The AMFA misses a PR opportunity

Since Tuesday, American Airlines has cancelled more than 2,600 flights, with a whopping 240 of its planes currently out of service due to a failure to address mechanical issues.

Northwest Airlines, as far as I can tell, has cancelled 0 flights as a result of the issues facing American.

Northwest Airlines' mechanics are members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association -- a union.

American Airlines' mechanics are not.

It seems to me that a PR opportunity is being missed.

As a side note: I'm sure many people have heard me say that if you have to drink crappy American mass-produced beer it should be Miller because it is union-made. I just noticed that Miller's workers are represented by... the auto workers' union. How does that make sense?

Doin' it Celtic cool

Remember those old Mountain Dew country cool ads? These were the ads that came before the days when Mountain Dew was target-marketed to morons. In the 80s, Mountain Dew ads were almost indistinguishable from ads for Busch beer. They generally involved a group of buddies gettin' together and throwin' themselves into lakes and rivers while hooting and slammin' back a few cans of the Dew. For our friends in the Home Nations, this is the sort of thing we do in America. Every day.

It's from these commercials that I got the idea of Mountain Dew Moments. Well, it's from these commercials that Jim Moore got the idea of Mountain Dew Moments.

Moore is an old friend of my dad's. When I was 11 years old, I was allowed on a rafting/camping trip down the Guadalupe River with my dad, Moore, Phil Archer and several other quick-witted beer-drinking Texas journalists. One of them a cameraman named Austin (which is the coolest name ever [a]), who had a certain fondness for flinging himself into perilous situations. When one of the rafts overturned and got stuck in the churning of a section of falls, Austin tied a rope around his waist, the other bit to a tree, and went in after the raft. How's that for macho? He risked his life to save an unmanned raft!

One day, when the group was stopped for lunch, Austin climbed up a tree and positioned himself to jump in the river.

"Is it deep enough for you to jump from there?" Archer asked.

"Hope so," Austin said, and he flung himself into the water.

It was deep enough. Over his head, And instantly I was scrambling up the tree to mimic the act. Moore spotted this and, recognizing that an 11-year-old shouldn't jump into a fast-moving river without supervision, shouted to Austin: "Stay in there for a second. The Cope spawn wants to re-enact your Mountain Dew Moment."

A Mountain Dew Moment is one that is particularly memorable. Not necessarily life-changing or at all important, it will probably still end up on the end-of-life video montage.

Mountain Dew Moments don't necessarily have to be action-based. For me, they are often surreal swells of emotion. The time the child bride and I went to a mariachi festival, and a massive 30-piece band performed a mariachi version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and something about the performance ignited the crowd to a standing ovation and I looked behind me and saw 20,000 people on the Coors Amphitheatre lawn seemingly stretching up into the Chula Vista night sky, all of them going completely mad and the applause was so loud that all I could do was howl -- that was a Mountain Dew Moment.

I tell you all of this to try to underline the strangely magical, stars-perfectly-aligned moment that occurred at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day in a pub in Skerries, Ireland.

The child bride and I were visiting our friend, Claire. Through her we found ourselves in a gathering of the old Skerries crew. Everyone knew each other, had grown up with one another. For those of you playing along at home, it was a bit like being at someone else's high school reunion, but a high school reunion where the people actually know each other. At my high school reunion, people kept shouting my name at me and I had no idea who they were.

On New Year's Eve we bundled into the upper floor of the Joe Mays pub, where some idiot had thought it a good idea to set up a karaoke machine. As you can almost certainly guess, it was a shambles. The last thing one wants as they close the book on a year is a squad of screeching drunkards belting out "Like a Virgin" and "Sweet Caroline." Phrases like "the wheels have come off" and "it's gone horribly pear-shaped" were created for evenings like this. By midnight there was no karaoke, just background music to the amplified screeching of intoxicated women. It was like some ridiculous neo-Dadaist performance art.

But then came that blessed moment, the Mountain Dew Moment when we all clicked into one another amid the opening strains of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." Some groaned, some cheered. But then we all sang. Every single person in the pub was there in that moment. All of us singing so loud, so full that we couldn't even hear our own insufferable voices. For 4 minutes and 35 seconds we just didn't care. We reached a state of Zen. We were one.

It was so perfect, so exquisite, that the karaoke machine was shut off immediately afterward. There were no protests -- even through the gallons of Guinness and Miller (b), we collectively knew we had reached our peak. There was no possible greater moment. We could do no more. It was absurd. It was beautiful.

And that's how 2008 began for me. We spilled out into the cool Irish night singing whatever came to our heads, staggering arm-in-arm, ready for this life. Whatever the hell it's got for us.

-------------------------------
(a)Reportedly, my parents originally planned to name me Austin, after the city of my birth, but my grandfather -- who everyone knows as Breezy -- thought it sounded stupid. In my early 20s, I seriously considered legally changing my name to James Austin Cope, but there are already plenty of reasons for my friends to make fun of me. I didn't need to add changing my name to that list.

(b)I don't know who was buying my drinks -- it wasn't me -- but somewhere along the line it was decided that because I am American I should be drinking American beer. As I say, since I wasn't buying (big up the Skerries crew) I had no recourse to complaint.

I am a magpie. I am that bloke off 'Final Fight'

It feels like winter in Yr Hen Ddinas, which means that it is wet and windy and miserable. It's not all that cold, admittedly; by Minnesota standards it is spring-like. But the conditions make you want to stay inside, wrapped in a blanket and refusing to move, unless to shuffle to the kitchen for more port. This is Christmas in Cardiff.

We are supposed to get 80 mph wind gusts overnight, but already the tree in our garden is dancing a strange sort of solitary mosh in the wind. On top of the house across the garden, there is a magpie clinging to a TV aerial (FTYPAH: "antenna"). He looks absolutely miserable and it strikes me as a particularly odd place for him to attempt to station himself. Surely birds instinctively understand things like wind and know better than to position themselves in less blatantly exposed locations.

I feel a bit like that magpie at the moment -- hanging on desperately, and almost certainly failing to identify simple steps that could be taken to make things less stressful. I am hoping that things will improve from next Thursday, when my Christmas breaks starts.

I have several things to do over the break, but at least the work won't keep piling on. I have so much trouble keeping up in my courses not because I'm not interested or not doing the work, but because they keep happening. Week after week. I could probably keep up if I had a week of lectures followed by a week to debrief. But as is, I find myself pushing to the end of the semester feeling as if I am playing one of those arcade fighting games, and I'm looking at that little meter that tells you how much strength you've got left and I'm thinking: "Fuck, there's no way I'm getting past this level."

In an effort to push time forward I am listening to Christmas music almost nonstop these days. Strangely, that hasn't driven me mad yet. Or, maybe it has and I'm not aware of it. Either way, I am doing my best to get into the spirit of the season.

For those of you playing along at home, getting into the spirit of things is a lot easier on this side of the world. It's the booze, you see. Christmas + Britain = Booze. On Friday I was in Marks & Spencer and they had three different areas in the store where people were giving away generously-sized free samples of port and mulled wine.

Free booze for shoppers. Yes! That sort of thing would be against the law in Minnesota. And it's a damn shame in economic terms, because a wee tipple has a certain way of loosening the wallet. Once, after spending an afternoon drinking with my brother, I went with the child bride to Target, where I wandered off with the cart ("trolley" for our friends in the Home Nations) while she looked at clothes. When she finally caught up with me, the cart was loaded with myriad items that I insisted we buy for her.

I wasn't quite in that state on Friday, but in a good mood and eager to run about city centre. When I finally got on the train home I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment, a feeling that is rare in these days of always playing catch-up in academics. Nothing is ever done in university, I simply run out of time to focus on it any longer and turn in whatever shit I've come up with so far.

"Look at me," I thought. "Look at all the stuff I got. I have actually done something"

When I wrapped it all up and put it under the tree, it looked far less impressive, but I am still excited. Especially so because Astrid will be here celebrating with us. I don't know what kind of horrible things must have happened in her life that she has fallen so far down she is now stuck spending Christmas with the Copes, but there you go. If I gain from others' misfortune, who am I to complain?

I am especially excited because there will be another alcohol drinker in the house. The child bride is a teetotaller, which would normally leave only me to consume all the booze-laden Christmas goodies. Unfortunately, I prefer these things in quantities too small to validate their purchase.

Indeed, on the whole, I refuse to drink anything stronger than beer. Higher-octane stuff has a bad habit of sneaking up on me. One minute I'm having a witty conversation, the next minute I'm not wearing a shirt and demanding to go on a road trip and weeping.

But it's Christmas, see. And I am really eager to enjoy all these brandy-infused things and port and mulled wine and so on. And with Astrid coming, I now feel that it won't be a waste to buy all this stuff. So, my Christmas plans involve getting a Dutch girl drunk and stuffing her full of mince pies. That sounds like the sort of thing you'd pay premium rates to see on the internet, but you get what I mean.

Yes. And yes.

For 50 weeks of the year, I'm not really all that interested in going to Germany. But then Oktoberfest comes along and I am once again kicking myself for not being there.

Apart from lack of money, my main problem this time around is that I don't have anyone to go with. The child bride doesn't drink and she's not really a fan of being stuck amid a huge crowd of drunkards. Considering that some 6 million people are expected to take part in this year's German boozery, it's a good bet that Rachel won't be found anywhere near Munich over the next 16 days. If anyone out there is interested in going next year, let me know. My only requirement for a travelling companion is that you be able to lie convincingly -- you will need to do this when we return home and the child bride asks if I drank too much.

"No," you will say. "He was very well-behaved. To be honest, I think he missed you so much, he didn't really enjoy being there."

For those of you playing along at home, two devastating wars and countless soccer defeats have resulted in a general disinterest in Germany and German things here in Britain. Oktoberfest gets very little play. To be fair, though, Britons have their own massive beer-drinking festival -- they call it "Saturday."

For international viewers, as a big thank you for providing us with beer, sausage, pretzels and two ego-boosting wars, Americans host Oktoberfest celebrations in towns all across the country, including places where German influence is almost non-existent, like La Mesa, Calif. (it is from that city's Oktoberfest that this blog gets its name). These events are similar to our St. Patrick's Day celebrations in that the focus is on eating and drinking and reinforcing comical stereotypes. We also do this with Mexicans and Cinco de Mayo.

One of the best single-location* Oktoberfest celebrations I've been to is held at Gasthof zur Gemütlickeit, in Minneapolis. A large tent is erected in the parking lot and then filled to heaving with people and a polka band that is loud and raucous on a Gogol Bordello scale. The band is so loud that you don't so much hear it as feel and think it; it becomes a constant, coursing through your skull, that, when matched with beer consumption, destroys your ability to string together coherent thought. Each time I've gone, I've walked away feeling that it was one of the best nights I've had all year.

*As opposed to those celebrations that take up several city blocks and feature several vendors.

Rambling

I walked today from Barry to East Aberthaw and decided to turn the experience into an audio/visual blogging extravaganza. Well, perhaps "extravaganza" is a bit much. It's really no more than a slideshow with commentary.

I apologise for the quality of the audio in some of these clips. It's blustery on the coast. Adding to the poor quality is the fact that in most of the clips I was walking. My goal was to do things quickly and give it a sort of "instant" feel, but arguably this still could have been achieved while standing still and out of the wind.

The audio has the added factor of displaying my present hodgepodge accent. It's generally the old Minnesota-with-Texas-twang sound, but occasionally you pick up South Wales phrasing. It's most notable, I think, when I'm talking about mini-golf in the clip from Porthkerry Park.


The journey begins. I took the train from Sweet Home Radyr Way down to Barry. In the audio clip below, I misspell the Welsh name.


Angular waterway-thingy in Barry's The Knap area.


Lake in Barry's The Knap area.


This looks like a building site, but it is, in fact, a historical site. These are the remains of a Roman building that stood here in 45 AD. It's quintessential Britain that you have ancient sites sandwiched into everything else. Those are peoples' homes in the background. Just behind me was an ice cream shop. I was very obviously the only person interested in the site.


Above The Knap. The large body of water, of course, is the Bristol Channel. Off in the haze you can see Flatholm Island.

Audio from Barry:





The viaduct at Porthkerry Park.


Mini golf course in Porthkerry Park.

Audio from Porthkerry:



I don't know what a bulwark is, but this camp of theirs is mighty old.


In the haze, across the water, you can see England.


Phallic stone circle at Rhoose Point.


Giant compass made of rock. Impressively, the markings on the compass are in Welsh. In this picture you are looking to the dwyrain (east).


These stones were very clearly in a specific formation, but I couldn't make sense of it.


The golf course between life and death.

Audio from Rhoose Point:



According to a BBC cameraman I know, you can go down to the beach and see dinosaur footprints somewhere around here.




A ship heading out to sea.


Trailer park.

Audio from the trailer park:



That is a massive sign. Sadly, the sailboat hit it and sank. Two people died. Very sad.


Wetlands near East Aberthaw.


This is a family crabbing in the wetlands near East Aberthaw. I really wanted to take a picture of what they had caught, but I couldn't figure out a non-embarrassing way to say: "Can I take a picture of your crabs?"


Interesting-looking abandoned building.



Audio from the woods near East Aberthaw:





Even the garages are made of stone in East Aberthaw.


The Blue Anchor pub has been around since 1380.


A look at the inviting front side of The Blue Anchor, and its thatched roof.


Heaven.

Audio from The Blue Anchor:



And that's about it. I walked home the same way. I left my house at 10 a.m. and was back just before 6 p.m. If you ever come to visit me and want to see The Blue Anchor, I promise that we will just drive there.

Winning the hearts and minds

Quickly, a few things referenced in a pub conversation I had last night:
- George Carlin's seven dirty words
- According to a recent USA Today story, Tijuana's murder rate is considerably lower than I stated. It is now down to one person killed every day. And only two kidnappings a week! Book your holidays now.

The highlight of the evening was having Sara Huws' friend look me right in the eye and tell me that she hated Americans. I thought only Germans did that. Our friends across the North Sea are perfectly happy to state things so bluntly*: "You are American? There are 27 reasons I do not like Americans. I will list them for you..."

I find that I get to spend a lot of time talking about America these days. More so than when I lived in Portsmouth, I think. The Welsh are particularly regionalist in a nation-state of regionalists. I've pointed out before how eager Britons are to illustrate their differences with other Britons living 10 miles away. In Wales, and especially within the Welsh-language community, with its multiplicitous dialectical variances, that mindset is intensified. A big part of any conversation in Welsh is where you're from. This applies to everyone, not just outsiders, and location is often very specific. For example, here is an actual conversation from last night:
FFION: "So where are you living now?"
ME: "Here. In Cardiff."
FFION: "Where in Cardiff?"
ME: "Oh, up in Danescourt."
MAIR: "It's not really Danescourt, though, is it?"
CHRIS: "The Danescourt station's, like, two seconds away."
MAIR: "But it's not Danescourt. That's across the road. He lives in Radyr Way."
ME: "No one knows where Radyr Way is, though."
MAIR: "I do."

And then Ffion told me that she hated Americans. That's a little less common. Although it is exhausting to talk about where I'm from all the time, most people don't have that many bad things to say about the place. New York is lovely, Florida's lovely. Once met a person from Missouri, or maybe it was Kansas, or Idaho, or one of those places, and they were lovely, too. People have their criticisms, many of which are valid, but for the most part I don't run into too many individuals who stare at me and tell me that they can't stand me because of their perception of who I am.

I always feel stupid and false when forced to defend the United States. It's not a place I'm particularly proud of at the moment. But it's where I'm from, and in Wales, where location is identity, criticism of place is criticism of the individual.

I run into that criticism from time to time and I do my best not to respond to it negatively. Like a lot of things, it's usually misunderstanding. For example, it struck me that Ffion didn't get American sarcasm. That's not to say that she doesn't understand sarcasm, but that she doesn't understand it coming from Americans. Sarcasm depends a lot on your understanding of the speaker. If you think of me as an ignorant, oversure ass-hole who revels in violence, you probably are going to miss the joke when I tell you that San Diegans take tremendous pride in the fact that their police force has the highest number of officer-involved shootings in the country.

Her question of whether I knew anyone who had killed a person reminded me of when I first moved to Minnesota and someone asked if we had cars in Texas.

But we all do that, I suppose. I have trouble accepting that French people can be funny. I base my knowledge of Germany on having met only eight actual Germans. And I sometimes find myself wondering whether people from North Wales are retarded**.

It worked out in the end, though. I got a hug as I was leaving the pub (the look on Chris' face when that happened was priceless). I'm winning the hearts and minds, one heart and mind at a time. I think the U.S. government should send me a stipend.

* I'm not the only to notice. It was pointed out in an episode of "The Simpsons" once. In this clip, a German is in a hostel, listing what's wrong with America. It is scarily familiar to an actual experience I had several years ago, when a German was telling me how the European Union would crush the United States.

**That's a joke -- put there because the majority of my friends here are Gogs (people from North Wales) and I'm starting to pick up elements of their insufferable dialect in my speech.

Using my time wisely

I'm supposed to be revising. Instead I'm creating Facebook groups. Go me.

They go good together

I once saw a man on one of those "wacky/amazing people" shows who had written the preamble of the United States Constitution on the back of a postage stamp. He did this, he said, because he suffered from insomnia and could think of nothing else to occupy his time. That kind of productive insanity I admire. My brain is dysfunctional, too, but all it does is fill me with the desire to do nothing but drink Guinness and eat Jaffa Cakes.

Why did I never post this?

I found this picture in my Flickr account last night; although I took it a year ago. I cannot for the life of me think why I never posted it on my blog. My only guess is that a year ago I had higher standards for what I put on this site. Or maybe it was shortly after Crystal made some comment about how she really hoped I wasn't the sort of person to pull my hair back. Sometimes you just need that shit out of your face, though.

Ah, the long hair. Good times. Sometimes I miss it -- in that way that I don't really miss it. It looks sort of goofy-cool in pictures and my children will have a field day with pictures like this, but having all that stuff sitting atop my head was a major annoyance when it was actually there. I have found myself lately toying with the idea of growing it out again, but I almost certainly won't.

Booze!

Christmas in Britain kicks the ass of Christmas in the U.S. because of the number of booze-laden products available: mulled wine, mince pies with brandy in them, Christmas pudding with cognac in it, rum sauce to put on my brandy mince pies and cognac Christmas puddings! Woot! If anyone needs me, I'll be lying on the floor.