June 08, 2005

• i'm so glad you linked to this, it's hilarious
• oh my that's a good one.
• i love the crossword parts. heh.
• Once during a trip down to the Yucatan I had a similar bit of trouble. At the end of a long, hot day of looking at Mayan ruins, my brother and I hopped on a bus that was to take us back to our hotel. The only seats were the ones in the very back against the rear wall of the bus. We also had our daypacks with us and with my brother and I being well over six feet tall, we just barely fit. On the seat in front of me was short, long haired German fellow with his chair part way back. I asked politely if he could move the seat up a bit and he looked me straight in the eye and moved it further back with a smirk. I was infuriated but my brother was more deferential than I and shrugged his shoulders. The trip was about 45 minutes back to the hotel and soon the rocking of the bus put both the German fellow and my brother to sleep. My deviant mind remembered the new Swiss army knife that I bought for the trip. The ones with the nice, new scissors. When we got back to the hotel the German grabbed his bag and stumbled off the bus, too sleepy to notice the several large hunks of blond hair on his seat pillow.
• I ♥ David Sedaris
• Last time I flew through Baltimore, I was actually knocked to the ground by a Japanese man. I was standing by my bags in a narrow area behind a support column, waiting in line (flying Southwest, where you queue to get a seat on the plane). This man walked straight towards me and kept walking, though there was no room for me to move to let him through. I didn't expect that a person would just fucking walk into me, and the impact knocked me on my ass. I was willing to write off that perhaps he was used to different customs, but the bruise on my ass wasn't as forgiving.
• With all my travelling, I have no good stories. Best one was the drunk guy on a fairly quiet flight back to NZ one night, in the row in front of me. We had a row each to ourselves and he kept patting the seat next to him and trying to persuade me to come and sit with him, then got into an argument with the flight attendant after he refused to serve alcohol before takeoff. He passed out not long after. I ended up moving to a different row because the smell of alcohol was almost making me pass out.
• The last time my parents flew, my mom tripped over the threshold and did a faceplant in the center aisle. They were one of the last to board, so nearly a full load of passengers saw it. As they walked back toward their seat, my dad repeatedly pointed to my mother and said, "She's the one who fell down. Don't worry, she's okay. She's the one who fell down. Don't worry, she's okay."
• Recently flew back from Europe behind a guy who hopefully was an anonymous seat tester for Boeing. If not, then there's no excuse for the amount of thrashing about he did with every little body adjustment. If the seat had broken free of its deck bolts I wouldn't have been surprised. Then the guy across the row got bored halfway through the flight, started fiddling with his seat, and managed to break the arm in half, which he displayed to everyone around with amazement. I was just glad there was a decent amount of leg room in my row, so I was spared any impacts. Plus they served us ice cream cones.
• David Sedaris never fails to make me laugh. This made me recall some of my worst flights ever, but rather than share, I'll ask y'all to just read more Sedaris--he tells it much better than I can.
• Flying from Cincinatti to Roanoke, I was on an express jet. Stuck in the very back seat, by the time I boarded what little overhead space was gone, and so I held my one bag whilst I put the other one under the seat in front of me as best I could. It only fit halfway. The gentleman sitting next to me was somewhat peeved that he couldn't use the space under my seat for his somewhat longer legs, so he jostled me as much as possible and adjusted his knees so they were in my "space", then when I tried to relax, my knee touched his knee. He glared at me and sighed through his nostrils, and I quickly withdrew my knee. I waited until he fell asleep and then I "accidentally" jostled him awake when we hit turbulence.
• Imagine this: you sit in a long flight from China to Europe, trying to concentrate on a math textbook when the white 40-50ish woman behind you suddenly puts her feet on your armrest - so far in that they actually push your arm.. I was like WTF? and tried to politely push it back.. the foot vanished for some minutes, but far too soon it was back and again pushing way deep into my space. The pushing game went on for a few turns.. I tried to politely but sternly stare her into submission, but no go - she was just babbling something with her adjacent passengers. As I'm a bit shy and don't like any verbal conflicts I just gave up and blocked the opening between the seats with a pillow supported by my arm. After a while she gave up. I realize that some people need more room, but that was just ridiculous.. and very impolite. That flight wasn't too bad though, as I got to see some non-english-speaking chinese people try to figure out the completely english user interface for touchscreens embedded in the seats. It was interesting to see how they tried to navigate the menus and how frustrated they got.. (they never found the language settings, which I guess would have chinese as an option but was marked as just "LANGUAGE" so they couldn't find it)