I’m at the Sacramento airport…the fucking wi-fi doesn’t work. You have to agree to the terms and conditions, click OK, and then the next page doesn’t load and you can’t do anything.

My flight is in exactly fifty-five minutes…so I’m listening to My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult on my MacBook. If someone would have told me this morning that by midnight I’d be on a plane to New York, I would have told them they were loco.

But my grandpa died this afternoon, and the funeral is this weekend.

I found the cheapest flight, on JetBlue…it was $750 round-trip. But the kicker is I have to fly into JFK, which is an hour by car from my mom’s house. So I’ll be taking the Long Island Expressway into the city :P

A ten-block walk from Penn Station to the Port Authority, and I’ll be on my bus to my mom’s house.

I’ll take a train for 30 minutes to save my mom $200 any day.

I’m in New Jersey for a week or so, I’ve never been to a funeral before.

I have a feeling this trip is going to be harrowing in many ways.

My grandpa wasn’t much of a talker, but we all felt how he helped the family…lending money to my spendthrift aunt so she doesn’t lose her house, picking my mom up from work when it was raining…I have this video of him talking to the eight-year-old me about how math is stupid and pointless…it’s supercute. I dunno…this is going to be so weird.

They’ve always been there, my grandma and grandpa…I think I’m in the denial stage…it won’t seem real until I see the sun rising over the New York skyline…then it will be hyperreal.

I only have like $50 in my bank account…if only it could have happened on Thursday when I get my huge paycheck…I guess we can’t plan for things like this…I forgot to turn in my time card…I left it in the printer.

47 minutes until takeoff.

Last night, we had a kind of a going-away party for Sam…I got bottom-of-the-shelf Amaretto, naan, and Sam got hellza apple pucker. Aaron and I came over and we were having great fun being kind of tipsy making up names for the meth addicts on this Nancy Grace special, watching Family Guy and Aqua Teen Hungerforce. Just as Mission Hill came on, Zero arrived.

He complained how bored he was for most of the night, smoked all of Sam’s cigarettes, drank this bottle of Seagram’s Sam had bought. When it was time to sleep (Sam, Aaron and I had to get up super-early for work/school/work, respectively), Zero kept groping Aaron and wouldn’t stop. He said stop at least five times and he didnt.

I was trying to sleep the whole time, and kept telling Zero to stop, but he wouldn’t. Aaron woke up and got out of bed, I went and talked to him…got back in bed, he wouldn’t stop. I slapped his hand away for the third time, and he got out of bed. Turned on the light, rustled around all the bags in the room (2:00 am at this point), turned off the light

SLAM

the door and storms away.

Texts me asking for his glasses and socks, which we reluctantly turn on the light and find since the door slam has woken us all up. Sam’s really sick at this point, goes and pukes.

Zero calls me 20 minutes later saying his car won’t start and that I need to go down there and help him start it.

Fuck that.

Two choices.

1) come back upstairs and sleep on the floor

2) go fuck yourself

After about an hour he wants to come back in.

I’m reaching the end of my rope. He starts in with “don’t give me your shit.”

Let him back in, he gets mad at Sam because he smoked all of Sam’s cigarettes…like it’s Sam’s responsibility to provide Zero with cigarettes.

Ibid.

Ibid.

He goes to sleep on Sam’s bed…I find out later he was trying to feel Sam up to.

Okay, here’s a lesson today. Listening, Zero?

NO MEANS NO.

JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO JOB AND NEVER SLEEP, DOESN’T MEAN THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES.

LEARN SOME FUCKING MANNERS, YOU FUCKFACE.

You think you know someone.

And the next day he texts me asking if I’ve gone further than him with Aaron. Yeah…feeling up someone while they’re sleeping. Real noble.

I’m so sick of this shit. And he’s telling it all to Brian. They both can rot.

Fuck this shit, I’m done.

35 minutes until takeoff.

I hope I’m able to help while I’m there…I don’t know how to comfort people. I guess I’m about to get a crash-course.

I should find an outlet for my computer. But I’m already bored of it. Without the Internet, computers are useless.

What did I do on the computer before then…Oregon Trail, I guess. Omg…MMORPG Oregon Trail…’tis going to happen in our lifetimes.

I can’t stop looking at strangers. I want to know why they are going where they’re going. I want to know their life stories, their reasons for living…the subversive literature they keep hidden under strollers and duffel bags, their secret good-luck charms, the brand of shampoo they use.

The Mexicana flight announcements are in Spanish. Lol.

The only man in the terminal that’s wearing a cowboy hat is at the Mexicana gate.

The plane is here, the travelers are departing…with shaky legs and halting steps…businessmen, the guy that looks like he should be on that M83 album cover.

They will be boarding soon…overhead announcements, headsets, $1, JetBlue.

It’s a 100% full flight. Every damn seat will be taken. I decided to wear my contacts for this flight to go incognito while I’m on the Long Island Expressway…that is seeming like a really itchy mistake. I’d better repack my carryon to have my noise canceling headphones in my pocket. I’d better put my computer away.

iPod. Noise canceling headphones. Contacts case. Check. I need to put you away, Meursault. *into the carry-on you go*

*////aloft\\\\*

So…that was an interesting takeoff. I don’t know why I feel the need to document this trip in such excruciating detail…but it’s the most exciting thing I’ve done all year…and it’s June already. Well, the Presets concert ranks a close second, but that trip only lasted 24 hours.

I had the most cyberpunk takeoff EVER! In this plane there are seatback TVs, and right as we took off, the lights went dark and the TVs lost satellite signal, so they started flashing black and white…it was like the whole plane was filled with slow strobes. It did it the whole time we were taking off…now they say they’re going to “reboot” the system.

Reboot.

The plane.

If I wasn’t entirely, 100% sure I’m living in the future, that was my wakeup call.

It’s 12:40 a.m.

They say it’s another five hours till New York. The ass hat in the seat next to me has his leg all jammed into my part of the seat, and kept waving his book around like it was on fire.

Now he’s asleep. Score?

To my left is reading Philip K. Dick…I really wanted to comment on it, but then I just said fuck it, because the obligatory answer to the “so where are you going” question is a conversation-killer for sure. Oh yeah, grandpa died. He’s reading Valis, which I haven’t read. I’ll have to pick it up…I’m reading so much boring French literature it’s suffocating.

I mean, Simone de Beauvoir is an amazing writer, but after a while in her suffocating world of French bourgeoise nothingess, it feels better to be outside of that world than in it.

In my naivete I thought there could be wi-fi on this flight…nope. Just pay-for-rent movies. Oop, TVs are back on…on each seatback with static. Odd.

In six hours, I take AirTran –> Long Island Rail –>Port Authority –> bus home.

Should be fun

I guess.

I need to find something more interesting to watch/listen to/do. I think I’ll watch Nights of Cabiria. Well, she is a prostitute…I don’t think I watch any G-Rated movies…which makes the issue of in-flight movies that much more troublesome.

Hm.

It’s La Dolce Vita time.

++++/intermezzo\++++

Watched the director’s commentary track on Army of Shadows on the plane, barely got any sleep, arrived at JFK in the morning.

Bright out, cold…JFK is on Long Island, took AirTran to the subway, took the E train to 52nd Street in Manhattan, and my mom picked me up at the Port Authority.

The meeting about what to do with the funeral was at 1 p.m.

I’d never been to a funeral before…we all went in this room, went over all the information…hashed it all out: flower arrangements, notices in the paper, went up and picked out a casket.

It was so surreal.

This was Friday. It’s Monday now…I need to write the rest up, but my wrists are killing me and I don’t think I can use voice-recognition in this house…I mean, not about this subject. Maybe when we’re visiting Gail I can go out into a corner of the lawn and recount it all.

Until then, sayonara. The funeral was today.