It’s Christmas travel season and I’m going to see my family back in WA this year. For lack of an intergalactic starship, I get to wedge myself into a tiny steel tube with a few hundred flu carriers for an entire day. Even better, I get to catch a 3:15 AM shuttle to do it. This, my friends, is traveling rock-star class.

I could play this one of two ways- stay up all night drinking and partying and show up at Logan International looking like Keith Richards and smelling like the fat Elvis, or I could try and get some sleep (and fail), wake up at 2:30, and show up at Logan looking like Keith Richards and smelling like the dead Elvis. Either way, I’ll be a rolling stone walking through a digital strip-search with my shoes on a conveyor belt.

On a side note, I’m still waiting for the day someone tries to blow up a plane with explosive pants. Then the TSA will get to strip us down to our underwear and hilarity will ensue right up until we the people stop putting up with this shit.

Anyway, I digress. I have choices before me, either one leaving me like the walking dead. I would pay good money for the ability to sleep on airplanes, but being 8 feet tall makes that pretty much impossible. I’ll be curled up into the fetal position in American Airlines’ Proletariat Class sucking on bad coffee, immune-system-boosting placebos, and thanking God that I don’t have to take the train or the bus across the country.

Merry Christmas and safe travels to all of you. Trust me, it’s worth it.

I just got back from one crazy weekend. I’m sick, I have a lot of work to do, but man was it an absolute blast. Unfortunately, the hotel we stayed in did everything in their power (and in some cases against the law) to make our stay an unpleasant one. This is not the sort of thing a local hotel can get away with in the age of the internet.

If you attended Furfright 2009 and wish to send some feedback about the Holiday Inn in Waterbury, CT, here are a few resources:

hi-guestrelations@ichotelsgroup.com

This is the email address for customer relations with Holiday Inn corporate. Be sure to mention if you were a paying hotel guest.

lward@waterburychamber.com

Email for Lynn G. Ward, President and CEO of the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce. Be sure to tell her what local business you visited in addition to the hotel.

http://ct.bbb.org/File-Complaint/

File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and be sure to mention if you were a paying guest of the hotel.

tips@consumerist.com

The Consumer Reports website that will quite frequently bring local horror stories to national attention.

Update: Your General Manager for the weekend: Chris Costabile

Be sure to mention any problems you had, such as:

• Registered hotel guests being barred from the atrium at night, even with no noise complaints
• Illegal lights-out in the atrium at midnight (against CT fire code)
• Hotel management falsely claiming that these policies were at the convention staff’s request
• Inconsistent barring of late checkout for no apparent reason (there were not scheduled events at the hotel that day)
• No a/c in convention space even after repeated requests for adjustment
• Of course, any other problems that may have arisen during your particular stay.

I spoke with a local business about the kind of boost this convention is for the local economy. I was told very clearly that nothing- NOTHING brings a crowd to Waterbury like the annual Furfright convention. Hence why many of us are so puzzled as to why the Holiday Inn would allow not just bad service but illegal violations of fire code simply to try and break their contract.

Who knows? And frankly, who cares? All we can do is send feedback. I had a great time and I’ll be posting pictures later today.

I hate the fact that every time I introduce myself as a Christian I have to immediately append “but no, I’m not that kind of Christian.” It’s a shame that a small number of idiots who think they’re doing the right thing can ruin something for so many people.

It’s all about the image you portray to the public. We all have two sides- every person, company, organization, even our pets. You have the public face and the private face. The reason we keep the two separate is not because it’s dirty or reprehensible, it’s because the private does not necessarily reflect the interests of the entire group.

Our military kills people, but the recruiter won’t tell you “join us so you can shoot people.” That’s not our military’s main purpose.

Our mothers and fathers spank their children, but they don’t announce it to people they meet for the first time. “Hi there! I whipped my boy’s butt last night!” That’s not what parenting is about.

Public relations is all about putting your best foot forward and making the right first impression. When you know your group or company is already fighting an uphill battle, everything you say and do speaks to the conduct of all involved. The fine line between private and public image must be made clear.

Don’t be ashamed of what you do in private, but don’t be ready to jump in front of the press corps and announce it either.

Dr. Samuel Conway kindly allowed me to re-publish this article in its entirety. I found it moving when I read it this morning and I really wanted to share it with you.

Anyone involved in emergency planning faces the same challenge on a daily basis: apathy from the “what’s the big deal” set. It ranges from eyerolling to grumbling to outright hostility. “We can’t leave now. We’re in the middle of an important meeting.” “It’s cold outside. Why can’t we go to our offices and get our coats?” “Fire drills are stupid. They do nothing but feed the egos of the control-freaks who think they’re God because someone gave them a megaphone.”

The control freak with the megaphone in the picture above is Rick Rescorla (born Cyril, but he hated that name). He was chief of security at Morgan Stanley, which occupied more than twenty floors of World Trade Center Tower 2. After witnessing the chaotic and, frankly, pathetic evacuation of the Center after the bombing attempt in 1993, Rescorla demanded quarterly evacuation drills that must have had hundreds of people cursing his name. Every three months, nearly 2700 Morgan Stanley employees were forced to walk down as many as 75 flights of stairs to the street below, with Rescorla urging them on with a megaphone that 90% of them probably wanted to stuff down his throat.

Eight years ago on a warm and sunny Tuesday morning that I remember all too clearly, all but six of the 2700 Morgan Stanley employees made it out of Tower #2 safely. They had left their offices and filed down those stairs countless times before, and thus knew exactly what to do, where to line up, how to keep moving, and what to do when they reached the street.

The picture above was taken that same morning by a secretary as Rescorla herded the employees downstairs, using his megaphone to keep them calm by singing Men of Harlech (he was Welsh) and other rousing songs. It was the last photo of him ever taken. Just as the last of the Morgan Stanley employees reached the street level, United Airlines flight 175 struck Tower 2. Rescorla ran back inside to try to locate the stragglers. He was last seen headed upstairs from the 10th floor landing. Someone shouted to him to get out of the building; his reply was, “As soon as I make sure everyone else is out.” He was not seen again and his body was never found.

I like to keep Rescorla’s story in my mind every time I conduct a fire drill at work and listen to all the sighs and the impatient grumbling and the “why the hell are they wasting our time with this?” It gives me and all other emergency planners the courage to do our jobs when we think of our fellow control freak with the megaphone and the nearly 2700 people who are alive today because of him.

Dr. Conway’s original post and comments can be found here.

With all due respect to Scott Bourne, birds do indeed dream. No, not of fish… at least, not all the time. Some of them dream of music, lights, smoke, and Robot Bass Players.

Wait, what?

A fan of my weekly UStream shows sent me this fabulous piece of original art a couple days ago and, with permission, I’m posting it here. This is one of the single most impressive chunks of awesome anyone’s ever thrown at me. Not only did Stampy catch my fascination with osprey, my laptop with red case and sticker, my M-Audio keyboard, and even the ugly-ass Exit sign that lived behind me at my New Hampshire gigs, but check out the robot playing bass behind me.

Yup, that’s Prodo-1, my faithful co-host from High Orbit and snarky sidekick from Goodbye Planet Earth.

It’s stuff like this that reminds me why I do what I do. Thank you, Stampy, and all the others that have been sending in photos and art! Birds dream of having fans like you.