I knew I was back in the South the minute I stepped out of the aircraft into the gate ramp. The smell of the carpet, the dampness, was familiar, but I hadn't smelled it in a long time.
Up at the top of the ramp, I could tell immediately that the terminal was essentially in the same condition as it had been 25 years ago, when I first was in it. The tiles and the seats were unrepentantly from another era---the post-brutalist Seventies. It brought back pleasant memories of changing planes here a long time ago.
That's when Memphis was the hub of a major passenger airline. Now it's mostly an airline backwater, even though the airport itself is among the busiest of the world. The vast majority of the planes are not carrying people but packages and other cargo for the great local shipping colossus---Fedex.
Fedex has become a verb, has it not? I mention this because my private word game lately has been to think of as many English language verbs as possible, ones that are expressed as an infinite consisting of "to" with one word following, perhaps with a hyphen.
I wrote a little script that puts them into a database as I find them. The script tells me whether the entry already exists in my database.
Greg gave me a lot of good verbs when I was with him. In return I told him about my findings on Tumblr regarding the new postmodern reality of the "oppression olympics."
"You're a shitlord," I told him, in the midst of explaining about the paradigm. I explained why, and then added, "but don't worry, there's pretty much nothing you can do about." He got a big kick out of that.
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