Watch North Korea on or near the 4th of July- that's when they'll predictably fire their next excuse for an ICBM. I say that not because they pose a current clear and present danger with their rocket launches, but because they're really not good at it.
Frankly, there are high school kids in the Team America Rocketry Challenge who are better at launching rockets than North Korea. You see, these high school kids have to actually achieve results- North Korea has a hard time dealing with a simple bottle rocket. Oh sure, they launched that last one and the second stage failed, and it dropped harmlessly into the ocean- boy there's nothing more intimidating than large chunks of smoldering wreckage splashing into the water. Oh hey... but they learned sooooo much from that flight. Yeah- they learned that if you blow a big white noisemaker some political types may listen- but you have to blow it again every few months. They'd have been better off to contract with Pizza Hut to place their logo up the side of their poor excuse for an ICBM and then gain some cash because the whole world saw the video a zillion times.
Of course Japan is in fear that the North Koreans may fly one over their country. That makes sense! Hell I'd be afraid if North Korea flew a balsawood and paper anything over me. I'd advise the folks in Japan to pass out a bizillion hard hats and little Wile E. Coyote umbrellas to their citizens immediately.
Now "sources say" that the next one may be aimed at Hawaii- President Obama's home state. Gee, that could actually be good- maybe it'll wake him from his Jimmy Carter pacifist stooper and drive home the point that the world could be a dangerous place... that is... prior to the point where the bird breaks up and plops into the ocean.
What would be the best is if the next North Korean rocket goes the wrong way and comes down someplace, any place, in Red China. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Imagine the little North Korean tin horns trying to explain that they meant to point it at Obama... but it just went nuts... like the North Korean leader.
The other close targets that are actually on the US soil are San Fransisco and Alaska. If they're smart the North Koreans will aim for San Fran, home of the beloved Speaker of the House Nancy. She'll immediately move to send a trillion dollars to the North Koreans as reparation for our country getting in the way of their rocket- the obedient House Of Representatives will quickly approve the funds, which we'll have to borrow from China. If they take a shot and hit Alaska, however... big trouble... Alaskans shoot back.
Monday
Thursday
Wednesday
THERE I WAS: jumpseat weirdness
After going through an aviation career and pretty much done it all from CFI to Airline pilot to Corporate Pilot with a touch of mechanic along the way, I managed to experience a lot of stuff and thus have a ton of "There I Was" stories, just like every other pilot. Having a blog, and never intending to go back into any airline or corporate operation in the future, however, allows me to publish these stories as they happened and not care one bit about who who thinks what about them. So- here is the first of my There I Was tales...
Looking back across my flying career, I believe that one of the tests as to if or not a professional pilot will become a good crewmember is how you handle normal weirdness. This as opposed to general weirdness and deeply weirdness as well as We Are Gonna Die weirdness. Normal weirdness is the stuff that, by my definition, happens with some frequency yet always goes away.
One of the greatest perks, if not the greatest perk that you get as an airline pilot is the jumpseat privilege. This takes place when your company has an agreement with another company to allow pilots to use the normally unused extra seat in the cockpit that is intended for training observation. It is called the "jumpseat" and is the means by which most airline pilots commute to and from work. In fact, much of the time you are not actually in the jumpseat itself, but rather, at the captain's discretion, you are usually told that you can, "just take a seat in the back" and thus you can occupy an unused passenger seat if any are available. Jumpseating is free of cost and allows you to simply go to an airport, find a flight going your direction and, if the jumpseat is available, get on and go. Frankly, it is the only airline thing I've ever missed after getting out of that business.
Getting the jumpseat is a process that depends largely on politeness, respect, pleasantness and following an unwritten series of rules. The old adage of getting more flies with honey is extremely true here. Without revealing any actual procedures here and for security reasons (Yes- there have been fake pilots who tried to jumpseat), I'll cover the basics as I used to do it. I'm sure a lot has changed after 9/11, but back in my day- it went like this... First you have to show ID and get some paperwork. Go to the aircraft door and ask who is the lead flight attendant- respectfully ask that person if you can speak to the captain. Next you have to go to the cockpit and meet the captain. Then you have to very respectfully request his or her permission to occupy the captain's jumpseat- the captain owns the jumpseat. I'd always make a smiling, yet formal statement "Captain, I'd like to request permission to occupy your jumpseat" or if the cockpit appears at first glance to be having a fun trip I'd ask "Request permission to plop my unworthy worthless butt into your jumpseat, Captain." while handing the captain my ID and paperwork. Having a spare set of ALPA wings pinned onto your ID often helps too. If told to "have a seat in the back," you NEVER just go sit down. You're best off to find the lead flight attendant and tell that person that the captain has told you to go sit in the back and then ask "where would you like me in your cabin?" Always keeping in mind you are only a guest... okay... a freeloader, but a polite freeloader at that.
And now the THERE I WAS part...
I'd just finished my first week as a bona fied airline pilot and was about to do my first jumpseat from PBI to BWI and home. I'd been well briefed by some of the other pilots in my company as to how to jumpseat, but I also made sure that everyone along the way knew I was new at it. The captain at first told me to go to the back, but I explained quickly that this was my first jumpseat and he instantly showed me how to deploy the cockpit jumpseat so I could "see the whole show." We blasted out of PBI in the 737 just before dusk and headed up toward BWI on a nearly 3 hour cruise. Before long it was dark and we were humming along at altitude on a smooth ride... a very smooth ride. The FO was doing a word puzzle on his map-board and the old captain was... asleep. I was keeping my mouth shut and my eyes wide open and could care less about the captain's snooze, I was just takin' it all in babe. I'd waited and worked a very long time to get this little free ride- for me it was a victory lap of sorts. Soon, however, the FO put away his word puzzle, turned off his map light and sat there scanning the panel for a while. Bonk... he's asleep too. So there I sit, as rookie as rookie can be, a brand new DHC-7 FO and I'm the only one awake in the nose of this 737...
Oooooookay.... weird.
What do ya' do?
Every cockpit crewmember is taught that everything you say and often every move you make that produces sound will be captured and recorded on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and you don't want anything goin' in there that you don't want goin' in there. So the CVR is always in the back of your mind- at least it was always in the back of mine. In this case, with that in mind, I pondered what to do and shortly came up with the perfect solution. I took the toe of my shoe and gave the FO's seat a sharp whack down by the base. It was enough to wake him up as he'd only been out for a minute or two. His head popped up straight and he looked at the instruments instinctively, then he turned and looked silently at me. I just raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Then he turned his map light back on and looked over at the captain who could have easily been mistaken for being in a coma. The FO looked back at me with a big open mouth smile and his finger pointing happily at the sleeping captain in a "get a load of this guy" motion. Then he mimed me a "Shush keep quiet" with his finger and lipped "Watch this!" A moment later in a loud voice the FO blurted out "HEY BILL!" The captain snapped back awake. "Didn't you used to have a place down there?" the FO asked in the blind. "Uh, yeah..." the captain responded as if he's been awake the whole time, "right on the water, had a terrific dock." As the captain panned his vision around he saw the two of us silently laughing in tears. We all stayed awake to BWI and I learned a lot about being an airline pilot that evening.
Anyone who tells you readers who are non-airline pilots that events such as this never happen, is feeding you a line of total bullshit. Airline pilots are professional, able, competent, conscientious, and HUMAN. Airline pilots out there who are reading this, you know the way it is- stuff like this does not happen` all the time, and does not happen on a regular basis, but it happens. You all have a bag full of similar stories. It's just one of those normal weirdness events.
Looking back across my flying career, I believe that one of the tests as to if or not a professional pilot will become a good crewmember is how you handle normal weirdness. This as opposed to general weirdness and deeply weirdness as well as We Are Gonna Die weirdness. Normal weirdness is the stuff that, by my definition, happens with some frequency yet always goes away.One of the greatest perks, if not the greatest perk that you get as an airline pilot is the jumpseat privilege. This takes place when your company has an agreement with another company to allow pilots to use the normally unused extra seat in the cockpit that is intended for training observation. It is called the "jumpseat" and is the means by which most airline pilots commute to and from work. In fact, much of the time you are not actually in the jumpseat itself, but rather, at the captain's discretion, you are usually told that you can, "just take a seat in the back" and thus you can occupy an unused passenger seat if any are available. Jumpseating is free of cost and allows you to simply go to an airport, find a flight going your direction and, if the jumpseat is available, get on and go. Frankly, it is the only airline thing I've ever missed after getting out of that business.
Getting the jumpseat is a process that depends largely on politeness, respect, pleasantness and following an unwritten series of rules. The old adage of getting more flies with honey is extremely true here. Without revealing any actual procedures here and for security reasons (Yes- there have been fake pilots who tried to jumpseat), I'll cover the basics as I used to do it. I'm sure a lot has changed after 9/11, but back in my day- it went like this... First you have to show ID and get some paperwork. Go to the aircraft door and ask who is the lead flight attendant- respectfully ask that person if you can speak to the captain. Next you have to go to the cockpit and meet the captain. Then you have to very respectfully request his or her permission to occupy the captain's jumpseat- the captain owns the jumpseat. I'd always make a smiling, yet formal statement "Captain, I'd like to request permission to occupy your jumpseat" or if the cockpit appears at first glance to be having a fun trip I'd ask "Request permission to plop my unworthy worthless butt into your jumpseat, Captain." while handing the captain my ID and paperwork. Having a spare set of ALPA wings pinned onto your ID often helps too. If told to "have a seat in the back," you NEVER just go sit down. You're best off to find the lead flight attendant and tell that person that the captain has told you to go sit in the back and then ask "where would you like me in your cabin?" Always keeping in mind you are only a guest... okay... a freeloader, but a polite freeloader at that.
And now the THERE I WAS part...
I'd just finished my first week as a bona fied airline pilot and was about to do my first jumpseat from PBI to BWI and home. I'd been well briefed by some of the other pilots in my company as to how to jumpseat, but I also made sure that everyone along the way knew I was new at it. The captain at first told me to go to the back, but I explained quickly that this was my first jumpseat and he instantly showed me how to deploy the cockpit jumpseat so I could "see the whole show." We blasted out of PBI in the 737 just before dusk and headed up toward BWI on a nearly 3 hour cruise. Before long it was dark and we were humming along at altitude on a smooth ride... a very smooth ride. The FO was doing a word puzzle on his map-board and the old captain was... asleep. I was keeping my mouth shut and my eyes wide open and could care less about the captain's snooze, I was just takin' it all in babe. I'd waited and worked a very long time to get this little free ride- for me it was a victory lap of sorts. Soon, however, the FO put away his word puzzle, turned off his map light and sat there scanning the panel for a while. Bonk... he's asleep too. So there I sit, as rookie as rookie can be, a brand new DHC-7 FO and I'm the only one awake in the nose of this 737...
Oooooookay.... weird.
What do ya' do?
Every cockpit crewmember is taught that everything you say and often every move you make that produces sound will be captured and recorded on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and you don't want anything goin' in there that you don't want goin' in there. So the CVR is always in the back of your mind- at least it was always in the back of mine. In this case, with that in mind, I pondered what to do and shortly came up with the perfect solution. I took the toe of my shoe and gave the FO's seat a sharp whack down by the base. It was enough to wake him up as he'd only been out for a minute or two. His head popped up straight and he looked at the instruments instinctively, then he turned and looked silently at me. I just raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Then he turned his map light back on and looked over at the captain who could have easily been mistaken for being in a coma. The FO looked back at me with a big open mouth smile and his finger pointing happily at the sleeping captain in a "get a load of this guy" motion. Then he mimed me a "Shush keep quiet" with his finger and lipped "Watch this!" A moment later in a loud voice the FO blurted out "HEY BILL!" The captain snapped back awake. "Didn't you used to have a place down there?" the FO asked in the blind. "Uh, yeah..." the captain responded as if he's been awake the whole time, "right on the water, had a terrific dock." As the captain panned his vision around he saw the two of us silently laughing in tears. We all stayed awake to BWI and I learned a lot about being an airline pilot that evening.
Anyone who tells you readers who are non-airline pilots that events such as this never happen, is feeding you a line of total bullshit. Airline pilots are professional, able, competent, conscientious, and HUMAN. Airline pilots out there who are reading this, you know the way it is- stuff like this does not happen` all the time, and does not happen on a regular basis, but it happens. You all have a bag full of similar stories. It's just one of those normal weirdness events.
Tuesday
The cartoons that got me in the most trouble... so far.
In the fall of 1982, an event took place on the other side of the planet that would result in the greatest amount of ruckus made by the Klyde Morris cartoon. In the Middle East region of the world a group of radical Christians took it upon themselves to slaughter Palestinians in a refugee camp. Later, the AVION editor, a French national by the name of Julian Oleon took it upon himself to write an editorial piece in the student newspaper that was sympathetic to the Christians. I never read the editorial because, like everything that Editor Oleon wrote, it was fairly long-winded and highly boring. The Palestinian students on the Embry-Riddle campus, however, DID read the piece and were sent into a well deserved outrage. Suddenly, Mr. Oleon was receiving death threats and lots of other heat.
Who can blame these foreign students from Palestine, their people have been the targets of such outrages for endless years, and so they were rightfully set off. Where they come from, when someone publishes something that outrages you, the way that they are often dealt with is by of some sort of retaliation. However, the Palistinenan students, in their rightful rage, neglected the fact that they were now residing in the United States where our ways of dealing with such things is a bit different.
Seeing all of this banter, commotion and outright threats was just too much for a good editorial cartoonist to resist. Thus in the October 6th edition of the Avion, I ran two of the three strips showing Oleon being pursued by campus killers because of his editorial. Expectedly, this raised the level of rage. Unexpectedly, it turned almost every Palistinenan student toward me! One advantage that the cartoonist has is that almost no one knows your face, and in classes, the role was always called using my proper first name, “Walter” rather than my preferred middle name “Wes”, and the teachers always murdered the last name so badly that I almost always sat in class in complete anonymity. Thus I was a difficult target to zero in upon. Still, for the days following the strip’s publication, I was under threat. Outraged Palestinian students would storm into the Avion office demanding to speak to that cartoonist guy, and getting the standard line from the staff, “We hardly ever see the guy, he just stops in and drops off the next week’s strip...” Of course I would be sitting right there quietly watching the now really outraged foreign student spit additional venom. They were now not only going to kill Oleon, but were going to find my house and drag me into the street, they were going to catch me on campus and beat me, they were even going to blow up my car!
“He makes us look like terrorists! We are not terrorists! Just wait ‘till he tries to go to his car tonight!” Was the exclaimation of one such outraged Palestinian student.
Bombing my car would have been a neat task, seeing that I did not have a car and actually rode a bicycle to school every day... I suppose that had they known that, they would have bike-bombed me. Under such pressure, I did exactly what I am best known for... I wrote another series of three strips and this time all three were dedicated to making their heads explode.
Taking off on the famed terror group, the P.L.O., I concocted the P.F.L.O. or “Palestinians For Liquidating Oleon”. Then I had them raising money for their holy cause by having a bake sale. That series appeared on October 13th, 1982, and reaction was HIGHLY predictable. This time the group of Palestinian students went to the Student Government Association or “S.G.A”., who held the budget for the newspaper, and demanded that all Avion publication be stopped. Like any organization which has the word “Government” in its title, the S.G.A. was spring-loaded to tread upon the liberty of the masses in answer to the vocalizations of any minority group, and indeed threatened to pull the Avion’s funding unless I was stopped. The Avion staff responded by telling the S.G.A. that we had enough ad revenue to publish without S.G.A. funding and then pointed out that the S.G.A. itself would actually lose revenue without the paper. But, like good politicians, the S.G.A. idiots were not so easily put off and demanded a meeting with the Avion staff to discuss and settle the issue.
Before the meeting took place, I sat down with a fellow Avion staff member by the name of Ali, who is a Palestinian-born New Jersey resident, and asked him about the recent cartoons. He said they were “...funny as hell...” and advised me to “...keep ‘em coming...” Shortly thereafter the meeting of the Avion staff and the S.G.A. as well as a representative of the Palestinian students took place as Ali and I sat quietly and listened. S.G.A. demanded that all Avion material be read and approved by them prior to publication- this went over like the Stalinest demand that it was, with Holly Vath- an Avion staff member and future editor nearly taking to physical violence. Next there was the token black S.G.A. member chosen to stand up and call me a “racist”, which I saw as a form of racism in itself, and lastly the Palestinian representative got to spout of as to how “All” of the Palestinian students on campus [25 in number] were offended by my cartoons. At that point Ali spoke up and the following dialogue took place...
“I’m Palestinian, and I’m not offended at all...”
“You are not Palestinian! Where are you from?”
“I’m from New Jersey, but I was born in Palestine.”
“You are not Palestinian... you do not come to the meetings!”
It was at this point that the cartoonist felt the need to speak and, of course make matters worse...
“Will the real Palestinian please stand up?” I said.
It was much like throwing a bucket of aviation gas into a campfire.
In the week that followed that series of cartoons and that meeting, I had the P.F.L.O. in the library thumbing through “Janes All The World’s Terrorism”, but that one was too much for even Editor Oleon, and he pulled it to show the Palestinians that he would actually edit the outrageous stuff and that is how the system works in this country. The S.G.A. faded away, because they did not have a financial lever to use, and the Palestinian students, with the exception of Ali, never did quite manage to figure out who that cartoonist guy was. To this day, however, I always check my bicycle for bombs.
Oddly, the saga of the cartoons that got me in the most trouble does not end with the editing of that last cartoon back in 1982. Nearly 18 years later, I was visiting my parents in Michigan and my mom was attempting to empty assorted drawers and closets of family memorabilia by pawning it off on each of us kids every time that we visited. She suggested that I should root through her cedar chest and see if there was anything in there that I would like to take home.
In the process of digging for tid-bits from my past I discovered a packet containing some 400 Klyde Morris originals. Among them were 137 strips that I had thought to be totally lost, and among that group was the October 26th, 1982 “P.F.L.O.- Jane’s all the world’s terrorism” cartoon that I had thought was thrown away when it was edited.
In reality, the cartoon was far less inflammatory than those that ran before it, and when read it becomes clear that it was pulled simply to symbolize that the editor had the will to do so.
Thus, thanks to my mom, who never throws ANYTHING away, here is the cartoon that was never run in the Avion, just to make the P.F.L.O. go away...
Who can blame these foreign students from Palestine, their people have been the targets of such outrages for endless years, and so they were rightfully set off. Where they come from, when someone publishes something that outrages you, the way that they are often dealt with is by of some sort of retaliation. However, the Palistinenan students, in their rightful rage, neglected the fact that they were now residing in the United States where our ways of dealing with such things is a bit different.
Seeing all of this banter, commotion and outright threats was just too much for a good editorial cartoonist to resist. Thus in the October 6th edition of the Avion, I ran two of the three strips showing Oleon being pursued by campus killers because of his editorial. Expectedly, this raised the level of rage. Unexpectedly, it turned almost every Palistinenan student toward me! One advantage that the cartoonist has is that almost no one knows your face, and in classes, the role was always called using my proper first name, “Walter” rather than my preferred middle name “Wes”, and the teachers always murdered the last name so badly that I almost always sat in class in complete anonymity. Thus I was a difficult target to zero in upon. Still, for the days following the strip’s publication, I was under threat. Outraged Palestinian students would storm into the Avion office demanding to speak to that cartoonist guy, and getting the standard line from the staff, “We hardly ever see the guy, he just stops in and drops off the next week’s strip...” Of course I would be sitting right there quietly watching the now really outraged foreign student spit additional venom. They were now not only going to kill Oleon, but were going to find my house and drag me into the street, they were going to catch me on campus and beat me, they were even going to blow up my car!
“He makes us look like terrorists! We are not terrorists! Just wait ‘till he tries to go to his car tonight!” Was the exclaimation of one such outraged Palestinian student.
Bombing my car would have been a neat task, seeing that I did not have a car and actually rode a bicycle to school every day... I suppose that had they known that, they would have bike-bombed me. Under such pressure, I did exactly what I am best known for... I wrote another series of three strips and this time all three were dedicated to making their heads explode.
Taking off on the famed terror group, the P.L.O., I concocted the P.F.L.O. or “Palestinians For Liquidating Oleon”. Then I had them raising money for their holy cause by having a bake sale. That series appeared on October 13th, 1982, and reaction was HIGHLY predictable. This time the group of Palestinian students went to the Student Government Association or “S.G.A”., who held the budget for the newspaper, and demanded that all Avion publication be stopped. Like any organization which has the word “Government” in its title, the S.G.A. was spring-loaded to tread upon the liberty of the masses in answer to the vocalizations of any minority group, and indeed threatened to pull the Avion’s funding unless I was stopped. The Avion staff responded by telling the S.G.A. that we had enough ad revenue to publish without S.G.A. funding and then pointed out that the S.G.A. itself would actually lose revenue without the paper. But, like good politicians, the S.G.A. idiots were not so easily put off and demanded a meeting with the Avion staff to discuss and settle the issue.
Before the meeting took place, I sat down with a fellow Avion staff member by the name of Ali, who is a Palestinian-born New Jersey resident, and asked him about the recent cartoons. He said they were “...funny as hell...” and advised me to “...keep ‘em coming...” Shortly thereafter the meeting of the Avion staff and the S.G.A. as well as a representative of the Palestinian students took place as Ali and I sat quietly and listened. S.G.A. demanded that all Avion material be read and approved by them prior to publication- this went over like the Stalinest demand that it was, with Holly Vath- an Avion staff member and future editor nearly taking to physical violence. Next there was the token black S.G.A. member chosen to stand up and call me a “racist”, which I saw as a form of racism in itself, and lastly the Palestinian representative got to spout of as to how “All” of the Palestinian students on campus [25 in number] were offended by my cartoons. At that point Ali spoke up and the following dialogue took place...
“I’m Palestinian, and I’m not offended at all...”
“You are not Palestinian! Where are you from?”
“I’m from New Jersey, but I was born in Palestine.”
“You are not Palestinian... you do not come to the meetings!”
It was at this point that the cartoonist felt the need to speak and, of course make matters worse...
“Will the real Palestinian please stand up?” I said.
It was much like throwing a bucket of aviation gas into a campfire.
In the week that followed that series of cartoons and that meeting, I had the P.F.L.O. in the library thumbing through “Janes All The World’s Terrorism”, but that one was too much for even Editor Oleon, and he pulled it to show the Palestinians that he would actually edit the outrageous stuff and that is how the system works in this country. The S.G.A. faded away, because they did not have a financial lever to use, and the Palestinian students, with the exception of Ali, never did quite manage to figure out who that cartoonist guy was. To this day, however, I always check my bicycle for bombs.
Oddly, the saga of the cartoons that got me in the most trouble does not end with the editing of that last cartoon back in 1982. Nearly 18 years later, I was visiting my parents in Michigan and my mom was attempting to empty assorted drawers and closets of family memorabilia by pawning it off on each of us kids every time that we visited. She suggested that I should root through her cedar chest and see if there was anything in there that I would like to take home.
In the process of digging for tid-bits from my past I discovered a packet containing some 400 Klyde Morris originals. Among them were 137 strips that I had thought to be totally lost, and among that group was the October 26th, 1982 “P.F.L.O.- Jane’s all the world’s terrorism” cartoon that I had thought was thrown away when it was edited.
In reality, the cartoon was far less inflammatory than those that ran before it, and when read it becomes clear that it was pulled simply to symbolize that the editor had the will to do so.
Thus, thanks to my mom, who never throws ANYTHING away, here is the cartoon that was never run in the Avion, just to make the P.F.L.O. go away...
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