Worse Eight Hour Flight Ever

Worst flight ever? This kid apparently screamed like a demon
during an entire eight hour flight this past summer from
Germany to New Jersey. He also climbed over
everything, including sometimes, passengers. 

Everybody's got stories of their Worst Flight Ever.

I think the people on an eight hour flight from Germany to New Jersey have one of the best stories.

A kid screamed like a demon during the entire flight. it really does sound like a horror movie. You can watch the video at the bottom of this post if you don't believe me.

This happened in August, but is getting more traction on line now.  The video tag line says the incident unfolded because the kid was addicted to technology and couldn't always have it, but I think more was going on.

This kid has problems. Screaming like that for a full eight hours? And climbing all over the seats and even people? Geesh!

Yes, we should be sympathetic to children who might have some sort of mental illness, but this still had to be The Worst for the rest of the people on the plane. I honestly don't know if the parents could have done their parenting job better, or that the kid might have autism or something else that made him uncontrollable.

This is only my opinion, but judging from the video, it didn't help that the mom seemed to try only half-heartedly to get the boy under control.  On some flights, I've had to deal with slightly unruly kids from time to time, but this is so out of control. My sympathies to the people who had to go through this.

Here's the video:

Impatient Man Finds Another Way To Get Off Plane

This guy decided to leave a plane by opening an emergency
exit and getting out on a wing because it took too long
to get out the usual way. 

If you've ever flown, one minor annoyance is the wait to get off the plane once it lands, particularly if you're seated near the rear of the plane.

The way the airlines overcharge for checked baggage, people cram their stuff as tightly as possible into the overhead compartments. Which means it takes FOREVER for people to get their stuff and get out.

One man on a Ryanair flight from London that landed in Spain found another way out. He just opened the emergency exit and got out onto the wing of the plane.

This is not a recommended means of egress. You do get in trouble for it. In this case, the man, identified as a Polish national, was coaxed back onto the plane and arrested. 

Here's a video from another passenger:

Tarantulas On A Plane. Really!

How'd you like this guy to be your seat mate
on your next airline flight?  

Both real life and fictional airline flights are fraught, let me tell you.

I've recently written about the impossibly long lines created by TSA staff shortages and incompetence combined with a do-nothing Congress.  

We have idiotic movies, like Snakes On A Plane, which certainly sounds unpleasant.

Now we've just had a real life drama that's even worse than the aforementioned movie.

Tarantulas on a plane!

Makes me look forward to some upcoming flights I'm taking in June.

According to The Guardian newspaper, two huge tranantulas got loose in the passenger cabin on an April flight from the Dominican Republic to Montreal, Quebec Canada.

Understandably, the incident had passengers screaming and standing on their seats, and flight attendants urging everyone to keep their ankles covered.

Yeah, a lot of good that would do for the women on the flight wearing skirts or dresses.

Let's allow Catherine Moreau of Quebec tell her in-flight story, as related by Radio Canada:

"I was wearing a skirt and a spider crawled up my leg...,...It was during a meal. My husband managed to catch the spider in a plastic container, but it wriggled its legs out. My daughter was crying, she was in shock."

Yeah, I bet!

Especially since they're so huge.

The Guardian and Radio Canada said that a Montreal entomologist, Etienne Normandin said the type of spider on the plane is roughly four to eight inches long and has fangs that can be nearly an inch long.

The bad news, Normandin said, is this type of spider is quite aggressive. The good news, I suppose, is the venom in these spiders isn't especially potent.

Great. I'm sure everybody who was on the plane was just overjoyed with that news.

The tarantulas were on the plane in the first place because probably some idiot hid them in their carry on luggage and they escaped.

Apparently, there is a market for these things and the mystery passenger who brought them on board probably intended to sell them in the Montreal area.

Tarantulas as pets? No thanks. I'll just keep my two furry non-aggressive, happy and not scary dogs, thanks.

Doing Math On A Plane Can Get You Pegged As A Terrorist

Guido Menzio is a briliant economist and mathematician,
but not a terrorist, despite his habit of doing
math equations of airline flights.  

I'm not particularly good at math, and in fact I'm terrified of advanced equations.

Still, math does not, um, equate to terrorism,.

Except for one paranoid woman aboard a recent airline flight who decided that the professorial guy next to her scribbling math equations just had to be a terrorist.

Why else would a guy intently work on complicated math equations unless he was a terrorist plotting to blow up the plane?

Because if you're doing math equations, the next step is to build a bomb and set it off, right?  Never mind you can't just build a bomb out of nothing but math equations, but whatever.

This guy really had to be a terrorist because he had olive colored skin, had dark curly hair and spoke with a foreign accent.

Everybody who is not lily white is a terrorist, right?

At least that's what one really weird, paranoid woman apparently thought. She delayed a flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse the other day for two hours because she reported the guy next to her as a terrorist.

The guy doing math.

As Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post writes, the woman saw Something.

"That Something she'd seen had been her seatmate's cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn't recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3930.

She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism."

It turns out the "terrorist" doing math is Guido Menzio, a brilliant Ivy League economist and among many other awards, was declared the best Italian economist under age 40, says the Washington Post.

He was doing math as part of his focus on search theory, which is too technical to get into here.

It seems that anything anybody does now is suspicious.

I'm afraid I'm going to get kicked off a flight soon for my behavior. On flights, I sometimes read books. Not on a Kindle or something like that, but a physical book. Nobody does that anymore. That's suspicious.

Plus, I'm a hopeless weather geek. If I have a window seat and see some particularly interesting clouds, I'll sometimes snap a photo of them with my smart phone. Taking pictures aboard a plane?

Terrorist!

Luckily I'm white, so Paranoid America won't suspect me as much as some Italian mathematician, who has darker skin.

For his part, Menzio told the Washington Post he was treated respectfully through the whole thing, but he is troubled by the ignorance of his fellow passenger, and a rigid security protocol that stops everything for often no reason, and relies on people who are clueless.

The Paranoid Woman didn't reboard the flight, safe in the knowledge the mathematics didn't kill her.

Or anybody else.

Lesson learned: Don't do math on a plane.

Airlines And Congress Hate Us And Love Money. So We'll Keep Suffering

The way things are going, I think airliners will
look like this pretty soon.  

I'm a big guy. I stand six feet tall and weigh 200 pounds.

I suppose I could make the airlines a tad bit happier and me a lot healthier if I lost 30 pounds or so.

But meanwhile, thanks to the airlines and money hungry Congress creatures, I and millions of others will continue to be totally uncomfortable and cramped when we fly somewhere.

According to The Economist, people did try to work with the airlines and Congress for relief. Of course, that was totally naive.

An outfit called FlyersRights.org, a nonprofit that represents air travelers, sent a petition to Congress demanding new guidelines for a minimum distance between rows in planes, said the Economist.

Things looked good at first. Steve Cohen, D-Tennessee, recently introduced an amendment to a Federal Aviation Administration funding bill that would have mandated a certain amount of legroom for airline passengers, the Economist reported.

Cohen said the average distance between seat rows dropped from 35 inches before airlines were deregulated in the 1970s to 31 inches today. Average seat width has declined from 18 inches to 16.5 inches.

Cohen drafted his amendment, sensibly, on public safety grounds. He said the FAA requires planes to be evacuated within 90 seconds in an emergency, and no studies have been done on whether this can be accomplished now that planes are so cramped.

He and other backers also worried about the health effects of people being in such restricted environments for too long. This arrangement can cause dangerous blood clots.

But, the House Transportation Committee shot down the measure.

I wonder if campaign donations had anything to do with this vote.

According to the Intercept:

"The chairman of the committee, Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa, urged his members to vote against the amendment, and every member of the party did, except Rep. Don Young R-Alaska. 

Air transport PACS (political action committees) are Shusters largest source of campaign funding, with backing from major airlines such as American, Alaskan, Continental, Delta, Haaiian, JetBlue and Southwest. Air transportation PACS have given $92,000 to Shuster this cycle."

I wonder, then, if the airlines will keep shrinking space in the planes, because they do have cover from Congress. No, I don't want to overregulate industry, but I don't want industry to overregulatethe public either.

But I guess they have free reign to do so. I guess the airlines will eventually start stacking us on flights like cordwood.

Difficult Decision: Who Is Moron Of The Week: Florida Shooter Or Conrad Hilton III

This really dumb bro in Florida wanted to set up
a shooting range in his yard in the middle of a densely
populated suburb. What could go wrong? Add caption

Joseph Carannante, 21, who lives near St. Petersburg, Florida, likes to target practice with his gun.

Nothing wrong with that. Lots of people do.

Problem is, he wants to do it in a densely populated neighborhood where a lot of kids live. And because of lax NRA-inspired laws, he can.

WFLA-TV says people in the Lakewood Estates neighborhood are outraged at Carannante, and I can't blame them one bit

Caranannte's front yard shooting range is little more than a pile of sand. Like that's going to stop a bullet.

This isn't some remote place with no houses. It's a densely populated suburban neighborhood. Houses and yards are all right next to each other, and Carannante is right in the middle of it.

Talk about carrying Second Amendment rights too far! Yep, Carannante has the right to have a gun and shoot it. But he thinks that his Second Amendment rights trump his neighbors' right to enjoy their own property without fear of getting killed.

Oh, Carannante is so generous! He's offered to let his neighbors know when he's going to shoot, so they can all hide and stay out of the line of fire. So on weekends, when the kids want to play outside, Mom and Dad want to fire up the barbecue, and the new people down the block want to gather on the deck for some afternoon cocktails, they can't.

Because Carannante all but said he expects everybody to hide away while he fires his gun.  Apparently, it's too much work to drive all the way to a shooting range, poor baby.

Like Florida doesn't have a zillion shooting ranges.

"I don't want to have to go to a gun range, when I can just go outside my door," Carannante whined to WFLA.

Hey, it's only a 9 mm gun he's got. What could go wrong?

At the urging of the NRA, Florida has a law barring municipalities from barring gun ranges in people's yards.

Says TampaBay.com:

"Legislators passed a law in 1987 that declared state statutes superseded the laws of local municipalities when it comes to gun regulations.

Upset that some cities were still toying with local ordinanes, the Legislature passsed another law in 2011 that authorized hefty penalties for violations. Local officials could be removed from office and face personal fines of up to $5,000 for passing gun regulations."

But even the local NRA head thinks Carannante is a bonehead, and disputes the idea the law allos Carannante's stupidity. Says BayNews9 in Florida: 

"An NRA lobbyist in Florida also made a statement about the issue Monday. 'Shooting ranges don't belong in dense residential neighborhoods and, in fact, nothing in the law allows them,'" said Marion Hammer.

 There was some possible good late breaking news this morning on this situation.

Via the Daily Kos, a neighbor reports that a local radio station and a Florida shooting range helped out. Said the neighbor:

"This morning, a popular radioshow at 102.5 "The Bone" called young Mr. Carannante and offered a one year free membership to a gun range, donated by Shooter's World in Tampa.....They convinced the kid to commit to tearing down the pile of pallets and sand."

That's good, but it appears the neighborhood, the radio station and the shooting range all had to offer rewards for stupid Carannante to give up his plan. That's why this world can be sad. They only way we can protect ourselves from awful people is to reward them.

Something ain't right.

Speaking of "Ain't Right," we now offer, from the Washington Post, a simultaneously sad, infuriating and funny account of an airline flight on July 31 on which hotel heir Conrad Hilton III was aboard.  

Pretty faced rich boy bro Conrad Hilton III
caused a HUGE ruckus on a overseas flight
last summer. Makes him sound like
the Worlds Most Obnoxious Person.  

As the Post describes him: "Meet Conrad Hilton III,  younger brother to Paris and some kind of royalty in his own mind, it appears."

Anyway, Conrad Hilton III was Not Pleased with his flight experience aboard the British Airways Flight 269 from London to Los Angeles.

Of course, the FBI and other law enforcement are Not Pleased with Conrad's behavior, and he was in court this week facing federal charges of being an asshole on a plane. A really big dick, actually.

The Washington Post quoted from a conversation Conrad had with the FBI, which is contained in a 17-page indictment against Conrad filed this week in U.S. District Court.

"'I told all of them I could get all of their jobs taken away in less than thirty seconds,' Hilton said, according to the complaint, as he recalled interactions with flight attendants.

He credited a man at the back of the plane with stopping him from killing a flight attendant 'If that man wasn't there, that guy (the flight attendant) would have been #%*&# killed on that flight. A hundred percent I would have killed him.'"

On the bright side, Conrad's narrative to the FBI matches that of flight attendants and passengers on the flight, who also had conversations about the experience with the FBI. No need to sort any "he said, she said," is there.

See? Conrad is so helpful.

It all started roughly a half hour into the 10-hour flight, when attendants started the task of serving drinks to passengers, but Conrad kept standing the aisle, blocking the way and refusing to move.

From the Washington Post: 

"One flight attendent described Hilton as flying from 'one tirade after another' throughout the flight. He complained that the flight attendants were ignoring him or 'taking the peasants' side.' 

He whined about being upset because he broke up with his girlfriend, one flight attendant said. He bragged that his dad would bail him out of the situation as he had in the past. After all, he's already banned from several other airlines, he told the flight attendants."

'My father will pay this out, he has done it before. Dad paid $300,000 last time,' Hilton allegedly said."

Gawd, I don't care how rich Conrad's dad is, this dude is too expensive. If I were dear old dad, I'd jettison the kid and make him get a job at McDonald's or Walmart. That would teach him.

It went on, says the Washington Post:

"Food and drink service were delayed for more than 40 minutes as flight attendants struggled to deal with Hilton walking up and down the aisles in a rage. Just about every sentence featured the f-word. And Hilton seemed particularly keen on directing his rage against male members of the flight crew.

One flight attendant reported to investigators that Hilton at one point swund at him but missed his face by 'about ten centimeters.' His fist hit the bulkhead instead.

'If you wanna square up to me, bro then bring it on and I will %&*$# fight you,' Hilton allegedly told the flight's co-pilot in another incident."

If I were the co-pilot, I would have let Conrad try to fight. I'm sure everyone who paid good money to be on the flight would have been more than willing to jump in and help.

I think Conrad's pretty boy face could use a good messing up anyway. It would give him character. Lord knows he needs it.

Conrad complained that a male passenger was giving him the "stink eye" which Conrad took to mean either the guy wanted to fight him or have sex with him.

I really, REALLY think the guy wanted to fight you, Conrad. And maybe flush your head down the toilet.

You were already spending too much time in the bathroom anyway, smoking a joint, says the flight crew and FBI. The pot didn't mellow you out much, did it?

Conrad, exhausted from his duties of being an enormous prick, finally fell asleep the crew tied him up with restraints. Conrad later woke up, discovered the restraints and screamed, "I'm goin to $*&@ kill you!"

Yeah, whatever.

If convicted, Conrad faces up to 20 years in prison. But don't worry, he won't spend so much as a minute behind bars. I'm sure daddy will bail him out of this mess, again.

But if I ever find myself on a flight with one Conrad Hilton, III, I won't put up with his bull.

I'm one of those "peasants" who would find something fun and humiliating for him. It would be a blast!

Or better yet, maybe our Florida gun nut can use Conrad Hilton III for target practice instead of the pallets and pile of sand in his yard that he wanted to use.

Idiot Who Made Bomb Threats Against Airlines "Did It For Lulz"

From Buzzfeed: Part of the Twitter exchange between
Internet Troll "Zortic" and Delta Airlines Saturday.  

If media reports turn out to be true, some idiot made bomb threats against two airliners on Saturday "for the lulz"  

The word "lulz" for those not up on Internet jargon, is a plural form of LOL, for laughing out loud.

Yep, our bomb threat guy did it for the laughs.

Just when you thought Internet trolling could not possibly get any worse, it did.

The Internet troll who did this, via Twitter, will be having LOTS of lulz, I'm sure, when the FBI catches up to him or her.

And they will. It's fairly easy to figure out who is on Twitter when law enforcement really wants to know.

According to Reuters and just about every other news source, Delta Air Flight 1156 from Portland, Ore. and Southwest Flight 2492 from Milwaukee were both en route to Atlanta Saturday when somebody on Twitter names Zortic started the "fun."

Buzzfeed captured the whole Twitter exchange between Zortic and the airlines. 

Zortic sent a message via Twitter to @DeltaAssist: "I have a bomb on one of your planes but I forgot which one when I left the airport. Can you help me find it?"

Well, right there you can tell it's just a troll being incredibly stupid. But airlines do have to take threats seriously. Just because of the off-chance there could be a mad bomber around

NORAD dispatched two F-16 fighter jets to escort the two airliners to Atlanta. Investigators scoured the planes, re-screened the passengers and found no bomb.

But look at the trouble and money and resources "Zortic" caused, all in the name of "Lulz"

At the end of his little game, Zortic had one last message on his now-deleted Twitter account, taunting people to raid him. "I'm a God. Completely untouchable and I challenge @FBI @CIA @NSA to actually get off their asses."

Oh, I'm sure these agencies are off their asses, Zortic. They just like to make arrests on their own terms. You'll see.

I've seen quite a few creative suggestions on how to punish Zortic, you know, just for the lulz. The best is to leave him in an un-airconditioned cargo hold in the sun all day in a plane parked on the tarmac at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta on the hottest, most humid day of the year.

If they do that punishment for Zortic, can we have a live web feed of it please? Just for the lulz?

I keep saying there needs to be more aggressive prosecution of the most abusive Internet trolls to set an example. You can use existing laws barring threats, stalking, that sort of thing, to punish these idiots.

I hesitated before writing this post, because I don't want to give the trolls the attention they crave. But instead of pretending they don't exist, it's probably better to advocate punishment for the worst offenders. Maybe then they'll shut up already.

Best Pre-Flight Safety Instruction EVER

Marty Cobb, shown here appearing on "Ellen" might
be the nation's funniest and quick witted flight attendant. 

Airlines are understandably worried that people on commercial flights don't pay attention to those safety instructions you all hear every time you're on a plane and it's just about to take off.

Some airlines hire famous people to appear in films doing the safety routine, or there's comedy routines, or some bells and whistles.

Via the blog BoingBoing.net, I found one of the best yet.

No bells and whistles. Just a quick-witted flight attendent named Martha "Marty" Cobb offering a hilarious pre-flight safety instruction that certainly had the passengers sit up and take notice.

Congratulations to her for putting them in an unusually good mood amid what is normally the gloom of a cramped and crowded commercial flight.

The video, which has been rattling virally around the Internet for a year and a half now, helpfully is sort of closed captioned, so you can read what Cobb is saying. (Her delivery is pretty rapid fire.)

The Southwest flight attendant got so much notoriety that she ended up in the media last year, even doing a guest appearance on "Ellen."

She is certainly better than a flight attendant I had to deal with last summer on a United flight from Chicago to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The attendant didn't seem to know which city we were heading to. Every time it came up to mention which city we were heading toward, the flight attendant said, Umm...

All of us helpful passengers shouted "Sioux Falls!" when those moments happened. It was a bit scary. We didn't really want to end up in, say, Saskatoon, Canada, although I'm sure that's a lovely city.

Luckily, the pilot and co-pilot seemed pretty sure we all wanted to go to Sioux Falls, and they got us there with no trouble.

But boy, I wish we had this Southwest flight attendent to get us in the proper mood to get us to our destination.

Watch:

Live Tweeting The World's WORST Person On An Airplane

"Nadia" creating a flight from hell.  

Congratulations this morning go out to Ryan Case, an editor for the hit television show "Modern Family" who survived a four hour flight with the world's worst person.

Even better, she live-Tweeted the whole thing, and reading her string of Tweets is just perfect for a good Tuesday laugh.

Other than the fact that "Nadia," the World's Worst Person, was drunk and racist and loud and picking fights and narcisstic and everything else that could be wrong with a person, she was fine.

Hat tip to Mashable for collecting the Tweets. Just click on this link to Mashable, and scroll down and enjoy the Tweets. I won't give more away, because Case's Tweets are too perfect to do any spoilers.

The Tweets are comedy genius though.

This Year's Nominee For Man Who Did Worst Job Handling His Romantic Breakup The

Seattle area law enforcement said they arrested a jerk
for telling them his ex-girlfriend had a bomb
aboard a Southwest flight. He was getting back
 at her for breaking up with him, say authorities.  

If what police say is right, our nominee for creepiest guy, guy who does the worst job of handling a romantic breakup and all around jerk goes to Zachary Milliren, 26, of the Seattle area.  

A 22 year old woman broke up with him not long ago. I'm guessing she wanted to get away from it all, especially him, so she boarded a Southwest flight from Seattle to Las Vegas on June 18.

Milliren knew she was on the plane, so he did what any reasonable jilted man crazed maniac would do. He called police and said the woman had a bomb with her and planned on blowing up the plane, accoring to Seattle PI.

When this sort of thing happens, even if the whole threat seems like a stupid threat, you have to evacuate the plane, and in this case, interview the woman who was said to have the bomb.

Of course, the woman didn't have a bomb, but she certainly had a real dud of an ex-boyfriend. If what police say is accurate, he's one of those horrible, mentally ill people who scare the bejeezus out of their ex's by threatening them. Because they had the GALL to (wisely) leave them.

I'm not minimizing it, either. These guys ARE threats. I just hope he doesn't end up killing anybody.

The woman thought it wise to mention to police the threatening notes she'd gotten from Milligren, so they had their suspect.

He was easy to catch, too. (These wackos are usually pretty dumb) Milliren phoned in the bomb threats from his grandmother's house, police said.

The threats against the ex-girlfriend were pretty scary, so he faces charges along those lines, too. Some of the "love" notes he wrote after the breakup included, "Every day you will be unsafe...Just because you're in another state doesn't mean I can't get you."

And this doozy: "If the pigs come after me because of you, you will live the rest of our life in fear." That one went out to the woman right before he called in the bomb threats.

Milliren thought he was home free, though. He told police he was innocent because, "I didn't make a bomb threat...I just said my girlfriend had a bomb."

Not surprisingly, that argument, did not, um, fly.

He's charged with making a bomb threat and intimidating a witness, and was being held on $250,000 bails, says Seattle PI.

So at least he's off the streets and the women of Washington State are (temporarily, at least) safe from this clown.



 

"Sky Mall" In Flight Catalog Is A Wonder To Behold

If you forget to bring something to occupy your time on a flight, airlines come to the rescue with these AWESOME catalogs in which you can buy, buy, buy!! Everything you never thought you needed but really do.

This guy looks like a car crash victim after the
air bag goes off, but it's a pillow for sleeping
on a plane! From Sky Mall! Get yours today!!!  

So it was on a recent journey from Burlington, Vt. to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, (with a stopover in Chicago)

The flight had  Sky Mall, and I never knew there were so many products I just had to have.

Take computer mouses. Mine's a standard grey, inexpensive, unremarkable little thing. Why shouldn't I go fancy. Like one that looks like a little yellow Lamborghini. Why be boring? Drive your web surfing with the best! A Lamborghini!! .

If I'd gotten tired on my flight, SkyRest could have come to the rescue. It's this inflatable thing you put on the tray at your airline seat and you're supposed to sleep against it. It kind of looks like an airbag that has gone off in a car during a crash.

Somehow, thinking of crashes on an airline flight isn't restful, so I'll skip the SkyRest, thank you very much.

In the pet section, we have something for people who have a dog and no yard. It's a patch of fake grass you put maybe out on your condo balcony. It's where Fido can do his business. It even has a little fake red fire hydrant to get your pooch in the mood to pee. How clever!

But wait, there's more!  I quote the brochure: "The Premium Porch Potty offers an automated rinse and drain system that utilizes embedded sprinklers and an optional water timer to assure the cleanest environment possible."

Yeah, and I'm sure the people who have balconies on the floors below you just love the daily shower of dog crap and pee as you happily and easily wash the Porch Potty.

Now that Fido has done his business, it's time for fun in the sun! Make your pool party special by getting a Singing Gondolier. As the Sky Mall states: "Turns your pool into an enchanging Venetian canal!"

Or at least the noisiest chlorine puddle in the neighborhood.

The contraption is  a little motorized boat that meanders around your pool. On the boat is a little guy with a white hat and striped shirt, holding a paddle, who "serenades you with 3 traditional Italian songs."  The guy's name, I'm not making this up, is Luciano Poolvarotti.

If Venice is this tacky, I will never go there. Let it flood

If Luciano Poolvarotti doesn't make your property fancy and artistic enough, theres some great statues in Sky Mall for all your landscaping needs. Turn your yard into a horror show unique attraction with "The Zombie of Monclaire Moors"  which essentially looks like a terrified boy being sucked into the hell beneath your crabgrass infested lawn.

If that doesn't work, there's the Bigfoot the Garden Yeti statue, which resembles a hungover orangutan. Or try the "Peeing Boy of Brussels" which is basically a statue of a smug looking boy who is definitely peeing and seemingly challenging you to do something about it, you wimp.

If you want something a little friendlier, ther's the "Delightful Dancing Ducks" which is an image of three ducks who look like three very drunk waterfowl trying to imitate the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

All this and more is available in Sky Mall! Maybe we should just take random flights around the country and shop to our heart's content.

Or maybe not.

Worst Start To A Marriage EVER

We don't know they're names, but the happy couple left Atlanta recently for their honeymoon in Costa Rica.

In what might prove to be a very, very short
marriage, a groom got drunk argued with his bride
on their honeymoon flight. He got kicked off the plane.  

Sounds so, so romantic, doesn't it? Launching a marriage in a beautiful, natural tropical paradise. Ahhh..

Well, maybe not. In what might go down as the worst start to a marriage on record, the groom got drunk and argued with his bride on the plane.

Our groom got so disruptive that the Delta flight made an emergency landing in Grand Cayman, according to Reuters.

Our drunk argumentative groom was kicked off the plane and faces drunk and disorderly charges there, Reuters said. He might face even more harsh charges under international law because the airline industry and law enforcement tend to frown on forcing flights to make emergency landings.

As for the (surely) blushing bride, after the groom left the plane joined the rest of the passengers in continuing on to Costa Rica.

She'll probably have a better time without her obnoxious groom anyway.

Sexist Moron Objects to Female Pilot; Rest of World Rolls Their Eyes

A note scrawled on a napkin during a WestJet flight recently has gone viral.  

The sexist note read around the world  

In it, some moron wrote: "To Capt/WestJet. The cockpit of an airline is no place for a woman. A woman being a mother is the most honor, not a "captain."

Our Neanderthal goes on to wish that somebody would have alerted him before the flight that the pilot was a woman, so he could have rebooked.

Of course, I don't have to tell you this guy is more screwed than he thinks.  Imagine how many women besides the captain contributed in some way to the fact the his flight went smoothly and uneventfully.

I did a quick check of WestJet's top level staff and found many positions are held by women. Those positions include business solutions analyst, information technology manager, business analyst, corporate executive, contact for maintenance, materials manager and it goes on and on.

Our napkin scrawler is really screwed because, as the rest of the world knows, the large number of women at WestJet is typical of most companies. First of all, women probably had a hand in building and maintaining the engines in the plane that got Neanderthan Man to his destination safely.

And he's screwed in the rest of his life, too. Women probably helped design and build the car he drives, they probably had a role in designing and building the road he drives on, the house he lives in, and the laptop he might have used to book his WestJet plane tickets.

The pilot in question, Capt. Carey Smith Steacy, posted a photo of the loser's note on Facebook, which is how the world found out about it.

Steacy accompanied the photo with these words, which are in agreement with the points I just made:

"To David: Thank you for the note, you discreetly left me on your seat..... I respectfully disagree with your opinion that the 'cockpit' (we now call it the flight deck as no cocks are required) is no place for a lady. In fact, there are no places that are not for ladies anymore."  

So, Hide, David Hide!   Run! The 17th century is calling for you! Hurry!

Maybe a woman will invent a time machine for you so you can go back to the days of yore, where you belong.

Low Paid, Put-Upon Airport Workers A Security List

OK: Now I've got yet another thing to worry about.

I'm guessing the NSA, in its relentless combing of phone and database records, is probably looking for some Middle Eastern terrorists who might be a threat to our country.

Could bad airport working conditions and wages
lead to crime or terrorism? Workers want
higher wages. Photo by Dave Sanders/SEIU  

That threat might be real, but the New York Times and other news agencies might have indirectly uncovered another threat to our security, especially at airports.

Airports have substantially cut the pay of already low paid airport workers, deny them vacation time or days off, all in the name of cost cutting, according to the Times.

Upon reading this Dan Savage in his blog   raised a good point. The Powers That Be, who slash airport workers' wages, who make them work without breaks or time off, who willfully lower there standards of living because, Profits! might be opening the door to a domestic attack.

Some of these workers will get so resentful, goes Savage's reasoning, that they might resort to illegal activities. Drug running, even helping terrorists.

I think Savage is right.

Of course the airport workers, no matter how lousy their pay and working conditions, have a moral responsibility to not help criminals or terrorists.  But resentment sometimes overcomes morals, like it or not.

Airlines might be saving some cash for their bottom lines (not to mention their executive pay) But are they increasing the threats to our security at the same time?

Yeah, we can't all be millionaires, but maybe treat the workers a teensy, tiny bit better, and maybe give them an occasional pay raise, especially if they do a good job?

It could be a better investment than you'd think.

Airlines Shrinking Seats To Grow Bottom Line

Your bottom is getting an extra tight squeeze in smaller airline seats to fatten airliners' bottom line.

Chalk it up to the good old quest for profitability. I guess torturing passengers, especially beefy ones, is a good way for airlines to make money.

C'mon airlines! You can't  squeeze big guys
like this into seats with just barely enough
capacity for toddlers.  

There's two reasons for the trend. More people can flt on a plane. More people, more tickets, more money.

Also, the airline is more likely to upsell you to more expensive seats that are roomier if they make you terribly, terribly uncomfortable first.

Torturing again: If they make your life as miserable as possible, you're more apt to pay money to feel better. Even if you can't really afford it.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article on the shrinking seats on airplanes:

"This doesn't sit well with many travelers, particularly those who are large or overweight. Arm rests and aisles are also getting slimmed ot wedge in the extra seat, meaning more elbows get bumped. And while seats are now being designed more ergonomically, with better cushions and head rests, the improvements don't stop people from rubbing shoulders."

Airlines are also saying if they ply passengers with snacks, movies, and other distractions, they won't really notice their discomfort.

Yeah, right.

My questions is where does it end? Will airlines put everybody in shrink wrap to make them smaller so they can fit more bodies on?

This kind of news about the already shoddy experience of flying makes me think of Star Trek. Can't we just teleport to wherever we want to go and leave the airlines out of it?

As long as the teleporting machine is large enough to accommodate a big guy

Big People Sometimes Must Buy Two Airline Tickets. Maybe Airlines Should Make Those Two Seats Adjacent To Each Other

It's common practice in the airline industry to make people who can't fit in one airline seat buy two tickets, so they take up two adjacent seats.

An unnamed airline wanted this
big guy to split himself in two to board
 a plane, apparently.  

We can argue whether that's discriminatory, whether it's fair, whether they should make airline seats bigger.

But you'd think if the airline makes somebody buy two seats, they're at least adjacent to each other.

Not so for Les Price, who said the two tickets he had recently were for Rows 17 and 19, according to The Telegraph

Gawd, I wish they had identified the airline. What do they expect? Maybe Price should have cut himself in half, and put himself in the two seats, then reassembled himself when the flight was over

Yeah, yeah, I know the airline computer system probably didn't "know" that the two tickets were for one person, but you'd think somebody would have noted that?

Or did somebody at the airline just want to mess with a fat person's head?  Because it's fun, apparently. Damn airline employee was probably a Size 0 and hostile. Airline employee's brain was probably a Size 0, too.

Woman On Flight To Tampa Just Makes Things Worse For Everybody

Feeling overwhelmed?

Then maybe skip this post for awhile. It shows a woman have the Worst Ever Meltdown on a flight, this one bound for Tampa.

Turn down the volume some before watching. She keeps yelling "God is my savior!" as loud and fast as possible. Not the kind of thing to add to a relaxing flight.

Obviously it was a mental healh problem, which is said. But how is it when someone yells uncontrollably, "God is my savior!" on a plane, nobody does much of anything, but when they yell "Allah Akbar!" which is the same thing, all hell breaks loose and people are arrested.

Yes, you want to be careful and prevent a terrorist plot or disaster when somebody is yelling "Allah Akbar," but this gal needed to be restrained too. If only to protect the woman having a meltdown

In any event, no arrests were made, and we can hope the woman is better now.

What do you think, after watching the following video?

  

Air Passengers Will Always Hate The Woman They Met On Their Flight

News outlets were abuzz Monday about the world's least welcome rendition of the popular song "I Will Always Love You."

It turns out the song by Dolly Parton and popularized by Whitney Houston, was on this woman's heart and mind as she traveled on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York.

The problem was the woman sang the song, repeatedly and loudly, surely enough to make other passengers want to bust open the windows and leap out of the airplane high over Colorado or something.

Here's a brief video of the performance:




This was bad enough, of course. But it could have been worse. Imagine if she sang "Crash Into Me." or   "Free Falling" or even "Leaving on a Jet Plane"

The plane with our "I Will Always Love You:" lady  finally made an emergency landing in Kansas City and the woman, still belting out "I Will Always Love You," was escorted off the plane.

I suggest the surviving air passengers listen to something by Nirvana or Guns N Roses to finally get "I Will Always Love You out of their heads.

She was not arrested, but American Airlines, probably wisely refused to let her set foot on another of their planes so she could continue her trip. And her singing.

Media reports suggest she blamed her diabetes for the episode. Low blood sugar can cause odd behavior, it's true, but geez, somebody give her a cookie or something!

But then, she'd probably start repeatedly singing "Sugar Sugar by The Archies, and another flight would have to make an emergency landing, probably in Sugarland, Texas.

Airline Etiquette Lesson #1: Don't Slap Toddlers and Call Them Racist Names

Yes, we know, sometimes crying toddlers or babies on planes can be annoying.

But what can you do? Parents generally don't bring their squalling offspring onto planes for the express purpose of bothering everybody else on the plane.

Joe Rickey Hundley looking unhappy in
his mug shot after allegedly slapping a
two year old on a plane.

Hell, air travel has gotten so bad and irritating lately that I want to cry on planes, too. But I try to restrain myself.

Too bad Joe Rickey Hundley, 60,  didn't restrain himself. It's been all over the news the past couple of days. A two year old kid started crying as their plane started descending toward an Atlanta airport. Altitude changes really bother some youngsters, and this kid started crying.

His mother tried to quiet him down, but had little success. There's not much you can do about changes in altitude when the pilot is trying to land the plane.

But Hundley was undeterred. According to prosecutors and media reports, he called the kid a terrible racial epithet and slapped the kid across the face.

Yeah, sure. That'll make a kid stop crying. Frighten the bejeezus out of him and hurt him. Needless to say, the kid cried even louder after the alleged assault.

At least one other passenger  intervened so that Hundley was blocked from causing any more harm. According to police documents, that passenger colloborated what the kid's mother said.

Hundley said he asked that the mother quiet the kid but did not hit him. Other passengers disagree.

In his defense, Hundley said he was traveling to Atlanta to visit a hospitalized relative and was upset about the situation, but I don't know if that's quite enough of a defense for hitting a kid who had nothing to do with the relative's hospitalization.

Hundley's lawyer also says that we should let the case develop. So, if there's updates or mitigating factors, we'll pass them along.

Hundley hasn't been found guilty or innocent yet, but there's already fallout. He lost his job, apparently. His now former employer, AGC Aerospace Defense, put a note on the front page of their Web site, noting Huntley is now a former employee and that they don't condone such behavior.

The etiquette lesson here is: If you're irritated by a crying kid on your next flight, suck it up. Because it's even more irritating to face criminal charges, lose your job, and be deemed by the whole world as the biggest jerk on the planet.

So, now that Hundley's alleged misdeeds are all over the Internet, and he apparently needs to look for a new job, are you hiring?

Didn't think so.

Guy's Drunken Escapade on Plane To Live in Infamy

Some of you out there have probably done things while drunk that you're really, really embarrassed about.

You realize people saw and heard about what you did, and you're humiliated about it.

Take heart. Your life isn't nearly as bad as a guy named Gudmunder Karl Arthorsson.

Duct tape really does work for everything!
Subduing a drunk guy on a plane.

Arthorsson, 46, is all over the news and the Internet this weekend.  The stuff about him includes an incredibly humiliating photo of him duct taped to an airline seat on an Icelandic Air flight bound for New York.

Arthorsson was more bound than the rest of the passengers on the flight, that's for sure.

Passengers said our friend was boozing heavily as the plane zipped along toward New York. Apparently, Arthorsson is not a happy drunk. Fellow passengers said he groped and assaulted fellow passengers, yelled that the plane was going to crash and exhibited other highly unpleasant behavior.

Passengers and crew were annoyed to say the least, not to mention worried he'd do something to endanger them. The result was that very unflattering photo of Arthorsson duct taped to the seat, with more duct tape across his mouth to shut him up.

The photo went viral. He was even the cover model on the front page of the New York Post. The headline was "The Guy in 23C Wants Another Drink!"  

OK, that's not as clever a headline as the Post's famous news flash, "Headless Body in Topless Bar," but the Arthorsson headline will do.

According to The Post:

"Arthorsson was so drunk that when the cops hauled him off the jet at Kennedy Airport, he became terrified and yelled, 'There's a snake on my leg,!' a law enforcement source said.

He was taken to Jamaica Hospital and treated for alcohol poisoning."

For the rest of his life and probably beyond, anything Arthorsson does will be overshadowed by the phrase "Remember that funny photo of that drunk guy duct taped to the airline seat?"

He might even turn end up as a Trivial Pursuit or game show subject.  I bet they'll name a cocktail after him. Get super drunk on a Gudmunder!

Apparently, Arthorsson was on his way to see his fiancee.  I have to wonder if the wedding is still on.

The next time you're on a flight somewhere and want another drink, remember Gudmunder Karl Arthorsson. I bet that will make you decide on a tonic water instead.