Mustard banned on plane for good reason

I always buy a sandwich for the plane trip at the grocery store before I leave, because the same $2.99 sandwich at the airport costs $39.99. Last time I brought a package of mustard as well, unaware that you cannot bring deli mustard on a plane. Why? Because it's too sharp? Ha ha! No, really, you can't:

Can you find the reason why the mustard was verboten? Right. Eight ounces. Three ounces, yes. Four, no. You may wonder: wasn't the strange magic power of the plastic bag enough to contain its possible lethality? No. Remember the rules: 3-3-1. Three items, three ounces each, in one bag. Adjust your mustard-smuggling accordingly, and you sail through the security line. And by "Sail" I mean shuffling along in your socks holding up your pants because the belt had to go in the tray. We take off our belts because of the Batman Terrorist who had all kinds of things on his utility belt. I think. If you're old you don't have to take off your shoes or jacket, but that will change if there's ever an incident with a senior citizen who tries to bring down a plane with a windbreaker.

ARCHITECTURE Apple's new building is behind schedule and over budget by two beeeelion dollars, possibly because they had to tear down six months' worth of work and start from scratch to install a frogurt delivery infrastructure to every room. Maybe. Who knows: it's Secretive, like everything else Apple does. A billion here, a billion there - they have the money. But let's cue the doubters "industry sources" who know this is another bad sign:

The squawking will intensify the next time Apple releases its earnings, and admits that while it made more money than ever the rate of growth of making more money than ever has slowed. SELL SELL SELL.

Well, that's the URL, anyway. Apple's Campus shakes up as an investor relations nightmare. Concerns over the product pipeline? That could mean A) they will sell a Watch, which everyone things is the next big sure thing, or B) they won't, or C) they will sell a cheap iPhone, which will broaden market share, or D) they won't, which will mean they're ignoring market share for silly things like "reaping huge profits from existing lines, or E) they won't or will do something else RIGHT NOW that will redefine an entire market. Rinse, repeat, then say "nevermind" when they bring out hoverboards or holographic digital assistants or something.

It will get worse when the building starts to work its bad juju on the company, cutting off innovation and collaboration:

Remember the story about how they invented the iPhone? Two people ran into each other while walking down the hall; one was carrying an iPod and the other a Cell Phone. They collided. You got phone calls on my portable music player! No, you, got music on my portable phone! Light bulbs above both heads. Wow, we gotta take this to Steve.

Indeed. Without the whole "admitting it" part, but otherwise, exactly that. The article does make one point that should worry any Apple investor or product fan:

Sound familiar? Maybe it's Best not to Buy a new HQ. Rent for a few decades. See how that goes.

RIP The first casualty of the Disney-Lucas Entertainment Blob Formation:

Dang. Not because I was eager to play another Star Wars game - no interest in those anymore, since they're all 3rd person, and I prefer FPS. You don't feel like you're spending all your time looking at someone's back. 1313 looked great, but they all look great nowadays. No, "Dang" because of the old games long gone and never forgotten by long-in-the-tooth players. This was absolutely cinematic in the 90s: Full Throttle.

Then there's the Indiana Jones movie they should have made:

There was also Grim Fandango, which I never finished. Got stuck. I think I was on a ledge; a rope was involved. There's a time in your life when you have three hours to figure out how to get down from a ledge using only a broken kite, a marble vase, a fragment of a pinata and a legal-sized manila envelope. When that time passes, you'll know.

WEB Last week I wrote about peculiar, brain-taxing writing on sites designed to rank high in Google searches, thereby providing nothing more than eyeballs for an ad. It's unfair to beat up on some people who are doing their best for a pittance, but it's almost as if a new style of prose is being invented before our eyes.

Do you get all the sense of a person who is writing all the words that will be engaging to the reader which is of the reason in this manner, also to be making as many words so to be 500 words at the end? In other words, like a high school essay. Pad it out! Pad every sentence! The top of the page says it's written by a "chief writer for bestessays.com."

Hmm. Okay, I'll bite.

If I set up a company to sell essays to students who didn't want to do the work, I'd hire nothing but mediocre writers. The teachers would be more likely to question the provenance of the essay if you handed in something that had words like "Provenance." Hmm. He used provenance instead of origin. Unlikely. Unless he used a thesaurus, but he probably thinks that's a type of dinosaur. Doesn't strike me as the type of student who knows there can be more than one word for a concept or object.