame.

Hollywood star Charlize Theron forced movie bosses to change her costume design for forthcoming movie Aeon Flux - after deciding her character's original outfit was too revealing. When Theron saw the superheroine's skimpy crime-fighting outfit of a bikini, thigh-high boots and shoulder pads, she decided to add trousers to the outfit. The 29-year-old star admits, "When you're playing with aspects of sexuality, certain things have to be hidden. That's what my mother always used to tell me. I wanted to stay as true as possible to the original character, but didn't feel the need to go as far with the costume." The sci-fi movie, based on the comic book adaptation, is due to be released in the autumn.

Or maybe I shouldn't speak with such broad brushes. The artwork in Aeon Flux is sufficiently grotesque that the skimpy outfit is unnoticeable. Theron's got the right idea. I'd actually go a step further and give her a full-body Susie Storm kinda outfit. But there's a reason they never asked me:

Movie siren Scarlett Johansson was less than impressed with Ewan McGregor's kissing prowess while filming The Island, insisting he was no better than an adolescent. Johansson shared a screen smooch with the Scottish hunk, and although many women would swoon at the thought of locking lips with the clean-cut star, Johansson was left cold. She snipes, "He kissed me like a 16-year-old schoolboy."

I can't help but think that Miss Scarlet has realize that the more loudly she says irrelevent things about men, the more she makes the papers. Getting a tad suspicious of her mutterings, but I suppose it's a better way to go about it than having your fiance sleep with the nannie.

Director Mike Newell is using his forthcoming movie Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire to vent his seething mistrust of children. The 63-year-old film-maker is determined to obliterate any sense of false innocence in the magical tale, as he insists kids should be depicted in a more truthful light - as bloodthirsty maniacs. He says, "I was very anxious to break the franchise out of this goody-two-shoes feel. It's my view that children are violent, dirty, corrupt anarchists. Just adults-in-waiting basically."

You can help but feel a little scorn for a director who aims to use established material to push his own sociological beliefs on an audience largely comprised of children and their parents.