This sounds familiar

Another Thanksgiving and I'm once again without a seat assignment thanks to the steaming load of administrative idiocy and greed that is United Airlines.

I have a kickass aunt and uncle who also happen to be pretty wealthy. Uncle travels lots and both are premier elite etc. etc. favorite flyers of United. So Uncle very kindly asks at the airport today if he can get me a seat assignment for my flight home for Thanksgiving (the tickets for which I purchased about two months ago) and the United losers tell him since I'm not premier I can't get an assignment until 24 hours before my flight. Apparently they don't care that *he* is a premier member (and, frankly, this should not matter. Rich people are not the only ones who deserve to get seats they have already paid for). GRRRRR.

This is so fucked up. I paid four hundred fucking dollars for this stupid flight (the flight is less than a thousand miles and, again, was purchased WAAAAAAAY in advance). I better get to actually go home for T-giving, or heads will roll. Roll, I say!!!

Sigh...

I simply was not built for law firm politics.

I am slowly and painfully learning this.

Yay for New Jersey!

I really hope my state's supremes follow suit soon.

Did somebody reset the internet?

Because either that, or all the blogs on my blogroll just happened to update at 3:19 this morning. Which I doubt, especially considering it needs pruning (i.e., I still link to defunct blogs). And it's not just blogger either, since I link to non-blogger blogs.

Here's how Americans are stupid

Americans apparently are finally catching on to the fact that power corrupts, and that Congresspersons are no exception. Wow, aren't we brilliant. (As an aside: only half???)

In the same article linked above, Americans also think, apparently, that electronic voting is going to lead to inaccurate results. Excuse me?

Here you have polls showing, within paragraphs of each other, both that 1) Americans believe (correctly) in the existence of severe human error when it comes to politics, and that 2) these same Americans apparently would rather have fallible, butterfingered, eyesight-challenged, tired humans counting their votes than efficient, objective, morally incorruptible machines. Um?

This is why I don't like people.

I hear the tips there are shitty, too

I'm not sure what I think about this one. Chris Rock's mom walks into a Cracker Barrel and doesn't get service for like half an hour. Now, I will say that *if* this was the result of racial discrimination Cracker Barrel better be ready to pay up, and substantially (although frankly I wish it could go to someone other than Chris Rock's mom. Like maybe someone whose son isn't a multi-gajillionaire stand-up comedian who could easily spare a buck or two for good ol' Mom every now and then...).

But from the facts we have here... I don't see it. Maybe she has a good argument that this portion of South Carolina is racist, as evidenced by the fact that there apparently aren't very many black people there, but that doesn't mean Cracker Barrel itself is racist.

But, I mean. I've been ignored many many times when I go to a restaurant. Usually if it's taking too long, unless I'm drunk or lazy or bored I'll get up and leave well before it's been a half an hour. I'm not sure why she decided to stay so long; I guess she really likes the Cracker Barrel, which may well be reason to question her thinking in the first place....

Waiting forever at a table could be the result of lots of things -- maybe the restaurant is crazy busy. Maybe the server is crappy. Maybe the host/ess is retarded and didn't bother telling the server there were people at one of his/her tables. None of this translates into racism. It's just part and parcel of running a less-than-stellar restaurant operation, which is precisely what Cracker Barrel does.

And come to think of it, why is Chris Rock's mom eating at Cracker Barrel and not the Ritz-Carlton? Chris, you selfish bastard. Do you know how many hours she was in labor just so you could take your first breath and then exhale it with your first four-letter word?

Finally being a good Californian

Well, this weekend I get to go see a part of California I'm ashamed to admit I still haven't seen: San Diego, which is only a couple hours from Los Angeles, so I really have no excuse.

All I have to do is drive myself there -- everything's being taken care of by my firm, since it's a business retreat and while technically optional, you're kind of supposed to go.

So, I'll finally see Southern California's other major city. Should be pretty cool.

I still need to visit San Francisco though -- like a bad, bad Californian, I've never been there. ::ducks::

Ooooooh catfight!

I wonder if they started making out halfway through?

Sigh...

I miss seasons. It barely even gets chilly here.

Hurry up, trips home!

I have a headache

Normally I would blame said headache on being asked to process irrational and ludicrous propositions. But, no, according to some, it's because my smaller, inferior brain just can't handle the truth (cue Jack Nicholson).

Here is the interesting thing to me: it's well known that black and Hispanic teens, on the whole, score lower than do white and Asian teens on standardized tests like the SAT, which was used for this study. This has (in part) led some to question the SAT's efficacy as a predictor of collegiate aptitude. You'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the controversy surrounding the impact of cultural factors on "intelligence."

And I think this approach is largely a smart one. For one thing, intelligence is notoriously difficult to define, and even more difficult to accurately measure.

And yet, when the exact same approach is used to determine how males and females measure up in terms of "intelligence" (again, the definition of which could very easily be just as culturally determined as its measurement -- if the definition of "intelligence" is geared toward a heterosexual male WASP view of reality, then of course heterosexual male WASPs will be more "intelligent." That's as ridiculous as me saying I'm "prettier" than Ben Stiller. Says who? What's "pretty"?), the immediate response is, "see, this proves men are smarter than women!"

I'm calling bullshit. I would like to see these very same people make identical claims about the racial disparity in SAT scores. I would then like to see them get beaten up in an alley by the inner city minority thugs, because we all know that minorities raise thug kids.

Jesus. Anyone who thinks we don't live in a sexist society need only look at the ludicrous conclusion-jumping that our scientists engage in.

Another reason my church rocks

Outside-the-box thinking. I really like this idea -- I've never really seen why state marriages and church marriages should be, well, "married" to each other. I think it's appropriate for the church to define marriage however it sees fit. If this doesn't line up with the state's arbitrary requirements for contractual rights and obligations, well, that's for the lawyers to worry about, not the clergy. Personally, I'm a fan of this proposed new approach.

I would just like to know...

Who schedules a trial for July 6? I mean, who DOES that???

Dammit. This thing better get mediated. I don't wanna give up my family's annual Fourth celebration! :(