American Fez

Do You Hear What I Hear? Do You Pay What I Pay?

'Do they know it's Christmas?' an ensemble of preening and screeching entertainers from Britain called Band-Aid once inquired of listeners to their festive-themed, fund-raising sing-a-long. 

To which I would reply, also failing to hit the high notes: "By simply checking the fluctuating prices of plane flights and noting those days when prices quadruple, they would be left in absolutely no doubt when Christmas was."

A brief airborne puddle jump during the Christmas period costs about the same as an overnight long-haul schlep at any other time of year. Flying to Baltimore from Boston in coach suddenly costs the same as flying first-class from Boston to Brisbane at any other time of year.

A two-hour plane trip should not be a red-eye flight, but it is at Christmas when your eyes become bloodshot from vigorously rubbing them in disbelief at the astronomical sum printed on your credit card receipt. 

Borrowing a dubious leaf from the Bible, it would not surprise me if the airline lobbyists persuaded the government to enact a modern-day Census of Quirinius, requiring all citizens to be registered in the place of their birth by the end of December, thus entailing a mass purchase of plane tickets at hugely inflated Christmas prices, as it's difficult for a guy and his pregnant wife to get around on a donkey these days. 

So, for me, it's not just a question of do "they" know it's Christmas but do "I" even know it's Christmas, it being easy to confuse Tidings of Comfort and Joy with Declarations of Personal Bankruptcy at thirty-five thousand feet in the air.

There may be no snow in Africa this year, as the song goes, but there will certainly be an avalanche of travel bills to be paid.

Holiday Travel Woes

Travel broadens the mind, the old adage claims, which is as true today as it was yesterday. But today this broadening is mostly confined to the traveling mind's definition of food, especially when forced to seek sustenance in the nation's airports and railway stations, not to mention the unappetizing melange of manmade fats and industrial strength carbohydrates on offer aboard the planes and trains that depart from such nutritional wastelands. 

The term "restaurant car" on a modern American train, for example, must be one of the greatest misnomers of all time. There is no description more inaccurate, no appellation more inappropriate, than "restaurant" car. Chalk and cheese appear quite similar by comparison. At an actual restaurant, diners are served a meal that looks and tastes somewhat like real food, even if it isn't. Riders braving the restaurant car of an American train, on the other hand, will be confronted with an unrecognizable squishy substance encased in an equally unidentifiable solid substance that is loosely wrapped in grimy cellophane.

Real restaurants usually provide tables and chairs, also, whereas the restaurant car of a train requires its patrons to evacuate the tiny compartment as soon as their transaction is complete and their order is presented to them. The trick then becomes getting back to their carriage before the squishy stuff encased in solid stuff they've purchased gets cold. This is no mean feat as the barely edible thing in their hands has been reheated at the weakest setting possible, achieving a temperature roughly equivalent to that of a steaming turd. 

But at least passengers can get off a train if necessary. If you're flying on a plane and dying of hunger, however, you're stuck. Although domestic plane flights do boast a slightly more appetizing selection of morsels than trains, their menus still only approximate the starvation level bill of fare available in a medieval city under siege for six years. I'm constantly surprised passengers on a plane don't resort to cannibalism even if they haven't crash-landed in a barren and inaccessible mountain range.

Yes, travel does still broaden the mind. But it does not broaden the mind's appreciation of prepackaged sandwiches, microwavable pizzas, stale potato chips, lukewarm meat product pies, or chocolate flavored hunks of cornstarch. Ultimately, travel will not broaden your waistline as you won't be eating anything during the journey if your mind is still sane enough to overrule your stomach's demands.

Wile E. Coli

According to the news, E. coli is trying to kill us yet again, much like Wile E Coyote repeatedly tries to kill the roadrunner, although the murderous E.Coli conceals itself within the romaine lettuces we consume rather than ensnaring us within some deadly but excessively convoluted contraption.

This stop-press bulletin is of particular concern to me, as romaine lettuce is a standard component of my daily lunch. Indeed, it is the leafy foundation upon which my entire midday meal is built. What I believed to be a bedrock of vitamins and minerals is actually a slimy, writhing mass of homicidal bacteria. 

I well remember foraging and unwisely devouring wild mushrooms in my teens, being told the fungi I had found were probably poisonous, then curling up in an armchair for two days afterward expecting to be explosively sick at any moment. Nothing happened, however. In fact, I felt fine. 

God proverbially looks after fools and drunks, of course, and his assistant Mother Nature apparently casts a watchful eye over toadstool pickers too. But it seems no such divine dispensation exists for commercially farmed lettuce packaged in plastic and sold in supermarkets. Which, perhaps, is as it should be. Trust the homegrown fruits of the Earth and not the genetically modified products of Big Agriculture as far as you can. 

Death by lettuce must be a bewildering way to go. Queasy victims stagger away in the general direction of what they think is the bathroom, only to find themselves suddenly shuffling off this mortal coil instead. Alas, E. Coli is a far more successful bringer of doom than Wile E. Coyote this Thanksgiving.

You Could've Warned Me

The grass is always greener, an old adage cautions, on the other side. But I've never been beguiled by immersively verdant experiences, anyway, so such a pithy apothegm does not register with me. I prefer patchworks of sunlit meadow and brown plowed earth, a little churned reddish clay, sprinklings of sprouting mustard seed, and perhaps a tasteful arrangement of gravel or rocky outcrop. Yet such landscapes are not invoked as a deceptively appealing alternative to my current surroundings. I suppose it's too much of a mouthful.

The Existential Aquarium

Contrary to the suppositions of religion and science, I've always believed our Universe is contained in a murky fishbowl precariously perched on a rickety desk in the messy bedroom of an irresponsible manchild who exists in another dimension. 

Suffice it to say, this manchild neglects to feed the confused inhabitants swimming around inside the fishbowl. Nor does the manchild clean the fishbowl or even refresh the water. Perhaps the manchild taps on the glass from time to time but that is the limit of the attention the child provides to those submerged in the unclean water.

No doubt the fishbowl was a prize in some cosmic fairground, claimed by the simple feat of hitting a trio of dark-matter targets with three space coconuts, then forgotten about after a day or two in favor of more visceral and less boring distractions. 

And so the Universe subsists. After all, what is Oumuamua if not decorative fishbowl driftwood come loose from its moorings? Seems pretty obvious to me. Honestly, you don't need a billion dollar Large Hadron Collider to figure this stuff out.