I’m not sure if it’s come to your attention, but the best and the brightest minds on Earth (And we know they are since they tell us they are the smartest people in the room) have said that the planet is warming.  It appears that Heaven’s Climate Control Division has not availed themselves of this commonly held insight as my current temperature reads in the twenties and the sun is well over the horizon. 

Please alert your staff to make changes to the normal climate cycle, sun spot cycle, and global weather patterns immediately or face inquiry from members of the faculty of the University of  East Anglia. 

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Sincerely,
The Gulf Coast

1)     We are all sick of the NekkidScanners and the TSA.
2)     It’s expensive to fly.
3)     It’s degrading to fly.
4)     If you are alone, no one likes to fly alone.
5)     If you have kids, no one likes to fly with kids.
6)     If you are just a couple, you have better things you could be doing than being strapped into a seat created for a 12-year-old for hours (even if the idea of being strapped to anything normally turns you on).

OK, those are the existing conditions of winging your way across the friendly skies.

Let us examine some other real world facts.

1)     Who really likes going home for the holiday?
2)     Even if you miss you’re mum, there’s at least one creepy relative you’d lose a body part before talking to them.
3)     No one loves staying with relatives.
4)     No one loves relatives staying with them.
5)     It’s still not Christmas yet.
6)     People would rather have money than gifts.
7)     Even if you plan to buy a gift, you can either have it mailed directly to your intended target or have UPS or FedEx do the heavy lifting for you.
8 )     Netbooks are cheap.
9)     Netbooks have web cams.
10) Most people have internet and if they don’t, they really need to get into this century.

So, given all of these facts about the trouble, expense, and down right degradation one must endure by flying, I propose that if you are not within driving distance…

Don’t go. 

Yep, that’s right, don’t go.  Just call mummy and daddy and tell them you won’t be there, but you will be seeing them.  Send them a netbook with a web cam for Christmas (surely cheaper than the cost of tickets) and have a web party.  Invite local family and friends (probably the people you’d rather spend your holiday with anyway — if not, you wouldn’t have moved a thousand miles away from your dysfunctional family in the first place) and have your remote users do the same.  Share your parties over the web. 

Mail your presents or gift cards with special notes telling them how much you love them.  Send hand written letters remembering special times you’ve shared. 

Ok, what if they don’t have internet?  Not a problem.  Most places have no contract unlimited cell service and usb aircards.  Get them a line for a month and then let it lapse.   It’s still cheaper than a set of tickets for you and the younguns.  But more importantly, what is your dignity worth?  What is the wasted time worth? 

And this idea helps the economy.  Most online and big box stores sell netbooks, so that money that would be wasted in the airline sector goes immediately into the retail sector.  Sure it’s zero sum, but consumer confidence is really measured by retail so the numbers will look good and make the average Joe feel good.

Bonus is that we get to poke .gov in the eye.  When the airlines lose money, they will start yelling at lawmakers, “Remember that donation I was going to give you, EVER again?”  Once that happens, no matter how much the well-connected are making off the PornoScopes, they won’t match coin that the airlines have to throw around. 

I know it’s going to be hard to convince the folks that this is a good idea.  They so want to see you and make your life a living hell welcome home all the offspring.  But it takes bold moves in hard times to fight tyranny.  Men have lost their lives in this noble pursuit, the least you can do is forgo Aunt Fran’s fruit cake this year.  Who knows, she may FedEx you your own personal sized loaf. :) 

Ming Tsai?  Ringer much?  I freakin’ hate that guy’s attitude and his recipes.  I might find him slightly more palatable to watch than Cat “mah down home cookin’ always includes a ton of truffles and caviar” Cora.  But only just.  If he’s replacing her, maybe it’s a step up.  But if both are on the panel.  UGH! 

And can you get a better sound tech?  What’s with the farty noise those giant doors were making?  Was that supposed to be ominous?  All it sounded like was some fat guy just ate a bunch of Mexican food.  Maybe it’s the soul of Jeffery Steingarten protesting his role being taken over by a pompous bald Dumbo-eared Brit who doesn’t like honey?

I have no favorites yet.  None of them wowed me.  The Chorizo sandwich SOUNDED like a grate idea, but apparently it’s possible to frack up Chorizo?  No, I have no idea how you mess it up and don’t, “…put enough meat…,” on the plate?  IT’S CHORIZO!  You pile it on until your heart shoots a pain down your left arm then you double that amount. 

…And my one ingredient on a desert island?  POTABLE WATER!  IT’S A DESERT!  I watch all those survival shows.  I know what’s NOT on a Desert island. 

Alton, gain ten pounds, you don’t look well. 

Oh.  And to chef Estes, when you make Michael Symon regret eating Pork, you there, my friend, have accomplished something.  …And it’s not a good thing. 

I think I may bow out and not watch until they get down to the end, then root for whoever is picked to be the “Walter Mondale” to go up against Tsai’s “Ronald Reagan”.

Global GDP in 2008? Also about $60 trillion. Meaning that the optimistic view is that our federal obligations outpace the entire annual economic output of human civilization.

H/T to Unc. 

Oh… and if you didn’t get the title reference; rent Highlander.

WE MAY HAVE MORE THREE SHEETS!!!!!   HAZAH!  …maybe…

Never underestimate the power of slightly inebriated people in large numbers who have access to social networking! 

Man, just think… Could we have saved Firefly?

Now, if a plow breaks, the land it plows doesn’t care that you just got Plow 2.0 from the local blacksmith.  But if your computer breaks, it also takes the happy little files that made it useful with it.  All gone…  BYE BYE. Never to have that priceless hacked video of the celeb du jour making her “home movie” debut.

But, if you planned ahead, you probably have back ups of all your important data locked away on another computer OR some form of less fickle media.  So you can make sure your bills get paid and all your files are left intact.  Your files are part of your digital plow.  They are not the field.

Most people know this.  Most people have some important things like pictures or wills on DVD, CD, Flash drives, and the like.  Now imagine it was YOUR JOB.  Imagine there was the fanciful vocation called, oh I don’t know…  An IT manager?

Let’s imagine that job was on this planet to ensure the smooth day to day functioning of computers and their data.  So that when something goes to that great e-Waste bin in the sky, the end users are back up and running in just a few minutes.

If that job existed, part of its sandbox would be to back up ALL the important data.  …Because data is part of the package.  Remember the plow analogy?  So when a computer went plotz, they would simply walk over to the media shelf and pull out a back up of that computer’s data (or at least the important bits).  If they were top notch IT Managers, if the media on the shelf was bad, they would saunter off site and pull some very secure copy of the data for a magical sacred place.  …Probably their own home fire safe.

One thing you would never hear out of the mouths’ of these mythical job holders is, “No one told me I needed to do disaster recovery backups!”  They would never say that for fear of being stoned in the town square for being idiots not worthy of breeding or breathing.

*mutters something about consultants and wannabes and mass graves when he runs the universe*

“Don’t feed the bears,” is NOT we humans being mean and nasty to our nature brothers.  It’s an acknowledgement that once you leave suburbia, you are no longer the top of the food chain.  Act like it.  You are prey, and when a wild animal does you the courtesy of leaving you alone, you do likewise lest you end up proving that you belonged at the edge of the herd.  You see, when those guys on NatGeo and Animal Planet go out looking at all does cuddwy wuddwy widdle fuzzys, what you don’t see are the armed guides with mad hunting skills, that include knocking a gnat off a pin head at 100 yards, and their high powered rifles.  …Because nature does not love us no mater how much you give to the WWF or how much granola you eat.

If you bug a critter, not matter how small, it will finally decide it’s either you or it; and it ALWAYS votes “it”.   Sometimes that vote ends in it running like a deer.  But when that animal is equipped with claws and teeth and a usually surly ‘tude, you can pretty much guess it’s coin if going to land on “Fight” more often than “Flight”.  Act accordingly.

I wish that would have been a bearzilla that guy decided to go all Annie Leibovitz on!