Oh, Hitler Finished all the Juice wasn’t the only lick my Jesus inspired photocomic we did. Two years, one month and one day later, we did another.
Here it is.
The Cuttlefish that Love-Machined the Flip-Flops
Way back in the dawn of time, I realised that the lease for my bedroom in the university residences was going to run out. As I planned on doing a second year at university, it behoved me to find somewhere to live. Being poor, I couldn’t afford a place on my own, so I spoke to my friend Andy.
“Andy, dear” I said. “Shall we get a flat together, and live forever like J.D. and Turk, until you get married and I knock some girl up?”
He was agreeable, and thus it was sorted. Andy and I would find a flat together, and we would be flatmates! Then, walking along the road one day, we bumped into our friend Tom, who I was engaged to marry (though that later fell apart, after I met his parents). Somehow in the conversation, he decided that he was going to live with us, and thus it was sorted. Andy, Tom and I would find a flat together, and we would be flatmates! Then, later, on MSN Messenger with my friend Paul, I found he had applied to Strathclyde University to do Architecture, and didn’t want to go into halls after a bad experience with halls at Abertay, so I invited him into our little band of agreeable fellows, and thus it was sorted. Andy, Tom, Paul and I would find a flat together, and we would be flatmates!
There are many advantages to having flatmates. Splitting the cost of rent and bills can save you a packet. The lack of crippling loneliness where the longest conversation you have in weeks is “Would you like cashback with that?” Only having to clean the toilet one time in four that it needs cleaned. The ability to borrow a tenner, or make a pizza hut order worthwhile, having a film night, helping each other with various tasks. Many, many advantages indeed.
One of the greatest, though, is that you actually do things. This blog, to me anyway, often feels like I’m reliving past glories, as I don’t seem to actually do anything these days. Wake up, work, internet and sleep. Except for Tuesday, when I don’t even go to work. When I lived with my friends, we actually did stuff. Well, except for Andy. Paul, Tom and I were a creative force. Perhaps nearly everything we did was terrible, but that’s not the point. The point was we did things. Today, I am going to share one of those things.
Paul and I do terrible things to webcomics. Does anyone remember Men In Hats? It was an incredibly awesome webcomic, at least it was when I was 14. Paul and I killed it. Perhaps not directly, but it was not long after we painted murals at our school based on Mr. Farber’s comic creations that he revealed that he was stopping the comic.
A very young Paul Ferguson, Peter Bell and I standing proudly in front of our plagiarism. More photos here or here if you want to go all the way back.
Then came Lick My Jesus. We apparently killed this one so well that the website is no more. See?. The only trace of them I can find these days is their guest strip for Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics. Rather than paint characters from their strips on our walls, which would be difficult with it being a photocomic, we decided instead to do a guest strip for them.
Every so often, they released a round robin style strip, which was written by having one person draw three frames, then showing only the last frame to the next person. They used that frame as inspiration for their three frames, showing the last frame to the next person, and so it continues. Sort of like a purely visual form of Broken Picture Telephone. That was how we wrote ours, and then we photographed it, added our speech bubbles, and put it on the internets.
Here it is.
Hitler Finished All The Juice
I’ve recently been trying to work out why I want to “blog”. I originally started this blog with the idea of tying together different online personas, linking to all the content I’ve put on other websites, Youtube, Flickr, that kind of thing. There’s a problem with that though, I seldom actually add content to the internet.
I think I’ve come up with a purpose for mytbc now, though. I have always fancied myself as a bit of a writer. Never a particularly good one, but at least I wrote. Except that outside of this blog, I haven’t since, ooh, first year of university. This kind of flies in the face of my belief that I am a writer. I may have the potential to be a writer, but if I don’t write, then I’m not one
Like I say, though, I don’t think I’m a particularly good writer. Still, like the old joke goes:
Q. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
A. “Well, first you need to get to New York…”
It’s something like that anyway. The point is, if I want to be a good writer, I need to write more. There will be times in my life where being a good writer will come in handy. Whether that’s writing reports for a job, or even something simple like being able to make up a good story for my children when putting them to bed, knowing how to put words together in coherent sentence that attracts the reader’s, or listener’s, attention will be a good thing.
Practise, then, is the key. And if that’s the key, then perhaps this blog is the lock? I shall use this blog to refine my writing skills, become a better writer.
The problem with saying I want to be a better writer is that better is a comparison word. Better than what? Well, better than I used to be (which I hope that I am), and better than I am now. I recently discovered an old notepad which contained some fiction I’d started writing, before abandoning it after six and a half pages. It does contain two different ink colours, so unlike most of my stories at the time, I came back to it at least once. Using my forensic skills, I have been able to date it to around Spring 2001. For your amusement, and my chagrin, I have decided to share it with you, unedited. To all those who care about tiny grammatical and syntactical errors, I am sorry. This is apparently how I wrote when I was fourteen. Enjoy.
A strange woman rode into town upon a donkey. She rode up the general store, dismounted and entered
“Good evening, ma’am” said Smithson. Robert Smithson was the General store’s only employee. He had worked there since his father, Robert Smithson Sr, had unfortunately died when 10 tonnes of tinned Baked beans fell on him during a delivery.
“Hello sir. Take note. By Dawn tomorrow I wish to have A new donkey, 10 tins of Baked beans, stop Blubbering man, an assistant, 3 2 litre Bottles of perrier water and a map of the county. Think you can do that,” she almost whispered
“It’s possible, I think” he replied with a tear in his eye, “By noon tomorrow I could get it done but it’s a bit 50:50 for dawn”
“I’ll see you at noon then. Make it so”
The sun was at it’s highest for the day. At 12 noon exactly the stranger walked into the store. A note on the desk said something about meeting at the gallows. She couldn’t really read it because the handwriting was really terrible.
She got on her Donkey and raced to the gallows and saw Smithson standing there with everything bar the assistant.
She sighed, “I thought you said everything would be ready”
“It is” he assured her.
“Then where’s the bally assistant” she said with the evil look that woman do so well.
“I’m it.” As he said it a smile rose across the woman’s face before she burst out laughing.
“You, Ha! you. No offence but, you probably don’t know anything about surviving in the wild. I’m sorry, but” And she burst out laughing again.
Smithson showed her all his Scout badges and said, “Scout’s honour. I can help you. Please. My life here is really boring and I want adventure”
“Fine. If you’re useless I’ll drop you at the next town. My name is Stone, Rosie Stone”
“Robert Smithson. I’ll try not to let you down. I’ve already packed everything in mule packs”
They made their way out of town to the sound of a cat meowing.
They rode nonstop through the Desert until nightfall, except for toilet Breaks. Editor’s note: I seem to have been incapable of starting a b word with anything but a capital B. It’s really annoying me They stopped to make camp at about nine o’clock. This doesn’t add anything to the story but the chronicler, that’s me by the way, is a sucker for useless facts. If you don’t like them, tough. Just to spite you lot I’ll write ten paragraphs about Smithson’s toenails.
Ow. Stop it. My slave-driver is whipping me. Stop it. Ok, I will get back to the story, but I will put those paragraphs in somewhere. [the chronicler cackles evilly, and is hit over the head with a chair. The slave driver smiles]
Sorry. I’ll get back to the story now. The campfire was blazing away and smithson was flossing his teeth. Stone, our heroine who you’ve already met, was washing her hair in the river.
“You’re hair is already looked nice, so why wash it?” Smithson asked her. Editor’s note: I admit it, even I once used the wrong your. Oh, the shame. The shaaame.
“I wash it every night so that when I’m asked on a date I can truthfully say that I’m washing my hair” she replied.
“I see. So where are we headed?” He asked.
“Yonder”
“Yes, but which direction is Yonder”
“Aaah” She replied mystically. “Yonder is in no particular direction. It all depends where you are in relation to Yonder. From here it is due North, but 300 miles north from here it is due south. At dawn we head to Yonder, donkey dealing capital of Yondershire.”
“Yes ma’am.” he said, and promptly fell asleep.
“wee idiot” Stone whispered to herself, and followed the lead of her companion.
All that was heard that night was Smithson snoring and an occasional fart from the donkey
At Dawn they broke camp, and headed for Yonder. I would tell you every bit of conversation they had, but you’d soon get bored. To prove it, here’s a snippet
“Is that a tree?” asked smithson.
“No, it’s a flattened hedgehog.”
“How about that?”
“No, that’s my donkey.” Stone sighed.
It continued like that for three hours. Aren’t you glad I decided not to put it all in. Let’s have a hip hip hooray for me. Perhaps not, the slave driver is smiling at me again.
Eventually Smithson managed to identify a tree and Stone lowered her palm from his throat.
“Is that a tree?” asked Smithson, pointing at a road sign saying “Yonder, 3 miles”. She punched him in the mouth.
Three miles is a long way when you’re unconscious and riding on a donkey.”
So, there we have it. Am I a better writer now? Undoubtedly. Am I a good writer now? I don’t think so. Will there ever come a time when I will be satisfied with my own writings in such a way that I would use the word good?
No, probably not. But that just means I’ll ever be striving to be better, which can only be a good thing.
Continuing on from here, this is part two of my rewrite of my old FlyerTalk trip report GLA – ATL in US Economy. Now with added images, to break up the text some. Onwards and upwards, chaps.
Let’s recap, shall we? I was heading to Atlanta for 5 weeks of summertime fun with my girlfriend and her family. My plane had landed in Philadelphia, after a pretty rubbish flight, and I had 90 minutes to clear immigration, pick up checked bags, clear customs, recheck bags, and make it to my gate in another terminal before I missed my flight. 90 minutes, in an airport with a recommended international to domestic connection time of two hours. Oh, and I’d had about an hour’s nap in the past 30 or so hours.
Just to give you an idea of the flights I was taking, I present this wonderful map courtesy of the Great Circle Mapper.
Sitting near the front of a packed economy section, I knew I would have to hot foot it down to immigration to be in with any chance of making my flight. The last time I’d gone through immigration (albeit in Atlanta, which has more international flights (probably)), I’d queued for over an hour. I also knew, though, that I was tired, and that would make answering immigration questions a touch more difficult. Luckily I am a genius; that morning, in Glasgow Airport’s Boots the Chemist, I’d chosen a can of Red Bull as the drink included in my meal deal, and I’d saved it until that moment. I was walking fast, chugging red bull, and was probably the first person on the plane to make it to the immigrations hall.
The hall was really rather quiet, and I was in front of an immigrations officer in about ten minutes or so. He asked the usual questions; “Why are you here?”, “Oh, is your girlfriend an American citizen?”, “When did you last see her?” and so on. Probably ballsed up the “How much money do you have on you?” question when I said I had absolutely nothing, but he gave me the opportunity to recover from my mistake by checking I had credit/debit cards I would be using. A quick fingerprinting and passport stamping later, I was given leave to enter the land of the free.
I’d made it to the pre-customs baggage retrieval in 15 minutes, not bad at all. Unfortunately, no bags had. I was starving, but had packed some cereal bars in my backpack. I munched, and waited, and munched, and waited. Always watching the clock, munching and waiting. Eventually, a full 30 minutes after my plane had reached the gate, bags started coming out. I found my cases and made my way to customs. One of the customs officers took my form, and asked me if I had any food in my bags. I said I did, some pringles and chocolate, and she reacted as if I’d just said I was trying to smuggle a thousand Chinese babies into her country using my rectal passage as a hiding place. It was off to get my bags x-rayed by customs for me, then.
Oddly enough, I didn’t have any forbidden substances, and I was cleared through customs. Dropped my bags off in the rechecking area, then onto security. I was wearing my sandals that had been fine at Glasgow that morning, so didn’t even think to remove them for this security check. The wonderful TSA officer reacted like I was carrying a machine gun aimed at her mother’s head. Understandable, who knows what kind of damage I could have done with these sandals? So, it was back through the metal detector, sandals X-rayed with my bags, and then I could proceed to my gate after they found out I wasn’t carrying a bomb in them. Immediately after security there was a departures board which said something like the following – “B4 | 1430 | US AIRWAYS | US 3471 | ATLANTA | CANCELLED”
Ah. Bugger.
I didn’t really know what to do, so I headed to the gate of my now cancelled flight in the hope of finding somebody who could sort me out. When I arrived there was indeed a US Airways gate agent working at the desk in that gate, so I asked her what I was to do. She looked at me with indignation; how dare a customer ask her for help? Anyway, she managed to let me know where the customer service desk was in between disgruntled sighs, and I headed that-away. There was a short queue at the desk, and I joined it.
This Lego model of the Liberty Bell can be found in Philadelphia Airport. It was just about the only thing in the airport that I found interesting enough to take a photo of.
The queue wasn’t moving particularly quickly, and it was probably around 30 minutes before I got to an agent. Continuing the theme of Philadelphia airport’s staff that are happy to serve, he basically ignored me, grunted a couple of times, and handed me a boarding pass for a later flight. Happy that I finally had a plan, I just had to work out how to let Katie and her parents know what it was. Now, part of being a genius is planning ahead. So, in my bag I had a notepad into which I’d had Katie write her telephone number, and I also had a number of quarters from my previous trip. So, I made my way to the nearest bank of pay-phones, put in my quarters, dialled the number and heard “The number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please hang up and try again.”
Ah. Bugger.
Right, back up plan. I’d done my research on the airport, and I knew they have free wifi access at weekends. Excellent, except it was a Friday. Ah, but during the week they offer free access to college students. And I still had a valid student card. That’s a bingo! So, it was up to the airport information desk, ask for access, give the lady my details, and receive a one time username and password for the wifi. I headed to the gate for my new flight, opened my laptop, and saw Katie’s mother was on-line on Facebook. Just as I was about to hit enter on the message I’d typed with my new flight details, there was an announcement. “We are sorry to announce the cancellation of flight US 3423 to Atlanta. Please go to one of our customer service desks to rearrange blah blah blah.”
Ah. Bugger.
Mrs Katie’s mum told me how to collect call their house, and I got up to go stand in a queue. It was a little longer this time, but being British I was in my element. As we queued, the weather outside became frightful. I wish there’d been a fire inside, that would have been delightful. But as I’d no place to go I’d let it, em, rain. It was about 2pm at this time, but the dark clouds made it look like dusk had fallen. Being Scottish, I know rain. I grew up with rain. Most of the time, I consider rain to be my friend. But this American rain, it was something else. It was absolutely incredible, battering off the aeroplanes and concrete outside like a rattle bouncing off a mother’s noggin during her child’s temper tantrum. Then the thunder and lightning commenced, the thunder and lightning that had cancelled my two flights. Mixed in with my usual awe of thunder and lightning was mild annoyance at still being stuck in Philadelphia.
I queued for about two hours. The agents were doing what they could to keep the queue to a minimum; some were running up and down the queue handing out the number for US Airways reservations, so that those with cell phones could rebook over the phone, and every time an aircraft departed from a gate, that gate would become an extra customer service desk. Unfortunately, my mobile doesn’t work in the states, seeing as I’m too cheap to pay for international roaming, and I had to queue. For two hours. Even the most extreme British queueophile would get a bit hacked off with that.
Still, no matter how annoyed I was, I wasn’t going to take this out on the agent who, finally, dealt with me. It was not her fault that the plane couldn’t fly. I approached her desk, handed over my boarding pass and said, nicely, “I’d like to go to Atlanta please.”
“Not today, you won’t be.”
Ah. Bugger.
I asked what my options were, and was told that I could sleep in the airport or pay $78 for a distressed passenger rate at the airport hotels. I wasn’t keen on either, to be honest. The agent did say she’d be able to rustle me up a meal voucher though. There was a problem, however. She couldn’t find my reservation. I told her I’d been re-booked onto that particular flight, and she searched for my original itinerary. Then the story changed. As I’d come from the EU, the airline was going to pay for my hotel. Hooray! The earliest flight she could book me on was at 4pm the following day, so she printed me off three meal vouchers, a $10 one for dinner that night, and two $5 ones for breakfast and lunch the following day. She then gave me details of where my hotel shuttle would pick me up, and I left the desk tired but satisfied.
A flyover near Philadelphia Airport. I throw it in now to break up the MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT.
First things first, I was starving. I made my way to the food court and found salvation. Chick-fil-A! One meal voucher later, I headed for the luggage office to pick up an overnight kit. Unfortunately the language barrier got in the way, what with me speaking English, and the woman in the office speaking grunts. She couldn’t understand me, and told me to go to the check-in desks to get one. So, back to the main terminal, get to a check in desk, and the very nice man told me she was wrong, and sent me back. This time I got my overnight kit; razor, toothbrush, deodorant, that kind of thing. Collect call to Mr Katie’s dad, giving him flight times for next day and then I went to wait for my shuttle.
Quality Hotel was scrawled on my boarding pass. So, I watched the shuttles. Hilton, nope. Marriott, nope. Holiday Inn, nope. Quality Inn? I went up and asked, nope. I was waiting for Quality Hotel. Hundreds and thousands of other shuttles went past. I even saw the same Quality Inn shuttle about 3 times before, finally, the Quality Hotel shuttle appeared. Some of the other stranded passengers had attempted to phone the hotel, receiving no answer. Still, it was here now. We boarded, and made our way to the hotel.
As we arrived, the lobby looked a bit dark. In fact, it was a bit dark. There were no lights on. That was because there was no power on. Hooray! We were relieved to find that the power cut didn’t affect the rooms themselves, just the lobby. However, they wouldn’t be able to provide us with keys for our rooms, so we’d have to be escorted by a manager who would open the door with the master key. I didn’t care. I needed two things at that point, a shower and sleep.
Having showered, and put back on my dirty clothes as they were all I had, I realised I was thirsty, so headed to the lobby. I asked the manager if there were any shops nearby at which I could purchase a soda. She said the hotel just happened to have a shop at which I could purchase a soda. I then asked if she took credit cards, since I had no cash. Ah, small problem there. It seems that credit card machines use electricity, which the hotel was rather short on at that point. However, being a very, very lovely lady she just gave me a bottle of Pepsi, as compensation for my troubles. Sated, I went back to my room, turned the TV to a channel showing some dudes performing extreme sports, and crashed.
This is where I slept at US Airways’ dime. Basic, but worth the price I paid.
Return soon, dear reader, where I shall entertain you with my day in Philadelphia proper.
The newest version of Google’s Picasa software has face recognition built in. It scans all your photos for faces, and allows you to tag which face is whose. Better though, based on previous taggings, it will guess whose face is whose as it goes on. It can be quite accurate.
Needless to say, I have never been happier in my life than when Picasa suggested that.
This is a rewrite of a FlyerTalk trip report that I posted here after flying from Glasgow to Atlanta via Philadelphia in July/August 2009. I have edited it to make it more interesting to non air-nerds.
I remember sitting with Katie in January 2009, preparing to fly back home after three weeks with her, not knowing when I was going to see her again. I’m man enough to admit there were tears, some of which weren’t hers. I’d practically demanded that she come visit me in July, since it would be my birthday and my graduation. It’s not that I care about either, but they’d make an excellent excuse. There were probably many flaws in that plan, but the biggest is that goodbyes are hard for Katie. Not that they’re easy for me, far from it in fact, but I am at least able to detach myself from her, and make my way through the security checkpoint on my own. When she’d previously said goodbye to me, I honestly don’t think she’d have managed without her parents, pastor and best friend to drag her away from me.
So, then, if she’s not able to leave me, how do we solve this problem? Why, it’s quite simple. She would visit me in July then, as my lease ran out at the end of that month, I would save on a month’s rent payment and fly out to spend some time over there. The saving a month’s rent was how I was able to justify the expense of flying during the summer. My previous trip, three weeks at Christmas with KLM, had cost just £330; flights for the dates I was looking at were about £500. I was a bit cash poor, and wasn’t able to commit to my August visit, while Katie was able to commit to July. At the time she booked, her cheapest flights were with Continental Airlines, via Katie’s favourite airport, Newark Liberty.
While cash poor, I did have an emergency fund available to me. For the past few years I’d been overpaying tax on a number of jobs, always meaning to apply for it back. So, I waited until April and sent Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs a nice letter, explaining that I’d had some work, and believed I’d paid too much tax. They agreed with me, and sent me a nice cheque back for about £650. I immediately paid it into my account, waited the three days for it to clear (which it did, reassuringly Her Majesty is not bankrupt), then went on t’internet to look at flight prices. To fly back on Katie’s flights was going to cost £685. I’m not a huge fan of swearing, but fuck that. I found that US Airways would give me similar flight times for £585. I love Katie, dearly, but not enough to pay £100 to sit next to her for twelve hours, apparently
Now that you’ve had a four paragraph back story, we fast forward to the penultimate day of the month of July (which was an incredible, incredibly month). Katie and I had arrived back in Glasgow on Wednesday night, after five days at Soul Survivor, and would be flying out on Friday morning. This gave us Thursday for laundry, packing, and, for me anyway, wandering around my empty house realising that after three years, I would never enter her ever again. While I was gripped by excitement to be flying to spend five whole weeks with the Fullers, there was some maudlin in among my feelings. Still, we had packing to do. Katie, seeing as she has a vagina, had about four bags of stuff to pack in her two suitcases and giant carry on bag. My penis and I wouldn’t normally pack that much, but I was leaving my house, and finding stuff all over the place I’d forgotten to take to my mum’s house but that I wanted to keep. So, between us, we had 4 suitcases, her giant carry on, and my rucksack stuffed to the seams.
My usual trick of leaving it all to the last minute had meant that I had only finished packing and cleaning the house about twenty minutes before our taxi was due to pick us up. Taxi? I know, my normal mode of transport to the airport is the excellent Glasgow Flyer bus service, but with so many cases, and the bus station a 40 minute walk away, and a very lazy girlfriend, I decided a Taxi was our best bet. Besides, with Hamden cabs it was only £4 more than the bus would have cost for the two of us. Now, when it comes to airport arrival times, I always err on the side of caution. That’s why with my flight departing at 1015, I was at the airport for 0630. Yeah! Not quite as bad as my last trip, when I was at the airport for 2am for a 6am flight, even though none of the check-in counters opened until 4am.
We both got checked in, passing the extra security questions for US bound passengers, in about ten minutes, then we headed upstairs for security. Ever since I’d discovered a cheap pair of safety boots in a shoe shop when I was 17, all my shoes had been steel toe-capped. This gets very annoying when flying, so for this journey I’d bought myself some nice North Face sandals, and security was a breeze. One of the things I love about Glasgow Airport is that the Boots the chemist inside still runs their magical £2.99 meal deal. Even better, I’d bought five of them that month, so I was due a free one. So for £2.99, Katie and I each had an extra meal to consume on the plane, since food in economy is in short measure.
Oh man, my eighth paragraph into this trip report, and I’m not even on the plane yet. After buying the sammiches, we headed for the gates. As Katie’s flight boarded, we said our “See you in eighteen hours or so”s, and I confused her gate agent when I left the queue as she boarded. Explaining to him that I’d decided to fly with someone else, I prepared for the massive trek from her gate, 27C, to mine, 28. Twenty seconds later, I was sitting at my gate, looking out the window in case anything interesting happened. I watched her Continental Boeing 757-200 pull back from the gate, taxi out, and speed down the runway before heading off into the sunset. Some of that might not be accurate, since I couldn’t see the runway, and it was 9am. About twenty minutes after her plane disappeared, my flight started to board. I’d managed to nab a window seat in row 8, only one row behind the door to the plane. I was worried about a short connection in Philadelphia, so wanted to be one of the first off the plane, but not enough to give up my precious window view.
Finally, the plane was loaded, the doors closed, the safety announcements announced, and we headed for the runway. We took off and quickly headed west, passing over the Clyde estuary, and I was able to identify various islands based on my love of maps making me feel quite smug, which I like. It wasn’t long before the islands stopped, and the nearly endless Atlantic Ocean began. Lunch was served not long after take-off, and sitting near the front, I was served pretty quickly. I opted for the disgusting chicken thing with the side of disturbing vegetables. The brownie thing for dessert was nice, though. A quick glass of orange juice to wash the taste of the chicken out of my mouth, and I fell asleep. I was exhausted, after having not slept the night before.
It was a seven and a half hour flight from Glasgow to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, I was flying on US Airways, who seem to believe that Ryanair style flying is what the consumer really, really wants. [airline-nerd-mode=on] US Airways use Boeing 757-200s for the Glasgow to Philadelphia route. They had three different configurations. Two of these were international, one domestic. US Airways went around ripping in flight entertainment systems out of all their domestic planes a few years ago to save on weight, and therefore fuel costs. You can tell when you’re on a domestic 752, because there’s a toilet to your left as you enter the plane. On my plane, there was indeed a toilet to my left.[airline-nerd-mode=off] So, basically, there was no in flight entertainment provided on my plane. Luckily I had brought a book, my mp3 player, and was tired enough to sleep.
My memories of the flight may not be entirely accurate, what with being half asleep and all. About halfway through the flight, the cabin crew came through on a drinks run. I get quite dehydrated on planes, so asked for a bottle of water. The lady said she couldn’t give me the whole bottle, as it was too large, but she could give me as many refills as I liked. I was placated; she left and I didn’t see her again until the pre-landing snack, about two and a half hours later. The snack was a hot turkey and cheese roll, with a kind of tomato sauce. I removed the strip of “cheese”, and the roll was greasy and disgustingly delicious. I also got a full can of orange juice. A full can! Amazing.
Finally my window had stuff in it again, other than eternal ocean. Islands off the coast of America. This time, unfortunately, I couldn’t recognise any of them. I could no longer feel smug. We headed inland, and began descent. Out my window was an excellent view of what appeared to be some sort of naval yard, and we got closer and closer to the river. I was almost convinced that we were going to land in the river itself, until land began to appear in my window shortly before we touched down. I had made it to Philadelphia! I knew, though, that I had 90 minutes for my connection, and that there was a recommended two hours for an international to domestic connection in Philadelphia. I shall leave you, dear reader, in suspense as to what happened next, unless you already know of course, for I have written many, many words so far, and not even gotten to the interesting bit. Until next time then…
Back in the day, there was this rather awesome game called The Movies (which I’ve just noticed can be bought from Amazon for £1.99! A bargain). In The Movies, one ran a movie studio. Building sets, hiring actors, directors and so on. It was pretty fun.
Of course, me being me, I didn’t actually play the game for a good couple of years after it came out. That’s how I roll. But, my flatmate at the time Paul, being Paul, had it quite quickly. He wasn’t very good at the game. His actors were all pissed off alcoholics. The problem was Paul actually made proper (if anything Paul does can be described as proper) films. The game would provide you with scripts, or you could write your own. The game’s scripts were 2-3 scenes long. Paul’s were often about 15, 20 scenes long, which the actors despaired at.
On the other hand, because Paul took an interest in the scripts he wrote, his films were more interesting to real people. The Movies allowed you to upload your films to an online archive, but unfortunately that website has since been shutdown, so I cannot show you some of his masterpieces.
Well, except for one…
At the time that Paul was into The Movies, we were living in a flat in Glasgow with Tom and Andy. Andy happened to be in a relationship with a girl with a funny name. Being in a relationship, they often did some smooching. They can hardly be blamed for this, in fact I’ve been known to be guilty of smooching myself. However, for Tom, Paul and I, it grew a bit annoying. We’d watch a film, they’d smooch, then Oonagh would ask what was going on. One time, I poured a pint of water over them to get them to shut up.
Andy and Oonagh, or Oondy to their close friends, were the perfect choice for Paul to write a film about. He even went so far as to utilise Tom and I as voice talent, his only film to actually have voices. What follows is the completely true story of Oondy, starring
Oh, and apologies for poor quality, and offset lip-synching and stuff. Paul might attempt to fix this in the near future, in which case I will replace this with a higher quality embed.
So, as we know, I am in a ridiculously long distance relationship with a wonderful woman from rural Georgia (the American one, not the being bombed by the Russians one). Normally this is, if you’ll permit me to use a cuss-word for a second, a pain in the ass. However, there is one big advantage of loving a woman who lives 3,500 miles or so away from you. If you wish to visit her, you’re generally required to go there in a big metal tube in the air. These are called aeroplanes, and they’re pretty cool.
I think my first memory of anything to do with aeroplanes is being in primary two, discussing our various summer holidays with my friends. My family were never really rich enough to go away anywhere. Our idea of a holiday was to make use of a Caravan in Saltcoats that was owned by a mother and toddler group my mum used. We may have gone there that summer. One of my friends though, he’d been to Florida! He then borrowed my micro machines aeroplane to demonstrate how the plane had taken off and done a loop the loop before it flew them to Florida, so I’m not sure how reliable a witness he was.
It would be many years before I would get to fly in a plane myself. If I count properly, about eleven years. That was difficult to work out, since I only have ten fingers. In 2003, I was a fresh faced youth of 17 (This is my passport photo, taken at the time) hanging around in equally fresh faced circles. Paul had heard about this music festival down in Kent that he was quite keen to attend. It didn’t take much to persuade me.
Kent, though, is rather far from Perth. I mean, not like the distance to the Sun, or even America, but far enough to make it difficult for two young lads who can’t drive to get there easily. Luckily there was a solution. We could simply fly down! With the advent of budget airlines, flying was no longer a rich man’s game. Paul booked us some flights on EasyJet from Edinburgh to London Gatwick. His step-dad was roped in to drive us to t’airport, since it was an early morning flight. I mean leaving the house at 5am early morning flight. Eurgh. I remember staying up until about 1am or something with Paul, and I honestly felt that it was about two minutes after my head hit my pillow that I was being rudely awoken.
Still, we made it to the airport, and made it into the air. To be honest, it wasn’t particularly exciting. I really don’t remember much from that flight at all. Might be tiredness, or just that flying with EasyJet isn’t particularly memorable. There were certainly no loop the loops or anything like that. I do remember getting to Gatwick to find out that the baggage claim carousel was out of action, which was quite disappointing, and that the automatic ticket dispenser at London Victoria Railway Station wouldn’t take our Scottish money
It was on the return, though, that I fell in love with flying. You know I love Glasgow. It is my favourite place in Scotland, and coming with that is a contempt for anything from Edinburgh, including their airport. It rankles that the British Airport Authority neglect Glasgow Airport to keep their evil Edinburgh agenda on track. So, obviously Glasgow Airport is the superior of Scotland’s main airports, but I will grant that when you are landing, the views as you come into Edinburgh Airport blow Glasgow’s out of the water. The Forth Bridges from the air, the majesty of the Forth herself, with her many islands, the shoreline at Leith. All look fantastic as your plane swoops over them to landing. When I think of the views at Glasgow, which are basically the high-rises of Clydebank… Well, let’s just say I prefer to land at Edinburgh.
I started this post with the full intention of describing my journey last summer, to Atlanta, but I feel this is a good point to finish. I will return to it in a later post. Until then, loyal *cough* reader, farewell
So, I thought maybe I should start blogging again. I’m sure that this will be another three posts in a two week period, then leave it for ten months. (Wow, I posted in February! Awesome!) That’s a nice positive attitude, I have there. Preparing to fail already, yeah!
Of course, the problem is that finding things in my life to post about is difficult, because posts should be interesting to read. While a skilled writer may be able to take an every day situation and make it incredibly interesting, I am not a skilled writer. My every day situations can be summed up quite succinctly. Wake up, wander around Tesco for 3 hours doing sod all, go home, eat dinner, then sit on the internet talking to Katie until about 6am, then bed. I mean, occasionally something exciting will happen at work. Today it was a three year old girl who vomited (“It’s fruit pastilles,” exclaimed her mother), but most days my job is to pretend that there’s a need for an instore janitor.
So, here’s what I’m thinking. Last summer, I went off to America for a while. Turns out that the easiest way to get there is flying, whoddathunk it? Also, it turns out that I quite like flying, and my flight to America was rather interesting. I posted a trip report on FlyerTalk about my experience, but it contains some acronyms and details that a non flyer enthusiast won’t understand or care about, most likely. So, I think I’ll rewrite it for the old blog thing. However, just to increase my post count, make it look like I’m a bit of a more regular writer, I think I’ll post it in another post.
I have some other ideas of things to write about, I just hope I can keep up the enthusiasm, yo.
So, I’m working on a Java ME project just now, and doing some networking therein. And it’s fun how badly it’s documented. So, my code would run, but throw a Symbian Error -5120, and that’s all the information it would give me. The internets told me that this is a DNS problem. Fair enough. No indication of how to fix it.
This is how to fix it, using NetBeans. I don’t know how to do it in other environments, so don’t ask. First, right click on your project and go to properties
Then:
Then scroll down until you find the javax.microedition.io.Connector.http class(or whatever class you are using)
This will fix it. Why importing it is not enough for Java ME to let you use it, I have no idea, and why I don’t need to do this to access the Location API I have no idea. All I know is Java ME is driving me crazy.
This "blog" is where I, Murray Barnes, will post some stuff sometimes.
Hopefully often.
Probably not.
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
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