In flight, May 30, Oakland-Seattle

So here's the deal. I'm on a plane now: Alaska Airlines Flight 345, Oakland to Seattle, pretty much my "regular" flight when I commute to PopCap. I'm typing on my iPad, and using the inflight wifi, confirming that I am, in fact, communicating with you from the future. Huzzah!

The problem with this flight today, other than the 1.5 hour delay (second one in a week), is that I'm flying on Memorial Day, which not only means I'm not home on the holiday like I should be, but also that the plane is full of civilians, as snobby frequent fliers like me like to call you. Rubes and mouth-breathing morons are two other technical terms, though we try to only use those in our secret meetings.

Anyway, so I have a couple with two screaming babies behind me, and a guy next to me who smells like he hasn't bathed since Hee Haw went off the air in the 70s. And the guy two seats down from me keeps snuffling his nose so loudly I can hear it through my noise-canceling headphones.

I know what you may be thinking: Boy, this Jeff Green character is a real curmudgeonly asshole! To which I can only respond: Welcome to my blog! But, look, I fly a lot now, so what little patience I had in humanity is severely tested aboard these flying tin cans, especially when the guy next to me smells like a soggy bag of dog flatulence. It's times like these that I wish the airports had delousing and decontamination chambers at the gates. I've written letters to all the major airline airlines repeatedly now for months, but oddly, I've yet to receive a single reply, despite me adding "READ NOW OR ELSE" on the front of every Yu-Gi-Oh envelope used for this correspondence.

There's nothing you can do about screaming babies on planes. Nothing legal or socially acceptable, anyhoo. And hey, I've been there. Not only did I used to have my own screaming baby on planes back in the day, but just two weeks ago I was screaming myself when the flight attendants ran out of peanuts before it was my turn. I'm tearing up a little even thinking about it now. But, ya know, smelly passengers--that's another thing. It seems like the bare minimum one should do before confining oneself in a closed space with strangers for a couple hours is to make sure beforehand that one is not emanating a rotten, fetid, and/or fecal odor from one's body, but maybe that's just me. Maybe this guy is proud of his stench, or doesn't actually notice the flowers wilting and dogs whimpering and women fainting as he walks by.

The upside of this situation is that it is giving me something tocthink about and share with you on this flight, which you in turn can share with your children, and their children, and so on. As those noted rock emissaries Journey once astutely noted, "the wheel in the sky keeps on turning." As I look out the window of the airplane right now and gaze at the infinite sky, all I can do is say, "yeah, it does."

I hope you have enjoyed my heartfelt ruminations on this flight, as it has made me feel close to each and every one of you. I hope you feel the same. Now I'm going to blast some Beastie Boys into my ears and try to breathe in as little as possible until this flight lands and I can get the heck out of here.

Namaste,
Jeff

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad