Hey, Mrs Heathen, why don’t we do this with our stairs?

For most of the last five or eight weeks, we’ve had sufficient mojo with Continental that our flights have been in First Class. This is good for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest one is the aggregate: it turns 3 hours of discomfort and annoyance into a relatively benign nap-snack-and-cocktail event. Flying still sucks, but the suck is muffled by the increased personal space, free liquor, and somewhat passable food. Also in front, the aforementioned increase in space means that even very, um, girthful companions don’t encroach on your own sovereign zone, so you win again.

Also — and this is the key part — one’s seatmates up front tend to be of a slightly different group than the random mingling of hoi polloi found in coach. It’s not a socioeconomic thing, at least not purely; most First Class fliers didn’t buy First Class tickets. Front cabins are dominated by upgraded frequent fliers who — yes — do tend to have decent jobs, and often wear fancy watches, but the important difference is attitude about flight. We do this a lot. We’re seated quickly, don’t annoy the attendants or each other, etc. In back, you run the risk of chatty Cathy babbling about her first flight, her boyfriend, her grandchildren, her dog, The fucking Secret, or whatever. In front, this usually doesn’t happen. We sit, listen to our iPods, read books, or work on our laptops.

Given all that, then, imagine our shock and horror upon discovering that, on Friday last, our seatmate was (a) dressed like a middle-aged goth pimp, in black denim, a studded belt from Motley Crue’s yard sale, and an 80s-riffic pinstriped shirt and (b) intending to pass his 3 hour flight perusing not one but TWO classy publications: Penthouse and Hustler, which were the only items he carried aboard.

Really? You mean it, Huggy Bear? What the fuck, man?

We’ve got nothing against porn, but Christ Almighty, buddy, there’s a time and a place. Someone could passably read Playboy in public — they have been, at least in years past, one of the great American magazines, and published no end of strong writing. Sure, there are pretty naked girls, but there really ARE articles in there. With PimpMan’s choices, though, no articles were on offer — or, rather, certainly no articles written for or by persons who do not move their lips when they read, or extending beyond a paragraph or two attached to shots of a positively gynecological nature. He made some attempts to shield the magazine from the attendant when she came by — which was often, as there were only 2 rows in First — but when he thought he was “safe,” he was holding them like one might read the Economist.

(He came aboard with a co-worker, who was seated across the aisle. Their conversation dried up once he realized what Pimpy was reading.)

“Do YOU usually smell like deer urine if you don’t shower?”

(No, we were not a part of the conversation.)

Consumerist lays it out:

1. Are your most profitable customers those who have the most reason to be dissatisfied with you?
2. Do you have rules that you want customers to break because doing so generates profits?
3. Do you make it difficult for customers to understand or abide by your rules, and to you actually help customers break them?
4. Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?

Telcos, we’re looking at you.

Due to our own human fuckery, blogging was not possible on Sunday or Monday. Get over it. We’re back now.

Gas is now officially more expensive than ever. The previous high was $1.35 in 1981, which, when adjusted for inflation, comes to about $3.15 in 2007 dollars. The latest reading from the Lundberg Survey puts the current average at $3.18.

“Hey, did you know that just anybody can edit Wikipedia?”

sigh.

Frankly, we’ve been waiting for this one. As a kid, after too many episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, we asked our parents how long they thought before prosthetic limbs might impart an athletic advantage. Pure fiction, they told us.

Well, now we have Oscar Pistorius, an amputee sprinter facing challenges from the tnternational track & field governing body over whether his carbon fiber legs do just that.

Since March, Pistorius has delivered startling record performances for disabled athletes at 100 meters (10.91 seconds), 200 meters (21.58 seconds) and 400 meters (46.34 seconds). Those times do not meet Olympic qualifying standards for men, but the Beijing Games are still 15 months away. Already, Pistorius is fast enough that his marks would have won gold medals in equivalent women’s races at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Pistorius’s time of 46.56 in the 400 earned him a second-place finish in March against able-bodied runners at the South African national championships. This seemingly makes him a candidate for the Olympic 4×400-meter relay should South Africa qualify as one of the world’s 16 fastest teams.

Sure, the Taliban is scary — and quite far from mainstream Islam — but American Protestantism has its own brand of nutbird frootbat fundamentalism. Check out what Bill Barnwell to say about The Troubling Worldview of the ‘Rapture-Ready’ Christian.

Once you begin thinking of the implications involved, you begin to see why this doctrine is so dangerous to everybody. Dispensationalists seem to have a preoccupation with war. In fact, right now, dispensationalist mega-church pastor John Hagee is preaching that a war with Iran is not only the right thing to do, but is prophetically inevitable. Apparently, Bible prophecy demands a showdown with Iran. You see, if you aren’t on the side of war, then you aren’t on the side of God. Talk of peace now becomes irrelevant. It’s God’s will that we be militarists.

[…]

The dispensationalist view of Daniel 9:27 provides some troubling implications as well. They don’t care that tearing down the al-Aqsa mosque would result in a regional war and cause all sorts of global distress. This would not be a bad thing in their minds. They believe that it was all foreordained and is a sign that the end of the world would be soon upon us.

Also, if you buy into these interpretations, talks of peace in the Middle East are futile. Jews and Muslims must continue killing each other at high rates. And who will be the one bringing peace to the Middle East in this popular end-time paradigm? Not Jesus, but the Antichrist. Therefore, talk of Middle East peace during this current “dispensation” is not from Jesus, but the Antichrist. When dispensationalists hear talk of peace summits or treaties in the Middle East, they assume it must have evil origins and be antichristic. If that’s the cause, why bother trying to make the world a better place? All we need to do is be good Christians and wait for our ticket out of this earth and make way for the Antichrist.

It’s Carl’s birthday.