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Rhymes with what?

The other night, a friend and I had a… debate… over the pronunciation of “Glenmorangie”. Is it like “glen MORE an gee” or “glen MORE an jee”? Or maybe even “glen MERANGUE gee”, like the pie? We didn’t fall to fisticuffs over it — there was a lady present, and we didn’t want to offend her sensibilities and make idiots of ourselves doing it. Actually she changed the subject quickly to something more sensible, like beer.

This debate has raged among family and friends for years, turning the “gee” faction against the “jee” faction. After calling it “glen MORE an jee” for years, I heard more than one person who should have been in-the-know call it “glen MORE an gee”, so I converted from the “jee” camp to the “gee” camp.

Today I went to the all-knowing prophet, Google, to settle the debate. At www.Glenmorangie.com, I discovered the truth. The one, true pronunciation, right from the source, is this: “It rhymes with ‘orangie’.”

Next, have I been mispronouncing “Glendronach“?

Link: Glenmorangie.com: “Your Questions Answered”

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No… thank YOU

Sadly, I have to admit that today I lunched at the Scottish restaurant. I had avoided it for months, but while passing McDonald’s I succumbed to a combination of hunger pangs and delicious posters of hamburgers. (No, that wasn’t a misplaced modifier — the posters are far more delicious than the hamburgers.)

I’m pleased to report that the menu is exactly as I remember it — a lineup of vaguely beef-related sandwiches accompanied by tallow-soaked potato product. After consuming the “McDeal” of the day, I dumped the remains of the day into the nearest garbage receptacle, and was startled when it spoke to me.

“Thank you,” it said. Its voice was deep and gentle, and imbued with paternal kindness, as if someone’s dad had accidentally fallen into the garbage can and decided to make the best of it by thanking passers-by for cleaning up after themselves. It turned out not to be my dad or anyone else’s, thankfully. It’s actually an electronic recording that’s triggered each time someone throws something away — an innovative way to imbue a feeling of warmth and personal attention that doesn’t actually exist at McDonald’s.

I can’t wait to see what else speaks to me next time I need to satisfy my hamburger addiction. Maybe my chair will thank me for sitting down, and my table will thank me for placing objects on it. And toilets too! “Thank you.”

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I’m back, and building something useless

Yep, that was a short vacation. Sometimes, however, it only takes a short time away from Second Life to ferment new ideas. This time I’m back to construct a new main terminal at the aerodrome.

Oddly enough, a main terminal was something we’d planned to build since the founding of Abbotts Aerodrome in early 2004. We even made a start on a grand art deco style edifice, but somehow it didn’t work out, and we ended up building a collection of hangars and shops instead.

I suspect the reason the terminal has been delayed so long is that, when you think about it, it’s completely useless. In real life, terminals are designed to process passengers and shuffle the masses around like sheep, in and out of secure zones, through checkpoints, and past assorted food courts and shops, where they’re separated from their money. Abbotts Aerodrome is, in reality, not a transportation hub. With free teleportation, nobody actually needs to travel by airplane, and security really isn’t an issue.

Even so, I want a main terminal because it completes the illusion. I just saw Tom Hanks in “The Terminal”, and it inspired me to recreate the lifeless artificial environment that is an international airport.

Who can imagine an airport without maze-like, velvet-roped queues, and a luggage carousel? What’s an airport without the generic white tile floor, sterile waiting areas, and plastic plants? So I’ll go ahead and build all that, even though we don’t technically need it. Maybe it will attract groups of people lingering near the arrivals gate as they return from the Abbotts-Gray round trip.

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I admit… I was wrong about Star Wars

Warning: Contains possible Revenge of the Sith spoilers.

I’m a big enough man to admit when I’m wrong. Actually, I’m a big enough man to get winded walking up a flight of stairs too, but that’s another issue. The point is, I totally trashed Star Wars before I went to see it, and then George Lucas smacked me in the face with a great movie.

Alright, sure we have to overlook little details, like the fact that Padme dies in childbirth, despite the fact that in Return of the Jedi, Leia tells Luke what their mother was like. And the fact that R2-D2 and C3PO perform vital roles in Obiwan’s life, yet when Luke brings R2 to him in the original Star Wars, Obiwan says, “Strange. I don’t remember ever owning a droid.” I’d better stop there, because the list of massive plot holes can fill pages. Besides, that’s nit-picking. For the sake of willing suspension of disbelief, let’s ignore the fact that Annikin is about 6 years old in The Phantom Menace (and building pod racers!), yet he’s about 16 only a few years later in Attack of the Clones, and then by Star Wars, apparently he adds about a foot to his height and develops a gravelly, bass voice.

Setting all that aside, I have to say that I enjoyed the show very much. It wasn’t deep, or particularly thought-provoking, but its pacing moved the plot along quickly, without dallying on the mysteries of life, the way the previous two movies did in such depth. And the movie sprung so many surprising plot twists on the audience too. For example, at one point, a woman nearby leaned over to her husband to ask, “No way… Annikin is Darth Vader?”

Oh. I hope I didn’t spoil the plot for anyone there.

If I have a serious complaint, it’s that Luke Skywalker was a bit flat in his performance, and the actor was, I believe, a little too old for the role, and didn’t bear even the vaguest resemblance to Mark Hamill.

In the end, I left the theatre feeling that I’d gotten my money’s worth. My dollars had been far better spent on The Revenge of the Sith than on, say, food for a couple of days. George, I was wrong to doubt you.

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Gone fishin’

I’ve decided to take a short break from SL to take care of real life matters. (Remember real life? That’s the place where you can’t fly.)

In the meantime, my shop at Abbotts Aerodrome is still open, and the skydiving facility is still running. If you have any aerodrome-related questions, comments, suggestions, or rants… well maybe not rants… contact one of the other Aerodrome officers: Apotheus Silverman, Reitsuki Kojima, or Chage McCoy.

Back in a while.