Tag: travel

I’m drained and I need a vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve often said in my life, if there were a such things as a mythical purgatory, mine would undoubtedly look like Reagan National Airport based on how much time in my life I feel that I’ve wasted here.  Even now, I am once again stuck here on account of multiple flight delays, probably because of some rain as if the stuff has never existed in the history of the universe.

And it’s not one of those old “well maybe if you actually paid full fares” accusations I used to get when I had a flight pass and could jet set on standby flights any availability I got, because that ship has long sailed and I’m on a full-ass fare and still dealing with the insufferable passage of time at DCA.

Anyway, as the title of this post so succinctly reads, I am drained and I am in need of a real break.  The week of Thanksgiving started off a little bumpy, but limped towards progress, the holiday itself was really personally fulfilling, and there were a lot of good memories.  However, my holiday started with a long-ass drive, concluded with a long-ass drive, and now I’m stuck at my personal hell just trying to get home, so I can get back to work without really having any time to have unwound or relaxed, at all.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m probably at that stage of life where a lot of people my age have to accept and understand the mortality of our parents, as well as the onset of babysitting, assisting, holding hands, arguing about independence while trying to not step on eggshells of frail personal egos and the fears of change and mortality of them themselves.

This past week was basically all of the above, trying to see if I could convince my dad to move into a home down in Georgia.  The place where I brought him allowed for us to do a trial stay for a week, and I loved the idea of doing over Thanksgiving, because I always made me feel very sad over the years of my dad being by himself on just about every holiday, and I could have him spend this year’s with me, as well as hope to see if he could accept the place as a viable landing spot to get him out of his current home which is too big, has too many stairs and way too isolated from any family members who are willing to help him. 

Although there were some good times during the week, like having my dad over for Thanksgiving and ensuring that he wouldn’t be by himself, and having him spend some time with my kids, his grandchildren, the end result is basically no real different than when we started.  Such wasn’t really unexpected, and I’m honestly not really surprised, but it’s still disappointing that all the time, care and effort I put into everything led basically nowhere, and at the end of the day I can’t make him make a decision, and it’s up to him to decide, something at all, no matter how much logic and truth my sister and I try to get into his head.

Needless to say, I am just drained.  My life in general operates at a pretty high stress threshold to begin with these days, and adding my dad and all his end of life affair footwork on top of it is perpetually overflowing me on a regular basis, and I don’t feel as if I’ve had a chance to unwind, decompress or just catch my breath in weeks.

I think I may have to use a vacation day in the coming weeks to just take a random midweek day off where I can not be the first fucking person up in the morning, get some actual sleep, and hopefully a feeling of actual physical and mental recharging.

I don’t believe he didn’t know how poorly this would be received

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy basically says the majority of airline passengers are a bunch of slobs, encourages people to start dressing better when they travel at airports

Honestly, when I read the headline to this story, I couldn’t imagine that it was headed in any other direction than mass defiance, triggering and straight up rage-baiting from the federal fucking government.  To which it’s kind of sad, yet entertaining, but really more sad, that the federal government would go to the trouble to immaturely rage-bait as if they were a low-tier Instagrammer trying to get shock views with a poor take.

There’s no way Sean Duffy wouldn’t have known that posting a video, calling out primarily everyone who goes to airports in sweats, pajamas or otherwise comfortable clothes, and essentially blaming them for the uptick in disorderly conduct incidents at airports and on airplanes, wasn’t straight trolling.  As if he himself actually ever goes to airports for any other reason than to do his job, but he’s most definitely not flying commercial, with the rest of the pleebs, when he probably flies private, when for his own personal needs.

I mean it goes without saying that Americans today, more than ever, hate being told what to do, but telling them how they need to be dressing, that’s a tier above as far as triggering the defiance of modern America.  The response from the masses have been predictable and not at all surprising.

I’m sure all the fights and incidents have nothing to do with the fact that over the last two decades, the airline industry has been stoking the flames of passenger dissatisfaction, with all sorts of bullshit shenanigans such as cramming more seats into planes, reducing leg room, personal space, charging for bags, charging for snacks, and of course, the escalations of fares in general with absolutely no justification for doing so other than to line the profits of companies that are already billion dollar companies, among other things.

It’s totally because people are rolling into airports wearing sweatpants or pajamas.  Yep, makes total sense.  Hey, perhaps if we’re being encouraged to go back into the golden age of airlines, why not allow smoking on flights again?  Why not fire all the male flight attendants, and make sure all planes are staffed by attractive stewardesses instead?

The more I think about this whole thing, the more I can’t believe that this was absolutely anything other than a classic rage-baiting troll job, except that it’s coming from within our own government.  Like some defiant shit influencer who wants to throw shade, except in this case it’s coming from a 54-year old man(-child).

Honestly, this is all probably part of a larger, more nefarious plot, in order to force more martial law into things that ordinarily never needed it.  Duffy rage-baits the traveling nation, many predictably start dressing up like even bigger slobs at airports in defiance.  Airlines have little choice but to enforce their own dress rules, leading to more irate customers, passengers, and causing more incidents.  The National Guard suddenly has to start showing up at airports, and funding somewhere more essential is depleted in order to support.  Hashtag ‘Murica.

I’m sure this is going to go over well not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SFGate: Southwest Airlines unveils new boarding policy, where passengers board in order of window seats first, middle seats, and aisle seats last

At this point, I really should start implementing a tag on my brog for Southwest, because they keep doing things that I keep finding brog-worthy and then I actually write about them, as if I’m chronicling their gradual downward spiral.  They just can’t keep doing questionable things, and I feel like that at the corporate level, there’s some obnoxious visionary who is trying way too hard to put their stamp on the company by making all these questionable choices for really no other reason than the sake of making them, and probably gets off on words like “disrupting” and “aviation space.”

But circling back to this new boarding process, where windows get on first, and aisles get on last, I just feel like this is something that seems destined to fail, on account of people just not adhering to the rule, and the amount of outcry it’s inevitably going to cause because it’s just not working the way SWA corporate envisioned it working.

It doesn’t matter what airline it is, in the hierarchy of passengers, middle seat is supposed to be the very bottom of the pecking order.  Even in old Southwest internal lexicon such a notion was commonplace, where flight attendants would even make tongue-in-cheek jokes about the old boarding process, where Group A stood for Anywhere, as in you can sit anywhere you want, Group B stood for Back of the plane, because that’s where all the remaining good seats are, and Group C stood for Center seat, because that’s all that’s going to be left for you bottom feeders.

Deliberately creating a policy where the positions are forcefully switched is not going to go over well at all, because not only are passengers who prefer aisles not going to handle being considered bottom-tier very well, imagine the people who hate window seats but like getting on the aircrafts as soon as possible having to deal with this new Sophie’s Choice; status vs. preference vs. potential cost differences.  And middle seats still lose, because although their tier might be considered elevated over aisle-seat losers, when the flight takes off, they’re still parked in the middle seat, most likely squished between two fat fucks because Americans are always going to be a bunch of fat fucks.

My favorite part about this whole announcement was this quote:

If queuing isn’t good, boarding isn’t good,” Lisa Hingson, managing director of innovation, told the Wall Street Journal. “So we spent a lot of time studying queuing.”

Studying queueing, lmao.  There’s nothing to study when it comes to queueing, because a study doesn’t account for the infinite variable that is there are a few billion asshole airline passengers in the world, and there’s no finite way to factor for some flights having none of them on any given flight, or some having many of them.

Sure, there are plenty of people that will be willing to adhere and give the system a chance, but then there are always, always going to be just a few of them that have zero intention of sticking to the plan, and nothing short of the gate agent enforcing the queue and stopping any and all violators from boarding too early, this is going to fail 100% of the time.  Those gate agents probably don’t get paid enough nor do they give enough fucks to even try to stop asshole passengers from jumping in whenever they want and ruining the process for the entire flight, and departure times and delays are inevitably going to get wrecked by this, and in the grand spectrum calculus of airline operations, it’s only a matter of time before this shitty idea is quietly scrapped and they return to more traditional, fall-in-line boarding process.

Somewhere else in this whole thing, I have to be curious on how this is going to impact the whole, large passenger policy that Southwest used to be applauded for in having, where large passengers had the possibility of getting a free adjacent seat if the flight had availability.  If there are going to be price tiers in accordance to boarding priority, surely there will be new ways for people to try and game the system in order to save a few bucks, and I have to wonder if SWA people thought this through enough to merge with existing policies in place, unless said policies were on the chopping block for restructure in order to not lose money on these new potential pricing tiers.

Either way, I can’t imagine that this is going to end well.  I like to imagine that when this shit rolls out, it won’t take more than the first flight, before passengers, by virtue of being selfish dicks or just plain ignorance, queues up out of order, isn’t stopped at the gate, and boards when they shouldn’t have.  They sit down in an aisle, take up overhead space with their carry-on, and later on in the boarding, someone who’s a middle seat passenger is denied overhead space, and/or is jilted over having to wait for the prior aisle-seat dick to get out of the way so they can board, and already the flight experience is stained.

Before we know it, a fight breaks out, and 12 people record it on their phones from differing angles, and Southwest is back in the news again for another passenger fight, and absolutely nothing has changed at all.

gg Southwest, look forward to the next bonehead disruptor idea y’all come up with next.

I kind of have to respect Mercedes’ game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t mention it because life has a tendency to get all up in the way, but a little before Labor Day, I made a small trip, and my first destination was Philadelphia, where I met up with some friends so we could watch AEW live, on account of a childhood friend we have who is on their payroll and could hook us up with some tickets.  However, it wasn’t just watching AEW live, it was watching AEW live at the, now 2300 Arena, formerly known as the notorious ECW Arena, known for being the home to, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

This was very much as case of being more interested in seeing my friends and the venue itself as opposed to the actual product being shown, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad of a show, since the narrative of the whole night was leaning hard into the fact that they were at the ECW Arena.

It also didn’t hurt that our seats were front row.

Anyway, there really was no point to mentioning all that other than to just mentioned that I went to see the ECW Arena for the first time which I really enjoyed, and the whole point of this post is to, once again, talk about Mercedes Moné, seeing as how she’s hoovered up a 12th blet, and has been proclaiming herself to be better than Ultimo Dragon, and apparently, I’m not sure what prompted it, but also better than Bret Hart.

Little does she probably realize that kayfabe or not, by bringing up Bret Hart’s name in such a manner will embark her on a personal beef with the Excellence of Execution for the better part of the next three decades, but that’s neither here nor there.

Loosely tying back into my experience at the ECW Arena, I did get to see Mercedes live, in an in-ring promo where she was glorifying some new backyard promotion’s title win.  Despite being in the front row, nobody could really hear anything, because whether it’s AEW’s equipment being shitty, or the acoustics of the ratty old ECW Arena, nobody was getting any audio, but it didn’t really matter because in spite of the backhanded praise I have planned for this post, it doesn’t change the fact that she still gives really shitty promos, and on the trading card talent scale, her promos are probably at like a 2 out of 7, primarily on account of the fact that she’s not afraid to speak, it’s just she sucks at it.

But that was back on Labor Day, and as of now, Mercedes now holds 12 different blets, and finally lots of the internet are finally beginning to acknowledge that in spite of the number of blets, only nine of them are actually titles, considering the number of asterisks surrounding several of them, like the Owen Hart Tournament blet being a trophy and not an actual title, the Queen of Southside blet being technically retired and not an active blet, and I’m guessing the recently won Ring of Honor Women’s Television blet has an asterisk on account of it being an interim title, despite the fact that Red Velvet wouldn’t have a chance against Mercedes in a clean bout.

I’ve said it before, on account of some of them being not actual titles, and many of them being titles for a bunch of backyard promotions nobody had ever heard of, this whole blet collector arc for her is mostly meaningless, and if that makes me a hater to say such things, so be it, but it’s my version of the truth as far as I can see it.

I could argue with troglodytes on the internet about this topic, but I really do not want to, which is why it ends up being a brog post on a brog that nobody reads, but I have to say that I think I’m beginning to see what her large scale scope game is in doing all of what she’s doing, and if such really is the case, I think I do feel that I should respect her in this regard, because when the day is over in the wrestling business, it’s better to be hated and analyzed and criticized over being respected, heroic, but otherwise invisible.

And Mercedes is doing a masterclass job of doing what she’s doing, and getting people noticing and getting people talking.  Shit, as much criticism I have for what her character is doing, this is like my fourth or fifth post about specifically her, so whatever she’s doing is working, and in that regard, she has my respect.

And what she’s doing specifically, I would say is ragefarming, because between being the cockiest heel since prime Ric Flair, Mercedes is also taking her arrogance to the internet, dropping quotes and sound bytes, saying shit that is deliberately and tactfully setting wrestling fans off and getting them talking and interacting and engaging with her, with websites and groups and other outlets that are all scrambling to monetize the exposure.

Speaking of Flair, he used to explain that the point of being a good heel is to be so disliked and hated, that people start getting antsy and itching to see you lose, and one of the true arts of the business is being such to where they will be willing to pay money to see it happen, and I think Mercedes is doing an outstanding job of fulfilling that first part, but me personally I don’t like paying to watch wrestling other than live, but I am going to be excited if and when she starts having to drop all these blets back to their respective promotions.

In the grand spectrum of her career, it will be easier for her to parlay being a legendary heel back into a respectable face, as opposed someone who has to build up their fame and resume, and when the day comes, which I predict might be around next Thanksgiving, when Mercedes goes back to the WWE and becomes Sasha Banks again, she’s going to get a real needle-moving reaction, one way or the other, so the Four Horsewomen can have a massive blowup program with Asuka’s Team Japan with Iyo Sky, Kairi Sane and Giulia in a passing of the torch.

However, I still think the most defining period of Mercedes’s journey right now will be when it comes time for her to start returning the favor to all these companies whose blets she has right now.  My general scrutiny is that she may have stretched herself too thin to it almost being a no-win situation; if she bleeds her titles back piece meal, nobody will notice, but if she goes on a big tour of dropping titles in a sequence, a long string of L’s is going to make her look weak, and history has shown that Mercedes is not a fan of taking too many L’s in general.

If she pulls the losing her smile card, and starts relinquishing titles without having to take any defeats, it effectively kills whomever she does it to, and that’s just not good business at the end of the day, but I wouldn’t put it past Mercedes to keep this in mind if the thought of taking some losses starts to make her lose sleep.

Frankly, the only viable solutions are that a lot of companies will have to have some horsey, multi-women matches where Mercedes can drop blets without always having to take any pins or submissions, or she needs to start a feud with someone in AEW that reaches the level of hate that AJ Styles has reached in feuds with Dominic Mysterio or LA Knight, where they will be willing to cross seas and oceans in order to interfere in their matches and cost them in title defenses, thus keeping her somewhat strong in requiring interference in order to lose.

But anyways, because I’ve clearly got Mercedes unfortunately living rent-free in my head, and I’ve made yet another lengthy post overanalyzing what she’s doing, I’m wrap this up.  I think I’ve said everything that I’ve wanted to say this time, and normally I’d say I hope to not touch on this subject again, but there’s too much wrestling fandom and likely mileage in the Moné-train to not.

However, credit to where it’s due, Mercedes the Ragefarmer is holding a masterclass at ensuring people are noticing and people are talking, and in the wrestling industry such does require talent, and knowledge to parlay such reactions into positive, profitable careers.

Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m a day removed from having gotten off of the Disney Treasure, and hoo boy do I really feel my age these days.  For the first time in all of the cruises that I’ve done before, did I feel a little motion sick on a cruise before, but thankfully that was very short lived, and I was able to sleep it off and remain normal throughout the duration of the trip.  Driving back home all the way directly from Port Canaveral, I found my back hurting pretty badly to the point where I had to take some ibuprofen, thus making it the first time that I’ve needed painkillers, just to make a long distance drive, something I’ve done countless times in my life previously.

And unsurprising, the sea legs sensation of feeling boat rocking on solid land is hitting hard, and it’s mostly when I’m standing still or trying to remain as motionless as possible does the rocking sensation kick in, and I anticipate this will be the case for the next week or so, as it has been for me on previous cruises.

But anyway, big ass famiry trip in the bag, and do I have a lot of thoughts about it.  As curmudgeon as it may sound to say, I don’t necessarily refer to this entirely as a vacation, because the truth of the matter is that wrangling my two kids, on a boat, is still a colossal amount of effort that leads to a lot of aggravation at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get fried and pissed off at undesirable behaviors throughout the week long journey through the Caribbean on an egregiously overpriced boat.

#2 hijacked almost every single evening of the trip, mostly on account of fatigue and a lack of napping, but it usually amounted to her refusing to eat, behaving like a little shit at dinner, and then me needing to walk her out of the restaurants or carry her from point A to point B, and thusly being unable to really enjoy large chunks of time.  I don’t love her any less, but that’s about as succinct of a description of what happened throughout the course of this trip.

Oh, and I’m sure she’ll never live this down, she also barfed on the very literal center of the boat; in the grand hall of the main concourse, right at the center of the stage, where they had a photographer taking pictures of guests.  Immortalized, and definitely one of those stories that we as parents will always be able to recollect whenever we want to embarrass her in the future.

Still though, there’s little I won’t do for my kids and famiry, and despite the fact that I was probably burning out more than I was at any state remotely close to relaxation, there were still numerous pockets of happiness that makes it all worth it, and when the day is over, I want my kids to experience things and see things and visit places, and in those regards, it’s easy to say that the trip was a success. 

My children stepped foot onto the soil of other countries, experienced things that aren’t easily available to us elsewhere, and they got to experience a boatload of things that made them smile, rejoice or just be plain happy to see a bunch of Disney characters.  As a famiry, we went swimming with stingrays and sea stars, ate a ton of decadent foods, and enjoyed beaches, pools and a whole lot of fucking sunshine.

Some other observations about the trip were that this was apparently a tremendously busy cruise on account of two major factors:

  • It was the fall break for numerous school districts in the country, with a large quantity of them being from Georgia; I’m not even joking if I said that probably 2-3 fifths of the cruising populous were from Georgia, with quite a bunch of them being from my county specifically. The shore excursion we went on, our boat was literally over half from my exact zip code, as we were all on the same fall break.  Mythical wife even had one of her own students’ family assigned two tables away from us, so we saw them literally every single night.
  • This particular cruise was a Halloween at Seas cruise, which meant that there was a specific evening dedicated to Halloween, complete with characters all donning Halloween costumes, décor changing to be Halloween themed, and most importantly for the littles, trick or treating on the ship.

However, let’s stay on that latter bullet, because I feel like that was a big contributor to what I did not necessarily enjoy about my cruise experience as a whole.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise” →

Clearly the world does revolve around me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Before I carve out some time to write about the famiry cruise vacation, I just wanted to briefly chat about the fact that in the one week plus a travel day in which I was mostly offline and then for the most part radio silent as far as (reliable) internet connectivity went, pretty much the whole universe moved as far as people trying to get in touch with me, work pinging me endlessly at times in which they never do, people calling, leaving voicemails, and all sorts of news or internet activity that I was completely incapable of getting to, or even knowing about beyond the hints that I could surmise from the odd capabilities of pretty much only being able to receive push notifications and texts through iMessage only.

Ordinarily, I lead a pretty boring life where not a whole lot happens on a regular basis.  There are times in which I get so bored at home or at work, where I’m practically begging for my group chats or friend groups to fucking pipe up and chat, and I get to points where I feel like I have to restrain myself from trying to initiate lest I feel like I’m spamming and that the people in my life don’t like me. 

When I’m able to be on top of things, I typically manage to do such, and all my apps and mediums are typically left tidy and clean, and I’m most of the time pleased about the minimal amounts of catching up I have to do, when I’m at the most indisposed with the kids or work for a few hours at most.

But seriously, it was almost comical at how much activity seemed to only happen when I was completely incapable of keeping up with it.  My Fridays are work from home days, and it’s like this unspoken understanding that most people are capable of skirting the rules a little bit and stretching the “from home” part, be it through running errands, tackling appointments, or in my case, attempting to get out of town without having to officially burn any PTO, as long as the work gets done and communication is not completely radio silent.

However, in the one Friday in which we deemed our travel day, I figured I could skirt my work day so long as I kept my one meeting, and made sure to respond to any work-related messages in a timely manner.  Naturally, my work meeting was at like 11:30, so that loomed over my head throughout the start of my drive, and it wasn’t until we were around Macon was I able to check that off of my list, and I got work pings pretty much all throughout the entire day, that required mythical wife to transcribe for me, or me to dangerously try and type out while driving, and at one point required me to pull off the highway, VPN in and try to intervene myself.

It went all the way until exactly 5 pm.

Yes, it was my obligation to have to be able to work until 5 pm, but on a Friday, I knew my counterpart who was also involved in the work was as aggravated as I was.

I told mythical wife to remind me not to try and skirt the Friday again in the future and to just burn the PTO.

As far as the rest of the trip was concerned in which I was more or less forced offline which wasn’t really a bad thing in the sense that I actually went to bed for healthy durations of time and didn’t get sucked into the internet vortex of scrolling and wasting time, what was weird is that I was still able to get push notifications of all the things that I was missing, but was really incapable of staying on top of anything. 

I get free international roaming and data, which was serviceable in the past, but I guess T-Mobile really sucks compared to Sprint, and Mexico aside, the data available to me in Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Disney’s private Bahamian island were all inept garbage, and may as well as have remained offline, so it got to a point where I was just like, fuck it, and gave up on even trying.

But in the week in which I was off the grid, aside from work blowing me up, there was apparently all sorts of shit happening in the world that got a lot of my shit blowing up.  Wrestling events, sports happenings, interesting news in general.  Family gatherings, friends reaching out, and even a friend of mine getting engaged.  My dad, whom my sister and I are dealing with the things that occur in later stages of life, has been making a lot of questionable independent decisions, one of which caused his bank to contact me, naturally while I’m out of the country, to ensure its authenticity, which spiked my stress and anxiety at being incapable of handling it.  Family chats blowing up trying to arrange future things, multiple friend group chats exploding with topics and takes that I’d ordinarily like to participate in.  All the while, being pretty much offline for seven nights.

I understand that this is among the pinnacle of first world problems.  But it was almost comical at just how much the world moved just as soon as I was completely unable to witness all the happenings of it.  To the point where even though I’m home and beginning the settling in process, I wanted to blurt out this diatribe before taking any time at even attempting to ease back into the connected life, before anything else, not to mention the component of where I had the above graphic in my mind, and where the Photoshop sometime steers the post.

I guess we know who’s vying to be the next Spirit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Some friends and I were bullshitting on the topic of how Spirit Airlines is seemingly knocking at death’s door, about how if and when Spirit goes under, who takes their place in the airline pecking order, as the new budget airline that will absorb the lion’s share of ridicule and be the butt of all airline travel jokes?  Surely, one would emerge, seeing as how that’s just the natural order of nature, that if the weakest link of any category were to be cut off and killed, that someone would inevitably become the next in line.

The obvious choice would be Frontier, which is basically just Spirit Airlines but branded in green, as far as being a budget airline that lives on nickel and diming the fuck out of their customers, but for those who play it smart, a fairly serviceable option to get from point A to B.  And as someone who has flown both airlines on multiple occasions before, they really are pretty one and the same, and it would stand to believe that when Spirit goes under, those who already didn’t think Frontier was the ass-end of the airline industry, might not have any choice in the matter.

However, a surprising* contender appears to be emerging, as far as being a strong candidate to be the next Spirit, and that would be the once-reputable, once-universally beloved, once-proclaiming to love their customers, Southwest Airlines.

*or not, given the general direction of the company over the span of the last two years

Over the span of the last 12+ months, Southwest has made a tremendous amount of operational changes, with almost none of them being remotely beneficial to consumers.  First, it was them ceasing the whole open seating policy they had, which, to some was welcome, but to others, a sign of conformity and how they were taking one step closer to becoming another United or American or any other middling airline.  Then, in a move that definitely rose the ire of travelers, was the implementation of baggage fees, when for years prior, they boasted how bags flew free. 

And just over the last few days alone, Southwest has continued moving in conceivably the wrong direction, by announcing a large slew of route cuts, that will adversely affect lots of travelers from having direct options, and even had the audacity to try to spin that layovers were opportunities to see different parts of the country.  For as long as it took them to get their hooks into Atlanta, it looks like they’re already trying to reduce, with supposedly over 50% fewer flights this time next year, departing from ATL.

But one new development that is sure to draw the wrath of the internet as well as many around the country is their redefining of the large passenger policy, which was previously that large passengers could purchase a single seat, and get a second seat por gratis, if the flight could accommodate it, which was polarizingly applauded by many as a firm stance of allyship of inclusion of people of all body shapes and sizes.  Under their new policy, large passengers will have to preemptively purchase two seats if they know they will need them, and refunds of the second seat would be taken into consideration but not guaranteed, presumably on a case-by-case basis.

The latter is still probably better than what most other airlines offer, but it doesn’t take a genius to anticipate that the wrath of the internet is just going to see this as a sign of Southwest hates fat people, and when perception becomes reality, they become just like all the other airlines in the end.

The point is, Southwest is seemingly giving no more fucks about customers, contrary to the general brand reputation of theirs over the last two decades prior.  They’ve made it crystal clear that they are trying to profit in a competitive market, which is white people speak for, we know we’d probably be fine operating like we had been over the last half century, but we want to make more money now, so we’re going to say fuck the people and just do what everyone else is doing in order to achieve that.

I mean ultimately, that is the goal of every business in the world, to make money, but there are ways to do it and keep integrity and respect of the people intact, but that of course, often comes at a cost in itself, and when a bunch of old white guys run all these corporations, integrity and respect quickly fall to the wayside in pursuit of those extra nickels and dimes.

But it is funny how rapidly Southwest is selling their soul in order to go from successful company to asshole-rich successful company.  A part of me begins to wonder if Southwest isn’t deliberately tanking their company in one of those strange-but-typical modus operandi of businesses slashing expenses in a massive manner through liquidation and layoffs, in anticipation of a company sale or merger, and that Southwest is somewhere in a process of selling the company or getting absorbed by another airline.

And if so, a little more to be poured out for the airline industry, because within the guts of Southwest Airlines exists the remnants of AirTran, the budget airline that did succeed, and that I flew the shit out of, because they accomplished absolutely everything I needed out of an airline at reasonable costs.  Spirit and Frontier never could accomplish the things AirTran did, and AirTran did so well, they got assimilated into Southwest, who like Microsoft or Adobe basically did in so in order to kill a competitor.

Regardless of what happens to Southwest’s business in the future, if there was ever a bigger red flag of how they could become the next Spirit, look no further than the terminal incident out of Orlando, where a Southwest passenger went ballistic, and assaulted a terminal worker, as well as smashed up some monitors.  It’s funny because if this were actually Spirit, the lady would have been tazed and arrested within moments of the first aggression, but it’s like Southwest still has a lot to learn about unruly passengers, and she went unchecked for a while before presumably getting dealt with long after the cameras stopped rolling.

But if Southwest continues down this downward spiral, anticipate way more of this bullshit, and their gates will become the future places to meander to when you have a long wait before your flight after Spirit is gone, with hopes that you might see a street fight or a massive hot mess passenger meltdown.