Flight of Terror

I once flew to Rumania (or Romania, take your pick) on board a plane from their national airline. This was in the days before they kicked their then dictator, Nicoleae Ceaucescu, to death and before they joined the new nazi dictatorship of the european union. You would have thought they’d have know better, but no. Commie airlines, I think they were called.

 

Well, the hostesses all looked like the werewolf from Carry on Screaming, but hairier – I kid you not. Either that or they were cross-dressing all in wrestlers with two and a half pounds of foundation, rouge and lipstick plastered over their angular faces to disguise their five o’clock shadow. The in flight meal was clearly polystyrene painted to look like food and they grudgingly flung it at us anyway as though we were stealing it from the mouths of their starving children.

 

There was no sign of any other in flight service, apart from repeated attempts to flog us cartons of Marlborough cigarettes and bottles of perfume. Having, in hungry desperation, eaten the bread roll that accompanied the pretend food, which was so dry it almost choked me, I had little choice but to drink the tasteless gnat’s piss that passed for my free cup of tea and any request for water or other soft drink was greeted by an unfriendly scowl and apparent incomprehension. I didn’t like to press the point, either, in case one of the giant man-women got me in a full nelson and body slammed me onto the gangway floor.

 

The seats had obviously come from a medieval torture chamber and the pilot was a real loony, bringing us into land with a kamikaze style screaming dive that almost exploded my head – the sudden reduction in cabin pressure bringing me, sweating and groaning, to the edge of unconsciousness and leaving me almost stone deaf for half of my holiday so every conversation sounded like it was coming to me while submerged in a swimming pool, with pains in my ears that felt as if some torturing bastard was jamming meat skewers into my eardrums.

 

You just can’t pay for service like that.

 

Course you holiday camps can’t. Don’t talk prison blocks.

 

 

 

 

I Hear Ya.

Just because you can’t see God doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. I can’t see Him either, I just hear His voice in my head. Usually in the wee small hours. He whispers things to me and I go and do them. Why those particular people had to be taken out, I don't know, but mine is not to reason why. I was just following orders.

 

For some reason the judge wouldn’t take that into account, refused me bail and had me put into a secure psychiatric unit.

 

Must be an atheist.

 

I don't much care for this jacket they've got me wearing and typing with your nose is no fun at all.

Kill the Cabbage!

Way back in the 1970s, a scientific study showed that plants react to pain. Wired to an encephalograph, when a plant had its leaf burnt with a lighter, the needles on the graph went haywire. More than that, however, after repeating this process a number of times, when one plant was burned, all the plants nearby “screamed” as well. So not only do plants feel pain, they communicate with each other to boot.

After this experiment had been done over several days (always the same nasty white-coated man doing the burning), the moment the experimenter even entered the room, all of the plants “screamed”, although the needles on the graph showed no reaction to any of the other people in white coats.

Thus, these plants were showing reaction to pain, communication with each other, sympathy with their plant friend’s pain - even those that had never been burned themselves - and the ability to differentiate the man with the lighter from all of the other scientific bods wandering in and out, showing distress or fear before he even commenced torturing any of them.

Finally, these scientists found that all living cells, even the scrapings from the roof of someone’s mouth, showed the same reactions. They concluded, therefore, that all living things are somehow in sympathy with all other living things. These experiments have also been replicated since and have gained the same results, so this was no freak set of data.

The author of the book “Supernature” (where I first read about all this), Lyle Watson, said his research had lead him to the conclusion that the only way to have a clear conscience would be if he only ate cabbages that had died of natural causes. He also said he imagined grass screaming whenever he walked over it.

So, short of becoming a fruitarian and only eating windfall, i.e. fruit that has fallen from the tree naturally (no picking!), it is impossible to keep yourself alive without killing things. Hey, smug vegan, that lettuce you're munching on is screaming its head off (lettuce, head, get it?).

Personally, given that the carrots in my fridge are facing a horrific death by boiling, while the chicken has already met its maker in a slightly less barbaric fashion, it’s chicken and chips for my dinner and no troubled conscience. I will also honour the poor bird’s death by ensuring not one scrap of meat is left before chucking out the stripped carcass. The juicy parson’s nose* will, of course, be the first thing shoved into my gob. It’s the least I can do.

And don’t worry about the chips. They are of the pre-murdered oven variety and beyond feeling any further pain. RIP chips - in my tummy.


(*See "Parson's Nose" elsewhere on this blog, but only if you enjoy laughing).



 

Incoming!

Whenever an aeroplane full of excited holiday makers flies over my house, I get this horrible feeling that it’s about to explode in mid-air and crash. Then I cross my fingers and pray that the mangled scorched wreckage and its cargo of burning passengers doesn’t smash right through my living room window.

 

Just finished decorating, see.

 

Twelve pounds fifty a roll that bloody wallpaper cost me!

 

...Also, isn't it absolutely staggering how they make aeroplanes fly in the first place. Hundreds of tons of metal, rubber and plastic and somehow they get these huge, wonderful machines, up into the sky and keep them there for hours and hours and hours. Amazing!

 

It’s even more amazing (not to mention spectacular) when one crashes, putting the kibosh on all the gay cabin staff, the makeup-caked trolley dollies and eight dozen screaming passengers. I bet the pilot doesn’t get a reference after that.

 

Of course a life jacket under the seat is a waste of bleedin' time! Don’t talk black boxes!

 

 

 

I'll leave you with this tip. When flying anywhere, always sit right at the back of the plane.

 

Never yet heard of one that "reversed" into a mountain. 

 

 

 

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.

 

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

 

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. Mainly because the evil swines had galloped back and forth over him several times, trampling his broken shell-like body into the mud to make sure he was properly dead.

 

And they were laughing.