What a busy day for posts. And though this will once again preempt the hilarious OK Go treadmill video, I have to say something.

I’ve taken Bruce Tinsley to task before regarding his inability to be funny. For a comic strip writer, that’s what I would call a huge liability. And though he’s extremely conservative, and extreme conservatives simply don’t have it in them to be humorous (so goes my theory), he’s not alone in his poor humor on the funny pages. Hell, that stupid La Cucaracha comic is atrocious—head-banging-on-the-table atrocious—and it’s very liberal.

But I digress.

Here, look at the Mallard Fillmore from this Monday:

Yes, as you can see, not funny. But it’s also a bit infuriating, because that’s what happens when conservatives get a hold of anything complicated: They take a simplistic detail and use it as their talking point.

Of course Hezbollah, a terrorist, guerrilla operation, hides among the civilians of Lebanon. That’s how rats live. When you are fighting a huge power, like Israel or the U.S., and those huge powers have absolutely nothing in their hearts for you but, at the very best, dismissiveness, you really have no choice. If the U.S. got somehow taken over by, oh, I don’t know, an evil oligarchical government run by large companies and their friends, and that evil government began to, oh, I don’t know, chip away at the freedoms of its citizens until that government became, in the end, no better than the dictators and kings it still purported to loathe, and such events led to, oh, I don’t know, more subversive or violent oppression of the people… well, I imagine all patriotic countrymen who wanted to fight for the freedom that they were being denied would become, in effect, a terrorist, guerrilla operation. The oligarchy itself would waste no breath without calling the freedom fighters terrorists.

What’s so ignorant and ridiculous about the cartoon is that, were muggers to pull such a stunt with babies and other innocent people, the cops would not shoot at him. Or, rather, they should not shoot at him. Sure, that means the mugger has, for now, outsmarted the cops. But taking hostages is not anything new. It’s not like no mugger has ever hidden behind an innocent before.

Without being able to simply shoot the mugger, which is an extreme solution to begin with, the cops would have to rely on other means. Negotiation, perhaps. Or, as the movies like to show us, negotiation to buy time until another solution could be found. Suppose negotiation or another more covert way of apprehending the mugger were to fail and the mugger killed the baby before either killing himself or then being caught or shot by the cops… Who’s at fault for killing the baby? The mugger. If, while the mugger holds the child, the cops go in regardless, guns blazing, with the excuse that it is the only way to get this rat, then it is more likely the baby will die at their hands. In that scenario, who’s the one at fault? Law enforcement wold be at fault.

Those who choose to attack the mugger with the baby at risk and those who support people who make such violent decisions would claim it was the fault of the mugger for putting the baby in harm’s way in the first place. That kind of reasoning is slow-witted at best, calculatingly cruel at the worst. That sort of propaganda is no better than the mugger claiming that the police shooting at him were targeting the child.

In the Lebanon–Israel conflict, which still seems to be on hold, thank God, Israel was making the simplistic, inhumane, inelegant, cruel, and foolhardy choice in dealing with the rockets Hezbollah was firing into their country. They invaded a sovereign nation (the same thing we did in Iraq) to get at a military group that was, as anyone could have told them, not able to be destroyed with military might. If Israel really wants to destroy Hezbollah, they have to make measured, thoughtful, political choices. Hezbollah did not mainly arise out of brute force. It arose out of political and social circumstance. The only way to come close to destroying them militarily would be to nuke the entire region, and even then the annihilation of Hezbollah would not be assured.

The news is riddled now with stories of Hezbollah providing large cash payouts to people who suffered losses in the Israel attack. Harry Shearer, on Le Show, made an aside about how curious it was that Hezbollah was helping to repair the damage of the war while, in the U.S., our government isn’t doing anything tangible for the victims of hurricane Katrina. The point is that Hezbollah wins the hearts and minds of the people with a mix of propaganda and truly helpful financial and infrastructure contributions.

Israel gained nothing by destroying southern Lebanon for a month, and in fact will suffer political fallout from their foolishness. Just as the U.S. has gained nothing and lost much by having destroyed Iraq. Imagine how much more potent a non-military solution would have been in both Lebanon and Iraq. Were the U.S. to have worked for Saddam’s ouster through various well-placed and useful outlays of money and humanitarian aid, just think how much stronger our image would be. Such “soft power” solutions would not completely eradicate terrorism or resistance to the U.S., but it would lessen it and its attractiveness.

The trouble with such plans is that they take many, many years or even decades to bear fruit. Hawks don’t have any patience. Not until a war has begun, the justification for their existence is finally playing out, and all the friends of the government are raking in the cash from the building and selling of arms, are the hawks patient. Why should we accept that the military “war on terror” is going to be a long and hard one when it is unlikely to produce any good result? Why is it not more desirable to wage that long war with the morals and intelligence that are supposed to be the hallmarks of an advanced democratic civilization?

In the end, though Israel can claim they were not targeting innocent children, they certainly were. They knew that they would be killing many a civilian to get at the few rats that were hiding in their midst. Hezbollah can claim that Israel was purposefully targeting innocent children, even though they knew that, by being a target, they were in fact taking those innocent children hostage.

Who should have killed the children? Israel? Hezbollah? Should Israel have killed an exponentially larger number of civilians in a month than Hezbollah killed by launching the occasional, random rocket into Israel? Hezbollah’s rockets before the conflict were designed to kill civilians, but this is no excuse for Israel to retaliate in the same manner. In war, a baby killer is still a baby killer, no matter what the excuse.

To boil this all down to a mugger with a baby strapped to his front does nothing to enlighten, inform, or engage. It is not a sad truth or factoid, it is not a clever way to prove how evil Hezbollah is. It’s merely stupid. And it’s not even funny.

Therefore, I can only conclude what the headline here states: That Bruce Tinsley is an idiot.

Thank you, and good night!

The sane amongst us know that the recent security measures in airports that keep us from bringing liquids onto planes are about the stupidest “security” edicts to come our way in just about forever. I’ll be flying in a few weeks, and I’m honestly not sure how it’s all supposed to work, us not being allowed to bring liquids and gels onto planes. I mean, will I have to check my pens into the hold? They contain liquid. How about my bladder? Couldn’t I be storing one benign part of a magical liquid explosive in there?

If you have doubts about the viability of exploding an airplane using methods as purportedly planned by the recent London arrestees, or, more importantly, if you don’t have doubts, please to read an enlightening article in The Register: Mass Murder in the Skies: Was the Plot Feasible?

You may feel that, following my cereal post, I have no right to speak out against an overabundance of variety. Yet take a peek at this, won’t you? This is the sight that greets the casual toothpaste shopper of a day:

That, friends, was the toothpaste section at Target as seen at noon today. What’s more is that this is only the COLGATE section of the toothpaste section! I feel the picture does not do justice to the bewildering array of choices avalanching upon the consumer, so here’s a little recording of me reading off the flavors and kinds.

Yes, I was doing that on my phone as people were shopping around me. I imagined they would believe I was a simpleton boyfriend listing the toothpastes over the phone to my girlfriend because, had I come home with the wrong kind… Well, you know what girlfriends are like.

Now, despite the audio-visual aids, I still do not feel I have impressed upon you, gentle reader, the true scope of Colgate’s offerings. Text is often mightier than multimedia, so here, cobbled from various lists off the Colgate website, is their current spate of toothpaste options (all ®s and ™s removed to, ironically, dispense with clutter):

Cavity Protection Great Regular Flavor
Cavity Protection Winterfresh Gel
Total Whitening Paste
Total Whitening Gel
Total Clean Mint Paste
Total Mint Stripe Gel
Total Advanced Fresh Gel
Total 2in1 Advanced Fresh Gel
Max Fresh Cinnamint Tube
Max Fresh Cinnamint Bottle
Max Fresh Cool Mint Tube
Max Fresh Cool Mint Bottle
Max Fresh Clean Mint Tube
Max Fresh Clean Mint Bottle
2in1 Oxygen Whitening Cool Mint
2in1 Whitening with Tartar Control
2in1 Icy Blast Whitening Gel
2in1 Kids Bubble Gum
2in1 Kids Watermelon
Tartar Control Whitening Crisp Mint Paste
Tartar Control Whitening Cool Mint Gel
Sensitive Maximum Strength Plus Whitening Fresh Stripe
Fresh Confidence with Whitening Gel
Luminous Crystal Clean Mint
Luminous Paradise Fresh
Luminous Cinnamint
Simply White Advanced Whitening Spearmint
Simply White Advanced Whitening Sparkling Mint
Sparkling White Mint Zing
Sparkling White Cinnamon Spice
Sparkling White Vanilla Mint
Baking Soda & Peroxide Fresh Mint Stripe Paste
Baking Soda & Peroxide Whitening Oxygen Bubbles Brisk Mint Paste
Baking Soda & Peroxide Whitening Oxygen Bubbles Frosty Mint Striped Gel
Dora the Explorer Mild Bubble Fruit
SpongeBob SquarePants Bubble Fruit
Barbie Sparkling Bubble Fruit

If you find yourself flummoxed by this vast register, the Colgate site has a handy dentifrice interface for choosing which of their 37 breeds will suit you.

Me? I still use the original Colgate—now called, simply, “Cavity Protection Great Regular Flavor.” Though the “Baking Soda & Peroxide Whitening Oxygen Bubbles Brisk Mint Paste” sounds nice. Or maybe I’ll start using Crest. After all, they have 42 kinds of toothpaste. I applaud that commitment to consumer choice!

I’m in the middle of another post that I started on Thursday but have not had the time or energy to finish, so, really, I should not be writing this. But I have to, because it’s a truth I’ve noticed and want to bring up.

I was just reading an article in Dwell about how transportation shapes American cities.

While critics insist that the West Side Highway will have to be rebuilt to accommodate future traffic needs, Wiley-Schwartz argues that traffic needs are created by the creation of roads and parking.

L.A. is, as everyone knows, car-centric. The 405 is currently undergoing a widening from just north of my exit, Wilshire, southward toward LAX. The new lane they are adding in each direction is going to be for carpools only. Oh, and for registered hybrid vehicles. It’s the final piece of the south 405 that does not have a carpool lane. (For those of you outside L.A., yes, we put an article in front of the freeway number out here. It took some getting used to, believe me!)

I think carpool lanes are just about the stupidest things in the modern world. Their original purpose of getting people to ride together and thus ease traffic, pollution, and save gas is, without question from where I sit in traffic each day, a horrible failure. People don’t change their mode of transportation so that they may use the carpool lanes; they use the carpool lanes if their mode of transportation just happens to allow them to do so.

In 1998, New Jersey removed some of their carpool lanes (or High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes… HOV lanes) because they failed on two of three criteria established by the Federal government. Boy, when I heard about that back then, how I wished they’d do the same thing here!

I take the 405 every day to and from work. It is a notoriously crowded freeway. What’s sad is knowing that we’re enduring a few years of worse traffic caused by heavy construction so that a single new lane in each direction will be completed that will in no way ease congestion, lower pollution, or reduce gas consumption. I have often wondered how less often traffic would be jammed if a full lane of traffic were opened for every driver to use.

However, when I think about what Wiley-Schwartz said, I have to wonder if it would really matter in the long run whether another full-use lane is opened on the 405 or not. The cars will always be there, and so will the traffic. Since moving here in 1994, my constant thinking about increasing the capacity of the freeways in L.A., how that would be accomplished, how prohibitive the costs would be, and how much it would ease traffic if somehow it could be done, has always been tempered by the thought that, really, the last thing L.A. or any city anywhere needs is the environmental degradation and urban ugliness brought on by fatter freeways. Just seeing the unattractive results of the widening of the 405 over the last several months has made me realize what a waste of space a freeway really is.

Believe it or not, freeways are not why I started this post in the first place. I was gonna talk about surface-street traffic. Let’s go back to Dwell:

[Wiley-Schwartz] visits neighborhood groups who think that the way to solve parking problems is to add parking. […] “People just don’t get that if you build faster roads and you build more parking, there will be faster roads and more parking,” he says.

I have lived in L.A. long enough to see the creation of several new shopping mega-centers. I daren’t call them malls, as they are hardly that. Anyone who’s visited The Grove, an attractive shopping offshoot of the Farmers Market, knows that most of these new constructions are so much more than malls. There’s Hollywood and Highland, an ugly and difficult-to-navigate blotch that features shops, movie theaters, restaurants, a bowling alley, and the Kodak Theatre, where the Oscars are held. There’s Sunset and Vine, another ugly and uninviting place to eat, shop, or, in this case, live. There’s the addition to the Cinerama Dome that houses Arclight Cinemas, a gym, a culinary school, and lots of unsold space. There’s the Empire Center, a sprawling heat-infested asphalt and corrugated metal eyesore in Burbank. There’s the new clump of shops at Santa Monica and La Brea.

In every single one of these locations, despite some effort on the part of the city where each is located, traffic has become worse. Highland always had it’s problems, what with the Hollywood Bowl and all, but now you can be assured of a slow drive down that street most times of the day. I used to take 3rd street to cut quickly across town going to or from Hollywood, but thanks to The Grove, I can’t do that anymore. Driving in the vicinity of the Empire Center means running into long lines of cars.

Maybe this is not exactly what Wiley-Schwartz was saying, but it fits into the same category, I believe. In every instance of the creation of these new, multi-use coagulations, people arrive like flies to an outhouse. The Empire Center, for example, is a huge place. Gigantic! Yet as soon as it opened, boom, the parking lots got full, the stores crowded, and restaurants packed. All this without an apparent lag in the popularity of other consumer-centric playgrounds like downtown Burbank or Toluca Lake. How does this happen? Where do the people come from? Were they all sitting at home before this shopping paradise opened?

If you build a big, multi-use structure, there will be crowds. And crowds cause traffic, especially in L.A., where the only way to get anywhere is to drive. Perhaps the planning commissions and governments and guilds and leagues did their best to plan for this traffic. Or perhaps they didn’t. They should all have known that the boost in traffic is inevitable. Yet there are other new structures going up. There’s a huge one in Glendale, next to the ugly Galleria mall, that will make the traffic on Brand even worse than the hit-every-red-light disaster it already is. A mixed-use thingy is planned for West Hollywood, also on Santa Monica. That boulevard already sucks to drive on, so a bunch of new stores, restaurants, and apartments will only make it worse.

In my own neighborhood, a similar project is underway, though this one is skewed mostly toward condos. Oh, and it’s friggin’ 24 floors! With 79 condo units! And office space! And retail and restaurant space! I first heard about the project from a cab driver, via the touching tale of how the owner of the little liquor store at one corner of the property—the liquor store where I bought my parents a bottle of Dom Perignon one year for Christmas—was asking a selling price for his land that the developer thought was too high. The cabbie said the liquor store owner was asking so much because of the air space the high rise was going to need. Smart!

Not long after this mobile lesson in current local affairs, I started seeing “Going Out of Business” signs in the windows of the shops at that corner. Then, finally, one of those signs popped up at the liquor store. Did he get his price, or did he get shafted? Whatever the case, the whole parcel of land is now abandoned and ready for demolition/construction. I simply can not wait for the traffic in my own neighborhood to get worse than it already is, both during the building of the high rise and afterward, when people stream from all those new residents and businesses to and from other residences and businesses. Parking is definitely going to get even worse.

How can traffic be fixed? Can it? When cities like L.A. continue to grow, what can be done? When you expand the issue outward to the whole of human population, how can there be any fix for crowding and inconvenience and noise and mess and TRAFFIC?

Wiley-Schwartz and others with his mindset have it right, but no one cares about what they have to say. Like anything else, money is the only thing that matters to the people who make the decisions, and people are too lazy to change their habits anyway. My God, I’m guilty of that myself! I live here, don’t I? As long as I choose to live in a huge city like this, I’ll have to expect more congestive hives of commerce and more wastefully useless widening of freeways.

* * * * * *

Once again, I took what was going to be a short posting and turned it into a book. One good thing is I finally got down to researching the high rise that’s going up a block-and-a-half from me. For your fun and delight, I present some of the links here now.

October 2001: Original developer petitions for the project

July 2003: Land sold to new developer

July 2004: New developer at the Brentwood Community Council

December 2004: Approval by Los Angeles City Council

August 2005: Changes and liquor store capitulation

I simply have not had the time or taken the time to post recent thoughts up here, which is a shame. So today, I have some tidbits.

1) Israel is wrong and, like the U.S. invading Iraq, is making their own situation worse by killing, maiming, and destroying the lives of thousands of innocent people. (Okay, the civilian death toll so far is over 1,000, but trust me, it’s only going to get worse. As if 1,000 is some kind of acceptable number.)

2) Dog owners should be aware that after taking their dog for a walk and picking up the mess in a plastic bag, some people might not be so keen to have you touch them or anything until that hand has been washed. Though plastic is a wonderful barrier, the thought that that hand just grabbed some poop is enough to require a washing. And you never know if a tiny hole is present! You never know!

3) I want to see Little Miss Sunshine again. Were I still doing movie reviews, I would have complimented its originality, cleverness, and charmingality. The fact that Little Miss Sunshine is the only summer movie I’ve seen so far that I will be making an effort to see again says something about the quality of said summer movies.

4) Also, please wash your hands after major dog playing/petting if you want to then use those hands for an amorous human encounter.

5) I added new navigation buttons to The Wren Forum. For some reason, they suddenly worked, whereas before, I could not get them to. Hmm. The ones at the top ruin the design slightly, but are convenient. I do not know if anyone cares.

6) Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut yesterday. Hooray. He’s nasty. For someone who says he’s progressive, he’s sure done a lot of extremely non-progressive things in his time. He’s now running as an independent, and I hope he loses bad.

7) I found a mushroom growing out of my bathroom ceiling today, right where a new water leak has materialized. Great. I have to call my landlord again about that leak. So I’m done with this post.

With Israel bombing Palestine and Lebanon, killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in the process, merely because a few soldiers were kidnapped (hey, they’re soldiers… they’re meant to be shot at, killed, kidnapped, mistreated, since they are meant to do the same to others), I’ve been in a disgusted political mood the last couple days. As I listened to the stories of the Lebanese bombing campaign on my drive into work this morning, I thought something: I am, currently, not proud to be an American. I can say that without reservation. Most of my life, I have felt very lucky, very privileged to have been born here, especially as a white male. Really, what kind of cushy luck is that?

But with my country behaving, under the leadership of rabid, greedy cretins, as a self-righteous, indignant bully with a victim complex, teasing and taunting and provoking anyone out there who might have a beef with us to begin with into some kind of rabid, self-righteous, indignant froth of their own, I am ashamed and not at all proud of what America is doing to the world.

So it’s time to bash the conservatives again. Mostly because it’s so easy, so fun, and makes me feel just a little bit better! (A war of words on a blog is nothing compared to an actual, physical war where hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent people are killed.)

I thank Alan for giving me today’s ammunition. He sent the following yesterday.

First, this video, with former White House Consel under Nixon, John Dean. Now, Dean is no liberal. He had a big hand in the Watergate thingy. Yet he’s written a book called Conservaites Without Conscience where he decries the amorality of the neoconservative leadership of the Republican party.

I have not read the book, so I can not vouch fo it in any way. But watch what he says in this video and see if it all doesn’t make some kind of sense. Concerning the bit about those in power using terrorism and even provoking terrorism in an effort to keep hold of that power, didn’t we see that from day one, when the WMD/Iraq situation was first concocted? It is certainly another “we told you so” moment.

This article includes a partial rush transcript of the video.

On the still infuriating but much lighter side is the following Flash animation: Become Republican by Brian Frisk. He’s got some other fun stuff on that site, too.

If you don’t think we should all be worried about those Americans who believe killing everyone else is in the best interest of our country, and that there are not Americans out there who fall for the Enemy of the Day bullshit, take a quick look at this unfortunate forum discussion. “The Idiotic Stand” might be more apt name for the site. This kind of mentality is exactly the same as that of many of the Islamic terrorists who do genuinely want to destroy us. The dumb-ass head-butting of two cement-craniumed ideologies only leads to disaster. Just because we happen to be stronger militarily does not make our violent and unforgivable indignation justified, moral, righteous, or correct. We do not get to claim the high road just because we are America and they are Islamic extrimists.

What gets me, too, is that people like those who comment on The Patriotic Stand don’t like our current government, either. They want us to be more belligerent, more violent, more protectionist, and more close-minded, more hateful of anything seen as different. Scary.

The simplistic reaction is to destroy. That tactic has not created a kind, peaceful, or pleasant world. I say this time and again, but as a powerful nation whose foundation is supposed to be based on freedom for mankind, we must take a higher road and not stoop to the crass bloodshed of revenge. The Patriotic Stand would call that a wussy stance. But then, they would. They can only insult that which is more civilized.

So I may not be a proud American, but I am American enough to wish that we could be a nation that others can look up to without hating us. Maybe that’s idealistic, but then, so is the dream of a close-bordered, supremely religious nation bristling with weapons of harm.

Silly headline, I know, but I just wanted to throw this up as quickly as possible, especially following the Star Wars fiasco (Star Wars v3.1b vs. 1.0 and Coca-Co— er, Star Wars Classic).

I have been waiting years for this, and it’s finally happening. Ridley Scott is releasing his multi-version DVD of Blade Runner. Here’s a press release (also sent to me by Marcy):

Warner Home Video is bringing Ridley Scott’s futuristic film noir classic Blade Runner back to DVD in a big way.

After recently securing a new long-term agreement for the worldwide rights to the 1982 film, Warner announced several new DVD releases to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

In September, Warner presents a limited four-month re-release of the 1992 director’s cut of the film, which was originally released as one of the first DVDs in 1997. For years this has been the only version of the film officially available on DVD.

“A number of people have told me that in the start-up days of DVD, Blade Runner was absolutely the first DVD title they wanted, so much so that they purchased it even before their first DVD player,” said Jeff Baker, SVP and GM of WHV.

In 2007, Warner will unveil Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Scott’s definitive new version of the cult classic, which stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos and Daryl Hannah.

The film will be released theatrically in select major U.S. cities, followed by a multidisc special-edition DVD release that also will contain three alternate versions of Blade Runner: the original U.S. theatrical cut, the expanded international theatrical cut and the 1992 cut. A wide array of bonus features are being prepared for the anniversary edition.

“This is clearly Ridley’s signature film, and we are thrilled to have it back,” Baker said.

Compare that with what Lucas has been doing with his movie. In the realm of science fiction, Star Wars and Blade Runner stand out as being true classics, genre-defining films that sent all moviemaking onto new paths. However, Ridley is smart enough to give all fans of his movie a choice. A true fan of this movie, like me, will eagerly slurp up every version to examine and compare. In fact, back in 1999, Marcy and I showed up at a 70mm screening of what was advertised to be the director’s cut of Blade Runner, only to be surprised that it was a film festival/audience preview version of the film from before its original release. I won’t repeat the details here because I wrote a long, detailed review back when I was knee-deep in Reviews on the Side. Go read that review if you’re at all curious about the movie or about how deeply-rooted my geek genes run.

Back to the point: I would have eagerly slurped up multiple versions of Star Wars and Empire on DVD, but I’m a filthy, unintelligent, unwashed fan-dog who knows nothing of the brilliance of Lucas’ final (yeah, right) version of those movies. Lord Lucas has pooh-poohed both his own artistic creation of 1977 and the fans’ love of that version. He knows best.

I know Ridley has a big ego and can be a pain in the ass, but he is not so self-absorbed and egotistical to believe that any current vision he might have of Blade Runner is the only one the world should ever see. Lucas, on the other hand, seems to be so out of touch that he, like a dictatorial lunatic, has been trying to sell the world on his modern version of Star Wars alone, and like the memory hole in 1984, the past should be re-written or erased. If George had any sense, he’d do what Ridley is doing: release a nice DVD set that includes all versions of the movie (without the cheapskate packaging and art that Fox was forced to use for all the Star Wars DVDs). I know that Ridley has been working on this Blade Runner set for years, and I trust that the multiple versions will all be at least somewhat restored and, at the very least, ANAMORPHIC. Ridley is not alienating his fans (NO PUN INTENDED! REALLY!), but appreciating them, letting them have something wonderful to watch and geek out to. Georgie, on the other hand, has consistently angered us, and now I, for one, could give a shit about this upcoming release. If Georgie had, from the start, come out with a set containing the three versions of the movies (yes, Empire has been changed again), we’d all have been happy and snapped up the sets like mad, thanking George for letting us enjoy the variations of the movie he has so gently offered forth to us, his mighty fans.

Ridley also has the advantage, for the sake of this comparison rant, that his 1982 theatrical version of Blade Runner was butchered by the studio. His director’s cut in 1992 was truly Ridley bringing the film back into line with what he’d intended to make. The version I saw in 1999 is proof of this. (Again, see my review for more details.) I imagine Ridley’s “final cut” version will be cleaning up the scars left from salvaging the 1992 version from out of the flames of the 1982 version. He will not be making Pris an all-CG creation to present his original concept of her as more impossibly beautiful and Replicant-like. Or some other Lucasian bullshit like that.

Well, so much for the short post. I’m very excited. But I have not wet my pants. I’ll leave that to others. I require dry and comfortable briefs for the rest of the day.

So in case you guys are wondering why John so vehemently defends all of George’s changes to the original Star Wars movies, it’s his job! Most people reading this probably don’t know that. John works for marketing at Lucasfilm. While I do enjoy a good Star Wars row on The Wren Forum, what we all should understand is that John can’t very well agree with us, even if he wanted to. (I don’t think he’d want to.)

With that prologue out of the way, here’s something interesting from Video Business, forwarded to me by Marcy:

In the wake of extreme fan protests, Lucasfilm is positioning its release of the original ’70s theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars movies as bonus features.

As groused about on various DVD enthusiast Web sites, including www.thedigitalbits.com and www.hometheaterforum.com, Lucasfilm confirmed the studio is not remastering these early films. The prints for the Sept. 12 DVDs of Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi come from laserdiscs of the films released in the mid ’90s. This means that Episodes IV-VI will be presented in widescreen but not anamorphic, thereby not making full use of modern TV screens.

Lucasfilm acknowledges that some imperfections are embedded in the prints, but director of publicity John Singh said the company felt there was little need to invest resources into sprucing up films that have already been restored to pristine form.

Special edition versions of the films with additions made by George Lucas were released in theaters in the ’90s and on DVD in 2004.

“We put a lot of time and effort into digitally restoring the negatives for the 2004 DVD releases,” Singh said. “The late ’90s theatrical versions represent George’s vision for Star Wars. We hoped that by releasing the original movies as a bonus disc, it would be a way to give the fans something that is fun. We certainly didn’t want to be become a source of frustration for fans.”

Although the prints aren’t in the best of shape, the masters used for the laserdiscs “do look good,” Singh assured.

Both old and new versions of Episodes IV-VI will be included in the Sept. 14 Star Wars sets, to be distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The revamped ’90s theatrical versions will be offered in anamorphic widescreen.

This release also represents the first time the movies will be available individually on DVD.

Fans have threatened to boycott buying the original Star Wars films if they aren’t cleaned up.

“These are the versions that the fans saw as kids back in the ’70s—this was how they grew up,” said Ron Epstein, HomeTheaterForum.com co-owner. “George doesn’t like these versions, and it’s not the way he wants his legacy to be remembered. But fans [are saying], ‘You aren’t doing us a favor [in putting out] what basically amounts to a laserdisc transfer.”

Aware of the uproar, Lucasfilm is in the process of directly contacting its upset fan base in an attempt to smooth things over.

Some fans had been speculating that Lucasfilm was saving its big gun efforts for the new generation DVD formats. But the company said that at this time, there are no plans to release the original ’70s Star Wars versions in high-definition.

“We absolutely appreciate the fact that these fans are so passionate,” Singh said. “It’s indicative of the fact that they care so much about Star Wars.”

Well, how about that? I think everyone knows what’s wrong with Lucasfilm’s statements regarding the old films, and yes, it pretty much does end up being a “screw you, fans” thing. “We appreciate [insert concern here]” is corporate speak for “We don’t really care but must act concerned anyhow.” (Or, in the case of customer support issues, The Consumerist says, “I damn well know that ‘I appreciate your concerns’ is shorthand in your industry for ‘We’re not going to help you.'”)

How clever that the original movies are only “bonus features.” What spin! And saying “the company felt there was little need to invest resources into sprucing up films that have already been restored to pristine form” is ludicrous; the originals were not spruced up, and that’s what the problem is here. Clever marketing speak (read: LIES) does not change the fact that the originals, which are what people really want out of this release, are gonna look like crap.

I reiterate that it is John’s job to create statements supporting his employer’s position. And as he once hinted he’d do, he has, indeed, started a blog devoted to criticizing the company I myself work for. (You can also get there via the Epcot Central link in the Wren Peeps box.) But I don’t care. In fact, I tend to agree with him on everything he posts there. His site is well-written, passionate, and, most of the time, dead-on regarding Disney’s missteps with its theme parks. Maybe if I were in a marketing or PR position here, I’d have to watch what I say about Disney. But I’m not, and I don’t, thank God.

As far as the Star Wars movies go, I, of course, fully appreciate John’s approach to this issue. However, I am unable to support his employer’s viewpoint at this time.

UPDATED! You can skip to it here.

Since Disney pays for my cell phone service, I have not used my home phone for anything but incoming calls and the occasional toll-free number call. A while back, I pared down my Verizon and my AT&T services to the absolute minimum so that I could still have a land line in case of emergencies. Oh, and because I get DSL and have to have a Verizon telephone account to get the DSL. Yeah, I know, stupid requirement.

The AT&T plan I chose was a pay-as-you-go thingy, which means I haven’t paid any long-distance charges for many moons.

Here’s the post card I got in the mail today:

Beginning with bills issued on or after July 1, 2006, a $5 monthly usage minimum charge will apply to the AT&T One Rate® Simple plan. If your monthly AT&T qualifying calling charges* are less than $5, the difference will be included in your bill for that month. For example, if your applicable monthly calling charges are $4.00, then $1.00 will be added to your bill.

(The bold and the asterisk are part of the original text, so I left it in. The asterisk led to some mumbo-jumbo that meant nothing to me.)

I called the number on the card, and once I was in the menu branch explaining the new charge, I could not get out to talk to anyone. When I called the number back, I was told by the recording that the AT&T Customer Care office was closed for the day.

I got out the one piece of paper I have with any AT&T info on it from when I changed my plan, and I called the different number there. Same thing. Yes, AT&T no longer has 24-hour customer service.

I went to the website and hunted around (after first creating a new user account so I could do so). I compared the plans to see if they had one without the fee. Under the Fee column of the plan comparison page, three plans said “None³.” Ah, yes. The numbered footnote. That said, “³Learn about the Minimum Usage Charge that applies to this plan.” Following the link, I was treated to a wonderful surprise: All of the fee-free plans were not at all fee-free. There was a monthly minimum charge for all of them.

Poking around, I found I could not cancel my account online, which was fine, because I wanted to cancel in someone’s face. But there was an inviting “TAKE A SURVEY” link, so I clicked it and did so. At the end of the survey, I was offered a text box. Heh heh heh. I wrote something fun. Then I went to the e-mail section and sent AT&T an e-mail.

Below is what I sent through the e-mail interface:

I sent a comment via a survey on your website (see below), but I will send it to you again anyway. I have also posted this experience on my blog, which is read by at least five people, and will tell a couple consumer-sympathetic sites I know about it. Just because. I know you will not be quaking in your boots to hear this. I know you will not care that you have lost a customer who has not been making long-distance calls from home as of late. However, you should know that charging for “nothing” is a pretty reprehensible practice. I chose the long-distance plan I chose so that I would only pay you if I used your services. Now you’re planning to charge me for doing nothing. It’s disgusting.

I also know that there’s a small chance you will send me some reply message written by a Frankenstein committee of marketing and legal, the meaning of which will be, in the end, “too bad.” I look forward to that message and getting a good laugh and eye-roll out of it.

Following is the message I sent in the survey:

I am a decades-long AT&T customer. Your stupid $5 minimum charge that goes into effect July 1 for my “no-fee” plan, and the fact that all of your “no-fee” plans now effectively have a fee (which makes your company a big, fat liar), has left me no choice but to cancel my service with you. I have been making my long-distance calls from my cell phone as of late, but had your plan in place on my land line in case I ever needed it. But I will not pay $5 to your company for providing no service whatsoever. You also no longer have a 24-hour customer service number—an SBC carryover “feature,” perhaps?—so I will be calling tomorrow morning to cancel. I realize that you are no longer truly AT&T, but just another big-ass conglomerate who doesn’t care about its customers. Good luck gouging your remaining customers. Bye-bye.

The sad thing about all this is that, even though Disney pays for it, my cell service is through Cingular, which is SBC, which is AT&T. They’re still getting my (or someone’s) money. I hope they don’t figure this out and have themselves a good laugh and eye-roll.

UPDATE!

I called AT&T today, and the woman was very nice. She laughed when I called the new fee “stupid.” I hated to pull the miffed customer routine on her, but, hey, I am a miffed customer!

In fact, I recorded the call. There it is, below, ready to be played for your amusement and horror. (It won’t show up in the RSS feed, so you’ll have to actually visit the site! DOUBLE HORROR!)

Also, in case you don’t make it into the comments area, it seems Tanya had to deal with AT&T as well, though she was nice enough to get the lady’s name and thank her.

UPDATE REDUX!

I did indeed get a response e-mail from AT&T. However, it neither provided me with a good laugh or an eye-roll, so I’m not even going to re-print it here. Yes, it was that corporately boring!

Time for a frivolous post that will be of no interest to anyone but myself.

I am a picky person. This is obvious the more one reads this site. One of the areas about which I am super-picky is gadgets. One of the gadgets about which I am über-super-picky is cell phones.

I proffer for reference this and this.

Okay, so I have had my Nokia 6230 for over a year now. I love this phone. It’s small and packed with every feature I want. However, the one important feature on the phone that should not be buggy is buggy, and that’s the voice dialing. Often, after speaking the tag assigned to who I’m calling, the voice dialing mode freezes. I then have to either wait a minute or two for it to stop freezing and pop back into action, or I have to turn off the phone and start it back up.

Did I dare contact Cingular about this? No. Or at least, not right away. Like every other massive company these days, their support people are clueless about anything technical. So I have been putting up with the flaw.

In January, I was in Vegas for CES and stopped by the Nokia booth. There, I started talking to one of the booth monkeys and showed him my 6230. You know, every time I talk to someone who knows anything about Nokia and cell phones, when they find out I have a 6230, they inevitably say, “Oh, that’s a great phone.” Booth monkey said such, and I told him, “Yeah, but…”

After describing the voice dialing freeze, the guy told me that that flaw had been fixed long ago with a firmware update and suggested I talk to Cingular about that.

Foolishly, I tried to follow his advice. The conversation with the Cingular monkey went something like this:

“Yes, a guy who works for Nokia told me I just need a firmware update.”

“Do you ever turn off your phone?”

“Uh, why?”

“That’s when we push updates to the phones.”

I declined to point out that nothing can be pushed to a phone when it’s turned off, but I think I understood what she meant.

“The only time I ever turn off my phone is when I fly or when the voice dialing thing screws up, so, yes, I do turn off my phone.”

“Well, try turning it off tonight and see if anything happens.”

I gave up right quick on Cingular being able to help me.

Slam cut to a few weeks ago. Sven and I were inside the belly of the bloated whale that is The Beverly Center. I noticed something peculiar: A Nokia store! Zounds! I went in it right then, and once more the next week to ask some questions, and then again Monday. I had a plan: To replace my Cingularly bastardized phone for a real, unmolested Nokia 6230. Or, in the parlance of the geeky, an unlocked 6230.

You see, the American cell companies utterly control which phones are sold in the U.S. Because the phones are heavily subsidized by the cell companies, they go through a lengthy process of choosing from whatever phones the equipment makers have and tweaking them to do what the cell company wants. This usually includes removing features that force you to spend more money on services.

For instance, my Cingular 6230 does not allow me to save ringtones and games that I purchase where I want. Such things are stored in a place your average Joe can’t get at them, so that when you get a new phone you can’t copy those things to it. Oh, I suppose the cell companies say it’s to prevent piracy, but that’s everyone’s excuse for shafting the consumer.

Another feature that was disabled on my phone is network selection. This became an issue on my business trip to France last year. (Oddly, I seem to have not mentioned it in the travelogue.) My phone was not working on Cingular’s preferred roaming partner in Paris. The signal was also very poor where we were staying. On a real, unmolested phone, I would have been able to go into the settings and tell me phone to try another network. But no, Cingular had disabled that feature, and I had to make many land-line calls and wait days for Cingular and the French company to fix the issue.

[UPDATE: If you don’t believe me about phones being crippled by the cell companies, read this recent tidbit.]

Most cell phones that use GSM (which is what Cingular’s system uses) are tri-band phones. That means that there are three GSM bands it can use: 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz. Sadly, the GSM carriers in the States tend to use 850, 1800, or 1900. So often there’s even more of a delay getting new phones to the States while the equipment manufacturers create a separate version that swaps 850 for 900. Can this be any more tediously boring? Or, if you’re like me, could it be any more tediously frustrating?

So I went to the Nokia store on Monday to get an unlocked phone. When I told the guy there about my voice dialing problem and so on, he said that often those things can be caused by the cell companies messing with the OS on the phones. (I do not imagine the cell companies do this on their own, however, but with the help of the equipment manufacturers as well. They want to sell phones in the States!)

The conversation with the Nokia man was becoming curious, making me finally ask, “Do you sell the phones here?” They do not! It’s merely a showroom. He told me where I could buy an unlocked 6230. Somewhere on Sunset. Or I could buy it online at Nokia, where there are very few unlocked phones for sales in the U.S.

So the iron grip of the dumb-ass cell phone companies seemed in tact. Nokia couldn’t even sell their own phones unless they wanted to risk being dropped by the cell companies out of spite and greed.

To add pain to the whole affair, Nokia yesterday announced some new phones, one of which looked like a great set with the elements I want most: small size, Bluetooth, and, now, a camera. (I have gotten very used to posting to The Wren Forum from my cell phone!) The new N73 looks brilliant. While Motorola has been releasing many quad-band phones, which are 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 and thus usable just about anywhere in the world, including the U.S., Nokia has been slow to follow suit. But the N73 is quad-band.

The pain is that, once again, there would be a delay in the U.S. while the cell phone folks decided whether to pick up the N73 at all and, if so, how to change it so the phone is missing features. It could easily be a year before the N73 ever gets to America, if ever even at all, ever!

A final piece of news came in today that prompted me to write this boring post: Nokia is opening stores in the U.S.! While I don’t live in Chicago or New York, where the first stores are slated to sprout, I’m sure that once the stores open up, I’ll be able to buy an unlocked N73 online from Nokia. And then, friends… then my cell phone happiness will reach its peak! I will hold onto my crippled 6230 for now while I see what happens.

The fact that I have just written a forty-thousand-word piece on this topic reminds me of something I’ve been pondering a while. What if I were to get rid of all my gadgets? Maybe by the time I can buy an unlocked N73, I will have set all my gadgets ablaze and moved to a house in the Colorado Rockies somewhere, hiking and reading and living a simpler life.

Did I not say I should stop reading the newspaper? Did I not learn the ensuing lessons of posting anything about religion?

I did. And I didn’t.

Simply scanning the front page of the Times today, the following article came to my attention. Click it to read, perchance to weep [NOTE: Link now goes to a PDF file]:

Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies

Cute little headline there, but the reported nonsense isn’t cute at all. Just read it! Is it any wonder I feel I need to lash out against these morons? These people hang themselves with their idiocy, but I simply have to point it out to others so that those of us who are of stable and thoughtful mind might be the ones to finally kick the stool away. And Matt and any other sane religious people out there should want to join me in the kicking!

This quote is kind of like jumping into the middle of the pond without first walking along the dock, so read the story first.

Okay, now that you’ve done that, re-live, with gawking kisser, the following:

“What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn’t mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn’t work?” asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal.

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different—a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.

By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. […]

“Think how marginalized racists are,” said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom. “If we don’t address this now, it will only get worse.”

My goodness! Conservative Christians in bed with the racists? Horrors! This certainly would be the first time that’s ever happened. I proffer that the racists are marginalized for a good reason, and that Mr. Baylor needs to go buy his plot of land in Racistville right now, because he’s going to need to be building a nice little house for himself.

It’s the concept of “inborn” vs. “lifestyle choice” that is the very pivot of such arguments. (See, once again, John’s corresponence with Linda Harvey. Follow the links from this comment.) As the evidence for the genetic seat of homosexuality begins to accumulate, this final point of argument is in danger of being proved wrong. Now, of course, I’ve already spoken about how some (some, I repeat!) religious folks have no trouble ignoring scientific evidence. The people in favor of gay-bashing in the Times article will carry on bashing gays as long as they wish, despite any genetic evidence or otherwise to demonstrate that homosexuality is not a choice. But once the proof becomes overwhelming, these nutters will, indeed, begin to become marginalized just as racists are. In fact, the process has already begun.

I do believe that this sort of behavior is simply the final struggle, the desperate fight back against a social change these people consider detrimental and, I suppose, unholy. As the saying goes, when the cat is cornered, it’ll fight back. Is that a saying? If not, pretend it is for today. Anyway, that’s what’s happening. These mangy cats are fighting from a corner they’ve inevitably gotten themselves into. If the country doesn’t get any more screwed up politically than it is, these people will lose. They will hang themselves, and their souls will not go to heaven but to Racistville.

I might add that they could have difficulty finding people to style their hair or apply delicious window treatments once there. But there should be plenty of pleated slacks!

Remember a couple of years ago when I got into that e-mail exchange with the woman who hated gay people?  Well, after reading a news story about another ridiculous anti-gay effort, I decided to write to the head of the Capitol Resource “Institute”. (I use that “Institute” term loosely.

Below is the text of my letter. I’ll let you know if she responds!
****************************************

 

Dear Ms. England,

I read your comments about the “gays in textbooks” issue in California, and while I certainly applaud you for standing up for your ideals and beliefs.

I hope you will agree that other Americans deserve to be able to do the same.

As a gay man, I can assure you of this: I have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in “promoting” my “agenda” to anyone, least of all children. Given how much animosity, hostility and humiliation we must endure from some sectors of society who believe we are “faulty,” I would not want anyone to “be gay” — unless, of course, that is how they were born.

I do realize that the idea that people are born gay is a difficult concept for people to understand. Just as I cannot conceive of being left-handed or being tall (something I sadly am not) or being Chinese or being a woman, it’s certainly equally difficult for someone not gay to understand that being gay is part of our genetic makeup.

But being unable to understand or empathize with an individual is very different from being able to respect and value that person.  I cannot imagine for a moment that you would want to instill values like hate, prejudice, hostility and intolerance in any child.  I hope you agree with me that the values we want to instill in children are acceptance, harmony, understanding and respect.  Why would you want to promote an agenda (and, yes, it appears that you definitely have one of those, just as you accuse “us” of having) of fear and ignorance, which can only lead to unhappiness and anger?

Can you imagine what the world be like if Michelangelo, Cole Porter, Oscar Wilde, Dag Hammarskjold, Socrates, Walt Whitman, Alexander the Great, T.E. Lawrence and Tchaikovsky had not been in it?  All of them were gay or bisexual, and just as YOUR most significant personal relationships have impacted your own accomplishments, theirs were informed and influenced by who they were as people.

Such important figures in California as Harvey Milk and Randy Shilts have impacted history far beyond this state and influenced the course of events around the world — and their very existence is the definition of modern history.  To not name them as gay, particularly in light of their accomplishments, would be like not naming you as a woman in a textbook in which your name appears.

I urge you to continue looking into your own heart to realize that California and the United States are founded upon the contributions of people from all walks of life, not just straight white people.

I absolutely PROMISE you that, unless s/he already is, not one child will “turn gay” because s/he has learned about a famous gay person; if it were that easy, I would have become a physician by learning about Dr. Jonas Salk, and I’m afraid I never even made it past basic chemistry.

My best to you,

John Singh

Looks like Wal-Mart has actually done something sensical and has taken a stand against the vile American Family Association. In a story reported today, Wal-Mart says it will sell and continue to sell the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain on DVD.

Bravo.

By its actions and words, the now-less-than-entirely-reprehensible Wal-Mart has said that Brokeback is a movie with an audience, and a movie they want to sell. (Perhaps they realize how many men will be coming in to Wal-Mart to surrpetitiously look at the package and maybe even buy the movie to secretly watch at home before they go back to their redneck lives in which they hide their true nature from their bigoted communities?)

In the Reuters story, a heinously misguided AFA spokesman says, “It wasn’t even a blockbuster movie, so if Wal-Mart isn’t trying to push an agenda, why would they put it at the front door?”

Perhaps the AFA should take a harsher stance against the other non-blockbusters that Wal-Mart routinely sells and promotes. You know the movies I mean—stuff like The Dukes of Hazzard, which grossed only $80 million in the U.S. (less than Brokeback, despite its Confederate flags); Because of Winn-Dixie ($42 million worldwide); Doom ($43 million worldwide); and Ice Princess ($33 million globally).

On the other hand, if the AFA is continuing to decry the mere presence of Brokeback Mountain on Wal-Mart shelves because of some Biblical objection to homosexuality, you have to wonder why they don’t object to the presence of such movies as Saw and Saw II, Sin City, and Red Eye, since the Ten Commandments lists “Thou shalt not kill” as one of the most important commandments from God. To date, I haven’t seen the notes from God requesting a Commadnment rewrite that “Thou shalt not have sex with men if you are a man.”

It continues to amaze me that the AFA uses obscure Scripture to object to homosexuality so vehemently, but rarely (if ever) makes mention of the legion of its own members who daily break one of God’s supreme Commandments (you think not a one of them ever says, “Oh, G-d”?).

AFA members will never read this, but if one of them should happen upon it, ask yourself: Shouldn’t you be upholding God’s laws before worrying about possible allusions to potentially “God-offending” behavior elsewhere in the Bible?

 

I do NOT have time to be writing this. I have to be at work at 6:00am tomorrow, I still have a sinus infection I caught over a week ago, and I am dead tired. But this simply has got me riled up. Not in a fuming way, but in a resigned way, as much of the political news these days has dulled the rage.

Mallard Fillmore is an unfunny comic added to the sadly anemic and unfunny pages of the Los Angeles Times a few years back during some strange effort to balance the left-leaning stance of the funny pages with a conservative voice. There’s a good reason there were no conservative comics in the Times a decade ago (unless you count the barely disguised rantings of The Wizard of Id): conservatives tend to not be very funny. Granted, the liberal La Cucaracha is sadly, painfully unfunny as well, but on the whole, the more liberal comics have a better track record of being funny where the conservative comics just aren’t. I think liberals are more funny because they can laugh at themselves and others. Conservatives can not laugh at themselves, only at others.

But that’s another subject I’ve been meaning to write about for eons now.

No, today I’m disgusted by this. Here are the last three days of Mallard, reprinted here without permission:

See? Not funny. Not even a smidgen. But again, that’s not why I’m writing this.

When I saw the first one on Monday, I had a feeling this Tom Coburn guy, though taking what sounded through Mallard author Bruce Tinsley’s eyes like an admirable stance on less government spending, was going to be a meany in other matters, just like everyone else Bruce and his staunch lot love.

After today’s comic, I had to check. So I did a little reading.

This is from Tom’s official Senate webpage: “Dr. Coburn’s priorities in the Senate include reducing wasteful spending, balancing the budget, improving health care access and affordability, protecting the sanctity of all human life including the unborn and representing Oklahoma values.”

So okay, not a surprise that Tom is a pro-lifer. But then I came upon a Salon article from before Tom was elected, back in September of 2004. Here’s an early snippet from the article:

For Coburn, the imminent danger facing America is apparently not terrorism but the “gay agenda.” His thumping about this menace within contributed to the pressure that led to Bush’s endorsement of a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage. At a Republican meeting this spring, Coburn warned: “The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power … That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That’s a gay agenda.”

Oh, my, but it gets better.

In 1997, Coburn proposed a bill that would have ended anonymous testing for HIV/AIDS and required reporting the names of those who tested positive to public health authorities, among other draconian measures—including withholding Medicaid funding from states that failed to comply.

This from the guy President El Busho appointed as Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS.

But there’s more. Remember, Bruce thinks Tom is for less governmental spending:

In 1996, after voting for provisions of an agriculture bill that aided Oklahoma farmers, Coburn told the Wall Street Journal that it made him sick for days afterward and that Washington was “a dirty place.” In 1997, he boasted, “I don’t ask for anything from Appropriations.” The year after that, he complained to USA Today that he was underpaid as a congressman: “You have to be able to earn more money to attract good people.”

Uh huh. How about this?

As far right as Coburn is on fiscal issues, he is even farther right on social issues. “I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life,” he told the Associated Press in July.

What a sweet fellow. Here are more juicy bites:

A year later, Coburn gained a moment of national attention when he condemned NBC for televising the Academy Award-winning movie on the Holocaust “Schindler’s List.” According to Coburn, the film encouraged “irresponsible sexual behavior,” and he called for outrage against the network from “parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere.” He added, “I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program.”

In 1999, after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, Coburn opposed President Clinton’s proposal for making adults liable if they allow their children to buy guns and harm others. “If I wanted to buy a bazooka to use in a very restricted way, to do something, I ought to be able to do that,” said Coburn.

I have to wonder if someone like Bruce is so very, very concerned with smaller taxes and government that he ignores Tom’s more hateful posturing. I mean, really, is it more desirable for our government to spend less than it is for it to treat all those in our country fairly and equally? Just looking at Tom alone, you have to wonder how someone like this can espouse the concept of as little government interference as possible in one area—bazooka Tom—but increased government interference in several others—gays, mothers who desire abortion, or even gay mothers who desire abortion.

It’s the same argument we’ve all made a thousand times in the last five years, but it can not be repeated enough.

What I forgot to mention about the Salon article is that Tom himself was once charged with an illegal Medicaid claim. Read the story to find out more, because to me, it’s the least interesting part of the article.

So I’m a ranting liberal faggot, huh? Of course I would not see eye-to-eye with Tom. Of course I would only site one source and milk it for all its worth. Well, an article on Fox 23’s site (an Oklahoma station, as far as I can tell) points out some of the good ideas Tom has, such as emphasizing prevention to help tackle medical costs and importing drugs from Canada. These are typically not conservative concepts. But the story shows more of Tom’s crackpot side than his good side. Regarding abortion, he says, “Under the mores we live under today, my lineage wouldn’t exist.” You see, it appears that his great-grandmother was raped by a territorial sheriff. Had she been allowed to get an abortion—and it seems Tom’s assuming she would have made that CHOICE—Tom would not exist today. Shucks.

Yeah, better she should have suffered against her will so we could have this kind and thoughtful leader in office.

How about this quote from the same article? “The oath that people in Congress take isn’t to bring back pork to their state. The oath they take is to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.” Unless, of course, you’re gay or a woman. “I’m going to check with what I know is right and what I think the Constitution says and does it fit with the moral code that I follow.” Well, I guess the Constitution loses out to Tom’s moral code. Thank the Lord!

But what about this nice gesture? On Tom’s own site, it says he introduced legislation updating the Ryan White CAR Act, which funds care for those with HIV and AIDS. Nancy Pelosi liked it. That’s good.

Also from Tom’s site, an interesting speech relating wise government spending to Katrina relief. Some smart comments, though he does over-use the conservative watch words “children and grandchildren.” There go my heart strings. He also said, “We have an oath to uphold the Constitution, but we have a higher oath, and that higher oath is to keep the obligations that our forefathers put forward to create the best, brightest, the country providing the most opportunity of any in the world.” Unless you’re gay or a woman wanting an abortion.

I could go on. Tom, as a “maverick” Republican, surely does have some good ideas. Many Republicans do. But how genuinely generous and caring is someone going to be if they can also suggest that abortion doctors be executed, that gays are the cause of society’s supposedly lax mores, and that gun rights are more important than reproductive ones? Not very.

I agree that individuals need to take more responsibility for their actions and lives. But gun-wielding pro-lifers who believe in killing others to protect people who aren’t even born yet do not fall into that category for me. Bruce Tinsley and all the rest are nauseating in their selective inclusion of those who deserve the freedoms they so highly covet. Freedom for all or freedom for none. There can not be an in-between. Sorry, fellas!

My husband Vincent and I received a $400 gift certificate to
Continental Airlines from some well meaning friends as a wedding gift
in November of 2004. After the wedding, as strapped for cash as we
were, it was pretty impossible for us to imagine using it to take
ourselves anywhere for a vacation, especially since we had already
booked and paid for the flight for our honeymoon through Jet Blue.
(This company, by the way, has great service to New Orleans, LA from
JFK, and is really worth the $140 per ticket!)
I actually considered using it to help us pay for the visit to my
in-laws in France we had planned last March, though we weren’t able to
use it for that purpose either. It seems that although American flew
us there for $450 a-piece, as was the offer from Delta, both nonstop
from JFK, Continental couldn’t get us there for less than $850.00 per
person, and they only flew to Paris from Newark Airport, in another
state. If you do the math, it was pretty impractical to book with
them, because even with the gift certificate, the Continental flight
would have still cost us quite a bit more.
The gift we received was beginning to seem more like a nuisance than
anything once I realized that it would expire within one year from the
date of purchase (11/5/04), and the $400 that our friends so
generously paid for it would simply be absorbed into the profits of
such an already ridiculously overpriced company. So, I began calling
them weekly in the month of September 2005 to look for a way to spend
our “gift” certificate without breaking the bank. Every time I called
a customer service representative and asked them if they had any
specials, or if they could help me plan a trip using the certificate,
I was greeted (after usually twenty minutes or so on hold) with
unfriendly and unhelpful people who told me it “wasn’t their job” to
help me find a place to go, that there was a “map on the website” and
that I should use “Continental Airlines Vacations” if I wanted help
booking a trip. So, I called them. They explained that my gift
certificate was not valid for use with their services. And so it goes.
So, just days before the “gift certificate” was about to expire, on
October 27th, 2005, I booked us a flight with Continental to Las
Vegas, Nevada, upon recommendation from my parents, flying out of
Newark Airport, nonstop, for February 12th through the 15th, for a
total of $633. Even though America West could fly both of us out there
for less than $500, at the time the $233 coming out of our pockets was
less consequential than the principle of not wasting the money from
the “gift”, and I would have felt really terrible not to use the
certificate as it was intended: for Vincent and I to have a romantic
vacation together. And I figured, “what’s more romantic than a
Valentine’s Day escape?” Anyway, at this point, I had never flown with
Continental Airlines before (due to their high prices), and was
actually looking forward to being treated especially well, figuring
that this was the reason for all the extra expense for the tickets.
Once the flight was booked, I found us a great little hotel on the
Vegas Strip through Vegas.com, and patiently waited for our vacation
day to arrive. You see, I work with emotionally disturbed children in
foster care, and my husband is a manager at a very well known Tribeca
restaurant, so we both have stressful and demanding professions, with
little ability to take time off. Our work schedules also conflict, so
we barely see each other, and the 2005 holiday season proved
especially exhausting for both of us. This was a vacation we
desperately needed to take.
As luck would have it, it began to snow in the early morning hours of
February 12th in New York City, and it fell from the sky so quickly
that the day went on record as being the biggest snowfall in New York
City history. Our flight was scheduled to leave Newark Airport at 11
a.m. that morning. I called Continental at 7 a.m. to check on the
status of our flight, and it was “Scheduled On-Time for Departure form
Newark Airport” as both the internet site and automated voice message
would tell us.
A very good friend of mine who grew up in the Midwest and was
comfortable driving in dangerous conditions offered to drive us to the
airport, because I was too scared to do it myself, and if we missed
our flight we would surely be penalized for it by Continental
Airlines. I checked the flight status again for good measure at 8:30
a.m. as we headed out the door, and got the same story. I checked
repeatedly via cell phone over the course of our harrowing hour-long
drive from Brooklyn to Newark in white-out snow conditions, even
though the news reports were advising that all people stay indoors,
because although the most up-to-date news coverage was reporting that
“most airlines and airports are closing” they never named Continental,
and every time I called Continental on my cell phone, or had a friend
check the status of our flight on the internet site from their home,
it continued to read as “On-Time”.
“Perhaps,” I thought, “this is the reason they cost more! They will
get us out of this mess today, out to sunny Las Vegas, even when the
other airlines are grounded!”
When we finally pulled up to the departure terminal at Newark, we were
immediately greeted by a TSA worker who told us that the airport was
closed, and that Continental had cancelled our flight. I was quite
understandably devastated, and I started to cry. My husband gathered
me and my things, and we headed back to the car, and back to Brooklyn.
On the scary, hour and a half long journey home, my friend drove
carefully, I pouted, and my husband re-booked us for a flight at 5 am
the next morning via telephone.
Vincent and I spent the next fifteen or so hours regrouping. We began
by negotiating with Vegas.com to try and get a refund on that night’s
room reservation and to book us an additional night at the same hotel.
Although they were initially stubborn about their “no refunds” policy
on the hotel room, after speaking to the CSR’s and their managers and
explaining our unfortunate story, though they were not able to attain
us a last-minute additional night’s stay at the hotel, they gave us a
refund for night we lost. Luckily, once we called Bally’s hotel
directly, they found us a room for our last night, for even less than
we had paid Vegas.com for the previous nights. Once that was settled,
we had to find a way to get back to New Jersey for the following
morning at 3 a.m. because, although my friend had been incredibly
generous in driving us in the snow the first time, there was no way we
would ask anyone we cared about to drive us back again in those
dangerous conditions at such an ungodly hour.
Some seemingly endless busy signals and inevitable price gouging
ensued with a number of different taxi services, and finally through
some tough negotiation tactics we miraculously reserved a taxi to take
us from our apartment in Brooklyn to Newark Airport at 3 o’clock in
the morning, for a mere fifty dollars. Once we secured that, sometime
close to 11 p.m., Vincent and I attempted to take a nap before our big
journey a few hours later.
We awoke at 2:45, confirmed our car once more with the cab company and
put on our coats to bring our luggage to the entrance of our building.
At 3 a.m., the phone rang and I assumed it was our driver telling us
he was downstairs. It was actually an automated service from
Continental telling us that this flight, too, had been cancelled.
While listening to this message, we got a beep on the line that was
indeed our driver. We sent this poor man on his way, fare-less,
because of the last-minute cold and unprofessional nature of these
lousy Continental Airlines representatives.
At this point, Continental had not only put us out, but it put out a
dear friend and a taxi driver, not because of the “weather
conditions”, but rather because of the lousy way they communicate
these changes to their customers.
Unable to sleep, we tried to re-book, however, the Continental
Customer Assistance phone line did not open until 6 a.m. At 6, we
tried to rebook for that day, and were dismissed, told rather coldly,
that though there were indeed flights to Las Vegas leaving that day
through Continental Airlines, they couldn’t fit either of us on one
until the 14th, because “today’s flights were fully booked with other
passengers”. We asked that perhaps they could show us some favor,
because we booked so far in advance and were so terribly unfortunate,
and bump someone who booked their flight at the last-minute? No. They
claimed that there was nothing they could do but fly us out on the
14th or give us a refund. We asked if they could help us find seats on
another airline and again they refused to help us. So we accepted the
“refund” and started searching the internet for another flight.
Within the span of fifteen minutes, we found a host of other airlines
with flights to Las Vegas leaving from both LaGuardia and JFK
airports, both much closer to us than Newark. We found it terribly
unlikely that the CSR’s at Continental would not have been able to do
the same thing, but I suppose it would have been unfair to ask them
because we would have been spending our money elsewhere, and not with
them.
After all, they received $400 from our friends fifteen months prior
and an additional $233.80 from us four months ago. The amount of
interest they had already collected on our hard-earned money and the
fact that they had provided us with NO services whatsoever up to this
point was only of consequence to us, and not to them.
Of course, booking a flight the same day you plan on taking it means
you are going to pay quite a bit more, so after a bit of quick
searching we settled on a flight through ATA with a layover in
Chicago, leaving from LaGuardia at 2 p.m. which cost us roughly $850
for both round trip tickets. I figured that I would pay for the flight
with the $633 refund we were promised from Continental and use the
$100 apiece we had put aside for gambling toward the difference. It
was getting down to the wire, and we could not extend our vacation any
further, since my husband was due back at work on Friday morning at 9
a.m. Due to the chaos the snowstorm had caused the day before, our
flight through ATA took us eleven hours, and we landed in Las Vegas at
9 p.m. thanks to the time difference. Though the chaos was certainly
not their fault, they offered to help us any way they could, and
called us on our cell phone when any changes to our flights had been
made. They were friendly, sweet and patient with all their passengers,
as disgruntled as we may have all been. I would definitely recommend
their airline, though the seats are small, and I had never even heard
of them before.
We then spent the next two and a half days cramming in as much of the
Vegas experience as we could, and indeed we did have a wonderful time.
The weather was great and I have over a hundred pictures, if you would
like to see them! The ATA flight back to New York was equally pleasant
and this one was on-time, though I wish we could have stayed in Las
Vegas a bit longer.
Alas, we fully intend on going back to Vegas one day, but definitely
NOT with Continental. I would never risk booking another flight with
an airline so dismissive of it’s customers, especially when you figure
in how much more it costs than it’s competitors.
One week later I checked with my credit card company to find that
Continental had yet to credit my account. I called them to clear up
this discrepancy, and after a total of two hours on the telephone,
being placed on hold for twenty minutes at a time, I was disconnected
twice and had countless “professional” (and I use that term loosely)
CSR’s saying things like “I don’t have time for this.”, “There’s
nothing anyone here can do to help you.” And “It wasn’t our fault, it
was the weather.”
I was also told that I was credited just $233 to my credit card (which
they said would take “seven to ten business days” to appear on my
statement, how convenient), but issued two separate gift certificates
(one for $316.90 and another for $83.10, if you can believe it,
because each ticket cost $316. 90 and they “had to split the
certificate because of that”). This is thereby ruining our chances for
selling or transferring our “gift” for any kind of monetary recoup on
ebay because we will be charged by them for each certificate we put up
for a bid, and who the hell bids full price for a gift certificate? I
figure the most we would get for a $400 gift certificate would be
$350, but who the hell would bid on $316.90 and $83.10 gift
certificates, especially when Continental does not allow you to use
two gift certificates for one purchase.
This reeks of the worst kind of corporate doublespeak. It is designed
purposely to obfuscate the truth and generate profit for themselves
without providing any services whatsoever to its customers. So
essentially, even if I did theoretically take the risk and book again
with this lousy, overpriced excuse for an airline (within a year,
because these certificates will also expire), I would have to book one
ticket in excess of $316.00 and another in excess of $83, thus
ensuring two more horrific experiences with this crappy airline.
Dear readers, I ask that if you have taken the time to read my lengthy
petition, that you take another minute to sign it, and to post a link
to it in an email to all of the people on your mass email list as
well.
Don’t let Continental Airlines, or any airline for that matter, get
away with treating its customers in this way. Despite how you may feel
about the government these days, and how big corporations are more and
more frequently taking advantage of their disenfranchised customers,
the very people they are supposed to be serving, this is still the
United States of America, and in a capitalist country, when the
customer still has choices as to where they spend their money, the
customer is always right.
If even one person who was planning to fly Continental Airlines
instead picks from the dozens of better choices there are out there,
then the money we have lost is essentially taken out of the hands of
Continental Airlines as well, and following it, the power they once
had over us, their customers.
We may have lost our money this time, but it is Continental who will
pay in the long run, because they have already alienated our families,
and the families of the friends who bought us this “gift”. Bad
publicity is sure to cost them far more than the $400 they stole from
us, as long as you pass this message to everyone you know, before they
book their next flight.

This is where you can sign our petition to boycott Continental Airline:
http://www.petitiononline.com/VNICOLAI/petition.html
Thanks for reading and best regards.

Maria and Vincent Nicolai.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. Sometimes, I hate my industry.

What’s so horrible about this, besides the obvious limiting of the consumer’s power to enjoy entertainment at their leisure, is that HBO is already a premium channel! You already pay through the nose to watch their stuff! If you damn well feel like taping it to watch later, they have no right to stop that.

Greedy fuckin’ bastard sons of bitches! (Now I can add this to the Rant category.)

Today has seen quite a collection of annoying news. Why most of it has come from Ars Technica is anyone’s guess, but I love the site, so why not?

If you thought the TSA was a giant boondoggle, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet; Meet the Registered Traveler program

Broadcast Flag praised, panned in Senate hearing

Google bows to Chinese demands

CIFA: The Pentagon’s very own domestic surveillance program

And on that last note (domestic spying), there was a terrifying interview with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on NPR yesterday. (Follow the link, then click on the Listen icon under the headline to hear how totally twisted our government is.) Thankfully, Michele Norris, whom I normally find annoying, pulls no punches in her questioning. What’s so sleazy about Gonzales’ answers is his use of positive phrases like, “That’s a good question,” and, “You’re absolutely right,” before launching into answers supporting stomach-turning policies.

There is so much wrong with all of these issues that I can hardly stand it. The Ars articles are wonderfully biased in pointing out such problems, and if you can’t pick out the issues with domestic spying in the NPR interview, you must be too far gone to be helped.

So much to say about the previous posts on Brokeback, but it’s time to rant. Here’s the e-mail I sent to Delta today:

I was just on the Delta site to look into booking a flight. I logged in to check my SkyMiles balance just for reference, and saw that all my miles have been deleted. I immediately called your toll-free number and was informed by a woman on the phone that there is a three-year period wherein if there is no activity on my account, the account is deleted.

Obviously, the account is not deleted as I still have access to it. I can only assume she meant that after 3 years of inactivity, my miles expire.

I was never sent any mail regarding this action. I was not sent warning that I would lose my 23,400 miles.

After some questions to the woman on the phone, she transfered me to someone in the customer service department. I asked this woman the same questions, to which I got no satisfactory answer. “Perhaps this is not the program for you,” was what I was told.

In this day where airlines have cut back service to the barest minimum and where airline customer satisfaction, as a result, is plummeting, I can only wonder why your program would do something like this without some effort being made to keep my business. My reasons for not flying Delta in a while have to do with work–our company tends to send us on United thanks to corporate bargaining–and price. I have not found any Delta flights to be the cheapest in some time and so have taken other airlines.

Perhaps you feel my taking the cheapest flight I can find proves the point that you airlines need to cut back on services to make money and to remain competitive. IN fact, since all the airlines now pretty much have hit bottom, there is nothing else left to choose one airline over another. United may have the worst leg room on their flights, which would lead me to take American, but American charges outrageous prices for crappy food, even of cross-country flights. You all have made your deals with the devil, and so we shafted consumers have no perk to choose from except lowest price.

After building up my miles for a while, now to see you’ve sucked them all away from me, I have no choice but to get angry at you. I have no incentive to fly you now, knowing that if my travel does not take me on your airline for a randomly-chosen period of time (you can not argue that three years was a scientifically-chosen expiration period) that a nicety like miles will get taken away, just as other details of the flying experience have vanished with your sole concern for bottom dollar.

I won’t fly Delta now. I’ll go to another airline where I have miles and put up with their lack of service just because I am not as angry at them as I am of you now.

The customer comes last, despite the friendly face you put on, and so I can only do the one thing left to me: Not fly your airline again. Good luck with your bankruptcy.

I did not proofread it, which I’m sure is an issue, but they’ll respond with the same bullshit every other company does. Which makes the apology from American Airlines I got after the Thanksgiving problem even more special. (And even more special because I just used those apology miles to book a flight to Austin for my friend Min’s wedding!)

DAMMIT! Now my blockquote formatting is all messed up. WHEN will I have the time to fix all these tiny errors? 🙁

UPDATE: Ah ha! It’s the WordPress update. Blockquotes don’t work in any of the themes. SIGH!

AGAIN: So I’ll just gonna gotta add the

tags myself. Fanfriggintastic.

AGAIN WITH THE UPDATES: Read Delta’s heartfelt response here.

It just gets sillier and sillier. Now the music companies (not the record companies, though often they are all the same conglomerate anyway) are trying to get rid of song lyrics sites. Yes, you read that correctly. Can you believe this? Now that the iPod and iTunes can store lyrics for songs, seems another cranky baby in the big cradle of music is throwing a tantrum over nothing. How embarrassing for human kind that such people exist.

Read the article at BBC News and commentary at Ars Technica. UPDATE: Here’s another article, from Macworld, with a smidgen of new info.

The articles note that PearLyrics, a little app that searches the Web and pulls song lyrics to use in iTunes, has been forced to be pulled from distribution thanks to the particularly whiny baby Warner/Chappell. I use this software and have found it very helpful. I’m slowly attaching lyrics to all my iTunes music. It’s not perfect software, but it saves lots of time. If anyone wants to try it out, I’d be happy to send it to them. Really. this sort of thing gets me so mad, I can’t stand it, so I don’t mind getting PearLyrics out to anyone else who might find it handy.

Grrrrrr!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Instead of wasting another post, I’ll include this relevant musing from Engadget here. What a mess it all is…

WICKED NEW UPDATE: The PearLyrics link above takes you to an updated page wherein the guy who made PearLyrics discusses getting a call from Warner/Chappell. Click the link again and read what has happened. I am surprised that the music industry semi-apologized, but not surprised PearLyrics is not back up for download. This small turn does not make the music industry unevil, just a teensy weensy tiny winy bit less evil. Just a bit. Just a tiny teensy bit. A negligible amount, really.

So I’ve been very quiet on here lately, aside from all the comments on the last Thanksgiving post. And it just so happens something happened today that is relevant to that post.

But first, I never really explained what happened that fateful day/night. So get comfy, ’cause here it is:

After boarding the plane for a 4:00 departure, after we’re all sitting comfy on the 100% booked plane, the pilot comes on and tells us to get off. Not that rudely, but you know… There was an oil leak in an engine, so the plane was not fit to fly.

(I always get some amusement thinking that these kinds of problems only crop up between flights, that this oil leak, for instance, did not develop during the plane’s previous flight and it happened only while it was on the ground. Because, you see, the plane can’t fly with an oil leak. But I make no sense, so never mind.)

After deplaning, we were told another plane was wrangled into service for us, but we would not leave until 8:00. Then, quietly and without any verbal announcements, that time changed to 9:00.

I was not really hungry, but Marcy and I decided to eat to pass the time. Yes, we’re Americans. I went up to the gate agent and asked if they were giving out meal vouchers, which is common with such a long delay. Oops, I mean WAS common. “We’re not doing that since this flight was not scheduled for catering.” I simply smiled, shook my head, and did not tell the guy what I was thinking, which was, “But you never have catering anymore, so what does that matter? You don’t serve free food anymore! We have to pay for your crappy airline food now, and it’s only cold sandwiches! None of your flights are ‘catered,’ and therefore we get screwed out of a convenience once again because you’re all too greedy and stupid to…” And so on.

My burger at the restaurantesque establishment was terrible, but there was entertainment in the form of a tipsy woman on her cell phone calling everyone she knew to tell them about how she missed her plane in London. I caught her in a movie on my phone, so that’s another post for another time.

Our new plane finally arrived, after I got some good reading done on The DaVinci Code. At this point, an announcement happened: “Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t think a departure time of 9:00 is likely at this point, so we’re adjusting the departure time to 9:15.” Again, I launched into some vitriol, but this time out loud to my poor audience, Marcy. “Why don’t they just say 9:30? 10:00? We all know 9:15 is as unlikely as 9:00! Why lie? Just push the time to something more truthful!”

Thankfully, because passengers from the 4:00 who had connections had been shoved onto other flights, the new plane was not full. After boarding and settling, we sat and sat. We did not take off until 10:30. How these things happen is beyond me, but that’s how it goes. At this point, I simply did not care. I had a fun book, so I was fine.

Once up in the air, the trip was uneventful. Of course, they did not offer to feed us for free. We still had to pay $7.00 for a shrink wrapped wrap. I did not pay for said wrap, as I do not believe in it. The money the airlines save by not feeding us is not going to save them from bankruptcy. I’m sure they’ve been trying to figure out how to get rid of the food for decades, and 9/11 provided the perfect excuse. (I must bring up this old post, wherein United decided it’s more important to re-paint all their planes than provide either good customer service or decent benefits for their employees.)

Blah blah blah.

Cut to today, when the following arrived in my e-mail:

Dear Mr. Lekowicz:

It’s completely realistic for our most frequent travelers to put flight dependability at the top of their list of expectations from us. For that reason, we were disappointed to learn that flight 133 was delayed for so long on November 29. After our manager in New York apprised us of the details, we wanted to take the opportunity to apologize to you for the disruption of your travel plans to Los Angeles.

I realize that our expression of regret is of small consolation in light of the time you spent waiting in New York for your flight to depart. I hope you will accept the addition of 11,000 Customer Service Bonus miles to your AAdvantage(r) account as a more tangible apology. You should see this mileage adjustment in your account very soon. For your convenience, you can view your account via http://www.aa.com. We appreciate your understanding during the delay of your flight and hope to have your continued business. We will do our best to provide a smooth trip the next time you fly with us. We’ll look forward to the opportunity.

I first have to say that I was bowled over. I have made it no secret that I think customer service is, on a whole, horrible. To wit: this and this. So when a company actually admits to making a mistake and takes steps on its own to make amends, is so shocking it’s sad. Sure, it’s a form letter, which implies that they send out this kind of apology a lot, but it does not diminish my surprise.

A couple things to note about the e-mail:

11,000 miles? Who came up with this strange number?

It’s very important to put the (R) representation of ® there because, you know, I could steal it for my very own!

I’m glad I got this e-mail, because I’ve generally liked American more than United. They have more leg room on their planes, the same kind United now charges extra for. Their seats are much more comfortable, unlike the horrible ones on United that force your head to jut out in front of your body at an unnatural angle. Those two items alone can make a 5-hour flight much more endurable.

Now, the fun will be where am I going with these miles? Before the trip, I had 19,000 miles. After this trip and its various bonuses and apologetical addenda, I have over 36,000. Suddenly, the inconvenience of JFK has melted away into possibilities! And I did have time to finish my book, too, so…