Curmie will write soon (he hopes) about more important issues: the Stalinistic/Fascistic tactics (here’s one place Curmie believes in the horseshoe theory) of the DeSantis regime, the idiocy of the Tennessee prohibition of drag, Walgreen’s craven capitulation to right-wing ideologues, etc. But for now, it’s a few comments about little things that are pissing Curmie off.
1. Spammers. Curmie is one of two admins of a Facebook page for a theatre honor society. Since the Zuck minions changed their policies, we’re now inundated with spam. Our only defense is that we do get to allow or disallow first posts by users. Not long ago, we’d get one or two a week; now it’s dozens every day, most of them from Asia. Virtually all are “reels,” some of which are, one supposes, intended to be cute or inspiring. A few are fake celebrity death news; others are pornographic. Sigh.
Curmie’s email is now littered with “X requests permission to post for the first time” messages. I’ve blocked a few hundred would-be posters since the last time I approved anyone, and the other admin has cleaned out a lot of crap, too. I don’t want someone who has a legitimate reason to post on our site to be denied the opportunity to do so, so I at least glance at everything before denying access. All of this increases Curmie’s heartfelt desire for these assholes to die an excruciating death.
2. American Airlines. Curmie lives in East Texas, and uses Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for most of his air travel. It’s a little closer than Dallas, and it’s an easier drive; there are a couple of smaller airports that are closer, but the limited number of flights makes them less appealing. Anyway, Curmie flew to Lexington, KY for a conference last week. The return trip included a reasonably tight connection in Dallas. Curmie made it; his suitcase didn’t, despite the fact that according to their own “summary” they unloaded it from the Lexington flight 57 minutes before the scheduled departure to Houston (and that flight was delayed).
Jump cut to Houston, where Curmie is waiting for his bag… and waiting… and waiting. The carousel is still spinning, but nothing more is coming down the chute. Finally someone starts clearing all the remaining bags off the still-turning carousel; she snarls at me when I ask if this means all the bags are now unloaded. So… off to the American desk. Yes, the bag is still in Dallas. I can wait for the next flight (a couple of hours) or they’ll deliver it tomorrow. I chose the latter.
The next morning, I tried to check on my baggage’s status, using the website listed on my receipt: nope, no listing. OK, let me try through the American website: nope, tracking not available. Wait, hidden away in a dark corner of the interwebs is a phone number for baggage questions! Ah, but the recording says that number is no longer operational; I’m directed to the (worthless) website. Note, by the way, that the number I called is in fact still operational or I wouldn’t get that corporate recording; they just don’t want to staff it. Finally, I find a link that actually works.
Did American put the suitcase in a van and drive it up to Chez Curmie? What a silly thought! At 5:41 a.m. they put it on a flight back to Dallas, of course! It was listed as “En route from Dallas/Fort Worth” as of 8:42 a.m. Curmie heard that, Gentle Reader. You want to know “en route to where?”. Well, to nowhere in particular, apparently, for another eight hours, at which point it was loaded on a plane to Longview (that’s one of the smaller and slightly closer airports mentioned earlier). About 7:30, Curmie got a call from Mindy at the courier service that American hired, saying she’d be here in about an hour; she was.
First off, thanks to the courier service (alas, Curmie doesn’t remember the name of it) for getting me my bag almost exactly 24 hours after I’d have arrived home with it if the ground crew in Dallas had done their jobs. Not so much love for anyone at American: a little competence (or even care) would have gone a long way. But it’s the useless website and the scrupulous avoidance of actual customer service, of any possibility of having someone at American actually have to talk to a passenger, that epitomizes the era of corporate arrogance.
3. More Censorious Asshats. Shortly after the furor over the bowdlerizing of the books of Roald Dahl, we learn that the Woke Folk are coming after Ian Fleming’s James Bond series . Certainly the books are somewhat less than politically correct by the standards of the 2020s, but they are what they are, and removing the casual racism of the originals does alter them significantly.
Curmie remembers using a textbook in an acting class many years ago. It’s a great book… if you can get past the sexism. Most students could; a couple couldn’t. Whether the Bond books can remain relevant today despite their use of what are now regarded as racial slurs is debatable. But it’s more than passing strange that apparently it’s really only the negative depictions of black people that have been sanitized. According to the Telegraph article linked above, the slurs against Asians, the sexism (“the sweet tang of rape”? Really?), and the homophobia remain. I guess we know the sensibilities of the “sensitivity readers” hired by the Fleming estate.
If nothing else, though, the kerfuffle has generated one of the best quips of recent memory. Curmie can’t determine who should get credit for it, but it wasn’t him. The earliest citation I can find is from the title to a blog piece on the right-wing site PJ Media: “The Name Is Bond. James Bond. My Pronouns Are...”. Whatever your politics, that’s a good line.
4. Stupid University Administrators. As usual, Curmie apologizes for the redundancy in this phrase. Alas, as has become all too common of late, yet another university has decided to abandon its mission in order to find a short-term solution to problems created by its own mismanagement. This time the culprit is Marymount University in Virginia.
President Irma Becerra offers the same lame arguments we’ve all heard too many times before, such as those at Goucher College back in the halcyon pre-COVID days. Quoth Becerra, “Over the long term, it would be irresponsible to sustain majors [and] programs with consistently low enrollment, low graduation rates, and lack of potential for growth.”
Of course, one solution would be to provide those programs (theology and religious studies, philosophy, mathematics, art, history, sociology, English, economics and secondary education) the resources they need to attract and retain students. Another would be to at least pretend to listen to faculty, students, alumni, and other interested parties. But Becerra, like so many of her irk, is as narcissistic as she is short-sighted.
She wants to turn the place into a trade school. Don’t get me wrong: there is a place for trade schools. Just don’t call them universities; you can’t be a university without degrees in English, economics, math, and history, or a Catholic university without robust programs in theology, religion, and philosophy. The other majors on the chopping block are valuable, too, although perhaps not absolutely vital to have as majors... and they may well be especially strong in qualitative terms at Marymount. Becerra doesn’t care, of course: she is driven only by short-term numbers. (Mathematicians or sociologists would be especially useful in helping her understand what those numbers actually mean. Of course, that suggests she might listen.)
She even has the audacity to claim that “True to our mission, all university programs will continue to be grounded in the liberal arts and focused on the education of the whole person.” In a word, bullshit. There will be, can be, no liberal arts grounding at a university that has turned its back on the values of the liberal arts. Becerra is a hypocrite as well as an incompetent administrator.
The disintegration of a university Curmie had never heard of is, of course, not cause for great alarm in its own terms. As an exemplar of the path too many myopic and panicky administrators are choosing, however, the Marymount case offers ill portents.
5. ESPN’s Narcissism. The network has long believed people tune into their coverage of sporting events to listen to their talking heads rather than to see the game. Hence we get blowhards like Dick Vitale and Bill Walton, who really think the telecast is about them. Announcers frequently say things like “they called an offensive foul” without saying on who (the guy with the ball? an illegal screen?), and that could matter if someone is already in foul trouble. No, they’d rather keep babbling about some player’s high school coach or, more likely, their own experience as a coach (back before they got fired).
Now, however, ESPN is even worse. As many Curmiphiles know, Curmie is a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks (he got his PhD at KU). It has long been the practice at Chez Curmie to listen to the KU radio broadcast for pre-game, switch to the TV for the first half of the game itself, back to radio for halftime, and back to TV for the second half. For, well, reasons, we were watching the first-round game on the Big 12 tournament on ESPN+ on the computer monitor.
This worked particularly well in that we could listen to the radio halftime show while the visual images were of the ESPN+ site, so we’d know when the second half TV coverage was about to start. Except. You knew there was an “except,” didn’t you, Gentle Reader? ESPN decided we’d rather listen to their talking heads utter “analysis” of what was happening elsewhere—no highlights, mind you, just a couple of guys rambling—than to see the game live. We were four minutes of game time (so, more than that of in real time) into the second half before ESPN deigned to show us the game. We did get to see the rest of the game, but on time delay. (Interestingly, the final score was posted on the ESPN website when the TV coverage was still at the three minute mark (maybe sooner).
Curmie has objected for years to the all-too-common practice of a network’s pretending that a taped event was live. This is especially true of NBC’s Olympic coverage. But at least there, you can see the rationale, even if it’s a little sleazy. But there is literally no advantage to ESPN’s unethical misrepresentation. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be horse-whipped and fired. They’ll probably get promoted.
6. More Nonsense from GetUpside. You may recall, Gentle Reader, that the GetUpside app used to make the absurd claim that users could save $200-300 a month. In reality, if you drive 1000 miles a month, get an average 25 mpg, and get the maximum savings offered by the app (25¢ a gallon), you’d actually save $10. But hey, they were only off by about 2000%. Can’t blame them for that, right?
Well, apparently someone suggested that ridiculously false advertising might be contra-indicated, so they’ve dropped that particular bit of idiocy. Nonetheless, they’re baaaaack. Now our heroine claims that she’s got lots of extra cash because of the app. “Everyone is driving a lot more now,” you see, but she never pays full price at the pump.
Notice: “a lot more.” Curmie would take that to mean at least 50% more, but let’s say it’s 10%. The state with the lowest average price for a gallon of gas today is Mississippi, at $3.01. That would be the state in which a 25¢ a gallon savings would make the greatest impact on a percentage basis. Driving even 10% more and getting gas 8.3% cheaper puts more money in your pocket exactly how?
7. The Slash Ad. This one doesn’t really piss me off as much as make me scratch my head. Capital One has for some time had an advertising theme that suggests that banking with them is “the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than this…” The “this” is opening the birthday pony first, using Derek Jeter instead of another guy named Derek as a pinch-hitter, etc.
The newest ad in the series shows auditions for a (high school?) rock band. A couple of teenage boys are waiting their turn, while Slash, the lead guitarist for Guns n’ Roses, plays the iconic guitar lead-in to the band’s classic single, “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” He’s only a couple bars in when he’s interrupted and told he’s “in.”
When the ad debuted during the Super Bowl, Curmie raised an eyebrow. Yes, that riff is instantly recognizable, but it’s not like Slash is the only person on the planet who can play it. Don’t believe me? Check out this middle-schooler. The kid does a great job all the way through, including the solo near the end. To be fair, it doesn’t match what Slash does with that latter sequence, but we’d need to compare those renditions to choose the better guitarist. Based solely on the ability to play that opening riff, choosing Slash immediately instead of hearing other auditioners is a stupid decision… probably not what Capital One had in mind.
Next up… a subject of greater import. Maybe.
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