My father spent today in Sioux City at a board meeting. He came back from the return flight with news that the people of Sioux City are working to get their FAA designation changed.

It seems they don’t feel that SUX really captures the spirit of Sioux City. As they are the former home of Gateway, I can’t think of a more appropriate moniker. Yet it seems they’re not happy with anything:

This is not the first time Sioux City has tried to get rid of the SUX designator. In the ’80s, the city asked the FAA to change the code, Januska said, and it almost happened. But Sioux City was not overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the replacement options the FAA gave it, and decided to stay with what it had.

“One option the FAA gave Sioux City in the ’80s was to change the identifier to GAY,” Januska said, without comment. — a Chicago Tribune story, as reprinted by a site that has no trouble with SUX at all

For any number of reasons, I haven’t read a paper newspaper in a very long time. So this afternoon when I picked up the Register, I naturally celebrated our reunion by turning to the all-important comics page.

It was I remembered. There was some mildly amusing stuff, a consistently excellent strip or two, and then the rest. And of the rest, the worst seemed to have one thing in common: they were all a single panel.

So on the basis of this data, allow me to offer my own plan for comics page reform. Its basis is one simple precept: prohibit comics that (usually) contain a single panel.

Note this plan has two corollaries. One: Brad Anderson has a lifetime ban. A decision to convert his strip to multiple panels (as in the Sunday edition) is insufficient for inclusion on any page, ever. Two: should Gary Larson decide to restart his strip, he, too, should not be included on the comics page.

He should be on the front page.

Personally, I blame the Sixth Sense. You may finger another cause for the current obsession with surprise endings (“twists”), but I’ve picked mine.

Not that Identity‘s first surprise ending is that bad. In fact, given the tired nature of this genre, it actually feels fresh (though my experience with horror films is mercifully little.) But of course the filmmakers try to pile on yet another twist — and that’s where my patience wanes.

My expectations weren’t too high, of course. I needed a rainy day movie to see with good friends, and John Cusack always seems watchable. The horror/suspense plot guaranteed the whole thing was disposable anyway, as the Times captures so well: “Identity is a dressed-up B picture, a hunk of cheese trying to sneak into the gourmet food aisle of the supermarket.”

Comes now three judges from the U. S. District Court of Columbia to declare (in a record 1,638 page ruling) that portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law are unconsitutional.

We’ll have to see what the Supremes think of that ruling. For now, allow me to offer my own plan for campaign finance reform. Its basis is one simple precept: allow donations only from individuals. The move would preclude PACs, SIGs, corporations, unions, associations, and anything else that is non-human from contributing to political campaigns.

To my point of view, this would make the process much more transparent, as open records would allow us to see which person is expecting quid-pro-quo, not just (for example) data about bullshit associations that are fronts for others.

One. Am I the only one who finds a trailer at the start of a DVD to be oddly anachronistic? It may be strange, but I welcome and expect a few previews on a videocassette, but the same thing on a disc seems unfriendly and dated. Note I’m not talking about the mere presence of trailers, but instead the practice of placing them before the main menu or at the start of the feature presentation. (And, worse, ignoring the “skip” button.)

Two. Trailer content: it’s always been a delicate compromise, balancing the need to give an idea/sense of the film while still holding back enough to keep it interesting. Lately, though, it seems the balance is breaking down.Today it seems many trailers contain all of the film’s highlights, seemingly obviating the need to plunk down your eight bucks. The most spectacular recent example: The Italian Job trailer. We see the players, the conflict, the rising action, and plenty of climax. All that’s missing is the job-well-done scene and our Reader’s Digest condensed version would be complete.

Sheesh.

(Note to the guy who made the Job site: “Steal the day?” Feeling a little dry creatively, were we?)

Two articles in the Times movie mailing caught my eye. There’s news that Blockbuster Decides to Go Online, a move that will bring them into direct competition with Netflix and Walmart.com. (The interesting part: Blockbuster will use its stores as distribution centers. That’s going to be a fun exercise in transportation, logistics, and inventory management.)

The more intriguing story was on Malkovich. In Being Any Number of Versions of the Self He Has Invented, the New York Times Magazine profiles the man, and it’s fascinating stuff: He lives in France full-time, in a home that features many pieces he designed directly or commissioned. He worked as a catwalk model. His directorial debut is now in distribution, though the production company hates it. He lost 60lbs. by subsisting solely on Jell-O. He… well, just read it. An interesting life.

As I walked from the theater, I heard one member of the trio behind me say, “That was a good movie, but it was boring as hell.”

I tend to agree.

It was good, surely, and there was a freshness to it. But after about 70 minutes I was just fatigued. I entertained myself by trying to spot any parental figures in this story of a group of Asian-American honor students who turn to crime for the rush. (I found none.)

Which is not to throw cold water on the flick. While I may not have the same level of affection the critics seem to, I think the director has talent and I eagerly await his next project.

(And for the record, lead Parry Shen looks like a young B.D. Wong — which is to say, adorable.)

James Carville called Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign “the most expensive act of masturbation in human history.” One wonders if Carville caught G. W. Bush’s performance on the USS Abraham Lincoln tonight.

Was there anything about the event that didn’t seem hopelessly contrived? From the ship to the Friends lead-in, the Pilot Bush clip to the strangely well-timed way the live camera managed to pull back just before a “spontaneous” standing ovation, we had all the markings of a dry-run for a re-election campaign. All that was missing was some of that “crowds“-pulling-down-a-Saddam-statue footage.

Or maybe some weapons of mass destruction. After hearing all along that Iraq was just on the edge of using the weapons we “know for a fact” they have — the evidence of which Colin Powell was sorting through to present to the U.N., the prize that military planners were supposedly preoccupied with (since we know it wasn’t museums or hospitals) — well, all we heard about those was:

We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.

That roughly translates to: “we already know of some places we should look.” I feel safer already.

May is music month at Apple, and Steve Jobs kicked it off early today with the introduction of a new, slimmer series of iPods and iTunes 4.

The iPod is as slick as ever, but it’s the new music service that has really caught my eye. Here’s a legal music offering that has no subscription requirements, a fairly decent price (99¢/track, $9.99/album) and — most important — allows you to burn CDs.

Jobs & Co. have managed to pull together 200,000 tracks from the Big 5 labels and are offering them with album art and 30-sec previews for 1-Click buying. For now, the service is only available on Macs; a Windows version will come later this year.

It will be fascinating to see how the market responds to this offering. (And the new commercials. My favorite: a youngster does Lose Yourself. Not that he could have seen the movie, of course. It was rated R!)

I spent the last few days at home, ensuring the baby was recovering nicely from surgery. I got back a few minutes ago and ducked my head in the fridge to see what options I had for munchies.

Here’s what I found:

• 1 gallon Hy-Vee skim milk
• 1 2L Hawaiian Punch (the red one, not the skanky new ones)
• 1 10oz. jar Smuckers Simply Fruit strawberry jam
• 1 10oz. jar Cascadian Farms Organic Apricot jelly
• 1 8oz. bottle Hy-Vee Organic Italian salad dressing
• 1 9oz. squeeze bottle Hy-Vee yellow mustard
• 1 24oz. bottle Heinz ketchup
• 1 28oz. jar Arrowhead Mills Certified Organic Smooth Valencia Peanut Butter
• 2 12oz. bottles Leinenkugel’s Northwoods lager
• 1 8oz. jar Hoffman House cocktail sauce
• 1 8oz. container Organic Valley organic mozzarella cheese

Milk, juice, cheese, condiments. That’s it. Well, and beer…

Boy, I’m really getting the hang of this apartment living thing.

I just lowered my credit card APR by 6 percentage points. On a Saturday.

All it took was a few minutes on hold and a few seconds of conversation. I asked to cancel, was transferred to an account manager, asked again, and then laid it on the line: I got better offers in the mail almost daily. What were they going to do about it?

I don’t plan to carry a balance on the card, but it’s still a great idea to let the shitty economy work my way for once.

(Aside: When I transferred to the other rep, she didn’t need to ask for any of my information. I love it when phone systems are non-retarded.)

I have a few things to say about the Rick Santorum comments, but first I just want to note that this is one of the best lines I’ve read in an AP interview (transcript):

AP: I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about “man on dog” with a United States senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.

In today’s installment of our continuing series, we have remedial math:

Ok, fellas, the little greater-than sign means… greater than. So if you have a “hundred plus” templates for “greater than $100” that means that no, it sure isn’t less than $1 per template.

Maybe it’s time for Presentation Math 50.

(Note: the version of the ad shown here differs from the original version. Only the frames relevant to this critique have been excerpted.)

Update [01:06]: Chad writes that it’s possible to get 110 templates for $101, thus achieving the promised ratio. I could say that I concede that possibility even though the advertiser doesn’t sell anything over $100, but instead I choose to distract him with this picture of a hot guy.

Wired calls it the Gadget-Heavy Audi, and one glance at the feature list backs that up. But hold on, what’s this?

The car’s twin LCD panels are part of Audi’s multimedia interface that adds more than a dash of geekiness to the dashboard. … A8 L owners in Germany can receive television broadcasts through their LCDs, but U.S. safety laws prevent that option from being offered here.

What? Television in the dash? Somebody needs to high-tail it to an Awareness Tent.

Happy (20th) birthday to you.

And many more…