In a day and age where the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just passed, one has to wonder how anyone could be oblivious to their surroundings in an airport.

While walking through the Dallas airport this morning to catch my connection, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a policeman standing with his arms crossed in an aggressive pose. This would get my attention at any time, but being in an airport just heightened that. As I came closer, I could see there were two more policemen with him and a man in a suit all surrounding what appeared to be a college-aged caucasian male with a largish black & white dog. The male in question seemed perplexed by whatever his situation was (after observing for a bit I finally pieced together it had something to do with getting the dog on the plane), and the police had him surrounded.

Being a curious sort, I found a chair a fair distance away and observed the situation, but what drew my attention quickly more than the actual occurrence was that I seemed to be the only one paying any attention. I sat there for a good 10 minutes watching the scene, and I spent the vast majority of that watching person after person walking by and not even noticing this was going on. Even people who came over to the area where this was happening would swerve to miss one of the policemen as they walked because they were paying no attention.

Something my family always raised me to do was to be aware of my surroundings; I am always very aware of where exits are in buildings, how many people are around me and so on.  Ive even been known to catch a shoplifter or two when I’m just out shopping.  The idea that people could walk through an airport, a known terrorist target, and not pay attention to something of this nature just astounds me.  What if he had been dangerous and stood up and grabbed one of the cops guns?  What if he had somehow smuggled a weapon through security?  There could have been an endless list of dangerous scenarios, and yet no one paid it a bit of attention.  (For the record, I chose a seat that was a good distance away and partially concealed by a pillar, I chose that postion based on ability to get away and shielding)

It is easier than ever to get distracted in this world these days thanks to all of the gadgets we carry, but aren’t there some things we should just be at least a slightly bit aware of?

Welcome to the sixth annual posting of this entry!  Long time readers can skip it, but as I keep adding more readers, it’ll keep getting posted!

Ah, Columbus Day, the day we set aside each year to celebrate a lie. It always warms my heart.

People tend to forget that Christopher Columbus wasn’t looking for North America when he landed here, he was looking for the West Indies. Quite the navigator there. He also believed, until his death, that the entire time he was in this area that he was exploring the Eastern coast of Asia.

Never mind the fact that he also took the indigenous people as slaves and shipped them back to Spain, against the Crown’s wishes. Never mind that colonists he brought over here rebelled against him when the New World didn’t come close to what he described. No, no, all those things are just a-ok for a man we should honor with a governmental and banking holiday.

The biggest offense to me is that he was far from the first person to “discover” the Americas. (how does one “discover” a place that is already inhabited?) The Siberians crossed the land bridge with Alaska as early as 70,000 BC, and it was those crossings that gave us the Native Americans. There were numerous other occurrences of people coming to the Americas, but one of the most well documented was Leifur Eircksson in 1005 when he sailed from Iceland to North America and traveled down the coast. Gee, does that come before 1492?

Yet, history textbooks still hail him as the man who “discovered” America. Why is beyond me, but a friend pointed me to a wonderful book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
(Barnes & Noble link) that spends an entire chapter delving into this very matter. Fascinating stuff.

If you want to credit Columbus with something, just say that he brought the America’s to the attention of Europe, but leave it at that.

The American Family Association (AFA) has decided that the time has come for them to take their fight for decency into the grocery aisles.  Their target?  Schweddy Balls.

Announced a mere two weeks ago, the Saturday Night Live inspired ice cream has already hit store shelves (I’ve tried it, I liked it.)  One Million Moms, a sub-division of the AFA, has issued a statement against the new flavor and its “vulgar” nature.

In the past, Ben & Jerry’s has released controversial ice creams, like a special edition of Chubby Hubby called Hubby Hubby last year which celebrated gay marriage. It seems that offending customers has become an annual tradition for Ben & Jerry’s.

The ice cream is being released in a limited batch, which means it will be distributed nationwide but only for three or four months. If it proves popular, another batch might be forthcoming, but we hope not.

Ben & Jerry’s spokesman Sean Greenwood replied to the call for the protest:

The name is irreverent, but we’ve always been about having some irreverence and having some fun … We’re not trying to offend people. Our fans get the humor.

As per their usual modus operandi, the AFA is making a call for action that you should protest against Ben & Jerry’s, and as with just about everything this group does, I just have to shake my head.

This group takes offense at just just about everything under the sun, and as per usual there is next to nothing to get worked up over.  They get offended by “Schweddy Balls” as they don’t want kids asking for it.  What makes them think kids will know what the heck it means?  How about if they ask questions you just say it’s named that because there are balls of sweets in it.  If you don’t make a big deal out of it, they won’t even think twice about it.  However, this group is positive that the smallest thing will cause children to turn into perverted savages.

You know what?  It’s an ice cream.  Get over it.  How about you get worked up over something serious in this world that presents a real danger to children such as the lack of exercise, falling grades and in general how to get by in this world.  But no, by all means, ignore actually spending time with your children and instead spend your time writing useless letters over the name of an ice cream.  That is the perfect use of your time.

One man is shot and killed by the police; a man suspected of drug and gang crimes, and with evidence pointing to him having fired at the police. While outrage is fine, and speaking out against it is more than acceptable.  Four days of rioting?  Now you’re just spitting on the man’s grave.

Before I go much further, let me say that I am speaking solely to the rioters.  I have had many friends from England over he years, and I know that I am not speaking to 99.99% of the population of the country.  I am speaking directly to the cretins that have seen fit to take the death of Mark Duggan and turn it into an excuse for looting, destroying and acting generally as asses.

You are a proud nation, a nation that was a glowing example of strength and will in the face of a great enemy as Germany pounded you nightly during the Blitz.  You are a nation that has once been able to say that the sun never set on your empire … and now you are burning down a Sony warehouse after you’ve ransacked it for some electronics?  Well done.  Makes total sense that you should loot businesses of people completely unrelated to what happened to Duggan.

What about the 150-year-old family business you destroyed?  Did they shoot Duggan?  No, they didn’t.

With every moment of footage and report I read, I feel a gut wrenching sadness for England, it’s proud history and the innocent people caught up in this that have never done anything to harm anyone.  Those of you participating in the riots, you are nothing but hooligans, thugs and scum.  You want to know what’s wrong with your life?  Look in a mirror and leave those around you alone as they have done nothing to you, and all you are doing in the end is hurting yourself.  You are hurting friends, family, loved ones and taking jobs away from your area by destroying businesses.

Are you proud of yourselves?  No, you aren’t.  And as more and more of you upload pictures and video to social networks, and you slip up showing your faces here and there, we’ll see how proud you are as you get hauled off to prison.

To those of you who have stood strong, keep calm and carry on.

It would seem that being a woman beater is not harming Chris Browns career in any way, shape or form. Must be nice.

Following an appearance last week on Good Morning America where he was so enraged by an interview that he broke a window, Chris Brown was back on ABC tonight to appear on Dancing With the Stars.  Despite the fact that host Tom Bergeron and professional dancer Cheryl Burke both voiced opposition to his coming on the show, come on he did.

In case you’ve forgotten why this matters, while Brown has had some success as a singer, he became most well-known for beating his now ex-girlfriend Rihanna back in early 2009.  He got noticed again when American Idol singer Adam Lambert got pulled from some TV bookings due to kissing another man on sage at the American Music Awards.  Brown took over Lambert’s bookings, sending a signal that beating women was still better than being gay.  Good to know.

So, here we are with Brown still acting up, existing show personalities expressing their dismay at his coming on the program, and ABC just ignores it all.  Does he have incriminating photos on someone high up at the network?  Somehow he keeps getting on this channel even after he has thrown a hissy fit on another of their shows.  Does this make sense to anyone?  Was a guy who is simply out promoting a new really that necessary to appear on your show at the risk of alienating viewers and cast members?

Apparently so.  Apparently woman beating is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the Disney-owned network.  Getting destructive after another interview on the same network?  Perfectly ok.

So glad to see ABC has a sense of moral direction

Have you ever walked into your kitchen and thought, “I wish I had a way to quickly tell my friends and family that I’m not totally right in the head … oh, I know, I’ll buy a 5′, 9″ refrigerator with a gigantic picture of the latest royal couple on it!”

If you’re super excited about the impending wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, you can now mark the occasion by buying a refrigerator with one of the royal couple’s official engagement photos emblazoned across the dual doors.  Apparently this design was the winner of a poll conducted by GE on its Facebook page for its UK branch.  The appliance maker is launching a line of customizable appliances, and they asked fans to vote on a design they would love to see, and somehow this is what won.

David Garden, Commercial Director for GE at Glen Dimplex Home Appliances told Get Connected, “As expected, the Royal Wedding has really captured the UK’s imagination and it was no surprise that a William and Kate commemorative fridge was a popular choice.”  He went on to add, “It certainly wipes the floor with your usual commemorative tea towels and mugs and is most definitely one of the most novel Royal Wedding products we have seen. Who knows, it may appeal to die-hard fans or maybe even Prince Charles and Camilla will order one as a wedding gift for the couple.”

What it really is is a way to advertise a new refrigerator that can be customized for color and other specs using panels you can change on the front of it.  All it does for me is make me want to check anyone who orders this version into a mental hospital.  Do you really need to acknowledge the marriage of two people you don’t even know by having them stare at you every time you go to get cream for your coffee?  No, I don’t think you do.

As someone who has taken a lot of ribbing over the years for his love of Star Wars and comic books, even I have to say there is a line I would never cross in my fandoms.  Pasting an image on my refrigerator would be a good guess as one of those lines.

BBC America, once a bastion of British programming, seems to have completely lost track of its original intended purpose.

Last year I complained when it was announced that BBC America was going to start showing Star Trek: The Next Generation.  While I could somewhat grasp the concept as Patrick Stewart is a well respected British actor, but could someone explain to me why they are now also showing The X-Files in the afternoons?  Is there some British connection there that I’m unaware of?  (answer: “No.”)

Then lets take a look at some of the movies they’ve been airing as of late.  Apparently so long as a movie has a British (or Scottish) actor in it, it qualifies for airing on the channel.  The Untouchables?  The story of Elliot Ness that just happens to have Sean Connery in it?  The Hunt for Red October?  Same connection.  It’s getting a bit silly at this point when you consider how many British productions exist that they’ve never aired and yet we’re saddled with American productions you can see just about anywhere on a channel they aren’t made for.

This has become a problem not just limited to BBC America, however.  Could someone explain to me why the SyFy Channel now has a cooking show, Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen?  Don’t forget they also have WWE Smackdown on Friday nights.

I understand that channels may find their original formulas don’t work quite as well as they first thought they might, and then they need to retool, but to go this far afield of their intended purposes just seems wrong.  SyFy is a bit more forgivable than BBC America’s programming choices, but neither of them make a whole lot of sense to me.

And in case you are curious, yes, I have actually e-mailed BBC America to voice my displeasure instead of just venting here.  This used to be my favorite cable channel, but now I find myself turning to it  a lot less as I have no burning desire to watch American shows on a channel dedicated to British television.

In the modern age of streaming video, can we now please get rid of trailers on DVDs before the film so I don’t completely ditch the format?

While siting down to watch a DVD last night, I was rather annoyed by the concept of having to skip through some trailers.  While not anywhere close to being as annoying as the days of VHS, it’s still just a nuisance.

Studios are concerned about declining home video sales, but yet they continue to make watching discs an inconvenience.  When I pop in a disc, I’m forced to go through the trailers.  Not a horrible thing to once, but lets say you go back to watch the same disc a year or two down the road, are you going to care about seeing the same trailers again, or especially what amounts to advertisements for movies from a few years ago?  Short answer, no.

With the rise of digital downloads and streaming video, things that start instantly, why should I be force to even think about trailers any more?  Yes, I know it’s a minor thing, but considering I watch almost everything  via download or streaming now, so when I popped in that disc last night, the first in quite some time, I was just immediately struck by how antiquated this was.  If you insist on putting them on the disc, put them in the extra features or something, but when I start up a Blu-ray or DVD, I should be immediately launched into the menu and not have to fight my way to get there.

With that being said, I’ll go back to watching Netflix now, thanks.  If you want to dump the trailers, let me know.

Can the Food Network be classified as an addictive drug yet?

While I’ll admit to having spent some time watching the Food Network, most specifically when they were first running the Japanese version of Iron Chef, I can’t say I’m a huge devotee of the channel.  With that being said, I seem to watch/hear more of this channel than any one human should ever have to.

You see, as loyal readers know, I live with my parents.  I believe my mother only knows the location of two channels on DirecTV, and those are the Food Network and HGTV.  I figured this was only an issue in my house, but when recently speaking with a married friend of mine, the subject of Iron Chef came up, and that led to us discussing the Food Network in general.  I mentioned my situation with my mom, and he said that ever since he got married he felt those were the only two channels ever on in his house.

I thought about it some more, and I realized that another female friend of mine, also married, also seems to watch the Food Network exclusively.

Is there something about this channel that men are incapable of comprehending?  I’m not some sports fanatic, so it isn’t like I’m opposed to exploring other channels or I have to be watching ESPN 24/7, so it’s not the concept of the channel somehow offends my sensibilities, but how can anyone stand to watch that many hours of people having cake decorating competitions?  If I have to hear one more story from Ina Garten on the Barefoot Contessa about how she has to have a meal prepared before her guests arrive, I may scream.

The only concession I get is that the channel does get turned off any time Rachael Ray comes on as my hatred of that woman is well-known, and there is a fear of me hurling something at the screen.  However, during those slivers of time where I receive a reprieve from endlessly steaming pots of boiling water, I get treated to House Hunters on HGTV.  We own a house … why are we watching a show about people hunting for a house?  Is there something I’m missing about a show where people wander through homes nitpicking every little thing, obviously hamming it up for the cameras?

I digress.  I do realize it isn’t just women who watch the Food Network as my father has an unhealthy obsession with one of their competition shows, Chopped.  So, yes, men can and do watch the channel, but I have yet to find one who watches it for hours on end like the women I have mentioned in this post.

I don’t get the attraction, and I’m not sure I want to either.

Vasquez Rocks needs to be put on the list of “places no one should ever film ever again”.

There was an episode of the original Star Trek series called “Arena” where Kirk got trapped on an alien planet with a Gorn – a green lizard – and they had to fight to the death.  There was a famous cliff in the background which is located just north of Los Angeles.  Ever since that episode, you can’t go more than a few days without seeing it show u[ in a movie or TV show.

You can actually head over to MovieSites.org to get a good feeling of just how many TV shows and movies these rocks have been in, but seeing them in the season premiere of Big Love, albeit for about two seconds, just made me realize that you just can’t use them any more.  They’re too recognizable, and they actually pull you out of he story to a degree as you go, “Oh look, it’s those rocks!”

Just as Hollywood has run out of ideas, it appears they have run out of locations to film things, so we constantly get these rocks.  Enough already, we enjoyed them the first 500 times, now it’s time to move on.

I used to fall for the whole, “I need to make New Year’s resolutions!” thing, but as I’ve gotten older I have come to the conclusion they are totally meaningless.

I am all for people making positive changes in their lives, but why do we feel the need to set these changes to some sort of date? Most people get discouraged with them after a couple of weeks and think, “Oh, well, no one keeps to their resolutions, so I might as well drop it.”

No, how about instead you just think through out the year, “You know, I really need to change aspect X in my life” and you just do it?  You don’t need to wait around for a certain date to happen, you just get up, you get it done and you keep at it.

I have chronicled my battle with weight loss on this blog more times than I care to remember, and trust me there are many days I just want to throw in the towel.  I do not enjoy going to the gym as it is just not a generally pleasant place, but I keep going.  Why?  I like the results I see and it is about the only time every day where I get a quite hour to myself.  I put on the iPod, fire up a podcast, and I zone out for 30 to 60 minutes.  There are no instant messages, no e-mails, no Tweets, no phone calls, it’s just me working to better myself.

Perhaps if this had started as a New Year’s resolution I would have given up after a couple of weeks, but instead it was just something I woke up one day and went, “Forget this, I’m going to lose weight,” and I did it.  I am healthier than I have ever been, have more energy and I look better.  Yay.

It isn’t just weight loss, however.  Is there something in your life that you could change for the better?  Of course there is.  Instead of waiting for that magical date of Jan. 1st to roll around, why don’t you just do it now.  You want to curse less?  Just stop.  You want to go to the gym?  Just go.  You want to find a better job?  Start looking.  But pick something, tell yourself you’re going to do it, and do it.  Stick with it until you reach that goal, and then keep going if you can.  Just don’t tie it to some stupid date.

Now, excuse me, but I need to head to the gym.

Last night, if you all remembered, you moved your clocks back one hour for standard time.  For the next 128 days (March 14, 2011) we are stuck with an outdated system of time that was based around helping farmers out.  For some insane reason people, namely the government, keeps this insane system going when there is absolutely no need for it to even exist.  It sure would be nice if they joined the rest of us in the 21st century some day.

We have reduced this time period to as little as we can while keeping it in service, which just makes you wonder harder about why we do.  As I pointed out in the above linked post, it is a proven fact that traffic accidents go up during this time period because people spend more time driving in the dark.

You know what else it does?  It drives up your electric bill because we turn our lights on earlier in the day.  Aren’t we supposed to be cutting energy use?

Just once I would like to see someone write an explanation of why we keep this stupidity going, but that would require someone, anyone, to come up with a logical reason for it.  And until this creative person comes along, we’re just stuck with it.

Come on, world, make it go away already!