Mama Knows Best

“. . . But if you want great advice, consult a fortune cookie also consult your mother (and don’t say otherwise on your blog so long as your mother occasionally reads the blog and you want to stay in the will).”

Ted Stevens Has His Tubes Tied

Poor Ted Stevens.  On Friday his staff sent him an Internet, but he didn’t get it until today.  Why?  Because it got tangled up with all the indictments going through the Internet.

It’s times like these that its good to remember that you can’t just dump Ted Stevens’s career on a big truck.  No, Ted Stevens’s career is going down a series of tubes.

Easy come, easy go

” . . . In hindsight they will agree that moving the safe by crane was perhaps a bad idea.”

Making Wilbur and Orville proud

I love waiting on lines.  Indeed, I’ve been known to go to Disney World, wait four hours in line for Space Mountain, make it to the front, and announce “hmm… I just wanted to see what it looked like up here,” and then leave the line just before boarding the train.  That said, why is it that people cannot figure out how to operate the automated check-in kiosk at the airport?

Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of being a guest of AirTran Airways (nee ValuJet, the Altria of airlines), at LaGuardia Airport.  It was a busy Sunday at the airport, and a line of about 30 happy individuals snaked through the AirTran/ValuJet queue.  I placed myself at the end of that line, secure in my knowledge that the line was assured to move quickly as there were at least eight – nay ten – open kiosks!  And yet, after ten, then twenty minutes passed, there were still eight or ten open kiosks, but I had moved no more than ten feet forward.  I was confounded and bewildered!

When airlines first debuted the automated check-in kiosk, I was more excited than Andy Dick at a high school prom.  Not only did I love that the airlines were adding high tech gizmos to the check-in process (future posts will no doubt document my love affair with technology), but I also realized the brilliance of what the airlines were doing.  The kiosks allowed us, the paying customers, to do what we had previously been paying the airlines to do for us, although the airlines were still charging us for the customer service they were no longer actually providing. Because the passengers would now be doing most of the check-in process themselves, one attendant could attend to four of five kiosks at the same time, thereby speeding up the entire process.

At least that’s how it was supposed to work.  What I noticed in the line at LaGuardia is that the airlines did not take into account that there are two types of people who happen to frequent airports:  (1) The Morons and (2) Those Who Insist They’re Superior (TWITS for short).  Interestingly, neither of these types of people believe that they should operate a kiosk unless a uniformed airline employee is giving them their complete and undivided attention.

The Morons are an interesting group, because despite the fact that they presumably operated a two ton steel machine at high rates of speed in order to get to the airport, they are afraid to operate a TV screen mounted inside a box once they arrive at the airport.  This is unfortunate because the kiosk is a simple machine that asks only four questions: 1) What is your confirmation number; 2) Would you like to change your seat; 3) How many bags are you checking; and (4) Would you like a receipt?  If The Morons would at least approach the kiosk, they would only block one device, but sadly most stand at the top of the queue waiting for a uniformed attendant to signal them towards a kiosk, thus holding up the entire line.  Once The Morons reach a kiosk, they ask the attendant to use the kiosk for them.  Note that this makes The Morons quite smart, actually, since The Morons get the customer service that airlines used to provide, albeit now at great cost to anyone unfortunately trapped behind them.

While the airline attendant is busy operating a kiosk for The Moron, the line clogs again because now the TWITS wait at the top of the queue.  The TWITS know how to operate a kiosk just fine, but the TWITS refuse to use the kiosk because they believe they have a question or demand that requires the attention of the airline employees.  As it turns out, the TWITS are wrong.  For future reference, here are some of the common answers to the TWITS’s questions: “No, you cannot bring that Starbucks venti-grande-carmel latte through security even though you just paid $7 for it.  And no, asking a second time won’t change the answer”; “I appreciate the fact that you need to get to LA by 7pm, but I cannot get you on the noon flight because that flight is overbooked, so maybe next time you won’t show up three hours late to your flight”; and,  ”Yes, the luggage weight fees really do apply to you as well.”

Air travel used to be a joy.  I, for one, could never understand why people complained about it.  I’m a lanky 5′6″ and I find the seats often too spacious.  In fact, sometimes I can barely reach the seat-back-pocket for my pre-licked copy of SkyMall magazine.  If only The Morons and TWITS would let air travel be fun once again, so that rather than waiting in a long line for check-in, I can instead spend my airport time in a long line to get a Cinnabon.

People I may know

I am an avid user of Facebook.  Mostly I use it to comfort myself by secretly observing that ex-girlfriends are now dating or married to men far less attractive than I.  Or they’ve become nuns – that makes me feel better too.  

One thing, though, puzzles me about the fairly new “People You May Know” tool.  Are there people I’m forbidden from meeting?  If not, isn’t everyone someone I may know?

Open Sesame

“. . . But apparently we need to have them widened.  You’d think someone would have mentioned ‘supersized‘ or ‘Taftian‘ to us.  We’re cookies, not psychics.”

Even India was too expensive

“. . . Dear fortune consumer, due to the current economic downturn, the need to control costs has forced us to outsource control of your fate to the universe.  We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to resume fortune-based control in the near future.”

20+ Post Milestone

They say that 95% of all of the blogs on the internet peter out after 19.21 posts.*  I am pleased to report that over the past week I have surpassed the 20-post milestone.  This is a momentous occasion, worthy of much fanfare, frivolity, festivity, felicity, fellowship, fealty, and fasting.  

Why, you might ask, is the posting of a simple 20 posts such an important event?  You might even ask yourself, “why should I celebrate such a paltry putrid pile of posts?”  Ignoring the second, rather rude question, I will provide with you an answer to the first: with each passing post, I make it more likely that the post will be followed by yet another.  If you were the one who asked the second question, then this is not good news.  The rest of you, however, may rejoice in between paragraphs.

My understanding of the way blogging works is that it is all downhill from here.  Step 1 of blogging is to come up with a brilliant idea.  Clearly I have done that.  Step 2 is start posting and not let it die in 19.21 posts.  I have now succeeded at that as well.  Step 3 is to build an army of rabid fans, and Step 4 is to sell out by taking a large book deal.  I’m halfway there!  All I need now are fans…  I’m likely to come across a fortune that will tell me how to attract readers.  Any day now, I’m sure that I will get that bolt of wisdom from a cookie – it never fails.

While I work on Step 3 of the Master Plan, I am still trying to refine this wonderful blog.  As it turns out, I’ve done more than just post fortunes matched with hilarious riposte.  This will continue.  Indeed, until I figure out Step 3 and users flood my inbox with their own fortunes, I must carefully ration out my fortunes by posting filler material between fortunes.  Some posts may even be like this one, meta-filler discussing filler.  Also, I will be changing jobs shortly, and this may lead to some exciting changes for this blog.  Well, as exciting as cookies can be.

In summation, this blog is 99.9% excellent already, but I’m going to work hard to get that last 0.1%, and I hope you’ll join me.

* They also say that 72% of all blogs contain erroneous statistical data. Also, photo credit: Antigone78

Tomaydo/Tomahdo

“. . . You were right, those tomatoes did taste a little off.  Enjoy yourself now because you’ll be spending the night in the loo.”

You are now “free” to move about the cabin

“. . . However, there is a $50 wish-choice fee if you want to choose the desire that is granted.  That is in addition to the $30 wish-delivery fee and the $10 fuel surcharge.”