Airports Suck. Plain and Simple.

Isn’t it funny how one act by one person can affect the lives of everyone in an entire country, or even throughout the world?  The reason I bring this up is because I’ve been traveling lately for my good-sized promotion at Longs.  While I’ve always known that traveling through airports was a very expensive process ($4+ bucks for water or a small bag of candy?), there are prices of certain things you never really pay attention to unless you’re no longer allowed to get that item through security.  In this case, I’m talking about: bottled water.

I need water for when I’m waiting to board the plane and for when I’m on the plane.  If I freak out and have a panic and anxiety attack, I need to be able to pop that little pill real quick to calm me down and I need water to do it.  It’s happened before and I was once in the Cub Scouts so I know to always be prepared.  Every since that panic over liquid explosives several years ago (I don’t know the details, I’m actually in the Oakland terminal right now and they charge for WiFi), you cannot bring a bottle of water (or any beverage) into the terminal unless you buy past the security checkpoint.  Normally, this isn’t a big deal, right?

The problem is airports are like Disney World: the food services pretty much have a monopoly so they can charge pretty much whatever they want for food and beverages.  For example, on Monday, I was at Burbank waiting for my flight to come up to Oakland and I needed my bottle of water.  So, I stopped at the only place that had water in the terminal I was at and paid $2.45 for a 16.9 oz bottle of Crystal Geyser water.  At Longs Drugs, where I work, one can buy that same bottle of water for $0.69+CRV.  For employees, it’s $0.21 ($0.16 without CRV).

On a side note, CRV is California’s lame attempt at getting people to recycle their cans and bottles.  It’s basically a can and bottle deposit that you can recoup (I know several years ago you couldn’t get the full CRV back, but I’m not sure if that’s changed) by taking the empty containers to a designated return center.  The only problem is that here, in California (at least in the Ventura Country area), there are very few places to take your returns and those few places tend to either have a machine broken (there’s usually only two machines total at any given place), there’s a massive line because people wait until they have hundreds upon hundreds of cans and bottles, or a combination of the both.  Basically, it’s not worth to recycle your recyclables.

Ok, back to the topic at hand.  These businesses in the airports are taking advantage of the fact that you can’t bring your own water, or any other beverages, into the terminals.  In my mind, it’s borderline criminal!  Because there’s now a fear that someone is going to blow up a plane or a terminal with a bottle of liquids.

Speaking of blowing things up with things that don’t normally go “boom”: shoes.  Because that prick (again, no internet, no way to look this up…I think it was a transcontinental flight from Europe to the U.S.) a number of years back tried to detonate explosives in his shoes while mid-flight.  Because of that asshole, we all now have to take our shoes off at the security checkpoint and put them on the belt to be x-rayed.  It’d almost be laughable if it wasn’t true (and somewhat scary someone would try to blow us all up with their shoes).  Again, it’s one dick that ruined it for the rest of us.  Not only do you have to hope your socks (if you’re wearing them) can protect your feet from foot fungus,  you have to hope your shoes and your feet don’t stink too badly…not mention worry about the people around you having stinky feet.  It’s one more damned thing we have to take off person.  Anything metallic, liquid and now anything on your damned feet.

Of course, there’s also that little matter of airports charging for WiFi access.  They’ll offer you some package deal where you buy a month’s worth of access for $xx.xx and so on.  The problem with that is, what happens if you’re only in that airport that one time?  What if you normally frequent other airports with other services that have their own deals?  You’re paying $30 for a couple of hours of access.  It’s ridiculous!

God, I hate traveling.

Boston Massacre

Well, the C’s finally did it: they finally won a NBA Championship after years of mediocre (at best) seasons.  And they did it by absolutely annhialating the Lakers in Game 6 in Boston by the score 131-92.

Yes, I’m not a big basketball fan.  Haven’t been much of one for years.  It’s been hard to like a sport where fouls all called inconsistently, yet, way too often and disrupt the flow of the game.  It’s also hard to like a sport where there is an “I” in “team” and the only way to win games is to have one super star ballhog surrounded by a bunch of mediocre players.  And to top that off, the gangsta mentality seems to be prevalent amongst many of the players.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like about basketball and I absolutely enjoyed going to see the C’s at the Garden when I was a kid and I loved playing it when I was in grade school.  But, it just can’t seem to hold my attention very long.

Ok, back on topic: the Celtics pounded the Lakers throughout the entire series.  Let’s face facts, the Lakers couldn’t follow through with a comeback in Game 2.  They blew a huge Game 4 lead and blew a large lead in the beginning of Game 5 (both games being in LA where they should have dominated).  Kobe played hard, but seemed to not be giving his all while his supporting cast really didn’t show up to the games.  The Lakers also had history against them: no NBA team had ever come back to win the Finals while being down 3 games to 1.  Just too much momentum for the other team to overcome.

The C’s had everything going for them they could possibly need or want.  They won the regular season series against the Lakers.  They had the best record in the regular season which gave them home court advantage throughout the playoffs.  And there were a bunch of veterans on that team that had never been to the Finals and obviously wanted that ring a hell of a lot more than Kobe & Co. did.  After the first two games, the C’s made it perfectly obvious they wanted to win badly.  The Lakers didn’t show the same level of determination.  Plain and simple.

Being a Boston sports fan, I have to root for the Celtics.  I always do, even during their worst seasons.  I don’t get overly passionate about them like I do the Sox, but I’ll still quietly root for them.  Of course, it’s hard to quietly root for the Celtics to beat the Lakers when you’re a Massachusetts native living in the outskirts of Los Angeles.

My reasons for wanting the Celtics to win was more selfish than anything: I wanted Lakers fans to just shut up.  Leading up Game 1 all I heard from Lakers fans was how much better the Lakers were.  How much better Kobe and his supporting cast was better than the Big Three.  How much better their bench was.  Blah blah blah blah.  Now, those same people have to eat their words and I’m going to love every minute of it.  I also don’t have to see those massive SUVs on the freeways sporting 2+ Lakers flags.  I don’t have to see people dressed to the hilt in those god-awful Lakers colors (which, by the way, make me nasueas when someone is covered head-to-toe with that fugly purple and marigold-esque color scheme).

So, starting tomorrow morning, I’ll be asking everyone: how about that Boston Massacre?

I don’t know what to write

I’m in this mood where I want to write something but I don’t know what to write.  I could talk about my “promotion” at work or Obama finally nailing down the nomination or any number of things like high gas prices or how much I hate Lakers fans or that I just got my haircut.

All I really wanted to do was play my CoD4 online whilst drinking some Cap’t Mo’ and Coke for a few hours tonight.  But, that can’t happen because the internet I’m on is being insanely retarded and having some sort of issue with the signal quality degrading to the point where I begin to lose the connection to the game.  That was supposed to be my relief valve for the evening but instead I’m all worked up and pissed off that I can’t kill virtual representations of people around the country.

No, I’m not in therapy.  Yes, I should be.  I can’t afford it.

But, the big news of the month is that I got a promotion at work.  Yeah, I’ll still be working for Longs, but, I’ll be an assistant manager.  How can I do that without ever having been a manager?  Well, Longs has this program that allows recent college grads, like myself, to jump into this accelerated management training program that has you in a store for about 6 months as an assistant manager in training before actually sticking you in a store as a full fledged assistant.  Given the cost of living and the ever rising cost of gas, I had to do it.  It’s not what I set out to do when I went to college, but, in the end, it’ll pay the bills and it won’t slowly kill me.

Of course there would be a catch with this training thing: I’m being sent to one of the Longs Drugs stores in Santa Barbara to do my training.  Any of you who knows where I live and where Santa Barbara is knows that’s going to be an absolutely horrendous commute.  Let’s forge the fact that it’s a 55 mile drive, one-way.  The rush hour traffic heading up there is so bad it’ll make you want to drive a railroad spike through your brain.  The good news is that I don’t have to deal with Newbury Park people anymore.  Those people are so far removed from reality it’s not even close to being funny.  At all.

Which reminds me: Lakers fans are almost as bad as Yankees fans.  I’m no fan of the NBA, but even I’m a little excite about the Celtics being in the NBA Finals…primarily because the C’s are a Boston team and I love me some Boston sports.  Anyway, all I’ve heard up to the beginning of the NBA finals is how the Lakers were so much better than the Celtics and how Kobe & Co. were going to destroy them and blah blah blah blah blah.  Well, the Lakers are down 2 games heading back to Los Angeles and the fans are crying like little kids who just had the ice cream fall off the cone.

Let’s forget the fact that the Lakers have been good for a long time and have won several championships in the past 10 years and that the C’s have blown during the same time period.  So, of course, it’s been “too long” since the Lakers have won a championship, so lets all complain about that.  Lakers fans are now complaining about the officiating.  It’s the NBA, when has the officiating ever been good?  I dare say that the NBA has the worst officiating in the history of modern professional sports.  Would they complain if the bad officiating was in their favor?  Nope.  Basically, officiating can only do so much to turn the tide of  a series, or a game.  In the end, you either put up or shut up.  And if it’s the latter, try and walk away with some dignity.

I think I’m done for now.  I’m tired, moderately buzzed and my shoulder is absolutely killing me (rotator cuff has some serious issues right now).  But, I did get a haircut to today!