Service isn't that great from the airlines, but the level of service is about the norm from American businesses and government agencies today.

I got a letter from my state instructing me to have my car inspected. I drove to the state inspection facility and was asked by the employee if I had an appointment. No, I didn't know I needed one. Well, he said, you are in luck. If you had an appointment, the wait would be three hours. Since you don't, you can go home.

I tried to sell some stock through Merrill Lynch. Pretty big outfit, you would think they would have good service. No. You have to fight your way through voice mailboxes, secure websites, and various other forms of torture. What should have taken five minutes took three hours, and unfortunately I didn't have Elliot Spitzer demanding they give me a free meal.

I had to go to the hospital and eventually have surgery. Boy, do you need a sense of humor for this. The paperwork, confusion, waste and incompetence is stunning. And this is at one of the best hospitals in the state. I saw the movie Sicko which implied that if the government paid all medical bills these problems would disappear. This is roughly equivalet to saying if airlines were regulated flying would be marvelous. Yeah, right.

They would sell a lot fewer bikinis if they used Bea Arthur as a model.

California has had a fruit ban for 70 years or so. Any country with a significant agricultural industry wants to control bringing pests in. California sprayed for med-flies for years because somebody brought them into the country -- perhaps on a coconut. This has nothing to do with terrorism, but just good, common, environmental sense. I don't know whether Canada takes steps to protect its agriculture, but Australia is notoriously ferocious and fines people hundreds of dollars if they bring an orange into the country.

According to Great Circle Mapper, it's 496 miles shorter to fly from Sydney to London via Vancouver rather than Los Angeles. That's a savings of almost an hour.

Travelers go from Sydney to London via Vancouver instead of Los Angeles for two reasons -- they hate the fascist Bush regime; and its 200 miles shorter. Yes, going through Vancouver is a short-cut, but hasn't been possible until the introduction of very long range planes in the last couple of years. Still, you save at least a half hour of flying and landing fees at YDR are lower than landing fees at LAX.

according to state bridge inspectors.

Always blue states -- Katrina, the Minnesota bridge, the roof on the big dig in Massachusetts, the conector ramp to the Bay Bridge in California. Why always in areas controlled by the Democrats? Could it be they tell their inspectors to lay off the Democratic campaign contributors who build crappy stuff? Could it be that jobs like bridge inspector go to party loyalists regardless of qualification? When it comes down to it, I prefer my bridge inspectors to be CONSERVATIVE.

The owners love Barry Bonds. His homeruns sell millions of tickets and aggragate eyeballs for advertisers. However, Congress leaned on baseball about it's attitude towards steroids so Bud Selig was the designated grump, showing concern about illegal drugs, while the other owners high fived in the back room. The kicker is Barry Bonds probably shaved 20 years off his life with steroids which the owners will pocket through a reduced pension.

Really is America's or the world's factory owners had their choice we would all be taking steroids and growth hormones and amphetamines every day so we could work harder without tiring and die quicker to save on pensions. Way to go Barry. You are modeling the ideal worker of the 21st century.

You would think this bridge was in Egypt with all the denial going on. Blame Bush. Blame Halliburton. Blame Republicans. Well the simple truth tht Garrison and others can't see to accept is that this bridge was poorly built or poorly maintained by people who live in Minnesota. Unionized government workers went out year after year and inspected this bridge and signed their names on forms that said it was safe. At the very least, anybody who signed off on this bridge's safety in the last 10 years should be fired and those who have retired sould be stripped of their pensions. In other states, some of the state highway folks might be looking at prison terms for manslaughter, but I bet in Minnesota, the Democrats will protect state workers and the entire investigate will be muddied. Uzeckistan indeed.

If you think pot doesn't destroy your mind, read the strange letters from brickbat and traidep. These two really need to put down the bong and go for a really long walk until the clouds in their brains start to clear. Pot makes you stupid. That is clear. Stupid is a sad way to go through life.

I went to Berkeley and everybody smoked a little pot. But that was some time ago and I haven't really thought about pot much since. It seems, though from reading these letters, that people who kept with the pot smoking got really addicted and have come to see pot as the center piece of their lives, not as something to do on a lark. They also seem to have lost all proportionality equating the kid criticizing his mother with an attempt to take away their own pot, possibly confusing the concept of taking away mother's pot with mother taking away my pot. I'm sure it's too late for mom or most of these posters to stop using pot. I guess I just wasn't aware how strong the addiction was or that it lasted your entire lifetime.