A Sarcastic Overview of Air Travel

PositronWildhawk It's the summer! Yippee. As I was saying this time last year, we are being joyfully held at gunpoint to make use of the seething heat of the great sphere of plasma and ravenous swarms of carriers of typhoid and dysentery to have fun while every government-funded joint shuts down. It's all a delightful recipe for sunburn and suffocation, so would I ever question these people's motives while they complain about it? Not as much as they'd hate being a little bit cold in six months' time, where all is boring, silent, sanitary and sober. It is thus perfectly orthodox and besuited of these people to go somewhere even worse in the time that they have to waste, and they often get there by aeroplane. Because a rocket was too cool and a train has never crossed the English Channel.

Let's follow the journey of a typical airline traveller, shall we? He enters an airport, to which he has brought ten tons worth of cargo ready to test out the strength of that mighty Boeing. Taking the ticket to the desk, he pays the ugly bag at the desk before she tells him there's a catch for travelling to this foreign country. Either the number on his debit card will get him convicted as a war criminal, or he can't be white without having a bodyguard, or he has to fill out the eighty-page consent form that ensures he won't be left stranded in a mental institution. Which one is it this time? Who knows? Having done all this research and not once being told that the foreign security freaks won't allow flip-flops and mango juice positive urine test samples without a license, there must be some bloody dignified explanation for why he has to go to several help desks before he can get on the bloody plane. The explanation is simple: they like giving people a hard time. The last time someone went on the plane with an Asian electronic device, they say, all the pilots were tied up with turbans and tossed into a towering inferno, so you gotta keep those rogue genie lamps where they can't be rubbed. And the pains of this procedure are only being cruel to be kind, when we see what happens after hours of being tested for metal-plated genitalia, and then finding out that one was in the wrong queue.

Looking through crap on sale on the other side of the security gate, we see various low-lifes buying cheap booze before they board the plane. Sitting around for so long before the gate opens, in which time several other airlines have sent off their lucky buggers, that half the slaves for their business have died of boredom. More queuing and being checked for cooties occurs before finally being shoved along a tube made to accommodate the average 11-year-old being able to stand up and into a seat that is perfectly capable of comfortably seating a man with no legs. Children and the disabled have clearly been given a priority, and with so many people in this world who are children and/or disabled, it would be a true sign of respect and human rights to design the seats to give everyone the same amount of room: approximately as much room and oxygen as a corpse would make significant use of; and exactly the same amount of what everyone else has: body odour, mushy skin, loud voices and puking babies. Communism has always had its equalising influences on planes, from this to their downward trajectory over East Berlin and later Pyongyang, and will clearly only continue to do so.

Our strong-stomached traveller has now been sitting wedged between two normal-sized people that severely limit his ability to breathe fluidly, but for the sake of conserving air, which does become thinner at high altitudes, he keeps it that way. Not to mention how he resists higher air intake and increase in blood pressure as he is constantly kicked in the back and shoved to one side of his seat by the masses around him, as he has the patience to keep a cool head, amazingly still attached to his neck. With that said, they have been waiting yet longer for the plane to get moving. Everyone's here, but nothing's happening. Oh wait, here comes the safety info. Please use life jackets for water landings, they say. How about crashing into the ocean, which is obviously vastly different as this is not a pontoon plane? Use the oxygen masks for emergencies, they say. Like when the oxygen masks don't deploy? Or when you hear the intercom: "My name is Abdul and I'll be your hijacker."? It won't matter if the plane's headed straight for the Empire State Building if we have oxygen masks, seatbelts and everything else in this video! We are prepared for literally every possible scenario, from being shot down over North Korea to being abducted by aliens, and knowing that every possible outcome is conceivable given the Many Worlds Theory and the Boltzmann-Lucretius Scenario, preparing for absolutely everything is like asking Stephen Hawking to help a 5-year-old with his maths homework. Couldn't be simpler for the airline firm, with all the engineers and pilots having very specific physics degrees.

The plane finally takes off, and it's only been feeling like five years instead of six. Our traveller gets his own screen, with access to a broad selection of movies and TV episodes, ranging in quality from meh to sod all. The man goes for a meh, only having to use headphones with a port that looks like it came from another planet, which break when getting onto his normal-sized head. Another traveller who has managed to get them on is constantly re-adjusting them so he can hear the on-screen drivel, which is accompanied by the screen which looks like it is smoothing out its bruises when it is animating the characters' motion. After hours of eye-strain, he joins the queue to do a number one, only for him to be approximately number two hundred and seventeen in said queue. With the air flow disrupting so many stomachs, it's a wonder why the windows won't open, to let some fresh air in and everyone out by cabin pressure.

Two hundred and sixteen flushes later, and our traveller is able to wiz. Having as much room standing up in here as he did when seated in his seat, he collides with the walls of this cubicle multiple times before reaching a peeing position, only being so dehydrated that it takes a bit of force. Screw that, a lot. Luckily, the stewardess has attended to his bodily functions, and when he gets back to his seat, dinner is served. Travelling somewhere exotic and raring to try out obscure and authentic cuisines, the food most unlike any other is that which is prepared at altitudes above 30,000 feet. What's kind is that there are basically no customs, so no way in which a man from any country can eat this is likely to offend. The starter is typically a hard bread roll containing elements of the natural Earth, such as those in rocks, with butter which has clearly been poison checked before being deemed safe, as it looks half-digested. The main course is often some kind of animal that isn't legal to eat in most continents, being cooked well done rare, or not at all, and mixed together with mucus and mayonnaise; and for veggies, shavings of grass pan-fried in fish guts (yes, we accept that vegetarians generally eat fish). Dessert, to finish, is a piece of cake with no exotic additions, except the peas that should probably have been with the main. After this token of gratitude, magic is worked upon the human body. Our traveller feels all the water remaining in his body flow in a tsunami-like current to the bowels, and suddenly obtaining the energy needed to dart back to the cubicle, ready for a whole new number: six; when one and two pass through each hole.

By the time half the people on board are dead, the plane comes into land. Our traveller heaves himself out of his seat, pulling his legs out of his face and snapping his spine out from under his pelvis, before waiting again to abandon ship. Only this means the pilot has to make dangerous maneuvers ON THE GROUND before anyone can get off. We hope you enjoyed your flight, they say. And I think he did. Experiencing several hours of time dilation which violates expectations, being able to fix legal issues he never knew existed, preparing for the next seatbelt calamity or communist revolution, tasting a stomach-convulsing cuisine, all with two moles of oxygen an hour, this man has seen things only those on the brink of society will see. By flying with these people, one can learn new things, and potentially speak as an individual who no longer takes freedom and human rights for granted. Just be sure to find a way to entertain yourself, and whatever movies you check out, don't see Time To Destination.

Comments

What IS THIS?!?! - JaysTop10List

It's paradox... #teampuga - CerealGuy

"My name is Abdul and I will be your hijacker" - Puga

Not to fret, I saw the video! - PositronWildhawk

Dude, this is awesome! - visitor

I agree. PositronWildhawk is my Nizza! - visitor

I'm happy you didn't rip off anything or too much material from that old George Carlin skit lol - visitor

Only saw that after you mentioned it. Laughed a lot. - PositronWildhawk

This is funny. But North Korea's not communist, not at all. They're Juche. - PizzaGuy

"they're more of a heredity military totalitarian dictatorship.... Did I say that right? " -Hank Green - keycha1n

But North Korea isn't that bad UNLIKE the media said - CerealGuy

They are just nothing. - 05yusuf09

@Keycha1n Yup - PizzaGuy

I'm hijacking a plane! - visitor

MUSLIM! - visitor

RACIST! - PositronWildhawk

@visitor Ignorant. - visitor

ALLAHU SNACKBAR - CerealGuy

@visitor
Anyway, I find it offensive because I'm a hijacker and I find this plane - CerealGuy

CerealGuy, did you book? - PositronWildhawk

No I quickscope it - CerealGuy

CerealGuy is officially in control of the plane. And that's not good. - PositronWildhawk

Hey you kid, let's shout Allahu Akbar as we are going to crash a tower - CerealGuy

Tower? WTC towers? 9/11? - 05yusuf09

Idiot visitor sighting! - visitor

You forgot:
The person who kicks your chair
The person who gets their seat wrong and goes to the other side of the plane, causing hassle.
The person who uses your armrests as footrests - iliekpiez