Kafka Airport World's Most Alienating

As we wait for deposits to come in from candidates for our study trip to Prague and Kraków this spring and hope that it is a "go," we need to start thinking about travel arrangements. Fortunately, I can assure the students that the actual airport in Prague is rather more user-friendly than the one depicted here:

Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Can't vouch for that Dostoevsky Hotel, though.

Handy Evaluative Language

First in an occasional series of handy phrases to employ in student evaluations. Some are blunt, some are subtle. Some can serve a further educational purpose by requiring the reader to demonstrate a proper knowledge of grammar and sentence structure.

She wanted to pass the course badly--and she succeeded.

What, Me Study?!

Jaded woman at Amherst College to equally motivated fellow students:

"I can't take school seriously."

Upon seeing me approach:

"I guess I shouldn't be saying that."

Suppressing the urge to draw upon my arsenal of blonde jokes, I merely replied:

"Hey, that's okay, I don't work here."

Not exactly the kind of thing they want US News and World Report to hear.

Department of Irony: all-expense-paid trip to learn why you are unjustly privileged!

From the Hampshire College internal announcement service:

Posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 by Pesha Rose Wasserstrom

White Privilege Conference

The 10th annual White Privilege Conference is being held this year in Memphis, TN, the weekend of April 3-5.

The school has allotted funding for 10-15 people, for registration, transportation, and hotel! Registration ends this wednesday, . . .

You can register at http://www.uccs.edu/~wpc/regdown.htm, but please let me know if you want the school funding!

. . .The funding is available to anyone who would like to attend this great conference!

[Note: the link in the original text is not active, but one can read all about the White Privilege Conference here.]

So, let's see. Funding for anyone: no qualifications, no demonstration of need. That sounds like a nice privilege. And at the Hilton, no less. Looks pretty nice.

Nice indeed. Putting together the information on the conference and hotel web sites, we find:

• New in 2008 Flat-Screen Televisions, 36-inch in our Standard rooms and 42-inch in our Executive Level rooms
• Wireless high-speed Internet access available in all 405 rooms ...
• Serenity Bed Collection® featuring the Hilton Suite Dreams Mattress & Box Springs by Serta®
• Bath amenities featuring the La Source line from Crabtree & Evelyn®
• Hilton's signature MP3-capable alarm clock radio
• Two dual-line phones with data ports and voicemail
• Coffee maker with complimentary coffee & tea
• Iron & ironing board
• Hairdryer
• Wake-up service
• Individual digital climate control
• Electronic door locks
• Complimentary newspaper delivered each
weekday morning
• Express video check-out
• Remote control television
• In-room movies and video games

So this is what privilege is all about!

Naturally, this suggests all kinds of possibilities. I'm already imagining a nice consciousness-raising conference on the evils of conspicuous consumption. And one on the social and environmental selfishness of the gourmet cook. Maybe the vintage wine connoisseur, too.

By the way, a minor note of warning: That "complimentary newspaper delivered each weekday morning" is actually the classic scam, as the Hilton's own website reveals but does not quite tell you. Hotels "give" you USA Today, but (1) they don't tell you that it goes on your bill--you need explicitly to indicate that you do not want this "service." (2) It's a gimmick that allows McPaper to claim ridiculously inflated "circulation" figures.

Just one of those fun facts to know and tell from the world of book history and publishing.

Now this is actually a very good example of how one kind of privilege proliferates, as two large corporations team up to boost their profits and con the consumer, who is either too prosperous, too embarrassed, or just too ignorant to worry about that extra $ .75 per day on the bill.

See how that works?

Drill Team for Retired Guys

The approach of spring already brings thoughts of summer, which in turns summons up memories of my parents' generation in the old neighborhood:

Pay for Pee? (You Pay for Everything One Way or Another)

News last month that budget airline Ryanair was contemplating charging passengers for use of toilets both sparked cries of outrage and stimulated the creative juices of satirists.

Mind you, the CEO was merely contemplating the change, but for anyone who has actually flown on that carrier, the prospect seemed all too likely. Given the airline's stringent limits on weight of baggage and personal items, I felt, as I was packing my luggage some years ago, that I had been thrust back into my more youthful days as a backpacker when, as the late Colin Fletcher explained in his now-classic Complete Walker, fanatics felt moved to snip the labels off their tea bags in an obsessive quest to reduce carrying weight.

The really sad thing is that this is all part of the cynical shell game that we play in modern capitalist society, the more so, as economic crisis looms: We constantly disguise the real costs of things, and who notices? We have an unjust and in some ways inefficient health care system, but we don't realize that part of the expense arises from our unwillingness to tackle real across-the-board reform. The University of Massachusetts notoriously promises (or is required) to limit tuition increases, which it then makes up for by charging increased "fees" for everything else imaginable. The tuna can, which some years ago dropped from 6 and a half to 6 and one-eighth ounces, recently plummeted to 5 (do people ever read weights on packages, or are they just focusing on the "sale" price?). And of course, the biggest shell game in the country is the conservative obsession with "taxes." There is a legitimate debate to be had about size of government and extent of taxation, but it won't be an honest one until we confront the fact that we pay for the things we need one way or another, through the front door or the back, progressively or regressively. Our taxes are kept low, but we pay increased health care costs out of our private funds. Our roads and other infrastructure fall apart--but we pay for the flat tire or busted axle, or we finance highways and public transportation in part through regressive and often regionally and socially unfair taxes and charges. Just look at what is happening in Massachusetts, as residents are being asked to pay an increased gas tax that will primarily fund the eastern turnpike, the whopping debt for Boston's corrupt and mismanaged "Big Dig," and the Boston Metropolitan Transit Authority. Western Mass. residents--who have been getting the shaft since the days of Shays's Rebellion-- are understandably outraged. Charging more for tolls and transit tickets to the Boston-area residents who actually use the structures and services in question would be the most logical and fair solution, but no one wants to face up to market value and fight that fight, so we hide the cost by spreading it around in inequitable ways. To raise the income tax would be equitable and might result in a more equitable distribution of goods, but there's an ideological bias against that. Because most people, educated or otherwise, can't handle quantitative reasoning--we all lose.

And what of the future of and on Ryanair? As always, satire, like science fiction, has the best answer. A friend forwarded this prediction:

Which is ultimately scarier: the prospect that we might one day need to pay to pee--gives new meaning to that economic phrase, "pay as you go"--or that, because most of us can't count, we don't even know what we're really paying for?

It's not just a radical point. Capitalist gurus, too, get it. Why can't the rest of us?

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Best little-known film quotes

Some favorite little-known lines from Sergei Eisenstein's film, "Alexander Nevsky" (1938):

Mongol leader, trying to recruit Nevsky: "Join the horde!"

Nevsky to his comrades: "Lay out my princely garb."

Inane Journalistic Observation of the Day: March 13

From an NPR report on the use of the military to combat gang crime in Juarez, Mexico: The speaker on the audio introduction intones with great solemnity and self-righteous sarcasm:

"some say the military has been fighting violence with violence"

Gee, d'ya think?!

The reflexive and obligatory condemnation of all violence is of course just plain silly, but that's not what is saddest.

It is a shame. The point, of course, was that the government was not just using force, but using torture, and thus violating principles of justice in its supposed quest for justice. But if the professionals who get paid to write this stuff can't be bothered to choose the words of their stories with an ounce of care, how do they expect us to care about the content--or even get the message? We, like the victims, deserve to be treated better than that.