The Golden Rule

I recently flew a certain airline for five hours at a time twice in a two week period. Sure, so did everyone else-it's called "the holiday season." Here's what I noticed, that everyone else may have missed (and yes, I do notice this every day-I live in New York City but I like to pretend that I write for a national audience-your actual experience may vary): People are assholes.
That's it. People are assholes.
How else to explain the fact that on my five hour flight from JFK to LGB (AKA Long Beach Airport), the "gentleman" behind me decided to chow down on a giant pile of corn nuts (is that one word? "cornnuts"? "cornuts"? I don't know because I'm not rotten enough to eat the filthy devil snacks!). If you are unfamiliar with corn-nuts, allow me to explain: They are corn kernels processed in such a way as to make sure that when a person crunches them open, thereby releasing their internal nasty-gas and allowing it to mix with human saliva and lung vapor, the resulting stank is heinous in the extreme. Like, heinous to the extent that your mild-manored narrator, ordinarily a charming and peaceful man, seriously considered perpetratin' like he was gonna get up and pee only to walk a row back a break a man's nose.
Overreaction?
No.
This was a man confined on a plane eating corn-nuts!!!
Has he never smelled corn-nuts???!
How the f&$k about "do unto others"?
Seriously.
I don't give a good god-damn if you love the smell of corn-nuts-breath, if you have a corn-nuts-breath scented tree hanging from your car's mirror-
How the hell about a little goddamned common mother-fu^%ing sense?
Howzabout exhibiting the sense that says "hey, I like corn-nuts, and I LOVE stinky-ass tuna sandwiches, but maybe I should hold off on indulging my passion for smelly crap until I'm in a place where that indulgence won't force innocent bystanders to be my stank-ass co-conspirators?"
And while I'm on a rant:
NOBODY likes the smell of your perfume and/or cologne enough for you to jam it up their ass on an elevator!!!
If I can smell you on an elevator, you either should have taken a shower and eschewed the artificial stank, or you just can't smell and need to hire a competent smeller to clear you for public consumption before you walk out the door.
I know it seems like I'm nuts and that I'm simply mining a single incident for an overblown blog post, but I swear to whatever deity you can dream up, a week after the initial corn-nuts incident, on my flight back to JFK, there was ANOTHER corn-nuts eating piece of crap on the plane!!! (Yes, it may have been Fritos-just as bad! Keep them both in the privacy of your own homes please!)
The corn-nuts/Fritos scourge is clearly an epidemic. It may indicate that the offendors don't give a damn if they cause others to suffer. More likely, I think, is that we have reached a point where it simply doesn't occur to most people to think whether or not others will suffer. "Corn-nuts? Tuna? Limburgher and onion sandwich? Poop and peppers casserole? Whatever, dude-I paid and I'm eatin-suck it!"
The golden rule? I don't (and can't) ask that it be followed in all circumstances-but when you're in a metal box, breathing recycled air for five to five and a half hours...?