Air and space nauseum

Tonight, on the eve of the start of the Catholic Church's Lenten season, all eyes turn to the hedonist haven of New Orleans as the drunken and debauched have the sinner's equivalent of a condemned man's last meal by consuming copious amounts of alcohol and debasing themselves by flashing all sorts of body parts in exchange for a few pennies worth of plastic beads before their forty days of penitent living begins. Sounds like fun to me!

This week, I will be on the road just a few days, flying to the city that wears its sin on its sleeve all year long and doesn't need a religious holiday to cut loose; Las Vegas. I don't know if it a testament to age, sobriety or common sense but, like tonight, I will most likely be snug in my room early in the evening researching another blog instead of pickling my liver on the 24 hour a day playground that is the Strip. They do have free beer at the hotel for a few hours so I may have a few; just to keep my liver from getting complacent.

The anxiety for my trip will be the flight from Utah to Nevada. Flying on Southwest Airlines to save money (sic), for me, is a stressful game of seat mate musical chairs that inevitably has me straddling the aisle because the not-so-frequent flier in the middle's thighs are invading my 17" of ass space more aggressively than Hitler moved in to Poland. Even worse is when they decide to raise the arm rest to its full and upright position which opens the aisle seat to middle seat border to a flood of unrestricted fat emigration equivalent to the rush of East Germans in to Berlin after Mr. Gorbachev finally tore down that wall. Like a svelt sun tanning beach goer on the Thailand coast is washed to sea in a Tsunami, I spend the hour long flight fighting the wave of human flesh trying to push me in to the airplane's aisle and in to the path of an oncoming drink cart.

I do feel for overweight people. As a person with enough miles on my physical odometer to be well out of warranty, I have to choose my meals with more care and spend more time swearing at Tony Horton and his "bring it" routines than I had to before in order to maintain a BMI that keeps me out of the store to buy new pants and off Michelle Obama's obesity radar. I can see how a person's weight can get out of hand. But seriously, at what point does a person who makes a conscious decision to eat another muffin top shortly after seeing their own waistline muffin top over their belt as they dress in morning begin to deserve our sympathy?

There are some who are clinically obese for reasons beyond their control. There are others who aren't. In the news the past few days is self-admitted fatso and highly overrated movie maker Kevin Smith. Mr. Smith was kicked off a Southwest flight when his girth was deemed a safety hazard and thanks to the fact any twit can now twitter to the world instantly, the rotund one was able to gripe, bitch and whine in 140 characters or less. At the root of the problem, and against Mr. Smith's point, is that he had purchased two seats, one for each cheek, on a flight but decided to try and catch an earlier departure. The earlier sardine can that is your typical Southwest Airlines flight only had one seat available for Mr. Smith. Like trying to squeeze ten pounds of Hollywood ego in to a five pound bag, getting the Clerks director in to a single seat proved an insurmountable task and the airline was forced to ask him to deplane. Silent Bob didn't live up to his character name and began tweeting immediately.



In Mr. Smith's defense, he admits he is fat. He is so fat, he knew to buy two seats. So why, when he made the decision to fly earlier than scheduled does he feel the need to condemn Southwest Airlines for enforcing a customer of size rule that he tacitly endorsed by his decision to purchase the extra space for his spare tire?

It can't be easy for larger, o.k. fat, people to fly. But why do they have the right to inconvenience others? Why must I rebuild Hadrian's Wall every time I board a plane to ensure safe haven to enjoy a book? The norms, as Kevin Smith refers to those who must be height weight proportionate, have the right to enjoy their full purchased seat. I view the dividing arm that is the arm rest between seats in the same way I look at a fence surrounding my property. Neighbor, you can do what you want up to the point where you cross it. When the person next to me on the plane begins to ooze under the arm rest I want to yell like the old man in the neighborhood at the the rowdy little kids to "stay off my lawn!" Even worse is when the ground attack of my seatmate's flanks are encroaching on my defensive flanks while there is an air war being waged by the crying baby one row back and the little brother goose stepping his way up the back of my seat.

Perhaps the solution is to make the metal detector we all must go through to enter the terminal the same width as your average airplane seat. If a passenger can't make it through, they don't board the plane! If they can do that, we will only need a way to muzzle children and then, once again, the skies will be friendly to fly.

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[ED Note: The staff at NoMatoMiPavo does not despise or condemn overweight people. We understand that you are fully aware, and often painfully and embarrassingly aware, of your size in situations such as a transcontinental flight. Many of you probably work at losing weight and set backs in exercise and diet regimens are harder to overcome every time they occur. But obesity can be overcome. We've seen many people do it. This blog is not meant as an attack on you but simply an effort to show the other side.]

The gifts that keeps on giving from those who continually don't get it

While they may seem an impersonal gift akin to giving someone a box set of DVDs, magazine subscriptions are actually nice to receive. Every month you get a little reminder of someones thoughtfulness in the mail and about twice a week you get a phone call from some reseller trying to get you to extend the subscription another year or two. Where else can you pack so much attention into $1.67 a month?

You'd think journalists, news commentators and late night comics would be celebrating like slum dwellers in India watching the Academy Awards over the cornucopia of material being provided to them by the Obama administration. But no, instead of embracing this ready made humor with Shiva's eight open arms, it seems all they can do is find more ways to bitch about Rush Limbaugh and liken him to one of Ganesh's heads on some perverse GOP idol. If Bush or Reagan underlings committed half of the faux pas as The ONE's, the media would be busting a collective gut and Twitter would be all a twitter with one liners. With signs of hope in the doom and gloom financial crisis harder to find than an open seat on the New Delhi to Mumbai express bus, we all need to take our smiles where we can find them.

Hillary Clinton must have taken the same gift giving course as the First Couple. Before beginning talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the former First Lady and smartest woman in the World presented him with a gift meant to symbolize the "new beginning" of talks between our two countries. The gift was a small box with a red button on it and was supposed to have written on it, in Russin, "reset". Instead, our Cyrillicly challenged State Department labeled the button "overcharge". I don't know if this was a spelling error or if Hillary just grabbed the button meant for Nancy Pelosi's desk by mistake.


Hillary's Hilarity tour continued in Belgium where, addressing a group at the European Parliament, Bill's Better Half commented:

"I have never understood multiparty democracy.

"It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy."

I hate to break it to our Secretary of State but it took my secretary all of 1 minute to find that most European democracies date back to the times of the Romans and our own representative republic is based off documents written by men pushing the plagarism envelope by citing numerous lines from the Magna Carta (written in 1215). Again I offer Hillary the benefit of the doubt as I am sure she is much more familiar with the politics, but not the language, of the former Soviet Union or Red China.

Ring three of Hillary's circus also took place in Brussels and is more funny weird than funny ha ha. Talking about the global economic turmoil, Clinton somehow related stock markets and businesses closing to "going green". She said, "Never waste a good crisis ... Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security,". This joke of an idea has been a running gag in The ONE's reign of error and the clowns in Congress will vote on Cap and Trade in spring. Even supporters of the First African American President of the United States are questioning the widsom of this move.

Speaking of jokes and clowns, the former Vice President of the United States and temporarily miscounted President Al Gore was spewing more global warming gases out of his well stuffed pie hole at a Wall Street Journal Eco:nomics Conference when he was challenged by Man Made Global Warming skeptic and real scientist Bjorn Lomborg to debate the science of Gore's favorite topic and sacred cash cow. The Nobel Prize winner ducked the challenge faster than a turbaned snake charmer avoids a poisenous strike and continued his blather. Gore's been slinking away from debates for years now so he is getting good at it.

Finally, First Lady, fashion diva and Oprah cover girl Michelle Obama did the obligatory lunch lady duty at a local DC homeless shelter. The attempt at a photo op to show how the White House sits like a Taj Mahal amid poverty stricken slums was overexposed when the "poor" used their cell phones to create a photo op of their own with the First African American First Lady of the United States. The irony of this makes me want to shout, "Can you hear me now? We don't know what real poverty is."

In these times when everyone is worried about their job security, retirement funds, Iranian nuclear proliferation and Jessica Simpson's weight we sometimes have to tell ourselves it is OK to laugh. I promise to do my best to help with that smile on your face through the posts here. If that doesn't work, there is always this:



Indian music video - a bette version of Thriller - Watch more free videos

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It is the thoughtlessnes that counts

What separates great from good is an attention to detail. The extra effort you put in to doing even the most mundane task shows character, desire and caring.

It was rumored that the magician Blackstone, Sr. would have cakes baked with coins in them and distributed around the theaters where he was performing so he could, while walking around, do an "impromptu" coin trick where a borrowed coin would vanish and reappear inside of a "cake that just happened to be there" at a local vendor. Everyone was amazed and the resultant word of mouth advertising virtually guaranteed a packed performance the next evening.

A few weeks ago I posted on how the Obama administration ticked off the Brits by returning a bust of Churchill that was loaned to GW Bush. I guess The ONE is a little behind on his reading of this blog as he didn't learn anything from that incisive and poignant review of his actions.

Just this week, the Prime Minister of the England, Gordon Brown and his wife, arrived in Washington for a meeting with the first African American President of the United States and his fashionable First African American First Lady wife.

I don't know if I've witnessed a Brit treated with such carelessness since Elizabeth Hurley was tossed aside for a two bit hooker by Hugh Grant. Then again, that was Brit on Brit disrespect. First, a press conference was cancelled due to snow. I guess Obama's protestations of a wimpy DC crowd regarding a little snow a few weeks ago was, like most of his statements, more "show than go".

Mr. Brown bestowed upon our fear inspiring leader gifts such as an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President. The forethought of this gift became apparent when the holder was placed on the Oval Office's Resolute desk which just happened to have been carved from the salvaged timbers of Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute. Carrying the "theme" forward, the President was also bestowed the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria. Finally, Mr Brown gave Obama a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

In return, Barack tossed to Gordon a collection of 25 DVD movies he got from Roland Burris as a White Elephant gift at Governor Blago's house last year. I don't even think he wrapped them.

Mrs Brown didn't fair much better with America's top model of a First Lady. Sarah Brown gave Sasha and Malia Obama an outfit each from Topshop, which has just opened its first American store in New York. She also picked six children's books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America. What did Michelle offer in return? She handed over a toy replica of Marine One. British columnist Sarah Vine sums it up so well writing in the Times:

'These were gifts chosen in the true spirit of present-giving: to please the recipient, not the giver.'

Giving the Browns' two young boys a helicopter was 'fair enough'.

But she added:

'Marine One? It’s not as though anyone needs reminding that Barack Obama is President or that he has his own helicopter.

'Short of giving the boys Action Man models of her own husband smiting the evil forces of neoconservatism, Mrs Obama’s gesture could not have been more solipsistic or more inherently dismissive of Mrs Brown.

'Not only did she demonstrate that she spent approximately three seconds contemplating the needs of the Brown boys (having an aide pop to the White House gift shop for a piece of merchandising does not imply a great deal of thought), she appeared to show a most uncharacteristic lapse of judgement.'

Lapse of judgement seems to be a part of the Obama standard operating procedure. Britain, once we kicked her ass off this continent, has long been our closest ally. The simpatico between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was benefit for not just our two countries but for the world as a whole as these resolute leaders won the Cold War and free millions from Communism and the fear of the actions of Communists.

I only hope that, while Gordon Brown fattens up on popcorn watching his DVDs, Barack Obama pages through a few of those volumes of Churchill's life. There is little chance of that, I know.

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