Today I get to travel from Seattle to Boston via Atlanta. I use the word "today" loosely on account of having taken a redeye flight during which I fell asleep thinking about Stephen King's The Langoliers, so I have bigger problems than units of time, duh.

As a result of the travel situation, the sock choice is less sartorial and more comfort-related. I am convinced these socks look like what a Lands End knockoff designer thinks Lands End socks would look like. Inevitably, though, our hard-luck knockoff designer is doomed to get the vaguely southwestern, brand-name look slightly wrong. 

"So close," he thinks, "And yet, not worthy of the catalog shoot with a contented couple wearing matching socks and staring creepily at a roaring fire in the hearth." We watch the designer's rage build over the years. He quietly seethes under ever-thicker layers of catalog merchandise inadequacy, brushed on one slick coat at a time, as shellac.

Just kidding, that's probably not true. Socks just need backstories.

Back to the air travel part of my story: I think it's important to share the best moment of the trip so far. I watched a guy empty his pants pockets in the security line. He had those loose-fitting hiking pants with the various compartments for stuff like freeze-dried turtle meat, or tourniquets, etc., up and down the legs. 

No joke, the man also had a pith helmet. This is some Heart of Darkness type stuff here. The jungle called, and he was prepared to answer, but he needed a lot of crap to do so. He filled three bins with the contents of his pockets alone, and three bins with other miscellany. That makes six bins total. [Re-read the last 2 sentences in The Count's voice.]

Finally, and this is sort of important: whoever is out there reading about my socks today*, I want you to know, I have chosen three-bins-of-pocket-contents guy over you for my zombie apocalypse partner. And he and I already talked about it, so don't bother bugging him, either.

*Langoliers!