Widow Sues To Make Airline Travel More Tedious

We all know about the long lines that await when we go to the airport to catch a flight, but a recent widow is suing to make sure airlines check your IDs as you leave the plane, too:

After the plane landed at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on April 13, 2005, passengers and flight crew disembarked and the jet was taken to another gate for cleaning. Workers then discovered the bathroom was locked from the inside and found Matsuo’s body — about two hours after the jet landed.

“How could you lose a passenger?” Watts, who did not fly with her husband that day, told The Indianapolis Star. “If I was somewhere on that plane, I would hope someone would notice.”

Oh, sure, she’s not suing for the express goal of lengthening the disembark time or making it more likely that you’ll miss your connecting flights; she wants the money. But be assured, gentle reader, this is what you’ll come to know as a result.

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Cosmic Impact of America’s Refusal to Abide by Kyoto Accords

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high:

A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years.

Natural cycles beyond the grasp of human control or outside human impact are inconceivable to some people. Certainly, this must be part of a Republican plot to impair global communications right before the 2008 election cycle.

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Book Report: Hidden Prey by John Sandford (2004)

This book precedes the last book I read (Broken Prey), so I put them in the wrong order when I lined them up on my bookshelf. As I’ve mentioned before, the events in Lucas Davenport’s life are background material, and the plots of the books are the important things within the novels.

This one differs from the rest, which differ from each other pleasingly. Davenport looks into the murder of a Russian sailor who formerly worked for the KGB. Was it a Russian mafia thing? A spy thing? Or could it be a hidden sleeper cell within the northern reaches of Minnesota?

Two things detracted from the book:

  • A Russian security operative, Nadya, who is sent to oversee the investigation. No problem. Overreliance upon her saying, “What is this (insert American idiom)?” That can be a problem when overused. As a matter of fact, it was a problem.
  • 2 typographical errors: an extra space before a comma and the misspelling of Del’s name as Dell. Come on, guys, you gotta try harder.

Also, I’ve nticed that Sandford’s novels have common pacing: 250-275 pages of chasing herrings and investigating followed by 50-75 pages of manic chase the real criminal action. As such, the climaxes often are forced and kinda rush past you. This book is no exception.

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With Warnings Like These

Mmm, a lollipop:


A lollipop.
click for full size

Looks good, doesn’t it? Not if you have certain food allergies:


A deadly lollipop.
click for full size

That warning says: Allergy information: Made in a facility that processes milk, eggs, soy products and wheat.

The allergy information is on the label where it’s twisted around the stem; if you’re like most people, that lollipop is in your mouth before you even look at that portion of the label, if you look at that portion of the label at all.

And if you suffer from a severe allergy to any of those food groups, your throat is probably already closing off.

But, hey, you can’t sue.

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Book Report: Fiddlers by Ed McBain (2005)

This book represents one of Ed McBain’s last books, and it was published posthumously; the About the Author bit on the back flap is in the past tense, which startles me. Cotton Hawes gives his age as 34 in this book, too, which bothered me a little, too. For most of my life, he’s been older than I am, and suddenly I’m older than many of the detectives in the 87th Precinct. That’s the meta about this book. Also, let it be known that Ed McBain did not support the war in Iraq. I don’t have a vivid impression of whether his contemporaneous books from the Vietnam era were as down on it, or even his Korean War-era books were as down on it, but it’s noticeable in these last books (see also Hark!). Now, onto the story.

Someone is shooting seemingly-unrelated late middle-aged people very quickly, and the 87th Precinct has to find the perp before he can do another vic. Meanwhile, Kling’s broken up with the black doctor following Hark!, Cotton Hawes finds himself falling for an older woman, and Carella’s daughter (now 14 after 30 years) is hanging out with a bad seed. That’s all it takes to craft a good, readable book. Like Perry Mason, McBain’s books age well, so this will be a fine read decades from now.

I was a little disappointed with how long it took the police to figure out what was going on, but I guess McBain had a minimum length to meet.

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Missed Their Panic-Induction Target

Silly UN people and their media mouthpieces, tinkling the dinner bell of doom with prognostications like this: Global warming: hotter summers, more flooding:

The St. Louis region should brace for more frequent and intense heat waves, an increased risk of flooding from big rivers and a surge in air pollution by 2050, some of the authors of a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said at a news conference Friday.

Silly Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. He should have known to get the home crowd in an uproar, he should have aimed for more direct traumas that would appeal to the baser instincts of St. Louisians. Something like:

Global warming: More blackouts, higher electricity bills

That would tear up the people addicted to 70 degree interiors maintained at a government-limited few pennies per kilowatt hour and make them demand that their government do something to limit other people’s lifestyles to protect their own.

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Once In A Lifetime, The Faithful Should Go

Mary Bufe writes some travel tips for married couples, but it’s clear she doesn’t understand the power of the one true chosen one:

A: Imagine this couple’s life 20-something years later when they are driving back from spring break with a van full of kids. Suddenly the husband suggests a “slight detour” to visit the hometown of another important figure in American history.

Q: And that would be?

A: Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre.

Although the scenario she describes could occur, it’s just as likely that Heather’s husband would want to go directly from Robert Frost’s farm to Camden, Maine.

But I won’t rule out a trip to Kiln, Mississippi.

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Good Sports

This is just good sportsmanship:

Five people were hurt last night when a car struck the rear of an ambulance, pushing it on its nose and onto the front of an apartment building in Kirkwood.

The incident happened shortly after 11 p.m. on Manchester Road near Dickson Street when a Chevrolet Camaro struck the eastbound Abbott ambulance from the rear, said Larry Stone, an Abbott vice president.

[. . . . ]

Another Abbott ambulance took the Camaro’s occupants — a man and a woman — to St. Anthony’s Medical Center, said Stone, adding that police told him the woman had been driving.

Not to mention good business.

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Wooing With Insect-Based Love Poetry

John Donne, “The Flea”:

    MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
    How little that which thou deniest me is;
    It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
    And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
    Thou know’st that this cannot be said
    A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
        Yet this enjoys before it woo,
        And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;
        And this, alas! is more than we would do.

    O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
    Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
    This flea is you and I, and this
    Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
    Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
    And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
        Though use make you apt to kill me,
        Let not to that self-murder added be,
        And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

    Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
    Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
    Wherein could this flea guilty be,
    Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
    Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
    Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
    ‘Tis true ; then learn how false fears be;
    Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,
    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Yeah, calling a woman flea-bitten has always worked for me.

(More John Donne here.)

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Response Mandatory; Opt Out, Not So Much

Students at Mehlville schools received negative campaign materials relating to a fire protection district election recently. The firemen’s union were running a campaign for a write-in candidate and hired a mailing company to send the missives, and the mailing company got the addresses from the school district and sent the campaign materials, marked “You’re Invited,” to the students instead of the parents.

A Mehlville School District spokesman obliquely blames the parents:

Patrick Wallace, a spokesman for the Mehlville School District, said that per federal public records law, the district provided data with names and addresses of students to the union. He said the district did not include information on students whose parents signed a “media exclusion form” at the beginning of the school year.

That’s right, Federal law mandates that school districts sell or release your children’s data, and if you didn’t opt out at the beginning of the school year, well, his job is secure anyway, so squawk if you want.

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Book Report: The King’s Henchman by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1927)

This is a three act play retelling an Arthurian legend (particularly the Lancelot and Guinevere thing). Published in 1927, this piece is now 80 years old, but it reads older than that. Set in the 10th century in England, the characters all speak Middle Englishesque, which is not historically accurate (Middle English started in the next century, and it certainly wasn’t spoken in 1927 on the east coast of America). As it’s not a direct retelling of the legend of Lancelot, the suspense kept me moving even through the stilted prose.

I read most of my Millay in early college, and my structured poetry of the time reflects her influence. Casting love poetry and whatnot into Middle English turns of phrase and relying upon iconic imagery of the period. I later moved a bit beyond it, but I still appreciate it enough that I enjoy Millay more than McKuen.

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Book Report: The Case of the Cautious Coquette by Erle Stanley Gardner (1949)

This book contains not only the titular Perry Mason novel, but two other novellas featuring the sleuth. Theses stories are almost sixty years old, but Perry Mason stories are almost timeless. As a matter of fact, I used them as an example in the the March/April issue of The Writer’s Journal:

Are you writing a story with a short shelf life, or an allegory on human nature for all time? Regardless of what you intend to write, the details you include might inadvertently determine whether you’re an Erle Stanley Gardner; whose Perry Mason novels remain accessible and relevant decades after he wrote them, or a Justin Thyme, whose works connect with this year’s audience but will seem as dated as a Baltimore Orioles world championship in ten years….

How timeless are they? One of the suspects is an inventor:

“What does he invent?”
“Oh, lots of little gadgets. He’s made money out of some them.”
“What sorts of gadgets?”
“Well, right now he’s working on something in connection with infra-red rays. Before that, he worked out a device that opens and closes doors and does things like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“It works with invisible light, what I think they call black light. A beam runs across the room and as soon as some object corsses that beam it closes a circuit and does things–oh, for instance, like making electrical contacts so that the minute you walk into the house the elextric stove clicks on and starts cooking, the radio turns on, and lights come on, and … I don’t know, Mr. Mason, I think it’s just a gadget. So many of his things are scientifically fine, but impractical when you want to work on them.”

That’s not so far-fetched now, is it? We still don’t have those things commonly in homes, but they’re available and feasible. The language itself is more archaic than the plots or the characters, with all the talk of infra-red rays, black light, and lots of Gosh!

The stories are more whodunit than the most whodunit of the Lucas Davenport novels (recently reviewed here and here), but sometimes the plots have to be a bit contrived to get there. Within the brevity of these stories, it’s good.

A quick rundown of plots:

  • “The Case of the Cautious Coquette”: A simple hit and run tort case turns dangerous when two people “come clean” as the hit and run driver, and a woman named as a witness has her first husband inconveniently die of a gunshot wound in her garage.
  • “The Crimson Kiss”: A friend from Della’s hometown is going to be married, but is implicated in a murder of another Lothario.
  • “The Crimson Swallow”: A wealthy client comes to Mason to hire him to protect his new wife from whatever made her flee. A jewelry theft muddies the waters, as does the death of a potential blackmailer.

One thing these novels seem to indicate is divorce is bad for you. Ex-husbands die a lot.

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Singing The Skip

Sometimes, when I’m singing along with my favorite songs on the radio in front of friends—good friends, mind you, the sort who don’t mind that I miss one note out of every three or two—I will further embarrass myself by not only missing the interval, or octave, but by missing a line or a lyric. Sometimes, a bridge or solo is shortened and the renewed vocalization catches me by surprise. After the song is over, I try to justify that portion of my pathological performance by saying that I am “singing the skip.”

Back in my formative middle 1980s, the cassette single was a novelty even as the era of the 45 record was fading. My mother owned a large number from her youth some twenty years previously, so my brother and I had plenty of oldies to load onto the console stereo in the living room. We cut our teeth on those, and when I went onto college, my endearment with the cheapening media form grew.

I found a music store in Milwaukee that offered juke box packs of records, a ten platter grab bag, for $1.99. I bought as many as I could, uncovering a large number of singles of dubious merit, but some I recognized. I also bought singles of contemporary or past hits for $2.49 each, and a number of used LPs to play on my shelf turntable.

There shall come a time when we’ll have to explain the oddities of records to children and young folk. You see, it was a disc like a compact disc, but it had these long grooves on each side. A needle rode in these grooves and the minute variation in the groove depth provided the sound. However, sometimes the records became scratched or damaged, and the needle would jump the edge of the groove. This skipping would advance the song a couple seconds, sort of like touching fast forward for a nanosecond.

Some of the inexpensive or used records I bought were imperfect, and even with the penny taped to the record needle, the songs sometimes skipped. Due to the nature of the imperfections, the songs skipped consistently; that is, the same line morphed into the second following line every time I played a particular song. So as I sang along in the darkness of my apartment, I began to skip, too.

The years of conditioning has paid off; I could sing to those songs and correctly account for the errata. Unfortunately, that special talent only works when I listen and sing along to the records I owned as a teenager and twentyager. When I’m confronted with the songs on the radio, on cassette, on CD, or in any of the current digital flavors of the month, I find myself a couple measures ahead at least once in the song.

So that’s my excuse, gentle reader and tolerant listener, for those odd moments where I run ahead of whatever I’m listening to and interpreting through my own rendition. It’s not a sign of my senility, but it is a sign of how we did things back in the old days when we flipped the discs or stacked them to play single-sides of albums in succession. We had to walk 2 mi—record store in the—we liked it!

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Bicyclists = Hooligans

Sure, at the same time as they loudly protest that motorists don’t treat them with equal respect even though they’re pedalling vehicles as entitled to the road as actual internally combusted or hybrid cars and trucks, they’re blowing through traffic control devices at their convenience. I could have told you that bicyclism breeds hooliganism, as became obvious in the cradle of loving-your-neighbor known as San Francisco when a mob of the two-wheeling thugs attacked a minivan containing a mother and two children:

Confusion, however, quickly turned to terror, she said, when the swarming cyclists began wildly circling around and then running into the sides of her Toyota van.

Filled with panic, Ferrando said, she started inching forward until coming to a stop at Post and Gough streets, where she was surrounded by bikers on all sides.

A biker in front blocked her as another biker began pounding on the windshield. Another was pounding on her window. Another pounded the other side.

“It seemed like they were using their bikes as weapons,” Ferrando said. One of the bikers then threw his bike — shattering the rear window and terrifying the young girls inside.

A mob, but a green-thinking mob lashing out against the global warming suburban mindset. Because that’s okay.

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The Real Jerky Boys

Corporate dischord, family infighting, and courtroom drama. Another nighttime soap? I wish. It’s my favorite dried meat manufacturer:

When Jack Link started his beef jerky business in the 1980s, it was his plan that his boys, then in their teens, would someday take over the company.

Unfortunately, that dream has turned into a nightmare that is being played out in Washburn County Circuit Court, in a lawsuit that pits Jack Link and son Troy against his elder son, Jay. The Links are battling over the ownership of Links Snacks Inc. in Minong, now one of the largest producers of beef jerky in the United States.

It’s a dispute that has ripped the family apart, with accusations of greed, jealousy, harassment of company officers, bullying of employees and a long list of bad business behavior.

If only there were some way I could stock up a dried meat product sold cheaply at Sam’s Club in case this battle destroys the company.

But my luck isn’t that good.

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