Friendly skies, my ass

Would someone at American Airlines please justify this? A little explanation from somebody would be nice.

I travel a helluva lot, and I've had my share of bad airline experiences (and part of your share, too). But this little string of events is just getting silly. And it's not the fault of the $26,000-a-year employee who megacorporation American Airlines leaves at the gate to face 200 passengers. He or she gets paid and gets to go home that night whether he or she is an asshole or not. Aggrieved passengers say they want some "accountability." Why should the front-line employees be responsible for accountability? They're not going to get treated any better or worse by their employers no matter how professional they are. The best customer servants will likely be rewarded with the opportunity to work more unpaid overtime. The worst will keep their jobs. Doesn't sound like much incentive to me either way.

Disclaimer: I've flown American Airlines twice in my life, both times by accident and neither for a round trip. (On each occasion, I was rebooked on American after the flight I had purchased on another airline was canceled.) I can guarantee you after the situations in Austin and the one described in the link above, I will continue to not voluntarily fly American. Not that my primary airlines are much better. It's rare that I run into a Delta employee who isn't a jerk, and US Airways has mishandled my baggage enough times that I'll now find a way to carry on for a 10-day trip.

So, why? Why do airlines treat their customers like shit? Why do airline employees continue to work for employers who treat them like shit, which they pass on to the customers? Why do airlines allow their employees to treat people like shit? It's a vicious swirling circle.

And, I guess most importantly: Why do I care, as long as I get to Point B safely?

I got nothing

What does one say about senseless violence? What does one say when a guy who found a way to survive the goddamn Holocaust when he was in his teens gets gunned down by some pussy with two guns and a bad attitude? What does one say when 32 people who were living the part of their lives that makes for great stories in 20 years are just gone? Gone because some guy had violent images in his head and felt he had no choice but to act on them? It damn sure takes "not fair" to a previously unreached level.

I don't want to argue about gun control. I don't want to rail about how Virginia Tech officials should have put out more warning. There's nothing to debate. Thirty-two people died yesterday, most of whom made a fatal decison to simply not skip class.

I don't want to blame video games or slasher movies. Well, maybe I do, a little bit; ours is the society in which Wal-Mart demands that musicians censor their sex-fueled lyrics yet prominently displays the unrated version of "The Hills Have Eyes" and other slasher films. It's a society where you have to buy condoms in brown-paper-bag-wrapped stores, but you can buy a gun ... well, at that same Wal-Mart where you got the slasher film. You can buy it in the "Sporting Goods" department, no less.

But none of that is the problem. You can ban guns and slasher movies and Grand Theft Auto, but you can't ban wackos. You can't ban violent psychopaths and people with grudges. You can't protect a college campus the way you would protect an airport or an inner-city high school.

All you can do is hope, and keep your head up.

Justify this

We're over there so they don't come over here and kill us. Like this.

Somebody please make this stop. You can't convince me that what we're doing over there is the least bit right.

Real World update

Many worse ways exist to eke out an existence. My gig is not bad at all. I get to play with computers all day and when I'm done playing with computers, I get to talk about newspapers. I get to go to some cool places and hang out with some cool people. I occasionally fly first class, and I eat a lot of food and drink a lot of beer and scotch and other people pick up the tab.

My job allows me to not have had to pay for a vacation in three years. My job allows me 2,500 square feet of living space and a new "near-luxury" car (that's what J.D. Power calls it, "near-luxury." I find that funny, for some reason.) It allows for The Wife to have thousands of dollars worth of dogs around the house and to put her stamp on something she loves and that feeds her soul.

It allows for my seventh-grader to not have to go through the same hell I went through in seventh grade. Don't get me wrong: seventh grade in 2007 is apparently equally as hellish as it was in 1981, but at least it's not for the same reasons. If she came home crushed by somebody having made fun of her clothes, she can go buy different clothes. She never has to worry about the check for her field trip bouncing, or about not having lunch money. And before you ask, yes, I still after all these years know how to identify an overprivileged brat, and when I see her showing signs of being one, I call her on it.

I'm also lucky that, when I show signs of being an overprivileged brat, The Wife calls me on it. That is a good thing. I've been prone to show said signs (and have been all my life, even before I had even the remotest qualification to do so), and I know those signs well enough now to hate myself a little bit after I find myself guilty of it.

More than all of that, I have had opportunities to broaden my perspective that I never thought I would have. I never thought I would be counting kroner at a McDonald's in Denmark or driving a car from the passenger's seat in Australia. I never thought I would sit in a roomful of executives at some newspaper and have them listen to me.

And more than all of that, around all this stuff, I get to occupy the same house as four of the most fantastic people I'll ever have the privilege to meet.

I work with a lot of people who don't realize how good they have it. I work with a lot of people who get no joy from their work at all and it makes me wonder if they get joy from anywhere. I work with a few people who worry about whether the numbers on the spreadsheets add up and who are charged from above with the task of making sure they add up or it's their ass. I can see how that might suck out one's soul. I work with people who have everything I have and then some and think they "deserve more."

My job puts me around people who have no soul left. Maybe it's because they had to work too hard for the same level of success that has seemingly come so easy to me. Maybe it's because their life is all about spreadsheets and not about actually accomplishing something. Maybe it's because I no longer work with artists and instead work with Business People. Avid readers — well, maybe reader — will remember a post from low down on this page, from when I was contemplating making this career change, when I interviewed with the president of the company:

He was a Businessman. I've spent years cultivating a deep contempt for Businessmen. Soulless assholes who care nothing more than making a buck, who hire people based only on what they can see on paper, who don't create anything.

That guy was shitcanned a couple of years ago. Not much patience among Businessmen for guys who don't make their numbers. Whatever that means.

I was worried then about transitioning from a job that required a lot of soul (while simultaneously stealing said soul) into a job where soul was not really a requirement. I've done OK, and I've done so without having to give up too much of what makes me, well, me. It does require a different approach. I have an obligation to the Spreadsheet Drones. I have customers who could give a shit about my work-life balance. Sometimes I overdo the amount of energy I put into bringing soul into my job, and I don't have enough left over for things that actually matter. The Real World will take whatever you give it, and no matter how much you give it, it usually wants a little bit more.

But as I get settled into Year 4 of Life in the Real World, life after journalism, I'm OK with what it has provided me so far. There is a post below which might be interpreted as, well, a rant. And it was. I'm entitled to that occasionally, too, because the pace can be frenetic and frustrating. But the rewards are really pretty cool.

If any of the above comes off as arrogant, I'm genuinely sorry (and it's not often I put "I" and "arrogant" and "sorry" in the same sentence.) I sincerely don't mean for it to be; far from it. I'm genuinely grateful for what I have. I think it needs to be said.

Drip, drip, drip

The kids are home from school today, but instead of doing fun things, they'll be waiting while Mama tries to convince the insurance adjuster that our dirty laundry was on that closet floor and therefore needs to be part of the settlement.

This is the fallout from Thursday's toilet catastrophe. Apparently, after a routine flush, the toilet never got the signal that it was full. The water dutifully kept running, and by the time it was discovered — at a point in another room, 15 feet and three walls away from the actual toilet itself — nearly $10,000 in damage had been done.

Where there was Pergo and carpet, there is now bare concrete. Where there was peace and quiet, now there are fans, roaring. I like sleeping with the sound of a fan, but this one is a little extreme.

But where there is disaster, there is The Wife, who kept her head even as she sloshed her way through our bedroom. After it was determined that towels weren't going to cut it, the first phone call went to a friend knowledgeable about house stuff. He said her next call needed to be to the insurance company. Barely an hour after the initial discovery, the fans and dehumidifers were roaring. This prevented even more damage and more disruption. I shudder to think
of what would have happened if it had been me left in charge while she was somewhere off working.

And because she's smart like that, where there could have been a seriously bad weekend, there was instead Easter, and a great time. We took the kids fishing yesterday. Didn't catch a thing, but it was worth the time anyway. And Saturday, we were distracted by the news from a distant dog show, where Champion Dog 2 won big ribbons for being the best in her breed and one of the top 10 of nearly 650 entries overall.

And in a couple of hours, the fans will be gone, and we'll be able to hear the usual chaos again.

Stop

And read this. Now. Seriously. It's worth your time; just like so many other things that you think you don't have time for.

The worst kind of news

Local TV weather guy John Winter died today. The sheriff's office is investigating his death as a suicide.

He had been with the station since 1994. He was 39. He lived in the next neighborhood over from us.

His co-workers were left behind to read the news to the public. It was difficult to watch. I can only imagine how much more difficult it must have been on the other side of the desk.

Thirty-nine. Same age as me. That's too damn young to be giving up.

High and dry

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- I'm looking out my hotel window at Corpus Christi Bay. If I had a really powerful telescope, I could look straight across the Gulf of Mexico, through St. Petersburg, Fla., and across Tampa Bay to my house, where apparently a toilet exploded, leaving several inches of water on the floor in the bathroom, bedroom and adjoining areas, and possibly enough water under the floor to necessitate replacing it. All of it.

Meanwhile, The Wife has houseguests of both the human and canine variety. In short, we could not have picked a worse day to schedule a plumbing disaster.

Just another day in the life of a guy who makes rich guys richer

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Here we go again, go, go, go, go, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, Illinois, Iowa, go, go go, the kid in 2C has been screaming since takeoff (actually he’s been screaming since we were at the gate), turn up the iPod, let Patrice Pike scream at me instead, at least she has some sense of tone, go, go, go, “I presume you’ll send the updates on this document tonight,” yeah, I’ll do that, after I land at 10 p.m. after I’ve been working since 7 a.m., go, go, go, THEM: got time for a question? ME: no THEM: just a quick question? :) , ME: k, what’s your question? THEM: can we do blah blah blah blah blah? ME: no, we can’t make the system do that, THEM: why not? Shouldn’t it work that way? :-( go, go, go, can I get a decision on this document I gave you Tuesday?, go, go, “no, we’ll have to put that in front of the committee,” go, go, go, Wendy’s for lunch, McDonald’s for dinner, I can sleep after I’ve made some more money for these other people, go, go, go, what a team player you are, what a professional, “the most professional person I’ve ever worked with”, go, go, go, gotta go, answer the phone, “got a question,” it’s a two-parter, a three-parter, let’s go back to the first thing you said, I can explain that part, “why does it work that way?” I don’t know, I’ll never know, it wasn’t my decision, I don’t defend the functionality, I just describe it, go, go, go, go, go, it can always be worse, at least you have a job, at least that’s not your kid screaming in 2C, it could be so much worse, go, go, go, let’s get going, but wait, there are storms, somewhere, we’re not going to go just yet, can’t go, it’s not safe, ok, now let’s go, on to the next thing, no time to do this thing right, it's about 90 percent there, "well, that's enough, let’s just go on to the next thing, we can go back to the other thing later," go, go, go, go, I gotta get back to the other thing, but I can’t remember what it was, go, go, go, phone’s ringing again, can’t get it now, hit the Ignore button, if it was important they’ll leave a message, gotta send a message, go, go, go, hey, you know, I don’t think I can do this anymore, “yeah, me neither, things are tough all over, did you update those spreadsheets I asked you to update?” go, go, no time to listen or evaluate or try to come up with a way to go more efficiently ‘cause we gotta for christ’s sweet sake go, where are we going? hell if I know, I just know we gotta go, 'cause that’s what we do, we go, next place, “ding” you have new mail “ding” THEM: I think we found a bug ME: what kind of bug? THEM: it does this when it’s supposed to do that ME: let me check on that for you THEM: I’ll be waiting :-) ME: k, I’ll get right back to you after I “ding” come see me when you have a second “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrring” I need some help right now, THEM: you there? ME: no, go, go, go, keep going, goddammit, because if you stop, you’ll be forced to think about how ridiculous it all is.

It's been a long time

1984: We're driving from school to my house in J.T.'s 1973 Dodge Dart. This Dart was sharp as hell; 360 V8, Centerline wheels, shackled up in the back just enough to look cool. J.T. had laid significant amounts of rubber on the way home, including a donut in the Fassnight Park parking lot. On the stereo was what I thought was typical late-'70s classic rock. "Listen to this guy hold this note," J.T. said. J.T. was a musician of some renown; he was a saxophone player in the school marching band, and he was probably the person from whom I learned the most about playing guitar. He had an appreciation for good music. The song was "Peace of Mind." The band was Boston. I was stunned by this guy's vocal power. That was the missing piece; that was the thing that Boston had that the other Camaro-rock (or, in this case, Dart-rock) bands had. I was hooked right there. I borrowed the tape, copied it, and played it over. And over. And over.

1986: Boston had not put out a new album since 1978. The Rock 99 morning jock was hyping the new single. "We're playing it at 8:15," he said. Damn. My first class was at 8. I decided, "Not today." I drove around campus, waiting for the song. As I heard the first few chords of "Amanda," I said, "Yeah, that's Boston."

1987: Rock 99 is giving away tickets to the Boston tour. Unfortunately, the closest stop to Anytown is more than 1,000 miles away. We didn't win, but we went anyway. I had a friend who lived near the Alpine Valley venue in Wisconsin. F. had a relative who lived nearby. M. had, well, a few days off. I had some friends who lived up there who could hook us up with a party. We packed up my 1980 Citation and pointed it north. The odometer showed "21245" or something like that when we left. That was back in the days where cars didn't usually last long enough to necessitate the "1" that should have been the first digit of that six-digit number. The car miraculously held up for the trip. It fell apart soon thereafter. The show was incredible; outdoors, fourth of four nights, more than 45,000 at the venue.

1989: Headed home after a night of abusing various substances. In the passenger seat of Mickey's 1988 Daytona Shelby. Trying to hold it together and not throw up all over said Daytona. Mickey's worried about my health (or, more likely, his upholstery.) He pops in a tape. I hear "Rock 'n' Roll Band." I breathe easier, and relax a bit in the seat. The urge to yak has passed. Mickey says, "I knew that would make you feel better."

I like a lot of different types of music. Some of these types leave me open to ridicule. I'm OK with that. I love Boston. It has been the one constant through nearly 25 years of my personal evolution. It still makes me feel better whenever I hear a Boston song, just like it did that night in Mickey's car. "Don't Look Back" is my personal transition song, the first song played when I start some new job or new thing. I hope they play "Long Time" and "Party" at my funeral.

And yes, the two albums they did after "Third Stage" sucked. I'm aware of that.

I'm very saddened by Brad Delp's too-soon departure; saddened in a way I don't remember feeling since hearing that Stevie Ray Vaughan's helicopter had crashed (oddly, it crashed leaving the same venue at which we saw Boston in 1987.)

From the Boston Globe's appreciation: "Brad always signed everything that people brought him,'' said [Sean] Sturgess [general manager of the club where Delp's band Beatlejuice, a Beatles tribute band, was supposed to have played tonight]. "Some bands just draw 45 people and you can't get them to stay around to greet their fans. Brad often stayed until the end of the night. We'd even have to tell him to leave sometimes because it was getting late.''

The two times I saw Boston play, Delp seemed to be very much enjoying himself, and very much in tune with what the band's fans wanted to hear. He certainly was in tune with what I wanted to hear.

A few words I hear in my head whenever I start to overdo on the job-stress thing:

Now you're climbing to the top of the company ladder
Hope it doesn't take too long
Can't you see there'll come a day when it won't matter
Come a day when you'll be gone ...

Brad Delp is gone. The music still matters. Thanks, man, and RIP.

Brad Delp, 1951-2007

The voice that made Boston unique among the Camaro-rock bands of the late '70s died last night in his southern New Hampshire home. He was 55. More from the Boston Globe here. More from me later.

Turn the key to the left

For most of January, I was in Australia. For most of February, I was in North Carolina. Suffice to say those two places are separated by a lot more than 10,000 miles and a really big ocean. Suffice also to say that neither of those places is home.

My calendar shows no items in green type this week. This means no trips. No airport parking, no expense reports, no Planter's Fruit and Nut Trail Mix. I have become inexplicably addicted to Planter's Fruit and Nut Trail Mix -- but I only eat it at airports. Don't ask me why, because I just won't have a good answer. Traveling for business requires a certain level of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's important to do things the same way, every time. Traveling is unnatural enough as it is; the routine is the reality, and any deviation from the routine can cause enough of a wrinkle in the space-time continuum to drive you completely over the edge.

For the next 10 days or so, blessedly, none of that matters. I'm home, and doing Home Things. Sunday was one of those glorious This-Is-Why-We-Live-in-Florida days. Clear, bright, 72 degrees. The Boy and I detailed my car. I took a short but rewarding motorcycle ride. The Wife was looking glorious, as she always does. Just a wonderful day, the kind of day I wish I could go to File --> Save As and recover from a folder whenever I needed to recharge.

For the rest of this week, I'll commute back and forth to The Office. Cool mornings lie ahead; it'll be Thursday before it'll be warm enough to make motorcycle commuting practical. Catching up on the inevitable work that piles up when I'm out will keep me busy during the day. Home-cooked meals (for a change) will keep me fed during the evening. It's going to be a good week. I hope yours will be, too.

Random stray thought

Writing is so much easier when you actually have something to say.

There's cold, and then there's Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Minus-9 degrees, and I'm currently suffering from insomnia.

February in Iowa ... I was reminded of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper as my Delta Connection flight hovered over Eastern Iowa, 48 years almost to the day after The Day the Music Died. Buddy Holly would only be 71 if he were still here, 10 years younger than Chuck Berry. ... five years ago, in February, Waylon Jennings died. It was Waylon, then an obscure bass player from the Texas Panhandle, who was bumped from the plane because J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson had the flu and didn't want to ride the bus. "I hope your old bus freezes up," Holly teased Jennings. "I hope your plane crashes," Jennings said to Holly. Those who knew Jennings say he never recovered from having said those five words, even at the height of his future stardom.

For my money, Buddy Holly was the king of rock 'n' roll. The skinny kid from Lubbock lit the fuse for the British Invasion. Listening to Holly and The Crickets, you hear the pre-Beatles, the pre-Rolling Stones, the framework for music as we know it today. Not fade away, indeed.

Meanwhile, it's 2:19 here, 3:19 in my time zone. I need to fade away.

The ticking of the clock

A story that really affected me, for reasons I don't quite understand. It's long, but it's worth your time ... and be thankful that you have the time. Take note, also, of some fantastic turns of phrase along the way. Just a very nice piece of writing.

Link brought to me by my home page, Arts and Letters Daily. Tremendous repository of good writing that might not be brought to your attention by anybody else. I envy the job of the person who compiles this daily.

How things change

RALEIGH, N.C. -- This time last week, I was in Sydney; it was sunny, warm, the middle of summer, and everybody was nice and polite and wonderful and speaking with those delightful accents.

Today, I'm in North Carolina. It's none of the above.

on the way home

sitting on board the united 747 that will take me on the first step home. i'm ready to go home. but i certainly will miss this place.

Scenes from a New South Wales Sunday

My Australian co-worker and I spent Sunday as tourists. "I love being a tourist in my own country," he said repeatedly. I loved it too; it was fun to watch the looks on other people's faces when he introduced himself in his thick Melbourne accent as an "American."

Here are a few snaps from our day, which started in a bright sunny downtown Sydney morning and wound through the Hunter Valley, the eastern Australia coast's wine country.

Sydneysiders love their city, and they love summer, both with good reason.

The Queen Victoria Building. It was a train station. Now it's a mall. In between, it was almost torn down. Score a big one for the preservationists.

The obligatory kangaroo picture. Saw this one at the Australia Walkabout Wildlife Park near Calga.

In 1830, a bunch of convicts were assigned to build a road from Sydney north to the Hunter Valley. Much of the road remains. Read more about it here.

The vineyards at the Brokenwood Winery.

Australia's shame lingers

As most people know, Australia was originally a British penal colony. Thousands of petty criminals were transported here from the British Isles from 1790 to around 1870. Under the not-so-gentle supervision of their overseers, their labor laid the foundation for the Australia of today. But not even the convicts were there first.

Groups of people known collectively as the Aborigines populated Australia many tens of thousands of years before white settlers. Nobody's quite sure how they got here. Research shows their time in Australia predates reliable overseas navigation, yet the Australian land mass was never connected to another continent. And the Aborigines weren't telling; some scholars estimate the various tribes combined for 750 different languages, none easy to discern.

So the Europeans, many of whom who weren't emigrating to Australia voluntarily, did what Europeans in those days did to people they can't figure out: they tortured them, they marginalized them, and they took their land and anything else they could take. They built cities and forced the Aborigines into the bush. They killed thousands of Aborigines, some by violence, most by European diseases to which the Aborigines were not immune.

Then they tried the most awful way possible to "fix" the problem. From 1900 until 1970, the Australian government did not recognize the parental rights of Aborigines. The states took thousands of Aboriginal children from their parents and put them in orphanages, in foster care, in concentration camps. The intentions behind this were almost worthy: The idea was that these children would be more easily assimilated into larger white society if they were raised outside of their tribal customs, giving them a chance at jobs, education and a successful (read: more white-like) existence.

In reality, children were taken from their parents, always against the parents' will, sometimes violently so.

The policy no longer exists, and Australia has spent most of the last 20 years apologizing for it in various ways. But it's also still paying for it.

A few of the surviving Aborigines are often seen around Sydney, usually drunk, aggressively panhandling. I saw evidence of this sad phenomenon this weekend; a scruffy looking dark-skinned man scrubbing windshields at a busy intersection near my apartment, two wasted young women screaming at passers-by to give them money in the Central Business District's more touristy section.

How do Australians feel about this? Don't dare ask. In a country that prides itself on its largely liberal views and its belief that everybody deserves a "fair go," the Aborigines are not a subject to be discussed. My Australian friend and co-worker, who's very liberal, very tolerant and very willing to talk about anything related to his home country, won't discuss them. Other Australians I've talked to dismiss the subject by saying, "yeah, mate, the Aborigines, it's a problem." The fact that many visible Aborigines in urban Australia are drunk, homeless and unpleasant toward others doesn't help their cause.

Few nations have proud records with regard to treatment of indigenous peoples -- not Canada, not Mexico, not most of Europe, and certainly not the United States. And Australia as a nation has been forthright and contrite about the wrongs committed in the past, even if Australians individually would rather not talk about it.

I didn't intend to spend so much space writing about Aborigines. It's an incredibly complex subject, and really kind of out of place in what is otherwise a fawning travelogue. If you're interested the subject, Google the term "Stolen Generation," or read about Cathy Freeman, the Aborigine who won the 400-meter run at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, in front of thousands of cheering fellow Australians of all races.

Many, many things about Australian society are wonderful, and then some. The Aborigine situation, however, is a stark reminder of the fundamental imperfection of humanity.

It's the weekend, mates (so stop calling me!)

SYDNEY -- The work week sputters on in the U.S. like a car that won't turn off. One of the joys of being here is that co-workers can call you into a meeting at 7 a.m. Saturday and not feel terribly bad about it. I certainly wouldn't, if I was there instead of here.

But now that the 5:30 bell has rung in the Eastern Time Zone, it's time to officially start a Sydney weekend.

A co-worker and good friend, S, landed here yesterday. This is his second trip to Sydney for this project, but it's more of a homecoming of sorts for him. He grew up in Melbourne, and still speaks with that accent that American women (including The Wife) love so.

When he came here back in October, he seemed more excited about it than I expected he would, given that the Australia Novelty Factor was less of a factor for him than it would be for, say, me.

"Well, mate, I've never been to Sydney," he said.

Wait a minute. You lived in Australia for more than 25 years and have never been to Sydney?

"Well, it's not exactly a small country," he said, with that slight touch of miffedness that Australians will occasionally express when a common misconception about their country is brought to light yet again -- say, for instance, the common belief that Keith Urban is Australian (he's actually from New Zealand.)

Australia, you see, is a very large country. Geographically, it's about the same size as the U.S. The main difference is that 280 million fewer people live here. Melbourne and Sydney are as far apart (and, in many ways, as different) as New York and Charlotte, N.C. And I was in my mid-30s the first time I visited New York.

The other difference, of course, is that some 90 percent of the population is in about 5 percent of the land mass. Imagine the U.S. being populated from New York, down the East Coast and around Florida to New Orleans ... and Los Angeles. Everything else is virtually empty. That's Australia.

So today, my friend and I will explore downtown Sydney, and I'll be the one with the funny accent. Tomorrow, we're loosely planning a trip to wine country in the Hunter Valley. And I'm hoping like hell that cell phone reception is spotty.