Home of the Soul Cookie

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[Previously: America's worst... grr...]

So I’m stuck here at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas because my America West flight out of San Diego was well over an hour delayed in departing and the flight I was to have taken home left without me.

After trekking out to the ticketing agents, waiting in a huge-ass line, and dealing with AW personnel whose reactions to my plight ranged from indifference to strongly implying that this series of events was, somehow, my fault — not a single, goddamn person bothered to say “I’m sorry” — I’ve been put on a flight three hours later than I was to have taken.

Which means I’m taking a cab home when I get to SF.

Perfect.

The lesson of the day: Avoid America West like the plague. This was the first — and last — trip for me on this no-customer-service P.O.S. airline.

…who are letting creationism be taught as “intelligent design” in public schools.

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design to be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

More here.

[via]

Dear Asshat,

I applaud your bold, living-on-the-edge decision to drive without any sort of automotive illumination with the conditions as thorougly foggy as they are.

And how clever of you to hang out in my blind spot like that! Your mother must be very proud.

I appreciate the sense of humor and good cheer you exhibited by not honking until after I’d realized you were in the way of my lane change and had moved back. Speeding up and giving me the one-fingered “Howdy!” were the perfect punctutations of your “goodwill ambassador” worldview.

I salute you, fellow motorist, and sincerely wish for you to get everything you have coming.

Yours very truly,
the driver of that white Altima

The straw that broke the camel’s geek’s back

Just found out that despite assurances for the past few weeks that my promotion from mid-January would be announced (finally!) two weeks ago today with the title I’d been pushing for (Development Manager), TPTB at work are apparently no closer to an announcement today, two weeks later, than they were then. Further, the title of Development Manager is now, apparently, being removed from consideration because “it would put [me] above” the other two non-managerial team members.

This despite the fact that I’m the one everyone comes to for answers when my boss is out.

This despite the fact that the one or two new people we’re about to hire will be reporting to me.

This despite the fact that this question had been resolved weeks and weeks ago.

But what do I know? Clearly, not how to pick a winning situation.

I’m angry, hurt, and betrayed. At every turn, it seems, the company finds new ways to fuck me. And I’m getting shitty pay while I’m here, doing the stuff that needs to be done and being a fount of strength and stability amidst the dysfunctional chaos, getting my ass up at o’dark early five to seven days a week to do content updates.

Why exactly am I still here?

If anybody has any job leads, feel free to send ‘em my way.

I just returned from seeing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2), and while I wouldn’t describe it as terrible (it’s still loads more watchable than, say, Highlander 2), I would describe it as profoundly disappointing.

Now, understand that I first read the H2G2 series when I was in seventh grade. I’ve read the first four books in the “trilogy” time and again. (I have - but have not read - the fifth and sixth books.) I’ve enjoyed the TV movie. And I’ve passed many a long hour on car trips listening to the original radio programs on tape. There’s a certain feel, a particular rhythm and energy common to the various incarnations of the H2G2 series.

That selfsame style of rhythm and energy are so sorely missing from this cinematic adaptation.

One of the things I’ve grown to love in the series are its very quotable bits, the little H2G2 mantras, the enjoyment of which I likely share with other aficionados of the series:

• “Ford, you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”
• “I wonder if it will be friends with me?”
• The entire “disused lavatory”/”Beware of leopard” bit

Most of them are gone, excised completely or gutted so intensely as to make them all but neutered.

• Upon arriving on the starship Heart of Gold, Ford and Arthur find themselves briefly in the form of couches. Couches!
• The H2G2 script tags an entirely unnecessary “Hello, ground!” onto the end of the falling sperm whale’s soliloquy.
• Arthur had to “go down to the cellar.”
     (beat)
  No, really, that’s all there was to it.

There were other tweaks, too, that stripped away some of the cleverness of the originals. Remember Ford (or Arthur, depending on which version you first encountered) convincing Prosser to take Arthur’s place in front of the bulldozer at the beginning? That’s gone, replaced with Ford passing around brewskis to the construction crew. How about Arthur trying to wrangle up a decent cuppa tea? Gone, replaced with a vendomaticked cup o’ something green and smoking.

And that brings me to another issue I have with the movie: The changes to Arthur Dent.

As in the H2G2s that have come before, Arthur is our “everyman” character, our gateway into the vast reaches beyond this unfashionable Western Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. But always before, Arthur has been capable of action - whether ranting and raving and threatening to stomp into tiny little bits the workmen demolishing his home, or actively engaging Eddie in making a decent cuppa. But the movie has him bouncing around from situation to situation, incapable of taking any actions (even the wrong ones Arthur was so apt to take).

It’s like they removed all the periods and exclamation points in Arthur’s emotional makeup and replaced ‘em with a perpetual question mark.

Any additional time the filmmakers could’ve spent in staying truer to the source material was wasted on pointless additions. The entire Humma Kavula and Vogsphere sequences? Added nothing, IMHO, to the story, particularly not at the cost of the “good bits.”

And that’s not easy for me to say; I wholeheartedly believe that a movie version of something has the right and the responsibility to chart its own course - movies are not books are not comics are not radio shows. This movie definitely goes its own way. Pity that it’s so distinctly the wrong way.

Moreover, it’s dispiriting to realize just how much the filmmakers truly seem to love the source material. Don’t believe me? Just look at how many really great homages and in-jokes did show up: Simon Jones, the original Dentarthurdent, as the voice and image of the lethal Magrathean answering machine; the TV version’s Marvin, as one of the queue-dwellers on Vogsphere; the I-still-love-it-to-this-day H2G2 theme song, played over the first appearance of the Guide proper in the movie. There’s even a flash of Douglas Adams’ face as the movie fades to a “For Douglas” dedication at the end.

All nice touches, but in the end the movie simply doesn’t live up to the tradition set by the H2G2s that have come before. And I, for one, am saddened by that.

Now hand me my Joo Jantas and that Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster; I think I’m gonna need ‘em.

It’s 2005, and Microsoft still has its corporate head up its corporate ass when it comes to supporting standards for web-based presentation:

CSS Support Could Be Internet Explorer’s Weakest Link

Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft’s IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser.

But Microsoft isn’t planning to go the whole way and make IE 7.0 fully CSS2 compliant, sources said.

Idiots.

One more reason to get people to switch to Firefox.

(via)

Which is worse: Using people as unwitting lab rats or dropping the f-bomb on TV?

Not so fast… As Rolling Stone reports in a review of a new indecency bill that Bush and the FCC are pushing:

A review of fines levied by other federal agencies suggests that the government may be taking swear words a bit too seriously. If the bill passes the Senate, Bono saying “fucking brilliant” on the air would carry the exact same penalty as illegally testing pesticides on human subjects.

That’s not all.

And for the price of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl, you could cause the wrongful death of an elderly patient in a nursing home and still have enough money left to create dangerous mishaps at two nuclear reactors. (Actually, you might be able to afford four “nuke malfunctions”: The biggest fine levied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year was only $60,000.)

Say it with me: PER-SPEC-TIVE.
Now go find some, people!

[via]

This sucks.

It’s not bad enough that the glimmer of hope that JMS could run a new Trek show of his own dashed soon thereafter by circumstance (as Noelle documented in her blog), but now I find out that the plans for a Babylon 5 movie have fallen through.

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