Airlines have yet to figure out what the buses already did long ago. And that is this: if your seatbelt ever becomes of any use to you, it is already too late.

Especially when they tell me it is recommended that I keep my seatbelt fastened at cruising altitude; that especially pisses me off. I don’t know where the hell cruising altitude is, but it seems a god damn good place to actually exhale at ease.

I have learned that on AeroMexico there are three types of peanuts served. They are

• Toasted without oil
• Japanese peanuts
• Japanese lemon peanuts

You do not want the Japanese lemon peanuts. I’m all for multi-culturalism … I’m even semi-tolerant of mangoes with chili powder. But mixing a peanut (which the Peanut Institute tells us originated in South America) with a fried soy/flour shell and then lemon powder? Please. That’s like fucking a dead duck.

Wanna hear more about airlines? Good. So as I’ve sorta mentioned, I’m supporting my taco habit by teaching English classes around town. From the About page:

Oso now lives in Monterrey, Mexico with his girlfriend. During the day he exploits the working class and plunders Mexican sovereignty by teaching English to managers of multi-national companies.

So mostly I sit around in air conditioned corner office suites and rap with old people in thousand dollar suits about golf and their secretaries/girlfriends. But when we’re bored we open up the books and look for some fun. Given that the “revolutionary color chart system of mastering English” of the company I work for is such a joke, I thought the books would be too. And they are - they’re hilarious. This morning I was sitting with some old putz and we were going over vocabulary related to business travel. Mostly the kind of stuff you find on Mango Sauce. Then it was time to read the article that accompanies each unit and the whole thing was about how some 70 year old hit his stewardess when he found out there was no more steak left. We thought that was great. Then we went on talking about his secretary/girlfriend.

Which brings me to my next point. Since when did “So” become the official way to begin a response? I’m a big fan of the podcasts on itconversations.com which records interviews and conferences with geeks and lets you listen to what they have to say without smelling their breath. But these people can absolutely not answer a question without starting it with with “So …” or “So … it turns out that …” And it’s not only geeks; graduate students are also infected. It’s such a sick disease. Don’t you people understand how belittling it sounds? You don’t have to tell me “So … it turns out, little man, that the world is actually round” just tell me it’s a freaking sphere. I think this should be official podcast (and grad school) etiquette: no starting responses with “So …”

Can you believe this. What site pops up first when you search for cacahuates japoneses? We’ve got some content problems around here. And so far Ourmedia doesn’t seem to be helping.

I’ve been trying to get my little sister to come visit me in Monterrey for the past six weeks, but as I’ve already covered in depth, she hates Mexicans. Lucky for me, the White Stripes are coming to town (she’d never agree to seeing, let’s say, the Brown Stripes) and so now she says she’s excited to come visit. Anyway, it’ll be cool to eat some goat with her.

I was nonline for about a week so now I’m playing catch up with emails, podcasts, and rss feeds. During la semana santa though, I got in some quality reading time. More to come on the actual books, but I’ve got a list going here.