a. I’m alive. b. I hate fingernail biters.

My deepest apologies Rantopolis readers.

Things have been so insane in Rantopolis land that I have not found time to post all month.  (My absence on this blog has even prompted long-time friends to call wondering if something bad had happened.)

You like me.  You really like me.  (With credit, of course, to Sally Field.)

Now, that I have confirmed that I am alive and well, I am going to try to make up for lost time.  (Even though I haven’t been writing, I have still been gathering blog topics.  Here comes the first one.)

What’s with people that confuse their airplane seat with their bathroom?!  May I enter exhibit A your honor?

No, they didn't really have marshmallow faces. I never said I was a PhotoShop expert.

A few weeks ago, I boarded a flight from Chicago to Las Vegas.  (Business trip, not pleasure.  My huge distaste for Vegas would never put a trip there into the pleasure category.)

A few minutes after claiming my seat, the guy across the aisle starts eating his dinner.  And by eating , mean gnawing.  And by dinner, I mean his finger nails and cuticles.

This guy starts attacking ends of his digits like a piranha.  Clearly not caring, or perhaps oblivious,  that other human beings were a few feet away from him.

He would bite, pull, chew and repeat.  I would gag, avert my gaze and pray that he would stop.  Finally, after ripping off every possible piece of flesh and nail that he could clamp onto, he stopped.

I sank bank into my seat and breathed a sigh of relief.  I had about 10 seconds of respite.  Then the guy in front of him started biting his nails.

I knew at that moment I was in the Compulisive Nail Biting Twilight Zone.  Ahead of me was a three-plus hour flight with freekish nailivores in my sightlines.

People with weird habits, I have to ask you.  Are you in a hypnotic trance?  Did someone drug you?  Those are the only reasons I can come up with to explain your inability to recognize that you are in a public place.

Newsflash. Strangers can actually watch you engaging in your gross, obsessive little habit.  (You should be deliriously happy projectile vomiting didn’t come your way.)

So, here are the rules going forward.  If you do weird, freaky things in public places and I see you, I will definitely write about you.  And I will most likely photograph you.  (Although I may choose to give you a marshmallow face.)  Consider yourself lucky I opted not to shoot video.

(BTW, note to the guy who sat next to me in the middle seat on the return trip. Either go on a diet, or buy two seats the next time.  Spilling into my seat is no longer acceptable.)

So, in the future, please show some self restraint.  Or if you absolutely need to dine on nail and cuticle while on a plane, please do so behind the closed doors of the lavatory.

Thanks a bunch.

Categories: Just plain weird , Travel drama , What is wrong with you?