This Just In... Nope, It’s Been Delayed at Heathrow

A flight was diverted today when live snakes were discovered in a passenger’s hand luggage. The snakes were set free through a chain of unfortunate events, and caused mayhem in the cabin. No fatalities have been recorded due to the prompt action of an FBI agent who was accompanying a criminal. All passengers will subsequently be required to have their luggage checked for live cargo, and boas, scarves, foam swimming noodles and spaghetti all have to be stowed in hold baggage for the foreseeable future. Police are arresting all reptile owners to prevent further attacks of this kind.

Could only be a Hollywood movie, right?

Replace “snakes” with, hmm, “completely made up liquid explosives,” and you start to wonder if, indeed, Baudrillard was right all along: reality and fantasy are converging in a big, implody way. Forget terrorists, I worry on a daily basis about whether anything is real.

OK, say there was an ill-conceived plot of the sort that a bunch of idealistic young men cook up while white-water rafting in the Lake District, involving a series of hijinks lifted from a B movie. Fine. As Kendra wisely puts it, I accept your scenario. At what point does it become logical to stop people taking books and newspapers onto planes? Is it in case I’ve put the cover of School for Husbands on The Anarchist’s Handbook? Or the Koran? Laptops, fine – as Dell proved this week, they might go up in flames anyway, through poor manufacturing because of a desire to make cheap to sell cheap so they break down and you buy another one. No-one wants to get roasted by their seatmate’s need to “work” on those “important documents” that look suspiciously like Quicktime porn downloads at 15,000 feet.

But books? And lip salve? It’s like that poem:

First they took my tweezers, and I did nothing to stop them.
Then they came for my pencil sharpener, and I looked the other way.
Then they confiscated my fountain pen, and I sighed, but let them do it.
Then they dropped my laptop while they were checking it, and I claimed on the insurance.
Then they made me taste my baby’s formula, and I accepted it. Whatever. I’ve been stuck here for fourteen hours with a squalling brat and you want me to drink pretend breast milk. OK. Just let me get on the plane.
Then they wanted to have a look at my travel documents because I have olive skin and a foreign-sounding name, and I bowed to the inevitable.
Then they put me in a small room, and asked me questions. Again and again.
Then they put me in jail for 30 days without recourse to a lawyer. And I’m still here, writing this on the wall with a pencil stub I found in my pocket (see above re: fountain pen).

And let’s say I don’t accept their scenario. Or fine: some people made some plans. We all make plans. When I was in secondary school, my friend Jade and I made a systematic plan to kill everyone in our class. Then we burned the plans and ate the ashes. Sartre and Se7en not a great combo of influences but, hey. Here’s the thing: many people make plans, and then – if they’re going to carry them out – destroy all the evidence. And hey, many people make plans and have no intention of carrying them out. Fantasising is part of being human.

Unless you’re Blur (aka, the strange meld of Bush and Blair, which I saw actualised in a screenprint on a fellow commuter’s bag yesterday – nice!). In which case, you can act out your fantasies of indiscriminate murder and political reprogramming on a grand scale. And no-one’s doing a thing.

The snakes are on the fucking plane, people, and we’re just sitting here waiting for Samuel L. Jackson to save us. Racist profiling, psychological X-ray machines – hell, let’s get in precogs – aren’t going to sort this out. Because the snakes are in power. They’ve chewed through the cage. Someone call for help.

Oh. You can’t. Your phone is in the hold.

Please hold.

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