Skipping LPs

Yeah, so I'm back home and I'm sort of awake and sort of not. Bwahaha.

If everyone on mock_the_stupid has the same icon, how will we tell them apart? I'm not getting a new layout so I can read usernames. That would be inconvenient. Honestly, people, GET LIVES. And DIFFERENT ICONS.

On a related note: if you post to a community, such as metaquotes or dot_cattiness, DON'T bother putting up a link if the original post that you're quoting or catting isn't, you know, PUBLIC. I hate actually getting interested enough to read a post and clicking and finding out that it's not publicly viewable.

And this one is for nullstr, who was with me on the Tube when I started doing really stupid things - Mysterious Skin is playing in the SIFF tomorrow. I'm so going. However, this does not look like anything that might be characterised as "slinky-hipped" or whatever the other description was. Still, male prostitutes.

I am disappointed that I did not get beaten with rubber tubing (though I nearly did get the speshul search in Toronto because god forbid that anyone who has ten minutes to get through customs and catch a plane carry a change purse in their bag) for carrying a number of dodgy books, including Palestine by Joe Sacco and This Is Heroin by somebody else.

Okay, so here's the deal and I probably will never do a recap of England for mass consumption, so I'm merely picking one bad instance out of an event that was not bad overall.

This is about Toronto.

I LIKE Toronto. I want to go there someday, I like it as a setting for things, I like it as a musical scene. But yesterday, I found out that I do not like it as an airport.

Picture this. You check in at Air Canada's desk in London, where you are given your boarding pass for that flight and the one leaving Toronto. The time of departure for Toronto is 17:10. This seems all right because you think that your flight from LHR lands at 3:00.

Your flight lands (on time) at 3:45. At Toronto Terminal 3.

You stand in a queue. You take a bus to Terminal 2. You are part of the third busload. The bus is sort of boring, but you're surrounded by crew so you're now in possession of many Fine Facts like that a working shift for the RapidAir flights from Ottawa to Montreal is six shifts and that includes breakfast on a thirty eight minute flight.

Bear in mind that you are carrying two heavy bags that you have been carrying around all day, though the plane did quite a lot of the work of carrying them for you. Bear in mind as well that a bag you have lightened for walking around a city can still cause people to ask if you have a) gold and b) a boyfriend in there (neither of these are funny, by the way, in much the same way as "There's no price! It's free, right?" isn't funny) and you think the people who ask these questions are nuts and not as funny as they think they are. You also now think that these bags are heavy.

Am I setting the scene?

You get to Terminal 2. You queue with the hordes and get (eventually) through Canadian customs. It is now something like 4:30. You pick up the luggage you THOUGHT was checked through the flights but in fact wasn't. You queue again and get told that you might not make your flight since you still have US Customs to go.

Your luggage gets dropped off on another conveyor belt that will take it to Terminal 1. You think this conveyor belt will take it to the plane. You will soon learn you are wrong. Go forth in innocence, young traveller.

You get on another bus (after running to catch it only to find that it was going to stand at the curb for another FIVE MINUTES) and go to Terminal 1. You pity whoever sits next to you on the plane. Current time: 4:45.

Start considering exactly what setting of "Stroppy" to put your voice on when you find out that you will not make the plane and you will demand a room for the night because god knows how many Toronto-Seattle flights there are in a night.

Get to Terminal 1 and bowl over three other passengers (well, not literally) in your attempt to get out the door. Run. Bear in mind that you do not run. Any activity that happens at faster than a fast walk happens in a car. Run anyway. Consider with a small part of your brain that this will HURT.

Find your luggage. For some reason this involves chatting up a small Pakistani man who demands your ID.

Your luggage, however, is not on the carousel yet. Make promises to god. Start giving death threats to god. Be pleased that you never resort to pleading. Luggage arrives, eventually. Consider that you will, by default, be lying when you tell them that your luggage has not left your sight. (Wisely, they never ask this in Toronto. They are Well Aware.)

Luggage is composed of two wheelie suitcases and two carryons. This is not so much of an issue in LHR, where the carts are free. In Toronto...you have a five dollar bill, some Euros, some pounds, some american money, some pesetas, and a number of Very Fine Credit Cards, but nothing that will get you a smart cart. You carry the luggage.

Run for Customs now! Run! Run like the wind! Be pleased, at 4:55 when you get in between a group of three and they let you go ahead of them. Sweat on the customs lady, and get your declaration form stamped.

Give declaration form to Useless Man Sitting There. Obviously the declaration form will be rendered invalid in the ten feet between Woman Who Stamps Things and Man Who Collects Stamped Things. Be irritated that you can't buy cigarettes because you are not sure that you've ever taken an international flight where you didn't have cigarettes. As is true in prison, cigarettes are a good form of currency in the real world.

Run, Forrest, Run!

Get told to put luggage on conveyor belt. Do so. Get told to go through security screener four. It is five oclock. You have no idea what gate your plane is at. Go through security. Beep the thing, get scanned. That one pound six in your pocket is the work of the devil - even though your watch, belt buckle, shoes, earrings, rings, necklace, and Something Mysterious In The Small Of Your Back beep the wand, it's the change that marks you as an Ally of Allah.

Get the semi-speshul search. Overwhelm the register biscuit with a) stench, b) tears, and c) incoherent attempts to shove things at him. Fortunately, you put those stolen Keep Off The Grass signs in your checked bags - or else you would shove one in either of his ears. Why are you getting searched? There's something "like coins" in your carryon!

Shove coin scarf at him. He shakes head. "But it was near there."

Pull out ONE coin purse and show him that it is full of coins. Have lightning fast debate about pointing out that you have TWO of those purses. Instead, shove things back into bag - bending cover of binder that holds all those photocopies you made all those years ago, snatch up bag, jacket, other bag, and nefarious quantities of change and find a monitor that tells you your plane is at gate N.

It is 5:03.

Run.

A lot.

Fling yourself onto the desk of the agent, while noting that there Sure Are A Lot Of People Here For A Flight That Should Have Boarded If It Was Running On Time Like The Monitor Said It Was and say something, anything, something to indicate that this is a plane and you want to be on it and no one has torn your boarding pass but it tore itself somewhere back around the Stampy Lady. Indicate that it would be nice if this plane went to Seattle but at this point you don't care as long as you don't have to leave the general area.

"Let me just see if you're still on it." WTF? Never get an explanation for that, since it turns out that yes, you are.

For some reason, she also tells you that it will start boarding "shortly" which means you can go to the bathroom, because this is not the only Fun Event in a fun-filled day and it's been a) imperative and b) difficult to get to the bathroom.

Do so. Wonder how quickly they can make you a triple Malibu and Coke at the bar but decide in favour of sweating by the check in desk. Sit down.

THEN and ONLY THEN (and in my defense, there is NO time listed on the monitors, they simply say "On Time", "A la heure", or Some Random Time That Means That The Plane Is Not On Time and mine was "a la heure") read the sign behind the woman.

The plane that leaves at 17:10? Yeah, it leaves at 17:45.

In an airport, no one wants to hear you scream.

Oh, and statistically speaking, based on a statistical pool of All The Flights I Have Ever Taken (28 that I recall) it takes 28 flights before you get the page over the PA asking if there is a doctor on the plane and all that. It was a lot of fun. I thought we were going to be landing in Saskatchewan or something. And if I ever, ever, EVER see the dumb motherfucker who got on the plane and had a medical crisis of high blood pressure that proved Difficult to resolve because all her medication was UNLABELED WHO THE FUCK FLIES OR DOES ANYTHING WITH MEDICINE THAT IS UNLABELED BECAUSE GOD KNOWS WHEN SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT HAVE TO ADMINISTER OR IDENTIFY IT I will be investing in a flamethrower.

Then I will go to Sanctuary Press and find out who authorised all those "however"s in the heroin book (seriously, I thought "However, blah blah blah paragraph However, blah blah blah" was bad, then I found the one where however was used TWICE IN THE SAME SENTENCE) and I will barbecue them. Otherwise I like the book, but there are more transition words in English than just "however."

More later.