Airline Reform Proposal

In the spirit of our newfound, albeit exaggerated political upheaval and reform, I want to suggest changes be made in area which has already seen much ado about various aspects: airline travel. Let it be known that I enjoy flying; I want nothing else than startling improvements made to enhance the traveling experience for any and all involved. It's for these reasons and for these reasons alone that I pine to, at some point in my life, see an option for "adults-only" flights, a luxurious, totally childless idealistic yet perfectly rational "first class." Who wouldn't want that? Obviously those with kids (although they might in theory want that), but I would presume everyone else included, from pilots to flight attendants to passengers, would enjoy the unburdening of mental anguish and alleviation that might result by purging the irritation children inherently tote along with them like carryon luggage.   

Especially in light of recent news with explosives on planes and attempted terrorist activity, we have to examine our protocol and try to retain control on what we can. We can't suppress terrorism on planes; it's never going to happen. Flying will never be foolproof and short of an Orwellian thought crime police task force apprehending every individual with an impure thought the possibility of someone sneaking explosive devices into a plane or a secure building remains strong. I can get down with that. It's the 21st century, folks; if you have trouble existing or holding fast to your sanity under the threat of imminent nuclear, chemically explosive, or fragmentary demise, well, good luck with the next 100 years. This happens and will continue to happen.  Let's take deep breath and move on. We can, on the other hand, control whether or not we have flights that contain a much different kind of terrorist, under five feet tall, not a shred of facial hair, squeaky voices, overalls, incoherent rambling - a child. If we already know we're going to have to deal with the terrifying potential reality that there might be someone on this plane whose only desire is to blow us and him into oblivion and then what they interpret as paradise, the very least we can do is make that flight as stress free as possible by providing an option for those who truly cannot stand raucous children belligerently antagonizing the entire flight crew and all the passengers. If I'm going to die by being blown to smithereens by some deluded death-cult goat-herding extremist who believes in an afterlife equally as farcical and unrealistic as every other once-marauding religion, I at least would enjoy doing so in the company of adults, peace and quiet, and as little insanity as possible. 

Kids and children need not be banned from flying; I won't go that far. But I would shamelessly love a flight that didn't feature the shrill scream or hollow wail of various slobbery-mouthed, teary-eyed, spaghetti-sauce-stained children jumping around on seats, throwing magazines and clothes, and in general making what is already for many people a tiresome, frightful journey in a inhumanely-cramped space that features body and brain camps and undue worrying all the more harrowing. 

Get them off the plane or sedate them, one or the other. I'm not opposed to loading them up with sedatives pre-flight either, but the likelihood of that occuring is far less than there actually being a simple and easy choice for adults to make wherein they can elect to fly comfortably, or as comfortably as possible in one of these fuselages, across the not-so-gentle skyways without the constant kick-in-the-back-of-the-head represented by baleful children. I recently read that  Ivana Trump was thrown off a plane for growing irate and causing a scene after becoming frustrated with children who were shrieking and pulling back on everyone's seats. In most cases I support any debasement of Ivana Trump; she should be thrown off as many things possible. Here, though, I empathize.

In a completely unrelated stream of conscious tangent, when I wrote the word "pre-flight" I instinctively thought of this:

Or for those of whom animation does the trick:

Happy Solstice!

I 

prefer 

heavy, 

concurrent 

doses of reality. 

Change the Guard

Inspired by what seems now to be weekly streams bearing disgraceful news on the front of America's debilitating fear of homosexuality, I'm proposing a bifurcated solution: One, we admit that the refined, domestic, self-righteous, and overtly didactic heterosexual project of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century has been a colossal failure; two, we make it illegal for heterosexuals to get married and instead only allow gays to wed. Those of whom are already married will be allotted six months to rubbish those vows and separate. Rings will be confiscated and promptly liquidated. Wedding dresses, may they enjoy their newfound form of burnt ashes. Pictures burned as well. If we could obliterate your memories of married life, we would. And when all of this is put together and simultaneously destroyed, we're going ritualistically dance and pirouette like bacchic pagans spurred by wine honoring the earth, lifting our feet off the dirt and throwing our ecstatic hands high, higher still into the sky while the giant conflagration sends up smoke signals to celebrate what we hope will be a landmark victory in the ongoing battle against stupidity.

Marriage statistics aren't glamorous, nor are they comforting. Divorce now appears to be a condition of marriage rather than a deleterious side-effect. And then, as if divorce were a pernicious disease that once established within a particular host persists somewhere inside the body's cells, the rates of divorce increase for those who've already had the pleasure of telling a lover to shove off. On some absurd level, the new American family seems to consist of at least two mothers and two fathers. This is why I have such a hard time swallowing the pill that conservatives and religious fanatics try to force down our throats that the "sanctity" of traditional marriage is under siege, that traditional marriage is being eroded by the malicious gays and their desire for their love to be recognized as equal to that of their straight counterparts, or in the recent Rhode Island case, their desire to have legal sovereignty to arrange funeral proceedings for a domestic partner's deceased love one. That's right; heterosexual marriage is being attacked by dead gays. Traditional marriage, the very idea of it, is nothing but a myth. Marriage has always changed as culture's have changed. There's nothing wrong with divorce. There's nothing wrong with deciding like two adults that at some point things stopped working the way they used to, but to do this and then to at the same time rail away from their lectern about the sacrosanct state of marriage and equate it with something along the lines of a private, inviolable club only open to a very certain privileged group of people is simply dishonest and grossly un-American; furthermore, it's cruel. And if we as a society can do one thing and one thing only, it's avoid cruelty to others at all costs.

If heterosexual marriage were a student, we would have flunked him years ago. We would have given him a few second and third chances, extra credit, tutoring, but ultimately we would have flunked and expelled the sorry patriarch for his shortsightedness. If this were the early 1940s we would have gripped him by the ear and slammed his hollow head against the chalkboard for being so fucking obtuse. Sorry heteros, you failed. You no longer deserve to be married. Had your rhetoric not been so inflammatory and your opinion of yourself not so haughty and moralistic, so deludedly off-base, we may have allowed for exceptions. But no. In addition to being dysfunctional in your attempts, you've also been enormous tyrants. The time has come to allow someone else a try.

Loveliness.

So

very

awesome.

Columbus? Eurotrash

I'm still not all that sure why we celebrate Columbus Day anymore. I mean, yes I know in theory why we celebrate, the over-credited historical claim behind it,  because he "discovered" the new world, but the dude was for the most part a cruel, murderous asshole whose only real desire was for gold, fame, and glory and who in his descriptions of the natives spoke of them as literal sub-human creatures in need of Christ, a person for whom rape and genocide were but a trifle. Columbus' vanity was large enough for him to even fondly consider his name, Christopher, a divine sign, the bearer of Christ. 

Not to mention Columbus Day is somewhat of a joke of a holiday anyway. Basically what it amounts to is another day off for government employees (last time I checked they have quite the pile of work they need to be taking care of, not taking useless holidays) and allowing elementary schoolers to dress up in colonial costumes for Historical Revisionism trials in which Columbus is being charged with numerous crimes, murder and genocide among them. I wish I made that up. That's something my mother's fifth grade class actually took part it. So who's celebrating this holiday? Are we that obstinate in holding on to antiquity and tradition? And if we desperately need a holiday to fill Columbus' void, microscopic as it is, aren't there myriad other noteworthy people who've had resounding effects on early America and the American way of life that might be better suited for the role? Give Einstein a holiday. Or Charles Van Depoele. Paul Revere. Or Booker T Washington. Or Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable. Phillis Wheatley. Anyone.

And, of course, you can argue that if we do that we might as well get rid of all the other holidays celebrating those old white men, many of whom were slave owners, misogynists, adulterists, and all the other fun stuff crotchety old white men got away with in those days because nobody knew (or wanted to know) any better and those that did hardly spoke a word about it. The difference is that Columbus had no redeeming qualities. The actual discovery he's famous for shouldn't even be considered a discovery, one because it was already here, inhabited, and doing just fine, and two because someone else would have come along and found it had he not. 

The diaries of Christopher Columbus are all one needs in order to figure the guy out. He was as one-dimensional as they come. Columbus was a monster. You can't discover something that was already inhabited. You can destroy what's there, the culture, the history, the life, but that's not the same thing as discovering. At least it shouldn't be.

United States of Canada

Haphazardly stumbled across this image. I must admit it's an intriguing concept.

Arms the Size of Giants

This being the second, third, or maybe even the fourth recent one of these incidents sharing similar characteristics, I'm compelled to write something on this, if only to at the very least organize and see my own thoughts on the issue(s). The others that I'm thinking of are the BART officer in Oakland who shot the unarmed man who was already down flat on his stomach with his hands spread. The other is a video taken from a Los Angeles suburban news station, again with another young man on the ground not moving after he'd given up on both his high speed chase and fleeing from the vehicle, whereupon an officer ran up to him and commenced to kick him in the head and neck with the sharp, pointed toe of his boot, a boot colored black in such a way that I'd imagine blood would just about blend in. A second officer arrived moments later. He, of course, saw the situation was out of control and used his baton to further batter the already beaten man. After the suspect was handcuffed, the officer who'd kicked him high-fived his partner. Go Team.

Now there's this incident in New Jersey. The video speaks for itself, I think, though CNN's version is edited, perhaps for brevity's sake, but there's another version on Youtube which shows the entire two minute scene in real time and finishes with a local man pushing his kid along in a stroller while about ten law enforcement officers apprehend the one middle-aged, non-combatant schizophrenic man in broad daylight after pummeling him with fists and billyclubs.

Here's what I get. Law enforcement is a high-anxiety job. It's not cold-calling and it's not sales. Depending on your beat, it's not much of a cake walk, though for some it very well might be. But focusing on high crime areas, places where officers are on the go and dealing with heavier misdemeanors and felonies and less doling out speeding tickets to middle aged moms late to the carpool pickup after practice. For every hour on the clock not only are these officers on edge, anxious, high-energy, with octane firing and adrenaline bursting out of their skin, but for they've got to be that way in order to be professional at their job. So as to remain alert, this boosted adrenaline is necessary. I understand that and want to empathize as much as possible. But there is a line between being alert and extending the already too-long, not to mention ever-growing jurisprudential arm further than it should ever go and entering that domain of sheer violence beyond all necessary means. Once that line is crossed it's painfully clear to see for anyone watching. And the more instances like these continue to occur, and it feels like they're occurring with unsettling frequency these days, the further the chasm between civilian and police gets, which ushers in less trust for police, more disdain, and for some, more outright hatred. 

For their sake it's beneficial that this relation be a healthy one. Yet if the police working in and out of our lives begin to mimic the very kinds of behaviors, demeanors, and actions of the "thugs" they claim to be intent on putting into custody, this relationship dissolves. There's no trust. If the police can rough up anyone they want, where do they draw the line? Who's immune? Is being a suspect a crime, something worthy of brutality? When these kinds of thoughts run through the mind of a citizen when they're around or even thinking about law enforcement, it negates everything law enforcement aims to do. They no longer protect nor serve at that point without a willing and cooperative public to protect and serve. 

For this one at hand, I can't imagine any scenario they could hatch up that would render this officer's behavior acceptable. There was no altercation. Nothing Ronnie Holloway could have said would have warranted what happened. Nothing he could have done would have warranted what happened. Whether or not he'd committed a crime before this, none would excuse the behavior from an officer of the law at that point in time. The suspect was standing and appeared to be cooperating. Cops are not harbingers of vigilante justice, making and breaking the law as they see fit. They uphold the law and are held to the same standards. We expect more from them. One of the charges laid on Holloway after the fact was resisting arrest. Frankly, I don't see where he was even given an opportunity to resist arrest. They asked him to zip up his jacket, he did, and then out came the officer wielding his latter-day version of a caveman's club. The only thing separating him from his ancient ancestors was a firmly pressed uniform, a badge, and swaths of bureaucratic protection.  He made no effort to arrest him. A man cannot be charged with resisting arrest when there was no effort made to arrest him. A question came to me while I was watching; why didn't the officer's partner either a. help her partner apprehend the the suspect, or b. stop the officer. My best guess would be because she was just as bewildered as I was when I first saw it, shocked. The fact what Holloway is schizophrenic, something that I don't know if at this point has even been empirically verified other than by the man's mother, isn't important as far as I see it. If true, it only further compounds it and makes for a more emotional case, but schizophrenic or not, the behavior of the cop was draconian and overarching at best and vile at worst. 

And here's the LA officer kicking the fleeing car driver. Is the guy a criminal? Yes, for sure. But again, nothing warranted this behavior. He'd given up.

Places I'd Rather Be Than Here...

Forbes released it's annual World's Best Places to Live list and Vienna sits atop at numer one. For the most part I think their criteria for these results are sound as can be. They make reasonable sense, and as far as the kind of place I think people, or at least I, would like to live, Forbes assesses 420 of the globe's major metropolises with a panache of accuracy, using New York City as a benchmark score of 100 for which to grade the rest. They rate these cities on the "basis of the political and social environment (including stability, crime and law enforcement); the strength of the economy, restrictions, such as censorship and limitations on personal freedom; the quality of healthcare as well as exposure to infectious diseases; and school quality." Added into the mix of all the aforementioned, recreation, theaters, sports activities, access to grocery markets, the availability and cost of housing, as well as the climate and susceptibility to natural disasters all received noteworthy attention. A virgin criterion put a new spin on things, though, and I think it's a brilliant way to analyze a city's desirability. Besides all of the other analytics, cities were now also rated on the basis of their infrastructure, including electrical supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transportation, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports. Put together, this puts together what I would regard as the consummate city. 

What's saddening, however, is America's glaring absence here and the fall from grace that is more or less inferred by it. It's nonexistent on the top twenty. Kudos to Vancouver there on the left, the lone North American representative in the top ten with Ottawa and Toronto not too far behind in the bottom half of the top twenty, but America's nonappearance here is a glaring sign that The Land of the Free has got quite a lot of work to do if it wishes to truly reestablish itself a cultural and societal breeding ground of innovation and quality of life. Granted that our major cities' population surpasses many of these not-so-distended ones on the list, it doesn't quite absolve America of the many obstacles facing its urban solaces.

It'd be much too easy to cry foul and denigrate this as just another example of anti-American, Euro-favoring journalism, minus the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian cities showing up. As far as I'm concerned that's a major cop out and doesn't take into account any of the data used. If your gripe is with how Forbes assessed the cities and the methodology behind the measurements, that's one thing, but to shrug it off as further evidence of ill-will towards America is a lazy reaction. I think when you look at the criteria they used it isn't any wonder the United States' major cities aren't here. They don't hold up. Crime through the roof. Transportation nonexistent. Traffic a constant parking lot. Poverty everywhere. Affordable housing like finding the will-o'-the-wisp. Economy in ruin. The roads utter trash, pothole ridden and usually cluttered with trash. Air quality? What's that. City schools a joke and an insult to residents. 

But compiling a list of this nature is always asking for discrepancies and arguments. Everyone has their own opinion on what constitutes the topmost livable city, let alone a number of livable cities. The loudest argument I can imagine would be to point out that taxes in these cities and the countries they inhabit are much higher than that of those here in the states, which is true, but it seems the prevailing logic here is that these taxes obviate the citizens of some of the burdens and worries that face citizens here and that the less worries one has the better their quality of life might be. Climate could be another issue, as many of these aren't necessarily in the most tropical of regions. 

Whether or not the quality of life in these cities listed is better overall for all or most of their citizens isn't a question, I don't think. The question is whether or not America wants to go down that route. The tax rates are higher, that's for sure. And to do so would be no inexpensive nor short-term feat. The work that needs to and could be done is quite long. There's a whole world of investing in our own society that would need to be done, in technology, renewable energy, infrastructure, and probably a number of other areas. But faced with the current state of affairs, I do believe it's a question we should be asking ourselves and considering despite any partisan biases towards either decision. Otherwise my fear is that the the great and storied American cities we've all come to love will continue to face harder and harder times, and those who love them the most will suffer right along with them, their devoted citizenry.

The English Language Breaks A Million

Next month, the English language will be celebrating the induction of its  one-millionth word. With word candidates like "noob", "defriend", and "chiconomics" (a fashion style for the recession, apparently) the vast and overwhelming majority of these words up for contention and others listed were all coinages of the internet, words used in forums and online communities, social networking sites and other social outlets along those lines. Yet while recognized and popular language as a whole separate entity approaches its millionth bedpost notch, dictionaries are far, far behind still at or below the 500,000 marker. 

Lexicographers don't have an easy task. From the sounds of it, deciding which words enter a dictionary on a given year is dreadfully time consuming - tracking words and their "hits", a hit being any time a word is mentioned in a book, newspaper, or on a website. The goal is to pick the most salient words, the word that the educated layperson needs to know. There's probably no single greater contributer to the English language than Bill Shakespeare, who through his works gave life to more than 1,700 words. To use one of his words, Willy gave us a fardel of words.  

Generally, dictionaries reject words that are either too technical or too young-sounding. Name brands don't count. The misconception out there is that dictionaries somehow create words, when all they really do is provide a detailed, typed out lexicon of the speech of the people. We create the words and we give them meaning, and it's up to the dictionary to recognize them. The problem, though, is the dictionaries are falling behind as the cultural and linguistic front of our speech patterns and commonly used words surges far ahead and changes just about every way we've every thought about language. We portmanteau everything (we turn nouns into verbs), among other things, and if dictionaries won't recognize these as "words" then are they doing us any good? As of right now, it's The Global Language Monitor that's carrying the load.

Dictionaries need to change. For one, they need to pick up the pace. Language moves fast now; We're talking light speed celerity. It's nothing new, though. Dictionaries have always played catch up, as they can't coin a word before it exists within a culture, but now their powdered-wig, archaic standards of what a "word" is are slowing them down ever more. By no means do they need to become Wikipedia and include everything, but there are words floating around out there being used daily and carrying more than enough meaning to be considered "words". Maybe there's a more fair way of inducting words nowadays. Currently we have two fronts of dialogue and the more these two progress and evolve, the more they begin to intertwine. Our casual vernacular mating with our formal verbiage in new and very interesting ways. Dialogue and fixtures of languid portmanteaus and abbreviations mixed with the formal, regular words that would make our scholarly ancestors proud. 

I was browsing through a Middle English dictionary and found that the old definition of a "word" was "a spoken thought". By that understanding, if someone says a word and you understand that word, it's a word. No need to mystify the process. Further early definitions of what constituted a word are as follows:

A meaningful single word or connected series of words forming an utterance, a remark, statement, question, etc.; a thing said, what someone says or said; speech, talk, discourse; also fig. and infig. context; also, the written record of someone's words, written speech, what someone writes or has written;

(b) an exchange of words, a conversation; conversation, colloquy, parley; haven ~ of, to be able to speak with (sb.);

(c) a spoken word or an utterance in explicit contrast to something done, thought, written, indicated by physical signs, etc., talking as opposed to acting, showing, etc.; bi wordes and bi writinge, in thought ~ and dede, mid werk and mid ~, wordes other werkes, etc.;

(d) the verbal portion of a song or liturgical piece; also, the literal level of a text as opposed to its deeper meaning or interpretation;

(e) diction, manner of speaking, customary delivery; also, a habit of expression or turn of phrase [occas. difficult to distinguish from (a)];

English is a global language now. No, fuck that. That's wrong also. Language, the very process by which two human beings communicate and express themselves is global now. We've loaned out so many words and proverbs and axioms and bent our lexicons over others that it's no longer beneficial to remain so rigid in our definitions of words. After all, what is language but little more than a mess of utterances, guttural intonations and incantations, vowels and other noises that over the course of time we've attached meaning to? We don't bend at the whims of our language; Our language bends to us. We've created it. Let's continue.  

In Memoriam of the Apostrophe

Are You Killing the Apostrophe?
Apostrophe, we hardly knew ye. And now, with the warning coming from this above article, it seems like without even really knowing you, your curvature, the way your smile twinkled at the ends of words in just the right way, and how you secretly told me in the slightest whisper "I'm showing possession of an object", we're throwing you to antiquity, into the drawer reserved for dusty obsoletisms, never to be opened again. We're declaring you, Apostrophe, useless, complicated, and coming with too much linguistic baggage.

I for one will miss you. For a time, you made things to clear, so precise. I could look out and distinguish between singular objects and plural ones. It was easy. Now, there's apparently men who own Limo companies and think there name is Als. Very strange indeed.

It wasn't all too long ago that a small town in rural England - the Queen's country; not the Queens country - decided to axe apostrophes from street signs, road signs, establishment placards, and anything else with the Queen's language scrawled on it. I believe it was Birmingham. The argument used was mostly a pacifist one. It's easier for people to follow. Too many people get confused and don't recognize it. Apostrophes are "confusing and old fashioned." Damn right, they are! So is beer! And walking! I personally think speaking in complete and coherent sentences is for the dullards. Let's put all these anachronisms rest, shall we? I wasn't aware we were getting so fucking postmodern in our road signs.

"Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," Mullaney said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it."

Yes. It's far too difficult. I agree. Never mind the fact that it's simply a matter of people no longer knowing how to construct a sentence that means what they want it to mean, thus have even more of a troubled time trying to interpret one.

But the best argument, GPS has a hard time recognizing the apostrophe. That settles it then, doesn't it? We are officially genuflecting at the alter of the Church of High Technology. 

They are not, as their opponents (multiple, see?) slander them,  merely decorative. They denote certain things to a reader whom certainly doesn't need an A-level education. All they need is a little common sense. There's a big different between won't and wont or hell and he'll. He'll take you down is a different statement than the slang-sounding hell take you down. Pete's Coffee is different than Petes Coffee. If these things all equated to the same thing, then yes, no longer would we need those blasted floating curves of text. But they don't and we do, for clarity's sake. Or maybe what we need is a better education teaching people the basics of how the English language functions. Otherwise, why don't we just all take up Latin and become the Roman Empire we're already well on our way to becoming? It's much less confusing, and we've definitely got our fair share of Caligulas out there.

Things You Cannot/Should Not/Should Be Embarrassed To Do with a Kindle

I would guess that by now most people have heard of Amazon's Kindle, which basically amounts to reading made lazy and dull. Frankly, I think it's another slap in the face from a technological modernity that assumes we, consumers and - more importantly - human beings, no longer possess the patience, or have a strong enough attention span, or, I don't know, maybe we no longer have formidable enough tendons in our hands to flip a few hundred pages.

Whatever the case may be, Kindle is out there and it probably won't be hurrying off any time too soon. And I'm reasonable enough to say that perhaps it may serve a practical purpose for some people in certain situations. Me personally, I can't think of a time when, one, I'd ever purchase such a waste of money, and two, even if I had when I'd actually sit down and e-flip through e-pages to get my e-enjoyment. But for the casual Kindler, caught up and frenetic with this high-tech climate of ours, I do think that there are most assuredly a handful of situations and ways of reading a book, which to be clear is an adhesively bound collection of pages with printed words and a vaguely sentimental fragrance - in case anyone's forgotten - that you simply can't recreate by way of Kindle. And if you do, you should know that besides the carelessness of doing so with such an expensive item, that sneaking suspicion of yours that people are laughing at you? That's not a suspicion. We are. We think you're foolish as hell.

1. Public Transportation 

The one thing I've never worried about being held up for whilst riding to and fro the various places I go is my book. I can imagine the absurdity of the situation. Held at gunpoint, the feral-eyed man demanding that I "hand over the paperback...right now."

Now a Kindle? You're talking about something that's closer to a grand than it is to 100 dollars, let alone the standard 13 or so you'd pay for a new paperback. You're talking primo resale value. Slap that thing on eBay or sell to a ne'er-the-wiser friend, or whoever. That's not a book you're carrying. That's a capitalist's variation of literature. That, in point of fact, is not literature, it's a mechanical symbol of money. It's a slab of technology that can be stolen and resold rather easily. 

But I'm pretty sure no one is going to be taking my dog-eared copy of Absurdistan, the one with the Diet Coke stain and the corner of the cover somewhat torn off.

2. The Beach

For safety reasons alone it seems like a silly idea. I certainly wouldn't want to get sand wedged somewhere into the cracks. It may be that I tend to protect investments, but whenever I do occasionally take my camera to the beach, I'm sure to keep it inside either its protective case or a Ziploc bag, far from the sand and out of the sun for extended periods of time. The same goes for a phone. The same goes for any electronic device. Having spent a serious amount of money on it, I'm wary of sending it into ruinous situations. 

But again, with the Kindle you're pretty much forced to have it out there, lying limp in your hands under the sun and getting sand blown into it, let alone water or whatever beverage you've opted for your vacation. I don't imagine the Kindle being all too favorable to a beer spillage. Is the constant barrage of the sun on ots faceplate even good for it? I'd wager not.

This alone pales in comparison to how foolish you're going to look. It's like the guy you see sprawled out on the towel with his bluetooth clipped to his ear, yammering away in a manner that leaves his sanity in quesiton. Go. Leave the beach. Go back to your room. Hole yourself away. What are you on vacation for? What have you gone to the beach for, a spot of the earth that is pretty much naturally limited to sand and water? I go to get away, hence the idea behind vacation. A book can only aid in that process, by taking you away. Sure. The Kindle has wireless capability. Email capability. You can browse the web. Great. Wonderful. That's exactly what I want on the beach. Because when I'm sitting there listening to the roar of waves and delightful shouts of young folk, the first thing I think of is, "I wonder if anyone's sent me an email."

I doubt many people will take their low-riding beach chair down towards the shore where the waves are crashing and pull out their Kindle, what with an unpredictable tide, kids running around splashing. Yet with a regular old boring book, it's no big deal. A Kindle is more convenient? You're on a beach. What do you need celerity and convenience for? Slooow down. Take a paperback. Apply sunscreen. Relax. Take your responsibilities and shut them away. One of the best parts of reading on the beach is much later, pulling up that book back at the hotel or your house, and smelling the admixture of sun tan lotion, cocoa butter, salt watery air, and the sun-dried texture of the pages. Good luck finding that with a Kindle. 

3. Romantic Excursions 

I'm not even going to move beyond a cursory explanation of why pulling out your Kindle to quote a phrase, a passage, or a sentence that particularly moved you to a loved one is as lame as you can get. For your sake I hope they keep you, if only for amusement's sake.

4. Used Book Store Postpartum Depression

What, oh what would I do without the completely happenstance discovery of some dim little mom and pop used bookstore that smells like a rain-swept apartment and in whose alcoves I might find a very shady but no less book-interested person to schmooze with, where paperbacks cost me little more than a dollar and brand new hardcovers often come as cheap 13 bones? Books out of print. Books out of translation. Books with pre-scrawled margins from a previously smitten reader(s) that I find nothing short of magical. It's a reminder that, Yes! People are still inspired by the written word, and judging from the double underline and three exclamation points following this last sentence, in very emphatic ways. Locate for me that kind of jubilation on an e-page of a Kindle. Still waiting.

5. Durability.

When I get home, I drop my messenger bag to the floor, allowing my book(s) to collide with the wooden surface. A dull thud follows. Sometimes I even accidentally step on it. I could dance on them if I wanted to. There's no damage to my book. I have no fear cycling through the city with it bouncing around wildly. Even in a crash, I'm still not worried. There won't be any damage to my book. On a crowded lightrail I have no problem stuffing myself into a seat and in the act of doing so smushing my book against the backrest. There won't be any damage to it short of a bent page. If I fall asleep in bed reading and the book falls to the floor, there won't be any damage to the book. If a book is so abhorrently awful that I have to fling it at the wall, cursing it into the diminutive list of books unfinished, so be it. No damage to the book, unless a book has feelings. Sometimes when I'm unloading my gear at the end of a day I'll toss my book across the room towards the sofa or the bed or the chair or anywhere else that's cushiony. If I miss? No big deal. How well the Kindle fares against all of the above, I wouldn't be so confident. 

I could go on. And on. The fact of the matter is the Kindle, while it may not be the "end of books" as some go on to doomsdayishly call it, is at the very least a boring, dull, soulless, and unflattering way to go about reading. Why? Why Kindle? Okay. You can have numerous things at your hands to read at one given time, but let's be honest. I'm speaking merely of books. How many books are you reading at once? How many newspapers at once? What newspaper is even worth reading these days? I've yet to hear a compelling reason why reading books as books is so difficult and/or obsolete? You can't physically read a Kindle faster than a book, can you? True, you might lose a fraction of a second every time to turn the page, and I suppose in a 24 hour day those seconds might add up. And gosh, that's a lot of time to lose, isn't it?

Put down the Kindle. Pick up a book. It's better and you know it.

Addendum:

With both the recent release of Amazon's new Kindle Big Screen and a keen suggestion by a friend of mine, if I'm to be honest with myself, I've got some addenda to make. 

6. Multiply everything I said by ten, because that's what Amazon just did. 

As of Wednesday, May 6, I believe, Amazon released their new Big Screen Kindle, which I suppose is great if you like really large and bulky items. Although, I should say, it isn't supposed to weigh all that much, supposedly around that of a paperback book. Nevertheless, it's an enormous piece of plastic to hold in front of your face. With the screen coming in around 9.7 inches, you're closing in on a foot of screen space. This is done, reportedly, to make reading newspapers and textbooks easier, thanks to the now enlarged screen which I guess will accommodate those trades known for their wide pages. 

I read someone say this may be the last chance of survival for Newspapers. With the size of the screen you won't have to pan, zoom, or really do anything but stare into the electric ether, hope that it isn't secretly frying out your rods and cones or slowly poisoning you with some kind of cancer, and read. I, for one, think a good way to save the newspapers is remind them that they're to be reporting on the news, not creating faux-news by spreading ideological drivel, which is neither well-written nor compelling, or even that convincing. And if textbook companies really think students are going to be reading them, they have a whole other set of delusions of granduer they need to hash out. I wish them best of luck. Not to mention that you can't sell back e-purchased Kindle textbooks to the school store for a quick few hundred dollars to use on last-semester hurrahs of overindulgent and irresponsible behavior. Wired magazine has a good article that busts the Kindle myth, particularly among college students, who in a poll didn't give the most reassuring numbers to Amazon's hopes that this bigger is better version is going to accomplish all that they assume it will.

 

The kicker? These bad boys will run you around $495 dollars, a price which begs the question, "why not just charge me $500, you motherfuckers?" Hey, if you can really justify spending that kind of money on something that, like all high-paced technology, you will probably at some point have to replace and/or upgrade, go for it. I just bought a used paperback in the city from a rather charming Ukrainian store owner for 75 cents. 

7. Personal Libraries

Prompted by the wise suggestion of a friend, I wonder what now becomes of the personal libraries? Even amongst the ruling elite, with their impressive libraries that all their friends know they've never bothered to read, it's still impressive nonetheless, no? There's something about a number of oak bookshelves stocked to full capacity with and endless cache of books, all of various colors and fonts and scripts and titles. 

You walk into someone's library, it's like entering a port of their personality. A library is an avid reader's inner sanctum. It's where they think, absorb, contemplate, and it's where they unwind after a spell spent out there in the complicated world. You get a much better sense of who this person is based on that. You might be wrong about the person and the library might be an enormous facade, but generally you can tell. Being immersed in a library, there's something historically and humanistically powerful. What surrounds us there are the written words of men and women over who knows how many hundreds and thousands of years of human history, words they put every ounce of brainpower, intellect, emotion, and wit they had. On the other hand, someone shows you their conveniently categorized electronic lists of accumulated titles, some purchased honestly, many pirated, you don't get that same sense of being welcomed into someone's private quarters or the vast historical awareness. It's much less underwhelming and actually kind of lame. No. Correction. It's very lame. Libraries have an aroma, a taste, a personality, and a body that is all there own. A Kindle has, what, a big hard drive?

I won't go into depth, because it probably isn't all too necessary, but I think this even extends to public libraries. Those big, cavernous edifices housing books for free. Some great times were had by me and my overactive imagination as a boy in the library after being dropped off there for the day. Guilty as I am nowadays, I don't utilize the library, though there's one a few blocks from where I could get any and every book I ever need without charge. Just try to grasp the logic behind this: There's a place that's letting you read books for free and you're not using it. 

But hey, who am I? Just a guy with an opinion. Sometimes, side by side pictures present the case and let the viewer slam the gavel. So have it. Which would you prefer to be doing?