Medicine

I discovered a new way to observe the Holidays this year; I had a couple of wisdom teeth merrily yanked out of my head. This decision admittedly had less to do with celebrating the end of another year and honoring cultural traditions than it did with using up the last of my dental insurance, but there it is.

Last week I wrote about my less-than-satisfactory experience as a customer of a major airline that shall not be named (it was Delta). What that experience came down to was that the airline (Delta) basically told me that they had my money, and they dared me to try to get anything in return for it.

Everybody knows that the airlines have not been doing that well lately. Between the rising cost of fuel and the ongoing hassles of cleaning up after young Nigerian millionaires with exploding underpants, the industry has been faced with a series of unprecedented challenges.

To add insult to injury, a certain volcano in Iceland (Eyjafjallajokull, whose name is really hard to say for most news reporters; it's pronounced "Xgicxgsrnlglu") recently shut down airports all over Europe and paralyzed air travel world-wide. Of course, most airlines are not compensating the stranded passengers in any way, since a volcano is an "Act of God."

Still, their profits are in trouble. Things are getting so grim that the airlines may eventually have to let the average income of their top executives plunge below three million dollars a year!

Funny story: