Thoughts Occurring to Me at 10,000 Feet, Somewhere above the Eastern Seaboard

I'm almost too fat to be typing this. Either that, or they're making airplanes smaller. I did buy a very large laptop. Maybe it's all of the above.

I thought I was being gypped by paying seven dollars for an ounce of Jack Daniels, maybe an ounce and a half. How much booze comes in those little airline bottles anyway? Anywho, after I paid and the old tonic worked its magic, going down the hatch nice and easy, I realize it was worth seven fucking bucks.

Apple, and other manufacturers of gadgets and gizmos, should do something for the airline industry. Either there are nerds aplenty on this flight, or everybody has an electronic distraction.

The hipster douchebag sitting next to me is alternately trying to get through Franzen's FREEDOM and fiddling with his iPad. If this plane goes down, I'm going to punch him right in the craw and maybe that will make me feel better for dying in a shitty plane. I can feel his disdain for me, the meaty southerner sitting next to him with the massive MacBook Pro dwarfing his tiny iPad.

Fucking douchebag.

The chick in 15D has got nice hair and a great rack.

On airlines I indulge in solipsism, which is really, really self-indulgent. Only I could invent such torture as air travel. I must have conjured all this in my mind.

Now my big toe is throbbing. Watch me have an attack of gout a mile in the air on the way to the most exciting city in the world. Fuck me with a rake. I'm not gonna let that happen. I'll chop off the offending toe first.

You know, this is the first opportunity I've had to work on THE INCORRUPTIBLES since I started my new job. Getting some words down. That feels nice.

Ooh, the chick with a nice rack is working on a sales PowerPoint. Poor thing.

Sun's going down, and the clouds below me are refulgent with the last light of the day. Pink like cotton candy. The earth beyond like a green and brown patchwork quilt.

This hipster douchebag can't get enough of The Wire. He's far more interested in it than FREEDOM.

There's a darling little girl, one year old maybe, across the isle from me. She's cute and plump with cankles and just being a little trouper, flying in this crappy airplane. She's just gurgling and exploring everything with her hands and making me pine for the days when my kids were that small, before they could give backsass and talk smack. When they had cankles.

The db next to me really needs his ass beat.

Now we're approaching Newark - glorious Newark - and the earth looks like a sheen of yellow jewels, strewn on a black plain. A big fat orange moon hangs low on the horizon and makes me wish I knew what the fuck gibbous is.

I want to take a picture but they've asked us to turn off electrical devices.

Somewhere, in the innards of the plane, a rattle, a clank. Gears are deployed. Almost there.