A Patch of Turbulence

Air travel. Now there's something I can definitively say I despise at this point. I find myself in the grip of hideous jetlag having just returned from a week in the homogenised south-western USA. What used to be an exciting privilege is now a stressful and humiliating ordeal, an increasingly unnecessary evil.

The first stage is debasement. We are now treated like livestock in airports; queuing up between the barriers for endless security checks, shuffling though metal detectors in our socks while holding our trousers up, explosive puffer tests, swabs, wands, interrogation, x-rays, fingerprinting, mugshots, inspectors with latex gloves ransacking your baggage.

What I have particular beef with is that airlines have the cohones to tart this mode of transport up like it's some sort of luxury. Twee uniforms, pompous pilots with cock sucking first officers, first class, premier class, business class, DVT class. Just give me the drugs and pack me into a crate, I want to be unconscious throughout. There's no need for you to have to feed me crap and show me edited reductions of movies. There's no need for me to have to talk to the other hapless souls trapped in this tubular purgatory. Just get the fucking engines up to the max and get it over with.

I just want to sleep.