Recycling 17.5 Peanuts

A few years ago I had a weekly column in a couple newspapers. Originally, I started in sports writing and column writing before getting into photography. Anyway, I thought I would revise and recycle some of the columns I have written on here. Perhaps, eventually I will even write some new ones. Although I warn you, without an editor the fact that I am a horrible speller and have the grammar skills of a 12 year old may become painfully obvious.

This goes out to everyone looking to waste some time at work!

I HATE AIR TRAVEL! Can I get a witness?!

A few weeks ago saw kid who was wearing a T-shirt that said "Friends don't let friends fly Southwest." I had just flown Southwest about two days earlier and I couldn't have agreed more. In fairness though, it isn't just Southwest, it is all the airlines. You don't get anything anymore. Food for instance. You don't get meals, you get snacks. Which even as snacks go are a joke.

On one flight I counted the peanuts I was given as my snack. My package contained seventeen and a half peanuts. From Chicago to Reno I was supposed to subsist on SEVENTEEN AND A HALF PEANUTS!

It doesn't stop just at the food, airlines no longer provide movies, TV reruns, music, or space. That would be bad enough right? But noooo, airlines are missing the charming intangibles of old and have replaced charm with the following:

1. Virtually, no hot stewardesses (I would even settle for stewardesses who don’t hit me with the drink cart, bash me in the head with a seat buckle while demonstrating to people the subtle nuances of those rare locking devices, jam their asses in my face while adjusting things in overhead bins, or apologize for ANY of the following),

2. Cushions that give me horrible butt-ache.

3. Anxiety attacks from wondering if you will be unpatriotic by going to the forward lavatory at the same time as someone else therefore engaging in illegal congregating activities.

Am I wrong here or is it un-American for us to now be charged a minimum of twenty-five dollars to super-size our luggage? Hell, you have to pay just to have luggage most of the time. My mom used to pack luggage that require pallbearers to carry. If she did that now it would require pallbearers to carry off my dad off after he got billed. Over all, flying just seems to have lost any charm it may have once had.

Maybe I was just young and stupid, but it used to be exciting. Now it has morphed into bus travel gone wild, minus any nudity or beads. Though, I don't think nudity would help the experience, I have sat next to very few people I would ever want to see in any form of nude.

ONE TIME have I got a seat next to a really hot girl. I have flown probably close to a hundred times and all I get is one time out of a hundred?! Lucky for me, that hot girl sat next to her boyfriend and the two of them proceeded to make out the whole flight. Can't say the flight wasn't memorable, just not for the reasons that I had hoped for when I spotted her in my row as I was walked down the isle.

Several times lately I have had the distinct feeling in an airport that I am livestock. You get herded in and out of lines, through gates and prodded with metal detecting wands in your rear and crotch. Besides being shot in the head No Country For Old Men style and being turned into an Omaha Steak once you get to the plane what is missing? 

Of course the people running the cattle drive are rarely friendly. I was running late for a flight recently after getting stuck in traffic and I went to a airline employee and asked if there was any way I could get rushed through so I could be sure to make my flight. She looked at me like I had asked for a back rub and said, "Yeah. You can rush on to the back of the line!"

I hate those moments because I am always surprised by them. When I am surprised I never have a good comeback. So for the next half hour while I wait in line I think of all the clever things I should have said. "Oh yeah well your jobs sucks more than mine! And I don't even have a job!" Or, "I bet all your friends really aren't your friends...they uhh...only like you because you are so pathetic you make them feel better about themselves!" Yeah…so take that…I am full of a lot of snappy comebacks like that, maybe even better ones…maybe.

I guess in some ways it isn't fair get angry at the airlines. They are just trying to find ways to appease our demand for lower prices. They basically said here are your low prices, hope you enjoy your butt-ache and seventeen and a half peanuts losers!

The real people we should blame are scientists. Why haven't they invented personal, affordable, safe teleporting. I mean even the OLD Star-Trek had it! And that was like fifty years ago! What's the deal? Didn't we get telegraph and phone close to a hundred and fifty years ago? You are telling me that the best we can do in a hundred and fifty years is give me a phone without wires that plays movies the size of a postage stamp?

Shoot, if we spent as much time and money figuring out how to teleport as we do on how to wage wars and kill people we could be faxing me to Yemen right now. And how much more peace would there be in the world if no one had to fly Southwest?

Then again what would happen to that feeling of excitement you get as a young single man boarding a plane with the hope that you will get to sit next to an attractive member of the opposite sex...who of course is making out with her boyfriend for five nonstop hours, uninterrupted by movies, TV reruns, food or music.

Excuse me while I go see what happens when you congregate next to the forward lavatory.