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2007

Skybus

What if they built an airline, and you were only allowed to go to and from Columbus, Ohio on it?

My local airport is one of those served by the new Skybus Airlines. Their fares are great, with every flight having a certain number of seats as low as ten bucks. There’s only one problem: if you want to fly someplace other than Columbus, you still not only have to go through there, but you also have to spend the night. That’s because all flights into Columbus (from all destinations, as far as I can tell) are in the afternoon, while all flights out are in the morning.

Am I just missing something, or is this complete madness? Is there really that much demand for an airline that basically only serves this one midwest city? And, in particular, are there really that many people itching to fly there from Greensboro of all places?

Columbus is a nice place and all, but jeez…

Cannibalistic Pigs

Is it just me, or is there something unspeakably ghoulish about the concept of Piggly Wiggly selling whole pigs for $1.19 per pound? And is it perhaps even more ghoulish that their cartoon spokespig looks so damned excited about it?

More pictures from our day trip to Fayetteville (a/k/a “The Armpit of North Carolina”) coming soon, I hope.

Books and Porn

Mark and I went to the annual Shepherd’s Center Used Book Sale yesterday, and found lots of great stuff. In addition to picking up about thirty books, I also grabbed a stack of old VHS tapes some guy had recorded from MTV in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I’m always on the lookout for that kind of thing.

I got home and started looking through them. There were a good batch of “120 Minutes” and “Headbangers’ Balls” shows included in the collection, along with some general stuff. I popped in the one marked “Guns ‘n’ Roses”, and was immediately transported back almost twenty years. It was not, however, due to Axl Rose’s onscreen presence, but to that of another long-haired guy, one who was actively buggering some other guy in a scene from a porn video I’d owned around 1990. As it turned out, the whole tape was full of random homoporn.

Somehow, I had the tremendouos urge to meet this Winston-Salem guy, who, in 1991, labelled his porn stash “Guns ‘n’ Roses”. At any rate, I briefly pondered going back over to the sale and seeing whet other mislabeled goodies I could find.

Catholics Can No Longer Dance Under Poles

Vatican report abolishes concept of limbo:

“Our conclusion,” the commission said in its 41-page report, is that there are “serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and brought into eternal happiness.” The commission added that while this is not “sure knowledge,” it comes in the context of a loving and just God who “wants all human beings to be saved.”

The scary thing is that so many people take seriously the very notion that babies might have to face the wrath of god because they neglected to get a little tap water sprinkled over their heads at the appropriate moment. Or that the issue is even being debated by anyone. What a load of utter bullshit.

In case anyone was wondering why I’m an atheist, I guess this is pretty much as good an illustration as any.

Charlotte Squidport

I’ve been meaning to post the Simpsons snippet about Springfield Squidport since (since removed) I wrote my own two rants on Charlotte, urbanism, etc., but I was finally inspired by Mark’s addition to the literature on the subject.

It’s just that this clip comes to mind every time I hear some civic booster in Charlote (or whatever other city) going on and on about how the right “upscale” development will make the city in question some sort of urban paradise. Gosh, if we could just get a Crate & Barrel, it would make everything perfect. Just like Paris, right?

Funny thing is, we both rather like Charlotte. It’s a pleasant enough place, and even though we didn’t end up living there long term, I don’t think either of us was absolutely averse to the idea. The problem with Charlotte, as opposed to some other cities, is that too many people there actually listen to these assorted civic boosters, message board clowns, and other decidedly anti-urban “urbanisists”, and that the “shopping mall as substitute for urbanism” mentality has really take root. As long as it’s “dense” and “upscale”, after all..

Obviously, this mindest is by no means limited to the Queen City, but its followers there sometimes seem almost as common as Baptists.

On Duct Tape

Hmmm. Less than a year as a homeowner in the south, and I’ve alredy become one of those guys who think most of life’s problems can be solved (or at least minimzed) through the creative application of duct tape.

I’d be scared if I weren’t too busy fixing the gutter.

Randomly Monday

Random stuff for a Monday morning:

  • I enjoyed the severely stormy Sunday, really. It was cool. But the storms are over, and that wind that’s sounded like a freight train pouding the house pretty much continuously since last night really needs to stop now, thanks.
  • In North Carolina, it costs $2.88 a month to have AT&T not list your number in the phone book. Apparently, it costs even more in some other states. There’s something very wrong with that.
  • Since moving back east, I’ve been surprised at how many papers still run “Funky Winkerbean”, which has managed in recent years to become the most bleak and depressing thing ever to grace the comics pages. This (via here) pretty much sums it up.
  • They’re kidding, right? Short-distance one-way traffic on adjacent streets is one thing, but a ten-mile stretch involving two streets that are separated by several blocks in some areas is another entirely. The whole idea seems prepoterous to me, even given LA traffic.