Plane Food
I'm reading Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace which was reviewed in the NYT yesterday. I didn't understand the review much better than I understood Fosty's 10,000 word review/article (the book is a collection of non-fiction pieces) on this book about English usage and usage in general. Both probably had valid observations but these got lost among the big words and postmodern deconstructionalist modality of principle (principal?) rhetoric. No one's going to run to the dictionary for a book review. Didn't one of those Strunk or White guys say something about writing clearly and so people can understand you without trying too hard?

When I started this post I intended to write that reading an article on usage, even one that was hard to read, has made me self-conscious about usage. But apparently not enough to keep me from complaining about two writers who are a jillion times smarter than me. Than I. Whatever.

My return flight from Las Vegas was at 8am and it was overbooked. You can't believe how many people are staggering around Las Vegas airport before 8am on a Sunday morning. Two people boarded the plane holding boxes with freshly made pizzas. I wasn't too happy when they sat behind me.

I wasn't even hungover and it smelled vile. Who brings pizza onto a plane at 8am? In Las Vegas?

The flight was overbooked and these folks had volunteered their seats so the flight attendant came and got them and took them off the flight. I looked at the girl next to me and said: Good. I didn't want to smell pizza for the next two hours. She nodded and said: I was thinking the same thing.