Originally published on 60x365.com on February 2, 2008:

nwa -- For the past couple of days I've been at the University of the Pacific for Robert Coburn's annual SoundImageSound concert. I had a great time meeting the faculty, talking to the students and presenting A/Break:1, a music with generative video piece of mine.

Today though, I had to fly home (Sacramento to Minneapolis and then Minneapolis to Columbus) on Northwest Airlines (nwa). I don't know why I bother with that airline, every time I do it ends up taking me much longer to get where I'm going and involves a lot more stress. Today was no different.

We were delayed leaving Sacramento for four and a half hours while some mechanical problem was fixed. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they took the time to fix the problem, but in the meantime they could have figured out some other way to get us on our way. For our troubles, we each received $10 in food vouchers as we got onto the plane, yay!

On landing in Minneapolis I had to run across four terminals to catch the last flight to Columbus. My luggage did not move as fast and will be arriving tomorrow. (God forbid they wait another ten minutes to let the luggage catch up with the five of us who ran to make the connection.) Their stunning incompetence as a company and the appalling level of apathy concerning customer service have left me irritated and grumpy.

So... I offer this tribute to nwa using samples from a different, angrier N.W.A.