I used to confuse "further" and "farther," and, apparently, I did it quite often. In one of my stories, I'd confused them yet again, and in the margins, he'd written, simply, "I hate you."

--Sue Dickman (from McSweeney's Memories of David Foster Wallace)

I've been a bit of a mess, and through a series of events this morning have ended up glued to that McSweeney's page for hours, reading and crying to myself.

In the middle of this confusing emotional state, that quote made me laugh out loud, and heartily, and I wanted to have somewhere to put it.

I've been doing kind of a ridiculous amount of flying this past year. I'm learning the ins and outs of all sorts of airports; I've got access to all manner of special lobbies; I know which airline uses which safety video on which aircraft type (and which regions switch up snack offerings); I've seen the radical inconsistencies of many various TSA checkpoints and immigration officers....

But I'd never flown without a boarding pass until this morning.

Most of our flying is done on United (and partners US Air and Air Canada), then Southwest. This morning was American, and when I was checking in last night, the site offered me the option of sending my boarding pass to my phone.

I'm flying alone (meeting Zach in Miami—he's coming from Calgary) and arriving earlier than is strictly necessary, so I was stoked to experiment. I considered printing a physical copy for a backup, but it took about two seconds to decide that was no fun.

So I gave them my phone's text/email address (number@messaging.sprintpcs.com), pressed go and waited. I got a text with a secure url to visit and a sentence of instructions that had been truncated for length. I have no idea where it was going, and part two never followed.

The website (on the computer while checking in) offered no links or instructions about this send to phone option, so I shrugged and assumed I'd figure it out. I was mentally preparing all sorts of arguments with the people invariably unfamiliar with the process.

I also figured I'd go all in and tell them I'd lost my ID while I was at it, but at the last minute decided it was more prudent to only push my luck with one new experiment at a time (read: chickened out).

Turns out it was super painless.

The first TSA person guarding the escalator to security (I know), was not really sure what to make of it, but waved me on with a shrug. She wasn't checking anyone's IDs, just verifying a boarding pass, so I wasn't expecting too much fight from her.

The agent checking IDs at security and scribbling on the boarding

If you have the opportunity to fly Spirit Air, I suggest you take a pass.

Seriously?

"What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it's making us small."

I have a plan for posting a little more, and maybe rejoining the human race somewhat. We'll see how that goes.

With an additional 41 minutes of awesome, apparently.

Don't mind if I do....

"Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being 'not even wrong.'"

I hate it here.

Whoa.

We're in Miami for WMC, at the Adam Freeland show at BED. Zach's just finished and he and I are posted up in a corner.

A cameraman comes up and says something one-hundred percent lost to the soundsystem. I make the universal gesture for "there's no way to hear you over all this noise" and politely wait for the mix to maybe hit a quiet spot.

He leans in again and I don't understand what he thinks will be different this time. kind of suddenly, he reaches up and plugs my ear. As I begin thinking about how very strange that is and what the possible meaning behind it could be I realize he's speaking to me and I'm hearing everything as plainly as if he were in my head.

I gotta figure that trick out.

On the plane, leaving Austin. This is the narrowest plane I've ever been on. People are having some serious trouble figuring the aisle out. Like, it's narrow, man. Is the thrust of what I'm trying to get aross here.

Fun SXSW game: walking up to anyone and saying, "Yo, you were great last night, man." Lotta musicians.

Two guys just sat down across the aisle (which is narrow) and recognized Zach from the Red Bull show.

So many people look sooo tired, or just...used up. It's strange.

The interview was cool. Professional guys, good set-up, conversational prompts. They rented the guy who plays Tim Riggins' place to set up shop. He has a poster of James Dean.

Layover in Phoenix, then home to LA. Right back on the road (Denver) on Wednesday.

Final (?) tally: 3 hours in the past 69. And I have to be up in 3 hours from now. Hoo boy.

I had a nice time, though; and I'm really impressed with this city.

I'll have to edit this post when I'm not on my phone to include a picture of my bloodshot eyes right now. Eep.

Lots-of-posts experiment results: fun for me, easy enough from the mobile interface, zero comments. Alrighty then.

Tired.

We just got back to the hotel. Have to get up in a few hours for this interview.... Ugh.

At the second party now.

Turns out it's much fancier and larger scale than I had expected.... Very cool, though, to have everything so well taken care of. Those Red Bull folks really know how to treat....

Zach goes on in forty-five minutes. I've slept for three hours in the past sixty-two. Also, hungry. I might hit the all-you-can-eat pancakes deal at Denny's when we get back to the hotel. By myself, which is a depressing enough situation to make me want to bury my sorrows in a plate of griddled goodness. Hey, maybe some things DO work out.

At the show now, surrounded by hipsters and the throbbing neo-rave pulse of their theme music. I am slightly fearful, very confused.

Also, everything around me is sticky.

Update day got derailed by really sleepy busy day.

SXSW is crazy, Austin is cool, Leslie called (but can't hang out on such short notice--I suck).

The first show got set up with fewer hitches than I expected. Second show is as yet unknown, but I'm not stressed.

Had some bbq pulled pork, lemonade, and an oreo shake.

Sitting in Zach's hotel room with Killa Kela now while they work out some impromptu craziness to drop on everyone out of the blue tonight.

Our rental car is a gnarly metallic teal with a gold undertone.

Layover in Denver. I'm dizzy and uncomfortably warm. Like, sweating a little just sitting here.

I was all ready to complain about flying and airports, but somehow we got booked in first class, so the edge is taken off a bit.

Still a shitty schedule ahead of me, though....

Wow.  That's a darker, almost industrial remix of "About Face" coming up from downstairs.  I like everything about what's going on there....

T-Minus three hours.

Why is it illegal to drive without a seatbelt?

This has only just occurred to me as a very strange reality. I recognize that "Seatbelts Save Lives," but where is the step that links that to legal action?

I know that laws are supposed to protect us, even from ourselves (why suicide is illegal will never make sense and is hardly worth discussing), but the more I thought about this tonight, the stranger and stranger it seemed.

Encouraging/requiring someone to wear a seatbelt seems unarguably a safety issue. So, granting that premise, what other safety issues are laws?

Cars are required to have airbags. Fine, that protects car buyers from corner cutting car companies that would sell them an unsafe product. Not a direct enough analogy. Is it illegal to disable your own airbag? I don't know, but even then, you could argue that you're endangering someone else who may happen to be driving your car without knowing there is no airbag (which they would reasonably assume there would be)....

Driving drunk impairs your ability to drive and should obviously be legislated, but seatbelts really only come into play during an accident that would be taking place regardless of that state of your being buckled, so you're not really preventing accidents.

So, if seatbelts only come into play during existing accident situations, who do they hurt? Cutting seatbelts out of a car would endanger others, fine, legislate it. The car has to have seatbelts. But they all buckly and operate individually and independently of each other seatbelt. So your choice to not wear a seat belt would seemingly only effect you....

That's like legislating "Look both ways before you cross a street". And, okay, that's maybe like jaywalking&mdashwhich is a dumb law, I think, but more importantly to this line of thought, it's also not a direct comparison. If you walk out into the street without looking/at the improper time, you could get hit by a car. Sucks for you, but it also is likely to cause an accident which wouldn't have happened otherwise, and also involves other people.

It's possible, I suppose, that the law exists to prevent people/property from being injured by bodies hurled from a crashing car, but that seems morbid and unlikely to me (and sure, there's a functionalist argument about more serious injuries causing someone to miss more days of work, or be somehow less productive to society and so therefore detrimental to society, qed illegal...but again, not buying it). So the law really only exists to protect you from the consequences of your own decision. That's kind of creepy.

(Here again, the obvious first thought is to compare this to drugs, but that's like the drunk driving argument in that it doesn't take long to think of a scenario where other people are suddenly involved/endangered on account of your choice to impair yourself. Even making unprotected sex illegal, while [almost] an unthinkable scenario, is at least somewhat defensible in that it effects [at least] one other person....)

So the law is there to make sure you're keeping your own safety in mind...?

I primarily buckle my seatbelt out of fear for getting a ticket. It's the potential fine that influences my decision to wear the belt. Isn't that kind of counter to the spirit of saving lives? Shouldn't I be encouraged to buckle up on account of it being a good idea? I submit that I would care more about making sure I'm buckled if I were doing so of my own volition and by my own choice and for my own, informed reasons. Maybe that's due in part to my being a bit of a contrarian, but still....

The law exists to cause us to fear fines, not to cause us to respect seatbelts and fear pain/injury/death. Is there another situation where this is the case that I'm missing here? Am I totally off base with my reasoning somewhere? I can think of many examples that are similar in concept, but no other law whatsoever that is both so definitionally a personal choice, and also so commonly accepted as a totally normal thing to legislate.

Unrelated: Is there an adjective that means "needing to pee"?