The Dog's Tits
Samizdata
Sasha Castel

Tim Blair
libertarian.org.au
USS Clueless
Damian Penny
Gareth Parker
James Randi
Eject Eject Eject!!!
Some Bloody Wog

Premium core
James Morrow
Jane Galt
Kathy Kinsley
Bizzare Science
Little Tiny Wit
Silent Running
Catallaxy Files
Little Green Footballs
Daniel Pipes
Scott of The Eye

Beautifully Wicked
Bitchin' Monaro Guide
Drivel Warehouse
Little Tiny Lies
Sup
port Israel
Capitalist Chicks
Evil Godless Swine
Professor Bunyip
The Rottweiler
Right Wing News
Clubbeaux

Anti-suckage
Le Québécois Libre
Hot Buttered Death
Vodkapundit
Vigilant TV
Pejman

Spleenville
Bleedin' Brain

Rachel Lucas
Acidman
A Small Victory

Aussies Up Your Arse
Bargarz
Angry Anderson
After Grog Blog
Ken Parish
Brain Graze
Amax Weblog

John Quiggin

Dickheads Galore
Dick Neville
aus.politics
The Daily Saddam
George Monbiot
Jew Killers United
Pilger
I Love Osama
The Guardian
Screeching Dweebs
Noam Chomsky
John Gotti Fanzine
Green Left Weekly
The Independent

 

Live Whacking Permalink Archive
click "Live Whacking" button for the latest entries


14-3-03

I hate flying

I don't fly well. When I was a kid I got airsick a lot, but the being-in-an-airplane part didn't scare me per se. Flying was just..well...boring, but nothing worse than that. Hell, the left engine on a plane I was on from Mount Isa exploded, and even that didn't bother me.

But as I got older, flying started to scare the shit out of me. My two holidays to Japan in '99 and 00' had spectacularly horrid flights in both directions: imagine sitting thru 5 straight hours of terror-inducing Clear Air Turbulence. In 1990, my flight back from Hong Kong hit an air pocket and the plane dropped hundreds of feet in a split second - the fella rising from his seat in front of us smashed his head on the roof.

Turbulence is not fucking fun. And even when you get a break from it, you just know there's more coming.

There's nothing I can do to relax on planes. They won't let you get wasted before you get on. I can't take my own bottle of vodka. I can't read because I get nauseous so easily. I can never hear the movie or music properly thru those shitty little earphones. And I'm trapped in that shitty economy-class seating: can't recline the seat far enough to sleep, you can't go for a walk to relax, there's the deafening drone of the engines, that ghastly sickly-sweet smell of the interior of the plane, the endless discomfort, the parched throat from the dry air. Each hour seems like a day. Hell, I found myself going to the toilet as often as possible just to be able to move around.

Flying to me is simply an eternal agony of physically restricitve, tiring, nausea-inducing, terrifying hell in what feels like a flying coffin. There are few things as sweet to me as the moment you feel the wheels touch the runway. The thought is always the same - hey, I didn't die. There's no point hiding it. Flying just scares me to death nowdays.

The flight to Japan was only just over 9 hours, the flight to LA next month will be almost 14 (and it's an hour longer on the way back. Just the thought of it is starting to give me the heebie-jeebies. I've heard the Sydney-LA trip tends to be very smooth, but somehow I doubt it. Can anyone offer their own experiences?

I'm not a drug person, but I think I'm gonna be asking for some nice little pills from the doctor before I get on that bloody plane.

If anyone can offer some comforting thoughts/advice/reassuring statistics, now would be a great time to send them.

(And if there's any kind-hearted billionaires reading this, the gift of an upgrade to business-class seating will win you a friend for life.)


Good movie

Just caught up with the DVD of John Frankenheimer's 1965 WW2 flick The Train, and a darn fine effort it was.

Burt Lancaster stars as a French resistance soldier trying to stop a Nazi train full of stolen french art treasures from making it to Germany.

Starts off rather scrappily, with erratic pacing & direction. And the sound is terrible. Once the train is on it's journey though, it's a cracker of a film. Heartily recommended.


Margot Kingston

Tim Blair exposes Margot's shameless distortions in her commentary of John Howard's appearance at the National Press Club.

 

Motorcycles
MC News
AMA Superbikes
Motorcycle News
Perth Bikes
Bon Trikes
Oz Trikes
Allmoto
MotoGP

Women
Holly Valance
Eliza Dushku
Katherine Heigl
Michelle Williams
Kate Winslet
Kristin Kreuk

Kulcha
Dark Horizons
CHUD
Roger Ebert
RAGE

Info'mation
FrontPage Mag
Snopes
The Smoking Gun
Straight Dope
Against Nature
Australian Skeptics
CSICOP
IPA
Shooters Party

Assorted Gubshite
Draggin Jeans
Really Cute Chess Geek
Miniguns
Pure rancour
Brunching Shuttlecocks
The Onion
killfrog.com
Omega Chess
Barrett Rifles

Brews
Coopers Ale

Subzero
Cougar
Hahn Ice
Strongbow
Carlsberg
Crown Lager
Carlton Draught
Tooheys New
James Squire