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I should be writing this tomorrow but I will be back on a plane heading for England.

Every year I get frustrated by St Patricks Day here in the US. People wear green, dredge their family trees for a glimmer of Irish to justify it all, and then get drunk on piss poor beer. Why oh why is it such a big deal, what happened to the St Andrew’s day celebrations, poor St David, or any of the other countries that helped seed the US.

Maybe I’m just jealous that no one wants to be English, or perhaps that I don’t look good in green, or that I have no Irish in me (almost certainly being the offspring of raping vikings), but mostly I think its because of the piss poor beer. Whats a celebration without a decent beer? Note to Brian: send Tuppers 🙂

(more jet-lag-inspired ranting)

I had the misfortune to watch Inside Edition last night, ABC’s nightly update on all things celebrity. Really, why does anyone care what these people say or do? In most cases, these people aren’t even entertaining us, let alone doing anything worthwhile.

Richard Crowe says he was the target of an Al Qaeda plot to kidnap a, ahem, major Hollywood celebrity in order to destabilize our culture? Really, I don’t know what’s worse – who makes this stuff up, or who believes it? Gladiator was a good movie but his kidnapping isn’t going to send me setting cars alight in a panic.

Poor Martha has to wear a house-arrest bracelet – the horror!! We saw just how awful it is to be imprisoned in your own mansion enjoying your fortune and planning your next one. Defrauding your shareholders and lieing to the SEC never looked so attractive. Why do people care about this pointless ex-criminal?

And, finally, poor tsuami-victim supermodel, trying to restore her life after surviving that awful disaster. It must be tough pulling yourself together in your NYC penthouse apartment, with access to food and drink, comfort and warmth, all the things that the millions of the other surviviors are having to do without. But lets feel sorry for her, after all if we think about the real victims we might just grow a conscience.

Ok, I’ll try and get more sleep today.

The sad fact about airplane travel is that you get to spend large periods of time cooped up with large numbers of people. And that means the chances of meeting more stupid people increases. For instance – how hard is it to sit in your assigned seat? There were only 40 seats on the flight to LAX but at least 10 people had chosen to sit other than their assigned seat. Perhaps its arrogance rather than sutpidity – that somehow they are more important than everyone else and we will all quietly go sit somewhere else rather than make them sit where they were assigned. We are all not worthy.

And why can’t people follow the frick’in rules on a plane? Seats belt on, chairs in the upright position for take-off, doesn’t everyone know that? So how come two different people get up and go to the overhead lockers just as the plane is taking off from LAX? We’re halfway down the runway when they do it. Same with people who get up the minute the plane stops at the gate, before the seatbelt sign has been turned off. I understand that everyone wants to get off before the people in front of them (after all their time is so much more important than mine) but there is a safety reason why you should stay in your seat. A few years ago I was on a southwest flight, stopped at the gate, people got up, and the plane lurched forward, several people falling over, one guy got hit by falling luggage. Much to my glee, the captain came on and said “that people, is why you are told not to get up until the seatbelt sign has been turned off”.

I’m going back to England again next week, can’t wait to enjoy my fellow man’s company.

I don’t usually watch the show but found myself in front of it last night. Kinda boring, no controversy to spice it up, not enough statues to Brits. But I did want to complain about Chris Rock. First, why the hell did everyone give him a standing ovation just for walking on stage? And whats the deal with the anti-Bush jokes in his opening monologue? I’m no fan of Bush but this is supposed to be entertainment, just because you’re a “celebrity” and have a captive audience doesn’t mean you should use it a platform for your views. Its just poor taste for the host to do it. Another low light – Dustin Hoffman presenting best film; was he drunk? high? asleep?? Way to spoil the big announcement, Dustin.

But there were some highlights: Natalie Portman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kirsten Dunst and Halle Berry were all mighty fine!

What is it about cars and stupidity? Friday evening on the way home and again this morning on the way to San Diego, I’m in fierce rain, near zero-visibility in the spray off the road and people are driving with no lights on. Apart from the fact that its illegal, its damn stupid, people.

And Friday night on the way home there are huge convoys of RVs heading for the desert as usual. But its rained for days and the forecast is for storms for the weekend and beyond so where do they think they’re going? Well, they end up spending the weekend in every large parking lot in town; Von’s, McDonalds etc. Near impossible to do any shopping with every space filled with RVs bigger than a house. How hard is it to look at a weather forecast and determine that leaving home didn’t make sense? I think all those diesel fumes must rot the brain or something. Its just stupid, people.

Listerine can get you arrested for drunk driving. Ok, so you’re not supposed to swallow the stuff but its still one more reason why Pfizer sucks ass. Hopefully this week the FDA will announce their findings on Celebrex and Pfizer will go further down the flusher, sucks for my some of my 401k, but there are many many people in the company who deserve it. Of course the good people will suffer whilst the idiots will remain, blaming everyone else., but those of us still suffering the trauma of having worked there can smile a little. Better than therapy!

Last year I got a great deal on a couple of T-Mobile Motorola V-300 cellphones. They were $0.00 to buy and each came with a $50 rebate – new phones and a $100 in the pocket, how can you go wrong? Well, its easy ‘cos you know you’re going to get screwed.

Sometime after activating the phones we found out that we had been given a Palm Springs area code making our numbers long distance from our home area. T-Mobile gladly changed them to a new number and everything was fine.

Then came the first of the rejection letters. Our rebate isn’t valid because the numbers I put on the form don’t exist. I called Young America, the company doing the rebate fulfillment, spoke to the usual hostile representative and eventually made him understand what had happened. He resubmitted the rebate with the new numbers.

And now I have a second rejection letter. Now our rebate isn’t valid because the numbers we have weren’t activated during the promotion period. Amazing, but not really suprising. These companies will do whatever they can to deny you what is rightfully and legally yours.

I wrote both Young America and T-Mobile to tell them what I thought of their process. I know I won’t get any joy but you can be sure that I won’t be a customer of T-Mobile once my current contract expires.

And whilst we’re talking about asswipes, the MINI blog got flooded with comment spam last night, so much for my ‘clever’ modifications. Maybe this weekend I’ll install the comment spam blacklist software.

Had to spend some time this evening implementing some hacks to the MINI blog website, after a period of no comment spam the onl*ne p*k*r dickheads were back in force. Hopefully I have them this time – I renamed the comment script and put a dummy form in the page which mentions the original filename but doesn’t appear on the screen. Well, I am sure it will hold them for a little while longer. Next up will be blacklists! Kinda over the top for a pointless little site like mine.

Tuesday morning update: here’s something new…. trackback spam? This morning this website had a bunch of trackback’s from the dickheads, I’ve not seen that before.

I saw this sign in Fry’s last night and it got me thinking about whether anyone offers cheap DVDs but doesn’t let you choose ?

Listening to a co-worker giving us a lecture on how to solve the world’s problems (I am lucky to have such an expert on world policy so close by) I am struggling to keep quiet. Why do so many Americans insist on making the vowel at the beginning of country names their own syllable? They don’t say A-merica so why do they insist on saying I-raq ? Argh, and now she is saying A-zores!

It used to be that just mean people suck but I think the Christmas season shows that all people suck when placed in amongst their fellows. I am tired of searching the mall for a parking spot, finding a gap and then finding that some ignoramus has parked so far over the lines I can’t even get the MINI in the space. I’m tired of being near beaten to death in stores whilst waiting in line to pay, I had to stand here for 20 minutes, you can !&@!ing do the same. And the line won’t move any faster with you stepping on my heels or pushing your boxes into my back. There are no manners anywhere, no courtesy, just selfish arrogance. One really does start to understand why people go live in the hills – give me internet and satellite TV and I am so there.