Having a blog is so great in theory but really when your life is defined by the demands of graduate school and the dubious prospect of meals you can prepare in three minutes, it becomes more and more difficult to generate content without actually going outside and getting arrested. Not that I have ruled out that contingency, by the way.
In lieu of anything interesting I have done recently, and as I prepare for an actual adventure in the near future (Look out, Tokyo!!), here is some small change from our recent trip to Phoenix.
Actual Quotes from Actual People in Arizona:
"I popped in there the other day, and you know, that was the dinkiest gun store I ever been to. I mean, talk about a poor selection, I seen better than that at some of them estate sales."
"That there's the black guy's house."
"Look at all those emergency lights. What do you want to bet there's a golf cart underneath all that."
"you can really tell the age of a community when you got 35 thousand places that do dental work and about three million urologists."
"look at that bastard all sitting out there in his wheelchair with a margarita."
Additionally, I became apoplectic with fury on the flight home and had to go pace the length of the airplane bathroom until I calmed down. By which I mean I got so dizzy from spinning in a circle that I forgot how pissed off I was.
Mike bet me I wouldn't write a complaint letter. Since I am too mature to ever turn down a dare, here is the email I sent to customer service.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have preferentially flown with Delta for over ten years
now. However, I have cause for complaint with an amenity of yours which makes
me significantly less likely to fly with you in future.
Your "interactive touch screens" are appalling.
Many of them refuse to shut off properly, persistently bombarding one with
incessant advertisements, flickering images, and the imbecilic, mutant rictus
of your corporate spokeswoman. The screens are bleary and smeared, suggesting
the accretion of months of mucus coated particulates from the mouth-breathing,
meat-mittened, sebaceous cretins jabbing at the unresponsive monitor in fruitless
attempts to repeatedly view the unmitigated crassness of the preview for “American
Pie 5.”
However, the potentially infectious and demonstrably grimy
abuse of this feature is not the focus of my complaint. I write to address a
more specific canker: the monstrosity of your in-flight trivia game. Never mind
that the content of the questions is so abstruse as to be preposterous - Do you
realize that 96 percent of the American population thinks that the passerine is
a type of fruit? – but given the recondite nature of these so called “trivia,”
one might safely assume that those responsible for the creation and
presentation of the game to have at very least a ninth grade equivalent
proficiency in spelling and grammar. To my dismay, this assumption was belied
in the most galling manner.
It would behoove those responsible for the production of
this atrocity to address themselves to the rudimentary foundations of the English
language; most notably, the appropriate employment of the much abused apostrophe.
Contrary to popular opinion, the placement of an apostrophe in a given word
does NOT signify the advent of the letter “s,” nor does it by default indicate
a possessive plural. An apostrophe placed in the word “It’s” connotes the
contraction of “It is,” while that in “Who’s”
is representative of the redacted “I” in “Who is,” and not, as your inane,
pestilent cesspit of arcane knowledge insinuates, the possessive “whose.”
Please attend to this matter immediately, as I will not
hesitate to put in train a petition to the other four insufferable pedants on
this planet who might be roused into righteous indignation by this type of
bagatelle.
Sincerely,
Emmi
I expect a complimentary jet any day. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to watching videos of pets falling off things and crying about my thesis.
