submitted from F concourse, minneapolis airport

ir travel is what capitalism wants life to be like in the twenty-first century.

You arrive before sunrise at an enormous blacktop. Traffic is always horrendously snarled. You hustle to be an hour early, but the corporation is at leisure to make you wait as long as necessary. Poor people are either clearly uniformed or else ejected, invisibly, from the premises.

Every square inch is painted, carpeted, wallpapered in grey. Corporations own everything. No plants or animals anywhere, except perhaps a single tree, incongruously indoors, and only in the very most prosperous shopping zone. No fresh food. Every item triple-price, quadruple-price.

As you walk through the security checkpoint, you have no right to free speech. Even the stickers on your notebook may be under scrutiny.

No single face you see around you is familiar. You will never see any of these people again. No eye contact. No touching. No controversial conversation. Small talk is permitted, but conversation with the opposite sex may be construed as sexual overture.

You are accustomed to sitting in a confined space. Your belongings could disappear at any moment and may be searched at any time. Food, water, and air are rationed--apportioned out as to laboratory animals.

Your identity can be co-ordinated with your whereabouts at any point in time. You entrust your physical well-being to a latticework of technological and bureaucratic systems far outside the control of any one individual.

Your happiness, it goes without saying, is irrelevant. What matters is your compliance with safety regulations and your ability to contain your rage, your fear, and your anguish so as not to disturb those around you or make a spectacle of yourself.