Does This Font Make Me Look Fat?

And it’s an inside job.

I’m pleased to announce that Full Of It is now available for pre-order through Amazon. Release is 1/9/09, so be sure to reserve your copy now so you have something to look forward to in early January, when you’re depressed about breaking all your New Year’s resolutions and President Lieberman is being sworn into office.

A nice day at the Fox River Trolley museum. These are the only way to travel. If we don’t start rebuilding the infrastructure for these in this country we’re nuts. (They also have old commuter trains on display, which still need a lot of restoring–the trolleys come a minute or three into it):

There are large sections of Manhattan and Brooklyn that are less culturally diverse than many of the Chicago suburbs.

Strange but true!

Leave! Him!! ALOOOOONE!!1!

(Scene: Int. Harper Collins offices. James Frey is speaking with his editor.)

James Frey: Dude, the new book is done. It’s, like, this giant sweeping panorama of L.A. It’s like Ford Madox Ford’s USA Trilogy, only in one book. It’s totally FUCKING awesome.

Editor: I think John Dos Passos wrote USA.

Frey: Whatever dude. Dos Passos was a fucking pussy. I’m going to destroy Dos Passos, I’m going to shove a copy of the fucking Tao Te Ching down his throat and make him my bitch.

Editor: Dos Passos died a long time ago.

Frey: Heh. He’s lucky.

Editor: So what’s this magnum opus of yours called?

Frey: Lost Angeles. Get it? It’s like Los Angeles, except LOST. How fucking cool is that?

Editor: Oh, wow, I love it already! But I’m worried people might think it’s connected with the t.v. series. We might have to come up with something else.

Frey: Great, man, fucking great. You just totally killed my buzz. There goes my bright and shiny morning.

Editor: Ooooh, I like it. Bright Shiny Morning. how much are we paying you again?

Frey: One and a half large, amigo.

Editor: You’re worth every penny, Jim-jim.

Frey: Dos Passos can suck a cock.

Man beheads Hitler waxwork

Eight canoeists sucked into turbines

Jesse Helms dead at 86

Helms once said his job was to derail the freight train of liberalism.

Helms was wrong about everything his whole life. He had no vision, foresight, Christian decency, respect for human life or individual freedoms (except those of other small-minded bigots like himself), and while a clever man, he was exceedingly stupid when and where it mattered. Now that he’s in hell, Helms knows the truth: a liberal is just the rejected conscience of a dead “conservative” that has come back from the afterlife to warn other reactionary racists like Helms to change his evil ways before it’s too late.

Coming soon to CNN? “Suburban Illinois Man Caught Shitting On Jesse Helms’ Grave”

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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Update: I look forward to Jesse having a long talk at the pearly gates with a true American hero:

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[Update 2: Even more amazing, the NY Post has only a small, subdued obit for Helms, at least that I can find so far. I was expecting a cover with GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE on it, complete with tearful ejaculatory ravings by Steve Dunleavy and Andrea Peyser. I suspect that new demographic research must be showing that mattress buyers are 64% more likely to support Obama, and the paper is subtly adjusting its brilliant political coverage accordingly. Whatever sells those ads.]

Tiny car loses control, hits people, fezzes fly. I love this country.

[Update: they gave an update on the local news last night. The elderly gentleman who was driving the little car said that he had been "turning circles for 45 minutes", as the parade went on its route. Poor guy just got dizzy. A speedy recovery is hoped for all.]

Released on America’s birthday: more fuel for conspiracy theories about 9/11. Be sure to look at all the other links in the sidebars.

Conspiracy Theory: believing the truth about a situation 20 or 30 years before it is acceptable to do so.

There’s a lot of handwringing going on in the cul-de-sac set, about how evil liberals are conspiring to force their white daughters onto PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION next to smelly, dirty brown people, even as their subdivision “communities” go up in smoke. And yet these same people have no problem getting anal probes, sitting on tarmacs for hours, and sleeping on linoleum floors at airports just so they can, say, go play golf in Phoenix for the weekend.

Fact: the new york city subways offer a far better travel experience than domestic first class airlines at less than 1/1000th the price.

Strange but true!

Here at DTFMMLF? we’re entirely devoted to the embettermentification of American life. We love this country, its cities and suburbs, subways and SUVs, ghettos and grasslands. We’re a nation of helpers, and helping others is a calling we try never to ignore at this site. It is in that spirit that I offer American Airlines the best, truest, surest ways to get back on its feet financially, and to even prosper long into the future:

1. Remove one-third of all seats in coach, upgrade those seats to nicer models, and double the price of tickets. 3-4 years ago I asked my brother-in-law, who has been a commercial pilot for many years, why airlines weren’t doing this, when it was obvious the country was on a luxury binge and commercial airline travel had not kept up with this. He said he was asked the same question practically every day by somebody, and he still had no answer.

What this would have done is fourfold: 1. Immediately set American (or any other airline) apart as a leader in “affordable first-class travel”, or better yet, “middle-class” travel, and it would have been a huge success; 2. overnight reduced the weight/fuel costs on its planes and delays, while increasing margins; 3. prepared people for today’s higher prices ahead of time, by adding value; 4. allowed AMR to slightly reduce capacity while improving service–a win-win in any industry.

I can’t say why no major airline implemented such a plan, but it seems like the airlines have been stuck for years in the “cutthroat price wars” mentality and couldn’t see beyond that. Other “upgrades”–like in-seat DVD players–only work if the seat you’re in isn’t stiff and cramped and utterly miserable.

And that takes me to #2:

HIRE SOME GODDAMN DESIGNERS TO MAKE THE PLANES LOOK MORE ATTRACTIVE. I mean, Sweet Limping Christ, if Target can bring designer sensibility to the five-and-dime, why couldn’t airlines? I’m not talking leather and lava lamps, but something other than BEIGE PLASTIC. It’s like riding inside a fucking Dell minitower. Let’s get some color and more creative lighting, at least. How about making flying something other than being stuffed into a human hard drive with other biological data points, all of whom have had their humanity and sanity stripped (literally) by asshole security gestapo? Why can’t any of them see that FLYING IS AN EXCRUCIATINGLY MISERABLE EXPERIENCE from beginning to end? People endure air travel because it’s cheap, but as a result it has no value in and of itself.

It’s the same thing that happened to railroads, largely. Yes, the small trolley lines were bought up and killed by auto/oil interests, but passenger rail had been on the decline for a long time because, as one article I read put it, they had stopped thinking they were in the “transportation” business and began thinking they were in the “railroad” business. Airlines are part of the travel/leisure/hospitality sphere, not the trucking/shipping/freight sphere, and they have completely forgotten that.

Can you imagine a Michael Graves interior on your flight to Bermuda? Maybe it wouldn’t be spectacular, but wouldn’t it be better than traveling inside a human vacuum cleaner?