It used to be that air travel was a breeze. You could smoke up there, call the flight attendants "stewardesses" and get up to move around every once in awhile. But then the health nuts got lawyers and the terrorists won. Anymore, vacations are book-ended with gruff orders to "Remove your shoes" and "Not linger around the cockpit." Aren't you ready for a return to the glory days of air travel? Too bad, kid. It's 2008; these days, things only get worse.

Starting immediately, if you fly Spirit Airlines, not only will you be miserable the entire time you're waiting for your flight in the airport, once aboard the plane, you'll be inundated with loud advertising blanketing every surface imaginable. The tray tables, cups, seat backs and window shades will all be covered in ads for some bullshit a person should be able escape for a few precious hours while 30,000 feet above the Earth.

Like everything thrust upon you by corporate pricks, this is for your own good: "Spirit Airlines claims [the ads are] a way to offset high fuel costs so that it can preserve competitive fares for its customers." Wow! I hadn't thought of it like that! Oh wait, yes I did. It's just that my consideration of possible benevolence was completely smashed apart when I read Spirit's Clockwork Orange-ish press release, obviously conjured by one of the worst people in the whole wide world:

Where else can you find 100 percent saturation with a targeted captive audience that will be actively engaged by your ad for an average of three hours? Why pay for a five-second gaze time on a billboard when you have more than 2,000 times the viewing exposure aboard a three-hour flight?

In other words: "Those sorry bastards are stuck; let's eye-bang them with whatever it is you're selling!"

The Bahamas tourism board is Spirit's first advertising partner, buying up space to post colorful ads reading, "Don't you wish you were here?" How cute that's going to be for Spirit customers flying back to Duluth for mom's funeral.