Sheraton Wilmington, DE

The Sheraton in Wilmington, DE pissed me off so much, I decided to share it with you. Everything I am about to say is demonstrably true. I will not exaggerate, conflate or lie. Your mileage may vary, but my recommendation is: stay anywhere else. Your car would be a better choice.

First, I would like to say that the people who work at the hotel are fantastic. The employees of the Sheraton in Wilmington, DE could not be nicer, more professional or more helpful. I asked for more complimentary coffee and I got it, lots of it. I asked for more towels, and I was immediately sent a whole stack of towels. The last day, I was trying to get 18 people a last minute reservation at a restaurant, and the gentleman behind the counter called for me and got me a reservation right away. The employees of the hotel are not the problem.

What was the problem? The room I reserved included 2 beds and one pullout couch. If you're poor like me, that sleeps a minimum of 6 adults. (Depending upon how friendly you are.) So, we intending to sleep 5 adults and one preteen. The preteen and I were going to sleep on the pullout couch. The mattress of the pullout was essentially a sheet wrapped around coiled wires. There was no sleeping on that thing. The preteen got friendly with 2 other people, I slept on the floor- which was more comfortable than the pullout. Look, I don't expect tempurpedic* for $150 a night, but I do expect more comfortable than the floor.

Wifi. I use a friend's old first gen iphone for internet access when I'm not at work. (Which is why you only see weekend posts if I remember to set them up in advance.) I get wifi at home, at Dunkin Donuts, at the hospital, at McDonalds, but the Sheraton in Wilmington, DE wanted to charge me $10/day for wifi access. For wifi they're already providing and a room I already paid $150/night for. Seriously, fuck off. McDonalds gives me free wifi if I buy a $1 burger, but Sheraton can't give me free wifi for $300 worth of room?

Free internet. In the lobby, you can access the internet for free in a nice little cybercafe area- in the main lobby. Surf while the entire world shouts as it passes by! Yay! Not only that, you have to log in with your room number and the last name of the person the room is registered under, and you only get 45 minutes. Per day. Per room. There were 6 people in that room (the 11-year-old is a veteran surfer), we were considering a deathmatch for internet time by the first afternoon.

Parking. $12 a day. In their parking garage. I paid $300 for that fucking room, you are now going to charge me for parking- in the garage attached to the hotel?!

The elevator. Now, I had to use my tax return to pay for this, so I don't spend a lot of time in hotels. The elevator may be entirely standard these days, but it was obnoxious. You had to use your room key card to go anywhere in the elevator (or to use the stairs, or to use the bathroom in the lobby) and the card reader was slow and touchy. Every guest I saw was cursing the thing. It was especially annoying because as soon as the door closed it would start going up or down, so if you only needed to go up or down one floor, you were going to the top (or bottom) and hitting your floor on the next go round. Which was especially annoying because of . . .

The ice machines. On floors 8, 11 and 15 only. Which I missed. Several times. It took me 15 minutes to get ice. I gave up after that. Which may have been the point.

So, my advice would be any hotel but the Sheraton in Wilmington, DE. Wilmington itself was very pleasant.

*I don't own one, but having slept on a tempurpedic, I wish I did.

The World Is Complicated, Allow Me to Simplify It for You

I had an epiphany while reading a fascinating exchange on Zimbabwe (the country formerly known as Rhodesia) and the continuing effects of colonialism in present day Africa.

Well, actually, commentors like Whateverman and the problem with religion were having a fascinating discussion about the continuing effects of colonialism in present day Africa, while the blogger himself, Chris, was repeating "Christians [of my particular persuasion] good, all others bad!"

This relates, oddly enough, to the case of an abortion performed on a woman who would have died without the abortion, and the Catholic defense of their belief that even if the pregnancy will not result in a viable baby, the woman in question should still die, which could be reduced to "we have rules and we stick to them and if you allow exceptions to rules everything immediately descends into chaos."

That is, of course, demonstrably silly and everyone knows this, even those who claim it is true. I imagine everyone's boss cares when they show up and will punish people who fail to show up on time. However, if even the most die-hard Catholic got a flat tire on their way to work, do you think they wouldn't protest being punished for their lateness? If they were the boss do you think they wouldn't say, "Well, that's not your fault, don't worry about it"? Would the entire world descend into chaos if they did allow an exception in such a case? No.

The thing is, I have had bosses that would punish people for events beyond their control. Because actually listening to people and making judgments as to what is avoidable or fair is complicated. And who wants to think about things? It's far easier just to enforce the rules the same way every time, though that certainly cannot be termed fair.

Back to Chris, who won't listen to anyone but a Christian, no matter how much evidence someone else presents or how many Christians get caught out as liars. Over and over and over again, Christians prove that they are just like the rest of us and that you shouldn't trust people until they prove themselves trustworthy, that you should take everything with a grain of salt and that nothing is quite as it seems, but it doesn't matter. Someone like Chris will be fooled, again and again and again because his only qualification is Christianity.

Chris has simplified his life, like the people who allow no exceptions (common in Christianity), into one principle: Christian is good, everything else is bad. Everything else is too complicated. Subtlety is hard. Shades of grey are confusing. This one is good, that one is evil and that's all I need to know. The fact that very, very few, if any, people are all good or all bad is irrelevant. He's got his answer and that's all he needs. If PZ Myers tell Chris that his pants are on fire, Chris will double check with Ray Comfort before even looking to see why his legs are so warm. The fact that Ray already lied to him about the state of his pants 6 times before means nothing.

It's sad, really. There's a whole universe of knowledge out there, and these people have put themselves in a cage to keep it all out. I really can't imagine anything more tragic.

Tea Bags

teabagging, teabag, bad, asshat,
I had no idea teabagging* was a competitive sport.

*The most graphic possible description of teabagging, from a man who clearly likes him some teabagging.