Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Who's Responsible For This?

There's an old Kids in the Hall sketch in which some corporate CEO all excited about the day's upcoming company event - a picnic or a softball game or somesuch - which will be taking place outside. However, when he opens the blinds in the conference rooms he sees that it's raining cats and dogs. "WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?" he screams in frustration. Everyone starts pointing fingers at each other, and he makes his way down the corporate ladder as each person assigns the blame to a subordinate, until finally he's down to the janitor, the person on the lowest rung, and the CEO declares, "You're fired!"
At that point, the rain stops, the clouds disappear, and it turns into a beautiful sunny day.
The reason this comes to mind is that earlier today I was checking out prices on flights to Michigan for my upcoming annual pilgrimage home.
Out of curiosity, and for the sheer hell of it, I decided to see how much more First Class tickets would cost than Ecoomy.
I wasn't prepared for the answer.
It was more than three times the cost of a regular ticket.
I've flown First Class a couple of times; it's totally not worth that much money. For those kinds of prices you ought to get head.
At the very least.
Even though I had no intention of flying First Class anyway, seeing that pissed me off, to the point that I found myself angrily wondering "WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?" and wish that it were possible to find that person and give him or her a call:

"Hello, operator? Get me the person responsible for setting the price on First Class airline tickets. Yes, I'll hold."
"..."
"dadadada da da da the girl from Ipanema - dammit! Stupid hold music."
"..."
"Hello, this is Tad Funklesworth, Director of First Class Airline Ticket Pricing. How may I help you?"
"Hi, my name is Jon and I was just wondering...are you fucking retarded? $700 more for a slightly bigger seat and a shitty meal? Assuming the flight even has meal service? And you don't even get head out of it? Go fuck yourself, Tad."

As mentioned, I'd never bother with flying First Class anyway, unless I was going to be spending hours and hours and hours on a plane. However, the flight from Dulles to Minneapolis only takes about two and a half hours, and the flight from Minneapolis to home doesn't even have a First Class section because it's just a tiny little puddle-jumper.
So fuck you, Tad, or whoever you are.

All Of The Above Leads Me To A Question Department:
When he turned 40, legendary comic book writer and beard enthusiast Alan Moore declared to friends and family that it was his intention to become a magician.
Not a stage magician, but an actual magician.
He said that he didn't really know what was going to come of it, and that he was trusting his loved ones to warn him if it seemed as though in his studies of the mystical secrets of the universe he might be going mad.
The question this raised among said loved ones was "How would we be able to tell?"
Which leads me to my question: does it seem like I'm getting angrier?
Seriously, I was totally pissed off about something that, by my own admission, had no real impact on me, and I find that it seems to take less and less to piss me off more and more.
I realize that it's an unfair question, given how high a level of anger serves as my baseline, and, as with Moore and madness, how would you be able to tell if Jon is actually getting angrier?
Still, I'm just curious as to whether or not my apparent increase in rage levels is apparent.

Random Declaration Department:
If they ever make a movie based on The Doom Patrol (I'm currently reading Showcase Presents The Doom Patrol Volume One), and it features The Brotherhood of Evil as the villains (which it should), the voice of Monsieur Mallah should be provided by Jean Reno.
Why? Because a super-intelligent, beret and bandolier-wearing French gorilla voiced by The Professional? I have two things to say to that: fuck and yes.

Apart from casting roles in movies that don't exist, getting pissed about the cost of something I have no intention of buying, and finding myself a little troubled by my rising levels of non-specific and multi-directional rage, not much else has been going on, so I guess that will do it for this entry.

1 comment:

Merlin T Wizard said...

That's a fair question. I'd say yes, you are getting either angrier or it takes less to set you off.

I chalk it up to the build up of minor pranks the Universe has played upon you all these years. I think the Universe is trying to get you to reach critical mass.

However, you never seem to get that angry when you're around friends. It could just be that you're masking the anger well, I don't know.