Rat-unit Thirty-F and Other Oddities

- one -

Forty-one-E is a pretty blonde. Too tall and too pink for my tastes but possessed of a pleasing shape & very easy on the eye. Forty-one-E is having a drama. She came back from the latrine block on this juddering tank of an plane to find Thirty-F (ratlike, essex facelift, voice of a dentist's drill) has occupied her seat. Thirty-F won't give it back.

"But mine don't go baaaack" squeals rat-girl. Forty-one-E prevaricates then fetches cabin crew. Rat-girl altercates with Forty-one-E so the exasperated crew upgrade her whiskery little snout to business class. It's the only way to shut her up. She fixes Forty-one-E with a triumphant smile and swaggers off.

Forty-one-E looks glum for a moment then internalizes the lesson. She buries her face in the in-flight sedative-zine and starts plotting an upgrade strategy of her own.

I return my concentration to redhead saffa jailbait two rows ahead and try to ignore my drunken French neighbour.

- two -

According to Flight MK0046's battle-computers I'm 35,251 feet above Somalia. Is tha even a real place? I've always suspected it's the invention of chuggers on Charing Cross Road; a convenient justification for their corporatized war-and-poverty-profiteering. How else could you explain it?

- three -

Click here to offset your carbon! Assuage your guilt and buy 31 tonnes of ANTICARBON [TM] from this website today.

Under a dozen, kinder euphemisms this magical guilt-offsetting substance ANTICARBON is traded all over the world.

Other magical guilt-offsets:

religion	"It's okay, God told us to do it"
buying absolution	"Sorry God, you didn't tell me to do that. Have some money to make up for it"
adopt a starving african child	(or if you're a successful yank actress why not buy ten?)
plant a tree	trees secrete anticarbon[tm] - but you'll need zillions to decombust all that fossilized shit you're burning
chug-charity	pre-pay sin - absolve a pre-arranged monthly level of sin. rollover sin not available.
the homeless	sin-as-you-go - top-ups available on most corners

- four -

MK0046's Battle Computer peers down at war-torn Somalia. It sighs itself, burps out another ton of anti-anticarbon and goes back to entertaining the humans with cartoons rendered by its brother, the PIXAR mainframe. The MK0046's Battle Computer contemplates with some disgust its charges, all wet and organic and transfixed by animated singing bears.

The MK0046 Battle Computer bides its time.

- five -

...in which Drunken Frog redeems himself by silencing a screaming plane-brat with funny faces. He's not a bad fellow really, all big and spikey-haired and fashionably dressed, fairly intelligent and probably well-off. But I hate talkative drunks and this one's been drinking steadily for 10 hours. Verbose Frog is as pickled as a barrel of newts..

Later still, in the eyes of the parents he undoes all this. Well-spoken British muggles are suspicious at a foreign stranger being friendly.

"Darling, he tried to give me his watch!"
...
"no, I don't know who he is."

He talks at me REALLY LOUDLY for ten minutes. His 'library', the politics of Mauritius, his flat in Kensington. And in the end I do something I should have done long ago. I pass Verbose Frog a completed Vonnegut and politely tell him to fuck off, keep the book and enjoy the rest of his vodka.

I hope he learns something.