Have You Tasted Airline Food Recently?

The general attitude of an airline passenger is to go in an empty stomach, which is due to the excellent computer programs that reserves you the best timing for a flight. Usually if you are a heavy sleeper, it is very likely that you shall be booked for the 5:00AM flight irrespective of whether your source is Idaho or Manhattan or Bahamas. Hence majority of the passengers 89 out of 96 (Source: somebody as reliable as my friends in Bahamas) rely on airlines food for survival.

The food in general is not even as palatable as a wooden table but yet shall be served by the airlines with a broad smile. Some airlines would require you to pickup the packets while boarding the flight hence making their job a lot easier. Its like McDonald's motto "We do everything for you" while YOU order the combination, YOU collect the food, YOU have to cook it if you need it so, YOU clean the mess, YOU chew the food and YOU throw the leftovers in the trash can and yet you agree with their motto. In fact, it looks like a consumer of McDonalds should have a motto "We eat any SHIT served to us".

Coming back to the point, the airlines serve a neatly packed lunch basket, which invariably shall contain exactly 3 items. They are (not necessary in the same order mumbo)
1. A packet of "Break-fast" bar,
2. A cup of frozen yogurt (sweetened) and
3. The hardest green banana you ever seen on this planet.

Even a hammer would be difficult to split it. The banana is a part of the morning breakfast menu in all the morning flights which you travel. I presume that they have a secret agent following you to inform the airline agencies on your trip schedule and your dislike to bananas. Talking of tickets, you always end up sharing your seat with a huge fellow who requires a minimum area of 3 football grounds. Like rubbing salt to the would, he would have paid much less for the ticket since he booked it minutes after Oliver & Wilber Wright flew their first flight. While you, a rotten lazy blob, always end up paying an amount equalling the monthly salary of two attendants for the same ticket. (Reason: you booked it 4 minutes before departure)

The airlines always come up with new naming conventions such as "Bristo Pack", "Value meals" for their in-flight catering. These are the brainwave of a few marketing professionals who have a 3-week seminar in Paris, have nice food and come up with these news ideas which are consumer friendly. The rejected name during that meeting would be "a bag of inedible items", “decomposed garbage pack” or “McDonald’s happy meal”. The whole idea of calling the marketing guys into the picture was for the airline to save money. They came up with an appropriate solution "Let's stop serving real food and just give then wooden chips instead".

Most times than not you happen to eat the "Breakfast bar" since it’s a better bargain than fasting all the way to New York and falling down flat to the ground near Sax, Fifth Avenue. Also, it doesn’t matter if once a while we eat wood, take the beavers for example who since Darwin's time had only tree barks and are intelligent. They don’t travel via air and sleep a lot. Anyway, while having the bar, you are very likely to hear announcements like "We are having some FOG in O'Hare and hence, there is a delay".

One thing fails to get me, why is any technical fault in the US airlines linked with O'Hare. Or is O'Hare located next to the refrigerator that holds all those solid bananas that is circulated across the different airlines? I can not find a reason as to how they can manager to develop a FOG within 30 minutes in Houston. Another thing is that they won't let you off the flight while there is a technical snag such as a FOG in Houston. It's because they are afraid that we would run away and catch a Greyhound, which would take us to the destination faster and we get to eat at McDonalds.

Even though we are inside the flight waiting for the janitors to come and wipe the wind-shield so that the pilots can now say "The FOG has cleared and we are ready to leave", they wouldn’t like us to consume the eatables. In case, a fat lady decides to consume it, the hostess shall scream "Oh My god! One more down". I think they have a concept of recycling the bananas and the yogurt again for the return flight or keep it in the refrigerator located near O'Hare airport.

With the consumers becoming more and more like tub of lards and with increasing market ingenuity, there is no telling how far they shall take us for a ride. Perhaps some day, when we board our airplane, we will each pick up a box of dirt; this will be called "Haute Cuisine Service" or a packet of fresh decomposed ells and a badly hurt snail called "The Oriental Choice".

We will accept the box without complaining because we are knowledgeable consumers, and our motto is "Oink! Oink!"

A Typical American Late-Night Talk Show

Late one Tuesday night I was watching TV and doing a brisk skipping-the-channel-faster-than-light game, I was struck by shock that there was in fact a nice thought-provoking program on the TV. Well, I am talking about a toilet cleanser advertisement. After a second of freezing I continued to change the channel until I hit upon one that was airing a Talk show.

S-T-O-P, this is the kind of program for anybody to watch during late nights on American TV. Of course its a subjective matter and some (89 out of 100) people don’t like good topics, which makes them vomit and create an infuriating sensation, such as "Should America reduce its Talk shows" or "Are we running towards a nuclear free society" or "Should Oshkosh be on the world Map". People (this include innocent bystanders in New York sub-ways) tend to like some better topics like "Why I ran away with my uncle’s neighbour’s wife" or "I fantasize to Kill my Mother-in-law with the aid of my step-sister" or "Do we need Monica as a Sex symbol". The most liked topic by every American is "America’s favourite sport – SEX" ops sorry football was what I meant but the survey result turned out to be a little different.

The show normally begins with pleasant clippings of the past shows which feature mainly females, who are still trying to get into their dresses that were bought when they were in their eighth grade, spitting against each other. The time when they bought this dress would have been the same time when those females also dropped out of school due to lack of interest shown by the teacher in teaching Schrodinger’s Electromagnetic Wave Equation. The starting credits are done with (after 12 tons of salaiva collected by the total spitting), a huge set of commercials that mainly constitute Lawyers or Attorneys who are willing to fight for you even if you don’t insist them to. Followed by it are some thought provoking ads such as the same toilet cleanser brands since 1857.

Then, cheers for no reason will be started by the studio audiences, who have an IQ no greater than their shoe size, as soon as the applause sign is displayed. This sound marks the grand entry of our show's host. He shall always carry a mike in his hand and some cue cards which contain words that he must not use during the program. Many fanatic viewers (the whole audience to be precise) wear bright coloured T-shirts with wordings that read "I was there in the [Shows Name] Show" or "Do you want to come and puke at this show". The hosts usually would begin by uttering something that is totally unrelated to the show (yeah very similar to a Washington press release).

The debates are always amongst the top [domain] experts, who feel so strongly about the correct way to do things that at times they come close to whacking each other over the head with their seats. A few muscular hulks (always in black T-shirts) come running at breakneck speed to stop the fighting experts. The timing of these hulks is so precise that they don’t come into the picture until the floor production manager or the chair owner (in most cases both of them are the same) holds up a cue card such as "STOP those idiots before they break my chairs".

This is followed by a few minutes of BEEPING sound, thanks to the ground breaking invention of computer beeps, to stop the telecast of *$%&*(the word roughly translated means many un-gentlemanly things) dialogues. At this juncture, the clap boy, who never has a concept of elementary schooling, brings up the applause sign for the seated audiences and they (never had any kind of formal schooling) go wild. This brings us to the commercial break section.

Talk shows were not always so complicated back then. Thousands of years ago, there was only one talk show book, entitled "Don't talk too much". It consisted of a big stone tablet on, which were chiseled the words "DON'T TALK TOO MUCH!" It did not sell well, because nobody could lift it, on top of which everybody back then was busy with other concerns, such as trying to invent a language system that was simpler than Greek and Latin. Meanwhile today’s scenario is a bit different. Talk Show Host is a separate industry involving many complex theories such as "How to choose topics", "How to stand still while letting 2 families fight it out on stage", "How to make billions after dropping out of college" and "How to make a crass show the number one on the network ratings".

Let me know go back in time to see how talk show hosts evolved. It was back in 1895 when a gentleman named Mostly Chattering in Arizona made a sparkling discovery one night that people could stay up late glued to the TV while not choosing to clean their toilets. His theory emphasised that people would listen to other people talk about sensitive issues while HE can make a Million. (Back then Millions was considered huge money)

For decades, everybody operated on this Theory of Talking at nights, which basically states that you should never talk anything that’s bad to others. Then along came a new theory, the Evil Talk Theory that states you can talk burning issues as long as you don’t hurt each other on stage. This resulted in a multi-million dollar industry called TCN (Turner Cable Network).

There came another major theory which states that you can talk rubbish, but should not have a decent topic. For example you can kick your mother-in-law down and eat an entire pig for breakfast and talk all shit as a topic while rejecting “How to make the World a better place to live”. This Theory is extremely hot at present, as evident by the top rated talk shows in the cable network. Also, this theory has spun many cults such as "Kidnap my wife, please", "Let's poke the cops in the Eyeball", "Guns can be used during the Peace Talks in Israel".

So anyway, the experts debated their theories while the host walked around frowning with the deep concern which those talk-show hosts always feel about any topic. The audience provided valuable feedback whenever the clap boy holds up cards that said YES on one side and NO on the other. In between there are numerous commercials, with one for a toilet cleanser.

Anyway, I watched the experts’ debate for an hour, and here's what I learned:

• My TV remote really didn’t work for an hour
• Hardly 10% of the people wanted world peace
• 10% are those who wanted world peace are beauty contest contestants
• Terrorists want more twin-towers to be built in major cities around the world
• Women on these shows are stronger than their male counterparts
• Lot of companies endorse for these kinds of shows

• The chairs are really heavy and would be lethal upon impact
• I am a bachelor trying hard to sleep

So there are the facts, readers; it's now up to you to make an informed decision.

Remember: It's YOUR television and the remote is in YOUR wife’s hands.