YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE

The state of Maine may lay claim to this saying, but it's mine today. Here's Travis's Spring Break 2012 travel itinerary:

Depart for Spring Break, Saturday, Mar 10:

• 6:45 AM Arrive Easterwood Airport to board American Airlines flight to Albuquerque via Dallas.
• 6:50 AM Learn the flight was oversold. No seat for T. Next flight out also oversold. Only a bird is going to fly out of College Station anytime soon.
• 9:00 AM Take a TAXI for the 2-hour drive to Austin, TX, to catch a flight to Dallas and connect to Albuquerque. FYI: for those of you watching my pennies, American paid for the taxi. They have a contract with the guy. Apparently they need him a lot.
• 5:00 PM Arrive in Albuquerque. With a time zone change, it's a full 12 hours after arriving at the airport for first oversold flight. Couldn't have driven the distance in that time, but nearly.

After a week in Farmington "packed" with fun, T is set to return to Texas A&M, Sunday, Mar 18:

• 9:00 AM Depart Farmington, NM, for 3-hour drive to Albuquerque Sunport. 

DIGRESSION: I love the airport's name. Sounds like space travel. We do have alien visitation (real aliens, not Mexicans) in New Mexico, so we are a natural for space travel. We New Mexicans own the first commercial spaceport in the world, Spaceport America, a mere 30 miles SE of Truth or Consequences. Would I lie? 

We have the New Mexico Space Authority. Take THAT Texas, you don't have your own Space Authority! Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is booking flights NOW! Anyone can go. Just click here.


A $20,000 deposit is required. But it is refundable if you have buyer's remorse.


Back to the real travels and travails of Travis:

• 12:30 PM Arrive at airport for check-in. ALL FLIGHTS have been cancelled or delayed. 

What?! There is no snow.  Joe and Travis were ahead of the predicted snowstorm by hours. But there is  this:

Wind uprooting trees, toppling billboards, Arizona blowing in and reducing visibility to less than half a mile. Maybe jet engines sucking in dirt is also a problem. I know my lungs don't like it. 

Next spot out of Albuquerque to Texas? Maybe Tuesday!

• 2:00 PM on the road to Santa Fe where a seat on a flight to Dallas is available late Monday morning. Better to hole up in Santa Fe if it snows tonight.
• 5:00 PM at a showing of John Carter at the Regal Santa Fe Stadium. There wasn't enough Arizona dirt in the New Mexico air for those two. They had to watch a movie about Mars, the desert planet, filmed just a few miles west in Utah. 

I need a drink of water.

Denise's Book Bag: Second in the Series

Four great books that cannot be read as a straight arc of storyline: 

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Throw out expectations and go for the ride. A truly imaginative telling. I thought the title sounded horribly uninteresting. Pay attention so you'll know what the Goon Squad is.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Falls into that magical realism sort of category (common in Latin American fiction, but this one is Japanese). Some bits are never explained, revisited, or resolved, but once you accept that you are in a world Murakami invented instead of one you understand, you'll be OK.

The Blind Assassin By Margaret Atwood. Very interesting laying out of the stories which only seem to have no relation to one another. Each story on it's on isn't that remarkable, but It was interesting the way Atwood wove them together.

100 Years of Solitude (Cién Años de Soledad) Gabriel García Márquez. A metaphorical history of Columbia, told through the generations of the Buendía family. Extraordinary events fill this story, best described as magical realism. 

DITTO!

I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned Rush Limbaugh on Facebook. And I should have known I’d get sucked into the black hole of Dittoheadism. 

Is Rush  an entertainer? Is he a comedian? Is he providing commentary on modern politics? Is he actually giving his opinion? Is he voicing the frustrations of his followers?  

Is he simply being sarcastic? According to dictionary.com sarcasm means: ". . . ridicule or mockery used harshly, often crudely and contemptuously, for destructive purposes." No doubt, Limbaugh was using sarcasm when he described Sandra Fluke as a slut and a prostitute: harsh, crude, contemptuous, and for destructive purposes. 

Was Rush being absurd in order to point out the absurdity of Fluke discussing “personal sexual recreational activities” before Congress as he states in his website apology to her? His commentary was definitely absurd. Absurd because it had nothing whatsoever to do with her testimony. 

The subject of her testimony was the requirement that insurance companies make available coverage for women’s birth control. The required coverage was not a cost to any taxpayer. Nor did the requirement for coverage force  any institution religiously opposed to birth control to pay for the birth control. It was only about making coverage available. Watch the video. Her testimony runs from the 15:20 to the 26:00 mark. Or read the transcript.

You should also read Rush’s transcript. He didn’t start the bullshit of equating Fluke’s birth-control-coverage-access testimony to “having so much sex” it’s hard to pay for contraception. Craig Bannister on CNSnews.com did in “Sex Crazed Coeds . . . ”. --- Side note to Bannister and Limbaugh: Birth control pills are taken one a day, regardless of how many times a woman “does it” or doesn’t “do it.” It’s erectile dysfunction pills that must be taken every time a man with ED wants to “get it up” so he can “do it.”

Rush took that article and blasted off. The result was screaming people all over the blog universe and radio and TV. Everybody’s thinking the other guy’s an idiot.

Both Bannister and Limbaugh emphasize that women need to take personal responsibility for their actions and the consequences of those actions. Women use birth control because they take personal responsibility for their actions.

Craig Bannister and Rush Limbaugh: You are each personally responsible for your words. When you lie about what was said, when you stir up a tempest in a teapot by implying women sell sex or by actually calling them sluts and prostitutes because they stand up for themselves, you contribute to an atmosphere in our society that is so poisonous that we as a people find it difficult to come together to make important decisions that affect us all.

I’m tired of it. 

I’m saying something about it.