Ah, friends, my tens of readers, it is with a heavy heart that I write tonight, for tomorrow . . . tomorrow, I am off. Off to sail the crummy, cramped, smell-other-people's-farts skies with a few hundred of my closest strangers, off to fly to Utah. I will be gone for the week, and so you're just going to have to content yourselves with a deficit of snotty complaining about, uh, everything, for a little while. Sorry about that. This is going to have to hold you.

And I don't even know if my heart is in it tonight. Do we really need yet another bunch of rambling crap about how awful airports are? Is anyone really interested in another jeremiad against airline gouging, or their horrible, alleged food? Does anyone really want to read another unfair, unkind, and ill-informed screed against some innocent city that I happen to spend four days in?

I say: We do.

It's with real anticipation that I await getting to the airport tomorrow, since my flight is on the not-at-all trouble airline Delta. I imagine their employees are going to be so happy! It is indeed fortunate that--assuming I get on my flight all right--I am essentially incapable of staying awake on flights, an attribute which has earned me my wife's enduring resentment. I can't help it--I fall asleep basically right away. It might be a defensive reaction against those particularly insectile male flight attendants, who all seem to resemble David Spade. They creep me out, and I have uneasy dreams about them extruding silk from their vest-concealed spinnerets to encase me before they extract my blood from my wiggling frame. Yes, in my mental world, David Spade is basically a big gay Shelob.

It doesn't help that I'm going to fucking Utah, the boxy state that fails even in its geometric imperative towards Platonic boxiness. This is a state that got out-rhomboided by Wyoming, for Christ's sake. WYOMING! Here's a gerund of a state, which is just pathetic, and yet it eats Utah's Platonic lunch.

And plus, I'm going to Salt Lake City, a Borglike grid of a city dumped down into the desert, and named in honor of a lake that is totally fucked up in the first place. Great Salt Lake? Who asked for that? They couldn't get a lake right? "What a gorgeous lake!" "Yeah, fuck that. It's full of salt." Hanh? Swell. I also can't wait to see the Mustard Mountains and the legendary Paprika Forest.

Look, I'm sorry. Like I said before, this is all very unfair. I was in SLC once, a long time ago. I'm just not very enthused about going, since it's a business trip, and I'm away from my wife, and blah blah blah. I'll be putting in some long hours, and I'll have to wear a tie all the fucking time, which, honestly? I'd rather cinch up my nuts with a spiked belt. (Oh, shit! Did I remember to pack my spiked belt?) WHICH REMINDS ME! What essential thing did I forget to pack? I'm sure it's something, and something big! Or maybe they'll just send my luggage to Oslo! And don't forget about that travel anxiety, like compulsively checking my back pocket to make sure my wallet is still there, and which looks to the rest of the world that I appear to have some ass-clutching twitch! Oh, it all adds up, and it makes me miserable. I hope this week goes by quickly, which I am certain it will not.

Oh, I'll see you next Monday or so. Fresh off the trip. At which time, this post will probably seem kind in retrospect. In the meantime . . . seriously, they couldn't get a lake right? Good Lord. Maybe someday I can go to a conference at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.