DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

We visited the Charles Schultz Museum, on the theory that little kids enjoy comics. I think maybe our kid is too little, though; he slept through the whole thing. And he can’t see very well yet anyway.

I wandered through the space, reading the placards and the old strips. I’m not really a fan of Peanuts, so I felt disconnected from it all. The exhibit that most appealed to me demonstrates this, as it results from an exchange between the comic and the real world: Snoopy’s Doghouse gets “Wrapped” By Christo

The original Peanuts strips were drawn on sheets of paper measuring about 30'' wide. At that size, the drawings seem much more like art. Most of the detail is lost when the size is reduced to 15% and printed with an 85-line screen onto fuzzy newspaper stock. There’s something beautiful in the bold black lines on thick matte paper that’s entirely absent from the reproductions on newsprint with muffler-shop ads bleeding through from behind.

The biggest eye-opener in the entire museum was this innocuous book on a low table amid photo albums and scrapbooks. “For Adults,” the label declared. What could this be — long-suppressed Peanuts porn, revealed only after the artist’s death?

But it was just a guestbook. I guess the label is an attempt to keep youngsters from doodling on the pages.

On the morning of the delivery, the nurse hands a sheaf of forms to the mother-to-be. Buried within is a release form offering a free portrait of the new baby. Mom is wired to three different machines, having her pulse and blood pressure measured automatically while two others sensors detect uterine contractions and the baby’s heart rate and another chattering electromechanical behemoth plots a seismograph of both. She’s frightened and excited and anxious and slightly nauseous and terrified — oh, wait, sorry, that’s Dad. But she’s not paying close attention to the paperwork; who wants to read ten pages of contracts an hour before having a baby?

A day later, the baby’s out, Mom’s recovering, and Dad is slightly less insane although even more paranoid, if that’s possible. A nurse enters the room to confirm scheduling for the baby photo. Dad expresses confusion, having misunderstood that a member of the hospital staff would shoot a Polaroid for the gallery on the nursery wall. In fact, the photo enterprise is run by a third party, Growing Family. They’ll shoot a picture of your munchkin, in exchange for his or her name and birthdate and your full name and address.

Does this smell like last month’s tuna salad? How many marketers do you think would be interested in knowing you just had a baby? Hint: all of them.

Growing Family’s privacy policy has a long and impressively complicated name: “Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act”. But it gives them the right to share your private information with anyone they choose. This must be some new use of the word “protection” I wasn’t previously familiar with:

Growing Family will use your information from time to time to promote additional products, services, rewards and special offers from Growing Family Network and its select Network Partners.

My point is not that Growing Family was deceitful. My point is that, to my dismay, caveat emptor begins at birth.

Oh, I forgot, I have a journal.

Last Thursday, on an airplane, I was reviewing 5MB worth of reports from an overloaded database: lists of thousands of queries, mostly locked, entirely unhappy. Dramatic action was called for. So I took four days off for a family wedding, which provided more than enough drama, I assure you.

The last guy to board the plane carried an enormous Macy’s bag with two huge packages in it. True to form, he stopped in the aisle to re-arrange the contents of the overhead bins, nearly dropping packages on nearby passengers’ heads, crumpling overcoats, etc., to make room for his oversized parcels. I hate when people do that. Haven’t they heard of UPS?

Here’s the worst thing: this guy was me!

I had to ferry wedding gifts against my will. Shipping these two fragile sets of fancy dishware would have cost more than the dishes themselves. I dreaded boarding the plane, especially last, so I got to the airport fully two hours early and camped out by the gate. But my seat was at the front of the plane, so everyone else boarded first — and filled up all the overhead bins.

There was a time in my life that I would feign a limp in order to pre-board. This time, I decided that that sort of deception is beneath me. (I’ve matured a lot since earlier this year when I feigned a limp so I could pre-board.)

In the aisle, I asked the stewardess for assistance. I would have been happy to gate-check my packages. She was not sympathetic. In fact, she wouldn’t even meet my eye; she was too busy waiting for me to board to actually help me board. This appears to be a new trend for American Airlines’ staff. Sitting at the gate, I watched a line of people approach the agent smiling, and leave frowning. The agent didn’t help a single passenger. American Airlines has outsourced inflight food service to the Bistro Bags people, and they’ve outsourced customer satisfaction to Southwest Airlines.

I rearranged some overheads, nearly dropped a 200 lb set of dishes on one guy’s head, crumpled another guy’s coat, and finally shrank into my seat while muttering apologies to everyone within earshot. I didn’t move for four hours, after which my bladder was the size of Los Gatos. But I had plenty of time to relieve myself in St. Louis, where baggage regularly takes 60 minutes to appear on a carousel, even for the last guy off the airplane.