Oh, Canada, what the hell is the matter with thee? I think they have me flagged in their database as the guy who gets set up over and over for some new extreme-reality prank show. When I flew to Vancouver a week ago, they had a domestic flight departing from a US-controlled gate. Hillarity ensued. The flight was delayed by a half hour while the airport agents attempted to properly operate the door. Today I am connecting through Vancouver again, this time on a US flight, but the plane is departing from a domestic gate which (once again) I cannot access. Is it really so hard to put US planes on the US side of the airport, and Canadian planes on the Canadian side? And why doesn't anyone sell sandwiches on the US side? Oh!!! Canada!!! [stares at sky; shakes fists in rage].
And as long as I'm ranting, I should also mention that Japan has a lot of room for improvement in the areas of cartography and airport-direction-giving. They must seriously hate maps in Japan. Nobody understands them, nobody wants to look at them, and Japan's best and brightest are apparently busy creating complex train protocols. Speaking of Japanese trains, what the fuck!? Today(?) I got on some kind of crazy Voltron train that was supposedly bound for the airport. After departure, it was announced that the car I was in would be detaching itself from the train to go to some other destination. The rest of the train went to the airport. Who in Christ's fuck needs that feature!?
Back to you, Canada: if you are going to go to the trouble of offering an in-flight movie, is it really so hard to put the correct tape in the damn machine? Or, at least, could you rewind it before playing? I didn't even catch the title of that DeNiro film you showed half of. Half of "National Treasure" was actually pretty good. I might check out the other half some time. And bless you for showing "In Good Company" twice, back to back, even though it wasn't on the flight's line-up.
In all fairness to Canada: the free WiFi at the Vancouver airport is pretty good, although the signal is extremely weak and I'm not entirely sure that the free WiFi is deliberate. But thank you, nonetheless. And as for you, Sprint WiFi at the Salt Lake airport: merely turning on my laptop does not count as authorization for a new charge on my credit card!!
In keeping with the WiFi HotSpot business model, I am firmly convinced that I could make money by replacing public water fountains with coin-operated ones. I am also fairly sure that (1) the idea is patentable, and (2) a strong case could be made that, because the idea is new and profit could be made, I am in fact entitled to those profits and should be able to claim monetary damages against anyone who operates a free/public water fountain. Indeed, capitalism obligates all of us to clear a path for the opening of such new markets. I have plenty of similar ideas, such as toll-sidewalks for stripmalls, and royalty charges for reading signs and menus (reading is a form of reproduction). I'll bet we could also create a new profession out of listening to the tunes that people hum in public and confronting them with license/royalty invoices if those tunes are under copyright protection.
I'm sure that my rants will become slightly more organized after I get some sleep...
