HUMILIATION of a SAMURAI

five VINCENT

THAT WAS THE CRAZY 48-HOUR PERIOD THAT ENDED WHEN I suspended my disdain for social media and its corrosive effect on civilization.  Fucking gave up and knelt down before my new phone.  Took a big fat bite of the Blue Pill.

New York we changed planes and when our ship leveled off over the ocean they brought the cart around.  I bought drinks for my new seatmates, emptied my plastic cup quick and rattled the ice like Yahtzee dice.  Recycled the same schmaltz I'd spread heavy riding center seat from EUG to DEN, DEN to LAG and inquired whether anyone among our economy-row trio possessed special talents that might prove vital to our survival, if things got weird and we found ourselves in some kind of "LOST" situation.

Stupid but it always gets a laugh.  Never comes across all nosy like asking What's your name?  What do you do?  Data like that will be rendered useless once all the wrong planets line up in just the right way to send your budget flight slipping buttfuck-sideways through spacetime to crash-land on a spooky island in another dimension.

When you wake up flat on your back in a patch of bamboo to find the plane you boarded is now broken up and scattered across some beach?  That's the moment your job title, your place on a company org chart, your socio-commercial standing all wither and drop like the useless wings of an earthbound ant who will never be queen.

Now you're on the starting blocks competing against every other survivor for excellence in a new economy of individual worth proven by contribution and performance.  Running a race to transcend self-motivated participation and achieve true cooperation.

You used to be Phoebe, the pretty one with all the friends?  Now you're the tan one who's really good at spearfishing.

You were the fat guy in Accounting hunched over a keyboard packed full of fast-food crumbs.  Now you're the genius who fashioned a novelty belt buckle into a cutting tool and built the best shelter on the island.

Or maybe you'll wash out because no matter where you go, you're always the one who can't cope.  Maybe you'll wrap two slashed life jackets full of stones around your neck and stroll into the surf because your brand is hollow and you can't generate a corporeal stream of subsistence income based upon you. 

That's why it's a waste of time giving a shit about somebody's day-to-day background.  You have to keep it casual but discreetly focused when mining data to rank fellow travelers according to the arbitrarily assigned and untested metrics of my alternate universe slash desert island slash human resources scale of assessment.

I recommend you gather information linked to hard-wired and hard-won traits to discover valuable outliers versed in dark arts.  Sniff out those oddballs abundant in legitimate gifts and practical goods.  Inspect each subject's timeline for an asterisk, a temporal scab or scar marking evidence of upheaval or catastrophe.  Something warm that got too hot and bubbled over, made a real fucking mess.  A poignant or painful meridian crossed over, then scrabbled back from.  A great smoking crater marking a significant Before and After. That should give you a good head start on determining which members of your wacky castaway population are worth sucking up to, and maybe flag a few you should-oughta steer clear of.

Definitely do your homework.  You want to get in the car with the Professor, not Gilligan.  Gilligan was a jack-off artist, a confirmed and certain liability.

I was seated between a couple of good sports.  Spirited travelers capable of maintaining conversational volume in a confined space.  Devoted practitioners of oral hygiene.  No grumps, crazies or religious kooks.  My fellow passengers repaid my round, kept up a solid standard of discourse and tipped the help proper.

Lady on the aisle wanted vodka tonic and when they cleared our dinner trash she pulled out her phone.  Showed me pictures of grandchildren shrieking at the edge of a hotel pool.  Then fat little Dachshunds, then a shot of her late husband sunburned in a tropical shirt holding down a pai gow table at some Reno casino.