The way to think of revolutions is as national bankruptcies. Like bankruptcy, the debts are cleared so the enterprise can start fresh. In the case of a company, the debts are the manifestation of bad decisions by prior management. In the case of the country, the debts are the ruling class and the system that makes them possible. These are the results of decisions made by prior generations. Wiping those away allows the new generation to reinvent the enterprise of society.
People are much more practical about a big sprawling corporation that go through bankruptcy than they are a country going through revolution. In the former case, the focus is on the mundane. The company needs to shed product lines and business entities in order to focus on the profitable stuff. In the latter case, all of the talk is about grand plans for reorganizing the very nature of society. Revolutionaries want to reinvent the people that make up society.
The better way for revolutionaries to think, at least in the planning stage, is about the small things that make up daily life. Airports, for example, are a thing that most people now experience with some regularity. There is nothing more populist, democratic and elitist than a nation’s airports. When you travel to a foreign country, your first impression of the place is in the airport. You hear the strange new language and maybe see some strange new things for the first time.
An airport is a symbol of a country. As a public works project, it is one of the more complicated things a country does. It is a system that has to guide millions of people who are often out of their element, thus easily confused. Those people expect to be cared for as they leave for a journey or return from abroad. The airport is not just the welcome mat of a country, it is the welcome home sign. You can judge a nation by its airports because it reflects the nature of society.
For example, when you travel into an organized society like China or the United Arab Emirates, the first thing you notice is the orderliness of the airport. Everything is clean and works as expected. In a disorganized country like the United States, airports are often an incomprehensible mess. The best airports are worse than the worst airports in high functioning societies. The worst airports are what you expect in Africa. There is a genre of video for this experience.
Assuming things continue on the current path in the United States, what would the revolutionary committee do to change the airports? How would these vital ports of entry and transit hubs be changed to reflect the sensibilities of the revolution? The point of the revolution is to change the nature of society, so there is no better place to start than where tens of millions of citizens frequent. How would the revolutionary airport serve the goals of the revolution?
The first change would be how people dress in the airport. Shorts for men would be banned inside all revolutionary airports. Men and women would be required to dress as they would at a proper office. There is no reason for men to be in shorts at an airport other than slovenliness. Men arrive in an air-conditioned car and are quickly transported on an air-conditioned bus then to an air-conditioned terminal. You can hang meat in most airports, so there is no need for beach wear.
This is not about comfort or aesthetics, even though the latter is important. It is about instilling confidence and self-respect back into the people. The reason people dress up for special events like weddings is they want to feel their best. Erasmus famously wrote, “vestis virum facit”, which means clothes make a man. The reason this is true is how you dress reflects how you think of yourself. The same can be said for how we dress our people in our airports.
The next change is to ban roller bags on planes. A feature of the modern airport experience is people wheeling bags the size of steamer trunks around, calling them carryon luggage. Every plane is late because they run out of overhead space and the extra bags must be stowed in the belly of the plane. Of course, people also carry a huge second bag that needs space. None of these ever fit properly in the bins, so people waste time figuring out how to get them into the bin.
Watching this circus on every plane, you are reminded that the people, and the people in charge, are no longer able to operate an airport. The revolutionary airport will assign space to each passenger for their carry-on. Their bag will be measured in advance and if it is too big then they and their bag will be hurled into a crusher installed in every airport for this purpose. This solves the immediate problems, and it solves the problem of people who cannot or will not follow basic instructions.
This sounds harsh, but you know that the people who carry steamer trunks and giant backpacks are the sorts of people who cannot order off the menu. These are people who prove they are special by making sure they are a public nuisance in every aspect of life. Eliminating them from the airport system by eliminating them from the gene pool turns the airport into a selection mechanism for society. The revolution has no place for those who cannot follow simple instructions.
Fixing the passengers is one half of the problem. The other half is the people running the airport, especially security. In organized countries, security is not handled by blue shirt wearing simpletons. Security is not just a matter of forcing people into long lines, hoping that the bad guys have less patience than the good guys. In well run countries, airport security is close to invisible. It is there but it is woven into the system in such a way that you barely notice it.
America is a heavily armed country. There is no reason we cannot rely on the tens of millions of gun owners to handle security. The revolutionary airport will license citizens to be air marshals. In exchange for their service on flights and in the terminal, they get to fly free domestically. This is a country where 65% of fires are put out by volunteer fire companies and 70% of EMS workers are volunteers. There is no reason the bulk of airport security cannot be handled by volunteers.
There also needs to be a tonnage tax at airports. Another horrible aspect of American airports, aesthetically and operationally, is the fat people. Frequent travelers know the joy of being wedged into a seat between two fat people. Pass through an American airport at holiday time and it is a circus of fat guys in shorts and fat women testing the physical limits of yoga pants. All tickets will be hit with a BMI tax to both limit fat people on planes and encourage a healthy weight in the population.
In fact, this is an idea that should be extended to all food sellers. Imagine the checkout at the grocery store having a scale. Before you pay for your food, you weigh in and calculate the tax. Even more fun, imagine Starbucks installing scales. Social pressure alone would lower the national BMI. The fat tax would also be a voluntary tax, which is the best kind of taxation. After the revolution, people will care about how they look, because they will have pride in themselves again.
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I wouldn’t start with the airport if I was the revolutionary, but the satire is humorous.
I would start where all revolutionaries start: deciding how the leaders will be chosen.
In a country like this, you start by removing the voting franchise from non-citizens. Citizenship defined native born Americans born to TWO American citizens, and who pay a net income tax. If you earn more in taxes than you pay, you’re not a full citizen and you don’t get to vote. That includes government employees and contractors, not just welfare recipients. Wanna vote? Get off the government cheese. Your tax return defines your citizenship every April for the upcoming year, and you present it plus a photo ID in order to vote.
I would take a page from Heinlein and make 4 years of continuous honorable military service an automatic lifetime citizenship criteria.
Finally, I’d make it so any company larger than a set % of national GDP gets automatically broken up and sold.
The attire/dress code points are ones I think about more regularly than not.
Seeing people while traveling treat the airplane like it’s their personal living room to lounge around in pajamas is a personal pet peeve of mine. Dressing like a slob doesn’t elevate yourself or others around you. We’re a transformed society that works actively to destroy and denigrate things that elevate ourselves and each other. What we wear is a big part of it. It does reflect on the type of person you are more than what most care to admit.
Last night, while coming home from work, I saw a tubby college girl hoofin’ it down the street. She was clad in hot pants (yes, 70’s-style hot pants), her school’s t-shirt, and gigantic $200 basketball sneakers. I bet she completely loathes the attention she gets from disgusting chubby chasers and garden variety horny dudes… But I honestly wondered if she also loathes herself. Leaving the sorority house dressed like that; I can’t help but to figure that you’d have to hate yourself to present yourself that poorly.
The people who matter don’t travel by public airlines. Those planes and airports are for the cattle. So there is no pressure to make them first world.
The need to always dress down seems to be both a fight against adulthood and a way to show you don’t care about other people. I see it as part of the general decline in manners, especially among women. There is no need to be polite to others because you never asked them to stop so you could cross the street or hold that door open for you. The current thing is to be cold to people until you determine they are worthy of you or of some use.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
And buses.
Del: You’re in a pretty lousy mood, huh?
Neal: To say the least.
Del: You ever travel by bus before?
[Neal shakes his head]
Del: Hmm. Your mood’s probably not going to improve much.
Things have not improved since 1987
I already live in the post-revolutionary society.
I call my health plan. After a twenty-five minute hold, a sweet, young voice comes on the line. The young lady speaks English with such a thick foreign accent, I can’t understand a word she says. She is very nice, always calling me “Meester Jon-sone.” I repeat back to her everything she says to me to see if I understand it. She repeats back to me everything I say to her to see if I understand it. I ask her where’s she’s from. She’s from Cambodia. “Oh, are you in Phnom Penh?” “No, I’m in (name of local city where my health plan HQ is located.)
Under diversity, equity and inclusion, I understand that companies have to beef us their foreign workers as well as some classes of domestic workers. But why, when they hire hire sweet, young, recent Cambodian arrivals with a year of ESL English under their stretchies don’t they put them to work filing, coding or word processing? Why do they put them on “customer service” phones?
They do it because they hate us. Not the sweet, young Cambodians, the post revolutionaries who run my health plan.
The main airport in Moscow was pretty bad in the early 2000’s. Very chaotic inside and it seemed to be made of nothing but cement slabs. Travel there now and it’s a nice, modern airport. Nothing like some of the top airports in the world, but pretty nice compared to what it was. Shows how far the country has come since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Not to mention the transition from Yeltsin to Putin and Medvedev.
I was in Croatia a few years ago and on a sightseeing tour. The tour guide went to great lengths to point out the concrete tenement housing around the city. And how farmers had their land taken, and they were forced into these apartments to do factory work. Then she pointed to an ancient Roman aqueduct. “The ones the Communists built have all failed. So we use the ones the Romans built 2,000 years ago.
The collectivists have never given up on their dream. They just changed their names.
After the revolution the airports will be crowded with certain people trying to get the f**k out of the country before they’re hanged from lamp posts.
Why do you think they call it “flight”?
El Al will be running charter flights to the Promised Land. You know, the place from whence they promise there will be no extraditions.
There absolutely has to be some sort of weight/bmi limit. Further, if you have a kid under the age of one, or better yet, two, tough luck. Finally, no gimps or feeb geezers getting boarded first. Those sombit**** buy an economy ticket and sit up front – at least on SW. F that…
I don’t so much mind them boarding first. What pisses me off is that they are the first ones to stand up and since they are clear up front, they the clog the aisles for the next 20 minutes. If you needed extra time to board, you need extra time to deplane.
Further, all those morons who brought the steamer trunks? You sit back down until everyone who followed the rules has been able to get on their way. We don’t need you and your 7 carry-ons in our way, either.
Be courteous. Or the airlines could start issuing pistols with frangible ammo to people who travel sensibly. Either works for me.
Some kind of nationalist to not like children. Good luck with the nice quiet future
In certain circles — thankfully not here — whenever airports are mentioned, the subject of “high-speed rail” comes up. The fact is we don’t need high-speed rail in the U.S. for obvious reasons. But if we did need high-speed rail, the same dress codes would need to apply.
It would be entirely in the Spirit of the Revolution to name one of the new airports after the late Robert Palmer.
I remember some interviewer in the 80s asking him, in accord with the egalitarian norms of the age, why he dressed in suits. Palmer seemed a little embarrassed, as if being called out for being an elitist. His answer was that dressing nicely got him better service in restaurants.
But I have always suspected that what he really wanted to reply was something more like “First, because I look smashing and feel great, and second, the ladies fall all over me, and finally, no one will ever mistake me for you, you journo yob.”
Oh, and naturally, the main terminal at RPA will prominently feature a statue of Mr. Palmer backed by a pair of the equally well-dressed singers from the Addicted to Love era.
Vote: Baby, It’s Cold Outside
1. Dean Martin
2. Robert Palmer
Well, you know, ZZ Top was right that every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed man.
Robert Palmer got a lot of mileage out of an Armani suit and a bevy of fashion models. It’s a shame there aren’t more like him around today.
Being on 50%+ travel, I am very familiar with the majority of domestic airports as well as some of the main international ones.
Fully agree on the baggage – actually once you have decent status, at least one checked bag is free, so I don’t get why more business travelers don’t go that route.
Also, speaking of, their is a huge marked difference between say a Tuesday 10am flight and a Saturday 10am flight. I rarely travel for personal, so it’s always jarring when I do go during non-business travel times, when the majority of fellow flyers are uninitiated and ignorant.
Finally, TSA has gotten more and more surly. I was extremely impressed with traveling in Australia as the security was cheerful as a rule and their was not the adversarial dynamic present in the US.
Finally, I generally dress casual when flying, for comforts sake. That being said, a fit gentleman like myself generally looks sharp in nice jeans and a slim t-shirt.😉
Finally, TSA has gotten more and more surly. I was extremely impressed with traveling in Australia as the security was cheerful as a rule and their was not the adversarial dynamic present in the US.
I recently had the same experience in Chile. Not only cheerful, but helpful; in Santiago, there were also folks stationed near the baggage claim to help keep the bags moving and clear everything out.
In both those countries the people have been so deeply and permanently defeated, airport mall cops don’t even bother to molest them anymore.
Actual cops do still beat them in the streets though.
Jeans are uncomfortable compared to dress slacks like Dockers. and a nice polo shirt or short sleeve button down with a white tee underneath, crew, or tank, is perfectly comfortable.
I think you dress in jeans and tees because you are too lazy to press your clothes.
Great topic.
Additional enhancements:
* No television screens and no overhead radios pumping music.
* Eliminate the shopping mall. Only a simple book shop with snacks and water. All produce and goods must be local market price.
* Classical architecture
* The only art will be statues and plaques to our noble heritage honoring our best people. They should be local and reflect the local founders, pioneers inventors … No political activists or criminal’s imagery shall be displayed or mentioned.
* No advertisements of any kind will be displayed. This includes the dress code. No apparel with logos will be permitted. See the trash compactor solution. Your deeds and valor determine your worth not what you can buy. We are not an ostentatious people.
Could do more. Namely, no more Star Wars bar scene. Our people man the airport and are welcomed home by our people.
Oh yeah! This is controversial but I have this conviction. No seatback TV screens. I’m was in a flight last week that did not have them pumping ads, white erasure and the background radiation anxiety that those things bring.
Maybe international flights. For all else, we promote reading writing taking time to relax and be at rest. Play cards with your neighbor.
As for the presentations of the staff (safety review … …) they will have to be done for adults. No more infantalizing staff f the population and promotion of the emotional safety culture. This is not Sesame Street. This is America – a nation founded by European adventurers and explorers. Be kind. Be courteous. Be professional in your delivery.
We must break the spell of Madison Ave and the PR industry and its infantalizing victim and subservience promotion. I don’t feel grateful for a kindergarten level safety review and experience. We are not building a brand and it’s consumers addicted to warm and fuzzy hiding a mailed fist. we are building a civilization of serious men and women.
Sad Sack Airlines will have the plug pulled in AmeriEuropa
Insert the buckle into the clasp and pull the strap tight across your lap…
Idiocracy, indeed.
Indeed. A whole bunch of third worlders who have never seen a seat belt in their lives get to travel by air these days.
Usually credentialled idiots from Bangalore.
Speaking of screens…
Everytime Im greeting by some negress or homosexual advertising TV shows featuring other negresses and homosexuals… when I have to PUMP GAS I dream of pumping a dozen or so gallons on the ground and throwing a zippo down on the way out.
If there was any real populism in America a candidate could win on just doing away with all these nasty little intrusions into all our lives
On the gas pump screen, if you press the second button down on the right hand side it mutes the ad. Its better than nothing and it frees up your ears and eyes to be on the lookout. Never relax…
Hell yes! Those are the worst. I once saw a globe homo ad on a web page with a negro popping out of the computer.
I had the same experience relaxing at the pump then wham – out came black lesbians and beautiful whites women with negro boyfriends and a Chinese child. No where to run.
Gas stations that do this will have all of management beheaded.
No more ads! You want to take big tech? Severely limit ads. Revenue gone! Peace of mind restored. You also get rid of Madison Ave’s power as well as PR shrunk way down to size.
Additionally, the revolutionary airport needs to be built to accommodate mass deportations of illegals.
I’m also glad to have you on my side on the anti-men wearing shorts crusade. Serious men don’t wear shorts except at the gym, beach, or pool. As Carmine said to Tony Soprano, “A Don doesn’t wear shorts.” I’ll add another one: men have no business using a backpack. You’re not in high school. Get a proper leather travel duffel.
So right on the shorts and the backpack.
Also, no grown man should be in flip flops except perhaps at the beach and in his bathroom after a shower.
Foreigners check-in, they don’t check out…
Ahhh airport security, where does one begin? A friend I’ve mentioned here before is a deputy at the sheriff’s office and they have an airport that is run/owned by the county.
Shortly after 9-11, they canvassed the ranks to find people who had travelled overseas as part of their military service, as they wanted ideas on how things are run in various parts of the world. Almost every one who had something to say about the subject mentioned two countries at the top of their list: The Swiss and the Israelis. Say what you want about the latter, but I spoke with a few of these guys over the years who have had experience travelling there and they have nothing but great things to say about how their airports are run.
What Z commented on here is true, security is so seamless, you never know it’s there until they are needed. You are being profiled before you ever get near the gate. From the moment you enter the airport their behavioral observers can ascertain whether or not you need further scrutiny. If you do, plain clothes security will usher you into a nearby room where you will be questioned further about your plans, 95% of the people who walk through the doors are left alone. There is no curbside check-in. When you arrive, your bags are dropped off at a location that is at least one mile away from the terminal, lest a bomb going off wipes out a lot of people.
I read an article about how Giuliani hired a retired director of security from El-Al to redesign the security at Kennedy and LGuardia, but the guy got nowhere and ultimately left. Reason being is that whenever he spoke about a change that needed to be made, there was a chorus of “We are not going to do that!” from the various other groups at the airports. From the ramp rats, to the taxi’s and ticket counter people, everyone had a problem with at least one of the suggestions and so everything remained the same. That is the main reason we got the smurfs from “Thousands Standing Around” who are our new harassers.
Was checking in at the ticket line at Paris CDG (post-9/11). It had been a quick trip, so I was carrying just a small bag. Plainclothes security guy swings by and asks rapid-fire (in English after I flunked his friendly French greeting):
What were you doing in Paris? Visiting a friend.
Where did you stay? With said friend.
What did you do during your stay? Touristy stuff.
How do you know said friend? School
What is your friend doing in Paris? Studying…something
How long have you known said friend? About two years.
…and, bang: I passed. “Have a good trip home.”
Took 25 seconds. Quick, professional and respectful.
Had I been married or a terrorist, I would most certainly have been pulled out of the line for further questioning.
I’m guessing quick answers (or the lack thereof) are the first thing he’s looking for
I had a sense of good security at Sheremetyevo in Moscow. I wouldn’t say it was unobtrusive. Probably the first airport I ever went through where I doubted my ability to smuggle anything (a mental game I play in airports).
No, we got them as the price of the Democrats voting for airport security. They wanted a huge new union for unemployable (mostly) negroes.
One question: Will helicopters be taking off from the revolutionary airport?
“When you travel to an organized society,” i.e. when you travel to a society without blacks versus one with blacks. Airport employees and TSA are disproportionately black. Is the chaos any surprise? It’s like the leftist outrage a few months ago in one of their nutty publications. They were breathlessly asking why South Korea and Russias public transport is so much cleaner, more modern, and orderly than any of our country’s like New York or DC. Their answer was to throw more money at it of course. The real answer is one word: blacks.
True. Also, even when there is the option of public transport (there isn’t in many US cities), whites are reluctant to use it because of the ever-present threat of black violence and criminality. The presence of blacks is forcing the whole system to functional uneconomically.
I’ve lived in and around NYC for going on 38 years, and I never thought I would refuse to ride the subway, even during the graffiti- & crime-ridden end-of-Ed-Koch-thru-Dinkins-admin period.
No more. Some crime was to be expected, but there were always cops on the platform and/or/the train. Now, it’s criminals and seriously crazy people, and no one is going to be there to help when the sh*t goes down.
And if somebody does try to help, he’ll be thrown under the slammer. If he’s a white man, that is.
Anybody from Dickensian London, or from late empire Rome, for that matter, who had his/her wits about him would have known how to negotiate “old school” NYC criminality.
Avoid it – don’t go “there”…not “then…”
The shite that gets thrown around in the Capitol Cities of today’s ClownWorld, however, is like something out of time, entirely.
The never ending after effects of this country’s original sin of African slavery.
I concur with all these proposals.
Let it begin in Africa, meaning Baltimore.
The volunteer part cheered me up.
“65% of fires are put out by volunteer fire companies and 70% of EMS workers are volunteers“
Amen: although I would start with JFK/LGA/NWK.
“The first change would be how people dress in the airport. Shorts for men would be banned inside all revolutionary airports. Men and women would be required to dress as they would at a proper office.”
A few years back I asked friends: “would you pay a premium to fly with an airline that enforced a dress code?”
Never ANY question in MY mind…
Surely Z-Man has entered some offices in the past couple of decades. There are no “proper” offices left – if by which you mean IBM in the 1950s. Legal offices, perhaps, if they are private and for the wealthy, where the associates and partners compete at their respective levels to display wealth and accomplishment, primarily through clothes and horological trinkets.
@Ben the Layabout, “Basically the only large-scale public health mandate that has been beneficial has been the reduction in allowed trans-fats.”
Where do you live? When I’m down anywhere near the college, judging by appearance it seems like at least a quarter of the people there are trans-fats.
” Erasmus famously wrote, “vestis virum facit”, which means clothes make a man.”
In my experience, it’s largely, “Clothes fake the man.” The snappy dressers seem to usually be compensating for a lack of competence, while the less vain rely on their innate abilities to sell themselves.
I’m retired now, but BITD, seeing someone come through the door at the top end of business casual meant he was quite likely worth my time, while someone dressed to the nines was almost always a waste, and the receptionist knew to send a “call” through in 8 minutes to find out if I was urgently needed on the plant floor, and good day.
Indeed, the lawyers figured out long ago that respectability was only a suit and a haircut away.
Isn’t that the truth! They can clean some of those gud bois up enough to pass as good boys. Given the chance, they could have Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin look as if they still were those smiling 13-year olds.
There’s a big difference between business casual and bum. If you look like a bum, you probably are one. If you take pains to make yourself presentable, you’re probably okay. That’s my experience.
Agree 100%… While I do not dress in a slovenly manner, I deeply distrust anyone in a suit. In my experience the folks in a three piece suit are the ones who will f*** you over. The guy in jeans, work boots, and a polo will give it to you straight.
One of the main hesitations I have about AmRen is the coat and tie requirement. That seems to get in the way of the point, IMHO.
I would say AmRen needs a dress code of some sort. And by keeping it simple, “coat and tie,” they prevent the situation from devolving into a lengthy, contentious, tedious list of acceptable and unacceptable, with arguments over minutiae.
I used to spend a lot of time in airports. I no longer do. But back when I did, it was part of my race realism journey. Because I noticed that at certain airports, the arrival of the bags at baggage claim was always tardy, and at others always prompt. And I noticed who comprised the baggage handler staff at these respective airports. It’s sort of like pulling up at a fast food joint and seeing vibrant staff, you know to move on down the road, but at an airport you don’t have that choice.
Regarding fashion choices, you’re probably not going to want to hear this, but if you want to be a real Gray Man, you have to blend in by looking like the people around you.
If you measure Germany by the Berlin airport fiasco, you would not be far off.
https://www.dw.com/en/berlins-new-airport-finally-opens-a-story-of-failure-and-embarrassment/a-55446329
Not mentioned in the DW article but it sees there was a fair measure of corruption as well. This airport project has exhibited rank incompetence. I used the airport at Tegel last time I visited Berlin (2017).
I’ve always referred to Frankfurt Airport as, “the place where the myth of German efficiency goes to die.”
Being confronted by a German-speaking Vietnamese security agent was also jarring.
Frankfurt is decent, for such a big airport–after they spent a decade or so remodeling it, anyway. Tegel wasn’t all bad. Munich is nice, and the Lufthansa lounge there is one of the best. Düsseldorf was rebuilt after a huge fire and it’s well set up now.
On the average, I found German airports preferable to American ones.
I was thinking last night on how to compliment the Zman; big or small, his thinking this week on various subjects has been strikingly novel. The insights are always from an unexpected direction, the audience uniquely original in return.
So before reading one word, I just have to say:
I’m back in Atlanta today, just in time for The Indictment. I’m trying to listen to 750 AM, with Conservative Republican Erick Erickson.
Good Gob Almighty. If any of you have cyanide pills, I could really, really, really use a few. Maybe more than just a few.
Hey I’m in Atlanta
Are you offering to put Alzaebo out of his misery? (-;
Erickson is a fat, ginger never-Trumper who isn’t really a conservative. Don’t trust anything he says, he has never been on our side. He’s probably written for NR so he’s like that nepotism hire who was there, Jonah.
In other words, he’s a typical Republican.
“The reason people dress up for special events like weddings is they want to feel their best.”
Love today’s missive, but it really has a serious side that I think bears comment.
It’s not so much people do *not* want to feel their best at airports, but as Woodley points out, they are more and more often “spiteful mutants”. Ed Dutton’s new book, “ The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution” touches on the fact that we have a problem with pathological individualism in modern society.
Z-man, you’ve pointed this out, repeatedly, in past commentary. Extreme individualism is harmful to a well functioning society, and such is associated with these people (SM’s).
I don’t believe I have ever once felt my best in a suit. Tight, hot, restrictive. You may say I should have bought better suits, but if that’s true, then the law of averages says I should have enjoyed the benefits of such at least once.
I tend to agree, but always wore a suit to church and of course “special” occasions such as funerals and weddings. It’s a sign of respect for the occasion. Your “feelings” are secondary.
The wife—and kids—often try to talk me out of it. They’ve drank the cool aid. Last time they ragged on me was an outdoor, “cowboy” wedding of my niece. Took place in a barn of sorts. They said no one will wear a suit, or for that matter a tie or a jacket.
I said bulls&*t and wore cowboy chic—boots, ironed jeans, dress shirt (western style with some frills), old prof jacket with elbow patches, western tie. Blended right in, plus I added 2 inches in hight due to boots—cool. 😉
One principal idea of formal wear is that it be uncomfortable. Just cast your mind back to the tight corsets worn by women of fashion in the 18th and 19th centuries. They could hardly breathe in them.
I never feel comfortable in a suit — i.e., I don’t “feel my best.” But I probably do “look my best” in the impression I create in onlookers.
Jeff, not to poke too much fun, but if your suits dont fit anymore, Zman’s scale-based taxation might be a burden for your Starbucks tab.
But the lack of comfort is the point. You are constrained by the needs and higher purposes of society, at the cost of self-centered comfort. It is formal, starched, and stiff: when you lose the pomp, the formality, the set-aside-from-everyday nature of formal events, you no longer get formal events. Your courtroom will go from Atticus Finch to Idiocracy, your weddings will go from Princess Di to Jersey Shore, and another important piece of our culture will shuffle off into Gomorrah.
This disregards poor ability at selection (meaning you have a tendency to pick poor items). I wear slacks, dress shoes, dress shirt and blazer every day to work. When I have my sharpest ones on, I do feel better than other days. When the tie comes, which I do sometimes, I have to have the right shirt to be comfortable.
I may have mentioned this before, but it is worthy of being repeated.
For about 12 years, I worked at a university law library. I was just a humble staffer, circ desk, stacks work, clerk of government documents, but I thought of the place as a professional space worthy of being met by professional dress, no matter my lower status. So I always wore a jacket and tie (I like ties, an opportunity for a man to subtly be a peacock, and show a good eye for matching colors with those of one’s jacket, shirt, pants).
The male librarians, and sadly some of the female librarians, were heedless of how they looked. Once, when I was standing next to one of the male librarians who was fairly shabbily attired, a patron approached, and he posed his question to me instead of to Mr. Librarian, fashion plate extraordinaire, and I had to direct him to the librarian before departing without exhibiting even a microexpression of amusement.
The most recent Dean of Libraries at the uni where I work was shabbily dressed in the extreme. Thankfully, she was cashiered, although I doubt her sartorial failings had much to do with it.
On the contrary, those who make themselves presentable are the individualists and the non-conformists.
Tiffany Gomas must be made Airport Czar as well. Permanently.
Z: “70% of EMS workers are volunteers”
I was wondering about that very question, during muh recent spiritual travails concerning the v@xxines.
Do you suppose there’s a chance in Hades that EMS chicks might be UN-v@xxed?!?!?!?!?
I know one extremely h0rny BPD EMS chick who not just wants but definitely needs the “D”.
I’ma gonna hafta axe her about it.
[“It” being the v@xxines, not the “D”. The “D” is a given. It’s the v@xxines which are the existential problem here.]
“If it is too big then they and their bag will be hurled into a crusher”
After the Revolution, Death to exploitation by capitalistic baggage.
Aren’t we treading on Garrett Hardin’s turf here, concerning the tragedy of the commons?
Since Z uses airports as a rhetorical device today, here’s a timely piece that’s highly relevant, except it’s about the literal airports of a nation. It also bears mention that the problem described doesn’t affect what’s visible on the surface, at least until somebody (more likely: a lot of somebodies) gets killed. I’ve never especially liked flights, and here’s just one more reason to use land transport or just stay home.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/16/faa-should-rely-on-ability-not-race-in-hiring-air-traffic-controllers/
Ability instead of race in hiring air traffic controllers? Man, that’s just plain crazy talk!
That’s where the failures will really hit: when DIE traffic controllers are responsible for flights piloted by DIE pilots. If I had to guess more vibrant cultures deal with this by having less volume (in an unscientific anecdote I see O’Hare has twice the passenger volume of Mexico city) but the airlines have been piling on as many flights as they can into their hubs. It’s literally a disaster waiting to happen.
Either that, or controlling air traffic has been made so easy that even a negro can do it.
Incidentally, Morgan Freeman played an air traffic controller in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978).
I can picture AI eliminating 98% of air traffic controllers. What routine function that they perform can it not only do, but do better? Token humans kept on staff for emergency situations. Who still might be diversity hires.
I watch a TV series on Smithsonian Channel about airplane disasters, and those ATC guys can play a role in an emergency, pivoting on a dime from another day at the office, to a friend in need to the affected air crews. Unfortunately, I don’t think that ATCs are seen in that light by the bureaucrats in the FAA, and the Prime Directive of Diversity operates in their minds (such as they are) anymore than in the minds of the airline HR flunkies who make staffing decisions (hey, those airplanes basically fly themselves, don’t they?).
A brilliant scene, but that wasn’t Morgan Freeman!
Gott im Himmel! So, it wasn’t. Looked and sounded exactly like Freeman.
I just made a comment here the other day about how bums of yesteryear dressed better walking than streets than do most modern men. Their suits were dirty and unkempt, but they were suits. Most wore hats as well. Even the most casual dress did not include sneakers.
I’m surprised Z didn’t go into the Denver airport and its satanic design.
My dad worked for an airline nearly all his life and – while he never worked in Denver – he had a lot of first hand experience as to what a disaster the Denver airport was (and probably still is to some extent).
My favorite story of his concerns the automated baggage system they put into effect when they first opened it. What would happen was a passenger would come to the counter and want to check two bags to Phoenix, say. The computer would create some indecipherable output and internally mark the next two bags down the conveyor as bound for Phoenix. Often however passengers would change their minds and decide to carry on one of the bags instead of checking it. The automated system would remain bound and determined however to route the next two bags it saw onto Phoenix. When the next customer stepped up wanting his bag checked to Philadelphia, that particular bag would actually end up headed for Phoenix. It was the next passenger at bat that ended up with a bag bound for Philadelphia even if his destination was Los Angeles and so on and so on. My dad worked the counter in many capacities at the time, so he had to deal with the fall out from this on more than one occassion.
Making assumptions which you do not realize you have assumed.
One of the greatest errors we can make in this life [if not the greatest error of them all – failing to assess & re-assess & re-re-assess one’s assumptions, dadgum near about ad infinitum].
In this instance, a computer programmer assuming that the luggage queue would necessarily and always remain ordered in precisely its initial ordering, with no fallback plan for when the luggage queue suddenly lost its ordering and the previously logically ordered queue suddenly degenerates into random statistical noise.
As they say in the armed forces, “To assume makes an ass out of u & me.”
My Goodness, I pity the poor computer programmer who unbeknownst to himself made those particular assumptions.
Imagine how bad the luggage situation would be nowadays, with Colorado having legalized marijuana, and all the paranoid schizophrenics in Central & North Amurrikkkuh being drawn inexorably to Denver.
Said ‘poor computer programmer’ was probably some idiot dot H1B. Piss on him and the azzholes who hired him.
Denver’s only problem is that the terminals are not longer.
Revolutionary airport policy holds that anyone under 60 who is physically unable to make it from one end of the Denver terminal to the other and board with their designated group shall be banned from flying pending satisfactory completion of arctic Fitness Camp.
Isn’t it the Denver airport with all the satanic and pedo images and statues?
I favor the quasi-possessed bronco statutes personally.
crisis of competency – https://www.wsj.com/articles/airport-ground-workers-safety-airlines-c98e3216?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1
It’s everywhere.
https://billypenn.com/2023/08/17/fta-probe-of-septa-marks-just-the-third-time-the-agency-has-initiated-this-kind-of-safety-inspection/
Just as the brown slurry mud genetics are now everywhere too. It is almost like you need White People with a minimal IQ to maintain civilization and basic infrastructure. *smacks head* Amazing!
J, the White race could use an whole he11uva lot moar brilliant icy-blue-eyed nordic White bunz in nordic White ovenz.
Just saying, bro.
Just saying…
My stepson works as a mechanic to keep the light rail trains of the PATCO High Speed Line between Philadelphia and New Jersey running properly and safely. Previously, he worked as a mechanic in a busy commercial truck repair facility. He was acutely aware that how well he did his job could be a lifesaving factor, and he carried that attitude with him to his work with light rail. Yeah, a well-raised white guy, unsurprisingly.
Very relevant article embedded in the comment section of that article you linked. Highly recommend people read and probably bookmark as it captures the zeitgeist perfectly.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/
Morgoth did an hour on this.
Scott Locklin also touches on this from time to time.
Great post, Z.
My friend’s daughter caught a cheap ticket back to school on Spirit. She clutched her bag and kept her eyes wide open the entire flight. Someone had a medical emergency on the flight and she laughed when they requested anyone with medical experience to assist as she looked around at the vibrant, large Shanequas and Javons. She wanted to tell the crew they’d be fortunate to arrive without any assaults or brawls, let alone find someone who could assist with a medical emergency.
Negroes are far better at creating medical emergencies than alleviating them.
I spent three weeks at UNC hospital in Chapel Hill. You better get used to a majority of docs, nurses, techs, and orderlies being brown, black, and/or female.
My wife’s ER doc was a foreign black who actually needed a PA with him as an interpreter for God’s sake.
Destroying the errant nonsense known as egalitarianism will go a long way toward restoring aesthetics’ pride of place. Instead of pressuring people to look as dreadful as possible so that even the homeliest will feel at home, we will encourage people to reach for the stars of pulchritude. That, inevitably, will mean that some people feel a bit abashed. So be it. Civilization was never achieved, let alone sustained, by truckling to its lowest and most unfortunate elements. This doesn’t mean that revolutionary society will behave nastily toward its less comely citizens. On the contrary, revolutionary society, along with being aesthetically attractive, will also be polite and decorous, which means treating the less fortunate with kindness, without, alas, making lodestars of them.
PS–Individual will plays a much larger role in looking good than is commonly allowed. Diet, exercise, personal grooming, dress and deportment, rejecting disfigurement–these things are largely a function of effort and desire. Thus, even people who don’t have much natural beauty with which to work, through dint of will, can make themselves entirely presentable. Very few people are condemned to the Pit of Ugliness for eternity. Those who dwell there do so largely by choice.
The reason looked good before is that they were modeling themselves after their elite, their nominal bosses. The reason they’re ugly now is…pretty much the same reason.
Kneegr0wz dressed a thousand times better during Jim Crow than they do now in Klownworld.
Jim Crow kneegr0w fashions were remarkably similar to that whole Hugo Boss thang involving Austrian Watercoloring Painter Bro.
Is there even a single kneegr0w alive today with the IQ and the talent and the fashion sense of, say, a Nat King Cole?
Ye wanders & mumbles & stumbles around now in glorifed gunny sacks.
Quincy Jones [in his own gunny sacks] looks like he went to a barbeque and ate the entire dadgum swine.
Blacks were under pressure from whites to comport themselves in a reasonably civilized manner, and managed to do so…after a fashion. Alas, once the cultural compulsion vanished, the negro reverted to his natural, savage state.
https://medium.com/history-street/the-bizarre-lip-plate-tradition-4150ffc4352a
hahaha. Oh wait that’s here now.
The Victorians and Edwardians knew how to dress in public, and their society reflected that in its orderliness…All destroyed after the poverty produced by two unnecessary World Wars followed by mass immigration from 3d world countries…
When flying I’ve always dressed in natural fibers that will smolder and not melt, leather boots or shoes, and jeans. I’ve always done this because I was deeply effected by an article I read as a teenager about surviving a crash. In the article people that survived a crash landing almost unscathed unfortunately had to pass burning engines and had their nylon clothing melt to their skin. Men and women with light comfortable shoes lost them and were badly hurt extracting themselves from the wreckage.
Looking at my fellow passengers nowadays only validates my flight wardrobe. Between the obvious criminals and huge number of people with mental health issues… this clothing/footwear choice is better to fight in than shorts and flip flops. It may come to that.
You can’t run from terminal A to terminal D to catch your connection in flip flops. One more reason to wear practical shoes.
Just dropped by to say that is an absolutely marvelous comment, Ostei.
Back after Nixon went to China in 72, the ChiComs opened an office in DC, not yet an embassy. Every morning the staff marched out onto the street in Mao suits and performed calisthenics. American companies should adopt that. Those working at home would be required to do it in front of their abodes.
I agree. They should also be required to wear the Mao suits. It would fit right in with the requirements to attend DEI classes.
Waving Mao’s Little Red Book fervently would add a nice touch, methinks.
In one school district I know well, the parents rebelled against the fat commies and mandated two outside recesses per day for the kids, and BMI-wellness reports every quarter…The kids got skinnier, and the overweight junior high girls slimmed down.
Note also that many of the schools have soda machines on their premises (and get paid a pretty penny by soda vendors for allowing them). Note also that the lunch menu at many (most?) schools is usually not very healthy.
I still have “The People’s Republic of China Daily Exercise Plan”!
Got it in ’72.
A slim booklet of 10 brief calisthenics. I don’t sing any company songs, though.
They had vending machines in schools back in my day. Somehow we managed to survive. Probably because fatties were still shunned instead of celebrated. Its the fatso that causes fatassery, not the twinkie
We had one vending machine in HS. It dispensed (very nice ripe red) APPLES.
It was quite popular.
Fat doesn’t begin to do justice to some of the land whales on planes. On a recent flight my poor wife was assigned a seat in a row with two behemoths who, together, must easily have weighed in at 850 lbs. To make matters worse, they ate steadily through the five hour flight — chocolate bars, chips, whatever the flight had on offer. Oh Sgt. Hartmann, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you…
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Are you allowed to eat jelly doughnuts, Private Pyle?
Private Gomer Pyle: Sir, no, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: And why not, Private Pyle?
Private Gomer Pyle: Sir, because I’m too heavy, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Because you are a disgusting fat body, Private Pyle!
And it’s GySgt to you, twinkletoes. Dont demote the man.
https://youtu.be/h66p3gW82bM. My parents used to watch this show, we could enjoy it together, I’d like the slapstick clown play while my parents got the more adult jokes that were rather wholesome. I just watched this over the weekend and was laughing out loud. Zman are monitoring my YouTube viewing habits ?
An enjoyable post, because it’s true and funny.
Just a few comments. I haven’t read the previous ones, so if I repeat anything, oh well.
Regarding men in shorts. Forget about that. Men in flip flops or Crocs should be subject to the crusher outlined in the piece. In addition to not wanting to see anyone’s nasty toes fungus, no self respecting man wears flip flops or Crocs. If you have to take any survival action, you’re done, including your family. Whoever wears those lacks any self awareness.
As for visiting an airport again, I have vowed to never get on a plane, unless one of my kids needs an emergency kidney transplant in another state.
A friend who works for a major carrier has related that the AA hires that are filtering into the system, should not be anywhere near a cockpit. I’m not interested in a fiery death.
Over at Kween Airlines, you can rack up frequent fliers miles to exchange for weave.
The crusher will also be used for men who wear dress shoes with no socks.
Brought to you by the KlownBeGone Compactor Company. Squeezing the bugs and clowns out iof society for ten years since the Revolution
Bartleby: That’s our attitude. Between fights and weave pulling amongst the pj-wearing Shaniquas in the waiting area, being physically violated by the TSA, and dealing with odoriferous mystery meat land whales crammed into the seats . . . who would pay for that? Add in AA for pilots and air traffic controllers, plus vaxxed pilots, we just refuse to fly any longer.
Fwiw, my husband got home from a business trip quicker (after 2 days of driving) than a colleague who flew – after multiple flight cancellations and delays. Of course, driving is no fun either, with all the aliens and the idiots glued to their phones while going 75 mph. Between all the unpleasantness and incompetence, plus increasing costs and inconvenience, the goal is to limit and eventually prohibit anyone unapproved from traveling anywhere.
This is a topic I could write a great deal about. I don’t do much flying, but really any area of American life today would be subject to the same criticisms. I tend to focus more on roadways and grocery stores, myself.
The commonality across all such criticisms is the abuse of the public space. Fortunately, there is a common cure for the common cause. The thing that fixes all of this is hard money. Loose credit is what enables unprofitable people to do unprofitable things. When every gram and calorie and second has to be put to good use, it dries up the well of much foolishness.
I enjoy taking note of how much more pleasant my daily commute becomes when the weather is unaccommodating. I figure the people with regular jobs and regular places to be will still be driving the same routes at about the same times every day, rain or shine, because they have to, but a lot of the weaker hands (i.e. people with no good reason to be out and about) will be deterred. When the amount of vehicle traffic reduces by half during a cold spring rain, it gives you a good indication of just how many of these trips are unnecessary, and it is a hopeful sign of what things might be like when we get some normalcy back.
Similarly, there a brief period of happiness during the 2008 oil price spike. So many fewer cars on the road, and hardly any jets in the sky. This is what the world would look like if everyone were behaving themselves and living within their means. It is possible to do this by deliberate choice, but most people need the hard incentive of economic scarcity to enforce the discipline.
Not coincidentally, crime decreases considerably in foul, winter weather. Criminals may or may not be tough, but they are rarely hardy.
That world is coming, within a couple of decades if not sooner…
The last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the combination of the v@xxines & a sudden onset of a nasty Maunder Minimum of sunspots.
Do you suppose the Depopulationists [in their infinite cynicism] were well aware of a coming mini-ice-age, and they included in the v@xxines some poison or another which would make the v@xxinated even more susceptible to the elements than are the PureBloods?!?!?
The obvious and undeniable campaign by the Depopulationists to destroy the hydrocarbon energy bidness is mighty strong circumstantial evidence that the Depopulationists intend to use freezing weather as a means by which to cull the herd.
I suppose this makes a change from being fixated on the Tribe.
When we’re shivering in caves, will you be opining about the conspiracy to invade our bodily fluids dreamed up by the nefarious teachers of the new old dark art of chipping flint tools? If you skin a feral jabberwocky underneath a derelict 5G tower at full moon using your flint knife will your spermatozoa spontaneously burst through your ballsack and scare the living crap out of Jodie Foster?
We all agree. Vax probably doubleplusungood. Vax Bad also nice in-group signalling for Our People. Still… golden rule is Don’t be the Old Bolshevik for too long. When they passed their use-by date, they passed it good and hard.
Zaphod, I’m imagining the Depopulationists having access to Top Secret satellite data [concerning both solar and atmospheric trends], and the Depopulationists KNOWING WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that a very nasty Maunder Minimum is headed our way [cf the Summer of 1816 in New England, which saw 6 inches of snow in June 1816, and at least an hard frost in all the other months of 1816].
Every crop failed, and yuge numbers of New Englanders fled to Missouri, in search of warmth & the ability to cultivate food calories.
Suppose the 21st Century Depopulationists now know with near certainty that we’re gonna get a “Summer of 1816” within the next 24 to 36 months?
Then imagine something in the MRNA or the lipid nanoparticles getting activated, and all the v@xxed folks suddenly turning blue and hard as a rock?
[Compare Boba Fett freeze-drying Han Solo in Star Wars II.]
You can hang meat in most airports, so there is no need for beach wear.
I feel a little off wearing shorts in the airport, but my destination is normally tropical and the rental car is a convertible.
I have worn shorts in airports many times, but given Z’s apposite animadversion, will forego doing so in the future. A touch of discomfort is a small price to pay for improved aesthetics.
Well I wish I had taken the opportunity to get a Z-man hoody when the opportunity was there, surely he would approve of that.
Just get a Lagos Ravens hoodie. Close enough for jazz.
Since it is now an open secret that planes are almost never cleaned properly, I’d keep as much of my body from touching the airplane as possible.
Each time I am in the San Fran airport, I cannot understand what is said over the intercom system.
The people speaking often have strong foreign accents, usually asian, hispanic, or african, which most americans would have trouble understanding. It’s like the airport went out of their way to find their least understandable employees and handed them the microphone. In reality, the airport was probably afraid of getting sued if they said, “you can’t be on the microphone because no one will be able to understand you.” And they all speak quickly and don’t enunicate.
Second, there are periodic recordings that play and these often occur while people speaking are speaking over the intercom. There is no effort to ensure that these clashes don’t happen and that adds further to the inability to hear the information being communicated.
Nuke it.
International Brotherhood of Transit Workers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMdxClgQVN0
Dude, come to NYC! At JFK, I cannot understand what the CBP officials are saying, let alone the PA announcements. They are off-the-boat Africans with impenetrable accents. I would just add to Zman’s “revolution” list a requirement that US CBP agents pass English fluency tests.
Meanwhile, just stand in the US citizen passport line at JFK and count the hijabs and burqas……….some guy right behind me on my last trip was speaking Russian and looked ex-Spetznaz….whatever.
When landing in Miami, I just default to Spanish. Easy peasy.
LaGuardia actually IS a 3d world country, and should have a seat in the UN…Not much better than Port Moresby I would wager…
The two spots in AINO where I most felt I was in the Third World were Miami International, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. I couldn’t get out of those dumps fast enough.
Ostei: I had to do some consular training in Miami. The illegal black Caribbean travelers generally spoke better English than the Cuban Miami airport and government officials.
Odd. When I was at the university, we tested all foreign students who were employed for English skills. There were two classifications, one verbal, the other written. All teaching assistants had to be proficient verbally to interact with students in classroom. The written proficiency allowed research assistance and other duties, but not teaching.
Chinese were mostly writing proficient, but never got the English pronunciation down. Heck, there were times I simply walked by their office and then sat down and sent them e-mail. Indians were most always English proficient—verbally and written. I suspect due to high status caste background.
Now that I think back on it, how racist could we be? Ah, those halcyon days… 😉
Indians’ English proficiency is a legacy of the Raj, I suspect.
True. And even today it serves as a lingua franca among Indians because they have never had a common language. Other than lingua franca it serves as status symbol — the more fluent you are in English, the higher up you are in the socio-economic pecking order.
“All tickets will be hit with a BMI tax to both limit fat people on planes and encourage a healthy weight in the population.”
You also need to be doing other things to encourage lower BMI — namely, close down all Burger Kings, Mickey Ds, and Dunkin’ Donuts at US airports. Also ban soda completely. You must surely have noticed how few good eating options there are at US airports — you usually cannot buy, say, a wholewheat cucumber-and-cheese sandwich. Probably because there’s not much profit in it. And often you have to eat something at the airport, particularly if you’re in transit between two flights, given that many carriers don’t give you more than a small bag of pretzels during a flight.
downvoted you for “wholewheat cucumber-and-cheese sandwich”
You can buy them in England at places like Boots, Safeway, Tesco, and Sainsbury. And quite reasonably priced. Along with small bottles of orange juice. But if you’re going to eat a double quarter pounder with large fries (made from reconstituted potatoes) and a 32-oz soda, your BMI is guaranteed to go up sharply.
My BMI is just fine and I indulge in the occasional double quarter pounder.
Traditional English cuisine is notoriously high calorie, but the English were rarely fat before modern times because they didn’t sit around on their butts all the time.
True in the US too.. when store bought bread and other foods became available, average weights of incoming cadets at military academies immediately jumped 10 lbs..But the kids were still fit, they had been extremely skinny previously…Even when I was in school in the ’50s and ’60s, there was a total of one pudgy. but not fat, kid in my entire JH school class…
For USA, the rapid rises in obesity, diabetes and the like is “probably” mostly due to increased added sugar in the diet, greater portion sizes, and yes, less exercise.
At the risk of stating the obvious: refined sugar, flour and other “refined” empty calorie foods were around decades earlier, yet we didn’t have the public health issues to the extent we’ve had the past 40 years or so. Basically the only large-scale public health mandate that has been beneficial has been the reduction in allowed trans-fats. In some nations, they are flat prohibited now.
@benthelayabout Refined flour has been part of the Western diet for a thousand years at least. There are grist mills in the UK going back many centuries including at least one that I know of from the 11th century.
Bread has been part of our diet for a very long time.
My guess is it is not the flour, it’s the sugar and oil they put in the bread today.
There was a thing with subway whose bread is so sweet that Ireland rules it is cake and not bread.
The reality of the obesity epidemic is probably entirely down to feminism and women leaving the home and getting “jobs.” Ain’t nobody got time to cook meals from scratch.
Even if the wife were home, even making something as simple as bread is really not economically viable. It simply costs more money to make your own bread than to buy it in the store. The bread companies pay 1/10th of what you pay for flour and yeast. Though even though it is not economically viable, I still do it because I love the smell.
You’re not allowed to say anything positive about England here.
There is no difference whatsoever between OJ and Coke. Both have ingredients listed as 1) Water 2) sugar. Coke uses high fructose corn syrup and OJ is the natural fructose. Coke has 100 calories per 8oz and OJ has 103.
Agreed. I am sure some vendor would sell him an $11 cucumber and cheese sandwich in an airport if there was demand for that. The profit margin would be much higher than a burger. The reason for all the fast food is that most people have a very limited amount of time and consider it acceptable. Most airports I have been in have at least one place selling overpriced salads and stuff like that.
“The reason for all the fast food is that most people have a very limited amount of time and consider it acceptable.”
Considered acceptable, yes but not sure about the limited amount of time — I seldom see people rushing to get a couple of bites down before catching their next flight. Eating junk food has become a mainstay of US culture. Hence the acceptability. But if you’re going to have a revolutionary airport, that’s the place to do something about it. Plus it does seem a trifle unfair to me that you’re charging a BMI tax while providing a plethora of junk food options.
Indeed, the ultimate bait and switch, with a Big Mac and supersized fries and Coke as the bait.
I packed home made chili to eat while waiting for my flight. TSA almost confiscated it fearing there was C4 in the burger or something.
Make your own sandwiches and carry them in small bag to fit under the seat in front of you. Eschew the pretzels and overpriced, unhealth airport food.
Jeebus. Just eat one half or one third of the burger, wait a few minutes, and you’ll forget the rest.
It takes seven minutes for your brain to register that there’s something in your stomach.
A few bites every couple of hours. Foos s/b a pilot light, not a storage tank, to keep the whole engine calories burning.
Make a fist.
Your stomach is that size.
That portion, is a full stomach.
I believe the acceptable term is no longer “fast food.” You are supposed to refer to it as “goyslop” now.
“Eating junk food has become a mainstay of US culture”
This is very true and not just at McDonald’s and BK. It’s most restaurants. Even veggies are loaded with butter and sugar. Portion sizes are often extreme. Almost all the food is processed before it gets to the restaurant, particularly with the chains. A lot of stuff is deep fried.
Cucumber cream cheese sandwich is delish. Also popular in the south
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj3DObMV9j0
The cucumber sandwich has an illustrious pedigree…
Banning seed oils and HFCS from our foods would be a tangible first step. A lot of the issue are toxic foods that make the body store fat, even when consuming the same amount of calories as a person eater better alternatives.
What is it that people these days have against “seed oils”? Do you know any other kind of oil?
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with oil. Just don’t eat too much of it.
> What is it that people these days have against “seed oils”? Do you know any other kind of oil?
Coconut oil and olive oil. Different fats have different profiles, and some make you gain weight easier than
others.
I use peanut oil and olive oil almost exclusively in my cooking. Not only healthy, but also conducive to delicious dishes.
“I use peanut oil and olive oil”
Same here. In fact first cold pressed olive oil.
They are talking about the oils that can only be produced with industrial machinery as opposed to squeezing olives. Personally, I prefer fat out the churn
The problem isn’t seed oils, it’s the way they are processed to get said oil. Go to a seed oil processing plant. You’ll never eat anything with it again. The only healthy way to extract oils from foods is to press them. Olives, avocados, etc. Seeds have too little content to crush and have to have acids and chemical solutions to extract any oil.
Like I said, if most people knew how processed food was made, they wouldn’t eat any of it.
Why? That conclusion does not follow.
I know perfectly well how chemical extraction works, and it has never deterred me from eating dreaded “seed oils.” Arguably, oil extracted by solvent should be even more trustworthy than other oils, since it is almost entirely free of chemical impurities. I’m not going to frown on these industrial methods that supply the world with inexpensive oil for cooking, soaps, cosmetics, and a myriad of consumer products.
True, natural pressed oils have superior taste and perhaps some health benefits from the trace phytochemicals, but that’s why I don’t limit myself to one approach. I use the cheap canola for making chicken confit and deep frying, and the EVOO for caprese. Different tools for different jobs.
Seed oil has become the latest bogeyman in the food cults. Dig into the “science” and there is not much there to support the claims about seed oils. That said, seed oils turn up in processed foods, which have become too common in the American diet. We do not know the impact from the vast range of chemicals introduced to the diet this way.
For the record, the rare times I fry food it is with peanut oil, but otherwise I use coconut oil or butter. I’d use lard for frying if I regularly consumed fried foods.
True. I first came across “seed oil,” used a term of reproach, on the substack of Frank Wright, whom I was turned on to by Kevin Michael Grace.
I think highly of KMG so I bore with Frank Wright for a while. I argued with him a little bit when he started writing posts about weightlifting and testosterone which sounded too vitalistic. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the T-Boys who blame the downfall of civilization on imperceptible hormonal differences.
After we got into an argument, he responded by limiting his comment section to paid subscribers. I have no interest in echo chambers, so I tossed him.
I’m in the “Bulletproof” cult. Pp. 58-60:
“The most unstable, easily oxidized and therefore inflammatory fats are polyunsaturated fats.”
They also contain disproportionate amounts of omega-6 fats to omega 3s, and “Oxidized omega-6 fats do damage to your DNA, inflame your heart tissue, and raise your risk…of cancer.”
I stick to grass fed butter , olive and avacado oil as much as possible
The problem with seed oils is the extremely high linoleic acid content. Excessive quantities of this particular fatty acid in the diet has been causally linked to systemic inflammation, insulin resistance, and obesity. Seed oils were virtually non-existent in food until the middle of the 20th century and are now ubiquitous and very difficult to avoid. Stick with natural fats like butter, tallow, and coconut oil.
Just use animal fats, like we used to. A bit of lard is good for cookng with.
There were no lard ass hippos when I was growing up and if you happened to see one, you po8nted and stared.
Unless you fought in WWI seed oils were around when you were a kid; Oreos came out in the thirties so I doubt it’s just about processed food.
Bacon grease, occasionally, and in small portions, enhances flavor tremendously without damaging one’s health. But I wouldn’t make a habit of scarfing it up.
Your cell membranes are made of lipids. What can go in and out of them (i.e. their permeability) is affected by what *kind* of lipids. What lipids end up in your cell walls depends in part (your body also has a say) on your diet.
Start slurping (say) soybean or canola oil (needs a giant chemical refinery to make the stuff) instead of lard or coconut or olive or palm oil (just a bit of boiling or pressing) and you’re not in Kansas anymore.
Knock cell membrane permeability a bit off baseline and perhaps you’re suddenly a bit more insulin resistant than your parents generation. For 10M and one reasons you don’t want this.
Food is one-half of the equation, the other is exercise.
However, one needs to explore exercise with the same rigor as food has been. It’s really not hard to meet your exercise needs (IMO). One needs simply to get the hell off one’s ass rather than sit in front of a computer screen or TV for 8+ hours per day. Cardio stuff is great, but simply not allowing your body to slow its metabolism with hour after hour of idle screen staring works wonders.
In my weight loss journey, I have been unable to discern the elimination of seed oils leading to any weight loss whatsoever.
JZ
50-60 per cent of my caloric intake is good fats, 25 percent good proteins, the rest veggies and some complex starches and berry type fruits and dark chocloate, and I stay right at 23 BMI.
I upvoted for whole what and cucumber sandwich
But I would not pay $10.99 for it
That’s the thing — the profit motive is killing the USA. The price of that cucumber-and-cheese sandwich should be maybe $2 — but there’s not much profit in that. Far more profitable to charge $12-$15 (US airport prices) for a double quarter pounder, large fries, and 32 oz soda. And then people complain about all the fat slobs around them.
The Crisp and Green in the Minneapolis airport sells salads with $2-4 worth of food in them for $13-16. Most people don’t like this food or don’t see it as a meal.
https://www.mspairport.com/sites/default/files/attachments/Menu_CrispAndGreen_040723.pdf
They also don’t see it as a value…
Airport restaurants have many people over the barrel, and that means they’ll price gouge regardless of what they serve. Yet another little bit of evidence that the free market ain’t all peaches n’ cream…so to speak.
Yep. I typically take my own packed sandwiches. Can’t do anything about the water — bottles get confiscated and binned. So I have to pay the exorbitant prices for bottled water.
Ali, that will work until they find the first “exploding” sandwich. Hell, we’re lucky to still be allowed to weari clothes. 😉
Here’s another idea–load in precise order by seat number, back seats to front, exit front to back. First Class gets enough perks so they follow same rule. If you dump your bag in a bin over someone else’s seat it is removed and placed in baggage. If the owner objects, they get tossed off and only their luggage flies.
“After the revolution, people will care about how they look, because they will have pride in themselves again.”
Last week, I was visiting the parents. My dad is hooked on YouTube. He was watching a video of Vivek Ramaswamy giving a talk on American history and the American Way. A decent talk, the old Yankee Doodle bit.
I said to my dad, “Think about this: we just watched a guy named Vivek lecture us on our own country. What has happened to us? We used to be a self-confident people.”
That’s where it starts. We Americans no longer believe in ourselves and our project. I don’t believe in faking it until you make it, but it’s true: dressing the part, though ultimately superficial, makes a difference.
With all of this talk about change at the airport, it shouldn’t go unmentioned that United Airlines is devoted to hiring more women and people of color, with the goal of White men making up 50 percent or less of their pilots. Just when you thought the experience of flying couldn’t get worse….
Worse is one thing, fatal is another.
Fatal is pretty dam’ worse.
Everyone is focused on the competency angle. The outrage is that this is a dispossession of our people. We should be 100% of the pilots because we are the best. We must make the isssue our dispossession not competence. It is wrong to reduce our opportunity. Period. This is wrong and it is war! It must stop!!
My worst “Welcome Back to America” experience was getting off the plane at 2:00 A.M. in Detroit. The airport was mostly empty now, and most of us were groggy from the seven hour flight. We go to customs and are “greeted” by an angry black guy shouting orders at us and berating us all for not being able to read his mind. You could just tell the guy was salivating to use his authoritah to make one of our lives miserable.
That being said, U.S. airport staff is still better than India and Mexico, so yay us I guess.
Reminds me of a quip I made while traveling in China: I’ll take incompetent American airport security-theater over paranoid Chinese actual-security any day of the week. The other thing that struck me was the impressiveness of the Beijing airport and the fact that all the neo-peasants walked around clearing their throats and spitting into the corners.
It’s the global currency issue writ small: the only reason the dollar is still king is that everyone else has found a way to be even worse, for as hard as that is to imagine.
The main thing to bear in mind about the airport is that all of these measures we were told would be temporary in the “War on Terror”—basically being given a prostate exam by a Shaniqua in a blue blazer and having your luggage irradiated—became permanent. Yes, despite them violating Muh Constitution’s Fourth Amendment—they not only became permanent, but got worse. Besides, Shaniqua can’t read that laminated Constitution you keep in your back pocket, and the brains behind the operation can parse that Constitution until they find the invisible ink between the lines that says they can not only do what they want, but Thomas Jefferson and Washington wanted them to do it. Gay marriage is there on that yellowing parchment somewhere if you squint really hard into the display case at the National Archives. And it’s all moot, as Shaniqua tossed your foldup Constitution in the trash after you went through the metal detectors, took off your shoes and belt, turned your head and coughed. The airport is anarcho-tyranny on steroids.
Now with the Trump indictment the people actually ruling the country have got another chicken they can’t unpluck. They of course use private jets so didn’t have to suffer the consequences of their last fiat. This one might actually come back to haunt them. Hopefully.
The TSA backscatter x-ray pervert-a-tron 2000 forced on the American public in 2010 were forbidden for by European health authorities in their airports due to possible cancer concerns.
After hundreds of millions of passengers, the TSA quietly retired them in 2013. (never acknowledged any wrongdoing)
The current “millimeter-wave scanner” are promoted as safer. The risks of damaging DNA are within acceptable limits (for who?). I don’t believe that Europe uses these either…but their pat downs are quite thorough and your pat down is conducted by whomever is at the end of the line, male or female.
You used to be able to avoid this by insisting on a pat down instead of the millimeter wave scan (this would crater the TSA if 10% of the herd demanded this on a random morning..not enough staffing, not even close).
In 2016, they changed the rules. Now if you’re deemed a “credible threat”, you have to go through the scanner.
Best option is to just pony up the TSA-precheck fee.
“Best option is to just pony up the TSA-precheck fee.”
Take the jab and you can go to school, out to restaurants, not wear a mask…
I think, at the least, frequent exposure to those scanners can fry the eyeballs, so close your eyes when he trip it.
“Best option is to just pony up the TSA-precheck fee.”
I had to travel on business twice last year and when I saw that option I thought, “Well, there’s your proof this is all Kabuki theater. As if terrorists wouldn’t pay extra to skip screening.” 🙄
They’re just poor, bedraggled savages from Tora Bora who must fight nuclear powers with box-cutters. No way in hell they could afford that fee.
Joey nails it again. The people running the country fly private now. They haven’t set foot in a public airport in years. As a kid growing up around DC, it was common to fly with Congress-crittters. This rarely happens today.
So another addition to Zman’s revolution list is that public officials must fly common carriers. No more government Gulfstreams for even minor officials like Sec. Buttplug. Let them have skin in the game.
Hell, I’ll go you one better: You jokers LOVE EVs so much? Yeah, now EVERY government agency and elected official ONLY gets EVs:
– Every police department hands in their squad cars for Teslas or other EV vehicles
– Every Fire Department gets shiny new electric Fire Trucks and Ambulances
– Every Alphabet government agency loses their internal combustion vehicles and gets EVs
– Oh and Congresscritters? No more big ass Chevrolet Suburban or Cadillac Escalade SUVs for you and your entourage. Tesla Model 3s or an equivalent SUV. That armor plating will drag range down so you might just want to leave it off.
– No more Cadillac Limo for the Prez. See if you can stretch and armor plate a Tesla sedan.
Love it, live it, OWN IT. 😠
The less said about Buttplug and skin in the game, the better!
They’ll find a way to corrupt that process too.
One time I flew Thai Airways First Class from Bangkok to somewhere. Regulations require Thai government ministers to fly in Business Class. Mustn’t have them lording it over the tax paying public by flying in First, you know.
After I’d boarded, there was a delay and then suddenly a flurry of bowing and scraping somewhere a bit further back. Some cabinet minister plus entourage had just piled into business class.
Result: the first class cabin attendants decamped en-masse to business class to fawn over this guy and his flunkies — having correctly calculated that there was nobody of any consequence in First that day who could get them fired with a phone call.
We got fed last.
Cincinnati’s probably got an interest-free loan when he ‘bought’ his plough, too.
When I rule the world, spell checkers will be banned.
It’s nice to see Zman take a break from all the seriousness and do a tongue-in-cheek article like this. As wonderful as the idea of taxing obesity is, it unfortunately couldn’t be further from where our increasingly ugly society finds itself today. The popularity of Fat Acceptance reflects a degenerate population.
I put together and ordered my own t-shirt online (at an unfavorable price, mind you). The t-shirt reads: I WILL EMBRACE BODY POSITIVITY WHEN LADIES EMBRACE POVERTY POSITIVITY.
Last time I flew was in 2019, so I can’t comment on current air travelers’ appearances, but I have noticed a steady downgrade of female-in-public presentation. I wish I’d had the nerve yesterday to take a stealth photo of a woman I observed in an upscale thrift store. Dressed all in black, long-sleeved jacket over black “pedal pusher” length pants. Both legs from the knee down were totally covered with dark blue tattoos, front and back, so her pants were purposely styled to feature these permanent markings on her larg-ish lower legs. Then topping the whole costume off was a black pointed hat, yes, that would be a Hallowe’en witch’s hat, that had two black faux braids sewn on each side of the brim by the ears. She appeared to be in her late 60s and was looking at the furniture in the store.
Two nights ago we attended a monthly veterans organization dinner. A young woman vet received an award for her volunteer work. She excitedly came to the podium wearing cut-off jeans SHORTS, cut to the highest point possible, a tight sleeveless top with some cut-outs, all of which revealed an assortment of tattoos on her arms and legs, neck too. Fortunately, she was not overweight, but she will be in need of counseling to explain why her future employer or mother-in-law may not appreciate all these decorations. What is going on?
“What is going on?”
They want to disgust you. They want to disgust us.
There is a war between the culture that we want and those who oppose it. Those opposed to us present themselves in a way that disgusts us to demoralize us.
One example is a pretty young girl who worked at a sandwich shop where I used to go. She had covered her head with piercings and ear gauges. I realized that I could not make myself look at her while I ordered. In my mind, I said to her, “You’ve won this round. You’ve made yourself so disgusting that I can’t look at you.”
I couldn’t understand this as a teenager when I wanted to have long hair, which upset my parents. My parents were not able to articulate, “When you present yourself that way, you are announcing to the world that you are against us and our way of life.”
I just thought long hair looked cool because I admired the rock musicians that had been fed to me. I couldn’t understand the larger cultural conflicts that I had stepped into and the meaning of me joining the team that wanted to destroy my parents and their way of life.
Checking out at Market Basket there was an elegant well groomed blonde lady I couldn’t take my eyes off. Behind walked a fat, tatted slob couple.
My mind still sees, in detail, the lovely elegant blonde, while the sight of the bums is forgotten. Suppressed memory is a beautiful thing.
Depends upon one’s psychology. For some of us, the image of green-haired, morbidly obese, pierced freaks is burned into our brains even to the exclusion of the blonde beauties.
Ladies instead of women–that’s a nice little embedded barb, right there.
I guess Z’s last flight was the straw thar broke the camels back.
A few years ago my daughter got a job with a major airline which meant free flights for us but also only under the stress of flying standby. If first class didn’t fill up we were upgraded. Nice , and they always stressed a dress code for that. Heck, we dress nice for coach but still the slobs and uncouth in first class stunned me.
I guess Z’s last flight was the straw that (sic) broke the camels back.
Apparently he doesn’t have the legs to pull off shorts and a t-shirt either. 😏
Squats with weights will work for that. 👍
I tease, but I get what he’s saying. Lots of people “slob out” these days. I mean c’mon folks, pajamas are for beddy-bye time, not walking around the grocery store. You can’t put on a clean shirt, non-ripped blue jeans, and a pair of shoes as casual wear?
I relatively recently did a pickup at the international airport of a major shitlibopolis. I guess I saw at least a thousand, probably several thousand people, cycle through the baggage claim area. I was the third best dressed man I saw that night. (not counting guys in government or corporate uniforms) I was wearing a collared shirt, not tucked in. The 2nd best dressed guy was wearing a collared shirt, tucked in. The best dressed guy (older) had a tucked-in collared shirt and jacket, but no tie.
It’s been a radical change in only 10 years, not the least being that perhaps 10% of the people were white. We are living in globalist occupied America, and the forces of globalist occupation make Hitler’s occupation of France during WW2 look positively genteel.
All the carry on luggage problems started when the airlines started charging excessive fees for checking bags. If those were incorporated into the cost of the ticket probably half the carry on bags would get checked and that problem would be much more manageable. Of course getting your checked bags after a flight is also a disaster, so that part of the equation would most likely get even worse.
There is a lot to this. The standard carryon is not all that standard. People put “personal items” like backpacks, pillows, etc in the overhead bin. The carryon thing is broken.
Secondly, checking bags is a disaster. As flying has become less expensive, the additional fees are becoming more expensive. This accounting trick brings in more fliers, but overloads the system.
As long as it’s not ski season my bag is typically waiting at the carousel for me at Denver, though it has been years since I’ve checked a bag since every other airport involves a half-hour wait, if they’re sending it to the right carousel, which they are not.
Yes, but I’ve continued to use carry-ons even when flying airlines that don’t charge to check bags. Why? I need my stuff and there is no guarantee Clown World Airlines won’t lose your suitcase on a simple flight connection.
(On my last trip, I even shipped my bag back home the day before my flight. I might be inclined to agree with you if baggage handlers were more reliable.)
That, and a big part of it is the horror stories people have heard about luggage being lost after a flight lands. Schrodinger’s luggage as it were. You, flesh and blood human, made it to your destination while your suitcase, riding in the cargo bay in the same fuselage you were sitting in, vanished into thin air. 🤦♂️
On my four flights back and forth last year I was STUNNED I didn’t lose my checked bag after hearing and reading about airline luggage f-ups.
Baggage is the eternally unsolved problem. (Why?)
When my job was being in a travelin’ band that used unique equipment, we quickly realized that our choices were to put our gear in unassuming luggage so the airline could destroy it, or put it in containers that can’t be destroyed so the baggage guys would think it was worth stealing (it wasn’t).
A very used delivery truck that might run for a few more weeks was cheaper than four plane tickets, and we all knew a little about keeping it running. I don’t know what the punk kids do now. Probably nothing.
Something else you see at airports but also in grocery checkout lines is the guy that stands right behind you almost to the point of touching you while you’re going through TSA security or dealing with the checkout lady at the grocery store. When that happens I sometimes take a little step back or turn a little bit bumping into them. You need a little personal space even when standing in line waiting for something.
stand in front of your cart/keep your cart behind you so there’s a barrier between you and them, our SOB (south of border) neighbors are the worst, their personal space bubbles are really tiny.
You can only hope the guy behind you isn’t tumescent…
I always do this, but out of necessity and practicality. Here in the People’s Republic of NJ, Our Leaders have mandated that store bags are Streng Verboten, and bringing your own, along with filling said bags by yourself is now Government Policy because Green(!). So positioning yourself to load out the purchases, and then hopping to it to then bag them suggests that you should be in front of the cart. I don’t mind that much, as I have for years reused my paper grocery sacks inside of plastic handle bags; they are sturdy and easy to lift and carry , and I don’t have to fabricate them while bagging. Ilder folks than me, or mothers with kids of course both get screwed by these contrived hurdles.
NJ is the last hold out of full service gas stations. Good for older floks, parents with querulous children, and actually everybody else. And with the huge influx of illegals, who wants to grab the nozzle when there is an increasing chance that the multiple drug resistant tubercular sputum they hack up will be lying in wait for your hand? Not me, not people with compromised immune systems, nor parents who might pass the diseases along to their children. But I am sure that Our Leaders, just as with the paper/plastic bag restrictions, will try to eliminate that policy in favor of grime and disease spreading gas vending. Also, the young white HS guys who work the pumps will lose their jobs; I patronize a station precisely because they hire polite young white guys. But the race to the bottom must continue.
I have gotten favorable responses from those to whom I have remarked that Our Leaders “have people to do these things for them”, and consequently neither know nor care what the effects these policies have on us, the pee-ons.
The only thing that saves America is Christian Nationalism enforced at the point of a sword.
No exceptions.
You object, you get to sell your shot and get out.
Decide to stay,and you must comply. Or else the sword.
I’m not a Christian but I would welcome Christians demonstrating that kind of fortitude. However, I don’t expect to see it. May you prove me wrong, internet tough guy.
Indeed. Most people who profess to be Christians seem to view tolerance of Leftist aberrance as the highest virtue. I’m an old-school Christian unafflicted by that pathology, but am very much in the minority, alas.
As the comedian Sebastian Maniscalco says when talking about the slovenly appearance of airline passengers, “see the world, and the world sees you.”
The Revolutionary Airport will also feature Soul Planes, with Soul Pilots, maintained by Soul Mechanics so that our Precious National Resource of Future Scholars named Shitavious and Sasqueetchia can fly free from the curse of Whiteness.
Peep Delta!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaiIyPakI4I
To be fair, negroes were buzzing around the pyramids at Giza in their spacecraft when whitey was still wearing loincloths made of mammoth scrotum and gnawing on mastadon femurs.
Reminds me of another old Youtube vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xJzAYYrX8
directed to the sacred diversity:
“About that … Err, I’m really, really very sorry. You can’t have your pyramid space ship back. I “borrowed” it, took it for a joyride, and wrecked it. I hope your insurance premiums don’t go up too much.
It’s all your fault: you shouldn’t have left a spare key in the pilot’s seat coffee holster. This incident has caused me a lot of stress, and you owe me compensatory payments to the generations as reparations.
Shorts for men would be banned inside all revolutionary airports.
I get this. People do dress like crap nowadays. But this isn’t just an American thing. (The only difference is that Americans and Brits do it while obese.) The whole world over, unless they’re on business, people dress like they’re going to the beach or they’re working out. This is a battle that Dapper Dans like yourself, Zman, simply can’t win.
Finally, I like shorts. The glorious Greeks and Romans walked around in what we might consider sundresses and sandals. (Tunics, whatever.) How’s that different from shorts and maybe a nice collared shirt?
Pants and jackets are just a holdover from the time when European man had to put six layers of frilly clothing on, even in the August heat.
You sound like a flip flop wearer. I won’t abide that.
Flip flops, sandals…..nobody wants to look at someone’s ugly feet!
Notes on shorts: (It’s surprising Ann Althouse doesn’t chime in here, she HATES men wearing shorts)
I was in Sweden a couple summers ago- out for a walk on a lovely warm (for Sweden) day. I popped in to a grocery store to grab a Diet Pepsi- I asked the clerk “Har du nån läsk?” He looked at me and said “ “Yeah, it’s in the back cooler”. I grimaced and asked him “ Is my accent that bad?” He said “ no, but you’re wearing shorts- Swedes don’t wear shorts- I figured you were American or English.”
Z’s point about general slob-ness is well taken, although. have to admit I do wear shorts on the plane- nice ones though, no workout gear, and no Jesus cleats, especially as my feet are spectacularly hideous. I flew yesterday, shorts, a dressy sport shirt, and clogs, and I was practically in a tux by comparison to the average traveler.
I recall in the late 70’s flying for business wearing jeans and a button down shirt. The old-time sales guy who took me to the airport gave me quite a tongue lashing about my slovenly attire.
I caddied at an exclusive club for three years in the late 60’s- my first summer, 1967, was the first year members were allowed to wear shorts on the course. Most of us will live to see the pros in short pants.
Jesus wore sandals. If they were good enough for our Lord and Savior, they are good enough for me.
Crocs, on the other hand are children’s footwear. Men should not wear children’s shoes
I don’t go quite that far. I prefer sneakers. If only because I don’t want my toes that close to airport restroom floors.
There’s a new happy medium. Khaki shorts and a golf shirt isn’t a horrible look. Jeans and a clean shirt are fine too. Gym shorts and a hoodie is a horrible look. Save it for the gym, the track, or the couch.
Gym shorts and a hoodie is a horrible look.
At the airport and, y’know, in the freaking Senate as well.
Khaki shorts and a golf shirt isn’t a horrible look.
Yes, it is.
Vizzini, it depends.
Climate considerations must be accounted for. Here in AZ we set records for heat. Phx for consecutive 110+ days. Tucson for consecutive 100+ days. Looks like we’ll have at least 100 days of such heat this summer. Yeah, Khaki shorts and shirt makes one look like a great White hunter in Africa, but it really is necessary if you are out of an office environment.
Such a “uniform” is standard for all delivery persons and very common for workmen who don’t need special clothing protection. Even at that, you literally peel the clothing off at the end of a day and toss it into the washer. Once the heat goes away in October, the shorts go back into the closet.
I was at a football game in Tempe in early September several years ago. I saw Satan, in apparent misery, dabbing at his forehead with a cold compress…
Ostei, my son is an amateur cactus collector. He gets stuff from all over the world. This year a lot of his stuff is dying in the AZ heat. He needs to put it into a green house to keep it cool!
Yep, the Phx area is too damn hot. Not kidding. Seems that cactus have a tendency to stop respiring when the heat get up in order to save water. However, that assumes it can respire when the heat goes down at night—but the heat never gets below 100 degrees and after a couple of days, the damned cactus dies.
I had a 15 foot saguaro cactus drop over a month ago that had been doing fine for the last 8 years I’ve been here. Thing weighs a ton or more, so I just watch it rot and the insects chow down.
“Khaki shorts and a golf shirt isn’t a horrible look…”
Voila: add a baseball cap festooned with jay-oh sunglasses, and you’ve got a description of “Griller-Ware”.
ShortPants, I can let slide, depending on the venue: flip flops or other “open-toesies,” NEVER!
“Pants and jackets are just a holdover from the time when European man had to put six layers of frilly clothing on, even in the August heat.”
I’ve heard they’re fancier versions of old peasant garb. Makes you wonder what 17th century farmers worked in lol.
Louis XIII in armor vs. his son in skirt, tights, and high heels. WTF were they thinking?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIII?wprov=sfti1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV?wprov=sfti1
I never wear shorts under any circumstances. Still, given the riff-raff that hang around airports in most major American cities, I don’t exactly go out of my way to look prosperous, either.
The glorious Greeks and Romans walked around in what we might consider sundresses and sandals. (Tunics, whatever.)
We ALL know Animal House established Greeks wore togas, a crown of olive leaves, drank beer, and took liberties with their female guests.
It’s SCIENCE and you can’t argue.
Dang right. Spot on – every word (especially the dressing part).
At one time as a child at Sunday mass all the people in my community dressed up for services, literally everyone looked their best. Then the 60’s came along and ugly sloppy clothing started to become the norm and 70’s masses looked like a disco club among the young then after Vatican II we got Saturday evening mass for convenience and pretty soon everything was for convenience including how we dressed.
The typical American now in an airport looks like a homeless tramp.
Bringing back standards of dress and behavior in public has to be part of the foundation for the new beginning that we look for in the west.
Don’t get me started on how people dress at Mass…
I go to a Baptist Church & see the same thing; in Sunday services the congregation is in jeans, shorts, flip flops, & t-shirts. I wasn’t brought up that way. Easily I’m the most dressed up guy there. My parents instilled in me the principle of respect. I would never show up to church like that.
Ja, going to a classical music performance in a jacket and tie is now a Revolutionary Act. It’s a respect thing for me, respect for High Art and the Culture from which it originated.
I remember a mass as a kid (I was the altar boy that morning) in the early 70s in summertime when the priest send two women home for inappropriate attire. He should be canonized.
Nowadays he’d be cannonized. With grapeshot.
I hate seeing grown men wearing short pants in public. Short pants are for children and attractive women with nice legs.
One amusing sight on my last flight was some hippo sized arab-muslim women whose slacks were stretched to the point of a cascading fabric failure, but, head covering “cuz muh modesty”.
In short: women in dresses look like women, women in slacks in look like men, and women in yoga pants look like prostitutes.
Post Revolution flight attendants will also go back being a short time gig for young pretty girls. They won’t be employed long enough to grow into overweight, caustic, menopausal hags complaining about their bunions to passengers.
I’ve walked past flight crews from Asian and M.E. airlines and all you see are young professionally dressed and behaved ladies… complete with pillbox hats and classy scarves.
I’m just old enough to remember our flight attendants looking similar to this in the mid 70s.
I remember too probably from a different perspective. I started flying by myself at 6 years old in the early 70s while traveling from one parent to another. The stewardesses were always so nice and pretty and would almost always move me up to first class, probably so they can keep an eye on me. They gave me the free playing cards and the little Delta wings that you could clip on your shirt and then I’d go up to the cockpit and hang out watching them fly for a little bit. I was a well-behaved polite child so not much trouble and of course I always dressed appropriately. You couldn’t pay me to get on a plane these days. I am just not doing it. Anywhere I need to go, I can drive..
Travel on European airlines and you will not only find scruffy and ugly female atendants, but far too many effeminite prancing young men, who are even more demonstrative and attention seeking than the hags you mention. Overhearing their conversations, as they move in a gaggle between flights, is a real eye-opener. Only Karen wants to be attended to by a limp-wrister.
Asian airlines are almost too accommodating! I was on what had to be at most a 2 hour flight in China once and still they had these attractive stewardesses bringing out full drink carts and hot meals, and this was just after getting off another flight with hot meals! You can get on an American cross-country flight now and be lucky if you get some gay guy to give you a bag of rice cakes and a cup of water.
A miniscule bag of pretzels and half a Coca-Cola. 😒
Dude, fly ANA. Pretty Japanese FAs bringing you whisky on demand with a smile and giggle. FA appearance standards must make a post-revolutionary comeback.
And they’ll be called stewardesses, not flight attendants.
A lot of those blonde jobs working for Middle East airlines retire at 35ish having made so much on the game in the Gulf in their spare time that they are set for life.
Singapore Airlines has very high deportment standards.
Cathay Pacific isn’t what it once was.
One issue with East Asian airlines is that the cute young ones use their cabin crew training programs to get experience and certification and then make quick quick switch to serving on private jets — again can retire at 35 after blowing a bunch of billionaires.
ANA is bliss.
The brawler at the spirit airlines gate is named Que. What?
Que sera sera.
Inshallah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prwtkgrv7xQ
“K.? C.? What are you trying to say?!”