Polar Vortex Tweets: Lots of Chattering Teeth

We would add some commentary, but we want to be able to watch the local 6:00 p.m. news, which airs in 21 minutes, so here we go:

1) Shawn Reynolds (a Weather Channel correspondent): "As of 2 p.m., Texas is the only state in the lower 48 that is not below freezing."

2) WDBJ7 Weather (CBS station in Roanoke, Va.): Thankfully, not as windy tonight, but it will still be colder than ice. Warming to the 30s on Wed.

3) Digitriad (Channel 2, CBS station in Greensboro, NC): Flu death reported in Randolph County, 14th in NC

4) WXII (NBC station in Winston-Salem, NC): Feels like temperatures won't improve much this afternoon. 30s for highs late tomorrow.

5) Markos Moulitsas ("The Daily Kos"): I went on a training ride last night and was complaining that temps had dropped to 47F.

6) WRAL (NBC Station in Raleigh, NC): Trapped indoors by arctic blast? Here are some fun ways to avoid cabin fever from GoAskMom (refers to Sarah Hall, a contributor to the station's news).

7) Reagan Airport (Washington, DC): Water cleaning continues at bag claims #3 to #7. Bags are dry and have been relocated for pax.

8) 6abc (Philadelphia): Major delays on Amtrak Northeast corridor due to downed wires.

9) Tom Tomorrow: So 'cold weather' = no global warming is just another permanent fixture of the right wing landscape right now.

10) 11 News (NBC station in Atlanta): ICY CONDITIONS are being reported on I-20 West bound toward Turner Hill Rd.

http://www.weather.com

http://www.wunderground.com

A Snow Storm in Any Language

Greetings to our blog-readers in Kuwait, Bangladesh and New Zealand. It great to get hits from people quite far away from us.

Today, the mid-Atlantic portion of the United States got hit with either ice, snow or rain. Reportedly, the city of Frederick, Maryland, 45 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., got three inches of snow.
NPR is reporting that there are long delays and flight cancellations at Reagan Airport in the nation's capital.

Our favorite foreign language word for snowstorm is the Danish word 'snestorm,' which we actually googled.

Here is the list:

1) schneesturm (German)

2) tempele de neigert (French)

3) kar firtinasi (Turkish)

4) tormento de nieve (Spanish)

5) sno storm (Norwegian, actually one word)

6) zamiec (Polish)

7) vielista (Bulgarian)

8) snestorm (Danish)

http://www.weather.com

And, Now a Word from Our Spnsor- Malev Hungarian Airlines

We were actually initially going to with Bulgarian Airlines, but then we said to ourselves: "Hey, ya know_ Hungary is a larger country than Bulgaria. You'll get more hits if you mention Malev Hungarian Airlines."

Our apologies to all our blog readers in Sofia and Varna (those of Bulgaria's two largest cities, we think!).

http://www.malev.hu

http://www.air.bg/en

Free From Blog Entry: All That Jazz

This is new idea we have come up with, if it doesn't work, we'll blame Javier the Intern. We take six phrases and try to make a flash fiction piece with it.

The phrases are pregnant women, jazz (Dizzy Gillespie, picture top), cuckoo clocks, cold pizza, Angry Birds, Air Canada

Here we go:

"Little Marvin was playing Angry Birds on his hand-held device while waiting for the Air Canada flight from Toronto to Montreal when his father told him that he should eat the rest of his personal pan pizza from an airport Pizzaa Hut kiosk as it would surely go cold. Marvin ignored his father, which was in his DNA.

Marvin's father decided not to argue with him and listen to jazz on his I-Pod. He had tried to educate this son about jazz: Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Kenny G, ok, the later was a mistake. Marvin's father then noticed a pregnant young woman without a boyfriend, fiance or husband. She was actually reading a book. Even though it was a fluffy romance novel, Marvin's father was impressed.

Suddenly, the cuckoo clock in Marvin's father's head went off. There were now only 20 minutes until the flight was scheduled to depart. But, there appeared to be a long delay. Marvin's father then noticed a dark-skinned woman, perhaps from Syria or Egypt, wearing a hijab, now sitting beside the pregnant woman. Marvin's father's mind then drifted towards impure thoughts, and then he heard it was time to board the flight. He gently tapped Marvin's shoulders, but, of course, his son was going to play Angry Birds until the proverbial last minute possible."

http://www.aircanada.com

http://www.kennyg.com

Sunday Night Tweets- Malaysia Airlines Wishes You a Happy Monday

As most of you know by now George McGovern, the long-time U.S. Senator from South Dakota died in his home state early this morning at age 90; we will have a tribute to him later in the week. One of his campaign buttons from his race for the White House against Richard Nixon in 1972 is pictured above. We also have an image of Liberace because it was the best thing we could think of of for gay marriage. And, we were not able to find an image of a flight attendant from Malaysia Airlines so we are going with this image of Christina Ricci from the 2011 tv series "Pan Am," which never quite got off the ground....pardon the pun.

Here are tonight's tweets from the 8:00-9:00 p.m. hour on Sunday night, New York time:

1) @ABC11_WVTD (ABC11 WVTD, a tv station in Raleigh, NC): "Vice president's son Beau Biden makes stop in the Triangle."

2) @Markknoller (Mark Knoller is the CBS News White House correspondent): "Earlier today, Pres. Obama issued statement on passing of George McGovern calling him a 'generous, kind, honorable man. He will be missed."

3) @davidcnsswanson (David Swanson, an author from Charlottesville, Va.): "What Senator George McGovern Got Right_ Let's Try Democracy."

4) @PeterBeinart (Peter Beinart is a columnist for "The Daily Beast"): "I will never forget reading McGovern's 1970 speech where he says 'this chamber reeks of blood' during Vietnam, would any pol say that today?"

5) @LunarAnticsZeno (Zeno is from what we can tell some sort of comic book character; and yes he apparently tweets as do family cats and dead celebrities): "The difference between stupidity and genius has its limits, Albert Einestein."

6) @TeaPartyCat (Top Conservative Cat, actually a liberal blogger who rakes Republicans over the coals): "Romney changed his position on gay marriage, but since he was changing back to a previously abandoned position, it's not a big deal."

7) @MAS (Malaysia Airlines, and yes it is Malaysia Airlines as opposed to Malaysian Airlines we checked with our correspondent in Kuala Lampur to be sure): "Hopefully your Monday will be much better. Have a great Monday, and an incredible week ahead."

http://www.malaysiaairline.com

Weekend Tweets Log- Is Mitt Romney Out of Touch?

Today, we our posting some actual tweets we saw earlier this afternoon, about three hours ago. Let's explain the images: 1) Well, we always love making fun of Mitt Romney and we think the image is self-explanatory; 2) Lots of college football games today, hence this image; 3) We have flight attendants from Singapore Airlines to accompany a tweet from the faux news magazine "The Onion." Let's get started:

1) @HuffingtonPost (Huffington Post): TELL US: Is Mitt Romney out of touch?"

2) @slate (Slate): "Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are going to shoot a movie on the Google campus. It's about 40-year-old interns."

3) @DoughtyOnAir (Douglas Doughty, a sports writer for "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va.): "Wondering if UVA will score @TCU, where it's 14-0 @ halftime. Cavs can't run the ball and receivers aren't  making big plays." (The University of Virginia ended up losing the game 27-7).

4) @VT-Football (Virginia Tech football): "Virginia Tech honoring Officer Deriek Crouse right now. Standing Ovation." (The Virginia Tech police officer was killed last year by an armed off-campus person who committed suicide after the shooting).

5) @NastiaLiukin (Nastia Liukin): "Hi Portland. It's National Gymnastics Day! Who's coming to celebrate with tonight at the #KelloggsTour?" (The 2008 gold-medal winning American gymnast of Russian heritage is among the all-stars performing tonight in Portland, Oregon).

6) @DailyNewsEgypt (The Daily News Egypt): "Iraq aims to reunite with a new national anthem and flag."

7) @TheOnion (The Onion): "Dad suggests arriving at airport 14 hours early."

http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

http://www.theonion.com

http://www.singaporeair.com

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com

http://www.notmittromney.com

http://www.nastialiukin.com

Casualties of Modern Technology (12 of 12)-Paperback Novels

We conclude our long-running series on Casualties of Modern Technology with an ode to the paperback novel. Though it still exists as a media and entertainment form, the paperback novel is increasingly being voted off the island in favor of electronic reading gadgets, such as Kindle and The Nook.

It was a common practice for the cover of a paperback novel to be tied into a film if one was being made of the novel, as was the case with Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (pictured). My late grandmother in South Carolina actually gave me a copy of this novel with the the image of Jack Nicholson, but I have no idea what has happened to it.

There also have instances when a film became a book as was the case when Steven Spielberg penned his very own novel version of his 1977 film "Close Encounters of the third Kind."

In some incarnations, the paperback novel was known as an airport novel, which were usually fast-paced novels that a traveler could read while flying Air France from Chicago to Paris.

Earlier editions of the paperback novel were the dime novels, which originated at the outset of the 20th century; some of these works were actually sold for fifteen cents.

Things We Learned on Twitter This Week- Southwest Airlines Thinks We Still Like to Fly

Ahh, yes, the good ole days before 9/11 when it took less time to get through the airport in Albany, New York*, than it did in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Oh well!

With the advent of the new full body scanners which has undoubtedly increased ACLU memberships, people from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, are moaning and of course, I am one of them, even though I was not on an airplane this holiday weekend.

But, Southwest Airlines tweeted on Wednesday that they were looking for some positive tweets for their passengers, and amazingly enough people seemed to be giving them just that:

"I LUV all the travel tweets coming in this morning! Let us know how we're doing on this busy travel day! Where are you headed today?"

In other airplane news, British comic actor Neil Morrissey reportedly made an ass of himself on a British Airways flight from Singapore to London Heathrow by going on a profanity-laced tirade while under the influence of alcohol.

And, according to "The Daily News," an English-language journal in Pakistan, the country's leading airline Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was completely unprepared for the massive numbers of Muslim pilgrims travel on hajj to Mecca, as there were long delays in most flights from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan last week during the Muslim Eid Mubarak holiday. The journal reported that some 100,000 pilgrims were flying out of Jeddah back to major Pakistani cities, including Karachi and Lahore.

*-Albany is one of the many airports, a surprising number of which are in smaller markets, that has started using the full body scanners.

Silly Photo to Fill Space

Since I am traveling to Denver tomorrow to see my sister, my brother-in-law and their two charming cats, I thought I would post a photo of people falling asleep at airports, although I suppose this could just as easily be a business meeting.