Comments and observations on the traveling life.
I’m busy being Grandpa today. So, check out the latest chapter of The Crider Chronicles – Confederacy at Glibertarians, and enjoy some random totty from the archives. Regular posts resume tomorrow.
Thanks as always to Flappr, The Other McCain, The Daley Gator, Pirate’s Cove, and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!
Now then: It sure seems like folks are trying to avoid Boeing airliners lately.
Some fliers nervous to travel aboard Boeing aircraft following a stream of flight problems in the last three months say they try to book flights on other planes while others say they’ve turned to prayer or medications to get through their trips.
The shift in response toward Boeing took off in January after a panel plugging the space reserved for an unused emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner 16,000 feet above Oregon. While pilots landed the Boeing 737 Max 9 safely, the incident has left a mark on many travelers.
“I just can’t step on that plane,” Leila Amineddoleh told NBC News, referring to Boeing aircraft. “Even if the chance of getting hurt on a Boeing flight, even with all these incidents, is slim.”
The last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner occurred in February 2009 in an industry that saw 9.6 million flights last year. More Americans die in motor-vehicle crashes each year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Yeah, air travel is, statistically, pretty safe. In my previous, non-journalism career, I traveled a lot – lots of it international travel – and never was involved in an incident where I felt I was in any danger.
The problem with air-travel events is that they are pretty spectacular. When an airliner goes down hard, typically everyone dies, and that’s hard to swallow. It makes people nervous, just as it’s making people nervous right now, with stuff happening like emergency doors blowing off in flight and tires dropping off the landing gear.
In the end, it probably won’t make a great deal of difference. Take us – if Mrs. Animal and I want to see our kids and grandkids, who are all down in the lower 48, we have to fly to go see them. Not seeing them is inconceivable. So fly we will. We may feel a little nervous about it, but we’ll fly. And, I imagine, so will plenty of other folks.
To all of you who may be attending as well: I’ll be at CPAC DC 2024, from February 21-24. If you’re going to be there, let me know in the comments! Would love to meet any True Believers who will be there.
Folks, it’s been a hell of a year.
2023 came in with a bang and is leaving us with several. I started the year as a guy with a consulting business, an independent self-employed guy who had been in the industry for over thirty years and working as a consultant for over half that time. But for reasons unknown, the bottom dropped out of that, not only for me but for everyone I know in the industry; and after thirty years, I know a hell of a lot of people in the industry. Mind you I haven’t surrendered the idea of digging into my consulting career again, but… well, it’s been a while, and things are still looking really slow in that line.
Sometimes, though, when one door closes, another opens. After twenty years of blogging for free, writing about whatever amused me at any given moment, last summer I had an offer to go pro. So I 
did, and it’s been fun. And on that, stay tuned, because there may be more news along those lines soon.
As for all of us here at Animal Magnetism:
First, let me just say thanks to all of you for sticking with me, for my ranting and roaring, my occasional flashes of insight, and for my oddball way of looking at the world – although I suspect a lot of you drop by mostly for the pretty girls, and that’s good, too.
(A few years back a reader asked me what my wife thought of my totty posts. I honestly replied, “Hell, she helps me pick ’em out.”)
For 2024, given all that’s going on, there will be some changes here. I’m not changing the layout of the site; I’ve been using this 
WordPress theme and this layout for about ten years now (boy, do I ever get stuck in my ways) and I like it. The Rule Five Friday and Saturday Gingermageddon/totty posts will continue as before, as will the Blue Monday pieces.
Later in the week, though, I’m changing up a few things. While I’m keeping the Wednesday links posts, when I’ve looked at them the last few weeks, they’ve been… well, huge. So instead of combining my RedState links with the Hump Day links compendiums, I’ll be breaking them up. We will keep the Wednesday/Hump Day as the usual links posts it has been for a long time now, but instead of a random news post on Thursday, I’ll move my RedState links to that day, every week. So things most weeks will look like this:
Monday: “Goodbye, Blue Monday,” news and totty.
Tuesday: News post, whatever hits me as worth discussion, with usually a link to my Monday Glibertarians fiction piece that’s in play that week.
Wednesday: Hump Day posts as before: The usual totty and my big weekly links compendium, opening with comments, weekly idiots, and cultural edification.
Thursday: RedState links, and maybe a few other comments, and so on.
Friday: Rule Five Friday, exactly as we’ve had it; usually a little more involved discussion about news/thoughts/things that piss me off.
Saturday: The Gingermageddon, of course, with the occasional celebration of diversity with blondes, brunettes, or whatever.
But wait! There’s more!
Starting in January, you’ll occasionally not only be reading my stuff but also occasionally have the chance to see my battered old mug and hear me talk, as I’m going to be starting a Rumble channel, Animal Magnetism Live. To begin with, I’ll have some short (5-10 minute) blurbs with some commentary, but if things go well, I’ll be posting videos of some Alaska outdoor adventures, maybe some interviews, and fun stuff like that.
So stick around! My second, late-life career as a journalist is taking off, but trust me, Animal Magnetism isn’t going anywhere. I intend to keep this going until I just can’t anymore. And I reckon I have a good thirty years left in me to continue doing what I’ve been doing, that being precisely what pleases me.
As Robert Frost wrote:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Boy howdy, hasn’t it just.
No extra notes this morning. A red-eye to Denver and then an early flight to Des Moines beckons, and I’ve other work to get to before heading to the airport. So stand ready! Here comes the Wednesday usual.
Now then…
Housekeeping notes: A week from today we’ll be flying to Iowa, leaving our house-sitters in place here, where we will spend a week with the entire Animal family at our annual Thanksgiving/Christmas family reunion. Posts will be scheduled for the balance of next week, and the week of the 27th will be taken up with some placeholder totty. Regular posts will resume Monday, Dec 4th.
Now then…
Before we start, check out Part II of Season of Ice over at Glibertarians!
Now then: This has happened, to one extent or another, to everyone who (like me) has traveled a lot. Excerpt:
My worst fear about flying isn’t crashing – it’s being stuck in a middle seat between two obese bodies. My nightmare happened to Sydney Watson. On an American Airlines flight from New York to Texas, Watson got stuck in the middle seat between two large bodies. She described it as being a human sardine. Instead of being encased in tin, Sydney was marinating in obesity.
Watson made the best of living my nightmare. She live-tweeted the experience. American Airlines was tagged by Sydney and it responded with a less-than-optimal answer.
Watson’s live-tweeting went viral. She was featured in several newspapers including the New York Post and The Guardian. Most of the journalists took the side of the unknown obese seat invaders. The Post described her comments as “offensive“. Apparently wanting to have 100% of the seat you purchased, is offensive. She had her share of anonymous threats and haters too. She took the road everyone should take when making a valid point. She didn’t apologize. She said she meant every word. Never apologize. All your apology will do is embolden the haters who will demand more and more until you are “canceled” or fired. The left doesn’t really want an apology anyway. They want blood. They want your head on a stick.
Now, the thing Sydney Watson did wrong was to take to Twitter on this matter, which guaranteed a race to the rhetorical bottom. Twitter is a snake pit that no sensible person should contemplate entering.
But her complaint is legitimate. For a while, the airlines were requiring grossly obese passengers to buy two seats. I’m not traveling as much as I did in the pre-‘vid days, but I’m still traveling some. Even so it’s been a while since I’ve encountered a massive fatty on an airliner. And my experience with airlines is almost wholly limited to United, with whom I have lifetime status. If this has stopped being the practice, I’m not sure when that happened.
And American Airlines’ response is as inadequate as Sydney Watson’s claim is legitimate. “Sorry, sucks to be you” is atrocious customer service. A pox on American for that horrible, dismissive reply.
If I pay for an airline seat, I expect to have the use of the seat. Not 50% of it, not 70% of it, all of it. And if a fellow passenger is taking up 180% of a seat, then they need to be charged for two seats. That’s all.