New Jersey 08904

Back on the couch, all relaxed after spending a pleasant hour or so rebooting this machine repeatedly to get the wireless access to work again. There's a network cable lying at the foot of my couch, the other end of which goes directly to the router, but that's not the point. Probably. Anyway, apart from that it's been a mostly restful day, and so a good time to give a quick summary of who's been trying to kill me lately.

• Hotels Try To Kill Me
  I was staying in a Hilton (of course, not the Paris Hilton) for a couple of nights at someone else's great expense. I had forgotten quite how nasty hotels can be. Rather than let you breathe the natural, fine air of Cleveland, they insist on passing every molecule of air through some nasty air conditioning system. Air conditioning is my enemy: it makes my lungs hurt, it makes me cough, it makes my throat go all dry, and it makes it difficult for me to sleep. Well, I had enough difficulty sleeping anyway because of the pillows. I like thin pillows. This aligns my spine nicely, and lets me rest comfortably. The pillows in this hotel were about six inches thick, even when you try to crush them down. This meant that sleeping on them bent my neck at an unfamiliar angle and made it crackle sinisterly. The alternative, of no pillow at all, felt just as bad, since it made about the same angle in the opposite direction. Also the TV was rubbish. Good thing I was hardly there for any time at all.
  
  
• Aeroplanes try to kill me
  Newark and Cleveland are both Continental hubs, and there are direct flights between them which take under two hours. Why the only flights available went through baltimore, I do not no. I have nothing against Baltimore, but on the other hand there is very little to recommend it. One leg of the journey was on a Continental Express plane. I have been on roomier National Express Coaches. This plane packs 50 people in a total area about the same size as my front room, in rows of 3. Naturally, these have both heating and air conditioning. I think Steven Wright once did a routine about putting a humidifier and a dehumidifier in the same room and letting them battle it out: this must be official policy on most airlines now, since they both heat and chill the same air, probably just to ensure that all the captive airborne germs get a good chance to circulate. The most frustrating thing about these short little hops is that the "flying time" has built in half an hour of arsing about on the ground. The timing of the flight from Newark to Baltimore was over an hour, but the time in the air was about 30 minutes. The rest seemed to involve dicking about and driving right the way round the airport to get to the runway.
  
  
• The TSA tries to kill me
  The Transportation Secuirty Administration are the nice people who stand between me and the departure lounge. I like to travel light. I also like to bring everything with me as hand luggage, since I've looked out the window of a plane as they load the luggage and seen how well they handle the checked baggage. Plus, provided I don't have to submit my fingers and retinas to the BCIS on arrival, it means that I can get going quicker at the other end. The downside of this is the wonderful new paranoid security checking. Essentially, to get through the x-ray machines you have to unpack half your luggage, remove the contents of your pockets, take your shoes off, and waddle through the metal detector, then stand gloomily at the end of a conveyor belt to collect your positions and your dignity, which has to be scanned by a bored minimum wage worker for any signs of Anti-Americanism. At the time I throught the whole Richard Reid affair was somewhat silly: he seemed sufficiently incompetent to have posed no real threat to anyone. Now, everytime I have to travel cross country, I curse his name for causing me and countless other travellers inconvenience and delays at the terminal.
  So, any potential comedy terrorists or other trouble makers, here's an idea for you: if you want to piss off the American nation even further, then why not try sneaking through the security cordon with a pound of semtex in your underwear? You'll get caught and deported to Guantanamo Bay without trial, of course, but you'll go with the knowledge that from that day forth until the end of time, every person taking a flight anywhere in the world will have to strip down to their kecks in front of a line of fellow travellers before being allowed to proceed. And that could be more subversive and disruptive than any serious attempt to attack the country.
  

I could go on with my list of people and things that have tried to kill me lately, but I think that will do for now. Instead, I'll just note the following:

There's a lot of talk here about gay marriage, and some amount of controversy surrounding it. According to a recent poll, 51% of people in California are opposed to gay marriage. But let's put this in context: in another poll, 54% of people are opposed to Janet Jackson's right breast, and a further 18% actually think it is illegal. I personally have nothing against Ms Jackson's breasts (although I wouldn't mind... yes, ok). So, this is a country where same sex unions are about as divisive as a couple of tits on TV (and goodness knows, it's not like there's any real shortage of tits on TV). I'm making no further comment on this point for now, except to say that I wish that the policy on not showing any tits on telly was also applied to not showing any Bush either.