Aeroplane

Well, this is going to be a little fun.

I’m sitting at a near abandoned airport gate, waiting to board the smallest public flight in my life. Faint muzac plays just barely audible over the whir of the air conditoning. It has been so long since I was last in an airport I had forgotten to wear easily removable shoes. Between work, sleep deprivation, and general excitement for this trip, I decided the first thing I had to do once I had found my gate was get some caffeine in me. This was a daunting task, it turned out. They have machines with card readers, but it seems they don’t like to work without a cell connection to their mainframe, I suppose. Undeterred, I went to an ATM, and withdrew a bit of cash. With bills too large to be accepted by the machine, I tried to make change out of a machine which did not want to work with me either. Frustrated, I went to the nearest actual Starbuck's kiosk, expecting them to tell me that my money was no good either. Fortunately, I was able to walk away with a large frappucino.

Waiting for the boarding to occur, I made a single serving friend with a fellow passenger, on his way to pick up a truck. A mystery man sits in the back of the aircraft, and a woman just across from my SSF, presumably a native of my destination, Kirksville, Missouri. We are flying in a six seater dual engine aircraft, a Piper Navajo, model pa31-350. We have leveled off at 8150 feet, flying at a steady 150 knots. The lovely thing is as I stare as these little black keys, we are actually flying low enough to catch glimpses of the earth through the sporadic cloud cover. We must still be closer to St. Louis, because I either just saw some sort of refinery, or the Science Center.

This is a multipurpose trip which happily came together. Barely. My best friend, mentioned in a recent post, has finished his education at AT Stills University. His life is progressing and happily bringing him back to St. Louis, for the time being. I was there to help move him to Kirksville, and now I am en route to help move him back. I’m excited for it. On the way back to StL, we are going to stop through our college town, and of course, see a couple of the important alma mater sights, and coincidentally, the old bike shop. As a gift to my astounding Dr. Girlfriend, I spent some of my recent superfluous overtime earnings on an Electra Boney Finger 3i. Electra is one of the last companies that actually builds a quality cruiser bike in the United States, and it so happens that not only am I a fan of Electra, but my mechanic is a dealer of them (this might be a causal relationship, come to think of it.) As mentioned earlier, I will happily do my business through him for the rest of my life. Hell, if I have enough left by the end of this biking season, I may just purchase another cruiser for myself. They are quite baddass, and pictures will follow. Oh yes, there will be pics.

Hell of a bit of turbulence when you’re in something this size. Not my first time on a small aircraft, just my first time on a small land plane, not a sea plane. Experiences from my trips on those will come later. This trip nearly didn’t happen because I was scheduled to work almost all the way until the wire's edge of timing. I was barely able to get to the airport with time to spare for my check-in. I’m quite glad to be flying. The ticket cost was a fraction of the gas cost, and the transit time just over a third of what it would have been if I had driven. We’re beginning our descent now, after a 50 minute flight, at 175 knots, -650 feet per minute.

If you were bored by reading this, I’m not sorry. I find this exciting as hell. Flying web log post. Started in an airport, written during a flight, and finished on the ground

Quite a respite, a fleeting flight.

-The0

Saddle Up.

It has been a very nice break for me. I logged just over 90 hours into all my Steam games, and ate pretty well whatever I wanted. I stayed up late, I slept in. I saved the universe, only to doom it to total fascism. I melted about a hundred faces off with a face-melting solo, and I got my foot mostly all better. I hang out for extended periods with my favorite people, and had a few drinks almost every day. A great way to start the new year.

I made ZERO dollars during this little vacation.

Despite this I still went out. Dr. Girlfriend treated me to Eddie Izzard. A good show, and I still always laugh at his skits. Many friends were at that show, and we ended up at a nearby cordials bar. A cute place. This is all in faded memory.

After such a long pause I am surprised I have this much to say. More disasters are in the works, but suffice it to say, I just don't care to write right now. Suck it up.

It's not gold, but it's a start. There are some events that deserve their own separate posts. Important ones. Revealing ones. Ones that would probably be better off not written out, but that's not my style.

-The0

People I wish I could meet

While a healthy debate rages on between Baldercrap! and Kurtharsis, I have decided to steer clear of anything important or sensible, and instead pollute the Internet with another list of unhealthy sentiments. What follows is a small compendium of the characters that I would like to meet. The ability to pick these guys brains, to better understand their assumed philosophy, and to find out what sent them cracking would be a fun little trip, I'm certain. Without much further ado, here we go. These are in no particular order, but they are all awesome.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter

I have always been a fan of the Dr. Lecter series, and not just simply out of epicurean curiosity. Even between his ruinous childhood, a very telling adolescence, and a very well defined set of opinions on how humans should interact and respect each other, I still can't fathom how it became right in his mind to twist people into dishes. The murder and punishment stuff, I get. Killing a flautist and improving the the orchestra by removing the weakest member? Darwin-esque, to say the least. Serving and eating him? Creepy, yet there has got to be a way in which it makes perfect logical sense, at least to him. I'd ask about that, among MANY other things.

The Joker

Yes, I'm well aware that he's a very popular villain right now, what with Ledger's posthumous award and society latching onto whatever he does simpy out of his former sex appeal. And I'll also admit, I never actually took the time to do the character research like Ledger did. I've never even fully read a Batman comic book. But the scene where The Joker is corrupting Harvey Dent, and where he's explaining to Batman his philosophy make it obvious, he's not just a criminal. The Joker took being homocidally insane and raised it to an art form. Beautiful the way the world burns, isn't it? If I were going to interview him though, I'd definitely want some sort of mental protection. He seems the kind of guy that gets into your head and starts throwing shuriken.

Millions Knives

This is a very obscure one, and not even as (quasi-)justified as the other ones mentioned so far, but no anime is complete without a supervillain. Knives is the brother of our gun-wielding hero Vash, who are both some super advanced form of human. Regular humanity depends on their powers to survive and thrive. Vash's ideology is to separate prey from predators, so as to save them both, illustrated when he tries to release a butterfly from a spider's web. His brother reaches in and crushes the spider. Logic behind this? If you're going to save the butterfly, the spider starves and dies anyway. So, later in life, Knives starts destroying humanity in order to save the butterflies that he, his brother, and the others like them are. Humanity is one big hungry spider? Sounds accurate enough. I'm probably better not talking to this one, he'd just shoot me and get it over with, since I'm going to die anyway.

Darth Vader

It's clear that despite how poorly the character was built, it is canon, and the story is there. (On a side note, C-3PO should have been directing. We saw that he was a baddass storyteller in Return of the Jedi.) His character is evil and hateful out of emotional pain. He tried so hard to prevent everything from going to shit, and in the end he still lost everything dear to him. Does he go home and emo it up? Nope. Instead, Alderaan. Enough said.

Michael "Schwartzwald" Seebach

Another obscure one, but I like it just as much because he can be seen as a bastion of my crusade. This journalist uncovered a massive conspiracy in the city in which he lived. The corporation responsible for the conspiracy tries to have him killed. This tempers him, and he goes on a mission of trying to "wake up" the public, to get them to open their eyes and see. In addition to this, somehow or another giant robots are involved. Anyone so obsessed with trying to get people to wake up and embrace knowledge that he goes insane is a winner in my book. A fun little video of his magnum opus speech can be seen here. A lot of the information is out of context, but it's still very stirring. "Is it a crime to try and learn the truth?" "Wake up! Don't be afraid of knowledge!" Perfect lines for the embattled intellectual.

Light "Kira" Yagami

As long as I'm on an anime tear, I might as well include the [adult swim] community's favorite, self-righteous killing machine. Light Yagami, the smartest student in all of Japan, happens upon a notebook in which if you write a person's name with his or her face in mind, they will die exactly as you wish. After some moral squabbling, he sets to purge the world of evil and criminals. As the most intelligent and most forward thinking (at least as the series puts him) he removes people with a swift and judicious pen. I'd love to see what I could learn from him, and ask him how much more progressive/regressive could a world without criminals be? Where do morals actually come into question? Is it merely all dictated by law? What dictates the law? I'm certain he would have a beautifully cold answer to all of these.

And lastly, just to refocus...

Me, when I finally snap.

I'm certain I'll have an entire crazed manifesto as to why and how I'll do it all if I don't wind up straightening my head.

Not really, I kid, I kid. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a physical two-sided conversation with youself though? Would it be the most interesting conversation ever? Or would it be perfectly silent? That'd be cool to try.

Well, that's it for now. Have any of your own, or do you simply want to say I'm wrong? You know where to go. Somewhere else.

Naw, I'm kidding. Put it in the comments section.

-The0

Edit: 03/16/2009

After considering the suggestion of one of my readers, I have added pictures of these crazed superstars (plus the dude I have chosen as my avatar.) I do not own the rights to any of these pictures, they are all owned by their respective companies. That's right, I stole them. Enjoy!