Presidential Mix CD. . . ahh, the mix tape: A sign of affection amongst teens the world over. Wooing your sweetie? Send her a mix tape, showing in the words and voices of others how much you love her. It’s really a very sweet gift for that certain someone. Except for one small detail: In most cases, it is completely illegal. Quick!- someone call the RIAA. I’d make the call, but apparently the RIAA cannot afford an 800 number and I am too cheap. Do you think they’d take a collect call?

So, what was on the mix-cd the Bush clones gave their dad? Copyright and royalty-free music or spoken word, we hope. Or perhaps the soothing sounds of an oil well pumping. It’s sweet, but I think he’d have preferred an approval point.

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I call this “Killing Time.” Either because I’m killing time writing this crap, or because you’ll want to kill me just to get me to stop. Either way, here’s some poo-etry.

“Blissful Sleep”
Lonely, horny, waiting for morning
your snoring is boring
I want to sleep again
but I can’t.

A freight train in bed
thund’rous snores again
and me without earplugs
to stick in my head.

Have you considered sleeping
standing on your feet,
lying in the tube
or out on the street?

Good god, woman!
How does a sound so large
come from a hole so small?
—
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I need to stop watching movies with my wife.
“Dang, he’s ugly! He’s got a shrunken apple-head.”
Yes, dear, Garrison Keillor definitely has a face for radio, but let’s just watch the movie. We finally saw “A Prairie Home Companion” and enjoyed it very much, shrunken apple-heads notwithstanding. The challenge to watching it, or any movie on the weekends lately, is that it doesn’t get dark until at least 9pm, and by then we’ve had a full day of weeding, planting trees and performing random home improvements. By 9:45, my blinks can take over a minute to complete, and there’s only so long that Jennie’s snoring can keep me up.

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So, Lemon Orange Vanilla Fizzy Mint Strawberry Thingamabob:
1 cup Mike’s Hard Lemonade
1/2 cup champagne/sparkling wine
1/2 cup Stoli Vanilla
1 large orange
6 sour home-grown strawberries
1/4 cup peppermint or spearmint

Mix alcohols together with a small amount of ice.
Squeeze in orange juice.
Mash strawberries with your fingers and toss into the mix.
Crush the mint and toss it in.
Drink.
Fall down.

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I’m glad to see the TSA takes spelling errors as seriously as I do. Here’s their response to my recent suggestion that they update their “ammended” signs:

Thank you for your e-mail.

Please accept our appreciation for taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns with us. Your help and support are important contributions to ensuring the safety and security of the Nation’s aviation system.

TSA Contact Center

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Okay, I’ve done my part to improve our federal government. I emailed the TSA the following email regarding their typo:
< email >
During my layover in San Francisco International Airport this week, I noticed large signs stating that your organization had “ammended” its carry-on rules. The word, assuming you meant to use the English word for altering, improving, or changing something for the better, is “amended”. You might want to amend your signs and look into hiring a more vigilant and effective copy editor. Adding an extra ‘m’ to amended is not very efficient.
< / email >

Given their catch phrase, slogan or whatever it may be of “Transportation Security Administration … Vigilant, Effective, Efficient”, I figured they would appreciate those last two sentences. So, how much more per sign do you think the extra m cost?

While doing this, I also noticed a link on their site: No FEAR. Wow, an act named after a company that markets t-shirts with aggressive slogans! Is this a great country, or what?

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He was hard-boiled. Hard-boiled and gritty. Like a bowl of Grape-Nuts laced with sand and a boiled egg. The egg, to be fair, had been boiled too long and too hot, and was therefore cracked and had leaked before hardening. Misshapen, gritty, and not quite right in the head, then. All in all, a bad egg, rolled in sand. With a penchant for cracking skulls and asking questions later. A practice which rarely led to answers. And yet, he somehow managed a permit to carry concealed. Thank God for an Idaho residency and the lobbying powers of the N.R.A..

Insanity, as he inevitably ended up explaining to anyone unfortunate enough to spend time with him, is a legal term. And since every prosecution he’d ever faced ended being dropped due to a lack of breathing witnesses, he was obviously not insane. No, he was the Tough Detective. See, it says so right here on his business card:

   Niche Market, Tough Detective
           No convictions
 No job too small or too pointless
             Cash Only
     1-888-HAM-BONE (426-2663)
        ¡Se Habla Español!

He was proud of the HAM BONE. His other choice had been HAM POOT, which didn’t have the same ring to it.

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Shouldn’t the TSA be able to hire someone who can spell? Yesterday’s travels included staring at a TSA sign listing the “AMMENDED” information about carry-on restrictions. I can understand a hurried note with typos, or even the text of a lazy-ass blogger’s (hey me, I’m talking about you!) blog being riddled with spelling and punctuation errors, but shouldn’t a government agency, one that is supposed to be concerned about our safety, put a little effort into making sure they do things right? I mean, this isn’t like the set of TSA-approved locks of mine they stole, or the fact that they frequently can’t be bothered with actually zipping my checked luggage completely shut after searching it. Spelling is important, dammit!

What else? Hydrophobia. My eye doctor offered me lenses with rabies today! Oh wait, he’s actually referring to their ability to repel water and oil (the latter of which really should be referred to as oleophobic in the literature, not lumped under hydrophobic). Okay, that’s all for today. Move along. I have an expense report to fill out and a bad attitude to adjust.

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Yes, I’ve been traveling for work this week. I just spent the last three days in San Francisco: Monday and Tuesday in the financial district and Wednesday at SFO. I have decided I travel too much, so I’m going to try for a new job that requires less travel. Maybe I’ll be a flight attendant.*

Too much time in airports dealing with crappy airlines makes me a very cranky boy. With the latest cutbacks and budget airlines, things are only going to get worse. Why fight it?– I want to start my own airline. Not only will I charge extra for checking luggage, using the overhead space and for blankets and pillows, I’m charging for everything else. You want a seat cushion? Those will be rented by the hour here at RoadTrip Airways. Water landing and you want to use that seat cushion as a flotation device? Please be sure to pay one of our friendly flight attendants the flotation fee, plus the $20 drying/restocking fee. If a hotel can charge me to store my own water in the mini-bar, I sure as hell will be charging customers to dry out and replace the seat cushions. I’m not stingy, though. In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will be available for less than a dollar per every five minutes. My advice is to fly only full flights, however, otherwise chipping in for the tank of fuel is going to be a bit pricey.

Okay, time for bed. Hopefully I will get some sleep. It’s going to be tough with Jennie’s snores and moans. She pauses between snores every 10-15 seconds to moan “no!”, followed by either “eat squirrel” or “eat squirrels” and the occasional “yes!”. I think she’s spent too much time around the dogs lately. I am actually kind of surprised her legs aren’t twitching, because that sure as heck sounds like a chase dream to me. Fortunately, most of the dogs’ chase dreams aren’t punctuated by snores that sound so much like someone trying to snort a Jell-O-covered watermelon up each nostril. Damn, it’s going to be a long night . . .

*Just kidding. I’m going to be a pilot.

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I have no idea what went wrong with the first aircraft of the morning, just the vague statement of “mechanical failure” from the gate attendant. So much for needing to arrive ninety minutes early. The second aircraft’s problem was obvious: a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft where the baggage loader was rammed into the plane. Sigh. Somebody’s probably looking for a new job today. So now I depart at my original arrival time and get to ride at the back of the bus. Er, plane.

I could have flown out last night, but wanted to make sure I had plenty of time for the meeting I flew down here for. The same meeting I was “disinvited” to on arrival. Putting a positive spin on things, I am still getting paid to sit here, four hours and counting, at SFO.

Instead of flying out yesterday, I had lunch with Susan, put in a few more hours at work, then headed out for a stroll along the Embarcadero. I have never spent much time down there, which is a shame. Were I to find myself stuck in San Francisco and in possession of entirely too much money, I’d join the Gateway Tennis and Swimming Club, maybe spend and hour or two relaxing in the late afternoons in Strauss Park before wandering down to Fog City Diner for a Buffalo Burger, 22 ounce Pale Ale and a 15 year old single malt. Fortunately, I am neither stuck in San Francisco, nor in possession of obscene quantities of cash. Sigh again.
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