St Pauly Girl: May 2007

And by that I mean Ruminate In Perverbial-Hell, you psycho fundamentalist bastard.*

Despite my Catholic upbringing, I don't actually believe in hell. But if it exists, I hope he's there and I hope his hell consists solely of gays & lesbians (especially some whom have legally committed or married and adopted children), liberals, atheists, secularists, humanists, Bill Clinton (once he passes, hopefully not soon, of course), civil rights activists, porn stars, pagans, abortionists, and one TV which will only televise Teletubbies, loudly, with no off switch.

That, my internet friends, would be justice.

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*St. Pauly Boy commentary: "YEAH, you fat bastard".

I met up with St. Pauly Boy in So. Cal. for a weekend getaway last weekend. We went to Sea World, laid on the beach, swam in one of the luxurious pools that are available to the tenants of the Villa Sienna, the apartment complex in which SPB's company accommodates their traveling consultants a place to comfortably lay their head after their 18 hour workdays. It was a great weekend, overlooking the blisters on my feet for attempting to break in new (and C.U.T.E.) sandals and the blazing sunburn on my back from my lack of enough sunscreen for the California rays. What completely sucked about the trip was our flight home.

Caution: the following depiction could be viewed as overly dramatic, but a readers you should already have caught on to the fact that I excel at being overly dramatic.

1) Checking in for our flight was a breeze, despite the fact that we had to actually speak with someone at the ticket counter instead of being able to use the delightfully anti-social e-check-in-thing-a-ma-gigger. This is because we were trying to see about an upgrade for yours truly, as my Platinum Husband had already received his free upgrade. But it wasn't in the cards for us this time, so SPB actually gave up his first class luxury in exchange for an exit row seat by his wife. What wasn't a breeze was checking our luggage. At LAX, you have to wait in line to check your luggage (after you've waited in line to check in, mind you). It took 20 minutes. And when it was finally our turn, all we did was leave our luggage in the pile of the luggage from the previous line-waiters. Bravo on the engineering of your processes, LAXers, bravo.

2) LAX security positions are mainly held by unhappy middle aged men on a severely over-deserved power trip who unnecessarily yell at the travelers as if we all suffer from serious forms of learning disabilities. I realize that a lot of travelers are idiots, but seriously, get over you attitude problem and out of the airline security business if it causes you to act like an ass to everyone. If you find out that I'm a terrorist, THEN you have my permission to act like an ass.

3) The only place to actually have a drink in the terminal for NWA is the Roadhouse. Crappy food and shitty beer on tap. This is an area in which we are spoiled rotten at MSP. I guess I'm just an airport food & drink snob, what can I say.

4) The LAX bathrooms are nasty. There is always a fresh aroma of dirty diapers/fresh poo, there is always a line, and there is almost never soap or hand towels in sight.

5) Sitting in the exit row isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Yes, extra legroom is nice but when you have no armrest and your recliner is broken (as in, it reclined MUCH too far for the coach section of the plane, thus I couldn't fully sit back in the chair for the entire 4 hour flight) and the tray table doesn't reach you by 2 feet, sitting in the exit row blows. I think that NWA has THE worst aircrafts of any airline in the world. Their planes are pieces of shit and that's putting it lightly.

6) Potty break just before the flight attendants approach your row with the drink (and much too expensive snack box options) service, only because the 2 tall Bud Lights you choked down to attempt at calming the fire on your back, right where your bra strap is, are demanding to be flushed out of your system, then getting stuck in the galley while the drink service is still going. With 3 people crowded in the back of the plane, there's no where to go until the FA's get their job done, but apparently it's still not ok to be back there. The FA with the expensive snack service cart literally yelled to me (just me, not the other two asshats that were back there) to get out of "her" galley, that I'm not allowed to be there. So I squeezed between the asshats and stood in front of both lav doors, even though there was a 6'5" man trying to get into one of them with his 4 year old child. And he gave me a dirty look too. So I joked to one of the asshats, "Well, where the hell am I supposed to go?!", and she says, "Oh, it's a security thing". Yeah bitch, I'm aware of the "security" issues with air travel, I can read. So finally the snack cart bitch approaches us and as I'm struggling to figure out where to go she snaps at me, "Could you please get out of mygalleynowthankYOU". By the time I made it back to my seat, I was so pissed about the whole NWA experience, that I actually began to cry. Then SPB was irrate at the lady for making me cry. It was such a fabulous flight for us.

7) As we finally began our descent, water began dripping all over me from the Exit door.

8) Upon making our way out of the godforsaken aircraft, that snatch of a flight attendant was literally scowling at everyone and in her perfectly condescending tone of voice saying "Good NIGHT" as if our exit was finally relieving her from the inconvenience of actually having passengers on her flight. If it weren't for our current obsession with the Fear of Tera, I would have given that evil woman a piece of my mind. But I didn't feel like being arrested and interrogated for being a potential terrorist. In my dream, this is how it would go:"Listen here you horrible beast of a woman, you take that passive-agressive pissy flight attendant tone with me again, and I'll take my plastic fork from my $150 snack box, and I'll jam it down your throat. Then you can tell me whether or not being trapped in your goddamn precious galley was my fault or yours. Thank you for flying Fuck You Airlines. We hope you have a pleasant stay, burning in hell."

We're glad to be home and extremely glad that our upcoming weekend getaway involves driving the Pathfinder down to Milwaukee for some Twins v. Brewers baseball (and no goddamn airlines). A road trip sounds a LOT better to me at the moment.