2004-07-14 - 1:28 p.m.

Note: I realise it somewhat negates the whole snapshot-of-life point of a diary to submit an entry weeks after the event, but for the sake of completeness I felt I should wrap up my little New York triptych.

After being compressed into a space the depth of a cricket�s tit on my outbound flight, I resolve to make it early to the airport and score myself some mansize legroom for the return. Despite getting there some three and a half hours before departure time, there is already a queue. Of course, I assume everyone ahead of me is specifically asking for my legroom and try to calculate if I�m going to make it to the front of the queue in time. Fear not. I hit the check-in desk and the long leggage is still available. Oh, hang on, actually fear after all. The legroom is available but I have to pay a supplement if I want one of those seats. I forget how much but it�s in the region of, ooh, about...complete bullshit ripoff dollars. Have you ever heard such a thing? I mean, these are the seats by the doors. The Added Responsibility Seats. I�m the schmuck who might have to actually open the door if the 747 ends up broken-backed and smoking on an Andean precipice. Though in fairness on a New York to London flight that would involve a considerable navigational failure and some fucking World Cup-wining fog. Anyway, the point is, they should be paying me. I�m volunteering to lead the terrified, the bleeding, the newly orphaned and the morbidly obese to safety, just like Jeff Bridges in Fearless. Well, maybe not the fatties. Anyway. I�m grasping the nettle, I�m biting the bullet, I�m walking on sunshine and I expect recognition and respect, not to be charged $Bend over and let Virgin Atlantic plumb you up the wrong�un for the privilege.

In any case, what they�re effectively saying is that I have to pay more because I have longer legs. That�s discrimination. I should sue. The Short Man is holding me down, mofo! Beanpoles Fight Back!

So, yeah, I paid the supplement.

There is a MacDonald�s at JFK Terminal 4. On the wall is a noticeboard with team photos, motivational slogans and other sundry bullshit designed to engender a) some semblance of morale in the disinterested slackjawed workforce and b) some semblance of individuality in the grindingly, corporately standard �restaurant�. The central slogan stood out. It read:

None of us is as good as all of us!

I presume this is to be interpreted, like its prettier slogan cousin, �There�s no �I� in �Team�� as meaning that only when the workforce functions collectively can it fulfill its potential, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But I read it a different way:

�None of us� is as good as �all of us�!

ie, collectively, our value is equal to the value of none of us, in other words;

We are all worthless!

And so the MacDonald�s collective staff odyssey of self-knowledge flickered into being. SEE MOUSEMILK'S LIST OF THE DAY!

They have something on the flight back that they didn�t have on the flight there. A section on the entertainment menu which allows me to play games against people sitting in other seats. There is a trivia quiz. Naturally, I�m in there like Britney in a Vegas chapel. Each game consists of twenty questions and the faster you answer the more points you get. There is no prize. I think the winner should get five minutes flying the plane. Imagine the competition when they�re preparing to land. �Yes, muthalover, 'Waterloo' was Abba�s first Number One! Now if you�ll excuse me" *unclips safety belt*, "I gotta go bring this baby home.� But they don�t. After a few rounds of shaking off the competition, only me and three lads in a row a few ahead of me are still sufficiently bored to keep playing. Their names and seat numbers come up on my screen. They keep changing their names to things like �Tupac� and �Kill Mo G� and �MC Glock�. All right, Tupac is the only one I can actually remember, but the pain of one of them beating me on Question 20 is somewhat ameliorated when they get up at the end of the flight and turn out to be white, middle-class English teenagers. �Ha!� I say. �You thought you could intimidate MC Quizking Longlegs with your stupid gangsta names, when all along you�re really called things like Simon and Josh!� At which point one of them pulls out a piece and shoots me dead.

Please, help stop the senseless airline quiz gang wars � we�ve already lost too many good trivia-orientated business travellers to this madness.

MOUSEMILK�S LIST OF THE DAY!

Ill-advised MacDonald�s motivational slogans:

1. There�s no �I� in �acne�

2. A stranger is only a person who hasn�t taken your job yet.

3. There�s some �eye� in �our burger�.

4. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart: to handle the burgers, use the hand you�ve just scratched your greasy neck with.

5. �Botulism� makes a, er, �bot� of �u� and, um, �lism�.

Add your suggestions!

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude