The state of air travel is so repulsive, it's a wonder the weight of its stifling mediocrity doesn't fall from 737s to smash bright, shining children playing below, awash in their own genetic ignorance.

The operative has been forced to travel the airways of the United States extensively in the last few months, based on economic insanity. The simple idiocy of the procedures and arcana involved with these strangely sacrosanct bastions of Chuck Yeagerism is truly stifling.

For instance, when checking in, giving your precious posessions to a twelve-dollar-an-hour jackass behind the desk, this puppet of the FAA with the Secretary of Commerce's hand up their ass parrot simplistic questions destined to get the same responses:

"Has anyone asked you to carry anything on the plane for them?"

"Have your bags been out of your control at any time since you packed them?"

Now, for argument's sake, let's assume you're the dumbest goddamned terrorist or criminal in the entire f*cking world. That in this day and age, you've never seen any of the grillions of airplane terrorists in movies, with their olive skin and sweaty nervousness as they tried to further celluloid jihads. That in your supreme ignorance, you have decided to take an explosive device on to a plane for reasons only you are aware of.

You wander around suspiciously at your local airport, a place literally swarming with law enforcement professionald and their methodology and crowbar stares. You've made your peace with whatever the hell you worship and decided to give your life for your insipid cause, and accepted an incindiary briefcase from the leader of your cult/cell/group/whatever and been shipped off to the airport. You stand in line, prepared to check this bomb-in-a-bag in with all the baby strollers and care packages to little Suzy, away at school.

The operative realizes the implausibility of this scenario, but he's going somewhere with all this.

When you're are confronted by this limp finger on the long arm of the law, you say, "Oh, my, of course my mighty sahib asked me to carry this, and to be honest I never even packed it, they gave me this cliched ticking metal attache without ever showing me what was inside, why do you ask?"

Dumbass waste of time.

A Simple Plan Why is it that dripping, screaming, kick-your-leg-every-five-seconds waterheaded kid in the world ends up sitting behind you or next to you? Or worse, when some fat, sweaty, war-stories-the-whole-flight redneck with his flabby arms hanging half way over both aisle and window seats due to the width of his gut? Here's a Damage Control suggestion: have a series of flights or even an entire airline dedicated to a peaceful flying environment. First Class isn't enough -- all the curtain in the world won't filter out the fact of a wailing child twelve rows back. Flights with two seats on each side, no children allowed, and an agreement to shut the hell up on redeyes so people can sleep. We'd join the frequent flyer program today.

Now, while we'll admit Pokemon, the George W. Bush Jr. candidacy and the entire career of Pauly Shore proves that the grand majority of the people in the world are so bogglingly stupid they could barely power a two-dollar digital watch with their mental power, the chances of such questioning turning up legitimate results are so stunningly low that it's an insult to what little intelligence the questioner may have, much less the questioned.

Likewise, exactly what the hell is wrong with the airports themselves? From the networked drama in Dallas to the overly paranoid types south of Seattle to the somnabulent drones in Boston or the halfhearted homies in LA, each airport generally will have one unusual or stupid feature that makes one wonder what the hell the designers were smoking and why they chose to do it while creating a place where grillions of people need to move through.

Take San Francisco, for instance. This is a city by a bay. It is frequently overcast or foggy. Yet, somehow, the jackass who designed this waiting room for purgatory put the runways so close to one another that a paltry cirrus cloud can alter the travel plans of hundreds of people and mangle the schedule horribly.

This happens. A lot. Like, every single f*cking week.

The operative has been stuck in San Fran International on no less than two seperate and unrelated occassions due to this structural stupidity.

Or maybe St. Louis. The phone booths there are equipped with electrical outlets, full data jacks, and the ability to turn a few square feet into a mobile office. In St. Louis. Now, while this is a hub for TWA, it's not exactly home to the digiterati, more known for their non-stops from coast-to-coast. Did the geniuses in New York or Los Angeles or even San Francisco pick up on this and hook up their airports for the convenience of their users? Hell no.

Or Chicago – an airport with music stores, book stores ... there may even have been a Home Depot there, it's hard to know. Memphis likewise has an eclectic and fascinating mix of stores. People were spending like crazy, since the prices were normal (people are used to $16 CDs). Do these things end up in every airport, boosting revenues and spurring commerce? No – you still have to scavenger hunt to get a goddamned pair of headphones in the media capital of the fricking universe.

Chicago and St. Louis remains anomalies of oddness. Will somebody pick up the goddamned clue phone here?

Then let's get to the meandering, haphazard organization of the actual airlines themselves. Let's call a spade a spade, and speak in specific terms -- Southwest and United.

The weekend of July Fourth, United lost the operative's bag. This was not the first screw up these Gene Hackman-hawked cretins have done. It was, however, the first time they'd done it to him with a digital camera in the bag and two presents for his 10-year-old brother. A pox on their cretin organization.

Two years ago, when Wisconsin met Washington in the Rose Bowl, the operative was bumped from a Southwest flight he was scheduled for (and showed up an hour and a half early for), which changed a three hour flight (sung, "a three hour flight") into nine hours of traveling madness, from Seattle to Spokane to San Jose to Los Angeles, with a close shave that almost spliced Las Vegas into the mix.

The San Francisco Chronicle has done several articles on the declining state of air travel, a situation so horrid that even members of the US Congress have cried protest. There is a solution, and it will be presented in two paragraphs.

The operative recalls that his parents never flew anywhere. Drove from Milwaukee to Houston to everywhere else. They never said anything negative about it, they just never acted like it was even a possibility. It wasn't a situation of economics – they could have handled the less exorbitant prices of that era. It was simply a question of dignity, something that airlines don't provide you at all.

Stop flying. Simple as that. If you can't avoid it – funerals, large sums of money, and so on – of course fly. But if you can avoid it, realize that the unholy cartel of the FAA and the airlines will continue anally penetrating you sans lubrication as long as you continue to reward their behavior. This is a factor in many relationships, so quit letting them wipe themselves off on your ass and stand up for something.