Bad, General Edition:

• Untimely joke about drunken pilots nets a paying customer a free trip back to the airport parking lot. More proof that air travel is one of the few industries left — including broadband and medicine — where the concept of customer service simply does not exist.
• Microsoft apologists, which I define as anyone who can still ask if Microsoft is a force for good or… not… with a straight face. Journalistic impartiality does not include maintaining the ridiculous fiction that Microsoft, or any big business, won’t do exactly what it wants to do regardless of the customer’s needs, wants, desires, or rights right up until the moment they get caught, at which point they’ll either buy or bully their way out of legal trouble and then attempt to spin it so well that people will line up in droves to be violated in one way or several — a sport they excel at because it’s one of the very few things they actually invented. I’m neither bitter nor cynical, merely observant. And to paraphrase Lea DeLaria: I don’t give a fuck, I don’t give a fuck, it’s been proven in Court.
• Free webspace providers that use completely ambiguous TOS agreements to shutter any site that is the tiniest bit controversial or becomes a tad too popular. Particularly the second. It’s not the unpaid content creator’s fault their chosen host doesn’t have a valid revenue model.

Not good, bad, or ambiguous, but simply cool:

• The collective term for a group of bats is a cauldron. This marks the first time I’ve ever actually learned something from an internet personality quiz.

Bad, Personal Edition:

• Untimely bouts of unconsciousness (a/k/a passing out), stitches (a/k/a potential scars) of the facial variety, and the entire medical industry. This is a long, possibly interesting story that I don’t have the energy to tell right now, other than to say no, I was not intoxicated and no, I do not know what did cause it. I also have pictures that you do not want to see, thanks to the quick thinking and bottomless insensitivity of a roommate. Also: roommates.
• Those streaks of bad luck that you can’t help but define as such, whether you believe in luck or not*, due to the fact that the unlucky events happen every day for a week (so far) to a very small group of people and are all of very similar nature. I hate those, don’t you? Similar to above: long story, no energy. * Not that I didn’t believe in luck before this, but the addition of new empirical evidence has greatly strengthened the case.

Good, PE:

• Simple pleasures. Really, really simple pleasures, like Coffee. Or sex. Buffy (the show). Friends (not the show). Pulp SF.
• The fact that many simple pleasures are cheap or free.

Currently Ambiguous, PE:

• The fact that many of the above simple pleasures are either almost as, just as, or much more interesting as/than weblogging, without being nearly as taxing.
• Due in part to the above, in part to nostalgia, and in no part to any misconception that my life is any more interesting now than it has ever been, I’m anticipating a return to talking about myself, as opposed to simply my opinions and things I think are interesting and/or irritating. It’s either that or not post for weeks and try to make up by posting huge monsters like this one. I know which I would prefer, so fair warning, yet again, that you might read things here that I wouldn’t shout in a room full of strangers and that thusly, if you are of the inclination, you may have to recategorize this site in your own mind and bookmarks. This isn’t aimed at my two remaining faithful readers, of course, as they are people of infinite understanding, taste, and mental flexibility, but at the people who will return later and wonder what the hell happened.