Say WHAT?

If you were watching CNN this morning then you heard about the new 'rule' United Airlines is instituting. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1529524,CST-NWS-united16.article

Yes, you read that correctly. United Airlines (the bad guys) have instituted a policy in which overweight passengers may be forced to purchase two airline tickets in order to fly with them.

Wow, what next? Smelly people will have to charter their own planes? Skinny people will have to sit two per seat? Better yet, the skinny people plane can have double the seats added...

Their rationale is they received 700 complaints...out of 63 million flyers who used United Airlines. Now that is really messed up. They are going to piss off roughly 40% of their passengers (and that's a kind statistic if you go by the obesity rate in America) so that less than one one-hundreth of a percent of their passengers won't be annoyed? And I thought Amazon was a corporate bully for pulling their sales rankings - United Airlines makes them look like altar boys.

One thing I've learned in spades is some people will never, ever be happy. You can never do enough, say enough or give them enough to make them pleasant to be around. In short, bitterness is more than a fashion-statement - its a lifestyle. I would hazard a guess that these odious types comprise the majority of the 700 whiners.

Other mere mortals, like you and I, have a little-acknowledge facet of our personalities called...compassion. (Shhh, don't let that get around or everyone will want it) When we see someone in an uncomfortable situation we feel for them and we try to lend a smile when we can. We are the 63 million...

This is why United Airlines is the unlucky recipient of the J.C. Wilder...You SUCK award...

Amazon in the Naughty Chair...

Remember the show Hee Haw? There was a skit that started out with the intro song:

Despair and agony on me...whoa!
Depression excessive misery...whoa!
If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all...whoat!

That is Amazon's new theme song because if pissing off your customer base was an Olympic sport - Amazon would win the gold by a Big Margin.

So what are they doing now? In a nutshell, when you do a search on Amazon the back end uses the sales ranking to determine which titles are returned in the search results. So in order to find an author's books, they need to have a sales ranking on their book pages.

Amazon (aka, the Evil Empire) has decided to start sectioning off 'adult' content for the protection of our delicate sensibilities. When a publisher sets up a book, they select terms that would apply to the book such as, erotic, erotic romance, sex, love, mystery, violence - you get the picture - this is called Metadata. At Amazon, customers can also select tags for each book so if your book is tagged as erotic - well you end up on the naughty list. Consequently, if the book you are looking for is tagged as erotic, then it won't show up on the search results.

So what have they removed? Erotic romances for one. Go search for Dominique Adair and should have at least 10 books...only one comes up. Heaven forbid if you're looking for GLBT titles because you'll be out of luck. JL Langley's My Fair Captain will only come up if you search for the complete title and there are thousands of others who've had their sales ranking stripped including Maya Banks, Jaci Burton.

But you can still search for sex toys...

According to Publisher's Lunch, Amazon has reported that this is an 'error' on their end and it will be fixed shortly. Uh...right.

Want to sound off? Amazon Customer Service: ecr@amazon.com or via phone: 1-800-201-7575 and there is a petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

Ye Olde Closets....

Remember my closet cleaning odyssey? (http://jcwilder.blogspot.com/2009/01/closet-update.html) Well I finally have my closets all nice and clean and everything is organized to within an inch of its life.

To catch up - the master bedroom is now my library and my bedroom is the smallest room of them all. It's a little tedious - you walk in the door and you can just throw yourself on the bed - but I don't spend enough time in the bedroom to warrant staying in the big room. Since I spend so much time working, I converted over the master bedroom for the library. Tada! I have space to put in comfy chairs and bring some of my beloved books in from the garage. WOOT!

This is my first collection that went to Amvets - everything goes to help the Veterans - and I'm working on my second collection and it promises to be twice as much stuff. My house feels slimmer already - LOL!