The Airport World Rant

One of the other nasty things that happened to me during my travels this week was that I was grabbed by the heels and dipped head-first into the slimy sewage of modern American society with all of its crowds and cell phone conversations and Fox News airport televisions and ESPN banner headlines and USA Today pie charts and Orange Threat Levels and Transportation Security Administration checkpoints and Homeland Security announcements and maximum carry-on bag size restrictions and no-leg-room airline seating and those 17 half nuts in the little foil bag that the smiling flight attendant gave me on the plane. And there was that guy at the next table in the restaurant, where the tables were too close together, and he was telling his girlfriend the saga of his visit to the veterinarian, how his German Shepherd's one good eye went bad, and he had to take it in to be put down, and the dog looked so sad, but it really was a "quality of life" issue, and when it was over the man had to carry his dead dog out through the waiting room wrapped in a sheet because he really wanted its final resting place to be at home by the trailer park they lived in. And I'm thinking that if the vet had put the dog's phucking owner to sleep, I wouldn't have to listen to all this while I'm trying to eat my frigging breakfast. And there was that well-kept 60-something woman on the plane from Atlanta who carried on a conversation with a dull man two seats away, and she was explaining how her husband lives in China, and she lives in England, and she's only here for the birth of a grandchild, but her son-in-law is between jobs and her daughter hates her, and I'm beginning to hate her, and I think her grandchildren might hate her, too. And if they'd all just shut the phuck up, the world would suddenly become brighter. I'm thinking, of course, that Hell Is Other People. It's a thought that often comes to me. And I analyzed that notion a bit. It occurred to me that, #1) the world is way too crowded for my taste, and #2) I like polite people, but I despise friendly people. I suppose that doesn't really work for everybody. It wouldn't work for all those lonely people, who desperately reach out for a shred of human kindness from other hopeless and boring losers like themselves. No, my misanthropic mindset just wouldn't work for them. No one would ever strike up a friendly conversation with anybody. No one would ask anyone else out for a date. Love and procreation would dwindle. The future of the species would be in jeopardy. Humanity would soon die out altogether. And then there'd be more leg room on the plane and fewer blonde newscasters live from New York and less noise in the airport. And those weird a$$holes with those Blue Tooth phucking things in their ears could just talk to themselves (much like they do now), and there'd be fewer terrorists trying to blow up my airplane, and there'd be a lot less bullsh!t for the CNN News wizards to get all hysterical about. And things would be friggin QUIETER.
(And, no, noise-cancelling headphones are not the answer.)
People just need to shut the phuck up.
Maybe next time I'll just drive.

Thank you for your continuing patience.