The old man and the airport

Oh my goodness.

I love the airport. You know, the mall or other densely populated human gathering locale can be so rich in opportunities for observed human behavior, but the airport occupies a niche market.

Airports are not casual. People go shopping to relax, to acquire goods, perhaps to obtain sustenance with which to bog their gullets... Not so at the airport. Here, everyone is in a rush, they are concerned, they are concentrating, they are more than anything, upset.

Okay, I'll concede shopping may or may not be relaxing for some, and often shoppers do, or are in a, rush. But if you are a reasonable reader, and I know you are, you get the point. I know I can ramble on and on ad nauseam, but that is over important details for you to see, feel and taste the experience. So don't be a dullard. Keep up.

(I'll take this moment to point out that this blog also contains material which could be filed into the 'Overheard #xx' category, just as the previous entry. Alas, perhaps I was rash in my judgment that Overheard's days were finished. Too late now I suppose... funny how judgment is spelled without the 'e' after the 'g' and yet the word still has a hard 'g' sound...)

First up, we have the dumb family with the poor pre-teen daughter being molded into an idiot herself. I'm standing in the (rather) long line at LAX to get through security, and this couple is standing behind me chattering away.

Another pause. Perhaps there is a more elegant way to setup a story than what I do here, with all my starts and stops. By the way, since I used the word 'story', I'd like to point out that, with the rare exception that should be obvious to you in that it stands out rather starkly from the rest, most of these entries into this blog are quite true and I try not to embellish much if at all. Of course I may craft it in such a way as to hope to at least keep you entertained... I am aware of the mundaneness of some of these posts... I'm mean... *coffee cup imagery* ?! What the F is that all about? Only here folks. Well, and probably a hundred thousand other blogs on the 'net...

But I wasn't pausing to tell you all that crap, I just spewed that out in a moment of unforgivable honesty...

So I hope that you, reader, are not offended by what follows because it contains some convoluted personal judgments (without an 'e'). Alright, the first thing I overhear from dad is, "...even if you're attacked, your chances are still pretty good. The odds of you being blown up in a plane are still very low." I'll take this moment to give him the nod towards his statistical assumption, however unscientifically he may have arrived at it... His wife chimes in that she agrees, and complains about the security measures. She says she would rather security remained as it were before the 9/11 attacks. "I'd rather take my chances," she says. Well, thank you fucking idiot lady, but the *other* ONE HUNDRED TWENTY people may NOT want to gamble their lives, no matter the odds.

Of course, while I personally think your *odds* of going down in a plane due to accident is most likely higher than you dying as a result of sabotage, I'd like to point out that accidents do not choose to happen, as opposed to terrorist attacks against a civilian target where humans can and do actively choose to make these things happen. You cannot perform a security checkpoint to discern the likelihood of a mechanical disaster. Likewise you can perform 'maintenance' (note the root of the word, 'maintain', taken literally would mean to do nothing more than you are already doing, it's an abstract thought that I want to get across to you, since most of America is reading at the 2nd grade level these days...) and hope to prevent a bombing.

We have seen it all over the world. Car bombings are a daily occurrence. Perhaps there should be a lengthy security check before you can drive your car...

But all of that aside, what really offended me, was, regardless of the talk about odds and what not, was the brash selfishness. It's typical of Los Angeles, but I personally still find in inexcusable. The security line would be a HELL of a lot shorter if these three were the only ones on Earth. But then they wouldn't NEED security because there would be no one around to attack them, and, Hell!, there'd be no one to fly the God damned plane so they could get wherever the fuck they were in such a hurry to get to.

That was just the cake. The icing was the out loud proclamation by daddy, "They should just do racial profiling, anyone with a turban should be automatically investigated."

I had two responses to this. First was, shut your fucking mouth. As the saying goes, it's one thing to be an idiot, it's quite another to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I myself have ridden in a plane with turban wearing folk, and I'll admit to having emotions about this. But I was quick to slap myself (metaphysically) for such a blanket judgment (without an 'e') of a society, a religion, a race, a whatever. All Americans are gun loving cowboys, right? I know I am. Thanks to the rest of the world for judging me (with no 'e') thusly. Hypocrites. So it really bothers me to see Americans do it. And the reasonably intelligent people (are there really so few of us?) are caught in the fray between these knee-jerk, overly-emotional, fear driven cattle called the human race.

For fuck sake.

Basically, daddy, you're just a fucking moron.

Secondly, do you think they don't already do that? How naive do you have to be? So far nearly 100% of the folks that have crashed our own airplanes into our own buildings have been of Arabic decent. I'm sorry. It upsets my stomach to say it because I simply don't want to group a bunch of people in with a handful of bad apples. It seems terribly wrong. But as the saying goes, call a spade a spade. This is a hot button topic and personally, I really hate the way it's polarized, but shit, it's all fucked up any which way you slice it. Daddy is still a buffoon.

The worst part is the pre-teen daughter who is going to grow up a shining product of their parenting.

But enough of that. Onward Starbuck's !

I get some coffee at Starbuck's after suffering through the whole TEN MINUTES of the security check (dear God, a travesty!) and I want to be bold and get the Peppermint Mocha, which is seasonal in case that wasn't offensively obvious. Yes, I know good coffee, yes, Starbuck's isn't the best in the world, it does just fine though, so you lovers and haters go hash it out somewhere else... McDonald's Sausage McMuffin ain't no gourmet breakfast but damn that shit tastes good every now and again... I can't shake my white-trash roots...

I sit down and pull out my M7 (I love this thing), so I can store some thoughts real fast before they fade (including the family unit which I have so unjustly sat in judgment on with no 'e') and I get this from an older couple sitting next to me: "This tastes one hundred percent better!" Well I suppose it does. One hundred percent better than what? Gold? Poop? Burger King? I think it was in regards to a Starbuck's sandwich. I don't imagine that is some kind of food for the gods, but I *am* sure it is better than many things that can be had for your stomach.

It struck me as an odd thing, taken literally. As English speakers, and especially as Americans, we communicate a great deal with metaphors. Sometimes it is rather entertaining to sit back for a minute and listen to what is being said, taken in it's literal form. I am really curious what exactly is one hundred percent worse (which is absolutely worse, using 'absolute' literally) than a Starbuck's sandwich and more importantly, how one arrives at such a mathematical conclusion.

I also wrote myself a note about "hating shit that reminds you of other shit that you hate." I don't remember what that was about now, but it sounds frustrating, whatever it is...

Well, my flight was delayed by about an hour and a half, so out comes the M7 again and I start up a doodle to pass the time. I scratched out this picture, inspired by an old man who had walked up and sat down a little ways across from me along side his wife.

The picture is terribly unfair, he was a pleasant and normal looking person, so I am misrepresenting him here almost in his entirety. Except the socks. The black socks are dead accurate.



And now, it's Jerry Springer time...

Damn that was a rant and a half. I hate putting that up there at the top, about terrorism, because there just isn't much to laugh about. Most of it is very very sad. Sad because of the hatred. Sad because of the death. Sad because this is the current state of human affairs. We *choose* to do this to each other. Are we not brothers and sisters after all? We fight and kill each other for 'things'.

A very wise man once said to me, (this man is the closest person to a 'guru' I have ever met in my life, and this is just one of many many things he said to me, astounding in it's simplicity, and beautiful in it's honesty).

We're still apes, fighting over bananas...

Think about that. Like one of those trick questions where the answer is so obvious that you almost never see it. There is so much in that sentence that you aren't getting, because the message looks so obvious.

This man said these things to me in a context I cannot relate in such an eloquent manner as he, the best I can do is tell you to try and figure it out, and say, trust me, it's in there. I am only a student of life myself, not a teacher, but I have met some teachers, and we could certainly use a lot more of them in the world...