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Up in the air. Seat 37E, for Excellence. In an aeroplane, or as I like to call it, a Tube of People. The Slappa bag performs reasonably, but what the hell, why don’t I just get a roller bag like everyone else? I have two such bags but they are check-in size. I of course did not get the Slappa intending for it to be a travel bag but it will pass as such out of necessity. Or rather convenience.

Flying reminds me of class, and the distance money puts between us. Royalty boards first, along with the handicapped and small children. How does royalty feel about its brief union with the infirm and the screaming babies?

I sat in first class once, on a business trip to Las Vegas. My guess about this upgrade is that they thought I was the other Mark Thomas, the ad sales rep who flew all over creation. Whatever the reason for the upgrade I sat next to a woman who worked at Reuters. She was nice. I likely still have her business card somewhere around the world. She was adamant that I should contact her and that we should stay in touch. I never did, and we never did. But she took to me as if she’d never met anyone remotely similar.

On the other end of the first class spectrum was undoubtedly the nastiest person I’ve ever seen on an airplane. He kept asking for food they did not have, I think, and every other sentence was “I’m not happy.”

The Delta Terminal is swank. All you hear about LGA these days from our Governor Cuomo is that LGA is a third world facility. I have not been to Nicaragua lately and I do not know the other parts of LaGuardia but no way could you say that about the areas I sat in. There are tablet screens at every other seat at the main restaurant, which had the amusing-to-me name of CRUST. That word makes me think of whatever it’s called when you think you’re only farting but a little turd peaks out. I don’t know where that association comes from but it is locked in this brain, not going anywhere.

Well, now it is hard to type. OK, adjustments necessary. Person in front of me thrust his seat back, so he could be as comfortable as possible while punishing me into less and less space. The tablet was knocked off its balance. He noticed this, cast a sidelong look toward his left, and said nothing. Why would he care? He is an entitled sacrosanct asshole.

Now I type with the keyboard to the left of the tablet, hopefully irritating the person in front of me with vibrations caused by these fingers tapping these words onto these keys. And now I type with the keyboard on top of the tablet and the bags os peanuts and pretzels to the left.

Delta said over and over that this flight was completely booked. But I see 4 empty seats within eyeshot, including the one next to me. I am on a window seat, the woman on the aisle is handicapped, making it slightly problematic for me to decide if I should get up to defecate or masturbate in the bathroom during this flight. It is not impossible for her to stand up but it’s a bit of a project. I became sensitive to that sort of thing on a flight a long time ago when I got up to get something from the overhead bin 2 times before departure. I could not understand why the woman on the aisle was so flustered, even angry about this. It was not until the end of the flight that I noticed she was handicapped. Somehow I just did not notice this those two times I got up.

Listening to Joe Frank, In The Dark. This one does not sound familiar. It opens with a gun owner shooting his dog with a Smith and Wesson. John shot Olly. It was never lost on me but the more I listen to Joe Frank these days I see that it is commentary, but on what matter it is not always easy to discern. This one is obviously about guns but the one about K2 I never quite could tell upon who (whom?) he was dumping his bitterness. He posts too much to Facebook. But who doesn’t…

Yesterday at the chapel felt like home. I did not expect that. Nothing to share, maybe not ever, but God it was good. And the sound gear even worked, though certain moments might need some software processing. I mean it all will, of course, but some of it more than others.

These noise cancelling headphones are doing some work, but I am sitting next to the ENGINE. It might give me a headache or an inner ear ache or maybe a BUTT ACHE. Chewing on the peanuts (NICE PEANUTS!) causes an opening in the headphones through which wafts of noise stampede.

Big muddy squall of water below. What could that be? I cannot get maps to work here. Dammit. I have no idea where I am. Story of my life.

Interdyne and Unisphere. Hah. These are two fictional companies mentioned in this Joe Frank piece. How perfect would it be if he added that the Unisphere company was “also known as Globitron”?

There is an Interstate. There are the shadows cast by the clouds, which are few. There is a small residential area that is shaped like a lizard. I wonder who lives in The Lizard.

…

So yesterday was one of hilarity on the Links. I am still finessing things but the possibilities are tremendous. If I wished harm upon Citbridge (I do not) I might publicize what I’ve done so far, so that others could do it. But I will not. I like to think of myself as staying above the fray of common street pranks.

But yesterday, when I unexpectedly encountered two working Links on Queens Boulevard, I took out my sheet of phone numbers and dialed in to a conference call. When you first set it up and there are no other participants they play some generic Muzak. At full volume it was so loud I could hear it almost a full block away. It is utterly ridiculous that this product was designed with this … in mind? Is it possible they actually contemplated and approved this concept of a streetside radio blasting from every corner?

They blocked the 712 numbers but that is just a game of whack a mole, as my successes yesterday prove. If I want to get to the Talkee Donut chat lines from a Link, I will get to the Talkee Donut chat lines from a Link. I made a video of that stuff blasting out of a Third Avenue Link last year. I did not feel especially good about doing that, considering the nature of the conversation that was taking place at that time. I only did it to see if I could. My aim is to stoke people’s paranoia and dismay about the surveillance and greed of that the Links embody, not to pollute the air with noxious obscenities or stupid pranks.

But the approach has to change somewhat. For now I’ve defaulted to adding Links to calls where some kind of sound is already and always in progress. The trick is to leave it silent most of the time, barking out randomness interstitially. I did this yesterday when I called in to a Link that was live on the conference call. I heard what sounded like a little kid yell, just a general “RAWR!” type of thing. I promptly returned the RAWR!, and the kid clearly heard it because I heard him/her ask “Who is this? Is there someone there?” And earlier I had engaged an adult passer-by in very brief dialog.

But dialog cannot be what this endeavor is about. Call quality on the Links is so bad that it is almost impossible to understand what the person talking into the Link is saying … unless they scream, that is. That kid yesterday did just that. S/he screamed. The other person did not, and I understood very little of what he said.

But it’s not about dialog, it’s about broadcasting and minicasting. I will get my remote desktop chops up to snuff so I can dial in from across town and play short WAV files from home. This way I will avoid being connected to the sounds emanating from the Links. I was actually spotted last week by some surly looking residents of Third Avenue, though I’m not sure they were sure who they were looking at. That’s the problem now, I have to set the call up and then basically RUN.

With ability to play audio when I want I imagine a voice shouting out “CHARGE YOUR PHONE!” or “ULTRAFAST FREE GIGBUTT WIFI RIGHT HERE!” Make the Links say stuff that almost sounds like something they would actually say, then throw in dystopian fantasies about how human consciousness is being indexed and monetized by LinkNYC. “LINKNYC MONETIZES YOU. I could also put flyers containing printouts of the screeds on the Links. Unlike others who spray paint over the surveillance cameras I would draw attention to them.

…

Initial descent. Wow, these hours just … FLEW BY … AHA, I am so funny.

Sold out flight? Just noticed all three seats behind me are empty, too. OK, gotta power down. Oh wait, no I don’t. Oh yeah, that looks like Florida down there. Lakes aplenty.

…

That was possibly the most uneventful flight I’ve ever endured. I do believe the noise-cancelling Sonys contributed mightily to this possible illusion. I did, of course, submit to the “random” full groping in which the TSA grunt almost pulled down my pants for all to enjoy. He asked if I wanted to be taken in private. I was like, no, let my loins shine, as they did for God at the chapel yesterday. I was like, your gropings erect my cock hard, why not let transient LaGuardians savor the fruit of my bulbous balls?

There was some palm smear strip thing which I don’t remember from last time. I used to get pulled aside for the full body x-ray but now it looks like everyone gets forced into that. We take our clothes off for the privilege o travel. And travel IS for the privileged. With the palm smear strip (whatever that was) I felt like I was looking down the barrel of the terrorists’ arsenal. They so won this war.

I am in the room in which I mostly grew up. First masturbation, first phone sex chat, first window into what I always knew was the void of my belief in luck and destiny. Tonight I sip vodka and Resins on the space where my bed used to be. My sister has totally set me up here, with a queen size air mattress and all the booze I need. I had intended not to drink here at all out of respect to what I do not know. Well, there is a teenage kid here. He is… 15, I guess. He was born the day I left Time-Warner, February 28, 2002. I don’t know what he knows or thinks he knows about me but I think he’s pretty flippin’ cool. Timid and a bit gawky, as per teenage youth. He gets excited when I ask him about his future. But a poised kind of gawky. He seems to know what he is doing. He sorts his monstrous DVD collection by year of release. I bet that is how Scorsese organized his VHS tapes. He wants to make dramas. The first thing I thought when I got into the car and said hi to him was “Oh, your voice changed. Of course.” I sid nothing. DIane got lost coming back from the airport. We landed in St. Petersburg. It reminded me of how we almost missed our father’s funeral because she could not drive fast enough to get there. Maybe these two incidents were fulfillment of a dream I had in high school in which Diane and I were in a car our mother was driving. We were trying to get out of Washington, where we lived at the time (Alexandria, VA, to be exact). An invading army of Americans was closing in on the city. Mother got lost and ended up on one of those infinitely diagonal Washington, D.C., streets that could or could not lead to the White House, or that could or could not lead to the safety of Maryland. The military band of the invading army seemed to grow louder, as did the general noise of the army. It was like that night of the steam valve explosion on the upper east side. In the dream mother cursed continuously, as she did in real life. She did not know what to do. I guess we died but I woke up before that happened.

That was how today’s unexpected trip over the bridge from TIA to St. Petersburg felt. No armies, no imminent death (although the anniversary of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge disaster happens to be tomorrow). Just lost.

I have lived multiple lives. Everyone has, of course. Even the youngest. It was Updike who said that even an 8 year old could feel nostalgia. I loath nostalgia. But compartmentalized lives leaking into the other lives are the stuff of experience, knowledge, and inspiration. Cross-pollination of the social circles we’ve known. Life is long. Life is large.

Everyone here sleeps with their doors open. I do not. But, Jesus Christ, allergies have me sneezing like a MoFu this night. Innards will be sore tomorrow.

I am home. 🙂 I hope you are, too.