Over Informed Is Overrated

I don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing I think about every day. But it’s not like I’ve never thought about it either. I hesitate to even admit what “it” is, for fear “it” could then happen. 

Okay. Fuck it. I’m talking about…getting…okay…gettinghijacked.  

Do you see how fast I said that? “Gettinghijacked”. I had to put the two words together to get them out of my mouth at all. It’s kind of like not saying what I’m thinking, while still having the opportunity to broach the subject, all the while hoping that I’m not putting out some kind of vibes into the universe that will get me fucking hijacked.

Fine. The only reason I’m thinking about this now is that I just finished reading an article on dailymail.co.uk.  If you want a source for every possible type of news (and non-news), this is a gold mine, maybe even a diamond mine. And if there is anything better than a diamond mine, that, too. 

Being over-informed is often overrated. I could have had my pick of topics this morning: from Donald Trump to Ivanka Trump and on to Anti-Trump—from Saudi playboy to celebrity playdates and Kylie Jenner’s 5 hour manicures. I think my favorite headline of the day was “Is My Vagina Normal?” 

I skipped most of the piece about the “tiara-loving socialite” (she was, indeed, wearing a tiara in her selfie) who is being charged with biting another passenger in a first class airplane cabin. It didn’t interest me enough because, mostly, I couldn’t relate. I don’t wear tiaras, I haven’t found myself in first class lately, and, to date, I have not bitten anyone. I realize there is still time.

Here is the headline that caught my attention enough for me to click through and find out what was happening during that EgyptAir hijacking the other day. The one where the hijacker was wearing a fake explosives vest and demanding a four page letter be delivered to his ex-wife in Cypress. (Personally, I would have checked to see if FedEx delivers from Egypt to Cypress and skipped the hassle of commandeering a plane, but that's just me.) Okay, right. The headline:

“EgyptAir hostage reveals passengers' hilarious reactions, including one husband who rang his wife... only to find her main concern was getting him to tell her his BANK DETAILS”

I think what drew me to this particular article was the presence of the words “hostage” and “hilarious”, together, in the first half of the first sentence. To quote from the article, one passenger (an Egyptian surgeon) had the following to say:

'Most of the people managed to stay calm, but as usual passengers on board made my day.’

'A lovely Egyptian chap decided to call all his family and friends one by one in the middle of the hijacked plane when we were about to land to Cyprus.’

'Another funny husband calling [sic] his wife to tell her about some money he was hiding in a bank and the funniest part is his wife forgetting about the hijack thing and asking him to repeat the bank name.’

'Another lovely guy was sleeping and woke up to be informed we are landing in Cyprus and his funny response was 'why Cyprus??!..I will miss my connection.'

From these bits of information I can tell you two things. One—if this surgeon can have his day made during a hijacking, he’s gotta be one cool dude in the operating room. Two—I’d like to know how any follow-up conversation turned out between the husband who was hiding money and the wife who asked him to repeat the name of the bank. 

I will say, if I were to find myself in a situation like this, I would pray for the same fake vest scenario, take enough medication to lose consciousness, and—if I could see to dial a phone call before passing out—I’d have to tell my husband where I keep his M&Ms and extra toothpaste. At least there’d be nothing to fight about later…when I make it home.

   

The Wizard of Odd

If I had been drinking in the middle of the day yesterday, or even in the late afternoon, I would have been able to say to myself, “Don’t ever drink in the middle of the day again.” But I wasn’t. I can’t blame the Pellegrino or the herbal tea.

I have no explanation for the trip I went on. I think I departed at around 5:30 p.m. and returned at around 8:45 when my cell phone rang and I saw it was my husband calling.  I took it as a good sign that I was on my bed and no longer on Donald Trump’s private plane. Or, to be more accurate, his private plane that was kind of like a whole city that didn’t appear to be a plane until we were landing. I must have been really tired. That’s my whole explanation for being on my bed at 5:30.

Yes, there was the big, Godzilla El Nino-fueled storm going on outside, proof that all of the “Looks Like More Of The Same” forecasts were correct, but I had not been bashed on the head—Dorothy style—by any dislodged window frames. It was just a giant rainstorm. It was not a fucking house-lifting twister out there.

The last thing I remember, I was watching CNN. Not the super cute, Anderson Cooper giggling through Kathy Griffin, New Year’s Eve CNN. I was watching that last week in 2015 and stayed awake, no problem. No. This time it was just a regular Wednesday “What’s-The-Donald-Up-To-Now?” hour…or five minutes, or whatever time he was allotted. Tired or not, no wonder I went to sleep.

I get how everything that happened to Dorothy in Oz and everyone she met there related to some shit going on back in Kansas. Toto had bitten Miss Gulch, who—according to Wikipedia—was going to have him “euthanized”. I know that old biatch was going to do something bad, but "euthanized"? It sounds so, I don't know… efficient.  No one forgets Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch cackling, “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too.” We do know that for almost every person or “issue” in Dorothy’s dream there was a parallel back home in the Sunflower State. Right? And, with The Wizard of Oz being a fantasy and all, we do know that no little dog was gettin' euthanized. Right? If you don’t know that, I don’t know what to say to you.

Even though it was only fatigue that sent me off to dreamland yesterday around the time that I’d have preferred to be at a cocktail party, I can see very plainly that the news is sometimes like that piece of wood torn loose in Dorothy’s house—the one that went, quite literally, straight to her head.

I’m now completely sure that everything happening on CNN was making its way into my sleep state. I know this from reading yesterday’s news today. I didn’t know where I was exactly, other than in a freakishly tall, ultra-modern high rise—kind of a big, glass mall, that was sort of a city, in the form of a shopping center. I remember Donald Trump’s voice over a loudspeaker system. I don’t know what he was saying, which is true most of the time, even when he is saying something.

I recall going into a Macy’s, worried that I might buy something that I already owned, but I don’t remember clearly whether the people helping me were CNN anchor/reporters re-imagined as the store’s salespeople. That’s how it would have worked in Dorothy’s situation. You’d think I might remember if it was Wolf Blitzer selling me a pair of shoes. Meanwhile, the voice over the loudspeaker was unmistakable. It was definitely The Donald—the wizard of odd. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Fine by me.

After the mildly traumatic shopping experience, I went back to my room. Don’t ask me to explain why I had a room. Nobody told me why, so I can’t tell you. Once there, my husband appeared. He took one look out of the floor-to-ceiling window and said, “We are landing.”

“What the fuck?” is what I said. Landing? We are on a fucking plane? Shouldn’t the pilot have announced the fucking landing? The least he could do is turn on the fucking seatbelt sign, although, there was no fucking seatbelt since I was lounging comfortably on a fucking king-sized bed. I held on to the side of the mattress as if this would be an acceptable substitute for a safety device. As we touched down, I realized that the wings that had appeared on the building were going to make the “plane” too wide to taxi down the street—yes, the regular street.

No fooling—Donald Trump’s whatever was just going to plow through a regular old busy street, not giving a shit what was in its way. As if on cue, the wings folded into the side of what we were on, or in…plane or building. Don’t ask me.

As we were preparing to disembark, I was thinking we had not arranged for ground transportation, although, I could hardly be held at fault since until five seconds ago I didn’t know we were on a plane. But, I was sure there would be nothing so “regular-person” as a cab since Donald Trump was involved. So, what I'm saying is, I didn't know how we were going to get out of there. I’m also sure this part was symbolic—meant to shame me for not having the Uber app on my phone in real life.

Next, everyone went into a tented area to get his or her belongings. There weren’t that many people, especially when you consider the size of what we had just flown in on. We sat at fancy, white picnic tables and didn’t worry about whether our luggage would show up. We were given something to eat while we waited.

That’s when it started—the burping and the dropping of salad out of my mouth, onto my clothes. It was uncontrollable. Frankly, I was disgusting. Donald Trump looked over at me and I thought I would be embarrassed, but I guess it would take a lot more than that for me to feel like the ill-mannered, inappropriate one. I hope I stayed unembarrassed, but I'll never know.

My cell phone rang loudly in the bedroom. It was my husband calling. There’s no place like home.