The Travel Rant

If I see so much as one more single measly puny inferior pixel of ecstatically happy and inane world travelers on this computer screen ---I am gonna hurl….

…the entire LCD out the window. And then, the unsettled sesame seeds in my stomach will become airborne on their mission to be a new wall paper pattern.

I mean, people seem love to parade and prattle around internet dating sites with those vapid-smile, brainless-grin photos in front of the Matterhorn, at Machhu Pichu, in Modena, near Mumbai.

Don’t they get it? The only message they send is that the tourist on shameless display is a rich, self indulgent, shallow, narcissistic, adrenaline sucking, exhibitionistic show-off.

“Look at me -- I can travel. I am ambulatory. I’m hyperactive. I have credit card.”

What about a little balance in life. Is not there room to similarly genuflect to agoraphobia, couch potato syndrome, shut-in-itis, general do-nothingality?

I am all for voyages to places of foreign extraction. That have any thing remotely construable as a purpose. You wanna loot overseas ancient relic sites for a local museum? Fine with me. Wish to boink in person that cute Russian hottie who emails dirty pictures. Get express airfare to Leningrad and pass go. Want to run up a horrendous search-and-rescue tab as you try to swim the North Sea. Knock yourself out. Need to smuggle prozac in from Tuvalu? Right on! Desirous to see the world? Sure . Join the Navy.

But mindless useless travel is so banal. Sooo ephemeral . It creates memories you say. You need that? Oh, then watch this fist. It will create a beautiful and lasting memory on your crushed face!

And what about when you die. Anything lasting at all then? Oh sure -- those 6000 under-exposed out-of-focus kodachromes of dank dreary English gardens. Which you dragoon hapless relatives into a unbroken fortnight orgy of watching on a dim screen in a dark hot uncomfortable living room.

Okay I grant you -- mindless consumptive world wide energy use -- in the support of trivial transportation - does create all sort of fab and groovy things that do endure. Nuclear waste. Global warming, Ozone layer depletion. Ice cap melting. Glacier vaporization .Rising seas. Wonderful. You get gold stars for all those long lasting special effects and future generation abuse, fellow travelers.

Oh and I almost forgot. The fetid humidity of halitosis-afflicted tourist threatens to ruin the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And vibration and air pollution from tourist busses has helped crumble the Sphinx into an oversized alley cat that needs a face transplant. And the Parthenon into a penitentiary rock pile. The mindless feeding of Yellowstone yogis and careless food disposal turns then into dangerous dumpster diver grizzlies. It’s the appetizer for their main course….

Tree-climbing tourists.

Yes!!!. Which makes it for the bear and non-travelers also…just desserts, doncha think?.