By Paul Ford
Airplane Woes
I'm going South for my job. Two nights in Memphis.
I don't like planes, and I'm prejudiced against the South. I want Yankee facts, not antebellum friendliness. I want the captain
to come on the intercom and shoot off numbers: "Welcome, passengers. We are cruising at 23 kilodrams with a hydric spout of
190 metric engrams. We will arrive in Memphis at oh-one-niner point six-oh-four united microhectares, Greenwich mean." I won't
know what's being said, but the authority in tone gives comfort, five miles in the air.
But more likely, I'll get this cheerful jackass:
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is ol' El Capitan. Gaw-dang, it's a beautiful day, and by my Timex, we'll have this potbellied
posucker off the asphalt in about as long as it takes a heiffer to fertilize a field. Our bee-ootiful stewardspeople will
be strolling back and presenting you with the finest of pillows and peanuts, and for those in a hurry, we have white sheets
with the eye-holes cut out for five dollars each. Thank you for flying.
- Airplanes are made of lighter-than-air aluminates, and powered by arrays of rubber bands.
- The odds of a crash are roughly one in three.
- If someone parks a cubic meter of osmium on seat 37-J of a Boeing L-9 mid sized passenger jet, and all the passengers are
albinos, the chances for crash become one in two.
- Sometimes wings fall off and no one knows why.
- Pilots with healthy bowels crash three times fewer than pilots with inflamed colons.
So damn, tomorrow I fly out, overnight bag in hand, to Flannery's banjo-pluckin, Gothic Christian South. They still fly ol'
Dixie, down there. I'm flying TWA.
PEEK
Ftrain.com is the website of Paul Ford and his pseudonyms. It is showing its age. I'm rewriting the code but it's taking some
time.
FACEBOOK
There is a Facebook group.
TWITTER
You will regret following me on Twitter here.
EMAIL
About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit
things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.
If you have any questions for me, I am very accessible by email. You can email me at ford@ftrain.com and ask me things and I will try to answer. Especially if you want to clarify something or write something critical. I am
glad to clarify things so that you can disagree more effectively.
POKE
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Contact
© 1974-2011 Paul Ford
Recent
@20, by Paul Ford.
Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either.
(October 15)
Recent Offsite Work: Code and Prose.
As a hobby I write.
(January 14)
Rotary Dial.
(August 21)
10 Timeframes.
(June 20)
Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out.
(April 10)
Why I Am Leaving the People of the Red Valley.
(April 7)
Welcome to the Company.
(September 21)
“Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?”.
Forgot to tell you about this.
(July 20)
“The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.
An essay for TheMorningNews.org.
(July 11)
Woods+.
People call me a lot and say: What is this new thing? You're a nerd. Explain it immediately.
(July 10)
Reading Tonight.
Reading!
(May 25)
Recorded Entertainment #2, by Paul Ford.
(May 18)
Recorded Entertainment #1, by Paul Ford.
(May 17)
Nanolaw with Daughter.
Why privacy mattered.
(May 16)
0h30m w/Photoshop, by Paul Ford.
It's immediately clear to me now that I'm writing again that I need to come up with some new forms in order to have fun here—so
that I can get a rhythm and know what I'm doing. One thing that works for me are time limits; pencils up, pencils down. So:
Fridays, write for 30 minutes; edit for 20 minutes max; and go whip up some images if necessary, like the big crappy hand
below that's all meaningful and evocative because it's retro and zoomed-in. Post it, and leave it alone. Can I do that every
Friday? Yes! Will I? Maybe! But I crave that simple continuity. For today, for absolutely no reason other than that it came
unbidden into my brain, the subject will be Photoshop. (Do we have a process? We have a process. It is 11:39 and...)
(May 13)
That Shaggy Feeling.
Soon, orphans.
(May 12)
Antilunchism, by Paul Ford.
Snack trams.
(May 11)
Tickler File Forever, by Paul Ford.
I'll have no one to blame but future me.
(May 10)
Time's Inverted Index, by Paul Ford.
(1) When robots write history we can get in trouble with our past selves. (2) Search-generated, "false" chrestomathies and
the historical fallacy.
(May 9)
Bantha Tracks.
(May 5)
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