i still have not left on a jet plane

JUST WHEN the memories from my flight over was fading, I've now been blessed with the promise of equally delightful memories of my soon-to-come trip back. My original booking had me flying out of Jacksonville today doing a quick layover in Detroit and then straight to Shanghai. Flight delays in Jacksonville made it impossible for me to catch any connecting flights to Shanghai. The next available flight that I've been put on starts tomorrow at the delightful hour of 6:30am and comes complete with 2 stopovers adding an additional 7-10 hours to the overall flight time of my original booking. A 27 hour flight for the price of an 18 hour! SCORE!

In other news, I'm currently reading NY Mag's 5 Reasons why Avatar won't make Best Picture which include things like Academy snobbiness and Oscar's innate hatred of all things sci-fi which may be true general observations on the film awards in general but, in my mind, completely misses the main reason why Avatar shouldn't - or, more aptly, doesn't deserve to win: It's basically a thinly veiled PSA on environmental conservation made from mishmash of recycled storylines. Fern Gully meets Princess Mononoke in space.

Also, (SPOILER ALERT) what was that completely inane animal uprising at the end? It was like the movie suddenly inserted scenes from the Fox show When Animals Attack...IN SPACE. The only thing that could have made that part of the ending worse if they actually voice overed the scene with the Fox announcer voice and/or created a rip in the space/time continuum to reveal this guy:

"My power blows!"

Remember him from Captain Planet? Yeah, he was the one with the worst power! Out of all the elements - Wind, Water, Fire, Earth no one wanted to be Heart. "I can make fire explode out in a vortex!" "I can call elephants and gazelles to help us!" Lame.