cattle mutilation

a collection of thoughts during my (annoyingly delayed) flight on 2025.08.14

i'm writing this while on a plane. i don't have access to my journal, which has inconveniently been placed inside my bag inside the overhead locker. usually there is no issue with this, but today i have a middle seat, and a man is beside me in the inner seet. (the window seat is available, but i've left it empty. i have a kind of neuroticism about being in the incorrect spot)

it's a pain to ask him to move just to get up to obtain two items, my journal and my pencilcase, so i won't. besides, this flight isn't the longest in the world

that being said, it's a pain. time keeps slipping away when i don't notice and appears it in abundance when i need it the least. already half the flight has been taken from me, and all i have to say for it is how beautiful the view from the window is

mostly, i miss my girlfriend. i haven't spoken to her very much lately because both of us have been busy at inconvenient times, and now i'm on a plane with no way of contacting her! the time i intended to spend preparing certain things for her cannot be spent on that. the reasoning: my bag is inaccessible, and it's too much of a pain for too little reward

which i wish i didn't have to say. maybe it's a symptom of my laziness. it's not good for me.

currently, the window seat is occupied by what i call my "questionable cousin" or "ugly son". i suppose son describes our creator-creation relationship better, but in my heart, he's more of my cousin.

this "questionable cousin" is a hiromu toda effigy. he's made entirely of fleece bought on discount from the local fabric store's eterna shutting down sale, and he's stuffed with the innards of an extremely ugly modern ty-brand doll. i assume some sort of malicious ghost took shelter within him immediately, because he brings me the strangest luck possible. not good, not bad, but strange.

he's alright for a first go at making a soft doll. even if fleece pills easily and i misprinted my pattern and he's so ugly so fucking ugly. he's greedy, though

he thinks i don't know he steals my cigarettes!

after i got off the air train and entered the airport, my first order of business was to find a smoking area. i let a lady who just came home from christchurch borrow my lighter and we had a nice chat.

the new zealand scenery is beautiful, apparently. tell me something i don't know! well, she also told me about how she travelled alaska in the past, and it was a nice story... but i won't bore you with it.

(my real excuse is that i forgot.)

then it was two horrible horrible hours of waiting around. and one more terrible hour, for good measure.

i can't listen to albums on planes. i used to be able to, sure, but i can't anymore. either they become backgroud music or i start to cry. in fact, i am crying as i type this. no matter what kind of song you put in front of me, i get too overwhelmed, and the tears just don't stop.

i look like a disgusting animal with snot running down my face. i'm not even that sad.

i ask myself, won't you work on that thing you are writing, marion?

then i look at, and i cringe at my own writing. i can't possibly work on this. so i add to my stupid HTML document instead!

that's a lie, by the way.
because it's a php document.

...

but i did work on that writing after all.