Monday, February 08, 2010
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Bat Out Of Hell
02.04.10
Bat Out Of Hell
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - That thing about the cat and the scalding water, ‘What does a cat hate worse than being sprayed with cold water?’ It wasn’t intentional at all; it’s just that the hose had been lying out in the sun all afternoon, and what can I say? It’s the tropics.
__
Everybody knows what going 'like a bat out of hell’ means. ‘Went by me like a bat out of hell.’ ‘Came out of there like a bat out of hell.’ When going like a bat out of hell, especially on a motorbike, you should never go full bat. Everybody knows you never go full bat.
__
I don’t particularly like driving at night, especially on a motorbike. Went up to Takuapa, some thirty kilometers north of here, a half hour ride, after sunset, fully knowing the drive home would be in the dark.
You never know when the Good Lord is going to take you, right? So if you’re expecting it, then it should come as no surprise. It could be a big hole in the road that could easily send a bike cart wheeling and the rider spinning through the air, KIA on impact with the asphalt, or that elephant appearing out of nowhere, heading home also.
I had to take a second look, since these days ever since the 90s I don’t like driving at night because of failing eyesight, a kind of blur. Especially on the streets of Takuapa, where the lighting is poor, there is constant construction throughout the city, the pavement is uneven, and you just might run into an elephant headed home.
“I’m sure glad I wasn’t coming the other way,” I thought, noticing him just at the last minute. “I would have hit him.”
That’s what had me thinking about the high possibility of an accident, and going like a bat out of hell, assurance of death. It’s just all so tenuous, existence, life, when you think about it, a mere 93 million miles from our nearest star.
So tenuous and fragile. Out there floating in the Sea, something could come along and gobble you up. Chance you gotta take, like crossing the street. Should’ve zigged instead of zagged. Should’ve caught the next flight.
Although at night like a bat out of hell, I should have been paying strict attention to the highway, the train of thought led to how I wouldn’t want to die. Wouldn’t want to die in the sky, or falling from the sky, hang gliding, parachute failure, Hindenburg sequel, or blasted out of my seat from an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to drown or have anything to do with not getting air, like, mine shaft suffocation, spelunking, or scuba diving. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a shark, or any other big Jonah-sized fish.
Don’t want to hit an elephant, nor get hit blindside by fist, pool cue, wrecking ball or subway train. No RPG, IED, or UXO. Wouldn’t want people saying, “Never saw it coming…never knew what hit him.” Screw that.
Don’t want to die in a NASCAR crash or any other sort of public event or arena. No Daniel in the lion's den, Christian martyr, gladiator combat, crucifiction or Little Black Sambo. No sirens sweetly singing. Don’t want to die in a car or any other form of transport. No hangman’s noose, lethal injection, hospital, nursing home, or life support hoses, undignified or embarrassed.
Don’t want to die at someone else’s hand or someone else’s hand on the wheel, no death wish or suicide attack. No imprisonment of any sort, body or mind. No Alzheimer’s. No drug-induced coma.
Don’t want to die from carelessness or inattention, like stepping off a curb, looking the other way and getting whacked. Don’t want to go from ineptitude, or any other kind of stupidass negligence or lack of awareness. Please, for me, no mindlessness accident or bizarre twist of fate.
I’m trying to narrow it down, here.
Along with his autograph during an author-signing session in Rochester NY for his book, “The Wheel of Death,” The Zen Buddhist Roshi Philip Kapleau wrote, ‘May you live long and die well.’
I sure liked that. Hope it happens. For you, too.
A good way to go, for me I think, is of old age, out working in my garden. I’ve been working on that visualization for a number of years, for the distance future, of course. Old, old age, experiencing a convergence of garden and self, cultivating compassion with no anticipation of harvest. Along the way, try to contribute to the happiness and well-being of plants and other animals.
Dad went well. I liked his style. Worked hard, lived long, had a loving family, ate a good dinner prepared by a loving woman, and went in and watched about six innings of the Cubs in a Lazy Boy recliner and drifted off, catching my mom by surprise, washing the dinner dishes, when he failed to answer.
Well, you could go on and let your mind meander about all the ways you wouldn’t want to die. Like Elvis, Michael, high and low profile deaths, forgotten and tortured prisoner with no name. But we all come and go, our time here measured in what, years? Breaths? and against what scale? Life of the earth, the gods, a tomato plant, that of a butterfly?
-end
.
Bat Out Of Hell
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - That thing about the cat and the scalding water, ‘What does a cat hate worse than being sprayed with cold water?’ It wasn’t intentional at all; it’s just that the hose had been lying out in the sun all afternoon, and what can I say? It’s the tropics.
__
Everybody knows what going 'like a bat out of hell’ means. ‘Went by me like a bat out of hell.’ ‘Came out of there like a bat out of hell.’ When going like a bat out of hell, especially on a motorbike, you should never go full bat. Everybody knows you never go full bat.
__
I don’t particularly like driving at night, especially on a motorbike. Went up to Takuapa, some thirty kilometers north of here, a half hour ride, after sunset, fully knowing the drive home would be in the dark.
You never know when the Good Lord is going to take you, right? So if you’re expecting it, then it should come as no surprise. It could be a big hole in the road that could easily send a bike cart wheeling and the rider spinning through the air, KIA on impact with the asphalt, or that elephant appearing out of nowhere, heading home also.
I had to take a second look, since these days ever since the 90s I don’t like driving at night because of failing eyesight, a kind of blur. Especially on the streets of Takuapa, where the lighting is poor, there is constant construction throughout the city, the pavement is uneven, and you just might run into an elephant headed home.
“I’m sure glad I wasn’t coming the other way,” I thought, noticing him just at the last minute. “I would have hit him.”
That’s what had me thinking about the high possibility of an accident, and going like a bat out of hell, assurance of death. It’s just all so tenuous, existence, life, when you think about it, a mere 93 million miles from our nearest star.
So tenuous and fragile. Out there floating in the Sea, something could come along and gobble you up. Chance you gotta take, like crossing the street. Should’ve zigged instead of zagged. Should’ve caught the next flight.
Although at night like a bat out of hell, I should have been paying strict attention to the highway, the train of thought led to how I wouldn’t want to die. Wouldn’t want to die in the sky, or falling from the sky, hang gliding, parachute failure, Hindenburg sequel, or blasted out of my seat from an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to drown or have anything to do with not getting air, like, mine shaft suffocation, spelunking, or scuba diving. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a shark, or any other big Jonah-sized fish.
Don’t want to hit an elephant, nor get hit blindside by fist, pool cue, wrecking ball or subway train. No RPG, IED, or UXO. Wouldn’t want people saying, “Never saw it coming…never knew what hit him.” Screw that.
Don’t want to die in a NASCAR crash or any other sort of public event or arena. No Daniel in the lion's den, Christian martyr, gladiator combat, crucifiction or Little Black Sambo. No sirens sweetly singing. Don’t want to die in a car or any other form of transport. No hangman’s noose, lethal injection, hospital, nursing home, or life support hoses, undignified or embarrassed.
Don’t want to die at someone else’s hand or someone else’s hand on the wheel, no death wish or suicide attack. No imprisonment of any sort, body or mind. No Alzheimer’s. No drug-induced coma.
Don’t want to die from carelessness or inattention, like stepping off a curb, looking the other way and getting whacked. Don’t want to go from ineptitude, or any other kind of stupidass negligence or lack of awareness. Please, for me, no mindlessness accident or bizarre twist of fate.
I’m trying to narrow it down, here.
Along with his autograph during an author-signing session in Rochester NY for his book, “The Wheel of Death,” The Zen Buddhist Roshi Philip Kapleau wrote, ‘May you live long and die well.’
I sure liked that. Hope it happens. For you, too.
A good way to go, for me I think, is of old age, out working in my garden. I’ve been working on that visualization for a number of years, for the distance future, of course. Old, old age, experiencing a convergence of garden and self, cultivating compassion with no anticipation of harvest. Along the way, try to contribute to the happiness and well-being of plants and other animals.
Dad went well. I liked his style. Worked hard, lived long, had a loving family, ate a good dinner prepared by a loving woman, and went in and watched about six innings of the Cubs in a Lazy Boy recliner and drifted off, catching my mom by surprise, washing the dinner dishes, when he failed to answer.
Well, you could go on and let your mind meander about all the ways you wouldn’t want to die. Like Elvis, Michael, high and low profile deaths, forgotten and tortured prisoner with no name. But we all come and go, our time here measured in what, years? Breaths? and against what scale? Life of the earth, the gods, a tomato plant, that of a butterfly?
-end
.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Out Of The Blue
01.30.10
Out Of The Blue
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Out of the blue, just as mysteriously as it ceased to function, and as if it had a mind of its own, my computer ‘decided’ it wanted to return to operating status, after being unable to even turn on, at which point I took the machine a half hour north to Takuapa (Tah-koo-uh-pah) IT, where last month they installed a new hard drive, and then informed me after this latest visit that it needed a new motherboard, the warranty had expired, maybe they can fix it at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok but it’s going to be so expensive I might as well consider a new computer, but otherwise take this one back to the U.S. and have Dell fix it there.
So today, it works. God works in mysterious ways, they say. Or, maybe it can only be explained by swamp gas.
A lot of my material comes to me just as I’m falling off to sleep, and I think, ‘I should get up and write that down,’ then think, ‘no, I can remember this one – it’s too good to forget.’ But then, as sleep would have it, I forget it, and…or remember it but can’t ever again find a cohesive context to use it sensibly, so you can look at it two ways; you aren’t getting my best stuff, or, I’m forgetting my best stuff. So, all this is second rate, right?
Activity on the Lake
This lake, Lake Komaneeyakhet, I call it, since the locals know the Wat, the temple on the east side where there is an elementary school, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, with at least three semi-permanent Myanmar camps of several hundred second-class citizens between here and there, is one of several small lakes in the area that absorbed the shock of the tsunami five years ago that left the inhabitants of Khuk Khak relatively unscathed psychologically, but they say there are too many ghosts down on the beach, and there’s a crocodile in the lake.
Big shindig going on over at the Wat tonight under a full moon, with a big shadow theatre stage set up, dozens of vendors selling food and drink, monk toiletry buckets, kid toys, games, tools, used shirt, and your favorite Buddha amulet. A three-day celebration, the significance of which I am ignorant, but there’s a lot going on over there, with a monk walking around all day with a remote microphone on loudspeakers blasting across the water, doing a MC public address routine, I think. Come one, come all.
Ooooh, it’s big. Really big. Huge, in fact. Just came back, weaving my bike through a evening sea of several thousand people on the paved road through the temple grounds. Luang Pau Weng’s 40th memorial celebration, they say.
Big amplified sound, fireworks, floating lanterns, the wide palm-lined entrance avenue from the highway to the wat filled with vending carts, alternating blue and white florescent lights, dried squid on a stick, cotton candy and other sweets, pork on a stick, ice cream, people dressed in white, sitting on blue plastic chairs in a large pavilion, the large grounds turned into a parking lot, a double-decker bus full of people, a van full of monks off-loads. It’s big. Really big.
Across the lake, Karl’s wife, Mon, says, ‘maybe croc-o-die come out.’
___
My neighbor four doors down, Damon, the tattooed bad boy biker from England with whom I have nothing in common other than living in his proximity, was sitting out on his front porch, taking a break from whatever was going on inside the house, when I suggested rather than just sitting there, we could fix his rotted, jerry-rigged bamboo frame that held his porch lights, two strands of amber tiny lights encased in small bamboo balls about the size of tennis balls.
“All you need is a new piece of bamboo,” I said.
“I’ve got it right there,” he said, nodding at two lengths of bamboo lying in the yard that had been spliced together with four nails as a splint. “Style ThaiLAND,” I said to Damon. “On the rez, we fix this with duct tape.”
I came back for my ladder, then held the bamboo across the handlebars of his motorcycle as Damon struggled with a claw hammer to removed the nails, which had been driven through the bamboo, then bent over. After watching Damon proceed to destroy the bamboo pole, I said, “Like Manny always used to say to me, ‘Here, let me show you an easier way to do that’.”
“Who’s Manny?” asked Damon, giving me the hammer.
“My trainer,” I replied, turning the poles around and straightening the nails, then easily driving them back through the bamboo and removing them. Damon didn’t say anything more, nor ask what kind of trainer, as I thought he might.
“Didn’t you used to be a tradesman in England?” I asked. “A carpenter?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
After replacing the bamboo frame and re-stringing the lights, we plugged everything back in. They didn’t work. As Damon fiddled with the light plug, I collected my ladder and drifted on back down here to my place.
___
Over at Karl’s Lakeview Bungalows, I sat in the afternoon eating a slice of Karl’s two-day old chocolate chip cake. It was dry, I told him, and he said in a tone that suggested I was stupid, “You should have had the mango. It’s made today,” as his sign out front attested.
Joe, a returning German guest of Karl’s who I met last year, sat nearly drunk, arguing with his Thai wife, who grabbed the truck keys and sped off, leaving Joe grumbling and mumbling. Mon, waiting tables, asked if he wanted another beer.
“Sing lek ma kop,” said Joe, indicating his wanted a small Singha beer.
“What?” said Mon.
“Sing lek ma kop,” Joe repeated, then as she turned away, knowing I am an American, Joe said in imitation of an exasperated American, somebody from Chicago or New Jersey, “Bring me a Bud…Fuck!” then began laughing drunkenly, uncontrollably, covering his face with a large meaty hand in a vain effort to suppress his mirth.
They don’t have Budweiser in Thailand, never ever seen one, making his joke all the funnier. It was a pretty good joke, coming from a German to an American, indicating his appreciation of American humor and expression. Karl approached our table, raised his eyebrows and gave a slight, helpless ‘oh well’ shrug of his shoulders of his inebriated guest.
____
Early this morning I went down to Mr. Gui’s hardware store for a planer that Mark needed to borrow to finish his new bar tables. While there, I asked for further explanation of the weekend’s festivities at the Wat.
“Today, five o’clock, they take Luang Pau Weng to spirit house,” he informed me, so I don’t want to miss that.
He went on to explain that Luang Pau Weng’s remains had not deterioratetd for 40 years.
“Body no die,” he said, pinching the skin on his arm. ‘Has fingernails…has hair,’ said Mr. Gui, pulling on his hair.
Apparently, Luang Pau Weng was in possession of miraculous powers. “One day,” began Mr. Gui, “Luang Pau Weng sat at Takuapa bus station, and people say, ‘Get on, come on, we go to Khuk Khak.’
‘No,’ said the old monk. “I walk.’
“When the bus arrived in Khuk Khak at the Wat, there sat Luang Pau Weng, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. All the people on the bus look and say, ‘OHHH?’ ”
____
As I pulled out onto the highway, I had to follow that load of chickens, the cages stacked twelve-high, four times the height of the truck, feathers blowing out as the truck sped down the road. I was certain it was going to overturn.
I had never seen a load stacked that high, except for the guy on the motorbike with two dozen crates of eggs lashed on behind him, six feet over his head.
Amazingly, the chicken truck maintained upright as the driver weaved on springs and two wheels around motorbikes and turning vehicles, losing me as I chased him five kilometers through Bang Niang and southward toward Khao Lak. In my mind I saw the overturned truck with cages burst open and chickens scattering in the traffic, what could promise to be a terrific photo op, but it never happened.
___
Returned to the Wat for the placement of Luang Pau Weng’s remains in the spiffy new spirit house / mini-temple built for the purpose thereof. Thousands had gathered for the ceremony, everybody but a half dozen of us dressed entirely in white. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Maybe there were four of us.
After waiting in silent formation for an interminable time that would have made a marine corps boot camp appear as child’s play, all the local monks, and those trucked in for the occasion, led the throng of people carrying the old monk’s body in the fanciest casket I have ever seen, three times around the small temple to its resting spot, where the crowd pressed forward into a compact, compressed knit of humanity seeking a closer reach, like an Elvis concert.
You know how they do the public funerals of slain martyrs in Palestine and Iran, with huge masses of jostling people carrying the casket on their shoulders? It was sort of like that, but not nearly as visceral and mad. The people carried a long string, a very long string, affixed at one end to the casket, and the other disappearing deep into the crowd.
Having channeled the old monk’s spirit, I sat off to the side eating noodles on the steps of an adjacent temple (there’s like, four or five temples of varying sizes on the grounds), being forgiven for eating during the ceremony and not wearing white, nor being Thai, short, with black hair. He clearly understood that I, as a non-Buddhist but empathetic foreigner, had only a slight clue of my cultural and religious impropriety.
There were other people eating, too. I wasn’t the only one. There were six or seven of us, at least. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Could have been more like four.
The front rank of five monks carried incense, flowers, a large gold-framed picture of the monk, and holy water, which was splashed this way and that on the attendees as the procession passed.
From the photo, taken when he was already old already, looked as if he was a pretty neat guy. I wonder what he really knew, and if indeed he was resident of another realm, bestowing blessings on faithful practitioners and watching the whole affair, and me eat noodles, or if he was simply gone, his mummified remains holding a spellbound populace in a perpetuated mystical belief that somehow, by venerating his life and accomplishment, their lives will be enhanced.
Alms, tithes, frankincense, flesh offerings, gifts, sacrifices, and desperate bargains. Feed the monks, dance through fire, swim in the Sea. Mummies have hair and fingernails. Elvis has hair and fingernails. Under the full moon, firecrackers and festivities, will the crocodile come ashore?
-end
Out Of The Blue
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Out of the blue, just as mysteriously as it ceased to function, and as if it had a mind of its own, my computer ‘decided’ it wanted to return to operating status, after being unable to even turn on, at which point I took the machine a half hour north to Takuapa (Tah-koo-uh-pah) IT, where last month they installed a new hard drive, and then informed me after this latest visit that it needed a new motherboard, the warranty had expired, maybe they can fix it at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok but it’s going to be so expensive I might as well consider a new computer, but otherwise take this one back to the U.S. and have Dell fix it there.
So today, it works. God works in mysterious ways, they say. Or, maybe it can only be explained by swamp gas.
A lot of my material comes to me just as I’m falling off to sleep, and I think, ‘I should get up and write that down,’ then think, ‘no, I can remember this one – it’s too good to forget.’ But then, as sleep would have it, I forget it, and…or remember it but can’t ever again find a cohesive context to use it sensibly, so you can look at it two ways; you aren’t getting my best stuff, or, I’m forgetting my best stuff. So, all this is second rate, right?
Activity on the Lake
This lake, Lake Komaneeyakhet, I call it, since the locals know the Wat, the temple on the east side where there is an elementary school, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, with at least three semi-permanent Myanmar camps of several hundred second-class citizens between here and there, is one of several small lakes in the area that absorbed the shock of the tsunami five years ago that left the inhabitants of Khuk Khak relatively unscathed psychologically, but they say there are too many ghosts down on the beach, and there’s a crocodile in the lake.
Big shindig going on over at the Wat tonight under a full moon, with a big shadow theatre stage set up, dozens of vendors selling food and drink, monk toiletry buckets, kid toys, games, tools, used shirt, and your favorite Buddha amulet. A three-day celebration, the significance of which I am ignorant, but there’s a lot going on over there, with a monk walking around all day with a remote microphone on loudspeakers blasting across the water, doing a MC public address routine, I think. Come one, come all.
Ooooh, it’s big. Really big. Huge, in fact. Just came back, weaving my bike through a evening sea of several thousand people on the paved road through the temple grounds. Luang Pau Weng’s 40th memorial celebration, they say.
Big amplified sound, fireworks, floating lanterns, the wide palm-lined entrance avenue from the highway to the wat filled with vending carts, alternating blue and white florescent lights, dried squid on a stick, cotton candy and other sweets, pork on a stick, ice cream, people dressed in white, sitting on blue plastic chairs in a large pavilion, the large grounds turned into a parking lot, a double-decker bus full of people, a van full of monks off-loads. It’s big. Really big.
Across the lake, Karl’s wife, Mon, says, ‘maybe croc-o-die come out.’
___
My neighbor four doors down, Damon, the tattooed bad boy biker from England with whom I have nothing in common other than living in his proximity, was sitting out on his front porch, taking a break from whatever was going on inside the house, when I suggested rather than just sitting there, we could fix his rotted, jerry-rigged bamboo frame that held his porch lights, two strands of amber tiny lights encased in small bamboo balls about the size of tennis balls.
“All you need is a new piece of bamboo,” I said.
“I’ve got it right there,” he said, nodding at two lengths of bamboo lying in the yard that had been spliced together with four nails as a splint. “Style ThaiLAND,” I said to Damon. “On the rez, we fix this with duct tape.”
I came back for my ladder, then held the bamboo across the handlebars of his motorcycle as Damon struggled with a claw hammer to removed the nails, which had been driven through the bamboo, then bent over. After watching Damon proceed to destroy the bamboo pole, I said, “Like Manny always used to say to me, ‘Here, let me show you an easier way to do that’.”
“Who’s Manny?” asked Damon, giving me the hammer.
“My trainer,” I replied, turning the poles around and straightening the nails, then easily driving them back through the bamboo and removing them. Damon didn’t say anything more, nor ask what kind of trainer, as I thought he might.
“Didn’t you used to be a tradesman in England?” I asked. “A carpenter?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
After replacing the bamboo frame and re-stringing the lights, we plugged everything back in. They didn’t work. As Damon fiddled with the light plug, I collected my ladder and drifted on back down here to my place.
___
Over at Karl’s Lakeview Bungalows, I sat in the afternoon eating a slice of Karl’s two-day old chocolate chip cake. It was dry, I told him, and he said in a tone that suggested I was stupid, “You should have had the mango. It’s made today,” as his sign out front attested.
Joe, a returning German guest of Karl’s who I met last year, sat nearly drunk, arguing with his Thai wife, who grabbed the truck keys and sped off, leaving Joe grumbling and mumbling. Mon, waiting tables, asked if he wanted another beer.
“Sing lek ma kop,” said Joe, indicating his wanted a small Singha beer.
“What?” said Mon.
“Sing lek ma kop,” Joe repeated, then as she turned away, knowing I am an American, Joe said in imitation of an exasperated American, somebody from Chicago or New Jersey, “Bring me a Bud…Fuck!” then began laughing drunkenly, uncontrollably, covering his face with a large meaty hand in a vain effort to suppress his mirth.
They don’t have Budweiser in Thailand, never ever seen one, making his joke all the funnier. It was a pretty good joke, coming from a German to an American, indicating his appreciation of American humor and expression. Karl approached our table, raised his eyebrows and gave a slight, helpless ‘oh well’ shrug of his shoulders of his inebriated guest.
____
Early this morning I went down to Mr. Gui’s hardware store for a planer that Mark needed to borrow to finish his new bar tables. While there, I asked for further explanation of the weekend’s festivities at the Wat.
“Today, five o’clock, they take Luang Pau Weng to spirit house,” he informed me, so I don’t want to miss that.
He went on to explain that Luang Pau Weng’s remains had not deterioratetd for 40 years.
“Body no die,” he said, pinching the skin on his arm. ‘Has fingernails…has hair,’ said Mr. Gui, pulling on his hair.
Apparently, Luang Pau Weng was in possession of miraculous powers. “One day,” began Mr. Gui, “Luang Pau Weng sat at Takuapa bus station, and people say, ‘Get on, come on, we go to Khuk Khak.’
‘No,’ said the old monk. “I walk.’
“When the bus arrived in Khuk Khak at the Wat, there sat Luang Pau Weng, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. All the people on the bus look and say, ‘OHHH?’ ”
____
As I pulled out onto the highway, I had to follow that load of chickens, the cages stacked twelve-high, four times the height of the truck, feathers blowing out as the truck sped down the road. I was certain it was going to overturn.
I had never seen a load stacked that high, except for the guy on the motorbike with two dozen crates of eggs lashed on behind him, six feet over his head.
Amazingly, the chicken truck maintained upright as the driver weaved on springs and two wheels around motorbikes and turning vehicles, losing me as I chased him five kilometers through Bang Niang and southward toward Khao Lak. In my mind I saw the overturned truck with cages burst open and chickens scattering in the traffic, what could promise to be a terrific photo op, but it never happened.
___
Returned to the Wat for the placement of Luang Pau Weng’s remains in the spiffy new spirit house / mini-temple built for the purpose thereof. Thousands had gathered for the ceremony, everybody but a half dozen of us dressed entirely in white. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Maybe there were four of us.
After waiting in silent formation for an interminable time that would have made a marine corps boot camp appear as child’s play, all the local monks, and those trucked in for the occasion, led the throng of people carrying the old monk’s body in the fanciest casket I have ever seen, three times around the small temple to its resting spot, where the crowd pressed forward into a compact, compressed knit of humanity seeking a closer reach, like an Elvis concert.
You know how they do the public funerals of slain martyrs in Palestine and Iran, with huge masses of jostling people carrying the casket on their shoulders? It was sort of like that, but not nearly as visceral and mad. The people carried a long string, a very long string, affixed at one end to the casket, and the other disappearing deep into the crowd.
Having channeled the old monk’s spirit, I sat off to the side eating noodles on the steps of an adjacent temple (there’s like, four or five temples of varying sizes on the grounds), being forgiven for eating during the ceremony and not wearing white, nor being Thai, short, with black hair. He clearly understood that I, as a non-Buddhist but empathetic foreigner, had only a slight clue of my cultural and religious impropriety.
There were other people eating, too. I wasn’t the only one. There were six or seven of us, at least. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Could have been more like four.
The front rank of five monks carried incense, flowers, a large gold-framed picture of the monk, and holy water, which was splashed this way and that on the attendees as the procession passed.
From the photo, taken when he was already old already, looked as if he was a pretty neat guy. I wonder what he really knew, and if indeed he was resident of another realm, bestowing blessings on faithful practitioners and watching the whole affair, and me eat noodles, or if he was simply gone, his mummified remains holding a spellbound populace in a perpetuated mystical belief that somehow, by venerating his life and accomplishment, their lives will be enhanced.
Alms, tithes, frankincense, flesh offerings, gifts, sacrifices, and desperate bargains. Feed the monks, dance through fire, swim in the Sea. Mummies have hair and fingernails. Elvis has hair and fingernails. Under the full moon, firecrackers and festivities, will the crocodile come ashore?
-end
Thursday, December 31, 2009
How Smart We Could Have Been
01.02.10
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Lately, like, in the past year or two, I've experienced a number of people reminding me of how smart they are. I sat and listened to their self-stories of I.Q. testings in the third grade, what they got on their S.A.T.s, entrance exams, how they performed on a Yahoo intelligence test, a Facebook questionaire, how close to genius they must be.
I could have simply said to each of them, right then and there, 'Mine's higher', or reminded them of some stupid shit they've pulled, but who am I to burst anyone's fiction? And to the pup who was bragging about the forty women he'd slept with, I could have told him, 'I stopped counting at 250,' but I didn't want to throw a wet towel on his story.
And to the Gee-How-Smart-I-Am people, I could have added, 'Mine was off the charts. Broke the machine. Needle went wayyyy into the red. They said I was so brilliant, they had no idea of how smart I really was.'
Well, that's what I could have said, or wish I'd said, as 'come back' as they say here for 'reply', but like I probably mentioned previously, and as Manny always used to say, 'You're slow. You're wayyy too slow on your feet. You never gonna make it at this pace.'
So, in fact, I'm a lot slower than most people, the guy who doesn't get the joke, the guy who asks, 'what happened?', late on the scene, bottom third of the class, couldn't find the party, never read the instructions, almost didn't graduate, had to re-take the final...
My degree? Mechanics.
"Is that deisel or gas?" the guy asked, like he thought I'd be good on a VW bus.
"Quantified Interstellar," I could have said. Could have just said, 'Quantum,' I guess, but again, didn't think of it until many days later.
Like Manny, my high school guidance counselor, and my birth doctor all said, 'You haven't got what it takes." Except for Manny, those weren't their exact words, but to give you an idea, my counselor suggested I might have a future in Vietnam, which, at the time, was blazing.
(there he goes, taking the story off into the 'Nam. How long is THIS going to last?)
"You could go to the 'Nam?" she suggested both as a question and a career option. And my birth doctor suggested to my mother that I could be given up for adoption, "you know...if you don't want to keep it," they said he said. "And if we can find some takers."
They didn't have to tell me. I was there. I heard him say it. Verified it in a past-life regression session. I wanted to look him up between that stint with the circus, parole, and the 'Nam, but everything was coming too quick in those days, everything too quick, and my math teacher in middle school sarcastically nicknamed me,'Quickness', and like I said, I was slow, except after those first few times in front of the bench.
"You here for a case?" asked the judge between items on the docket. I had a briefcase, and had dressed like a third-year law student.
"Yes, your Honor," I replied.
"Who's?" the judge asked, flipping through a stack of files.
"Mine," I said.
Upshot of it was, her near-respect soon turned to disdain as she read my file.
"I see here you said you're a rocket scientist," she said. "You must think you're pretty smart."
"YESDRILLSERGEANT!" I almost blurted out, but repressed.
Same thing Manny used to say. God, I got tired of hearing that. "Oh, no, Your Honor," I told her. "I'm not smart. If I was, I wouldn't be here."
She said she couldn't have agreed with me more, sentenced me to fif..five years, suspended it on an option to the 'Nam, which I took, and...the rest is history.
Good news was, didn't have to pull time in the joint. Bad news was, I had to pull two tours in the Nam.
You might be probably thinking, 'going to a war during its heighth isn't very smart.'
And you'd be right. It isn't, especially if you enlist. But going as a medic was, as it turned out. Enlisting, in and of itself, was pretty idiotic, but was perfectly understandable given my dim prospects for a future in the circus and the socio-cultural programming of who's fit for duty in America.
When does a person become the programmer? Ask a VA shrink.
"Ha ha ha," said the jerk with my orders. "You thought becoming a medic was smart, huh? You thought you'd be hanging around educated people, nurses, and drugs, right?"
I thought so, but they put me in helicopters. Grunts on the ground said, "ain't no fuckin' way I'd fly," but I loved it. Good news was, I got to fly. Bad news was, we got shot down.
(end 'Nam digression, return to story)
So, just like Manny, the juvenile home people, and the Ringmaster predicted, "Instead of hearing the man say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the next gonna be somebody,' you gonna hear The Man say, 'All rise!'
Sure enough, their prophesies fulfilled, their prescription's definition's boundaries I couldn't escape. Nobody in those days was thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box is something that wouldn't occur until decades later.
Same way here. People ask, 'You work?'
I, uh, stammer and glance away if I'm having a slow day, which is usually every day, but if I'm quicker on my feet and have done some preliminary rehearsal, I tell them, "Yes. EVERY day!"
'What you do?'
"I'm a doc..a wri..a..stan..er, I'malmostretired."
___
What? You wanted a story about elephants and coconut palms from Thailand? You can write this shit from ANYwhere, man. Don't matter where you are, Manny would say. You're going to be doing whatever you're doing.
Ok. So why not the tropics? Tom said Pine Ridge had two feet of snow.
Or maybe you wanted a story about Li An Song Nu Kyi, a fascinating figure, and boss of the plane production company after the shower caddy venture tanked, not because of market or sales, but because it wasn't fun anymore. It became quite tedious long before the 493rd caddy, the production cut-off.
People still ask, "You still have caddies?"
The plane production is in it's fourth year now, going on five, if I can get the crew back together. It's worse than a band. In a band, you've got egos and attitudes and people trippin' on themselves, and with a crew of Myanmar, you've got all of that, on top of the language problem and illegal immigration status. It's one exasperating episode after another.
The squadron's doing ok, though. We've got some really capable people on board in command positions, a little reckless at times, but they can think for themselves and get the job done.
uh.
uh.
Go on.
"Go on," she said, showing interest, but caught glancing up at the clock.
"I guess I'm eating into your lunch hour," I said, looking over my shoulder at the clock and letting her know I was paying attention to her eyes, the new VA shrink, undergraduate work at Purdue, six years med school at Indiana University, psychiatric internship at...I forget, Chicago or somewhere, doesn't matter, what mattered is that I know those schools, taught at one of 'em, played her hometown, Elkhart, in basketball, which she found remarkably interesting and strangely coincidental, there in her office, where she asked what I taught and was wondering about why I hadn't had an appointment in five years, and my comment, 'the intake nurses wanted me to report back on the new shrink.'*
"Oh,no," she said, dismissing my concern for her time. "We started late."
She'd been on the job for three weeks, the degrees conspicuously large on the wall. I told her they had a high rate of turnover in her position.
She didn't say anything, but let the air fall silent, a cue that I was the one to be doing the talking in that setting. She had already revealed too much, but could rationalize it as establishing a friendly but professional doctor/client rapport. I explained, "South Dakota winters are tough."
When our time was up, leaving her only 35 minutes for lunch, I told her I'd see her in six months. She seemed surprised. "You don't want another appointment for six months?" she asked.
"I'm going away," I replied. "Someplace warm...for my mental health. South Dakota winters are tough."
___
"That was a long time ago, man," my friend said in my kitchen, implying that it was time to let it go. Well, you could say that about Wounded Knee, the Holocaust, the Wells Fargo guy riding shotgun who got shot with an arrow in the teeth, the treaty, birth on Earth, or any other traumatic event.
Good news is, there's treatment, except for the Wells Fargo guy. Recent research says you tell your story, find new activities to plunge into, and surround yourself with friends and a network of support. Exercise and eat right. Go shopping.
Bad news is, when you're in that space, you don't feel like doing any of that shit.
Good news was, there was cardiac recovery. Bad news was, the study control group was already all hospitalized.
___
Am I doing any writing? Like, a book? Yes and no. A manuscript in the works? Well, there's the screenplay, 'Stinky Boy', and the talking medicinal plant story that has the potential of becoming a major motion picture and viral box office hit, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail series that I uh..uh
am working on, and of course, there's that Big One out there, you know, like a trophy fish, just waiting to be caught, or in my case, to be written, since you said 'writing', but, ah, everything in it's own due time, right?
No, it's not...none of this is actually ON PAPER...HA..but they're ideas, and ideas are good, right? ideas while walking down the beach.
- end
*"How is he?" the nurses asked excitedly in the lower hallway of Building A, their eyes alive with the prospect of new gossip, "the new shrink."
"He isn't a he," I told them. "She's a she. And she's young. Just finished up her internship."
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Lately, like, in the past year or two, I've experienced a number of people reminding me of how smart they are. I sat and listened to their self-stories of I.Q. testings in the third grade, what they got on their S.A.T.s, entrance exams, how they performed on a Yahoo intelligence test, a Facebook questionaire, how close to genius they must be.
I could have simply said to each of them, right then and there, 'Mine's higher', or reminded them of some stupid shit they've pulled, but who am I to burst anyone's fiction? And to the pup who was bragging about the forty women he'd slept with, I could have told him, 'I stopped counting at 250,' but I didn't want to throw a wet towel on his story.
And to the Gee-How-Smart-I-Am people, I could have added, 'Mine was off the charts. Broke the machine. Needle went wayyyy into the red. They said I was so brilliant, they had no idea of how smart I really was.'
Well, that's what I could have said, or wish I'd said, as 'come back' as they say here for 'reply', but like I probably mentioned previously, and as Manny always used to say, 'You're slow. You're wayyy too slow on your feet. You never gonna make it at this pace.'
So, in fact, I'm a lot slower than most people, the guy who doesn't get the joke, the guy who asks, 'what happened?', late on the scene, bottom third of the class, couldn't find the party, never read the instructions, almost didn't graduate, had to re-take the final...
My degree? Mechanics.
"Is that deisel or gas?" the guy asked, like he thought I'd be good on a VW bus.
"Quantified Interstellar," I could have said. Could have just said, 'Quantum,' I guess, but again, didn't think of it until many days later.
Like Manny, my high school guidance counselor, and my birth doctor all said, 'You haven't got what it takes." Except for Manny, those weren't their exact words, but to give you an idea, my counselor suggested I might have a future in Vietnam, which, at the time, was blazing.
(there he goes, taking the story off into the 'Nam. How long is THIS going to last?)
"You could go to the 'Nam?" she suggested both as a question and a career option. And my birth doctor suggested to my mother that I could be given up for adoption, "you know...if you don't want to keep it," they said he said. "And if we can find some takers."
They didn't have to tell me. I was there. I heard him say it. Verified it in a past-life regression session. I wanted to look him up between that stint with the circus, parole, and the 'Nam, but everything was coming too quick in those days, everything too quick, and my math teacher in middle school sarcastically nicknamed me,'Quickness', and like I said, I was slow, except after those first few times in front of the bench.
"You here for a case?" asked the judge between items on the docket. I had a briefcase, and had dressed like a third-year law student.
"Yes, your Honor," I replied.
"Who's?" the judge asked, flipping through a stack of files.
"Mine," I said.
Upshot of it was, her near-respect soon turned to disdain as she read my file.
"I see here you said you're a rocket scientist," she said. "You must think you're pretty smart."
"YESDRILLSERGEANT!" I almost blurted out, but repressed.
Same thing Manny used to say. God, I got tired of hearing that. "Oh, no, Your Honor," I told her. "I'm not smart. If I was, I wouldn't be here."
She said she couldn't have agreed with me more, sentenced me to fif..five years, suspended it on an option to the 'Nam, which I took, and...the rest is history.
Good news was, didn't have to pull time in the joint. Bad news was, I had to pull two tours in the Nam.
You might be probably thinking, 'going to a war during its heighth isn't very smart.'
And you'd be right. It isn't, especially if you enlist. But going as a medic was, as it turned out. Enlisting, in and of itself, was pretty idiotic, but was perfectly understandable given my dim prospects for a future in the circus and the socio-cultural programming of who's fit for duty in America.
When does a person become the programmer? Ask a VA shrink.
"Ha ha ha," said the jerk with my orders. "You thought becoming a medic was smart, huh? You thought you'd be hanging around educated people, nurses, and drugs, right?"
I thought so, but they put me in helicopters. Grunts on the ground said, "ain't no fuckin' way I'd fly," but I loved it. Good news was, I got to fly. Bad news was, we got shot down.
(end 'Nam digression, return to story)
So, just like Manny, the juvenile home people, and the Ringmaster predicted, "Instead of hearing the man say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the next gonna be somebody,' you gonna hear The Man say, 'All rise!'
Sure enough, their prophesies fulfilled, their prescription's definition's boundaries I couldn't escape. Nobody in those days was thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box is something that wouldn't occur until decades later.
Same way here. People ask, 'You work?'
I, uh, stammer and glance away if I'm having a slow day, which is usually every day, but if I'm quicker on my feet and have done some preliminary rehearsal, I tell them, "Yes. EVERY day!"
'What you do?'
"I'm a doc..a wri..a..stan..er, I'malmostretired."
___
What? You wanted a story about elephants and coconut palms from Thailand? You can write this shit from ANYwhere, man. Don't matter where you are, Manny would say. You're going to be doing whatever you're doing.
Ok. So why not the tropics? Tom said Pine Ridge had two feet of snow.
Or maybe you wanted a story about Li An Song Nu Kyi, a fascinating figure, and boss of the plane production company after the shower caddy venture tanked, not because of market or sales, but because it wasn't fun anymore. It became quite tedious long before the 493rd caddy, the production cut-off.
People still ask, "You still have caddies?"
The plane production is in it's fourth year now, going on five, if I can get the crew back together. It's worse than a band. In a band, you've got egos and attitudes and people trippin' on themselves, and with a crew of Myanmar, you've got all of that, on top of the language problem and illegal immigration status. It's one exasperating episode after another.
The squadron's doing ok, though. We've got some really capable people on board in command positions, a little reckless at times, but they can think for themselves and get the job done.
uh.
uh.
Go on.
"Go on," she said, showing interest, but caught glancing up at the clock.
"I guess I'm eating into your lunch hour," I said, looking over my shoulder at the clock and letting her know I was paying attention to her eyes, the new VA shrink, undergraduate work at Purdue, six years med school at Indiana University, psychiatric internship at...I forget, Chicago or somewhere, doesn't matter, what mattered is that I know those schools, taught at one of 'em, played her hometown, Elkhart, in basketball, which she found remarkably interesting and strangely coincidental, there in her office, where she asked what I taught and was wondering about why I hadn't had an appointment in five years, and my comment, 'the intake nurses wanted me to report back on the new shrink.'*
"Oh,no," she said, dismissing my concern for her time. "We started late."
She'd been on the job for three weeks, the degrees conspicuously large on the wall. I told her they had a high rate of turnover in her position.
She didn't say anything, but let the air fall silent, a cue that I was the one to be doing the talking in that setting. She had already revealed too much, but could rationalize it as establishing a friendly but professional doctor/client rapport. I explained, "South Dakota winters are tough."
When our time was up, leaving her only 35 minutes for lunch, I told her I'd see her in six months. She seemed surprised. "You don't want another appointment for six months?" she asked.
"I'm going away," I replied. "Someplace warm...for my mental health. South Dakota winters are tough."
___
"That was a long time ago, man," my friend said in my kitchen, implying that it was time to let it go. Well, you could say that about Wounded Knee, the Holocaust, the Wells Fargo guy riding shotgun who got shot with an arrow in the teeth, the treaty, birth on Earth, or any other traumatic event.
Good news is, there's treatment, except for the Wells Fargo guy. Recent research says you tell your story, find new activities to plunge into, and surround yourself with friends and a network of support. Exercise and eat right. Go shopping.
Bad news is, when you're in that space, you don't feel like doing any of that shit.
Good news was, there was cardiac recovery. Bad news was, the study control group was already all hospitalized.
___
Am I doing any writing? Like, a book? Yes and no. A manuscript in the works? Well, there's the screenplay, 'Stinky Boy', and the talking medicinal plant story that has the potential of becoming a major motion picture and viral box office hit, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail series that I uh..uh
am working on, and of course, there's that Big One out there, you know, like a trophy fish, just waiting to be caught, or in my case, to be written, since you said 'writing', but, ah, everything in it's own due time, right?
No, it's not...none of this is actually ON PAPER...HA..but they're ideas, and ideas are good, right? ideas while walking down the beach.
- end
*"How is he?" the nurses asked excitedly in the lower hallway of Building A, their eyes alive with the prospect of new gossip, "the new shrink."
"He isn't a he," I told them. "She's a she. And she's young. Just finished up her internship."
.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Not of This World / Only A Matter of Time
12.28.09
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Stay gone from a place for six months, and you can expect just about anything to happen in your absence, the least of which is lizards and mice. Look what happened at Angkor Wat. The jungle prevailed for six centuries.
Same same here, land of a billion buddhas, south on the Isthmus of Kra, Tsunami-land, land of smiles.
They held the 5th year memorial ceremonies yesterday, the 26th, for all the lives lost here, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Prayers, candles, lanterns, sent to the sky, along with police whistles and a major traffic jam at the site of 'The Police Boat', a national monument now, swept in a full kilometer from the beach, just across from the Bang Niang Saturday fresh market, where thousands of memorial attendees, some bused in, joined the usual throng, and at least one motorcycle accident, from what I could see when I went through the funnel earlier with thirty other honda riders. It was madhouse enough that I stayed home and revisited the grief through photos on the net.
No visit from royalty, no helicopters, no big deal for many people, five years on, now. The Real 3-D World, war, no job, and the renewed holiday prospect of missing an airport ETA has overshadowed any remote concern for anyone not directly affected, such as, me, or the governor of the province.
Being directly affected, that's what got me here in the first place, and here I am, still here now. And when here it's 97 sizzling degrees at midday, and Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Rapid City are in the deep freeze, that's what got a lot of those foreigners killed who came here for Christmas.
The Governor of the province? How would you like to preside over a disaster of unparalleled proportions? Whatshisname, Blanco, down in Katrina-land, the governor here in Tsunami-land, Bush in his two administrations, al-Bashir over in Darfur. No easy task.
Just saying it's a tough job. What are you going to do with all the bodies? It's already a crowded planet. If you're the guy, then you're the guy.
___
If you were wondering about 'The List' and why your name wasn't on it, or why it was so short, well, there's a longer list, much longer. How do you get on it? Easy, sort of. All you have to do is, visit me, pretty much, here or Slim Buttes, or pay the 499.99 for your aircraft.
That automatically puts you on The List, and you also, by virtue of being on The List, automatically become a member, a standing member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron.
In addition to the said aircraft and rank designation, 'Rookie/Cadet', you will also automatically receive the squadron bulletin, briefings, updates, and SITREPS (situaion reports) from the field, delivered live stream, text, cell, facebook, U Tube, blog, iphone, blackberry, and all other forms of automatic instant communication of insignificant minutiae to keep you and other third parties informed of detailed information you'd normally not be concerned with whatsoever.
___
Is It Just Me
Are my eyes just seeing things, or is it you, too?
The other night, Christmas Eve, I was riding my bike, a Honda 125, home from Carl's dinner party on the other side of the lake, down a rather spooky narrow lane, when in the headlight I caught a glimpse of something quite large, a big black...shape...darting back into the jungle.
Something like a big black square. A square with legs. I didn't get a real good look at it, because it was pitch black already, and I just caught it there in the light for a fraction of a second.
I kept going. I went right on by, but with a little bit of a shiver up my spine, if you know what I mean...like, I was thinking as I went by, 'what if whatever it was I saw would suddenly rush out of the jungle and...and...I don't know, knock me off the bike, or rip me to shreds or consume me in one bite or something.
Anyway, it could have been my imagination, but the shiver was real.
Well, ok, I could have dismissed all that, but today, just today, Claudia said to me and Damon, 'Did you see that?'
'Yeah,' said Damon.
"What?" I asked.
"Something up there in the trees. It's behind the leaves," she said, nodding across the road into the jungle at some higher branches, straining with concern to see it again. "A monkey or something," she said. "It was big."
I looked and didn't see anything. If it was big, then why couldn't you see it?
Damon said he saw it, too, out of the corner of his eye.
So it's not just me. Just like last summer, sitting there at my table with Bo and Misty and Tom and somebody else, I forget who, listening to Misty finishing up a ghost story when Bo described the same thing I had seen.
When he said that, it sent a shiver up my spine the same way that shape did the other night. Bo was talking about a...creature...he saw in the headlights on the side of the road, the same thing I had seen a month earlier and wasn't going to tell anyone about.
I was driving back to the rez from Colorado and had left so late it would have my arrival just at pre-dawn. In the hills just south of Chadron, NE when it was still black outside, I passed a dog standing on the side of the road that looked grey and mangy with a sort of humped back and long tail and sick eyes and long pointy ears, too long for a dog, and, hey, that's not a dog...that's a...a...must be a coyote...no...must be a...
What the hell WAS that thing? why didn't it move when I went by? didn't flinch. just stood there.
At first, I thought to turn around and return to check, drive by real slow, and then I got that shiver, gripped the wheel and stepped on the gas, thinking to put as much space as possible between me and whatever it was back there. "HELL, NO!" I thought, as a follow-up thought to going back there and checking.
It was identical to the animal Bo described. When I said he didn't move when I went by, Bo looked up slowly and said, "Yeahhh. Didn't move. Just stood there and looked at us when we went by. It was like something not of this world."
___
Only A Matter of Time
I knew it was only a matter of time. A person doesn't really own an idea. The ideas are out there. Floating around. Chances are, in fact, a high probability, if you 'came up with' an idea, somebody else somewhere has already thought of it, or is thinking of it at the same time as you, snatching it out of the atmosphere. Lookit the light bulb, aerial flight, the internal combustion engine, heliocentric theory, paranoid end-of-the-world delusion.
So, I had this idea, this idea that I was the only one in the world running a vintage bi-plane squadron, and cranking out planes at the rate of about twenty-five a year.
I know, that's slow, in production terms, far slower than Boeing, and that's what I told the Myanmar crew, that they were working too long on one plane, but over here, to save face, you can't just bitch people out the way we do in the States, like, 'in your face' is something that any American would know the meaning of.
So, the production story is something that will require some finessing, in addition to finding a new crew since most of them got deported, and trying to find the temperamental crew boss, Li An Song Nyu Ki, was like trying to hunt down a...a...Myanmar illegal immigrant in Thailand. People said they had 'seen her around some', but 'not lately'.
So, I've got to start over from scratch if I want to resume the production line, staying one step ahead of Wal-Mart by discontinuing the bi-plane Sopwiths and going exclusively with the tri-wing Fokker dual-plane mobiles.
And it appears I need to get going on it since I saw the cardboard cutout on the street in Bangkok while walking outside the Grand Palace with Rex, seeking out temple pants and buddha amulets.
"Hey. There's your plane," said Rex, pointing down at cut-out items at a street vendor. There it was, the bi-plane cut-out, along with a race car, a battle ship and an aircraft carrier. Yeah, they took the idea and saw how far they could run with it. Can you imagine an aircraft carrier cardboard cutout? How's it gonna float?
Sure enough, somebody had copied my idea, and I instantly thought of Li An's comment.
'Maybe I sell to Chinese', she had said in an eerily threatening email last summer. Looks like she carried through with it, and I wonder how much she got, although the model I saw was NO WHERE NEAR the quality of the 335th. You know how boxy and crude communist products are...except for that new sleek superfast train the Chinese just made.
'Thailand can copeee any thiiiing,' they will say. Rolex, Nike, DVDs, Adidas, your idea. The weird thing is, they will put up the same product right next door. So there it was, right on the street in Bangkok, my idea. Except for the price differential (they're selling theirs for 100 Thai Baht, about three bucks), they have no advantage over my one-of-a-kind, made in the USA (except for those produced here), and two other reasons I can't think of right now that makes the $499.99 asking price worth it.
"See?" I said to Rex, while flipping through the cripple's inventory. "They're all the same."
"You hab blue?" I asked the vendor.
"No," he replied. "All same same. Only hab Led."
I could see the flash, the light bulb go on in his eyes. Blue. 'Now, there's an idea.'
___
Mr., who got beat up at his grand opening 'Dead Man's Party' on Christmas Eve, was earlier running around saying he was two days behind schedule.
"I've got a million things to do," he said. "Got to go get supplies for everybody's nostrils and everybody's lungs," he had said.
Turned out that things became heated and out of control during the early hours of Christmas morning, and whaddaya know, Mr. became my first patient this year.
My second patient could have been the large German lady, when she and her husband pulled up on two bikes in front of the Honda shop. After stopping, she failed to remove her feet from the pegs and put them down, thus, as gravity would have it, fell over with the bike, and appeared to be fantastically stupid. I thought I was the only one to do that, but again, it isn't just me.
- end
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Stay gone from a place for six months, and you can expect just about anything to happen in your absence, the least of which is lizards and mice. Look what happened at Angkor Wat. The jungle prevailed for six centuries.
Same same here, land of a billion buddhas, south on the Isthmus of Kra, Tsunami-land, land of smiles.
They held the 5th year memorial ceremonies yesterday, the 26th, for all the lives lost here, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Prayers, candles, lanterns, sent to the sky, along with police whistles and a major traffic jam at the site of 'The Police Boat', a national monument now, swept in a full kilometer from the beach, just across from the Bang Niang Saturday fresh market, where thousands of memorial attendees, some bused in, joined the usual throng, and at least one motorcycle accident, from what I could see when I went through the funnel earlier with thirty other honda riders. It was madhouse enough that I stayed home and revisited the grief through photos on the net.
No visit from royalty, no helicopters, no big deal for many people, five years on, now. The Real 3-D World, war, no job, and the renewed holiday prospect of missing an airport ETA has overshadowed any remote concern for anyone not directly affected, such as, me, or the governor of the province.
Being directly affected, that's what got me here in the first place, and here I am, still here now. And when here it's 97 sizzling degrees at midday, and Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Rapid City are in the deep freeze, that's what got a lot of those foreigners killed who came here for Christmas.
The Governor of the province? How would you like to preside over a disaster of unparalleled proportions? Whatshisname, Blanco, down in Katrina-land, the governor here in Tsunami-land, Bush in his two administrations, al-Bashir over in Darfur. No easy task.
Just saying it's a tough job. What are you going to do with all the bodies? It's already a crowded planet. If you're the guy, then you're the guy.
___
If you were wondering about 'The List' and why your name wasn't on it, or why it was so short, well, there's a longer list, much longer. How do you get on it? Easy, sort of. All you have to do is, visit me, pretty much, here or Slim Buttes, or pay the 499.99 for your aircraft.
That automatically puts you on The List, and you also, by virtue of being on The List, automatically become a member, a standing member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron.
In addition to the said aircraft and rank designation, 'Rookie/Cadet', you will also automatically receive the squadron bulletin, briefings, updates, and SITREPS (situaion reports) from the field, delivered live stream, text, cell, facebook, U Tube, blog, iphone, blackberry, and all other forms of automatic instant communication of insignificant minutiae to keep you and other third parties informed of detailed information you'd normally not be concerned with whatsoever.
___
Is It Just Me
Are my eyes just seeing things, or is it you, too?
The other night, Christmas Eve, I was riding my bike, a Honda 125, home from Carl's dinner party on the other side of the lake, down a rather spooky narrow lane, when in the headlight I caught a glimpse of something quite large, a big black...shape...darting back into the jungle.
Something like a big black square. A square with legs. I didn't get a real good look at it, because it was pitch black already, and I just caught it there in the light for a fraction of a second.
I kept going. I went right on by, but with a little bit of a shiver up my spine, if you know what I mean...like, I was thinking as I went by, 'what if whatever it was I saw would suddenly rush out of the jungle and...and...I don't know, knock me off the bike, or rip me to shreds or consume me in one bite or something.
Anyway, it could have been my imagination, but the shiver was real.
Well, ok, I could have dismissed all that, but today, just today, Claudia said to me and Damon, 'Did you see that?'
'Yeah,' said Damon.
"What?" I asked.
"Something up there in the trees. It's behind the leaves," she said, nodding across the road into the jungle at some higher branches, straining with concern to see it again. "A monkey or something," she said. "It was big."
I looked and didn't see anything. If it was big, then why couldn't you see it?
Damon said he saw it, too, out of the corner of his eye.
So it's not just me. Just like last summer, sitting there at my table with Bo and Misty and Tom and somebody else, I forget who, listening to Misty finishing up a ghost story when Bo described the same thing I had seen.
When he said that, it sent a shiver up my spine the same way that shape did the other night. Bo was talking about a...creature...he saw in the headlights on the side of the road, the same thing I had seen a month earlier and wasn't going to tell anyone about.
I was driving back to the rez from Colorado and had left so late it would have my arrival just at pre-dawn. In the hills just south of Chadron, NE when it was still black outside, I passed a dog standing on the side of the road that looked grey and mangy with a sort of humped back and long tail and sick eyes and long pointy ears, too long for a dog, and, hey, that's not a dog...that's a...a...must be a coyote...no...must be a...
What the hell WAS that thing? why didn't it move when I went by? didn't flinch. just stood there.
At first, I thought to turn around and return to check, drive by real slow, and then I got that shiver, gripped the wheel and stepped on the gas, thinking to put as much space as possible between me and whatever it was back there. "HELL, NO!" I thought, as a follow-up thought to going back there and checking.
It was identical to the animal Bo described. When I said he didn't move when I went by, Bo looked up slowly and said, "Yeahhh. Didn't move. Just stood there and looked at us when we went by. It was like something not of this world."
___
Only A Matter of Time
I knew it was only a matter of time. A person doesn't really own an idea. The ideas are out there. Floating around. Chances are, in fact, a high probability, if you 'came up with' an idea, somebody else somewhere has already thought of it, or is thinking of it at the same time as you, snatching it out of the atmosphere. Lookit the light bulb, aerial flight, the internal combustion engine, heliocentric theory, paranoid end-of-the-world delusion.
So, I had this idea, this idea that I was the only one in the world running a vintage bi-plane squadron, and cranking out planes at the rate of about twenty-five a year.
I know, that's slow, in production terms, far slower than Boeing, and that's what I told the Myanmar crew, that they were working too long on one plane, but over here, to save face, you can't just bitch people out the way we do in the States, like, 'in your face' is something that any American would know the meaning of.
So, the production story is something that will require some finessing, in addition to finding a new crew since most of them got deported, and trying to find the temperamental crew boss, Li An Song Nyu Ki, was like trying to hunt down a...a...Myanmar illegal immigrant in Thailand. People said they had 'seen her around some', but 'not lately'.
So, I've got to start over from scratch if I want to resume the production line, staying one step ahead of Wal-Mart by discontinuing the bi-plane Sopwiths and going exclusively with the tri-wing Fokker dual-plane mobiles.
And it appears I need to get going on it since I saw the cardboard cutout on the street in Bangkok while walking outside the Grand Palace with Rex, seeking out temple pants and buddha amulets.
"Hey. There's your plane," said Rex, pointing down at cut-out items at a street vendor. There it was, the bi-plane cut-out, along with a race car, a battle ship and an aircraft carrier. Yeah, they took the idea and saw how far they could run with it. Can you imagine an aircraft carrier cardboard cutout? How's it gonna float?
Sure enough, somebody had copied my idea, and I instantly thought of Li An's comment.
'Maybe I sell to Chinese', she had said in an eerily threatening email last summer. Looks like she carried through with it, and I wonder how much she got, although the model I saw was NO WHERE NEAR the quality of the 335th. You know how boxy and crude communist products are...except for that new sleek superfast train the Chinese just made.
'Thailand can copeee any thiiiing,' they will say. Rolex, Nike, DVDs, Adidas, your idea. The weird thing is, they will put up the same product right next door. So there it was, right on the street in Bangkok, my idea. Except for the price differential (they're selling theirs for 100 Thai Baht, about three bucks), they have no advantage over my one-of-a-kind, made in the USA (except for those produced here), and two other reasons I can't think of right now that makes the $499.99 asking price worth it.
"See?" I said to Rex, while flipping through the cripple's inventory. "They're all the same."
"You hab blue?" I asked the vendor.
"No," he replied. "All same same. Only hab Led."
I could see the flash, the light bulb go on in his eyes. Blue. 'Now, there's an idea.'
___
Mr., who got beat up at his grand opening 'Dead Man's Party' on Christmas Eve, was earlier running around saying he was two days behind schedule.
"I've got a million things to do," he said. "Got to go get supplies for everybody's nostrils and everybody's lungs," he had said.
Turned out that things became heated and out of control during the early hours of Christmas morning, and whaddaya know, Mr. became my first patient this year.
My second patient could have been the large German lady, when she and her husband pulled up on two bikes in front of the Honda shop. After stopping, she failed to remove her feet from the pegs and put them down, thus, as gravity would have it, fell over with the bike, and appeared to be fantastically stupid. I thought I was the only one to do that, but again, it isn't just me.
- end
.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Is It Worth It?
Slim Buttes
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Ever think, ‘Is he talking to everybody… or just me?’ The minister, the swami, the shaman, the medicine man, the public address at the train station, the airport. Yes and no.
What are they worth?
Is it worth it? I don’t know. It’s all relative, I suppose, entirely dependent upon the eye of the beholder, like everything.
Four ninety-nine ninety-nine might at first appear to be a bit exorbitant until you reflect upon the ways you’ve pissed away five hundred bucks in the past.
Yeah, just think about it for a moment.
Ok? Given that light, by comparison, a gift that’s going to keep on giving, down through the generations perhaps, each recipient automatically becoming a pilot and enrolled member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Detachment, seems to be well worth my asking price of fourninetynineninetynine.
Suddenly, the trailer was full the other night, people pulling up left and right, with Digger and Devin* up from Colorado, bringing the truck I’ve been awaiting all summer, and Bo and Misty and Kassel and Manuel around the table, the conversation turning to SitReps, Situation Reports, conditions of aircraft and props and wing struts and landing gear and promotions.
It was confusing, with several excited conversations going on at once, and we went over the four reasons again that justify the asking price.
“Made in America, that’s one,” I said, holding up one finger, Misty looking up from her scissor-carving, the only one who seemed to be paying attention.
“Limited edition,” I said, flashing two fingers. “That makes it a collector’s item.”
“Uh…what’s the third?” I asked.
Misty just looked up, didn’t say anything. “One-of-a-kind,” said Digger.
“Right. One-of-a-kind, each individually unique. What’s the fourth, Bo?”
We couldn’t think of a fourth reason right then, because too many other thoughts were flying through the air and the conversation went five, six other places, but there is one, a fourth. I’ll come up with it later.
Slim Buttes, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Six, Seven Days Later
How long can you play out an airplane story?
I don’t know, but really, other than landscaping, the Lord’s Work, and the L.A. Times crossword puzzle, it’s the only thing going on. If you’ve been here in October, you know what I’m talking about. Snowed last night, artic hawk pushing down our necks, mice coming inside.
Didn’t bother going to bi-weekly sweat lodge, even right after six of ‘the boys’ stopped in here for coffee, asking me if I was coming. I told them I was, a lie. Too cold. Too windy. Too dark. Stayed here and fed the stove.
It’s all coming back to me now. ‘You’ve gotta do more than just clock in, clock out. You can’t be just sittin’ around, waiting for slots to open up.’ Like that? If you see it in a movie script, you’ll know where it came from. Like, five years after it’s creation, people in mainstream media, print, televised, and live, are using ‘a whole ‘nuther’ as an acceptable usage of grammar, as in, ‘that’s a whole ‘nuther ball game.’ Notice? The phrase ‘went viral’ after Nina Tottenburg used it on NPR. Maybe I already told you.
You heard enough of ‘uptick’ and ‘ratchet up’ yet? Those aren’t mine…some other yoyo’s…economic forecasters. We’ll all be sick of it soon enough. ‘Outside the box’? When they say that…‘think outside the box’, are they talking about, ‘beyond your tv set’?
__
Made in America (except for those made in Thailand, of course), One-of-a-kind, Limited Edition, uh…there’s a fourth reason.
There’s a fourth reason why fourninetynineninetynine is a good asking price. You gotta think of more than just cardboard cutout and toothpicks. You gotta remember those girls. Each one of ‘em has a family. Each one of them has kids. All of them have momma go to hospital, papa sick.
They closed up shop on me, the Myanmar crew, stopping the production at eighty-six. Apparently, they all up and walked out, leaving me with a lot of explaining to do. You got the gist of Li An’s letter. Li An, Li An Song Nu Kyi, the crew boss. Maybe you met her. A communication breakdown, a language barrier. We’ll get things up and running when I get back.
Anyway, with two planes going out to N. Carolina last week to Rick and Pat, the folks from the permaculture workshop, one yesterday to aviation enthusiast Gene at ‘Gene’s Machine’ shop in Chadron, and two more last night to Stanley Good Voice Elk and his 12 yr. old son, Garrett, the on-location, in-the-field squadron strength has dropped precariously to eight, our lowest number of active duty in four years.
You can do the math. Eight from eighty-six is what? Seventy-five? That’s how many pilots are out there, my friends. Active pilots, most of them still flying.
“You know anybody else who’s doing this?”** I asked, looking at Stan and Lupe’. They shook their heads no. Matthew, Warren, Garrett, whatever his name was, was the perfect target candidate for rookie/cadet when he came in here last night with his dad and six of ‘the boys’, shaking off the shivers and huddling around the wood stove.
Twelve years old, the perfect age. All the men sat down over coffee, but he stood, wandering around and staring at all the aircraft.
“You want to join?” I asked him. “You become a pilot in the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron. Take your pick.”
I explained to him all the ins and outs of rank and pay grade and combat missions and everything…the rookie pilot orientation, y’know, but I don’t think he caught any of it, being absorbed in first one plane, then another, and finally settling on a green tri-wing with guns.
Stanley took one, too, for his younger boy, four years old. “Remember, it’s not a toy,” I told them. “Keep it up, flying. If you don’t, next thing, you’ll be in the maintenance hanger, talking about needing new landing gear, new tail, new prop.”
Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Chachee Esparza, a sumo-size 14 shoe, here with his dad, Lupe’, sat here and asked me if I assembled the planes from a kit. “You make these from a kit?” he asked. Tom and Jack Red Cloud laughed at his question as I recoiled in disbelief.
“What, from Wal-Mart?” I asked. “No, man. These are all hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind,” I told him.
“Cut’s ‘em out of cardboard,” said Tom, making a scissor-cutting motion with his fingers. “Made in America,” he added. “Fourninetynineninetynine.”
He went on to explain to how we, er, the Germans, figured out how to shoot through the propeller, and everybody understood triggers and camshafts, here on the rez. After that, they left, saying see ya later.
The 335th. That’s a poor man’s reservation-version Skull & Bones Society. You don’t have to be a Yale grad to become a member. A twelve-year old could be your wing man. A six-year old could be your flight leader.
end
____
*Devin, stopped in CO one night by a cop who inquired about the four-foot bong in the back seat. Devin told him it was a dijeridu. “I know a bong when I see one,” said the cop. “No. It’s a dijeridu,” Devin insisted.
“Ok,” said the cop. “If it’s a dijeridu, then play it for me.”
Devin took the bong and proceeded to WA WAAAA, WOO WOO, WA WAAAAA, and the cop let him go.
**the 4th reason.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Ever think, ‘Is he talking to everybody… or just me?’ The minister, the swami, the shaman, the medicine man, the public address at the train station, the airport. Yes and no.
What are they worth?
Is it worth it? I don’t know. It’s all relative, I suppose, entirely dependent upon the eye of the beholder, like everything.
Four ninety-nine ninety-nine might at first appear to be a bit exorbitant until you reflect upon the ways you’ve pissed away five hundred bucks in the past.
Yeah, just think about it for a moment.
Ok? Given that light, by comparison, a gift that’s going to keep on giving, down through the generations perhaps, each recipient automatically becoming a pilot and enrolled member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Detachment, seems to be well worth my asking price of fourninetynineninetynine.
Suddenly, the trailer was full the other night, people pulling up left and right, with Digger and Devin* up from Colorado, bringing the truck I’ve been awaiting all summer, and Bo and Misty and Kassel and Manuel around the table, the conversation turning to SitReps, Situation Reports, conditions of aircraft and props and wing struts and landing gear and promotions.
It was confusing, with several excited conversations going on at once, and we went over the four reasons again that justify the asking price.
“Made in America, that’s one,” I said, holding up one finger, Misty looking up from her scissor-carving, the only one who seemed to be paying attention.
“Limited edition,” I said, flashing two fingers. “That makes it a collector’s item.”
“Uh…what’s the third?” I asked.
Misty just looked up, didn’t say anything. “One-of-a-kind,” said Digger.
“Right. One-of-a-kind, each individually unique. What’s the fourth, Bo?”
We couldn’t think of a fourth reason right then, because too many other thoughts were flying through the air and the conversation went five, six other places, but there is one, a fourth. I’ll come up with it later.
Slim Buttes, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Six, Seven Days Later
How long can you play out an airplane story?
I don’t know, but really, other than landscaping, the Lord’s Work, and the L.A. Times crossword puzzle, it’s the only thing going on. If you’ve been here in October, you know what I’m talking about. Snowed last night, artic hawk pushing down our necks, mice coming inside.
Didn’t bother going to bi-weekly sweat lodge, even right after six of ‘the boys’ stopped in here for coffee, asking me if I was coming. I told them I was, a lie. Too cold. Too windy. Too dark. Stayed here and fed the stove.
It’s all coming back to me now. ‘You’ve gotta do more than just clock in, clock out. You can’t be just sittin’ around, waiting for slots to open up.’ Like that? If you see it in a movie script, you’ll know where it came from. Like, five years after it’s creation, people in mainstream media, print, televised, and live, are using ‘a whole ‘nuther’ as an acceptable usage of grammar, as in, ‘that’s a whole ‘nuther ball game.’ Notice? The phrase ‘went viral’ after Nina Tottenburg used it on NPR. Maybe I already told you.
You heard enough of ‘uptick’ and ‘ratchet up’ yet? Those aren’t mine…some other yoyo’s…economic forecasters. We’ll all be sick of it soon enough. ‘Outside the box’? When they say that…‘think outside the box’, are they talking about, ‘beyond your tv set’?
__
Made in America (except for those made in Thailand, of course), One-of-a-kind, Limited Edition, uh…there’s a fourth reason.
There’s a fourth reason why fourninetynineninetynine is a good asking price. You gotta think of more than just cardboard cutout and toothpicks. You gotta remember those girls. Each one of ‘em has a family. Each one of them has kids. All of them have momma go to hospital, papa sick.
They closed up shop on me, the Myanmar crew, stopping the production at eighty-six. Apparently, they all up and walked out, leaving me with a lot of explaining to do. You got the gist of Li An’s letter. Li An, Li An Song Nu Kyi, the crew boss. Maybe you met her. A communication breakdown, a language barrier. We’ll get things up and running when I get back.
Anyway, with two planes going out to N. Carolina last week to Rick and Pat, the folks from the permaculture workshop, one yesterday to aviation enthusiast Gene at ‘Gene’s Machine’ shop in Chadron, and two more last night to Stanley Good Voice Elk and his 12 yr. old son, Garrett, the on-location, in-the-field squadron strength has dropped precariously to eight, our lowest number of active duty in four years.
You can do the math. Eight from eighty-six is what? Seventy-five? That’s how many pilots are out there, my friends. Active pilots, most of them still flying.
“You know anybody else who’s doing this?”** I asked, looking at Stan and Lupe’. They shook their heads no. Matthew, Warren, Garrett, whatever his name was, was the perfect target candidate for rookie/cadet when he came in here last night with his dad and six of ‘the boys’, shaking off the shivers and huddling around the wood stove.
Twelve years old, the perfect age. All the men sat down over coffee, but he stood, wandering around and staring at all the aircraft.
“You want to join?” I asked him. “You become a pilot in the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron. Take your pick.”
I explained to him all the ins and outs of rank and pay grade and combat missions and everything…the rookie pilot orientation, y’know, but I don’t think he caught any of it, being absorbed in first one plane, then another, and finally settling on a green tri-wing with guns.
Stanley took one, too, for his younger boy, four years old. “Remember, it’s not a toy,” I told them. “Keep it up, flying. If you don’t, next thing, you’ll be in the maintenance hanger, talking about needing new landing gear, new tail, new prop.”
Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Chachee Esparza, a sumo-size 14 shoe, here with his dad, Lupe’, sat here and asked me if I assembled the planes from a kit. “You make these from a kit?” he asked. Tom and Jack Red Cloud laughed at his question as I recoiled in disbelief.
“What, from Wal-Mart?” I asked. “No, man. These are all hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind,” I told him.
“Cut’s ‘em out of cardboard,” said Tom, making a scissor-cutting motion with his fingers. “Made in America,” he added. “Fourninetynineninetynine.”
He went on to explain to how we, er, the Germans, figured out how to shoot through the propeller, and everybody understood triggers and camshafts, here on the rez. After that, they left, saying see ya later.
The 335th. That’s a poor man’s reservation-version Skull & Bones Society. You don’t have to be a Yale grad to become a member. A twelve-year old could be your wing man. A six-year old could be your flight leader.
end
____
*Devin, stopped in CO one night by a cop who inquired about the four-foot bong in the back seat. Devin told him it was a dijeridu. “I know a bong when I see one,” said the cop. “No. It’s a dijeridu,” Devin insisted.
“Ok,” said the cop. “If it’s a dijeridu, then play it for me.”
Devin took the bong and proceeded to WA WAAAA, WOO WOO, WA WAAAAA, and the cop let him go.
**the 4th reason.
Friday, September 25, 2009
No More Automatic Promotions
Slim Buttes
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD
USA 9.09
This fall, when promotion time rolls around, some of you…many of you…well, all of you…are going to wonder why the ‘automatic’ principle doesn’t still apply.
Reason is, is because you simply don’t deserve it. Tell me what you’ve done to deserve it. Go head. Tell me. I want to hear it.
The automatic principle does, in fact, still apply for your wings…16, 16, or six…those who’ve flown 1600 hours, sixteen months, or six shoot-downs, you or them, and you automatically advance from rookie/cadet to full-blown pilot.
That’s standard flight rank/status designation, standard SOP, standard operating procedure. That hasn’t changed. 16, 16, or six, whichever comes first, and you’ve earned your wings.
What has changed, however, is the criteria determining whether or not you advance in pay grade. That’s a whole another story. To advance in pay grade, you must first distinguish yourselves through the performance of meritorious voluntary service to God and your country, in the capacity of ‘combat pilot’* in the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Detachment.**
Any questions?
Ain’t gonna be no more automatic pay increases like before, just for rolling in for routine maintenance, oil change, lube job, reserve Air National Guard duty, governor, and maybe go on to become president. Those days are over. Just because people die and slots open up, don’t mean you’re automatically getting a promotion.
You might ask why we’re still flying cardboard bi-planes into combat in an age of rockets, shiny robots on Mars, and all kinds of other super-fast shit whizzing in orbit around the earth.
Good question.
Manny always used to say you’ve got to work with what you’ve got, and if you haven’t got any God-given natural talent, you’ve got to buckle down and work hard, and if you’re a lazy-ass, then you’ve got to depend entirely on luck.
If you’re out of luck, or down on your luck, born under a bad sign, or the only luck you’ve got is bad, then you’ve got to go with who you know, or your name. If you don’t know nobody, and your name is mud, then your only option is to go with what you’ve got, or try something else, he used to say.
Does that answer why we’re flying bi-planes?
Ok, then…well, when they flew…back in the day when they flew the machine you’re so fortunate to be flying today, the pilots were cut of a certain uncommon cloth, possessing a certain flair, a certain élan, a certain esprit de corps, a certain elite eche’lon superieur, an esprit de cal, an elle’ gance…an…you get the picture…a whole bunch of French words that describe a pretentious, pompous, affected style.
And that’s why many of you…almost all, I’d say, aren’t receiving a promotion.
No, not because of no style. Wanna know why? Ok. When’s the last time any of you asked about our squadron strength? How many of you asked about those guys who went down? Our guys, not theirs - the Germans, Holtz, or those guys up in Wisconsin working on the trigger mechanism – these were our guys, the 335th, at the air show, and the other two, playing tag. Have I seen any of your names lately on Daily Mission Ops?
Need I say more?
Yeah. So when you’re looking at that pay check, saying, “Hey. I’ve been flying for over a year. Why isn’t it reflected in my pay check?” well, Charlie, you’ve got to do more than barnstorm the family picnic and do kiddie rides at State Fairs.
Or you might say, “Those guys died. The slots were open. I should’ve had the promotion. I was here a full year before Carlson!”
Don’t matter no more. You gotta see the big picture. You gotta look at the war effort, the squadron, the company, the command, the country, inner self, the trees, the forest, the whole mission, beyond your own skin, predicament, what it means for our allies, the other guy.
You gotta do more than just clock in, clock out. You can’t just be sitting around, waiting for slots to open up. You gotta have the drive, the OVERdrive, gotta have ‘what it takes’, the right ‘stuff’, get yo’ mojo working, café latte, double chocolate def wish, double doberman cappuccino, wound up, hopped up, wired, whattimeizzit, meechuatnoon, Go-get-‘em style.
In addition to the necessary combat missions, you must begin to demonstrate an interest in the company. We need ‘company people’ here. We need team players, game-changers. You can ask yourself, ‘am I a team player, or am I out there, a loner, loser, loose cannon floating around in the universe, government salary, flying my little cardboard toy, spinning on a thread?”
UP2U. Gravy train’s over. Get on board.
You might ask, what has any of this to do with style? And you may wonder about the discordant association of cannons, loose or otherwise, to floating. Cannons don’t float. Cannons are found on ramparts, museum displays, and seabeds.
Style?
Well, the style went with a certain artistry. A ballet up there. Spinning and diving and climbing in a spiraling love/hate duel, sometimes two-on-one. You could feel the air, smell the engine, hear the rattle of the guns, cumulus fog on the goggles, sometimes a hot brass bullet casing searing into your flesh.
The very first combat aviators. We actually attended the services for the fallen. And that was the enemy. We knew who we were up against. We could see them. They looked like us.
-end
*As any good self-serving journalist or military officer knows, to advance your career, you need a good war. Not just a skirmish or an obscure and irrelevant military intervention. Peace-keeping force doesn’t cut it. You gotta have a good war.
**abbr. officially, ‘Slim Buttes 335th Post-Modern Contemporary Symmetrical Aviation Detachment, USAF.’
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD
USA 9.09
This fall, when promotion time rolls around, some of you…many of you…well, all of you…are going to wonder why the ‘automatic’ principle doesn’t still apply.
Reason is, is because you simply don’t deserve it. Tell me what you’ve done to deserve it. Go head. Tell me. I want to hear it.
The automatic principle does, in fact, still apply for your wings…16, 16, or six…those who’ve flown 1600 hours, sixteen months, or six shoot-downs, you or them, and you automatically advance from rookie/cadet to full-blown pilot.
That’s standard flight rank/status designation, standard SOP, standard operating procedure. That hasn’t changed. 16, 16, or six, whichever comes first, and you’ve earned your wings.
What has changed, however, is the criteria determining whether or not you advance in pay grade. That’s a whole another story. To advance in pay grade, you must first distinguish yourselves through the performance of meritorious voluntary service to God and your country, in the capacity of ‘combat pilot’* in the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Detachment.**
Any questions?
Ain’t gonna be no more automatic pay increases like before, just for rolling in for routine maintenance, oil change, lube job, reserve Air National Guard duty, governor, and maybe go on to become president. Those days are over. Just because people die and slots open up, don’t mean you’re automatically getting a promotion.
You might ask why we’re still flying cardboard bi-planes into combat in an age of rockets, shiny robots on Mars, and all kinds of other super-fast shit whizzing in orbit around the earth.
Good question.
Manny always used to say you’ve got to work with what you’ve got, and if you haven’t got any God-given natural talent, you’ve got to buckle down and work hard, and if you’re a lazy-ass, then you’ve got to depend entirely on luck.
If you’re out of luck, or down on your luck, born under a bad sign, or the only luck you’ve got is bad, then you’ve got to go with who you know, or your name. If you don’t know nobody, and your name is mud, then your only option is to go with what you’ve got, or try something else, he used to say.
Does that answer why we’re flying bi-planes?
Ok, then…well, when they flew…back in the day when they flew the machine you’re so fortunate to be flying today, the pilots were cut of a certain uncommon cloth, possessing a certain flair, a certain élan, a certain esprit de corps, a certain elite eche’lon superieur, an esprit de cal, an elle’ gance…an…you get the picture…a whole bunch of French words that describe a pretentious, pompous, affected style.
And that’s why many of you…almost all, I’d say, aren’t receiving a promotion.
No, not because of no style. Wanna know why? Ok. When’s the last time any of you asked about our squadron strength? How many of you asked about those guys who went down? Our guys, not theirs - the Germans, Holtz, or those guys up in Wisconsin working on the trigger mechanism – these were our guys, the 335th, at the air show, and the other two, playing tag. Have I seen any of your names lately on Daily Mission Ops?
Need I say more?
Yeah. So when you’re looking at that pay check, saying, “Hey. I’ve been flying for over a year. Why isn’t it reflected in my pay check?” well, Charlie, you’ve got to do more than barnstorm the family picnic and do kiddie rides at State Fairs.
Or you might say, “Those guys died. The slots were open. I should’ve had the promotion. I was here a full year before Carlson!”
Don’t matter no more. You gotta see the big picture. You gotta look at the war effort, the squadron, the company, the command, the country, inner self, the trees, the forest, the whole mission, beyond your own skin, predicament, what it means for our allies, the other guy.
You gotta do more than just clock in, clock out. You can’t just be sitting around, waiting for slots to open up. You gotta have the drive, the OVERdrive, gotta have ‘what it takes’, the right ‘stuff’, get yo’ mojo working, café latte, double chocolate def wish, double doberman cappuccino, wound up, hopped up, wired, whattimeizzit, meechuatnoon, Go-get-‘em style.
In addition to the necessary combat missions, you must begin to demonstrate an interest in the company. We need ‘company people’ here. We need team players, game-changers. You can ask yourself, ‘am I a team player, or am I out there, a loner, loser, loose cannon floating around in the universe, government salary, flying my little cardboard toy, spinning on a thread?”
UP2U. Gravy train’s over. Get on board.
You might ask, what has any of this to do with style? And you may wonder about the discordant association of cannons, loose or otherwise, to floating. Cannons don’t float. Cannons are found on ramparts, museum displays, and seabeds.
Style?
Well, the style went with a certain artistry. A ballet up there. Spinning and diving and climbing in a spiraling love/hate duel, sometimes two-on-one. You could feel the air, smell the engine, hear the rattle of the guns, cumulus fog on the goggles, sometimes a hot brass bullet casing searing into your flesh.
The very first combat aviators. We actually attended the services for the fallen. And that was the enemy. We knew who we were up against. We could see them. They looked like us.
-end
*As any good self-serving journalist or military officer knows, to advance your career, you need a good war. Not just a skirmish or an obscure and irrelevant military intervention. Peace-keeping force doesn’t cut it. You gotta have a good war.
**abbr. officially, ‘Slim Buttes 335th Post-Modern Contemporary Symmetrical Aviation Detachment, USAF.’
Friday, September 11, 2009
Trigger Gizmo Solved
Pine Ridge, SD
August 2009
Heyyyy Brrrrro,
How do you like your new aircraft? Pretty nice, huh? You can see we worked out your problem with the guns shooting through the propeller. Now you won’t have any more of your people shooting themselves down out of the sky, nor all those wood splinters and bullets ricocheting back at your pilots.
Remember, no shooting over 6,000 rpms. Anything beyond that, and the whole technology goes out the window, and your plane goes down with a prop.
We can’t take credit for the breakthrough, however. Unlike us or the French, the Germans did all their chickenshit testing on the ground, as opposed to live combat, and figured out the mechanics, and then the Brits got it from the Germans when Friedrich Holtz, the Baron’s wing man, got shot down over Alsace, and then we naturally got it from the Brits finally after they naturally sat on the designs for six months. I guess our governments are going to naturally let the French figure it out for themselves.
They, the Germans, synced, sync-ed, sync’d, sinked, synchro…coordinated the engine camshaft and blade with the trigger mechanism gizmo so the guns will fire only when the prop blade is in the horizontal position. What a novel idea! Why didn’t we think of that? I still feel sorry for all your guys. I guess you could call them the original test pilots. Somebody should do something for their families.
We learned that some of your aeroplanes fell into a state of disrepair after impact with the earth, so given the terms of your contract, we can provide supplemental support for your wings, struts, fuselage, and landing gear, but as you know, the one-year, 5,000-hour engine and drive-train warranty has expired.
Anyway, uh, somebody suggested…well…claimed outright that the $499.99 price we were asking for a ‘singleton’ was a bit overpriced. Well, hugely overpriced. They all laughed, the focus group, when I said how much they were. What’s your take on it?
The way I see it, they’re limited edition, right? Gonna stop at 500. That’ll make ‘em more valuable, a future hot ticket item on Craig’s List, say, or among aviation enthusiasts.
“You serious?” Tom asked, seriously, when I told him the production cap at 500,* maybe display ‘em all at once in a big air show, art show, like a big gallery or something, then sell ‘em off, auction ‘em off in a charity event or something. Probably not, though. A children’s hospital or something. They all, the people I ran the idea by, the focus group, looked skeptical when I voiced the concept.
“Nobody’s gonna give you five hundred dollars for one of these,” Tom said, derisively.
“Four ninety-nine, ninety-nine. You know anybody else who’s doing this?” I asked. He and everybody else here at the time all shook their heads no. Manuel, Louie, Bo, Misty, the White Drifter.
“Right!” I exclaimed. “Nobody. I gotta flood the market with these originals before the Chinese get a hold of the design and undercut me at Wal-Mart. These’r made in America, by God! When’s the last time you seen that?”
“That’s four good reasons, isn’t it, Bo?” I asked. “Made in America…one of a kind…limited edition…flood the…what’s the fourth?” I asked, holding up three fingers.
The people sitting here drinking coffee, raised their eyebrows and nodded, like it was worthy of consideration. Tom was wondering how flooding the market would get me my asking price. Bo said he’d give ‘ten, twenty dollars’ for one, a tri-plane, the blue one.
That’s bullshit. That’s ridiculous, don’t you think? The crew is already five bucks under minimum wage. Plasticized cardboard or not, you’ve still got production and shipping costs. Despite NAFTA and a Myanmar refugee labor force, you can’t turn a profit like that.
So, after taking into consideration the feedback, we adjusted the promotional offer so now it’s either $499.99**……or free.*** Most folks, almost everybody…well, everybody, has chosen the second, consumer-friendly option, with one buyer/owner saying he’d get back to us later with the full sticker price, yea.
“I’ll get back to you later with the full sticker price,” he said, going out, flying a brand new Fokker tri-plane, all black. John, a friend of Ted’s. Vietnam vet. Navy man. Pilot, I think. No. He was on river patrol down in the Delta. Now he’s a pilot.
$499.99. That’s for one of our ‘singles’, the singletons. A bi-plane; Sopwiths, DeHavilands and Malibus. The LaRois are out of production, so already, the folks holding one of those have got a little nest egg for their grandkids. Don’t know yet what kind of figure to fix on the Fokker tri-planes or two-plane deals. Gotta be more, right? They’re more than twice as cool.
Last month in a call with Li An Song Nu Kyi, our Myanmar crew boss, you might have met her, I told her, “from now on, we’re going to go strictly with the bi/bi-plane,**** dual, double, two-plane production arrangement,” and she asked, “You say we work two time now, same pay?”
I told her yes.
“Now make two prane for onee one pay?”
I told her yes. She grew quiet as a stone, and shortly thereafter terminated the conversation. It could be problematic later, like, when I get back, especially since the company isn’t picking up the crew lunch anymore, and she’ll have to tell them what I said.
Anyway, half our inventory, except for the Pizza Hut plane, went out this past week, mostly for grandchildren. One adult. And one toddler who probably won’t be able to fly or appreciate it for many years.
Since those horrific but spectacular accidents at the air show, we’re focusing on re-building the squadron back up to strength and getting these punk rookie pilots combat- ready. Did you see the video? The memorial services are on Sunday, if you want to fly in, otherwise I’ll tell the widows the flowers are from all of us.
Later,
Lt. Col. Brovic
Squadron Commander
335th U.S. Aviation Detachment
Slim Buttes, Oglala BIA 41 S.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
*500 is the target numerical from the concept boys in the front office, saying we can hit that figure in two years, but just last month the Myanmar crew were rumored to be murmuring about already ‘being sick’ of the project.
**Four ninety-nine ninety-nine. Sounds good, doesn’t it? One potential almost buyer, reaching for his wallet, said, “Sure, I’ll give you five bucks for one of those.” I laughed. “Aha, Sir…” I told him, clearing my throat, “Perhaps you misunderstood. That’s four hundred, ninety nine…dollars, ninety-nine cents.” He decided to take one for free.
***It’s not such a wild idea. The flowers do what they do for free. The birds sing for free. These meadowlarks out here aren’t asking anything for what they do.
****what would you call two bi-planes together? For production crew jargon, we’re saying something like, ‘We need four more bi-plane dualies out here!” but for marketing purposes, something like ‘dual bi-plane mobiles’ would work, don’t you think? They’re telling me I can get my asking price down in Colorado. “OH YEAH! The yuppies will eat this shit up!” Devon, a Boulder resident, said.
Ps. Hey, get a load of Li An’s note:
‘Sawadee Ka, Mr. Big Boss,
When you comeback? I hab someting to tell you already. Reason I goto my home in country papa sick. Close and lock shop already. crew people glap home already same same me being sick. say big boss ding dong. want 2 plane for onee one pay. same same sa-nake. I hab idea already. maybe I nosee you longtime maybe copy idea to China to much. You remember plane pattern I make in dirt? Leum? When you comeback? I hate you already.
Love,
Li An
Nong Sa helf me with letter toyou her say hi.
___
When you say, or hear, ‘mid-air collision’, you sort of naturally think the worst, right? like two aircraft, airliners, impacting one another head-on at five hundred miles an hour. That would be bad. Even the passengers back in the rear wouldn’t make it.
Or maybe getting T-boned by a jet fighter, slicing your 737 wide-body passenger compartment in half. “HEYYYYAAA. WHAT WAS THAT?” That would be bad, too. In fact, almost everything that happens up there is bad. Bad food. Bad seat. Bad air. Bad service. Can’t smoke.
We had one before, and another at the air show, mid-airs. We couldn’t really call them mid-air collisions, per se, even though they were. It was more like a mid-air ‘mishap’, or mid-air ‘encounter’, neither of which by the way, you would want to experience, either as a pilot, or as a passenger.
A mid-air mishap or encounter is just as bad and messy as a collision, and going down in a ball of flame, though spectacular, results in the same end as a loss of power, loss of a wing or tail rudder, fluttering down in a whining spiral, then poof.
Although quite theatrical, having it occur at the air show is embarrassing and not nearly as heroic and final as a clean-cut battle death. There’s always a whale more explaining to do, to many, many more people than just the immediate family. Like, investigators.
Investigators and military aviation authorities. Always got ‘em in a non-combat related aerial mishap, and in this case, two days before the show, a couple of our young punk new guys were horse-assing around playing tag with their girlfriend’s scarves attached to their tail rudders.
The guy who was ‘it’ would chase the other and cut the scarf sheet with his prop. Zzzzzzzzt, “You’re it!”
Well, who knows what really happened up there, but the chase guy chewed up the tail rudder of his buddy and shredded his prop in the process, so they both went down in a tangle. Chewed up and screwed up. These things happen from time to time. Non-combat related aerial fatality. It happens all the time.
Same in the navy. Man overboard. “Go back and get him, Skipper?”
“Screw him. He’s not critical to the mission. You know what it costs to turn an aircraft carrier around?”
But we’re not the navy, and each of our guys, whether they’re married with kids or not, is critical to our mission, not to mention the aircraft they were horse-assing around with.
The other two at the air-show, pilot error, not horse-assing, was really bad, partly because it involved numerous spectators (it’s not entirely our fault. They came to the show, didn’t they?)* and lawsuits, but like I said, these things happen from time to time.
Lookit the Blue Angels. Best in the world. Again, pilot error. Leader took the whole six-bird formation straight into the ground. Lookit Columbia on liftoff and the other one, on re-entry. Same with the Russians. How many guys did they lose? And the French. How many spectators have they killed at their air shows?
Every time you turn around, the French are killing spectators at air shows. You got a better chance running the bulls in Barcelona on a skateboard.
Anyway, a lot of stuff can happen up there in the air…just ask Niel Armstrong and Sergei Whathisname, so it’s not just us, and most of it you can’t blame on the Baron, though we’d like to attribute to him all elements of evil and misfortune, and implicate him as source of all our own stupidity and blunder.
Four aircraft and as many pilots in three days. Bunch of civilians. I don’t know what they came up with for the final tally.
Later.
-end
August 2009
Heyyyy Brrrrro,
How do you like your new aircraft? Pretty nice, huh? You can see we worked out your problem with the guns shooting through the propeller. Now you won’t have any more of your people shooting themselves down out of the sky, nor all those wood splinters and bullets ricocheting back at your pilots.
Remember, no shooting over 6,000 rpms. Anything beyond that, and the whole technology goes out the window, and your plane goes down with a prop.
We can’t take credit for the breakthrough, however. Unlike us or the French, the Germans did all their chickenshit testing on the ground, as opposed to live combat, and figured out the mechanics, and then the Brits got it from the Germans when Friedrich Holtz, the Baron’s wing man, got shot down over Alsace, and then we naturally got it from the Brits finally after they naturally sat on the designs for six months. I guess our governments are going to naturally let the French figure it out for themselves.
They, the Germans, synced, sync-ed, sync’d, sinked, synchro…coordinated the engine camshaft and blade with the trigger mechanism gizmo so the guns will fire only when the prop blade is in the horizontal position. What a novel idea! Why didn’t we think of that? I still feel sorry for all your guys. I guess you could call them the original test pilots. Somebody should do something for their families.
We learned that some of your aeroplanes fell into a state of disrepair after impact with the earth, so given the terms of your contract, we can provide supplemental support for your wings, struts, fuselage, and landing gear, but as you know, the one-year, 5,000-hour engine and drive-train warranty has expired.
Anyway, uh, somebody suggested…well…claimed outright that the $499.99 price we were asking for a ‘singleton’ was a bit overpriced. Well, hugely overpriced. They all laughed, the focus group, when I said how much they were. What’s your take on it?
The way I see it, they’re limited edition, right? Gonna stop at 500. That’ll make ‘em more valuable, a future hot ticket item on Craig’s List, say, or among aviation enthusiasts.
“You serious?” Tom asked, seriously, when I told him the production cap at 500,* maybe display ‘em all at once in a big air show, art show, like a big gallery or something, then sell ‘em off, auction ‘em off in a charity event or something. Probably not, though. A children’s hospital or something. They all, the people I ran the idea by, the focus group, looked skeptical when I voiced the concept.
“Nobody’s gonna give you five hundred dollars for one of these,” Tom said, derisively.
“Four ninety-nine, ninety-nine. You know anybody else who’s doing this?” I asked. He and everybody else here at the time all shook their heads no. Manuel, Louie, Bo, Misty, the White Drifter.
“Right!” I exclaimed. “Nobody. I gotta flood the market with these originals before the Chinese get a hold of the design and undercut me at Wal-Mart. These’r made in America, by God! When’s the last time you seen that?”
“That’s four good reasons, isn’t it, Bo?” I asked. “Made in America…one of a kind…limited edition…flood the…what’s the fourth?” I asked, holding up three fingers.
The people sitting here drinking coffee, raised their eyebrows and nodded, like it was worthy of consideration. Tom was wondering how flooding the market would get me my asking price. Bo said he’d give ‘ten, twenty dollars’ for one, a tri-plane, the blue one.
That’s bullshit. That’s ridiculous, don’t you think? The crew is already five bucks under minimum wage. Plasticized cardboard or not, you’ve still got production and shipping costs. Despite NAFTA and a Myanmar refugee labor force, you can’t turn a profit like that.
So, after taking into consideration the feedback, we adjusted the promotional offer so now it’s either $499.99**……or free.*** Most folks, almost everybody…well, everybody, has chosen the second, consumer-friendly option, with one buyer/owner saying he’d get back to us later with the full sticker price, yea.
“I’ll get back to you later with the full sticker price,” he said, going out, flying a brand new Fokker tri-plane, all black. John, a friend of Ted’s. Vietnam vet. Navy man. Pilot, I think. No. He was on river patrol down in the Delta. Now he’s a pilot.
$499.99. That’s for one of our ‘singles’, the singletons. A bi-plane; Sopwiths, DeHavilands and Malibus. The LaRois are out of production, so already, the folks holding one of those have got a little nest egg for their grandkids. Don’t know yet what kind of figure to fix on the Fokker tri-planes or two-plane deals. Gotta be more, right? They’re more than twice as cool.
Last month in a call with Li An Song Nu Kyi, our Myanmar crew boss, you might have met her, I told her, “from now on, we’re going to go strictly with the bi/bi-plane,**** dual, double, two-plane production arrangement,” and she asked, “You say we work two time now, same pay?”
I told her yes.
“Now make two prane for onee one pay?”
I told her yes. She grew quiet as a stone, and shortly thereafter terminated the conversation. It could be problematic later, like, when I get back, especially since the company isn’t picking up the crew lunch anymore, and she’ll have to tell them what I said.
Anyway, half our inventory, except for the Pizza Hut plane, went out this past week, mostly for grandchildren. One adult. And one toddler who probably won’t be able to fly or appreciate it for many years.
Since those horrific but spectacular accidents at the air show, we’re focusing on re-building the squadron back up to strength and getting these punk rookie pilots combat- ready. Did you see the video? The memorial services are on Sunday, if you want to fly in, otherwise I’ll tell the widows the flowers are from all of us.
Later,
Lt. Col. Brovic
Squadron Commander
335th U.S. Aviation Detachment
Slim Buttes, Oglala BIA 41 S.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
*500 is the target numerical from the concept boys in the front office, saying we can hit that figure in two years, but just last month the Myanmar crew were rumored to be murmuring about already ‘being sick’ of the project.
**Four ninety-nine ninety-nine. Sounds good, doesn’t it? One potential almost buyer, reaching for his wallet, said, “Sure, I’ll give you five bucks for one of those.” I laughed. “Aha, Sir…” I told him, clearing my throat, “Perhaps you misunderstood. That’s four hundred, ninety nine…dollars, ninety-nine cents.” He decided to take one for free.
***It’s not such a wild idea. The flowers do what they do for free. The birds sing for free. These meadowlarks out here aren’t asking anything for what they do.
****what would you call two bi-planes together? For production crew jargon, we’re saying something like, ‘We need four more bi-plane dualies out here!” but for marketing purposes, something like ‘dual bi-plane mobiles’ would work, don’t you think? They’re telling me I can get my asking price down in Colorado. “OH YEAH! The yuppies will eat this shit up!” Devon, a Boulder resident, said.
Ps. Hey, get a load of Li An’s note:
‘Sawadee Ka, Mr. Big Boss,
When you comeback? I hab someting to tell you already. Reason I goto my home in country papa sick. Close and lock shop already. crew people glap home already same same me being sick. say big boss ding dong. want 2 plane for onee one pay. same same sa-nake. I hab idea already. maybe I nosee you longtime maybe copy idea to China to much. You remember plane pattern I make in dirt? Leum? When you comeback? I hate you already.
Love,
Li An
Nong Sa helf me with letter toyou her say hi.
___
When you say, or hear, ‘mid-air collision’, you sort of naturally think the worst, right? like two aircraft, airliners, impacting one another head-on at five hundred miles an hour. That would be bad. Even the passengers back in the rear wouldn’t make it.
Or maybe getting T-boned by a jet fighter, slicing your 737 wide-body passenger compartment in half. “HEYYYYAAA. WHAT WAS THAT?” That would be bad, too. In fact, almost everything that happens up there is bad. Bad food. Bad seat. Bad air. Bad service. Can’t smoke.
We had one before, and another at the air show, mid-airs. We couldn’t really call them mid-air collisions, per se, even though they were. It was more like a mid-air ‘mishap’, or mid-air ‘encounter’, neither of which by the way, you would want to experience, either as a pilot, or as a passenger.
A mid-air mishap or encounter is just as bad and messy as a collision, and going down in a ball of flame, though spectacular, results in the same end as a loss of power, loss of a wing or tail rudder, fluttering down in a whining spiral, then poof.
Although quite theatrical, having it occur at the air show is embarrassing and not nearly as heroic and final as a clean-cut battle death. There’s always a whale more explaining to do, to many, many more people than just the immediate family. Like, investigators.
Investigators and military aviation authorities. Always got ‘em in a non-combat related aerial mishap, and in this case, two days before the show, a couple of our young punk new guys were horse-assing around playing tag with their girlfriend’s scarves attached to their tail rudders.
The guy who was ‘it’ would chase the other and cut the scarf sheet with his prop. Zzzzzzzzt, “You’re it!”
Well, who knows what really happened up there, but the chase guy chewed up the tail rudder of his buddy and shredded his prop in the process, so they both went down in a tangle. Chewed up and screwed up. These things happen from time to time. Non-combat related aerial fatality. It happens all the time.
Same in the navy. Man overboard. “Go back and get him, Skipper?”
“Screw him. He’s not critical to the mission. You know what it costs to turn an aircraft carrier around?”
But we’re not the navy, and each of our guys, whether they’re married with kids or not, is critical to our mission, not to mention the aircraft they were horse-assing around with.
The other two at the air-show, pilot error, not horse-assing, was really bad, partly because it involved numerous spectators (it’s not entirely our fault. They came to the show, didn’t they?)* and lawsuits, but like I said, these things happen from time to time.
Lookit the Blue Angels. Best in the world. Again, pilot error. Leader took the whole six-bird formation straight into the ground. Lookit Columbia on liftoff and the other one, on re-entry. Same with the Russians. How many guys did they lose? And the French. How many spectators have they killed at their air shows?
Every time you turn around, the French are killing spectators at air shows. You got a better chance running the bulls in Barcelona on a skateboard.
Anyway, a lot of stuff can happen up there in the air…just ask Niel Armstrong and Sergei Whathisname, so it’s not just us, and most of it you can’t blame on the Baron, though we’d like to attribute to him all elements of evil and misfortune, and implicate him as source of all our own stupidity and blunder.
Four aircraft and as many pilots in three days. Bunch of civilians. I don’t know what they came up with for the final tally.
Later.
-end
Thursday, July 30, 2009
No Floatation Device Under Seat
Pine Ridge, SD
July 2009
Heyyyy Bro,
Your aircraft is just about ready to roll out of the factory, and when I say ‘just about’, I mean, all we’re waiting for are the tires.
She’s ready to fly, man. Beautiful lines. The crew did a nice job on the paint job. Looks cool. Incorporated new design changes to a seamless fuselage construction at the suggestion of the Myanmar crew leader,* and major structural changes in the tail. I think you’ll like it.
Frankel brought his plane in for a thorough overhaul and rehab, after he laughingly said it had crashed. Everybody knows a plane doesn’t survive a crash…there might be a few usable parts, but most of it is scrap, much smaller than a breadbox, so you just can imagine the crew in the maintenance hangar shaking their heads when they saw the old first edition BV33 being dragged in.
Total rehab from head to toe, prop to rudder; new beefed up engine, new landing gear, new rubber, new wing struts, new cowling, rear landing gear, weapons platform, guns,** and new paint job.
I asked him, ‘Do you have any idea of what this is going to cost you?’ and he said to proceed forthright, the sky’s the limit, you know, so that’s what I told the team, and they did a helluva job. You wouldn’t recognize it. Sumbitch is fast.
Well, in the process of firing up the maintenance hangar for Frankel’s extensive rehab job, the crew got started on a couple new planes, primarily because of a recent spike in demand. You remember Alonzo, who shocked me last year by shrugging off an offer for a free, take your pick, plane?
Yeah. Stays with Bo and Misty. Jolted me bolt upright in the seat, causing me to exclaim loudly, “WHAT?”
He sees me this year, and first thing he asks is if I still have the planes.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I still got ‘em.”
And Dewayne, up in Porcupine, he wants one, too. This is after refusing an offer for a plane last year, saying, ‘Nah, I could do that.’
Funny. The two onliest guys who ever refused our aircraft turned around and ended up ordering one a year later.
After countless flight hours amassed over one year, we brought the two LaRois in for routine maintenance, tune up, lube job, wash and wax, armaments check, and new wing supports for one of them.
They looked cool in the squadron lineup with six of the newer Solaris and two Lao Poste ‘close air support’ models,*** sort of like the Pearl Harbor flight line before the attack. Except they’re biplanes, of course. I’ll send a photo.
So, after wrapping up Frankel’s rush job immediately after the sun dance, the crew began construction of a new model with new materials, sleeker and faster, with bigger engines and bigger guns. You’ll see them at the air show.
-end
*Li An Song Nu Kyi. Holding her position only because of her limited knowledge of English, spontaneously came up with the idea of seamless fuselage construction, after constructing several dozen aircraft.
“Maybe can sabe ti,’ she said, squatting, drawing a template in the dirt with her index finger.
“Ahhhh, yeah,” I told her dismissively, thinking that basically, Li An was ignorant of anything close to aeronautical design, having grown up with little schooling in a small village in the sticks where her father carved coral aquarium sea dragons for a living, and had only come to the aircraft factory for the job opportunity.
Also, I didn’t want to relent my superior social standing as Big Boss by acknowledging that she might actually may have something valuable to offer, so I told her to go ahead and have the crew do things the way we always have, since by doing so, admitting she had an idea, would have caused severe loss of face, for me, a terrible thing in Asia, and everyone, the whole crew, was right there, eating and watching. She showed me during their lunch break.
I didn’t have time for bird signs or drawings in the dirt. I needed to fake the appearance of a busy man, and wondered why it appeared the crew was watching us so intently and apparently taking bets.
When she hired on, I asked her where she learned her English already, and she just nodded and smiled with a vacant, unfocused, incomprehensible expression that clearly indicated she was faking it, and kept pointing at the dog. The neighbor told me
later she was asking for one of the pups.
“Pups? She don’t have no pups,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “When she has pups. When she has pups, she wants one.”
Anyway, when I got home, here, I traced out that pattern she showed me one night out of boredom, and for crying out loud, we tried it, and she was right, it saves time. The planes are more stable, stronger, and easier to construct, cutting the production time by a third. We should have been doing it this way from the start, sixty aircraft ago.
Same way with the tail section. Suddenly, the solution to an inherent and historical design flaw was astonishing and excruciatingly apparent, just today during the construction of a Solari. “Hold it!” I told the crew. “Hold everything.”
Everybody put down their cutting torches and just stood there. Me too. I just stood there.
**You might ask, ‘Why’s he gotta have guns?’
Are you kidding? Everybody up there has got a gun. What are you gonna do, send him out there without a gun???
***That’s ‘one Solari, two Solaris’, a sleek version of the old LaRois (that’s one LaRoi, two LaRois). The Lao Poste is the ‘workhorse’ of the squadron; slower, heavier, and more cumbersome than the fighter aircraft, but reliable, so far.
Unfortunately, shortly after the photo of the lineup, one of the Solaris was damaged in a near mid-air...if there is such a thing…sure, you can ALMOST have a mid-air, but in this case, it wasn’t head-on, but rather, the wing tips touching ever so slightly in close formation during preparation for the show, just enough to cause one of the team of Solaris, flown by one of our young punk cadets, flying cover for the Lao Poste aircraft, to spin out of control and go crashing to the ground. Officially, we’re saying the accident is still under investigation, but we know already what happened.
Did the pilot survive the crash? Well, technically, yes and no. You know, of course, we’re prop-to-rudder legit, so, no, there aren’t any parachutes.
_____
So now, we’re just training the new punk cadets and working on getting the squadron back up to strength, which in our case means about fourteen, sixteen aircraft. That way, when you lose one or two during operations, you can bounce back next day without missing a beat.
Not the same as when there’s only a half dozen guys in the air. Guy calls in for air support, and the only thing you can tell him is you’re stretched to the limit, your guys are flying on four hour’s sleep, half your birds are shot up, and he’ll need to tell his troops to hunker down and order more body bags.
With a dozen or more aircraft on station and operational, you take a couple of hits, a couple of guys go down, you attend the funeral services, get drunk, tell a few 'remember when' jokes about the deceased, go silent for a while, coulda been you, and next day you’re back up flying missions, get back on the horse that bit you. You got a nation to defend. Baron’s still up there. You think the Baron is taking the day off?
.
July 2009
Heyyyy Bro,
Your aircraft is just about ready to roll out of the factory, and when I say ‘just about’, I mean, all we’re waiting for are the tires.
She’s ready to fly, man. Beautiful lines. The crew did a nice job on the paint job. Looks cool. Incorporated new design changes to a seamless fuselage construction at the suggestion of the Myanmar crew leader,* and major structural changes in the tail. I think you’ll like it.
Frankel brought his plane in for a thorough overhaul and rehab, after he laughingly said it had crashed. Everybody knows a plane doesn’t survive a crash…there might be a few usable parts, but most of it is scrap, much smaller than a breadbox, so you just can imagine the crew in the maintenance hangar shaking their heads when they saw the old first edition BV33 being dragged in.
Total rehab from head to toe, prop to rudder; new beefed up engine, new landing gear, new rubber, new wing struts, new cowling, rear landing gear, weapons platform, guns,** and new paint job.
I asked him, ‘Do you have any idea of what this is going to cost you?’ and he said to proceed forthright, the sky’s the limit, you know, so that’s what I told the team, and they did a helluva job. You wouldn’t recognize it. Sumbitch is fast.
Well, in the process of firing up the maintenance hangar for Frankel’s extensive rehab job, the crew got started on a couple new planes, primarily because of a recent spike in demand. You remember Alonzo, who shocked me last year by shrugging off an offer for a free, take your pick, plane?
Yeah. Stays with Bo and Misty. Jolted me bolt upright in the seat, causing me to exclaim loudly, “WHAT?”
He sees me this year, and first thing he asks is if I still have the planes.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I still got ‘em.”
And Dewayne, up in Porcupine, he wants one, too. This is after refusing an offer for a plane last year, saying, ‘Nah, I could do that.’
Funny. The two onliest guys who ever refused our aircraft turned around and ended up ordering one a year later.
After countless flight hours amassed over one year, we brought the two LaRois in for routine maintenance, tune up, lube job, wash and wax, armaments check, and new wing supports for one of them.
They looked cool in the squadron lineup with six of the newer Solaris and two Lao Poste ‘close air support’ models,*** sort of like the Pearl Harbor flight line before the attack. Except they’re biplanes, of course. I’ll send a photo.
So, after wrapping up Frankel’s rush job immediately after the sun dance, the crew began construction of a new model with new materials, sleeker and faster, with bigger engines and bigger guns. You’ll see them at the air show.
-end
*Li An Song Nu Kyi. Holding her position only because of her limited knowledge of English, spontaneously came up with the idea of seamless fuselage construction, after constructing several dozen aircraft.
“Maybe can sabe ti,’ she said, squatting, drawing a template in the dirt with her index finger.
“Ahhhh, yeah,” I told her dismissively, thinking that basically, Li An was ignorant of anything close to aeronautical design, having grown up with little schooling in a small village in the sticks where her father carved coral aquarium sea dragons for a living, and had only come to the aircraft factory for the job opportunity.
Also, I didn’t want to relent my superior social standing as Big Boss by acknowledging that she might actually may have something valuable to offer, so I told her to go ahead and have the crew do things the way we always have, since by doing so, admitting she had an idea, would have caused severe loss of face, for me, a terrible thing in Asia, and everyone, the whole crew, was right there, eating and watching. She showed me during their lunch break.
I didn’t have time for bird signs or drawings in the dirt. I needed to fake the appearance of a busy man, and wondered why it appeared the crew was watching us so intently and apparently taking bets.
When she hired on, I asked her where she learned her English already, and she just nodded and smiled with a vacant, unfocused, incomprehensible expression that clearly indicated she was faking it, and kept pointing at the dog. The neighbor told me
later she was asking for one of the pups.
“Pups? She don’t have no pups,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “When she has pups. When she has pups, she wants one.”
Anyway, when I got home, here, I traced out that pattern she showed me one night out of boredom, and for crying out loud, we tried it, and she was right, it saves time. The planes are more stable, stronger, and easier to construct, cutting the production time by a third. We should have been doing it this way from the start, sixty aircraft ago.
Same way with the tail section. Suddenly, the solution to an inherent and historical design flaw was astonishing and excruciatingly apparent, just today during the construction of a Solari. “Hold it!” I told the crew. “Hold everything.”
Everybody put down their cutting torches and just stood there. Me too. I just stood there.
**You might ask, ‘Why’s he gotta have guns?’
Are you kidding? Everybody up there has got a gun. What are you gonna do, send him out there without a gun???
***That’s ‘one Solari, two Solaris’, a sleek version of the old LaRois (that’s one LaRoi, two LaRois). The Lao Poste is the ‘workhorse’ of the squadron; slower, heavier, and more cumbersome than the fighter aircraft, but reliable, so far.
Unfortunately, shortly after the photo of the lineup, one of the Solaris was damaged in a near mid-air...if there is such a thing…sure, you can ALMOST have a mid-air, but in this case, it wasn’t head-on, but rather, the wing tips touching ever so slightly in close formation during preparation for the show, just enough to cause one of the team of Solaris, flown by one of our young punk cadets, flying cover for the Lao Poste aircraft, to spin out of control and go crashing to the ground. Officially, we’re saying the accident is still under investigation, but we know already what happened.
Did the pilot survive the crash? Well, technically, yes and no. You know, of course, we’re prop-to-rudder legit, so, no, there aren’t any parachutes.
_____
So now, we’re just training the new punk cadets and working on getting the squadron back up to strength, which in our case means about fourteen, sixteen aircraft. That way, when you lose one or two during operations, you can bounce back next day without missing a beat.
Not the same as when there’s only a half dozen guys in the air. Guy calls in for air support, and the only thing you can tell him is you’re stretched to the limit, your guys are flying on four hour’s sleep, half your birds are shot up, and he’ll need to tell his troops to hunker down and order more body bags.
With a dozen or more aircraft on station and operational, you take a couple of hits, a couple of guys go down, you attend the funeral services, get drunk, tell a few 'remember when' jokes about the deceased, go silent for a while, coulda been you, and next day you’re back up flying missions, get back on the horse that bit you. You got a nation to defend. Baron’s still up there. You think the Baron is taking the day off?
.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Ants Come Marching
30.05.09
KHUK KHAK, Thailand
Rainy season
Ants come marching
Read a book
Leave no crumbs
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand
Rainy season
Ants come marching
Read a book
Leave no crumbs
.
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