Flying in an Aeroplane Sucks

Flying on an areoplane was once a magical experience. I have vivid memories of my father taking off from the Augusta, ME, airport on "The Yellowbird" in the late 1960's. I was sure that he was being attended to by mini-skirted flight attendants asking which brand of cigarette he prefered. And he was going someplace else, away from Augusta, ME.

In 2009, it's like Guantanamo without the waterboarding.

First of all, the security checks. I understand that some bad people were responsible for the horrific deaths of thousands of people in NYC. But why did that translate into gathering a bunch of retards off the street and giving them uniforms? And giving them the power to make us take our shoes off?

Secondly, the boarding. Dickwads with too much carry-on. Cell phone enthusiasts. Hicks who cannot find seat 37D. I swear they get these people from an "Airplane" extras casting call.

Thirdly (did I just say Thirdly? Damn I hate that), there is the Safety Speech. The speech is always half-hearted and ignored. For once, I’d like to hear a real pre-flight Safey Speech. To wit:

Welcome aboard General Airways Flight 4219 with service to Chicago O’Hare Airport - ‘the Hub that everyone avoids’ - with continuing service to some God-forsaken Midwest town that even Rand McNally has yet to visit. Please pay attention to this safety briefing, even if it is the twiddly-seventh time you’ve heard it, because otherwise you’ll be bypassed during the peanut distribution.

If you refer to the safey card in the seat back in front of you, you’ll notice that there are several pieces of previously used chewing gum attached. Ignore these and the other debris left by underpaid aeroplane cleaning personnel and note the exit locations. These exits could be used in the extremely unlikely event that the airplane lands in one piece.

Your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device, but the chance of you surviving a water impact is about the same as that of you surviving a land impact (0.00000033), so unless we crash into a land mass and bounce into a water mass, your seat cushion will remain, well, a seat cushion.

We’re not even going to go into the seat belt discussion, because if you need an explanation on how to use your seat belt, then we hope you die horribly because you are screwing up the gene pool.

Fourthly (now I'm really over-doing it), the actual flight. There are several categories of annoyance:

Screaming babies: No one likes sitting near screaming babies on an airplane, but if they are quiet, they can actually provide a bit of amusement - on a philosiphical level. The concept of "If man were meant to fly" is not something that has yet registered in their cerebral cortex. They are quite unaware of the fact that they are flying around in a multi-ton vehicle controlled by a vast array of digi-electro-mechanical geegaws that, at any minute, could plunge into the nearest geographical feature, leaving only a charred mosaic of flesh and technology that would take months of CNN updates to sort out. When I watch them, I am oddly comforted.

Beverage/Meal service: Not really a service, per se, just a mandated aeroplane function performed by a collection of misfits. Homosexuals that think they look good in uniform, blonds that want to marry a pilot, older blonds that remember the days of serving cigarettes in mini-skirts, and assorted other losers that could not find a real job.

Funny noises: They scare the crap out of me. Actually, scary noises are the equivalent of waterboarding. Scratch the "without the waterboarding" comment that was previously written.

Restrooms: Just make sure that all of your bodily functions have been attended to before you board. Because you do not want to go there.

Finally, the phrase that everyone on the Guantanamo aero-detainment cylinder is longing to hear: "We are now landing at YourDestinationAirport. We hope you had a pleasant flight."

I didn't. And you know it.