Time for something special, Gource fans. It’s a holiday-filled period of the year, which means that hundreds (seriously, hundreds) of people around this country will pack a bag heavy with clothes and passive aggressiveness, hail a cab, and find themselves at an airport on their way to spend time they don’t really know why they have with people they don’t really feel anything for. A key and terrible factor in this ordeal? Air travel. For those paying even a marginal amount of attention it should be abundantly clear that the Grimary Gource hates air travel. However, due to extenuating circumstances (grievously low speed limits mostly) land travel between my two primary residences during the holidays is inconvenient and unforgivably time-consuming. As a result I was forced to travel through the planet’s least reliable state of matter (plasma is actually more reliable than gas) yesterday. What follows are some articulated thoughts that my mind crafted regarding the heinousness of flight.Airport Security – why bother?
Let’s face facts, America – there are a lot of people who hate this country running around (most without shoes). Unfortunately for us, some America-haters do have shoes, and therefore are allowed into airports around this (mostly) terrible planet. Net result? We’re in constant danger. Does this danger justify giving a college dropout a minimum wage job that revolves entirely around digging through my checked baggage looking for national threats like some kind of truffle-rooting pig? No. I am an extremely efficient and particular person, and when I pack a suitcase I pack it to my expert specifications. When some doltish TSA goon goes and rearranges the innards of my duffel I feel as though my trip has been ruined before I’ve even had a chance to leave the ground. I mean, it’s not like I layer clothing according to a planned order-of-wearing schedule I've formulated while I pack it, so that I will never have to dig through my bag in order to find socks while away from home, is it? Oh wait. It is. If I wanted all my clothes disorganized, wrinkled, and sullied by strange hands I’d just drop them off at a foreign-run dry cleaner. If I have to sacrifice a skyline or two every seventy years to keep some ape out of my personal belongings, so be it.
People Who Sit Next to Me on Planes – what idiot notion drives you to strike up conversation?
I want you to think about the FAA for a moment. This is an agency that handles all kinds of important stuff, like going places and coming from places. They have rules, regulations, and lists of specifications longer than the laundry list of people with three-letter names who I wish were dead (long story). How is it then, that among all these countless codes and lengths of endless red tape there is no simple rule that makes it an arrestable – no – executable offense to bug the blinding hell out of a complete stranger on an aircraft? What’s more, every time I have to deal with one of these clowns they always seem to have some kind of regional accent, as though every airport has a distressingly stereotypical representative whose sole purpose in life is to get on planes, sit next to me, and start throwing around “y’alls,” “down the shores,” “hellas,” or “I am from the Pacific Northwest and want to kill myself’s.” Shut up, shut up, and shut up.
In-flight Entertainment – who’s in charge of this media abortion?
Ever wanted to know what kind of golf club will get a golf ball to go to the place a man in stupid clothes desires it to go? Curious about the faucets and fixtures of the rich and famous? Interested in buying a llama? If you answered “no” to any of the following questions it’s extremely likely that watching the in-flight entertainment on a one and a half to two-hour flight will make you regret color LCD’s ever became an affordable airline expense. Personally, I don’t understand the need for any form of stimulation on an airplane, be it audio, visual, olfactory, or sexual. Sit quietly, look ahead or close your eyes. If you’re feeling adventurous: fall asleep. It seems most people don’t agree with me though, and prefer to have some kind of mindless escape in the form of a glowing rectangle of pixels. I realize that my patience and attention span are far more massive than the average person’s, so I can forgive this need for distraction. What I can’t forgive are the airline’s choices in regards to what ought to be shown on their crafts. Does regular TV programming not work at twenty-five thousand feet? Can nobody affix a couple rabbit-ear antennas to the rudder so I could at least get some local news from “flyover” states? No. I’m forced to endure programs about people who live lives so full of comfort and luxury they can afford special shelves for their platinum-plated croquet mallets. How many people are involved in the production of this stuff? I feel like the amount of technical knowledge required to light, shoot, edit, and distribute this dreck could be better spent aiding the action movie filmmakers of America so I could go to a good blow-them-all-to-hell flick without having to read a Dickensian mass of subtitles.
Finally: a list of airports that had I the power, I would shut down
Dallas Ft. Worth
LaGuardia
JFK
Newark (are there any other airports that serve NYC that I’m not aware of? If so, they go on the list too.)
LAX
Dallas Ft. Worth
Orlando International
McCarren International
Atlanta International
Dallas Ft. Worth
No comments:
Post a Comment