5:40 pm

I have decided to keep a travel journal. That's the thing to do.

All times will be estimates, as I have left my watch in my room.

5:25 pm

I arrive at the airport. Abruptly I realize that I do not know my flight number, departure time or, for that matter, destination.

5:30 pm

I call home. Technology calls my bluff.

5:40 pm

Ticket lady has answers. Almost too easy. I hit Gate Sixteen, 1.5 hours early. It's full of New Yorkers. I head for the yogurt bar I saw on the way.

5:45 pm

Peering at yogurt I realize that I've had no dinner and it seems unlikely that the stewardesses will let me get away with that peanut thing a second time. I switch to Burger King, try to decide what to order.

5:53 pm

This... was your father's cheese-burger. Not as clumsy, or random as a Whopper. An elegant sandwich, from a more civilized age.

5:54 pm

My thoughts wander, as they often do, to natural intimidation. I saw part of "Congo" on TV last night. No, Sunday? Sunday. Gorillas are big. Take humans' guns away and they are the nerd monkey. Who the hell do we intimidate, aside from each other? Tuna fish? This is pretty sad. I hate my species. This thought had more of a point when I first thought it.

6:15 pm

I apologize for the previous entry in travel journal. I promise that if I am work for Let's Go I will not write like this.

It's possible that my present state of mind owes a lot to the fact that in the last 24 hours I've spent a lot of time hypnotizing myself and then giving myself maybe not the most carefully specific instructions in the world. I remember last night at 4:30 am I tranced out and told myself to wake up at 7:30 and not be bleary or tired so that I could keep studying for my psych midterm. You wouldn't think that would work, would you.

This all started last night at ten when my whole tutorial section begged the guest doctor to hypnotize us en masse and make us do our work. So he did. It's not even a joke. This is what I've done since 10 pm yesterday:

	- one 5-page psych paper with 
	  original research
	- 4 hours of midterm studying.
	- 3 hours of self-induced sleep from 
	  which I awoke refreshed and alert. 
	- 1.5 hours of actual midterm
	- 4 2-page papers
	- 1 page of sophomore essay draft
	- a regretful letter to my tutorial leader 
          about the other 16 pages
	- lunch.

	- no usenet
	- no web page
	- minimal e-mail
	- absolute concentration

6:28 pm

My arm hurts. I'm going to the vending machines. I'll tell you what I find out there.

6:31 pm

Vending machines are okay.

Part of me wants to climb inside the vending machines and play the Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter game where I sit behind the glass waiting for Jodie Foster to walk by so I can say "I can smell your cunt" and push some peanut M&M's through the little exchange drawer.

The other part of me is very, very ashamed. I wonder how much I would cost. I would probably come out for free if you kept looking at me like that.

6:36 pm

Maine de Biran.

I bet these times are all wrong.

I've got some peanut M&M's now.

6:39 pm

"hug" spelled backwards is "guh".

guh.

6:42 pm

I just realized that I probably look all arty over here in my leather jacket and silver shirt, all scruffy from the all nighter and lugging a skateboard around, a big one from the '80s, sitting by myself at the end of the terminal looking out the window and compulsively writing in my spiral notebook.

There are a lot of chicks in this airport. I bet they all want me.

6:47 pm

I want to go into the men's room and put on some of the eyeshadow Hodge gave me for christmas, but I'm really worried that somebody will think I'm a faggot.

6:48 pm

These damn things are all yellow.

Beats tomato juice though.

6:48 pm

There's a man on the PA system telling me that what I see around me is an airport in transition. I hope that he is pre-recorded.

6:50 pm

Update: Bill Clinton's new dog is named, I think they said "Buddy."

6:42 pm

I think that's closer.

6:42 pm

None of the chicks are hot though. This sucks. Also I bet this travel journal would really disappoint them if they read it.

6:42 pm

I am a rich man. I have a house in the Adirondacks that has more rooms than there are stars in the sky. I have more cars than there are names for cars. Some of my cars have no name.

6:45 pm

First class passengers may board. They will not accept my explanation.

I have to put the book away before they see that Hannibal Lecter thing from a few pages ago with their X-Rays.

6:50 pm, TWA Flight 3xx (Boston -> St. Louis)

I'm in the very last row by the bathrooms. I'm lucky there's no Row 13 on this plane or by all appearances row 33 here would be the bathrooms. On the one hand I'd be really comfortable, but on the other hand I don't think I could keep my hands off that smoke detector all the way to St. Louis. And people would pee on me.

6:52 pm

Yamulke.

6:53 pm

Good Christ, is that engine going to be right outside my window the whole time? Actually I hope so.

No wait, it's the luggage door.

7:06 pm

Okay, etiquette question. You're browsing the in-flight magazine before takeoff when your seatmate arrives and sits down. When you go to put the magazine back you notice there's another one. You check over. She hasn't got one. Do you offer? Does offering make you look like an in-flight magazine hog who was trying to pull something? Does not offering?

I hate in-flight magazines anyway. I don't want this many.

7:14 pm

Terrorists would never find me on this plane. It's so funny. I would hide like the ant lion, strike like the boll weevil. And their crop of terror would wither and die, and statues to them would be erected on the Libyan stage, where dead heroes push their rotting agendas with a stick until they grow soft, and smear upon the ground, and bend around the stick and split wetly in the middle in My glory.

7:18 pm

JESUS! it is an engine. it's right outside the window --

7:20 pm

This plane is so small it has little chairs that fold out of the walls for the stewardesses during takeoff. They look like those pilots in the old air force Mach 3 spinning chair so you look silly tests.

I've never seen that one before. If they happen to find this notebook still legible in the flaming wreck then I'd just like to say fuck whoever built this plane to scale for Laotians. That is all.

7:22 pm

I don't see why Mulder never realized Mr. X's connection with the Smoking Man.

unknown

I was trying to hypnotize myself again so I could give myself a firm suggestion to accept any peanuts or snack foods offered to me, but the pilot keeps pointing out every city and ski resort we pass by. I'm going to ask him to keep an eye out for my house the next time I come up for air.

----

All the possible trains of meditative thought in the world and here I am stuck on the phrase "bat guanaco".

Let's Go Cattle Truck!

where time has no meaning pm

Endel Tulving certainly got the short end of the name stick. It sounds like the name you would give to the first British expedition to a girl's nether parts, cave of mystery to so many teenage boys worldwide.

FOOD!

+5

I just heard my dad's voice distinctly say "Interesting things are _valuable_." Only he'd never say something like that.

+10

So far I have managed to make two new scenes out of the No Smoking sign: "no effeminate hand to touching unsharpened pencil" (!) and "oncoming car with one headlight, overheated, no."

Wish you were here.

9:35 pm (central time), Lambert International Airport, St. Louis

I'm not sure it's actually named Lambert but that's what I'm going to call you, Lambert.

That report about the president's dog is on the CNN airport network again.

Cable car news network. I'm thinking about skateboarding on the moving sidewalks.

9:47 pm

Just walking seems so ordinary after you've tried moving sidewalks.

10:08 pm, TWA Flight 171 STL -> LAX

I have a window. And I have my little plastic wings.

How you like me now?

10:17 pm

Wow, every television screen in the cabin just retracted into the ceiling like cold testicles. Right at the end of the Vanessa Williams video. It would have been funnier in the middle, if she got trapped up there.

10:34 pm

A haiku appears.

	-> Allergic to plane.
	   when the drinks trolley shows up,
	   I get a napkin.

10:48 pm

The second haiku

-> I mispoured my "Slice"
   had to use precious napkin
   bitter, bitter, bitter
   bitter

10:50 pm

I want my peanuts. Not cheese wafers. Not raisins. Peanuts. Peanuts.

10:56 pm

One last thing before I quit I never wanted any more than I could fit inside my head I still remember every single word you said and all the shit that somehow came along with it still there's one thing that comforts me cause I was always caged and now I'm free.

sodden napkin
wet and sad
sad, sad
sad
stewart

11:15 pm

I guess I don't see why Mel Gibson is supposed to be so attractive.

11:34 pm

Film idea. World without steel. Giant wrought-iron cities, made of family compounds tangled in static conflict or copulation. Gun battles in the wreckage (cool ones)

would need a good production designer

12:14 pm

When Julia Roberts gets upset she tries to turn into a Klingon.

[ after this i got bored. ]