Ich bin ein Berliner

[I invited my friend Allie to help me write this post, because more so than anyone I know, she values the sort of ruthless efficiency her German ancestors are known for. And because, as a fellow elitist traveler, she enjoys discussing the trials and tribulations that jetsetters like us must endure on a bimonthly-basis. She's blogging in blue; I'm in blogging in green.]

I’m sitting in the airport in Las Vegas at 9PM on a Sunday. I’ve made this mistake before—for some reason, I always think I can squeeze out a couple more hours of fun/sluttyness/sin. That’s never the case—it always turn into one long—very, very long—walk of shame home.

There’s a portly, homely-looking lady in her late-unmarried thirties sitting next to me (you know the type: high-wasted jeans, light pink crocs paired with a “slimming” black Haines beefy tee). She’s talking loudly on her cell phone; not because of bad reception—no…it’s clear that she wants us all to hear her conversation so that we think she’s cool (we’ve all used that voice before, let’s be honest). But here’s the deal: she’s asking if the person on the other line has any Plan B. Now I see why she was talking loudly—she wanted us to know she was sexually active. You would think fat-sex would be something you’d try to block out of your mind, and you’d be right. But still, it’s like a train crash—you gotta watch. Or listen.

After listening closer, I discover that the person on the other line is her Mother. “But Mom, I’ve borrowed some from you before. …. You don’t have any? OK, well I think I have some at my house, but it might be expired.” Evidently, this lady is clearly not making the sort of life choices that merit a trajectory away from the double-wide where she rests her head at night.

But, to be honest, her impending pregnancy is not the worst of her problems right now; her fly is down. I kind of want to tell her, but I’m afraid to draw even more attention to her FUPA than it deserves.

Which brings me to my point: Airport Etiquette. Now I’m not going to glamorize the good old days, when we used to get dressed up for flights and flight attendants would Rockettes-style welcome you onto the plane. But a little bit of ruthless efficiency wouldn’t hurt anybody…

#1 Travelators – Slower Traffic: Keep Right.

Pretty clear, right? This mostly applies to couples, groups and

Sidenote: travelator is one of my favorite words. I first developed a love for them in Hong Kong, where 1.5km of travelators carry British expats down from their apartments on a hillside and into the financial districts in the morning, and then switch directions in the afternoon to carry them back home.

especially groups of couples who are EFL—please don’t monopolize the entire walkway. And if you do, when I gently clear my throat 12 inches behind your neck, it’s not because there’s something caught in it—that’s a polite indication that you should step aside, biotch. There’s nothing worse than an abrupt roadblock whilst travelating at a cool 3 km/hour—it kills your flow.

I can be as lazy as the best of them, but I’ve never stepped on a travelator and just stopped walking. That takes some intense laziness, especially as more able-bodied walkers pass by on the other side.

#2 Security Check Points.

What's the world coming to when you can't bring butane, brass knuckles or a loaded pistol onto a plane?

I’m always surprised by the things people forget to take out of their pockets. Really?? You didn’t think your cell phone would set the alarm off? Or that block of lead you had in your fanny pack—you thought that was kosher? I can vaguely understand not being aware of the 3-1-1 rule (no I can’t), but some of the things people get stopped for just baffle my mind.

I was at one airport that had separate “experienced” and “casual” flier lines. Unfortunately, this wasn’t as self-selecting as I would have liked it to be. Ma’am, your walker with tennis ball guards automatically qualifies you as a casual flyer.

As a rule of thumb, I used to pick the line that had the fewest amount of elderly people / families / EFLers. Now, to the inexperienced traveler, this seems like it would be the smart move, right? Wrong. EFLers are usually so scared of American authoritarianism that they’re virtually naked by the time they get to the machines. Parents are so embarrassed of their bratty kids that they’ve got the whips out and ready to use (which, mind you, aren’t metal and can easily pass through the screener). And elderly people are accompanied by TSA employees who can stream them right through the machines. No, it’s the other line—the one with the baby boomers and the middle Americans who seem to blend right in—that’s the worst. And businessmen…don’t even get me started—that laptop never comes out of their briefcase until the last minute, and they’ve got like 25 things they have to unholster from their belts before they can go through the line.

Don’t worry, if you take a long time, I’ll just roll my eyes at the other people in line in an effort to make sure we’re all on the same page: when we collectively get to the other side, and Jeff Probst is standing there waiting with his lit tiki torch, we’re voting YOU off the island.

Great, so now that Chris has covered the perils of checking in, getting through security, and making your way to the gate, we should discuss the terror that awaits at the gate. That almost rhymes. But that’s where the fun ends.

#3 – Gate Lurkers.

We can't all be elite. Seriously, we can't.

You know who they are. When the sassy flight attendant tells people that flight 1512, non-stop service to Houston is about to begin boarding, a line forms faster than you can say “First Class and Gold medallion members Only.” Obviously, none of these people are gold plated (hell, even Fools gold ) Medallion members, but there they are, completely blocking the gate for those whose turn it is to board. What’s that? Oh no, I’m never flying first, nor am I elite (yet…), but I like to think that when I am, the path will be clear and I don’t have to aggressively ask people to move out of my way. Even when the flight attendant gets on the speaker to say that people need to move and make a clear path, they don’t. Let’s get something clear people. Seats are assigned. Getting on first will not make you get to your destination sooner. Further, you are zone 7. You will be boarding in 15 minutes. Sit. Down. I realize there is limited overhead space, but you wouldn’t be so concerned if you hadn’t packed your oversized, overstuffed suitcase that you snuck through security for your 48 hour trip to Vegas. Who wears clothes there anyway?

#4 – Extra Jetway Time

By now you know I hate the boarding process. The fact that some airlines board by zones and others back to front just screams to the inefficiency that is inherent to the process, since obviously the high paid consultants that did studies for the different airlines came up with different results. When the boarding process starts, people naturally get excited (see above), but first, the elite folks get to board. Then, a terrible thing happens. Priority boarding for fatties. Sure, they don’t call it this, but that’s what it is. “People who need extra time getting down the jetway may now board.” The occasional handi-capable person uses this alloted time to board, and rightfully so. But, more often than not, you see Bess and Carl, 700 aggregate pounds of fun, using this chance to waddle their way up to the gate attendant. Oh, I’M SORRY, I didn’t realize eating yourself into an early grave offers the chance to cut in line while you are still on earth. By all means, go ahead, but god help you if you are sitting next to me. Because I will demand that you pay for an extra seat for your girth. Really.

"Remove connection"... what a friendly way to say I hate you.

You’ve heard it before (maybe you’ve even said it yourself): “I just purged a bunch of people from my Facebook account.” Here’s how I translate that irritating statement in my brain: “I’m a douchebag who likes to pretend that the ‘throngs and throngs’ of people–people who I either added myself on Facebook or accepted their friendship request at one point–were just bogging me down so much and I had to cut them out of my life. Because I’m a douchebag and I need to complain that I’m just too popular. And I hate sunshine and dolphins and Project Runway marathons on Bravo.”

So, douchebags of the world, here’s my response to you:

  1. On behalf of those people that you deleted, thanks. We enjoyed being your friend just as much as you enjoyed being our friend (read: not that much). The only difference is that we didn’t have the buckets of time that you clearly have to one-by-one systematically delete individual people from your account. Which brings me to my next point…
  2. Clearly, you have waaaay too much time on your hands. Now I’m not going to say that deleting Facebook friends is a difficult task; it’s not. But deleting hundreds of friends (which is usually the number people toss around as they brag about this accomplishment) is.Here’s some math: It’s a two-click action to sever a Facebook friendship (one to remove, one to confirm). Let’s estimate that it takes two seconds to complete this process (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt with a fast connection), and about 8 seconds on average to make the decision to sever a Facebook friendship (“But I can decide much quicker than that if I don’t want to be friends with someone” you say. Yes, but let’s be sure to factor in all the wandering that you will inevitably do when a scantily-clad profile picture draws you in; really, I’m being generous with this as well). That’s 10 seconds for the whole process, or roughly 6 friendships a minute. If you were to delete 100 friends at this rate, that would take you a little over 16 minutes. So to purge 300 friends (the most common number I hear) would take around 45 minutes. Good lord, what a miserable use of your time.

Seriously, it’s a digital connection. It’s of no cost to you to maintain this electronic relationship. What has our society come to where someone will go out of their way to electronically break off all communication with you, just because they felt like they had “too many friends”?

Before you come back with a douchebag retort that “justifies” your action, let me just say that I’ve heard all of them and they’re all nonsensical. Here are two, followed by my retort:

“But their status updates were annoying.”

Simple solution: hide them from your news feed.

When you see a chronic annoying poster, simply click the “X” to the right and hit “Hide [name]“–easy, right?

Also, your Facebook feed learns what you like reading based on what you’ve clicked in the past. So really, it’s your own fault that your feed is annoying (disclaimer: this is an example of an unverified statement of fact which sounds correct, so just take me on my word). I can personally state that there’s one person in particular whose updates always get shoveled into my feed. Annoying? Yes. But do I click on every single one of them? Absolutely.

“I don’t want them to see my profile anymore”

Simple solution: Create special categories for groups of people and only give them limited access to your profile.

Seeing how your profile looks to other people: just another cool privacy setting brought to you by Facebook.

As much as people bitch and complain about Facebook’s privacy settings, they’re actually pretty straightforward; while they’ve built a lot of interesting features, most people are just too lazy to take advantage of them. One of those features is the ability to setup special groups; here are some examples: “Family”, “Coworkers”, “People I’ve Slept With”, “Aboriginals”, “People I’ve never met before but their profile picture was hot so I friended them”. Another cool feature is the ability to see how other people view your profile, based on what privileges you’ve given them.

Also, what is on your profile that you don’t want them to see? Slutty Halloween costumes? A picture where both of your eyes aren’t lining up correctly because you’re wasted? Really, this begs another question: if you don’t want Aunt Mildred seeing a picture of you doing body shots on a beach in Cancun, should those pictures be up on the internet at all? And maybe you shouldn’t have been so slutty in the first place (there, I said it).

Do you know what those pictures say to me: wow, you graduated from college. So did I. So did your parents. We all have pictures like that somewhere (our parents’ pictures are just in boxes stored in a basement in Boca Raton). And I guarantee you that you only know of about half of them on Facebook. When you run for Congress, they will be found, whether or not you delete me from Facebook (in fact, I think you’re only incentivizing me more if you delete me).

Pretty soon, we’ll get to a point in our society where those photos won’t mean anything anymore. Do you know why? Because in 20 years, you and I will be writing stories for the Washington Post, we’ll be sitting on the other side of the interview table, we’ll have our own kids, and we won’t care about those useless photos anymore because I’m sure we will have had worse. So I’m votingwithmyfeet.com by not caring.

If you’re planning on deleting me on Facebook, do me a favor: let me know, so I can delete you first.

4001919465_ec200e6801About five or six years ago, delis and sandwich shops started to make their credit card machines print out a space for you to leave a tip. At first I thought this was just an anomaly or a poorly programmed machine. But then it began to crop up at more and more places, and before you knew it, nearly every sandwich, pizza and coffee place now includes a place for tip.

Umm, hi. I baaaaarely enjoy forking over the 12.5% tip I regularly give at a restaurants. So if you think you’re getting a tip for entering in my ultra-complicated sandwich order into your machine (yes, I refuse to order off the menu–what are you going to do about it??), you’ve got something else coming to you. Well, to be more accurate, you have nothing else coming to you.

So what have we, as a society, done to address these awkward, tip-less encouters? We completely ignore it. No one wants to be that douchebag who puts a big fat line (or, what’s worse: a “0″ with a line through it) in the tip line, so we ignore it altogether and proceed to sign our name at the bottom of the receipt.

“Wait, am I supposed to tip them??” you’ll ask your friend, pretending as if this is the first time you’ve ever run into this occasion – you liar!

“Umm, just leave it blank, I guess?”

Yes, the cashier could very easily add a $1000 tip for themselves before tucking the receipt into their machine, but we’ve decided that’s a risk we’re willing to take in order to stave off a potentially awkward encounter. Because, at the end of the day, that’s how we live our lives: going to great lengths in order to avoid the next awkward encounter.

And yet, when it comes to writing a check, we always draw the line up until the dollar sign so that they can’t add “and one hundred million dollars” to the end of our scribble. How is that MORE acceptable?

So please, delis of the world, put back that plastic fishbowl so I can “tip” you my filthy pauper coins and be done with you.

battle-cnn-fox-200x267dr

A response to this Huffington Post article.

Taking a middle of the road approach to the news doesn’t mean that you present a topic and have two unqualified people from each side scream at each other for five minutes with limited interruption by the anchor. That approach is something closer to having someone else do your job for you.

Just because CNN divulged itself from taking a political side doesn’t mean it should have divulged itself from journalism, which seems to be their approach. There will always be two sides (or three or four) to every news story, but just because there are doesn’t mean that each side merits the same amount of air time.

It is the journalists’ responsibility to investigate and present the facts behind a story. At that point, if the story merits a partisan response, only then should outside input be included. And the partisan responses should be included in a moderated fashion; no one gains anything when commentators are given a soap box to spew talking points, unchecked by the facts. If a journalists wishes to include outside remarks, they should be responsible enough to hold these commentators to the truth. It’s one thing to have someone else do your work for you; it’s another thing to ask an unqualified partisan to do your work for you.

I stopped watching CNN not because it became too middle-of-the-road but because they were so concentrated and obsessed with that middle that they failed to present the story effectively and truthfully.
More on CNN
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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