Buying their memories

As a frequent air traveler, I have a lot of time to read. And, of course, I buy most of my books at airport bookstores. Looking through the selections wadded up in my backpack, it appears my taste has gone toward contemporary memoir.

I just finished "Bright Lights, Big Ass," by Jen Lancaster. Over the last year, I've also read all of the offerings from Laurie Notaro, Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, who apparently doesn't have a web site.

Quick reviews:

Lancaster is mostly very funny, but the footnote thing got old after a while.

Notaro is constantly flat-out hilarious. Her life would be a good stand-up act.

Augusten Burroughs: David Sedaris for the rest of us.

Sedaris needs to stop whining, and we need to stop enabling him.

What do these four essayists have in common? They all write about their basically mundane, everyday lives, and a large audience seems to enjoy reading about them. Also: None of them are heterosexual men.

Which leads me to believe: There must be no way to make the life of a heterosexual man interesting to a mass audience. (I suppose, if there was, I'd be writing more about it.)

I'm not sure why I enjoy reading other people's navel-gazing. I know I'm partial to funny women, which explains Lancaster and Notaro. Sedaris is wildly popular among people who are much smarter than me, and I picked up "Me Talk Pretty One Day" and "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" based on the recommendations of said smart people. I guess my disdain for him must indicate that I'm not all that smart. Burroughs? Meh. He's a slightly less insufferable version of Sedaris.

That said, I keep buying the books. I'm headed out now to get Lancaster's first book, "Bitter is the New Black," and the new Notaro tome (which is actually a memoir disguised as a novel), "There's a (Slight)Chance I Might Be Going to Hell." There's a (slight) chance I might be a sucker.

The times that try the media's souls

This guy asks whether bloggers should be protected by the First Amendment. He poses a question:

There's no specific definition of "press" in the 45 words of the First Amendment. So who might be bound by responsibilities that go along with the role of a free press? Are bloggers and other Web users part of a broadly defined "press" even though they certainly could not have been envisioned by the Colonial-era Founders who wrote the First Amendment?

Uh, wait a minute ... the Founders not only envisioned such a thing as bloggers; one of the Founders, Thomas Paine, essentially was one. His pamphlet, "Common Sense," laid the foundation for the Declaration of Independence. He was by no means a reporter or columnist in the traditional sense either then or now. If Paine was writing 210 years later, his stuff would probably appear at commonsense.blogspot.com (dude needs to give up that blog name, by the way; now, I want it.)

The Internet is a powerful and, alas, often-misused tool. Nobody's quite figured it out yet. This has been a big problem for established media, who had just figured out how to gain control of their own environments.

For better or worse, free, unfettered communication is the thing that will save America as we know it. No president, no Congress, no judge can subvert the will of an informed people. We have more information available with which to evaluate candidates and make decisions than ever before. We just have to learn how to use it.

And yes, it should be protected. The same law that protects purveyors of porn needs to protect purveyors of opinion, belief, and fact. Nothing less than the survival of the Republic depends on it.

An open letter to contractors

Dear Contractors of the World:

I have deep respect for most of you. My role in this economy is to make enough money to be able to pay you to provide your services to me. You have skills that I lack, and I have come around to being OK with that. Without you, my family would have no air conditioning, no indoor plumbing, and a swimming pool full of green, fetid malodorous swill. I thank you for your work, both in words and in cash (or, sometimes, American Express.)

But: The fact that you have skills that I lack does not give you license to steal money from me. At least not anymore.

So: Please note below the conditions under which from this point you will be allowed the privilege to work in my house and profit from its imperfections and our lack of ability/desire to maintain it ourselves. If you meet these conditions, you also get the privilege of speaking to my wife, who handles all the financial matters in the house and is usually good for a few one-liners. (She's also really hot, so keep that in mind. It's not often in our neighborhood you run into a woman who's attractive and pleasant to be around).

Everything is in writing. Everything. There will be itemized statements of work, and if we opt to not have a particular item completed, we will not pay for it.

Your time is valuable. So is our money. Payment terms will be as follows: No more than 40 percent upon signing the above-mentioned statement of work. Final payment will not be provided until we are completely satisfied that the work has been done to its completion. Your need to pay your subcontractors or suppliers is not our problem until such time as said subcontractors have finished their work. That is what in the real world is known as "the cost of doing business," and said cost is borne by the business person, not by us. We're not business people. You are.

We're big fans of helping out the little guy. We'd rather have a talented individual or small company handle a task than, say, Lowe's or Home Depot. But: We'll treat you the same way we'd treat them. You will be accountable for completing the work on time and within budget, and if you don't, we'll find someone who does.

We will be reasonable in setting a schedule for the completion of the project. We realize we aren't your only customer. (At least, we hope we're not.) We do expect that schedule to be met, short of extremely extenuating circumstances.

If you are responsible for obtaining the materials for our job, you are responsible for ensuring said materials are of sufficient quality at the time at which they are obtained, not 20 minutes before you are to start our job. Further, if it turns out you obtained crappy materials, and it will cost you more money to obtain non-crappy materials, that is also not our problem. If you're willing to lose a $15,000 job over a few hundred dollars, we're willing to take the job from you.

Did we mention everything will be in writing? If you say it will cost $6 a square foot to lay tile floor, that means $6 a square foot, not $6.01. Or $7. Or "oops, that doesn't include taking the old floor away." It is your responsibility to figure your profit before you present us a quote, not after.

Final decision about whether we like the work lies with us, particularly The Wife. If she's not satisfied, we're not paying. She's the person to whom you need to be nice, not me. I couldn't tell you within $500 how much we have in our checking account at any given moment. She controls whether you get paid, and if she likes you, she might contract with you for extra work (which means more money for you.) Me, well, I hate you. I hate you because you can do things I can't do, and because, by default, I think you're stealing my money until proven otherwise. You'll never win me over. Don't talk to me. Talk to her.

Thank you again for sharing your skills with us and for allowing us a place to put some of this excess cash that we would otherwise waste on food or toys or something.

Sincerely,

RJ

No day at the beach

Hung out at the beach yesterday for the first time in a long time. The five of us hiked west to soak up some UV and splash around a bit.

It was just about as unpleasant as it could possibly be.

The beach was horrendously crowded. This weird stink permeated the air, the stink of some sort of decaying sea life. Not sure if it was decaying plant life or decaying animal life, but it stunk like hell. The water was as warm as a bath, greenish, with seaweed floating just below the surface. It felt, well, thick.

The kids had a good time, and the wife sunburned the parts of herself that she forgot to sunburn in Bermuda. So that was OK.

So, I decided to take another swing. My weekend was going to be largely filled with work, and I needed to be able to say something other than "I worked all weekend."

So the wife and I went to see Knocked Up. Five-word review: Damn funny. Highly recommend it.

Today, I did most of that work. I just checked my calendar to see if I was going to be able to finish it in the morning. All signs point to "Yes." I'm going to reward myself by going to bed early and finishing it tomorrow. Thankfully, the recipient is in Pacific Time, which buys me three more precious hours. I'll take everything I can get.

Disclaimer: That last post was not intended to be the least bit entertaning, nor informative. (Maybe you found the five-word review helpful, but I'm not counting on it. Or, hey, if it helps you to steer clear of Clearwater Beach, that'd be a good call.) I just needed to write something other than semi-technical blather. One of these days, I'll learn to write again, I promise. Until then, this. You get what you pay for.

And it was, indeed, there and back

I find myself taking for granted things like a trip that goes something like this:

Get on the plane

Make your connection

Get off plane

Go to meetings

Get on plane

Make your connection

Get off plane

Drive home.

No delays, no drama, no having to negotiate with gate agents, no running. It seems to happen a lot less these days. Makes for a boring story, but for a much happier me.

There and back

I'm preparing to embark on what essentially is a day trip to the West Coast. Florida to California today; back tomorrow.

Island time

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- It started out as a battle between Good Karma vs. Evil Karma. It turned out to have a happy ending -- a beautiful trip to a beautiful place, a place that defies description. I spent years pooh-poohing The Wife's desire to visit one of the touristy islands. "We live in Florida," I said. "Why would I want to go to an island?"

Bermuda showed me why.

Words won't do it justice. Beautiful cerulean blue water, pink-sand beaches, everything you'd see in a tourist brochure and then some. Imagine a couple in love walking along a peaceful, secluded, empty beach, and you have a good picture of what we were doing last week. And by that point, we wouldn't have been talking about how we almost didn't get there.

The original plan called for us to clear Bermuda customs at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday and have a little better than a day and a half of a weekend before I had to go work at the island's daily paper Monday through Thursday. That plan was scuttled when the plane's weather radar wouldn't function, which was a bad thing on a day when a tropical storm was hanging out off the Florida coast.

Time for Plan B. Between my wife's sweet-talking and my quick work on the airport's wireless connection, US Airways rebooked us on a Delta flight to New York, which connected to the last flight out of the U.S. to the island on American. We had a half-hour to catch the Delta flight and a little better than an hour in New York. No problem.

Oops, one problem. The Delta flight was landing at LaGuardia. The American flight was leaving from JFK.

We were already making our plans to just concede and stay the night in New York when Good Karma shoved it up Evil Karma's ass. We landed a bit early at LGA. The taxi hit little traffic on the 11-mile ride to JFK. We finally convinced the American gate agent that our handwritten permission note from US Airways was indeed legit. We landed in Bermuda -- without luggage, of course, but it would be there the next day, right? -- at little after 7 p.m., a little later than we wanted but still plenty of time to see the sunset during the taxi ride across the island.

Sunday was an absolutely glorious day. We zipped around the island on our rented motor scooter, which should have been pretty easy. I've been riding motorcycles for a good portion of my adult life. Nothing I know about riding an 800-cc motorcycle, however, translates to riding a 50-cc scooter. Especially not on the left side of the road. After some reflection, I have to be honest: Every second on the scooter was pretty damn scary. Point A and Point B, however, were wonderful.

We rode along the shoreline roads, stopping occasionally at big rock bluffs and tiny little beaches. We went to St. George on the island's northeast end, a charming little town with architecture from the 17th century. We ate and drank and ate and drank some more. Oh, and our bags did show up, but on Monday, not Sunday, and not before I had to spend about 2.5 times what I would normally spend for an emergency set of business clothes.

While I fussed with software during the week, The Wife had a spa treatment and a snorkeling trip. She deserved every minute of her leisure. She's been busting her ass without a real vacation for, God, I don't even know how long. It was glorious to see her so relaxed. It was worth every stride through those airports and worth every penny.

Here's the best travel tip I can give you regarding Bermuda: Make the trip on someone else's money. A perfectly ordinary lunch at the Asian deli for myself was $18. Every dinner we had was well into triple digits. I'm pretty sure the Cokes from the mini-bar were $8; I didn't even look. My expense allowance covered most of it, if you have a fairly loose definition of "most."

Thankfully, I'm a rich man. Not because I have a big bank account; far, far from it. What I do have, though, is the memory of kissing a beautiful girl while the Atlantic Ocean crashed into a coral reef behind us and a bright pink sunset above us.

Anybody got a stagecoach?

Bermuda travelogue later. Rant about airlines now.

You could say the American air travel system is broken. That would imply that there is a system at all. Case in point:

As I type this, I'm at the Philadelphia International Airport. The operation here is in complete chaos, owing to an FAA computer failure earlier in the day and storms over the northern Midwest this evening.

My flight was scheduled to depart at 8:30 p.m. from Gate B9. As of 8:15 p.m., that gate's previous flight, to Seattle, had not yet departed. All the gate agent at B9 could tell us is that my flight was not departing at 8:30 p.m. from Gate B9. She couldn't tell us when it was going to depart, or from where; all she could tell us is what wasn't going to happen. That was information we already had.

At about 8:35, the gate agent at B9 announced that our flight would depart from C24. But they didn't tell the agent at C24. We told the agent at C24. The agent at C24, needless to say, was surprised as hell to see us.

So an unhappy gate agent is now facing 200 unhappy people -- not to mention the people who are getting off the plane that just landed, many of whom have missed connections because of all the chaos and confusion.

As of right now, my flight still shows that it's taking off at 8:30 from B9. It's 9:08, and there ain't nobody at B9. A couple of people just ran like hell to B9, only to get redirected here. However, at the U.S. Airways web site, the flight shows it's taking off from C24 at 8:30. That was 38 minutes ago, and we're all still here.

So I ask:

Why wouldn't somebody at B9 call the guy at C24 and warn him we were coming?

Why isn't the information updated in one central place? Great that the usairways.com website was updated; however, that's not very helpful to a bunch of people in an airport who don't have access to a computer. Shouldn't they have updated it on the boards first?

Why, when it becomes apparent that chaos is going to happen -- and if the computers go down, there will be chaos; when there are storms, there will be chaos -- why do airlines wait so long before making adjustments? They've been through this enough already. You'd think there'd be a contingency plan. I'm not saying it would be easy, or readily apparent, but it seems it could be done.

Why the hell is it always so damn hot in the Philadelphia airport? No matter what time of year, this place is always a steambath. At least you can count on something when you're traveling.

And most importantly: Why do airlines not staff at levels appropriate to the demand? It's completely inhuman to make one gate agent face 200 people who want to get on a plane and 200 people who are on their way on the plane. That's 400 vs. 1; even if only 10 percent of those people have questions, that's 40 people.

A system that is built to work only when conditions are ideal is not a system. I guess it doesn't matter, because people won't stop traveling. We get what we pay for.

Edit to all this: We boarded the plane at 9:41 p.m. Because of all the backed-up flights, we took off at 12:02 a.m. We were on the plane on the ground longer than we were on the plane in the air. At least the air conditioning worked.

Working on island time

If I wasn't having so much damn fun, I'd be providing you daily updates from Bermuda. But I am, so I won't. A comprehensive update will follow. Suffice to say:

This place is not for the faint of wallet

Nothing you know about riding a full-size motorcycle will help you ride a 50-cc scooter

I'm married to the most fantastic woman in the world.

More to come.

Next stop: The islands

I'm headed here tomorrow morning. The Wife and I are flying first class, courtesy of all of my customers who have been flying me around the world the last year and a half. I'll be working next week, but will be enjoying beautiful island sun until Monday with the greatest woman in the world. Your envy is merited.