MONDAY, 2 OCTOBER, 2000, WASHINGTON INT’L AIRPORT, DULLES

Who’s the angry little man? I’M the angry little man! Maybe “anger” is too strong a word, but “frustrated” sure seems to fit the bill. I just moaned loudly huddled in a fetal position on a delayed plane. The sound I made quite involuntarily started like this: “Unnnngggghhhhhhhhhh…” And grew in volume and culminated with this: “…nnnghhhhhhhhAHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRR-RABBAH!!” As if in response to my bizarre invocation of some heretofore unnamed deity, the pilot presently annoucned that some de-icing thingy-pooh needed some work and if passengers wished they could… I was up and running out of the plane before he could finish, growling like a Leo the whole way, bashing my laptop bag into doddering fools who also wished to be off the plane, but not as quickly nor urgently as I. Thank god for smoking lounges in Dulles. The loathesome little boy from ground crew to whom I took an immediate disliking, long before the plane started having issssues was about to get his lips ripped off. “I. Could. Rip. Your. Lips. Off!” — Mink Stole, ‘Desperate Living’ And what the fuck with de-icing stuff? It’s, like, 82°f at the moment. Chances for flurries are slim to none, it is safe to wager. The real irony here is that I’m using one of my treasured flight vouchers to get from Washington to Philly — a 20 minute flight. Last month I used another voucher to get from London to Washington. That is worth the voucher. 150 miles is not. And I originally considered saving the thing for later and taking a train from Washington, but in the interest of saving time (he says as he should have been home four hours ago), I opted for flying. Because I am bored and frustrated and hungry and pissed-the-fuck-off. Wow. How dull to hear about flight rants, right? Soz. I don’t have a calling card — to call people in Philly and bitch is going to be $4.15 a minute and who carries that many quarters with them?— and all I have is my laptop to use as a frustration ventilation device. Lucky you.