Microsoft vice president of automotive technology Dick Brass

I was talking to someone the other day about how much we both love technology. I may not always be the earliest adopter, but I’m an enthusiastic user. For instance, I have a wireless network at home that allows me to surf the web from my laptop computer while sitting 30 feet away from my desktop computer. If you’re wondering why this is necessary, then you are not One of Us.

Still, two things happened today that make me want to live in a mud hut and make my own clothes. First, I got a phone call from Midvale, Utah. I picked up the phone and heard a recorded voice:

“Please hold for an important announcement”
“10 second pause”

“Please hold for an important announcement”
“10 second pause”

“Please hold for an important announcement”
“10 second pause”

“We apologize for this inconvenience. Goodbye”

If I thought there was a guerilla/Dadaist/Luddite movement out there performing acts of technological annoyance so outrageous as to provoke widespread uprisings, I would attribute it to them. Sadly, the culprit is more likely just Some Jerk in Utah.

Second, I read this report from Reuters:

Microsoft Aims for Software in Every Car

First Microsoft set out to put a computer in every home. Now the software giant hopes to put one in every vehicle, too.

“We’d like to have one of our operating systems in every car on Earth” said Dick Brass, vice-president of Microsoft’s automotive business unit. “It’s a lofty goal”

Cars with the Microsoft software will speak up when it’s time for an oil change. They’ll warn drivers about wrecks on the road ahead and scout alternative routes. They’ll pay freeway tolls automatically. The software running their brakes will upgrade itself wirelessly.

Perhaps that sent a cold chill through you the way it did me.

You have chosen to end the unresponsive program BRAKES. Would you like to report this, or are you dead?

This reminds me of a joke:

Three engineers are riding in a car that suddenly stops for no apparent reason.

The mechanical engineer says, “We should check the fuel system”

The electrical engineer says, “We should check the charging system”

The Microsoft engineer says, “We should make an inferior product and use monopolistic and predatory business practices to force its use and drive cheaper, better products out of the market”

I think that’s how it goes.

experts predict busy Thanksgiving for the finger thing

I’m aware that readers of this blog may see me as a prick bastard incisive social commentator. Looking back over my recent posts, I’ve called people dorks, dipshits and morons. If you’ve come to the conclusion that I am cold and cynical, I offer this.

There. Now I feel I can insult people with impunity for another six months at least.

I was privileged to spend Thanksgiving with the Prices, who along with having a highly admirable family tradition involving buttermilk pie “and yes Dad, we sang that to the tune of the Hoagie Carmichael song”, are one of the most pleasant groups of conversationalists you could hope to meet. In addition to a whole lot of just darned smart and funny people, our group of turkey worriers included an esteemed author and an eminent historian. So what did we discuss ’round the table?

Michael Jackson.

Consensus: whether or not he’s guilty, he probably should have stopped inviting kids for sleepovers a long time ago.

And as far as the finger thing goes:

I’m declaring it a full-fledged meme.

Headline in Yahoo news Wednesday:

Experts predict busy Thanksgiving travel

Thanks, Experts!

A few years ago I saw a report on the local TV news about oil companies reducing gas prices just in time for the holidays. “They pull this PR stunt every year and the news falls for it every year.” They interviewed a woman filling up her minivan who said she and her family had cancelled their trip to visit grandma in Ohio because of gas prices, but now they were going after all. Let’s see. Prices went down six cents a gallon. Your minivan probably gets 20 miles per gallon. Your trip is maybe 1000 miles round trip. So, you’re going to save three bucks.

Next year you need a better excuse for not driving to Ohio.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving, and if there is Tofurky involved in yours in any way, I don’t want to hear about it.

is this too much to ask for?

I’m in danger of straying deeper than ever into bad stand-up territory here, but what is it with women and soap? First of all, don’t get me wrong; I love being in women’s bathrooms, whether it’s at a party, or at a friend’s house for dinner, or just dashing in to hide a web cam. Many of my male friends, it has to be said, are musicians, so it’s always a treat to be in a bathroom where I don’t want to wash my face again immediately after drying it on the sole all-purpose towel, and the shower curtain doesn’t try to hold a conversation.

But ladies, where’s the soap? No, the soap. I can’t tell you how often I’ve nearly washed with a candle or a seashell, or how much time I’ve spent with hands in the air like a surgeon, trying to determine which blue glass bottle might contain something vaguely soap-like. I don’t want to tone. I don’t want to exfoliate. I just want to wash my hands after I micturate. And don’t you want me to, too? “When I stayed with Adda, I found this in the bathroom, and I still have no idea what it is. If it had been in the fridge, I probably would have eaten it.” If I do find a bottle that looks like it could have soapish characteristics, it often turns out to be lavender comfrey ylang ylang astringent pore lotion with extract of Tibetan monk. Not only do I not want to waste your expensive product, but I don’t want to come out smelling like Richard Gere’s linen cupboard.

And if there is soap in bar form, it is often made from something unimaginably bizarre, or it looks like a gummi bear, or it has some cute shape that would be ruined after one use, or it looks like it cost eighty bucks a bar and carving it was the life’s work of elderly French nuns. Am I really supposed to wash my hands on the soap model of Notre Dame cathedral, lather until the flying buttresses are gone, then toss it back all wet into the decorative basket?

Maybe I should just take a cue from Ryan, soap-wise. His theory is that all bottled items for use in a bathroom are basically the same, and I can’t argue authoritatively against that. Hand soap, face soap, body wash, shampoo, conditioner: interchangeable according to him. Please keep that in mind if you catch me washing my hands with your toothpaste.

there is something oddly compelling about this picture

There’s a TV show called “Airport on the Discovery Wings Channel “a.k.a. the World War II Airplane Channel – not to be confused with the plain ol’ Discovery Channel, the Discovery Times Channel, the Discovery Mountain-Biking-and-Faux-Finishing Channel, the Discovery Animals-Doing-It Channel or the Hitler Channel”. The show follows people through the course of a day at Heathrow “abbreviation LHR: I like to know these things. In fact, you can look them all up and construct your ideal itinerary; I’d like to fly from MMM to OOH by way of HUH.”

What in the hell was I talking about?

Oh, yeah, the show. I love airports and I love traveling, but even so I’m not sure why I like watching it. Obviously they aren’t going to follow someone around who is having a pleasant and uneventful experience. It’s always things like the bridesmaid who has forgotten her passport and is begging the duty manager for Sri Lankan Air to hold the plane another ten minutes while she waits for someone to bring it “he did” or a group of Ethiopian athletes who don’t speak English and the airport information officer who has to try to make them understand they are a day early and in the wrong terminal “he didn’t”. Any given episode perfectly recreates the tension you’ve felt during your worst airport experience, and then gives you new stuff to worry about, like the fact that people apparently are shipping big bags full of baby crocodiles all over the world.

The show demonstrates that while English is the lingua franca of air travel, it isn’t American English or British English – it’s Airport English. Soon everyone in the world will be speaking in cadences simultaneously sing-songy and robotic and using impossibly overblown and obfuscatory phrases. “The title of this post is an announcement I heard at some small airport in the US. What does it really mean other than “testing”?” There will be a term to describe the moment when an airline official stops smiling and being conciliatory and becomes matter-of-fact and unapologetic. “On practically every show you get to watch the Cyprus Airways duty manager go through this transition 20 times as she explains to passengers that their flight is overbooked and they have the choice of going the hell home or accepting these peanuts and a Tom Clancy novel found in a seatback pocket and maybe there’s some room available in the hold.”

In the US, the style seems to remain faux-friendly longer. The last time I flew, I forgot to take my little pocket knife off my keyring. Obviously this raised some concerns among the security staff, and I was taken aside by an officer who explained very thoroughly and even cheerfully that I could not bring my knife onto the plane. Honestly, if he had just said, “What in the hell were you thinking, you moron? I would have been fine with that.

In other countries, airline employees seem to reach the moron-naming stage more quickly. On last night’s episode, the camera followed the activities surrounding, coincidentally, an Icelandair flight from LHR to KEF. “Hey, I gave you a link. Look it up.” Four of the dorkiest young men you could possibly imagine were checking in and discussing how they had chosen their destination. The alpha dork says, “Iceland’s got quite a good reputation for women” His friend, the second-biggest dork on the planet, grins broadly under his bowl haircut and says, “Definitely” There’s a brief pause while all four dorks dork dorkily into the camera, radiating their fervent hope that they will have better luck with the ladies of Reykjavík than they have traditionally enjoyed in Staines or Barking or whatever suburban dorkhole they usually dork around in. “Possibly Dorking.” Then you hear the ticket agent say, “I don’t fancy your chances”

REUTERS/David Bebber

From Reuters:

British performance artist Mark McGowan performs his artwork entitled ‘Sausage, Chips and Beans’ at the House Gallery, London in this photo taken November 14, 2003. McGowan intends to spend 100 hours sitting in the bath of baked beans with sausages strapped to his head and two chips stuck up his nose in support of the traditional fried breakfast which he views as an important part of British culture.

Do you think the NEA would give me some money to sit in a bathtub with Egg McMuffins strapped to my head? I mean, I do it anyway. I might as well get paid for it.

Speaking of traditional English breakfasts, I’ve had a nice hearty serving of spam lately. I’ve received emails from Headache G. Ethelred, Dramatist G. Brawlers, Stuffing F. Extinction and Clergywoman V. Sucrose. And my new mortgage broker, who is so fab that he just goes by “Juan,” thought it would make me feel better about trusting my financial future to him if he included this information:

I had to contemplate the math about eating dogs for a long time. Interest rates are lower than they have been in 40 years.

I appreciate that kind of outside-the-box thinking. You’re not going to get a cost/benefit analysis of dog eating from Merrill Lynch, are you?