messiestobjects

Apparently Reading PD James Influences The Way I Write My Bitter Rants

I realize that complaining about airports and airplane travel is rather banal and overdone, and that there is nothing new I could possibly add to the general discussion in this matter. But complaining isn’t about creativity or elevating the conversation; it’s about getting things off of your chest and passing on the impotent rage of less-than-rage deserving things. For me, in the case of all things air travel, it’s about dealing with the shock of modern dehumanity.

 So let’s start with the TSA agents. I’ve already made my contempt of security in general known, that I feel that security is %90 for the sake of appearances and comfort for the dimwitted, and only %10 of any actual effective deterrent, if that much. For instance I found, while digging through my carry-on bag looking for my ibuprofen, a large tube of sunblock that I’ve been apparently carrying around on planes with me for months. I’d forgotten I had it in there and of the 30 times I’ve been through security clearance to get to my departure gate since I first placed the lotion in my bag, exactly zero TSA guards have caught it, obviously.

 And now I want to add that the TSA agents themselves are a dull and predictable consequence of the paranoid yet exasperating culture of security. They are people who quickly become a natural extension and personification of the tepid evils of their jobs. They fall into a few general categoric personalities, and I’ve named the ones I see the most often.

 Slagathorn is the bitchy generally older but sometimes merely overweight female who thinks she works on a factory line inspecting cans of meat product. She talks to people queuing up to have their traveling lives inspected as though we are a single multi-headed cow whom if she were to look us in the eye would cause her to feel as though she needed to bathe. She treats us as though we are retarded 3rd graders who still don’t comprehend how to line up rather than as tired and confused travelers who can’t always keep up to date on the latest byzantine line-up rules dreamed up by the security authorities which pointlessly change from day to day, even hour by hour, as well as from airport to airport. She sees us trying to collect our bags after they’ve been processed by their X-ray contraption and yet will still attempt to push them all in a row further down the conveyor belt the second they emerge in order to clear the way for yet more bags and totes coming through as though we were weren’t standing there already waiting for our bags, so we consequently wind up stepping on each other’s toes and reaching over, under, and past the next guy to try and snag our bags which were a second ago just in front of us.

 Dullard Bing is the guy who, in order to relieve the boredom and tension of his job, tells bad jokes about what to take out of your bags, which of your clothes must come off and what stays on, all with a slightly condescending though ultimately apologetic manner as though he actually has a glimmer of how demeaning their job requires them to be. He’s trying to put us at our ease about our upcoming rectal exam by being our funny friend, but unfortunately lacks the true wit required by this position and in any case isn’t doing so out of sympathy, but for the purposes of crowd control.

 Then there is Paws Grubby. I hate this guy the most. He’s the guy who loves his job more than the others because occasionally, if the TSA agent currently scanning your bags via X-ray vision stops drooling long enough (thus, the X-Ray scanner’s name is Señor Droolcup) to spot something suspicious like a bottle of water or some nail clippers, then Paws Grubby gets to look through your bags while you have to sit there and watch him do it. It’s not just the violation of privacy of the job itself; that’s unfortunately the nature of the beast and in order for the illusion to work, sometimes bags must be checked. I get that. What makes this agent particularly odious is the casual disregard for your sovereignty as a person from a position of bureaucratic (and hence, petty) authority with his commentary on the things you choose to take with you. If he were to find a knife or a bomb or a bottle of sunblock, fine. Make a comment, confiscate it. Them’s the rules. But if you find my vitamin box and feel the need to jovially judge me on being a silly person for being a health nut; don’t, you fat retarded slug. Or when you find a bunch of computer gadgets and want to say something witty like “Wow, you really need all this stuff on the plane?” Fuck off. Just fucking die. My life is not up for your review. I don’t like you and I don’t respect your job, even if I have to put up with it silently.

 I think that ultimately what I despise about the TSAs is that they don’t seem to realize that they are an inconvenience to us, not the other way around. I know they don’t see it that way because they’ve been told that they’re protecting us from more would-be planejackers. But the reality is that they are not. If I can get a bottle of sunscreen onto a plane 30 times, not to mention my big metal pointy tripod, they aren’t stopping anybody with the will to do so from doing something tragic.

 But whatever. It is the way it is. This rant of mine is really just my frustration at my own powerlessness to end stupidity in the human race. It’s a frustration caused by many things, but most notably by the daily barrage of stupid people in and on and reporting the news, and by the people that eat it all up. I’d rant about that, but they do that very well over at the Huffington Post already and anyway that’s what posting links on facebook is for. I guess that I used to think that religion was the greatest evil plaguing mankind, but I’ve been realizing more and more, through the dubious joys of general human interaction, that stupidity and willful ignorance are the greater. In any case, you couldn’t have religion without those two as the catalyst.

 There’s another thing that got to me on the plane, which made me sad in a different way. When I have a window seat, I enjoy staring out at the sky. When there are an especially large amount of cumulus, the clouds can transport me for the entire flight in a bemused trance. It still amazes me that we can fly in a huge metal can, thousands of feet above clouds. One of my favorite feelings in the world is the sudden jolt of catching a rare and quicksilver glimpse of another plane going in another direction. It’s a fascinating perspective to see another plane so high up; it really gives you a clearer sense of how fast planes are going, how high up you are, and of how odd the whole endeavor is. We’ve made the dream of flight routine, but when you take the time to meditate on it, you remember how amazing and beautiful it is that we fly.

 But then the in-flight movie comes on. Usually it’s some safe, trite rom-com or inspiring yet shallow drama which I have no interest in seeing. On this flight I had an aisle seat, and the Captain came on the intercom and asked those sitting by a window to close their shades so that everybody could see the movie screens better, and everybody did. This made me incredibly sad. Maybe I’m just too sensitive today, but it felt like a betrayal of the spirit. When I have a window seat, the shade stays open, even if it’s a rare occasion where I happen to want to watch the movie. It’s unthinkable for me to close the shade, especially just to try and get a clearer view of a tiny screen with a brain killing movie. One time a person sitting behind me tapped my shoulder and asked me to close my shade, and I told him no. He seemed a little surprised, but I didn’t understand why; I myself felt that he’d been incredibly rude & insensitive to even ask. Now I know that it’s because in modern life, it’s more important to shut the outside, well, out, and zonk yourself out whenever possible, and I’m the weirdo.

For a fun bonus anti-TSA story, click on the TSA agent in action below.

I Have A Knack For My My My I Yi Woo, M M M My Tcha-rona...

Yes, it's time for my latest Trona Pinnacles photo shoot. I was there again last week. What's this like, my fourth time out there? But don't worry, it's not the last. I'm going back again in a few weeks.

This time I tried for some nice sunset pictures. And mostly failed. I need to get there a bit earlier and find a better vantage point.

I was compensated however by running across a movie crew filming something! I didn't want to interrupt because they were trying to get some audio before they had to pack it in for the night, so I never got to find out what they were filming. But have I mentioned before that Trona Pinnacles is where they shot parts of the Forbidden Zone in Planet of the Apes, and many many original Star Trek episodes? I'm sure I must have. Hollywood just loves filming sci-fi in front of those big deserty rocks.

And so then here are my latest night shots. I have to tell you, it is wicked creepy out there at night all by myself. To get to the pinnacles, you have to drive about 20 miles outside of Ridgecrest through the desert, where you pass nothing; no gas stations no houses, nothing. And then you take a right onto a dirt road which you follow for about 7 more miles even deeper into the desert. And it's a rocky, bumpy, rutted dirt road. And there's no one and nothing out there. All you can think about the whole time is that your car is your last link to your life. If it dies, I'm screwed. And the worst part is, I'm so stupid that every time I've gone out there, I wind up going with a quarter of a tank of gas or less and only one bottle of water, because I'm in such a rush to catch the sunset or the moonlight or whatever that I don't stop to think about that stuff until the sun is already down and I've taken about 100 pictures already.

And when it's dark, those rocks look like big creepy people who want to do sinister things to me. Very shivery. But also very neat, and lonely, and fun.

That's a big piece of coral there. The pinnacles used to be at the bottom of a big prehistoric inland sea.

And stars in a fishbowl!

Big Dipper!

And more stars in a fishbowl!

Stay tuned for my subsequent trip to Death Valley! Again!

Rockets Rockets Everywhere, And Not A Spot To Think

I went on a couple of jobs this month to places that were interestingly related. I was in Minot, ND a few weeks ago, giving a computer security exam on the Air Force base there to military personnel responsible for well, computer security, on the base there. Minot AFB is one of two bases in the US which apparently contain our largest stockpile of Nuclear Bombs. They proudly display an old Minuteman I Missile as you enter the base.

I didn't know that before I got there, that I was going to be aiding and abetting our Nuclear arsenal personnel, and I admit I felt a keen sense of ambivalence when I found out. (That sounds like nonsense, doesn't it? A keen sense of ambivalence?! Kind of an oxymoron; however if you've ever had that emotion you'll know what I mean.) I mean on the one hand, I will always feel the guilt of aiding and abetting our previous administration's dishonest and uber-destructive war reconstruction in Iraq. And so here I was again, in a position of compliance with the most immoral weapon yet conceived by humanity's spinal column thinkers. However I also feel that as long as nuclear weapons exist, well then by gum they oughtta be secured and if my small presence there as an exam proctor allows those with the crucial duty of keeping our warheads safe from being hacked to do their jobs better, then I suppose I feel good about it. Much as I hate nuclear weaponry and wish they'd go away, I don't want them getting lost or stolen!

Wait, what? Uh... do you guys remember that 2007 incident where some nuclear warheads went missing? Yeah, it happened at Minot. They were transporting some ICBM missiles (just the missiles, without the nuclear warheads attached) from Minot to the other big nuclear bomb site in Louisiana, so they loaded them up onto a B-52 for transport, and forgot to remove the warheads. A little bit later, someone was doing their, what, Bi-annual inventory checklist? And said "hey uh, where're those, um, y'know, nuclear warheads that are supposed to be on that shelf over there?"

Meanwhile, there were some very surprised cargo unloaders in Louisiana. "Hey uh, dude? Are we getting paid danger salary today? Do you know how to unscrew a nuclear warhead? Well, I'm sure we can figure it out."

Jesus. Here's a nice shot of some B-52s I got from the public highway.

I hope I don't get in trouble for posting that photo. I shouldn't; like I said I was on a public highway and it's public knowledge that they have bombs and B-52s there, and if they can't be bothered to hide their runway from view on the highway, then I can't see them being bothered to worry about the occasional photo showing up online.

ANYway, so my next job this month was to Huntsville, Alabama, also known as Rocket City. A different kind of missile history, home of Marshall Space Flight Center (itself the original home of NASA) and Space Camp. I had a job for a company that is involved in space and defense contracting, and that was a much better feeling. I think Space is really really cool. I don't know if you know that about me. I got to go to the Rocket museum there.

That was sweet. I did all the kid stuff; saw a 3D movie about Mars, an Imax about our moonwalk missions, and climbed around in old rockets and spacejunk. They obligingly placed some of their items in such a way that taking a wry picture was possible. Space rockets, War rockets, and a carnival ride; whee America!