Phrase of the day: Evil Coastal Godless Baal-Loving Media

Really good posts on the future of union and party membership:

Scott

Decembrist

Delta's Cincinnati Comair staffing rocks. They went out of their way to get us home despite the utter failure of their computer system.

Their management, who purchased a computer system that crashed yesterday, causing all of Comair's flights to be cancelled today, and had far fewer planes than needed on the ground as backup, are well, pretty sucky.

I still need my luggage.

Sleeping till 4 after you get home at 5am, ahhh.

Aloha from Cincinnati.

My first Meijers sighting since the summer.

My first bona fide snow sighting since last winter.

The flight attendant welcomed us to town, and then snorted and told us that if we had a connecting flight, "Good Luck."

This may be one of the worst designed airports in the country. The interior has the same layout as the Columbus GreyHound terminal, with carpet. Due to the weather situation the last several days in the Ohio Valley, the airport seems as crowded as a hurricane shelter.

I'm really looking forward to getting out of here. This place stinks of sweat, pineapple, and annoyance.

Washington, D.C.

The Stewardess on my flight here haltingly read a cheesy Christmas Eve poem about flying in the air, and the unsettling possibility of meeting Santa in the air. Being told that Santa may come in the door during the flight strangely reminds me of certain X Files episodes involving aliens visiting flying planes.

The descent into Reagan, under a dark clear sky, was unusually pretty, with house lights twinkling through barren tree branches.

I appear to be segregated into a tiny Delta commuter wing at the airport with six Delta gates reminiscent of the Northwest peninsula at Tokyo's Narita, albeit quite a but colder. DC is currently just below freezing, and NYC, just above.

Schizer. Even my city's weather is better.

The news shop in this wing has Republican and Democrat branded outerwear laid out like that of sports teams in other cities. The store has Election paraphernalia at a seventy five percent discount from the original price. You can still get your Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers ladies and gentlemen, but supplies are limited.

Ah boarding for Cin Cin. One last tidbit:

I am in REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT. The bar here, called the Federal Tavern, has a large RED STAR between Federal, and Tavern on the sign.

Perestroika indeed.

Also, we are enroute for Rendezvous with Titan. The first attempted landing by human craft on another moon. Forty years later.

Also, one in sixty-two chance of us being hit by an asteroid on April 13, 2029. Merry Christmakkahwanzaa.

Also, if you're in town on the evening of the 31st, drop me or the roommates a line. We're having a Tolstoy Appreciation Night. I am sure I have inadvertently left people off of the invite list.

Fly Away. Fly Away.

Theoden & a Ham Sandwich.

Click on Theoden Horsemaster.

Tonight
Partly cloudy. A chance of snow. Lows 5 below to 10 below zero. Southwest winds 5 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 40 percent. Wind chill readings 10 below to 20 below zero.
Christmas Day
Mostly cloudy. A chance of snow. Highs around 15. South winds 5 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 50 percent. Lowest wind chill readings 15 below to 25 below zero in the morning.

Saturday Night
Cloudy. A chance of snow. Lows 5 to 10 above. South winds 5 to 15 mph becoming southeast. Chance of snow 50 percent.

Sunday
Mostly cloudy. A few flurries. Highs in the lower 20s. North winds 5 to 10 mph becoming southeast. Chance of snow 20 percent.

Now tell me why I'm flying to Michigan again?

Lordy lordy.

I've been doing some googling to deal with some exchange issues at a client, and came across the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog, titled, in unabashed geek humor style,

You Had Me At EHLO.

Thanks to Antonia & the developer of PulpFiction for these tidbits:

An excellent review of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game on GameSpot that gets close to a perfect score.

A Burger King Christmas Song.

Cows.

I await the cable [wo]ma[-a+e]n and furniture.

At the minimum, misspellings tell us about differences in dialect over time.

I wonder if anybody has done a study tracking misspellings over time.

Nation Rests Easy...President Bush To Tackle Challanges In Second Term!: "Hopefully, he won't forget about educashun policy!





Yes, it's real.



Thanks Education At The Brink.

"

(Via Eduwonk.com.)

Warren tells it like it is:

2004: the year blogging got boring and...: "

2004: the year blogging got boring and the year commenting systems broke. The year Bit Torrent got really big and the year the Motion Picture Association Of America somehow became a world power. The year Indymedia finally managed to frighten someone and the year MoveOn.org managed to convince no-one. The year of podcasting, and the year no-one had anything to say. The year no-one paid any attention to Mperia while labels like 555 starved to death -- but that's okay, because people with day jobs tell us that art on the net should be free anyway. The year I actually read someone on a website say 'I want hospitals to compete for my business.' I find myself desperately looking forward to that man's first tumour. The year that the half of America the coasts sneer at as 'flyover country' voted George W Bush back in because, according to one of his creatures, 'they like the way he walks, they like the way he talks, they like the way he points at things.' The year the rest of us laughed at the electoral college system, while looking uncomfortably at our own stark lack of choices in our next general elections. The year I heard Air America radio and realised the left wing in America is beyond doomed. The year I saw The Daily Show and understood that Jon Stewart and his team realise that too. The year that the ambient sound of Britain became a collective mumbling noise. The year I discovered videoblogging and the year I discovered that almost no-one knows what to do with it.

2004: another step to the boneyard in the continuing Death Of Western

Culture. You're welcome.

___

Sent from handheld

"

(Via die puny humans.)

Wow! From the AP: "The...: "

Wow! From the AP: 'The head of the state Democratic Party said late Tuesday that recount results from King County give Democrat Christine Gregoire an eight-vote victory in the closest governor’s race in state history.'

"

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

Today's best use of the word pirate:

Test of the Mainstream:

<snip />

Guns:

1. Are an essential tool for killing things.

2. Are an essential tool for the home which also happens to kill things.

3. Are what Jesus would've given the meek to take back the earth.

4. Are good. The gun kills men. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seed.


Sex:

1. Mostly happens on the internet.

2. Is dirty and BAD... but I LIKE it... but that makes me dirty and BAD... but I LIKE it...

3. Is a foul and terrible abomination of all that is holy until a priest/judge/clerk/pirate captain puts a ring on my finger and tells me otherwise.

4. Does not exist. Humans reproduce through budding.

Caitlin sent a musical recommendation in her stead this (last) weekend.

Lieder Von Gustav Mahler ( Christa Ludwig ) has been playing on my iPod since then.


[Update: I expect some weekend that Mahler will send Caitlin in his stead.]

There's a meme making the rounds of the story behind the guy who ended sneaking into Apple's headquarters for months after he was fired to finish the graphing calculator application for the original and most succeeding versions of the Macintosh computer.

Here's commentary from slashdot:

Cheesy college fun of the type appropriate for passing around your freshman year. (of high school)

I heard a raunchy Autism metaphor today.

My day is pretty much complete now.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out July 16th, Reuters reports.

I should probably finish book 5 before then...


Milk & Honey was COLD last night. The Drinks were warm and good.

Bethany's in town. We have so far watched the extended RotK in two sittings, baked cookies gingerbread and meat (separately).

Is there such a thing as a savory liqueur? Should there be?

Are British Spellings cooler than American Spellings? Survey suggests maybe so.

My refrigerator has now had kefir introduced.

Who has the moral (ethical?) responsibility of making sure a guest is welcome, if they aren't technically your guest?

Google suggest is a beautiful piece of coding.

And, a former roommate is responsible for page 42 of the January 2005 Popular Mechanics.

Still not king...