Q: Dear everyone on the Internet, could you please stop being such whiny beyotches? Thanks. Love, T.A.M.S.Y.

A: We're not usually in the business of defending corporations and CEOs here at The Answer May Surprise You (quite the opposite, really), but we'll make an exception if it contributes to the eternal battle against idiocy.

The blogosphere and even printosphere is lately abuzz with the story of how Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza is still new to this whole email thingee. When a couple named James and Christine in Orlando emailed Baldanza, and various other employees of Spirit, to complain about their flight experience and request compensation, Baldanza responded to one of his underlings:

Please respond, Pasquale, but, we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.

Except he accidentally hit "reply-all," so his email was sent back to James and Christine themselves, at which point Christine posted it as a comment on a blog, eventually leading to it appearing lots of other blogs, and then USA Today and the Orlando Sentinel, etc etc etc.

Oh, by the way, want to know the nature of James and Christine's original email? They were angry that their flight from Orlando to Atlanta had been delayed by two hours and 35 minutes, because they missed a concert. As CEOsmack explains, "The couple also cited poor customer service when they asked to be reimbursed not only for their $73.60 airfare, but also for their hotel, concert tickets and airport parking... for a grand total of a company crippling $376.84."

As far as T.A.M.S.Y. is concerned, Baldanza should have been far more candid in his reply-all. I would have gone with, say,

Dear James and Christine, and all my employees, and everyone on Earth,

Please accept my apology for your poor experience with Spirit Airlines. I can certainly understand your frustration, as I am constantly receiving emails from people who missed a concert because their flight arrived three hours late.

Oh... no, wait... now that I think about it, I've never received such an email. Yeah, hold up, I've never heard of such thing. Upon reflection, it is, in fact, the most retarded thing I've ever heard. You must live in Florida or something. Oh, yeah, you do, imagine that.

Zee plane boss, zee plane: Ben Baldanza loves email from Fantasy Island

Say, do you know how I became CEO of a major corporation? I'm pretty sure it was by not handing out $400 in refunds to people from whom I will never ever ever make $400 in their entire lifetimes. Especially not people who are so dumb that they'd think it were a good idea to fly to someplace to see a concert within a couple hours of their scheduled arrival. Did I mention how retarded that is? Because wow.

Really, I have to thank you for your very entertaining email. Like when you wrote, "It is understandable that flights are delayed at times, and for this reason, we booked our trip to Atlanta with ample time to get to the concert that we were supposed to attend on the night of August 14th even if the flight was delayed by up to an hour and a half"? Honestly, I busted a gut. Funniest thing I've ever read. Or when you complained that you had to wait 20 minutes for the airport supervisor to unlock the gate? Maybe instead of giving you that $376.84, I'll use it to pay someone to train a field mouse to play the violin, and he will play you the tiniest fucking violin concerto in the history of time. It will be so much better than the DC Talk concert or whatever the fuck you were flying to Atlanta for.

Or wait, how 'bout instead, I just keep the money, and we never discuss this again? Yeah, that seems like a good compromise. No, $376.84 wouldn't cripple our company; in fact, I made that much in the time it took me to write this sentence. It's more just a matter of principle, specifically my principle that idiots who email me for no reason should go fuck themselves.

Please make sure every blog in America publishes this email, because I'm told "any publicity is good publicity," and currently no one really knows or cares about us here at Spirit Airlines, even though we only charge seventy-five bucks to chaperone retards to concerts.

By the way, if you ever email me again, I will instruct one of our pilots to fly a plane into your house.

Respectfully,
Ben Baldanza
CEO, Spirit Airlines

P.S.: I was laughing so hard while I wrote this that I knocked over a $750 lamp. Where's my motherfucking check, assholes?

Q: Are recording industry execs the puppetmasters for the entire Canadian government?

A: YES!!!!! Or...wait. No.

Boing Boing, the "directory of wonderful things," is one of the world's finest blogs -- if not the finest -- for the huge output of consistently cool stuff it showcases every day. But one post yesterday, by Boinger Cory Doctorow, struck me as uncharacteristically dumb: Canadian Heritage Minister Oda in the pocket of recording execs, pulling from this piece by Canuck blogger and University of Ottawa professor Dr. Michael Geist. This is the BB post, in its entirety:

Michael sez, "Following a debate on CBC Radio with Canadian Recording Industry Association President Graham Henderson, Michael Geist is reporting that according to documents recently obtained under the Access to Information Act, last year eleven professional organizations representing most Canadian copyright holders in the music industry, including songwriters, composers, performers, record producers, and publishers, wrote to Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier to reject CRIA's new opposition to the private copying system and to 'express their reservations concerning the legal protection of technological measures used to limit access to, or reproduction of, musical works.'

"Moreover, the government documents reveal incredible access for CRIA to the highest levels of the Canadian government. CRIA was busy arranging an event for government officials within days of the election which led to a sponsored lobby session on March 2nd that included a government-funded lunch and a private meeting with Minister Oda. New documents reveal that this was merely the tip of the iceberg. Four weeks later (on April 1st), CRIA hosted a private lunch at the Juno Awards for Bev Oda featuring Henderson and the presidents of the major music labels followed by an artist roundtable. Six weeks after that (on May 16th), Graham Henderson was granted another meeting with Bev Oda, this time to counter the news that the indie labels had left CRIA and that the CMCC had launched." Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Doctorow seems to have just cut and pasted an emailed press release from Dr. Geist. While that's not a problem in itself -- sometimes, posting a dozen+ daily missives to your blog means not having time to add insightful commentary -- does the text itself even close to justify the conspiracy implied in the alarmist headline?

Take note: X-Files was filmed in Vancouver, not set there.

The entire first paragraph can be summed up as, Last year, eleven representatives for the music industry wrote letters to the Canadian Heritage and Industry Ministers. Um, so the fuck what? Individuals and organizations write letters to government officials all the time. It's usually more a formality than anything else, as most government officials don't have time to read their mail (although this is quaint, adorable Canada we're talking about, so maybe things are different).

The second paragraph reports that the CRIA (the Northern equivalent of the RIAA) has "incredible access to the highest levels of Canadian government," indicating a lobby session, luncheon and private meeting with Oda. OH MY GOD! CALL OLIVER STONE! Or...no, wait, that sounds like standard operating procedure for a governmental official's dealings with a large corporate body; big business does have better access to government than the average citizen. We knew that already.

But wait! "New documents reveal that this was merely

Take note: Iceberg big, tip small.

the tip of the iceberg"!!! The rest of the iceberg? Another luncheon the following month. And another private meeting six weeks later. Hey, isn't the iceberg supposed to be bigger than the tip of the iceberg? Either Geist is on very thin ice, or these luncheon involved a lot of iceberg lettuce. Which would indeed be a disgrace, as iceberg lettuce offers very little nutritional value.

Look, it pains me to offer a defense of the greedy Luddites of the recording industry, who are no stranger to alarmist declarations themselves. And I was greatly amused by Boing Boing's Monday post providing photographic evidence of just how backwards the industry can be.

I also understand that it must be very tempting to rush such material to one's blog, if only because attacks on record moguls, the Bush administration, the PS3 and/or the Zune greatly improves one's chances of hitting the front page of Digg.

Maybe Oda really is in the pocket of the Canadian record industry; maybe the recording industry controls the cabal of Jews who, of course, control all the world's governments. But if the record industry is calling the shots, our governments make for a terrible lapdog, because piracy is as rampant as ever.

So maybe we should stop making paranoid claims under the guise of breaking news, and start kicking back and enjoying that new Andrew Bird album.

Q: What's the 411?

A: The 411 is no longer 411, unless you just enjoy making donations to your phone company.

Next time you need directory assistance, try 1-800-FREE-411. You'll save yourself a couple bucks or more, which you can then lose gambling. Meanwhile, the CEO of Verizon will have to wait an extra few days before installing that fourth jacuzzi. Hurray!

I just tested the service for the first time. Very handy. Two small complaints, People Who Run 1-800-Free-411: (1) Don't waste nine precious seconds explaining to me how to use 411, for the love of God. I'm a busy man, in theory. (2) Your voice recognition system could use a bit of tweaking (although they have operators on hand if the robot woman fails to understand a single goddamn word, as it did for me).

And if you're wondering how they can afford to run a service that charges you zero dollars: Good question, and I have no idea. Supposedly there are ads involved, but I didn't hear any.

UPDATE: They added ads now, and they are truly horrible. No, you idiots, I don't want to order flowers, I just want to call the fricking grocery store!!! So much for this nugget of consumer advice.

Anyway, life is full of strange little mysteries. For instance, why is it that I've been calling 1-800-555-TELL to get live sports scores and extensive recaps for four years, and yet I've never (a) met anyone else who knows what it is, (b) seen it advertised or even referenced anywhere, nor (c) figured out why they run a service with zero revenue and an audience of one? Maybe they just love me. And really, WHO CAN BLAME THEM???

UPDATE #2: What the hell? After four glorious years of freedom, they added ads to 800-555-TELL, too. When will I learn to keep my big, stupid mouth shut? (To be fair, the "Tell Me" ads are considerably shorter and less rage-inducing.)