Due to copyright issues, I will provide a link to this article at Askmen.com, rather than post it here. So check it out:

Dressing For A Night On The Town

(Herein begins my short-lived myspace blog, and ends my easyjournal blog.)

Woah, I have a blog. What a concept. I can actually just write pure stream of conscious stupidity, rather than well thought out and structured essays!?!? It’s like I just graduated college and don’t have to write papers anymore. Of course, I’ll still write that way, but now I can write this way sometimes. Score!

This whole concept of writing a blog was spawned by the events of the day. What happened, you ask? Well at O’Hare airport today, I thought that maybe the car on the way there had crashed and I had ended up in hell.

I had missed my original flight at 6pm on Continental. It wasn’t my fault. The client I’m working for ended up taking longer than anyone could have anticipated. Unfortunately, it was the last flight out on continental, so I had to book a flight on American. This is where the fun began.

First, I wait on the line that doesn’t move, in order to buy a ticket. There were literally 4 people in front of me, and I was in the line for 20-30 minutes. Of course, with every 30 minutes that passes, that means it’s possible I might not make the next flight.

It’s finally my turn and this woman books me on one flight, and then gives me a stand-by boarding pass for the next one. Fine. But she tells me to go to the gate for the stand-by one first, because it might be leaving before the one she was able to book me for. It was all very strange.

So I arrive at that gate, and the guy won’t give me a seat yet. For some bizarre reason, it’s American’s policy not to give people a stand-by seat until the entire plane is boarded. This, of course, is in contrast to Continental, whose policy it is to issue you a seat immediately if there is availability. So the dude won’t issue me a seat, but tells me that the flight is delayed until around 8:30pm (this was at approximately 6:45). He then seems my actual ticket and tells me that this plane is supposed to be on-time for 7pm.

Of course, the gate for the other flight (H14) was CLEAR ACROSS the American terminal at O’Hare. Now, American has a hub at O’Hare, so the terminal is quite large. It must have been a quarter mile walk, no exaggeration. And the airport was MOBBED.

So I finally get to the other gate, and go up to the desk. This woman tells me that this is actually a different flight than the one either of my tickets are for. Bear in mind that these are all flights to La Guardia. Everything is delayed so there are people from like 5 separate flights tho La Guardia hanging out at O’Hare at the same time. She tells me to go back to the gate I just came from (K1) CLEAR ACROSS the terminal because that flight is supposed to be taking off at 7:45, which is the earliest take off of any the American flights.

So I return to the original gate after my quarter-mile trek (it’s around 7pm now) and it’s desolate. The gate agent is there. I give him my tickets and he tells me to go BACK to the gate I just came from, because this is where my other flight is for. He also tells me that this is supposed to have a 7:00 departure. The flight that was here has had a gate change to a gate CLEAR ACROSS the terminal, near where I just came from. I throw my hands up and tell him that they just told me to come here.

So I go back again to the gate (H14). At this point I’ve walked about a mile trying to find the right gate. It becomes clear that this gate actually is for a flight that I do not have a ticket for, and it’s boarding. At this point I look up at the departure screens. MY ORIGINAL FLIGHT IS NOT EVEN LISTED ON IT. So I shrug my shoulders and go to the gate that the K1 flight got moved to. I wait there and it finally boards. We take off around 8:30, and I’m in the air now.

Bear in mind that I arrived at the airport at 6pm sharp. That was the scheduled departure time for my Continental flight. It was on time, of course. Had it been just 30 minutes late, I probably would have been able to check in. Instead, I had to buy an entirely new ticket and suffer with American, who was too incompetent to get me on a departing flight until 8:30pm 2 hours after I got to the airport.

I have traveled probably upwards of 150,000 miles in the past 2-3 years, and I have never experienced such ridiculousness. It was pure mayhem at this airport. I still don’t know what happened to my original flight. The thing disappeared. Did it leave? Did it just fail to appear on the departure screens? I don’t know, but I feel like I was in an episode of the twilight zone shot in Hell.

So now I will arrive back at my apartment somewhere in the vicinity of 11:30pm, when I was supposed to be home by 9. This is the kind of thing that makes the traveling lifestyle so difficult. People who aren’t road warriors don’t realize it. They think that if they’re slaving away in the office until 8 or 9 PM, then their job is much harder than mine, because I just get to hang out in great hotels and wonderful restaurants on the company dime. Okay, that isn’t entirely false. But in terms of the work we have to put in, our lives are far more challenging than anything they can begin to imagine. But I don’t want to digress into a tirade on what a pain in the ass it is to live one’s life when always traveling. That is for another time.

At any rate, I’m glad I’m almost home. They’re about to make me turn my computer off, which is just fine. I’ve been staring at it for entirely too many hours this week probably somewhere in the realm of 80-100 hours. Ugh.

Anyway, this blog will soon be posted on my own website synchrodan.com, but for now I figure I’ll use myspace. Until then, over and out, I’m officially a blogger.

Did you know that if you put a tortilla chip in your mouth and take a sip of tomato juice, then chew, it tastes like you’re eating chips and salsa? (The wonders of coping with airline snacks.)

There’s been a great deal of talk in the media lately about some political cartoons drawn in Denmark. Apparently, these cartoons featured the Islamic figure of the Prophet Muhammad in rather offensive settings. For example, in one comic there is a bomb in his turban. These comics enraged the Islamic community. In a number of nations, they are rioting as a result.

For those who have not seen these comics and wish to see what all the buzz is about, click on this link. Due to the fact that these comics are apparently so offensive, they’re very difficult to find online. Even with my superb googling skills, it took me about 20 minutes to find clear copies. Since I am such a firm believer in free speech, however, I have no problem whatsoever providing a link to them in my journal. If you look at them you’ll notice one thing: it’s really not that big of a deal.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. They’re offensive. If I were Muslim, I would be offended and annoyed. After all if someone had a political cartoon with Jesus wearing a suicide bomber vest, I would be similarly annoyed, since I am Catholic. So I don’t begin to question why Muslims aren’t pleased with these comics.

But come on. These comics have sparked serious violence. In Syria, angry mobs set the Danish and Norwegian embassies on fire. There have also been massive riots in other countries such as Afghanistan. All of this because of a lousy comic? Are you kidding me?

Imagine, if you will, that the Jesus comic I spoke of above was published in a Japanese newspaper. Can you imagine if Christians in the U.S. were to riot and burn down the Japanese embassy? Of course not. They would probably protest a bit with signs, maybe boycott Japanese products. Japan would probably apologize, and life would go on.

Yet, the Muslims chose to get violent. So let’s review the logic here. The Muslims are offended because Denmark published a comic which implies that their prophet promotes violence (i.e. bomb in his turban). They are offended, obviously, because they do not believe that this is true (if they believed it was true, then it’s not clear why they would be offended by it). So what do they do? Riot violently and set things on fire to retaliate. Am I missing something, or doesn’t this reaction just reinforce the very stereotype that they are so angry about?

I mean c’mon guys. You aren’t going to convince anyone that a picture of your prophet promoting violence is inaccurate by being violent about it. This just isn’t the right way to go about proving your point.

I’m not really sure what else to say. I don’t like hold broad generalizations, but at this point, the Muslims in the Middle East aren’t doing a whole lot to show that they deserve to be considered a legitimate player in world politics, and episodes like this certainly don’t help matters. I really hope that what President Bush said in his recent State of the Union Address about eliminating our reliance on oil wasn’t just an empty political promise, because the day we no longer need to rely on oil from the Middle East will be a wonderful one.

Is there anything to do in Arizona?