(no subject)

I always appreciate Christmas lights. As much as I love the big, gaudy displays though, there's always a little bit of hilarity to the half-assed efforts. This guy lives a few doors down from me. His Christmas decorations consist of a single string of lights haphazardly thrown on top of his fence.

Merry Christmas to all the slackers out there.

Plane English

Figured I'd chime in on the Adam Saleh debacle, since that's what's new and hip.

I gave this time to roll out and not have a knee-jerk reaction to it, and I'm glad I did. I feel like I have a level-headed take on this.

I can't speak for exactly what happened but here's what we know: Adam Saleh and his buddy were kicked off a Delta airlines flight. He claims it's because he was speaking Arabic and people complained that this bothered them or made them feel unsafe. We know that Saleh has pulled stunts like this before: he has numerous videos where he intentionally does things on planes to draw attention to himself (the most egregious of these is loudly counting backwards from 10 in Arabic while on a plane - I don't care about the racial overtones, this is idiotic. If you were counting backwards loudly from 10 in English, you better have a meeting with Homeland Security real, real soon).

What SEEMS to have happened was Saleh was attempting to provoke reactions doing something (witnesses claim he was yelling and filming their reactions). People got sick of it and complained to throw his butt off the plane. Delta JUST got killed on social media for letting the "Hillary bitches" guy stay on the flight after acting like a total lunatic on a plane. I'm STILL shocked that guy didn't get tossed. You have to think they're going to have a hair trigger if you're making a scene not just at an airport - ON A PLANE READY TO GO! Reap what you sow.

After 9/11, airports are extremely sensitive places. You don't make jokes. You don't draw attention to yourself. You keep it strictly business. From the time you go through the entrance to the time you get off the plane, keep your head down and your mouth shut.

TWENTY people complained about this guy. TWENTY. If it were one or two, I might be thinking "racists". But 20 people sitting on an airplane that are just trying to get the plane in the air? That's something that likely needed correction and was more likely someone acting a fool vs. kicking a guy off for speaking another language.

We get it. White people on airplanes are afraid of people seemingly from the Middle East. It's not the best scenario, but it's what we're faced with. It's a social problem being worked on, but stunts like this aren't going to help - they're going to make it worse. Saleh is not fighting racism - he's making it a joke.

All this knucklehead is doing is further reinforcing stereotypes against his own people by trying to get attention and collect a few bucks in the process. Shameful at best.

If there was anything I could ask everyone on a plane with me to do, it's to keep quiet. Anyone who violates this deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Maybe don't lean your seat back if you're a real sweetheart.

Remember the time that I spilled the Stanley Cup

I know bars make more money by having the jukebox playing at all times.

But it really kills the mood when I'm trying to get up for a bruins power play while "Adams song" by blink 182 blasts in the background