The Department of Useless and Ill-Informed Opinions

United Flight Diverted, AP Claims Boston Gets Extra Freaked Out

I was reading an Associated Press article on CNN.com today about the United flight from London to DC that was diverted to Boston, after a female passenger more or less freaked out. The second-to-last paragraph in the story contains two sentences:

      "Terror scares garner particular attention in Boston because of Logan's history. Members of al Qaeda hijacked two planes from Logan on September 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York."

Did you read that? Good.

Taken at face value, there is some logic to it. Bostonians, just like all Americans (and in truth like most humans), were deeply affected and frightened by 9/11.

But do me a favor, and go back and read that again. Particularly the first sentence. Then come back to me over here.

Are you reading what I'm reading? Of course it doesn't say that Bostonians were more affected than New Yorkers or anyone else, but why does an article about a flight that's potentially in trouble require a statement that says that Boston freaks out due to terror warnings. From a purely logistical/physical perspective (i.e. not loss of life) Logan, and therefore Boston, lost a plane. New York lost landmarks. Yes, they lost people too, just like 48 other countries who had citizens perish that day, and I'm most certainly not trying to stir the pot or create controversy. Nor am I saying a word about the city or people of Boston, who had nothing to do with this story.

I'm calling out the AP actually. I don't think insensitive is the right word here. Nor do I think tasteless is right, though God knows I take issue with the way every single news outlet covers 9/11 (something I won't go into right at this moment). I think the word I'm looking for is stupid.

If you want to tell me that New Yorkers have a greater fear of terrorism, because 9/11 happened here, I'm with you. Same for the other 9/11 sites, London, Madrid, Mumbai, and any number of other locales where terrorism has occurred in recent years. I also buy the statement that Bostonians, as with all Americans, are more frightened by terrorism in the past 5 years than ever before. These make sense; they show logic.

But, to me, to imply that Boston has a greater fear of terrorism because their airport was a launching-off point for the attacks belittles the attacks themselves. It suggests that regardless of where those planes and their passengers eventually met their end, whether it was NYC skyscrapers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania or the Dark Side of the Moon, that the theft of the plane is what strikes fear into the hearts of Bostonians.

Yes, the hijacking of an airplane is scary, and anytime I see a story that involves such an act I get a little quiver (and that was true even before 9/11). But no, I don't know that the hijacking doesn't scare the people of the departure city anymore than it does a person somewhere else.

I understand that it was an attempt to neatly wrap up a story that, at the time of this writing, hasn't seen its end yet. I suppose its author spent a while, as long as their editors would let them ponder a seemingly meaningless throwaway paragraph on a breaking news story, trying to figure out exactly how to close this piece out. And while I certainly don't think that this person was trying to offend, they did manage to. I'm not offended in a traditional "I just saw something that offends my ethical sensibilities" sort of way; it's my intelligence that's offended. It was a thoughtless way to finish off an article about a relatively minor incident by needlessly tying the residents of a city to, and reminding them about, a horrible attack. I highly doubt that the diversion of United 923 made Bostonians remember that American 11 and United 175 left from their airport. I'd suspect that if that day occurred to them at all, they thought about the entire thing and the atrocities committed.

NYC Scavenger Hunt

I'm working on putting together an scavenger hunt for NYC. Details are still being worked out, but it'll be on some Saturday this fall.

As opposed to the types I ran once-upon-a-time-in-my-youth, everything on the list will be legally obtainable, and ideally free. We're thinking lots of loose items as well as lots of pics. Should be lots of fun. I'm such an organizer-type that I'm looking forward to the planning and running of it.

More info will come as soon as I have it, and a website will launch for it at the same time.

How The Fuck Does a 30 Year Old Man End Up Playing Spin The Bottle?

I suppose at least it wasn't with teenagers, but with fellow "adults"...

I've honestly been debating for the past two days whether or not I even wanted to talk about this. It's sort of embarrassing. Fuck it.

Thursday night is my regular dodgeball night. Seriously, dodgeball. It's not so much a chance to get some fun-filled exercise as it is an excuse to meet new people and go drinking. I used to play on Wednesdays, and we drank less then. The crowd was a little different and we played in a different neighborhood, and I guess that's why it was a little more sedate. That, and it was a Wednesday night. But Thursday night seems to be a wilder and rowdier night, I guess since nobody gives a shit about work on Fridays. It's the best coasting day there is.

So we drink... And lately, it's grown from just drinking. Used to be we had a handful of beers each, hung out, listened to some music, chatted folks up, and went home. Now we're all buying pitchers. Last season, my team started playing Quarters at whatever table we were sitting at. Innocent enough. I can handle some low-key drinking games. During last season's playoff night (which I missed, because I was in Lisbon on vacation), it was reported back to me that the pool table was covered with a sheet of wood and a Flip Cup tournament was begun. By the time this new season had begun, after a 7 week break, the pool table at the bar was covered for us before we even got there (thereby pissing off the regulars of the bar mightily). Flip Cup I can handle, too. It's fun and gets everyone in a good mood.

But somehow, people got bored during Flip Cup this week. I took a quick bathroom break in between games, and when I came out there was now an empty beer bottle being spun at the center of the table, and a bunch of the regular FC'ers had backed off (though plenty also stayed), replaced with other people from the league. Yes, kids, they were playing Spin The Bottle. Spin The Fucking Bottle. Jesus, we'd reverted to our pre-teen and teen years.

I only have one distinct memory of playing Spin The Bottle as a kid, at a party at someone's house, after the parents had left us alone, and I'm pretty sure the bottle never actually landed on me. And the funny thing is that from time to time, when I think about the things that teenagers do, I realize that somehow I missed out on a decent amount of it. And more often than not, Spin The Bottle is on that list.

So what did I do, this supposedly mature 30 year old adult? Well, let's combine my latent regret about the things I neglected to participate in as a kid with the amount of beer I'd drunk at this point (a couple of pints with friends after work, a couple of nasty tall-boy cans in between dodgeball matches, and I-have-no-idea-how-many cups of beer at the bar) with the fact that I am, as per the norm, single. What would you have done? Damned fucking right I played.

A few friends played with me, but it was mostly new people for me, so I guess I made some new friends. I'm certainly intimate, or more intimate than before anyway, with a handful of new people.

But here's the funny thing for me... When you're 13 and play STB, it was an act of discovery (since you're just recognizing that the opposite sex isn't quite as cootie-licious as you previously thought) and an act of rebellion (since our parents would have been happy if we continued to think as we'd once thought, and we knew it). But when you're 30 and play, the discovery is long gone. Nobody there experienced any new sensations or performed any acts they never had before, even if it was new people. But it was still an act of rebellion, only now against The Man. Here's a bunch of mostly-corporate people sitting in a bar on a weeknight and playing games once reserved for the young and naive. It was a big middle finger to convention, the one that says we're supposed to be mature and adult. It was a beer-filled step up from Flip Cup and Quarters, a bar packed with grown-ups playing like we were kids once again, even if for an hour or two.

I don't know, maybe I'm putting too much thought into this from a sociological standpoint. You can bet everyone else that night went home and never had a second thought about it. But you can also bet that they didn't say a word to friends or co-workers on Friday morning when they got to work, too ashamed to admit the transgression, if you could actually call it that. I suspect it's going to continue as a late-night element of dodgeball nights, once the FC games die down. I'm going to be curious to see how things continue to escalate though... We went from just drinking to Quarters to Flip Cup to Spin The Bottle. I'm not dumb enough to think that this bar is going to let people go too, too far, but I'm going to be on the lookout for the first person who says "Hey everyone, let's continue this shit at my place."

Here's the better, more directly personal question though: If it happens again next Thursday, as I think it will, am I going to participate again? Cold, sober logic on a Saturday afternoon says no. But let's see how my thinking turns after I start smuggling a bunch of Bud Light in my belly.

I Hate Flying

Not even in that "it's such a pain in the ass and a hassle" sort of way. And not in a scared of it sort of way, though I don't necessarily enjoy the physical sensation. I mean that I just hate it.

See, here's the thing. I tend to be a streaky person, both by force of habit (I tend to get on a lunchtime kick and eat the same thing every weekday until I'm sick as hell of it) and by random coincidence, and air travel is no different for me.

The most notable, and surprisingly positive, streak was a good 3 year period where every flight I was on, probably a total of 25-30 round trips, was on time. Friends and family bitched about how they were always hitting delays, but I was golden. Sure, sometimes we'd get off the ground a few minutes late, but never very much, and I always landed on time (if not early). It was a wonderful run. But like all streaks (thank you Chase Utley for making this a good fantasy baseball year for me), it had to come to an end.

But as they say, when one door closes another opens. Unfortunately the new door contained screaming children.

The current run is now bad luck. Delays galore, and I'm all but guaranteed to have a shrieking infant or toddler within 2 rows of my seat.

This week was no different, and so we enter a new segment here at The Department... Stories about my flights, mostly shitty ones.

I know what you're thinking, because I'm thinking it too... You hate that co-worker who comes back from a trip and bitches about how awful the flights were, on and fucking on. It's just boring to listen to. I'm going to try so hard not to be that guy, believe me.

While my flight down to Florida was generally uneventful, the flight home was right in the norm. I knew it was a pretty crowded flight, since I tend to check out the seat maps shortly before a flight to see if I can move my window seats to a row farther back where there are no passengers slated to sit next to me. In fact, an hour or so before I left for the airport I bumped myself back a row, from 26F to 27F, since 26D/E were occupied, but in Row 27 only D (aisle) was. Just trying to avoid cramming my ass in 3 deep whenever possible.

Now, as it turns out, that was a lucky little bit of fate, since 26D/E ended up being taken by a young mother and her 3-ish year old son. But it's not like this kid was going to allow something as insignificant as a high-backed airline seat stop him from harassing the shit out of me.

The minute they sat down this kid was at it. If he wasn't chattering on he was screaming. If he wasn't screaming he was shrieking. If he wasn't shrieking he was crying. And if he wasn't doing any of those he was climbing all over the seat, treating it as his personal jungle gym. This kid was loud enough that it didn't matter what I put on my iPod, nothing was drowning this little bastard out.

And it's not like I was the only one to notice it, since his sheer volume level kept most of the plane awake. More than a few of my fellow passengers shot my sympathetic looks as they walked back towards the bathrooms, and there were a couple who looked downright apologetic at the baggage claim back at LaGuardia. This child had kept me awake for the entire flight, and I was coming off of a serious bender-esque night.

And speaking of Benders, I had the pleasure of watching some good old fashioned satellite TV on the flight, being Delta and all. Not much is on at 10:30 on a Monday night, so I gladly turned to Adult Swim for a Futurama fix. But a bump that ran coming back from a commercial break, and had something to do with one of their anime shows or whatever, talked about what to expect this Saturday. It says calmly in their usual point size to tune in on Saturday, blah blah blah. Then it changes cards for what to look for, and it says something along the lines of:

SCHOOLGIRLS IN UNDERWEAR
Fucking fantastic. The elderly gentleman sitting behind me, who was already confused as to why a grown man was watching cartoons, must have been thrilled.

Having left on time, even though there were storms moving around the mid-Atlantic area, we were moving well and on schedule and all that good stuff. Until the pilot came on and told us that there was massive lightning storms over the entire region, and there was no way through. We'd have to circle in a counter-clockwise pattern while they waited for DC Air Traffic Control to try and map a clear path for us to shoot through. The other option, of course, was landing in Ohio or something for the night. So we circled and circled for a good hour, until a brief hole opened up and we shot for it.

Here's the interesting part though... Have you ever seen lightning from above, in a plane? It's a sight to behold, truly. While I like to consider myself an environmentalist, in the general sense of the word, I don't get awed by nature-type stuff. The only other time I can remember it was when flying from Vancouver to Kamloops and flying directly over snow-capped mountains. Anyway, lightning, not snow-capped mountains in BC. The bolts light up the clouds from within, causing them to flicker and glow entirely. And then you'll periodically see the bolts leap across the surfaces, presumably before striking downwards (though I'm no weatherman, so I've got no real clue what they do). Outstanding stuff. I was wishing I'd had my digital camera with me, but alas, I'd left it behind in NYC. Makes me think maybe I'll always be sure to bring it along on trips, even weekends to visit the family in FL.

By the point of the lightning, the Devil Spawn in Row 26 was asleep, for at least a little while, and I sat there staring more out the window at the clouds than at the toons in front of my face.

Incidentally, we did eventually get that hole we'd been hoping for, and we ended up shooting it, going only very slightly above and directly over some major lightning. That was when it went from cool and ethereal to downright fucking spooky. I felt like John Lithgow in the Twilight Zone movie (and yes, I know it was all re-done bits from the series, but my Twilight Zone memories consist of the movie, which came out when I was 7).

Tales From The Hottest Place On Earth

(And I don't mean "hot" in a Paris Hilton sort of way.)

Some tidbits from the past two days...

I was heading towards the library tonight after work finally, and the subway line I needed was all fucked up, running something like one train every 10-15 minutes. It took me something like 45 minutes, including waiting time, to go 10 blocks.

When I got to 42nd St., I walked west towards 5th Ave. only to have find the street closed. There's one cop standing there at the corner of 42nd & 5th telling everyone trying to cross, at rush hour mind you, that they can't. 5th Ave. is closed from 42nd down to what looks like 40th, and there's a bus sitting in front of the main entrance of the library (you know, the lions). I ask the cop if the library is closed, and he says he doesn't know, all he knows is that this corner can't be crossed. Yet, from the other side of the same corner, people are crossing. When asked why people can cross west-to-east but not east-to-west a the same exact corner, the cop pauses and replies "All I know is, you can't cross this way." So I cross to the north corner, cut across, and head back south. Two more cops are at that corner, and won't let me take the corner steps to the main library entrance. I finally get in through the side door, on 42nd.

Leaving the library a couple of hours later, my research all done (and when I say done I don't mean done for the night; I mean totally done), I decide to take a cab home. It's too fucking hot, and I suspect the 4/5/6 line is still hosed. I know 42nd is a tough spot to find a cab in the evenings, so I walk towards Grand Central, and wait on the south side of 42nd, opposite Vanderbilt and the elevated Park Ave. There's no rhyme or reason, and people are standing all over this stretch, grabbing whatever cabs are letting people out for GCT. I'm fine, relatively, with a cab pulling up 10 feet ahead of me and someone else who's been waiting getting it. But, when the guy crosses from the other side of the street with his girlfriend and snags a cab I was hailing, then curses me out claiming I was trying to steal it from him, I sort of lost it. I'm a pretty quiet and reserved guy, but the heat does funny shit to people. All I know, is I was livid due to this guy's audacity.

I don't get people walking around in sweaters during a week like this. I haven't seen many, but I've seen a handful.

That's all for now. I'm going to Florida tomorrow, where it's actually fucking cooler than NYC.

Where's My Breakfast?

Every weekday morning my routine is more or less the same once I get near my office...  I go to the same place almost every day for breakfast, and order the same thing with only slight variation:

• Large coffee with skim milk (hot in the winter, iced in the summer).
• Fat free blueberry muffin.

It's a simple order, consisting of only two items, which only vary in the temperature of the coffee based on the season, served by the same woman who mans the quick counter near the front door.  I always enunciate it clearly, just to make sure its heard correctly over the din of the horrid light rock music radio station they always have blaring and the other patrons.

And yet, it gets fucked up probably 3 of 5 days each week.

Sometimes I watch as she pours the coffee, and I see her reach for the whole milk, only to remember at the last minute and switch back to skim (as she did today).  But there have been a few times I've seen her use whole milk or cream.  And other times where I didn't see it but could tell it was wrong when I got upstairs to my office.

With the muffin it's a bit harder, short of her putting a corn muffin or something like that in the bag instead.  It's a fat free blueberry.  There are days where I hit my desk and can immediately tell that it's cranberry, or even orange sunflower for fuck's sake.  But the really devious move is when it's just a regular blueberry muffin.  At this point I can usually tell the difference by sight now, but at first it took biting into it to be able to distinguish.  How can I tell?  Quite simply.  The fat free muffin takes like someone chopped up cardboard, wet it down, and stirred it up with a few berries before baking it, whereas the regular full fat muffin tastes...  well, it tastes fucking good.

I never get bothered enough to get up and go back downstairs to swap it out, partly out of fear she might spit in my coffee the next day if I did.  Mostly though, it's just because I'm lazy.  So I eat and/or drink it anyway.

I really need to find a new place to get my breakfast.