Maybe I just did it wrong. Maybe ambling off to see a maximum-strength gospel sermon where they charged me 10 dollars to bask in the glory of Gad, or accidentally being whisked into a pro-Israel hollering parade in Time Square weren't the sort of activities designed to make me die of adoration for this frankly bewildering city. If anything it only serves to solidify my over-generalising USA prejudices. I mean some things were ok. Catching a free ride on the Staten island ferry to observe the statue and skyline gave me a full Vito Corleone/incoming potato famine refugee experience. In Bryant's park, the brutality of an annual speed chess competition was also rather seductive and I got quite intellectually aroused. And West NY where I was lodged was basically gentrified South America and I was about to go to Peru anyway so that was in some ways preparatory, making me a less authentic Ugly Betty.
I love feeling like a negligible ant more than the average person does but New York just made me feel like that ant that wants to shoot all the other ants because they're all crowding round the Dali and ignoring the Miro. Probably also the same ant that takes on your half-eaten snickers bar and drowns in the caramel. Sigh.
Friday 25 July 2014
Crying babies on the plane
I (wrongly) felt like this is an issue which merits a whole post to itself, and although it's kinda polemic I felt it was bare destructive to the holiday experience. Sob sob, poor little privileged white girl.
But at least quietly sob sob.
For any of yous that have taken a plane, as I have done many a environmentally irresponsible time, you may have found that catching a nap is like playing a game of sleeping whack-a-mole, the mole (somnolence) being cruelly whacked by a screeching mallet whenever he tentatively rears his opportunistic widdle head. At times I've wondered how other passengers would feel if I decided to bring my banshee along with me on holiday and let it do whatever banshees do best.
So I have compiled a list of possible solutions, mostly tongue-in-cheek, others maybe less so, I'll leave you to go figure.
1. Crèche them together at the back of the plane behind a sound-proofed wall so they can indulge in their screaming shifts away from humanity.
2. Use their caterwauling to fuel the plane. Like monsters inc. And if one of them stops for a split second we all tumble to our deaths, making them vital for passenger survival.
3. Sedate them. And not in a creepy north korea way: who wouldn't love an 9 hour plane journey on unlimited horse tranquillisers? I'd be jealous.
4. Hand luggage compartments would make perfect incubators. Lined with velvet and furnished with soothing incense, it'd be a bread-bin dream.
So I'm all out but I'd love to hear any more strokes of genius as this transcontinental problem is the only thing keeping me from pursuing my air stewardessing ambitionz. Confronted by multiple wailing infants I would curl up in a ball on the floor rocking back and forth eating my own hair.
Someone please make the film Babies on a plane, it's been up in the air too long and it would raise much-needed awareness. Not that I would watch it. Unless I was sedated.
But at least quietly sob sob.
For any of yous that have taken a plane, as I have done many a environmentally irresponsible time, you may have found that catching a nap is like playing a game of sleeping whack-a-mole, the mole (somnolence) being cruelly whacked by a screeching mallet whenever he tentatively rears his opportunistic widdle head. At times I've wondered how other passengers would feel if I decided to bring my banshee along with me on holiday and let it do whatever banshees do best.
So I have compiled a list of possible solutions, mostly tongue-in-cheek, others maybe less so, I'll leave you to go figure.
1. Crèche them together at the back of the plane behind a sound-proofed wall so they can indulge in their screaming shifts away from humanity.
2. Use their caterwauling to fuel the plane. Like monsters inc. And if one of them stops for a split second we all tumble to our deaths, making them vital for passenger survival.
3. Sedate them. And not in a creepy north korea way: who wouldn't love an 9 hour plane journey on unlimited horse tranquillisers? I'd be jealous.
4. Hand luggage compartments would make perfect incubators. Lined with velvet and furnished with soothing incense, it'd be a bread-bin dream.
So I'm all out but I'd love to hear any more strokes of genius as this transcontinental problem is the only thing keeping me from pursuing my air stewardessing ambitionz. Confronted by multiple wailing infants I would curl up in a ball on the floor rocking back and forth eating my own hair.
Someone please make the film Babies on a plane, it's been up in the air too long and it would raise much-needed awareness. Not that I would watch it. Unless I was sedated.
Tuesday 15 July 2014
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