(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

Before I forget -- thank you to those of you who sent me New Year's gingerbread men on LJ over the vacation! They are jauntily decorating my profile page.

I'm glad to be home, especially since I had the day off yesterday. Good thing too, travel is exhausting. The plane flight from Austin to Chicago was one of the stranger ones I've had in a while. Nice, but strange.

I attract strange airline companions. Among my encounters have been a one-eyed woman telling me dirty jokes during takeoff, an elderly man telling me I reminded him of himself as "a young buck", a different elderly man accidentally but continually groping me because he kept crackers in his pocket and had issues locating his pocket, a Canadian baseball talent scout who is the first Canadian I had ever met to actually say "eh" as often as Statesiders joke they do, and now a woman flying for the first time at the age of 36 and who clearly had not known what she was letting herself in for.

The best part of this particular flight, however, was the flight attendant. I always sit at the front, on Southwest flights, because I have a lot of leg and there's more leg room. It also means I usually end up spending at least a portion of the flight chatting with the flight attendants. So I'd been joking a bit with the guy manning the front of the cabin, and when we reached altitude, a lot of people took out their phones/tablets/laptops. My phone and netbook were both tucked in the overhead compartment where I couldn't easily get to them, so I was mostly just staring out the window when the flight attendant said, "Being an air steward today is like watching a science fiction film 30 years ago."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yeah. I look up when we reach altitude, and everyone is staring at tiny electronic devices. It's not bad or anything, it's just like a scene out of 2001 or something. It's even creepier on flights with wifi."

I have to admit I ended up not getting my netbook out for the rest of the flight...

Comments

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I don't remember any sci-fi movies in which everyone is looking at a handheld device when the airplane reaches 10,000 ft.

Then again, I didn't see that many grownup movies in the 80s so maybe I'm missing an important reference.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

It's more the sense than the literal visual, I think. It does look a bit like those scenes in futuristic movies where the hero is walking around and in the background people are communicating by video screen and holograms are winking in and out. When he put it that way I did get a strong sense of the spaceport/airport in 2001.

[bakaknight.livejournal.com]

Every now and then, I look up and around the bus and go 'holy fuck, I'm living in the future'.

Sometimes aloud, but without the swearing.

[virtualjean.livejournal.com]

When I was riding the subway in Seoul 3 years ago, I noticed that all the younger folks were using electronic devices and all the "older" folks were reading the local papers. My daughters were busy looking through the windows.