Air Travel - Why Can't People Do It Better?

Recently, this reporter was put in the uncomfortable position of being on an airplane for about twenty nonconsecutive hours. It was a necessary method for transporting myself to one of America's several follies, though in the future one would do better to take a train, or stay only within the areas of our Nation where white people have succeeded in eliminating all previously extant cultures.
During this time I was unfortunately forced to witness the breaking of many unwritten rules of air travel. As part of a long-term dedication the Gource has to enlightening the masses (and widening the A of R), we present here the Grimary Gource's Now Written (Actually, Typed) Rules of Air Travel. We recommend these rules be made mandatory by all major airlines, with United Nations penalties doled out to noncompliant airlines.

1. The space behind your seat does not belong to you. You are in a seat, and everyone around you is in a seat. All these seats are the same size (unless you are a coach class flier, in which case the Gource suggests you return to trolling for vampire porn, and wonders how you arrived at this site). You do not have any rights to airspace surrounding your seat, because that space is occupied. Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Do not lean your seat back. Just being able to do so does not give you the right to do this. If you need to recline to sleep, try not traveling, or possibly booking the whole flight. Stop leaning your seat back and bumping into the knees of people of superior size.
2. Movies shown should all be airplane-related disaster movies, in order to alert travelers to the possibilities of trouble. Snakes on a Plane, Airplane, and Blimp are all acceptable. Wild Hogs, however, is not. Not only does it include miscegenational casting, but it also glorifies motorcycle culture, a culture born of LSD and brake fluid.
3. Eliminate security checkpoints. They take too long to get through, and mingle first- and business-class passengers with coach. Why should we be forced to wait in line with terrorists and garment retailers? If the War on Terror were working, we wouldn't run the risk of terrorism on planes, because all Arabs, Muslims, South Asians, North Africans, biracial, and Hindu people would be outside of our country (possibly in Mexico). Just step up the deportation and let me get on my airplane.
4. Do not bring a baby on an airplane. Put it to sleep, and then make a new one (or not--please) upon return home.

With these tips, the Grimary Gource hopes that air travel will become more convenient for those of us worth it, and less convenient for those who shouldn't be flying anyway. Enough is enough. Unless the situation improves, expect Amtrak to be crowded with members of the A of R, and our money is worth plenty.

Gourcegiving Grouses Part 1: Air Travel – Isn’t it Tortuous?

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

Helicopters - Aren't they Ridiculous Contraptions?

Have you ever really looked at a helicopter? I’m not asking if you’ve ever seen one, and I’m not even asking in hopes that you’ll answer, because I don’t care. The point I’m trying to make is that helicopters are a fucking outrageous mode of transportation. It might seem weird, but I feel a lot less comfortable with a vehicle that is not symmetrical. A scientist would probably say that this is because of evolutionary factors that make human beings like things that have lines of symmetry. Helicopters, being the precarious and dangerous crafts that they are, try to warn us humans of the threat they pose by failing to be symmetrical, much like poison dart frogs exhibit bright and garish colors in order to keep would-be predators safe from their deadly poison.

Of course, I haven’t even mentioned the most dangerous aspect of helicopters: they are inexorably drawn to power lines, like flies to honey or meth addicts to run-down areas of suburbia. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel comfortable with aircraft that are so disastrously prone to getting themselves tangled up in high tension cables that frequently have an absurd amount of current running through them.
Here’s what I suggest: everybody should stop using helicopters, forever. “What would we replace them with?” you ask. Easy: hot air balloons. Hot air balloons have so much symmetry it’s insane, and they’re much quieter than helicopters. They might not work as well in windy areas, but it’s important to remember that places with lots of wind are also places you shouldn’t be living, because you never know when wind might turn on you and become a hurricane.