Journey details: Domestic US flight, LAX-Houston
The scene: A delayed, late night departure, everyone's tired. I'm thinking a three-hour nap.
Passenger description: Bedraggled, pasty, 30-something guy with very red eyes.
The review: I'm quietly looking out of the window. This guy is leaning over me, trying to crane his neck to see out.
"That's San Diego!" he says loudly, pointing to a small town.
"I don't think it is, " I say. "It's too small, plus we don't fly over it."
"It's San Diego. All cities look small from this height. Have you seen London form the air? It's TINY!" (NB: we are still climbing, and at about 9,000 feet)
That settled, he hears I'm English and - excited it's his first time in America and high on sleep exhaustion after a 12 hour flight from London to LA, he launches into a tirade about how expensive America is, how fat American women are, how fat American men are, how immigration is ruining English culture (for this, he cites, "tea", which he sees as a British institution being under threat. When I point out we stole it from India, he just laughs), how "masses of Africans" are marching up through Europe and "have no idea about our way of life". His oft-repeated line is, "I'm not a racist (one time, he replaces this with 'Fascist') but SOME people MIGHT say...(insert racist thing mostly sounding like something said between racist white men in a closed meeting somewhere)..." This lasts for a while before he laughs at himself for being "something of a reactionary". He then talks at length about how all his friends are marrying and having families, and every time he says the words "marriage" or "family", he follows it up with "and all that SHIT". He's single, and shows me his directory of screenshots of girls he deems to be unattractive that he has taken off dating sites, which seems a weird thing to collect. He stops talking and falls asleep 15 minutes from Houston.
Verdict: Passive-aggressive pseudo-racist.
Rating: 2, but only for some basic element of self-awareness.
The scene: A delayed, late night departure, everyone's tired. I'm thinking a three-hour nap.
Passenger description: Bedraggled, pasty, 30-something guy with very red eyes.
The review: I'm quietly looking out of the window. This guy is leaning over me, trying to crane his neck to see out.
"That's San Diego!" he says loudly, pointing to a small town.
"I don't think it is, " I say. "It's too small, plus we don't fly over it."
"It's San Diego. All cities look small from this height. Have you seen London form the air? It's TINY!" (NB: we are still climbing, and at about 9,000 feet)
That settled, he hears I'm English and - excited it's his first time in America and high on sleep exhaustion after a 12 hour flight from London to LA, he launches into a tirade about how expensive America is, how fat American women are, how fat American men are, how immigration is ruining English culture (for this, he cites, "tea", which he sees as a British institution being under threat. When I point out we stole it from India, he just laughs), how "masses of Africans" are marching up through Europe and "have no idea about our way of life". His oft-repeated line is, "I'm not a racist (one time, he replaces this with 'Fascist') but SOME people MIGHT say...(insert racist thing mostly sounding like something said between racist white men in a closed meeting somewhere)..." This lasts for a while before he laughs at himself for being "something of a reactionary". He then talks at length about how all his friends are marrying and having families, and every time he says the words "marriage" or "family", he follows it up with "and all that SHIT". He's single, and shows me his directory of screenshots of girls he deems to be unattractive that he has taken off dating sites, which seems a weird thing to collect. He stops talking and falls asleep 15 minutes from Houston.
Verdict: Passive-aggressive pseudo-racist.
Rating: 2, but only for some basic element of self-awareness.
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