I suppose I will pass the time on this flight by blogging; I have five hours to kill. When I get to MD I will upload what I have written. Tiny keyboard practice time! U can analyze how it affects my writing style lol
I had a pretty terrible experience in LA. relatively short though it was, I'm willing to generalize from it and convert events into semeotics because I am full of hate and execute it well; use your talents, they say.
First of all, I made the questionable decision to accept some freebies in exchange for my airline seat, and was bumped to a flight the next day. My main experience in LA was probably the hotel, although I don't remember its name. It was glitzy and glam and looked like it belonged in LA, although I don't think it was top tier...hard to say. As long as they're clean I have trouble determining what makes one hotel better than another.
I had a voucher for the room, but everything else was mercilessly nickled-and-dimed from me: $12 for internet, $8 for a single phone call to a nearby area code for which I received no warning that it was a "long distance call", and (this is the worst part) $5 for a bottled water that I reasonably presumed was complimentary; aren't those kinds of things usually? I asked the front desk clerk how they knew to charge me for my water, and she told me there was a sensor in place.
Isn't that great? My room was booby trapped with bottled water that, when you move it, charges $5 to the credit card you're required to give them for "incidentals." I think the fee-for-this and fee-for-that situation is getting worse; banks come to mind as gross offenders, but apparently hospitality is guilty as well.
I think this is a sign of an economy in trouble: less profit means squeeze the customer more, which means fewer customers and even less profit. I'm just here eating my popcorn, waiting for the whole rotten, corrupt, stinking shit-mass to drop off into the polluted ocean with a plop.
So, my "free" hotel generously provided by united airlines would have cost me $25, just for getting on wifi, making what looked like a local call for less than 1 minute, and taking an 8 oz bottle of water from the gift basket booby trap. In fact, I complained about the water and returned it unopened to the front desk clerk, and asked for my $5 back, which was cheerfully refunded.
Now for LA in general: it's gross, like a huge polluted beauty salon. It seems to consist of palm trees and traffic jams and fat depressed brown people serving skinny white people who all think they're george clooney.
The travellers in the security line were incredibly pushy and rude; one fake-tanned alpha-type executive power woman actually gave me a little shove when I didn't move fast enough claim my turn to have my ID examined. She giggled afterwards to emphasize that everything was light and airy and I should not resent her childish california shit mindset and behavior -- no, everything was hunky dory. Shortly thereafter, a tiny platinum haired glamour granny in full bejeweled regalia told me to "get my own" security xray shoe basket when I mistakenly tried to put my things in the one she'd claimed. I grant that airport security at huge and crowded LAX puts people in a bad mood, but fuck them. I attribute most of their behavior to being from LA; pervasive douchebagginess pollutes the water and air there.
I've always hated the SF bay area, and now I can say with confidence that I hate LA too. Northern cali -- the mount shasta area north of SF up to the oregon border --seems cool, as does gold rush country near placerville. Downtown sacramento seem all right. But screw the two biggest most important cities.
Most of my hatred is a reaction to the childish, narcissistic, regionalistic pride so many californians seem to exude as some kind of genetic trait. In other words, the problem is the people -- if it weren't for them, CA would be a nice sunny place that looks like a golf course and has great produce, where you can bike year round. People always ruin everything.
Pictures of my aunt's hobby farm, which I visited on my last day in sacramento. I'm in LA now, having accepted travel vouchers and a hotel in exchange for my seat on yesterday's flight from LA to baltimore. Also, I get a food voucher, and I have an aisle seat on my flight in a few hours (yesterday I would have been stuffed in the middle).
I over-ate yesterday and only get 1500 calories today, then 2000 tomorrow. Doing calorie control without a spreadsheet is a bit more challenging; one has to keep numbers in one's head. The big killer was a community box of chocolates and receiving some gourmet beef jerky as a gift.
We attended a christmas concert last night of handel's "messiah." I don't really care for handel all that much -- I think he's stogy and stiff and conventional and unsuprising and dull, although I do like that you can tap your foot to it; you could add a rock n roll drum beat to a lot of handel and it wouldn't seem too out of place. A few moments were nice, like the halleluja chorus. Also, it was way too long. The text is in english, which weirded me out a little bit, because the words seem so dumb ("we shall praise him!" over and over again, with trilled r's...yeah, great...who gives a sh*t?). Vivaldi makes much better baroque.
I'd like to attend a "contemporary classical" concert -- something in the orchestral or just composition/performance idiom without strong references to rock, jazz, hip hop, or other established pop genres, but created in the past 10 or so years. One good way to define "serious music" is to take away the standard drum kit (bass, snare, high-hat, toms, crash, and ride). I'd attend a concert of just a few guys with electric guitars run through effects boxes, and call that "serious music."
Another way to think of serious music or contemporary classical music is that it's the musical analog to fine art as it happens in galleries, museums, and academia (as opposed to popular art like movies and comic books); stuff with some intellectual content and more complexity of form. Or, perhaps most importantly, not so subculturally restricted, like a rock song with a 4/4 beat or hollywood movie with a 120 minute running time. "high art" and "high music" allow for more freedom.
If you get too free, you end up in the avant garde, which, at least in music, tends to yield a less consumable product. I guess that's true of art too, but it's easier to ignore sights than sounds -- you can just close your eyes. Good earplugs are expensive and even then they don't work perfectly. Take note, next time you're at an art opening, of how small a sliver of time people actually spend looking at the art.
It's important to eat a variety of foods.
Barack obama is a space alien.
Up at 3am like clockwork. I'm getting bored here. I should have made my visit shorter. Maryland should be more tolerable, since there are more people to see and I'll have a car and familiarity with the area.
I'm looking forward to returning to my freshly cleaned apartment. Weight loss continues I think, although I've not been counting calories as accurately while on holiday, and sometimes even knowingly going over 2500. But it's fine, because 2500/day is a lifelong plan and some small holiday indulgences won't make a difference in the long term. That said, it's good not to over-indulge.
Today will be a day of frenetic church activity.