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: Now that it's been disproven, can we agree to stop talking about evolution?

A: Those of you worried about the American education system can breathe a huge sigh of relief this morning, thanks to some heartwarming news out of South Carolina. Of course, President Bush already fixed the public schools—but it turns out private institutions have their own special way of ensuring that no child be Left Behind.

The results are in from Pawleys Island Christian Academy's prestigious science fair, and the winner in one category... may surprise you. Under the tutelage of teacher Judy Doerr, PICA's preteens are taking science to new heights! By which I mean, they're finally destroying it.


I almost missed this story, but luckily, the Georgetown Times matched it with a real barn-burner of a headline:

Christian Academy Science Fair winners named.

Judy Doerr, the science teacher for middle school students at Pawleys Island Christian Academy (PICA), says she is very pleased with this year's science fair projects. "This is the third year we have held the science fair at PICA and I am excited about the variety of projects the students have created," Doerr said.

Brian Benson, an eighth-grade student who won first place in the Life Science/Biology category for his project "Creationism Is the Winner!", says he disproved part of the theory of evolution. Using a rolled-up paper towel suspended between two glasses of water with Epsom Salts, the paper towel formed stalactites. He states that the theory that they take millions of years to develop is incorrect.

"Scientists say it takes millions of years to form stalactites," Benson said. "However, in only a couple of hours, I have formed stalactites just by using paper towel and Epsom Salts."

OH MY GOD. Nearly two hundred years of scientists' lies and several decades of ill-begotten curriculum, refuted in two hours by a 13-year-old with table seasoning and a roll of Bounty! Finally!!! Inherit THAT wind, Charles Darwin—YOU FRAUDULENT WHORE!

Yes, after Mr. Benson's discovery, not even Richard Dawkins could claim creationism isn't the winner. The results are obviously irrefutable. I mean, it won the science fair, for God's sake. Plus, these findings strike deep into, and also detonate, the very core of Darwin's theories. Knowing what we know now, evolution simply makes no sense. Consider, for instance, this excerpt from Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species:



So much for that little house of cards!

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Man, all the sudden I feel like such an uneducated jerkwad. When I was in grade school, my top scientific achievement was proving that volcanoes erupt when God pours vinegar into the baking soda.

Nonetheless, it's refreshing to find that schools are evolving ... changing for the better ... doing whatever Jerry Falwell told them to do. Thank goodness we have people like Ms. Doerr shaping the minds of our children. Hurray for the future!!!!!

Q: Are you ready to be so surprisingered that it will take you a second to react?

A: Gawker has the shocking story! I hope you're sitting down. [via Susie]

Q: What's the matter with Boston?

A: First it was the desperately wanting to believe terrorists cared about them, even if it meant hysterically screaming about cartoon characters and Christmas lights; then it was the mayor banning great blogs for silly reasons.

Daisey: Spurned by a bunch of dim bulbs

The latest incident in Boston's increasing fear of everything occurred last week, during a performance of Mike Daisey's Invincible Summer at the A.R.T. Daisey is an acclaimed monologuist, whose talent for improvised storytelling has earned comparisons to the work of Spalding Grey and David Sedaris; last Thursday, 87 members of a Christian group stormed out, mid-performance, in reaction to Daisey's use of the word "fucking" (specifically "fucking Paris Hilton").

One purported "Christian," on his way out the door, took the liberty of pouring out a bottle of water on the handwritten outline Daisey uses to mold each night's show — "a kind of anti-baptism," as Daisey writes in his blog.

I sat behind the table, looking up in his face with shock. My job onstage is to be as open as possible, to weave the show without a script as it comes, and this leaves me very emotionally available — and vulnerable, if an audience chooses to abuse that trust. I doubt I will ever forget the look in his face as he defaced the only original of the handwritten show outline — it was a look of hatred, and disgust, and utter and consuming pride.

It is a face I have seen in Riefenstahl's work, and in my dreams, but never on another human face, never an arm's length from me — never directed at me, hating me, hating my words and the story that I've chosen to tell. That face is not Christian, by any definition Christ would be proud to call his own — its naked righteousness and contempt have nothing to do with the godhead, and everything to do with pathetic human pride at its very worst.

The whole bizarre event, and Daisey's reaction, was captured on video. Bostonians, please be warned: The following involves about ten seconds of course language. And several minutes of distorted Christianity.



The good news for Daisey — and bad news for those who would have him silenced — is that the incident raised his profile much more than even a Times profile ever could. The video is among YouTube's most viewed this week (70,000+ views, as of yesterday), after earning the coveted designation of "popular" on Digg. Not bad for a theatrical event with a seating capacity of 300. [original story via Gregg Henry @ TKC]

BREAKING: Daisey has confronted the people responsible. I'm just reading it now (Digg it here!)...

As for what's the matter with one of my favorite cities, I have no idea. What happened to Boston as a hotbed of crazy liberals and drunken coeds!? Has winning the World Series driven them mad? Someone needs to start pumping Prozac into the city's water supply or something, so its people can get back to what they're good at, scamming casinos and wasting my tax dollars on municipal highway projects.

EARLIER IN MASSHOLES: Damn you, Click and Clack!

Q: You know what's an even better way to subvert "American Idol"?

A: BY NOT WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL. And especially by not blogging about American Idol. Oy fucking vey, people. Please avert your eyes, I need to go on a

CRAZY OLD MAN RANT: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, AMERICA? IS YOUR BRAIN ON FIRE!?! WHY ARE WE ALL STILL WATCHING TERRIBLE SHOWS ABOUT ANNOYING PEOPLE SINGING TERRIBLE MUSIC TERRIBLY!?!? WHEN IS THIS PHASE OF AMERICAN CULTURE GOING TO BE OVER?!?! PLEASE? ANYONE?

WHY THE TERRORISTS HATE US: Arrested Development = cancelled. Freaks & Geeks and Mr. Show = cancelled (a million years ago, but still the pain lingers). Stella = cancelled. But American Dad? Inexplicably not cancelled. Two & a Half Men = America's #1 comedy. Everybody Loves Raymond = in syndication for the next 300 years. Mind of Mencia = get ready for an exciting new season!!! Becker = existed. CBS = still a network. American Idol = WATCHED BY 40 BILLION PEOPLE.


(It's also possible that I'm just annoyed Andrew Sullivan somehow has time to watch American Idol, in between posting to his blog 400 times daily, reading all known newspapers, magazines, insane Conservative bloggers and books, making frequent radio and television appearances, keeping in touch with surreal European sports, smoking tons of weed, and performing his actual job as Senior Editor of the Atlantic. I am now 100% positive that he is repeatedly cloning himself. And that the cloning turns out to be exactly as portrayed in Multiplicity, with each clone a tiny bit dumber than the previous one, and that it's the 700th clone who watches American Idol.)

EARLIER: Are Americans total idiots?

Q: Worst Internet porn search ever?

A: Approximately 99.99999% of this site's daily traffic can be traced back to very confused people and their ill-fated searches for pornography. After extensive scientific research, Hot chair-on-chair action.I've discovered the reason for this to be that The Answer May Surprise You is a Web site on the Internet.

I do check in on my SiteMeter now and then, just because I like to keep apprised of exactly what sorts of porn my readers are disappointed not to find. The prurient Google searches that erroneously lead to T.A.M.S.Y. commonly involve some combination of acts involving Alice the Snorg Tees model, Anne Hathaway, Lily Allen's 100% natural breasts, gay cowboys and/or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Every now and then, someone out there discovers a new and unique path to not finding porn here — a search string so dimwittedly arousing, it can only lead to T.A.M.S.Y.

On that note, I'm pleased to announce that I've just uncovered what is surely the most adorably doomed porn hunt in the history of sexually explicit imagery. When it comes to bad Internet porn searches (as it so often does), this reader in New Delhi really takes the cake:


Did I say "takes the cake"? I'd like to amend that to "burns down the Cheesecake Factory." Somewhere in India, a bewildered adolescent is desperately in need of a serious talk. Or a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, or a Playboy or something.

---

RELATED: I wanted to have a talk with you all about the birds and the bees, but then I remembered that the birds are dead and the bees disappeared. I think Mother Nature is trying to tell us to stop touching one another. One step ahead of you, Mother Nature!

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POSTSCRIPT: It is perhaps worthy of note that the aforementioned bewildered Indian uses Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 6.0, no less). The 46.7% of my readers who still use Explorer for their Web browsing should consider this a wake-up call: IE is for people who need photographs to deduce where they put their pennis in women.

FWIW, T.A.M.S.Y recommends Firefox. For the love of God, please upgrade.

Q: Gimme that old-time religion, gimme that old-time religion, gimme that old-time religion?

A:

• By Zeus! After a break of 16 centuries, Greek pagans are worshipping the ancient gods again... [The Guardian, via the Kenyon Review's blog]

That story is a follow-up to this piece from last summer, when Greece first unbanned worship of the ancient gods. It's a wonderful victory for freedom, tradition and mental illness, although the news has ruffled some feathers in the swan community.

Q: Was President Bush trying to insult the Democratic party by referring to them as the "Democrat Party"?

A: What? No. I don't even understand the question -- and the fact that you would even ask it led to one of the dumbest ledes to hit newspapers in... several minutes, at least -- but no.

Look, I don't know if you've noticed this, but President Bush is not very good at, among other things, the talking.

Which reminds me of something I'd been meaning to post. You might have already seen this video (it's been around for a few years), but if not, check it:



I don't know if I buy its conclusion, exactly, but it brings up some compelling questions. The Bush of '94 appears slick in a way we've never seen from President W. And the difference is more than can be explained away by a decade's aging.

Q: Didn't they always say there was no surf in Cleveland, USA?

A: Damn you, Euclid Beach Band, for your dirty lies.


The New York Times today has an expose on the Cleveland surf community: Yes, You Can Surf in Cleveland.

“Cleveland surfers have a reputation for being gritty and hard-core,” said Ryan Gerard, owner of Third Coast Surf Shop in New Buffalo, Mich. “They just don’t care what other people think about them.”

Occasionally there are days when the waves are good and the sunset falls into Lake Erie like a red fire and the Cleveland surfers bob silently in the water, alone in the city. And they laugh at their good fortune.

“Nobody surfs here to get noticed,” Scott Ditzenberger said. “We surf here because we love it.”

Speaking of not getting noticed, I've never heard of a Cleveland surf community. Wait, is the Times still running stories by Jayson Blair?

While I'm running photos from the Times, check out this sweet shot of the Discovery launch in Cape Canaveral yesterday:


As per always, click to enlarge.

Q: Why is Sacramento glued to the couch?

A: Every so often, a local television news team stumbles onto a story so disconcerting that it threatens to turn the entire community on its head. When one such story was uncovered by KCRA-3 Sacramento, it would take equal parts perspective, courage, investigative know-how and analytical aptitude to do the drama justice.

What really strikes me here is the quality of both the writing and the performance, and how each complements the other to grab and hold our attention. I may give local newscasters a hard time, but here's one they finally got right.

Q: Best Halloween costume ever?

A: Thomas Connolly -- an attorney from Scarborough, Maine who previously made headlines during election season 2000 for releasing details of W.'s drunk driving conviction -- was arrested on Halloween for walking around South Portland dressed in an Osama bin Laden costume.

Under normal circumstances, I would've thought this was a Republican conspiracy -- to jail an innocent man, for a non-existent infraction, as means of petty revenge. A very long-percolating, elaborate, confusing Republican conspiracy.

In the defense of the Scarborough police department, though, you have to admit that, based on Reuters' coverage of the arrest, it appears that it was indeed a very, very good costume.


Wow. Not even Robin Williams' gay brother in Mrs. Doubtfire could've pulled that off.

It also warrants mentioning that Thomas Connolly is apparently kind of an idiot.

Lt. Todd Bernard said the police department received calls about a man wearing Middle Eastern garb and a bin Laden mask and carrying fake dynamite standing along an interstate highway. When police arrived, they saw Connolly holding a gun.

"They ordered him to drop the weapon several times and he eventually complied," Bernard said...

"I didn't expect to be arrested," [Connolly] said. "Obviously I touched a post-9/11 nerve."

Um, yeah, yeah you did. You also perhaps touched a pre-9/11 nerve -- specifically, the one about dudes strapped with dynamite waving firearms at oncoming motorists. I believe it's got something to do with Americans' desire not to be murdered, which has been around since at least the 1970s.

Q: Will working too hard (with large breasts) give you a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack?

Good luck movin' up cuz you're... bustin' out

A: You ought to know by now...

You ought to, that is, if you happen to be Alice Alyse, the actress/dancer/model/ crazy person who is suing the folks behind Movin' Out, the Billy Joel musical, for $100 million after they made fun of her large breasts.

On a related note, three million people just googled Alice Alyse.

Alyse, a former member of the Movin' Out ensemble who says she was wrongly fired from the show in February, is also angry with the show's managers for accusing her of faking her fake toe injury.

If she wins the $100 million suit, Alyse will reportedly be trading in her Chevy for a Cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac.

Actually, this might be the most brilliant lawsuit of the modern age. It's a win-win situation; even if she loses, she will still have brought attention to her enormous breasts, which in the world of acting/modeling is known as "networking."

This case also gives us an answer to the question of whether the craziness inherent in being an actress/model/dancer is cancelled out by the craziness that comes with having huge tees. It turns out that, no, the crazy just gets multiplied.

Alas, the producers of Movin' Out probably should have taken the advice of Sergeant O'Leary, the policeman/bartender who works at Mr. Caccitore's down on Sullivan Street, across from the medical center.

As O'Leary once famously pointed out, "You should never argue with a crazy mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind."

By the way, if you're not a Billy Joel fan, you missing out on some solid gold jokes here.

The Nation: "Virginity or Death!"

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."
-- Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council

please shoot me. no, wait, please shoot Bridget Maher.

Virginity or Death! [The Nation, via Wonkette]

and just to be, you know, fair and balanced, here's a reminder that liberals, also, can be raging jackasses: Tot's Hat Triggers Park Slope Spat On Gender Politics. albeit ultimately harmless jackasses. [New York Magazine, via Gothamist]

Wonkette: "Live Starving Villagers Waiting to Talk To You!"

Live Starving Villagers Waiting to Talk To You! - Wonkette