I love air travel.

I sometimes find that I'm a little too busy to come up with my own "material" for blogging. I want to do it, but a person only has so much brain, and during the busy times, a large portion of that brain (known as the "thinking" part) must be committed to solving problems that are, apparently, more important than posting to a blog.

That's when air travel comes in.

No matter what happens, and no matter where I'm going, there's always something really screwed up about air travel that provides food for thought. I mean, you cannot go anywhere in the US today without having to laugh every three or four seconds about what a different world air travel is, and about how it's occasionally just ever so slightly out of touch with reality.

For example, I'm sitting in an aisle seat right now, and I'm looking down the length of the plane at the cabin. This recalls to mind all the post-9/11 shouting about how pilots should be allowed to carry pistols.

I think they should be allowed to carry pistols. I also think that they should be allowed to carry sawed-off shotguns, machetes, and small explosives.

In fact, they really ought to be trained as ninjas. Airplane captains should be dressed head to toe in black ninja outfits, they should carry poisoned throwing stars, nunchucks, and should be trained in the black art of the silent assassination.

It'd be even better if we started building extraneous air ducts into the ceilings and floors of airplanes so that ninja captains could crawl through them in the event of an emergency, machetes held in their teeth, and ready to burst out of a vent when the moment of opportunity arises.

Yup. Guns aren't enough.

Then, of course, there's the fun on the ground...