Dr. Metablog

United Airlines to Charge to Use Toilet

United Airlines has announced that starting March 1, passengers will be charged for the use of on-board toilet facilities. "Charges will be nominal," according to United spokesperson Alma Santistevan, "just five dollars for the first five minutes and two dollars for every subsequent minute, but passengers must remember to bring their credit cards with them to the facility."

Toilets are now being equipped with card-operated locks but passengers may still use the facilities for free until the end of the month.

Last year, United carried 95,611,500 passengers. "Even if each passenger uses the facilities just once a trip, we are looking at half a billion dollars of additional revenue with very little capital expense," explained Santistevan. "Stockholders will be very very pleased."

United is considering additional charges for toilet paper and for paper hand towels. Barf bags will also require a small fee.

Other airlines are expected to follow suit.

United CEO Scott Brandon was asked if he anticipated passenger resistance. "There will be some grumbling at first," he replied, "but passengers will get used to it. After all, they've accepted smaller seats, charges for water, rude service, unpredictable bumping, huge fees for cancellations and plane changes, luggage surcharges, pets stuffed into overhead bins and suffocated, as well as the occasional person dragged from his seat screaming. Besides, what choice do they have? They've got to piss."

My Afterlife

Shakespeare took a few shots at depicting a hellish afterlife. 

 

The most extended, if I remember correctly, belongs to Claudio in Measure for Measure.  "To die, and go we know not where;/ To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;/ This sensible warm motion to become/ A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit/ To bathe in fiery floods,/ Or to reside in thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;/ To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,/ And blown with restless violence round about/ The pendent world; or to be worse than worst/ Of those that lawless and incertain thought/ Imagine howling: tis too horrible." It's a damned scary vision, and mostly easy to understand, though it helps to be reminded that sensible= having sense, "delighted" = darkened, "thrilling"= piercing, "viewless" = blind, and that "lawless and incertain thought" refers to non-Christian speculation. Shakespeare gives Claudio a number of choices for eternal suffering, each one worse than the other.  

 

When Othello realizes that Desdemona was innocent after all, he foresees a one-dimensional hot hell, one in which devils will "Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulfur/ Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire." Clear enough, painful enough.

 

And finally, Lear imagines himself "Bound upon a wheel of fire,/ That mine own tears to scald like molten lead." 

 

I think the whole afterlife thing is a fraud, but if there were a hell, here's what mine would be like.

 

I'm on a commercial flight, steerage class, cramped into a seat too narrow and lacking adequate leg room. A middle seat. On my left is a very large gentleman whose massive shoulders and thighs encroach upon my territory. He stinks of tobacco. He drinks too much alcohol and tries to engage me in conversation. On my right is a similarly-proportioned lady who reeks of cheap perfume and who glares at me whenever my bony elbow makes contact with her fat forearm. I'm hungry and all there is to eat are some horrid plastic pretzels in a bag that only a safecracker could open. A scruffy fourteen-year-old boy sits behind me. Rap "music" leaks from his earbuds and he kicks the back of my seat at irregular intervals. My only reading matter is a airline magazine that advertises expensive gimcrack novelties that no sensible human would ever dream of buying. My bladder is distended and painful but the seat-belt sign is perpetually lit. This plane never lands. Sometimes it threatens to do so, but at the last moment it's diverted to another airport.

 

This continues throughout all eternity.

 

And it is much worse than vats of liquid fire. Far worse than anything that Shakespeare could possibly have imagined.

666

Donald Trump has taken credit for the rise in the stock market. "The stock market hit yet another record high yesterday. There is great confidence in the moves that my Administration is making.”  If he is responsible for the rise, then surely he is also responsible for the fall. It can be no accident, and can only be a signal from the other world, that Trump's market fell exactly 666 points last Friday. One trillion of market value was erased with the wave of the supernatural wand. Six hundred and sixty- six is "the number of the beast" in Revelation. Inasmuch as everything happens for a reason, we must ask what the Lord is telling us. The 666 point drop undeniably demonstrates that DT is "the man of sin" who "opposes and exalts himself above every god or object of worship" (2 Thessalonians 2:1). He is the false god who has erected his tower at 666 Fifth Avenue. Heed, O supporters of Trump, the words and acts of the Lord, for the man of the flaming hair is the egg of the serpent, the false prophet, the anti-Christ.

No possible probable manner of doubt.

More Family News: What My Father Ate

Sardines, a tin at a time. Herring, canned, either in wine sauce or in tomato sauce. Whitefish. Lima beans, which came into the house dried but which were soaked to plump up, then boiled and mashed (but not for me, if I could possibly avoid them). Potatoes in any form, but usually mashed and buttered. No chicken or lamb chops, but lots of tongue. (When I left home, I vowed never to eat tongue again, and, trust me, I've kept the faith.) Chopped chicken liver mixed with hard-boiled eggs and onions. Steak, when we could afford it. Roast pork with applesauce. Delicatessen meats -- salami, baloney, corned beef, frankfurters. Baked beans, courtesy of Heinz. Apples, seeds and all, right down to the stem. Chocolate in any form, but especially white chocolate. Halvah, a particular favorite. Dates and figs, dried. Black radishes and onions, soaked in gribbinis. Tschav, borsht with huge helpings of sour cream. Corn on the cob. Slimy canned Harvard beets. No alcohol, nary a drop. On hot days, not beer, but instead iced tea or iced coffee. Cheese, either Velveeta or Swiss. Good bread -- pumpernickel or rye. Crumb cake direct from Ebinger's Bakery. Bacon and two eggs, sunnyside up or soft-boiled. Cream o' Wheat cereal. Swee-Touch-Nee tea. On Sunday morning, bagels and rolls, warm from the bakery, eaten while reading the the Times (25 cents) and the Eagle (10 cents). Ice cream, the more exotic the flavor the better.