Thursday, November 25, 2004

Free association Thanksgiving

I'm thankful, at a most basic level, that my plane finally got in, and that, earlier in the day, I fully (hopefully) completed a confusing (for me, at least) phy-sci lab report.

I'm also excited to see that my post is up at the University of Chicago Magazine's blog, on the Latke-Hamentach debate. Best part of the debate: Prof. Harold Pollack asserting that Philip Roth, though a U of C alum, is banned from the campus ever since he wrote an erotic novel in which Golda Meir and Allan Bloom have an affair.

The best way to pass time on an endlessly delayed flight, I've discovered, is bringing along two things to read, one serious and one less so, and saving the serious reading for the stable middle part of the flight and the silly reading for the nervewrecking takeoff and landing. (My picks for the evening were Bernard Lazare's Le Fumier de Job and a copy of Elle.)

And finally, why does tomato juice seem so appetizing on airplanes but not under other circumstances?

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

glad to hear you made it home alright (my friend erin was spending the night in an airport). i wish i had gone for the elle when i was waiting for my plane. somehow i thought i was achieving the correct balance of reading material with the atlantic monthly and self. something to say about crowded flights. have you ever picked out the one person you don't want to have to sit next to when you're about to board the plane? or the one person you want to sit next to? well, it's so unlikely that you get to sit next to either, but this time, i got the best of both worlds. this meant in the end that i had a cute boy to my right. unfortunately, it also meant that to my left i had a woman who talked throughout the whole flight, under her breath of course, slapped her belly as she called herself "so fucking fat" because she couldn't reach below the seat in front of her to get her carry-on luggage, and warned me that her fiance knows karate and can kill anyone. so i think i'm also thankful for the cute boy who offered to switch seats with me, and when i politely declined, said he wouldn't have done it anyway.