The Horror

Today's Bizarro is brought to you buy Tough Money.

Don't get me started about airlines. Too late, I'm started.

I used to love to travel, but between the absurd pricing structures of airlines and the idiotic ritualistic voodoo practices of the T.S.A., I can barely stand it.

This cartoon got a good amount of mail from people who so closely resemble one side of the cartoon or the other that they were sure I was behind them in line at the airport. The simple reason is that this happens all the time.

Tiny people pay extra for a bag weighing two pounds more than a gigantic person's bag, because the airlines need to charge for "extra weight."

I've never bought jet fuel, but I'm sure it is very expensive and the airlines would like to charge more for extra weight. Fine. Can't blame them. But if they attack the problem where it really exists – in the seats of coach, not the luggage compartment – there would be discrimination lawsuits-a-plenty. Some people can't help being heavy (some), no argument here. But does it give them the right to be charged the same when they are consuming more services?

What if they charged per pound for luggage and passengers alike? It takes more fuel to fly a 300 lb man across the country than it does to fly me at less than half the weight, so he'd paying the same amount for goods and services, but since he consumes more, the price is higher. He pays the same for food as I do, but he consumes more. We aren't charged the same per meal in a restaurant, even though I am ordering 1/3 as much as he, so why the airfare inequity? There is no logic to elven folk (like my wife and I) being charged $25 or more for a bag that weighs five pounds more than King Kong's.

But the air travel shenanigans don't end there.

Once you've been fleeced by at the baggage counter, it's off to the security line where you're forced to take off your shoes even if they are flip-flops (because security employees can't be trusted to discern between a thin piece of foam rubber and platform boots full of nuclear weapons), you're only allowed to bring the amount of liquid that will fit into a 3 oz. bottle and only as many of those as will fit into a magic-sized bag (because no one would ever think to team up with someone else and combine their explosive liquids on board), you can't bring a 3 oz. bottle of alcohol on the plane because that's a "security" violation, (but wait, they sell that stuff on board! Does the T.S.A. know this?!), and you can have four 3 oz. bottles of liquid in your magic bag but not one 12 oz. bottle (you can't expect all T.S.A. employees to carry calculators to do the math, right?), and if you're wearing a T-shirt with a long-sleeved garment over it and that garment has buttons it's a "shirt" and can be worn through the metal detector, but if it has a zipper (even a plastic one), it's a "jacket" and must be taken off. Sure, makes perfect sense.

But at least we're "safe."

Once you get to the plane and take your seat, you find you're sitting next to the gigantic guy with the "free" luggage and his girth is hanging over the armrest, so your personal space has been diminished by 10%, even though you paid more to fly.

Then the plane is late to Atlanta (always avoid Atlanta!) and you miss your connecting flight and have to stay overnight, but it was because of "weather," so the airline doesn't have to pay for your motel room.

Then you wake up at 5 a.m. to catch the first flight of the day, put on the clothes you were wearing the day before because you have no luggage, and rush off to the airport in the dark.

You make the flight, it crashes on landing, you're the only survivor and you spend a fortune on therapists for the rest of your life.

And your cat peed on your bed because you were late getting home.

I may never leave the house again.