A Flight To Forget: And The Peanuts Sucked Too

The following stourie is true. Only the word stourie has been changed to make it seem fancy and regal. 


This is an actual letter written to U.S. Airways about one of their wonderful flights.

Passengers Ian Strang and Cheryl Strang. Concerning our flight from Austin, Texas to our connecting flight in Phoenix, Arizona on Feb. 19, 2007. Flight #73, seats 19A and 19B. Departure time: 2:55 pm.

On our return trip from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles, (with the above mentioned connecting flight to Phoenix) my wife and I had the window seat (19A) and the middle seat (19B).  A woman sitting in the aisle seat next to us (19C) had a considerable posterior and was taking up half of 19B. I want to be nice about this because I know that some people can't help it if they have weight problems, but, SHE TOOK UP HER OWN SEAT PLUS HALF OF ONE OF OUR SEATS! Although she seemed to be friendly (except for insulting us for being from Los Angeles and telling us how much she hates Los Angeles and that she would never move to Los Angeles because she couldn't make it there as a singer once) we were scrunched up next to the window for approximately two and a half hours. The flight was completely full so we could not change seats with a couple of small children or something. We could not physically put the armrest down nor could we even put the middle tray table down because of her jumbo sized hind-quarters and legs. We're talking heroic proportions here. I'm not really complaining because the flight was just another normal flight and the air waitresses were sub-par in their attitudes and they feigned friendliness as best they could, but this lady was HUGE!!! I don't really see how we pay for a whole seat, but only get to use half of it. I'm not sure what your policy on hefty humans who travel by air are, but if you have a policy on the size of baggage that can fit into the overhead compartments and a policy that if your luggage is too heavy you get to pay an extra fee, shouldn't you have one for people who can’t fit into seats? It's hard to believe that not one employee from U.S. Airways would have seen this woman's substantial buttocks, register the size of a standard coach seat on a U.S. Airways airplane in their heads, put two and two together and somehow come to the swift conclusion that she simply isn't going to fit, and that plan B should be activated immediately. I really hope that there is a plan B and that maybe some forgetful or disinterested employee simply blocked the possible scenario out of their minds because, this, my friends, is no way to travel. I realize that the airline industry has had their hands full since 9/11, and I thank you for all the security and inconvenience that TSA provides, what with the stripping down to the bare essentials in the airport and whatnot, but seeing how we're probably on a level blue or green or some other safe color, I think we really need to start addressing some of the other air-travel concerns of the day. We should try making some of your more apathetic employees take notice of uncomfortable situations, such as whenever someone might be scrunched up against a window, fighting for air. Maybe train some of your other semi-interested associates in the art of identifying a problem somewhere earlier in the program instead of when it's way too late. I really don't know what the answer is, friends. I'm not boycotting your airline because I'm probably going to travel in the future and I just might ride on one of your fine airplanes and have the pleasure of being served stale pretzels and soda pop by someone with a thousand yard stare. But, I hope that by then our little problem of enormous people taking up almost two seats will be yesterday's news. And once we've solved the problem of people taking up more than one seat, maybe we can finally tackle the problem of screaming children.

I hope this was helpful.

Best wishes.

Ian Strang

Store Wars: A New Hopelessness

The grocery store is an already crowded and panic-stricken atmosphere filled with wild-eyed shoppers with no grocery lists who are not allowed to return home without something for dinner. The easiest thing, I’ve discovered, is spaghetti. It’s real simple to make, but you shouldn’t have more than twice a week unless you want to look like big-fat Marlon Brando right before he departed the earth. Too many carbs.

One of the most frustrating things for me in the grocery store is trying to find the Q-tips. Am I insane or do they always seem to change locations every time I look for them? Sometimes they’re next to the baby food, sometimes they’re next to the soap and razors. One time I found them in the beverage aisle squeezed in between the A&W Root Beer and a six-pack of Tab. Sometimes they don’t seem to be in the store at all and I ‘m forced to use toilet paper wrapped around my pinkie finger until the next shipment of Q-tips magically reappear.

There is a nuisance, however, that has suddenly appeared in grocery stores that makes shopping even more difficult and irritating than I ever imagined. One day I was in the toiletries aisle, which was fast becoming clogged with people who had no idea what kind of toothpaste to buy or shampoo to change to because their hair was feeling a little limp lately and people were beginning to notice. My anxiety was building as it usually did in the narrow, cramped store aisle. I asked myself, “Will I ever make it out of here? If I die here will the morticians ever be able to get the panicked, bug-eyed look off my face so that I may have a proper open casket funeral without everyone thinking about how goofy I looked when I kicked the bucket. Why is dental floss so friggin’ expensive?!!! It’s FLOSS!!!”

Anyway, the toiletries aisle was now beginning to resemble a stopped up sewer pipe that was quickly filling up with poop, toilet paper and stuff you shouldn’t flush down the toilet but people do anyway, like children’s toys or empty cans of Chef Boyardee's Ravioli. One end was completely jammed by two elderly women whose carts are parked side by side while they reminisced about World War I or when they had an affair with Ben Franklin or some goddamned thing. My anxiety was quickly turning to utter panic when I noticed that several carts were part slalom style down the length of the aisle and open just enough for me to squeak by without hitting them. There was a small burst of light towards the other end so I began to race for freedom, and that’s when I saw it.

It casually, menacingly turned the corner, almost in slow motion, and effectively blocked any more light from entering the toiletries aisle. It was a behemoth, a Corellian Star Destroyer piled high with soda bottles, boxes of cookies and sugar based cereal, and some Weight Watchers Brownies because mom deserves to be decadent every once in a while without putting on the pounds. The entire cart was already on the brink of spilling out and crushing to absolute death anyone standing next to it, and yet, attached to the front of this already overloaded junk food buggy was an extended kiddie-cart that resembled a car, a Yugo I think. Or maybe it was a Honda? Two tiny, deranged looking children were in the front fighting over the steering wheel while two more kids were running around the top like a couple of squirrel monkeys in an open-air Indian food market. It looked like a cross between scenes from the Road Warrior and Deathwish. I began to panic. What did they want? Did they want fuel? Did they want my soul? Should I abandon my cart and bolt the hell out of there, never to return? The mother of these insane toddlers didn’t seem to notice that not only was she taking up more square footage than the Space Shuttle but that her lunatic offspring were causing a calamity that, in my opinion, could only be suppressed by a highly trained squadron of riot police, or perhaps Delta Force.

Is this what they called ‘shell shock’? Had these children/beasts mangled this woman’s ability to recognize when other humans are suffering as a result of the anarchistic behavior of her hell spawn? Mother Hubbard didn’t seem to give two squats or even notice that her children had almost completely taken over the toiletries aisle and were now holding three couples hostage, or that her aircraft carrier sized shopping cart was literally preventing evolution from occurring. We were all now overcome by this family of oblivious freakazoids and there was no SWAT team prepared to make entry and TAZE this family into submission, something somebody should have done long ago.

So, what do we do in this situation? STOP going to the store for fear of running into one of these roving kiddie-Death Stars? Do we really need the kiddie-cart attached to an already oversized cart in an already undersized store? If we are going to expand the size of the shopping carts why not correlate that by expanding the size of the store? Why are we using 2011 carts in 1942 shopping aisles? People were smaller a hundred years ago. Let’s try and keep up with the ever-changing human bulkiness and try and design our buildings, our restaurants booths and our airplane seats accordingly.

Grocery stores need to curtail the kiddie-cart attachment at once! This rolling menace serves no purpose either for the parent or the customer. It is a giant waste of plastic that parents stuff their disorderly, uncontrollable children so they may purchase unhealthy food that will almost surely contribute to their highly unlikable whippersnapper’s eventual imprisonment. Shopping for food doesn’t have to be a life or death experience. Shopping for food should not make a person contemplate suicide. Going to the grocery store should not be the equivalent to a death match in the octagon.

We need to solve this problem immediately so that we can move on to the problem of people who still write checks, use way too many coupons and cannot understand that 15 items or less does not mean ‘as many items as you want’.