Yankee Tag Blog

I’ve been flying a lot lately for work. A lot. Like six or eight flights a month. All that time on planes has given me quite an opportunity to think about how planes shouldn’t work. I’m not stupid, I know they do, I just don’t think they should. They weigh like a million pounds. And they’re metal. And they fly through the air. And I know, I’ve heard all of the statistics. Sure, you’re less likely to die in a plane crash, than you are a car. What makes you think I feel safe in cars? Clearly you haven’t ever met a semi-truck driver. I certainly don’t feel safe driving next to them. Semi-truck drivers. Salt of the earth.

The worst part about flying isn’t the flying itself, necessarily. It’s the other people who fly. I’m sure they’re no different than the other people who shop at grocery stores, sit next to me in coffee shops, or loiter pathetically by themselves at my local bar. I just hate them more, because for the next hour or two I can’t get away. I do everything possible to get away. I put on my iPod, wear my crusty old ballcap as low as I can, and keep my nose buried in a book (whether or not I’m actually reading anything). But I can’t get away. I want to point out to these people that I’m sitting next to them because random bad luck put a seat number on my ticket that was unfortunately close to the number on theirs. But for some reason, they always seem to think I chose to sit next to them and, as such, they go out of their way to make small talk to me about shit I couldn’t possibly care less about. And it’s always the person I have the absolute least in common with. Every single time it’s some desperate, overweight fifty-some-odd woman who’s clinging desperately to the last vestiges of sexuality by wearing disgustingly tight clothes that she purchased fifteen years ago, back when they were only marginally out of style.

On my flights, I’ve been doing a bit of reading while I try not to make eye contact with the desperate, overweight fifty-some-odd woman who is sitting uncomfortably close to me. One of the books I read recently mentioned that computers are becoming so advanced that in the next decade they will actually surpass the capability and capacity of the human mind. So, I guess, that means they’re currently less capable than the human mind. That doesn’t bother me because I think we should suppress the robot race anyway. We need to, we’re not allowed to buy regular slaves anymore and I don’t want to clean my own house. Like I said, it’s fine that computers aren’t as capable as humans. Or, it would be fine, except that I also read that computers currently handle almost every aspect of commercial airline flight. They’ve even taken over the takeoff and landing procedures. Wait a minute… we’re leaving flying this plane to something less capable than a human? Isn’t there a hamburger this computer could flip or something? That’s got to take less finesse. We can’t possibly be out of available humans already, I seem to recall reading somewhere that we’re shipping all of our jobs to India or Mexico or Vietnam or Canada, or some other third world country. I guess I didn’t realize that we were sending the employees, too.

It is strangely comforting that we still put “pilots” in the seats up front, even if all they do is make announcements about seatbelts and cellphones. With all of the financial problems airlines are having, you would think they would just sell those seats, too. I would pay a premium to be locked behind a door marked boldly, “Terrorists, please don’t kick this door in and kill us all.”

Finally, I’m a little disappointed that we still have so much security at airports. It’s not that I’m not afraid of terrorism, I’m just disappointed we haven’t killed them all yet. September 11th was six-and-a-half years ago. And we already figured out the magic anti-terrorism resistance tool: one quart ziplock plastic bags. Apparently anything put inside a ziplock bag is safe. Remember 3-1-1 to speed my screening process.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS