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The lecture continues. The next thing they advise me to do is locate my nearest emergency exit. Well, I do so immediately. I locate my nearest emergency exit, and I plan my escape route. You have to plan your escape route. It’s not always a straight line, is it? No. Sometimes there’s a really big, fat fuck sitting right in front of you.

Well, I know I’ll never be able to climb over him, so I look around for women and children, midgets and dwarfs, cripples, elderly widows, paralyzed veterans, and people with broken legs. Anyone who looks like they don’t move too well. The emotionally disturbed come in very handy at a time like this. It’s true I may have to go out of my way to find some of these people, but I’ll get out of the plane a whole lot quicker, believe you me.

My strategy is clear: I’ll go around the fat fuck, step on the widow’s head, push those children aside, knock down the paralyzed midget, and escape from the plane. In order, of course, to assist the other passengers who are still trapped inside the burning wreckage. After all, I can be of no help to anyone if I’m lying in the aisle, unconscious, with some big cocksucker standing on my neck. I must get out of the plane, make my way to a nearby farmhouse, have a Dr Pepper, and call the police.

The safety lecture continues: “In the unlikely event . . .” This is a very suspect phrase, especially coming as it does from an industry that is willing to lie about arrival and departure times. “In the unlikely event of a sudden change in cabin pressure . . .” roof flies off!! “. . . an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Place the mask over your face and breathe normally.” Well, no problem there. I always breathe normally when I’m in an uncontrolled, 600-mile-an-hour vertical dive. I also shit normally. Directly into my pants.

Then they tell me to adjust my oxygen mask before helping my child with his. Well, that’s one thing I didn’t need to be told. In fact, I’m probably going to be too busy screaming to help my child at all. This will be a good time for him to learn self-reliance. If he can surf the fucking Internet, he can goddamn, jolly well learn to adjust an oxygen mask. It’s a fairly simple thing: just a little elastic band in the back. Not nearly as complicated as, say, a seat belt.

The safety lecture continues: “In the unlikely event of a water landing . . .” A water landing! Am I mistaken, or does this sound somewhat similar to “crashing into the ocean”? “. . . your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.” Well, imagine that. My seat cushion! Just what I need: to float around the North Atlantic for several days, clinging to a pillow full of beer farts.

The a

“For you folks seated on the left side of the plane, that’s old Ben Hubbard’s place down there. And whaddeya know, there’s Ben comin’ out onto his porch right now. What’s he doin? By God, he’s pickin’ his nose. Wow! Look at that one! That is one prize booger. And look, he’s throwin’ it into a bush. Ain’t that just like old Ben? Over on the right . . .”

Zzzzzzzz.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-7” ??AIRLINE ANNOUNCEMENTS: ?PART TWO ?

Suddenly I’m awake. The flight is almost over, and somehow, along the way, the captain has become politicized. His latest offering:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have just begun our gradual descent into the Los Angeles area, similar in many ways to the gradual descent of this once great nation from a proud paragon of God-fearing virtue to a third-rate power awash in violence, sexual excess, and personal greed . . .”