– • david ross macdonald • extras and journal

The in-flight magazine, that glossy wet kiss to conspicuous consumption coos from its snug back-seat pocket right in front of me. It’s directly under my nose. Nestled between the laminated and unread safety procedures card and the equally unused sick bag (where chewing gum goes to die). This tome of untold frequent flyer riches and blatant status enlargement aids has a smell that I loath and yet cannot resist. Like a fart in a crowded elevator that no-one wants to smell but instinctively  must test, this glossy stench is like some barometric measurement of a confined groups social health and our limbic selves just can’t help but to suck it up.

I reach forward and it slithers effortlessly like a sheened serpent onto my lap and I admire the 100 megapixel Hasselblad cover shot of the uber-couple after-nooning within a Tuscany grapevine draped courtyard. Casual, clean and understated linen apparel with just a hint of side-burn grey for him and half obscured Rolex glint for her creates the desired consumer reorientation guaranteed by some advertising agency-engineered Euro Dorian aesthetic. “This magazine is gonna make me fucking rich !” my reptilian centers assure me, I mean, look at me, I am already on the flying steel bird and like neophytes pilfering the New Rich antipodes I am sitting in my aero-blue nylon blend pew in the upright position with tray table stowed holding the Good Book that’s gonna save me. I turn the pages and disappear.

Later … this plane cabin reminds me of my undergrad Skinner Box days and a laboratory rat named Keanu. Operant Conditioning Tutorial Question 1: Is the randomness of reinforcement through infrequent travelling turning middle-class-rodents-in-coach into high-end consumer crack addicts?

Later on … looking around some more …  laboratory rats in a mile-high-peep-show buckled in low and tight with our trousers down and wallets out  … somewhere, someone in a lab coat and clip board is taking notes on my eye dwell times and sympathetic nervous system metrics as I flick through the consumer porn.

The cabin pressure tweaks and our combined decent is assured.

I wonder who will complete my Sudoku?