I don’t even know if this entry makes sense… I’m delerious-tired.
Skirting Portland means a freakin’ maze of intertwined highways, crawling along on half of them with your foot on the brake. I’m pretty dang tired, 4am wake-up this morning and not much rest on the flight up. All-day meeting requiring my attention didn’t help. Now I’m back in the aeropuerto waiting for my “on time” flight to get here on time. I just want a nap, I’m tired.
The blog spam has been “shock and awe” style lately, over 100 items a day. I must say, though, WordPress stops nearly every single piece – every so often, a single piece gets through and I have to manually delete it. Most of the spam is for online hold’em, with viagra and phentermine running a close second. I tell you what, people must buy a whole heck of a lot of viagra and phentermine online… something’s making the marketing worth it.
The plane home was the flight from Hell. To my left, a young man, perhaps 21 or 22. Across the aisle to my right, a young mother with two young children, perhaps 3 and 4. I would soon come to find out that these two seemingly normal folks were, indeed, two of the most surreal people I could’ve possibly run into when I all I wanted to do was grab a nap on the way home.
The young man was a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he told me, out of the blue. He was also a “plane talker.” You know, those people who, for whatever reason, feel like they have to talk to you every second of the flight. He regaled me from the moment he sat down. “So, what about gas prices?” “Can you believe this hurricane?” He went on to tell me that he was coming home from college, to visit his folks for a while. He was double-majoring in Theology and Fitness Management, with a minor in Piano. He said he didn’t want to be “tied down” to one job. Yeah, because the market’s wide-open for Christian school PE teachers who play piano. Obviously intelligent by some of his comments, his unfortunately baritone, droning, and slow, stinted speech made him sound like the vulture from the cartoons: “Duhhh, which we did he go, George? Which way did he go?”
The woman with the kids was worse. Her voice went to eleven. She was a full two decibels louder than anyone else on the plane, and she was one of those people who is her kids’ best friend. “Get ready Jessie, we’re about to pull out on the runway! We’re about to go fast! Hang on!! Are you ready to go fast?! Get ready, we’re about to go. Watch the wheels, here we go!” “Look at the clouds! Do you see the clouds? Sit still, do you feel those bumps? That’s called ‘turbulence.’ Feel it? Look at the mountains! Can you see the wing? Isn’t this fun?!” Oh. My. God. This woman never shut up, never took a breath, every annoying pointless bit of childlike banter seemingly screamed through a megaphone. This back and forth went on for the entire flight, her children talking as loud as her – following her example.
At one point, while feigning sleep to avoid dealing with it all – I realized how insane the stereo picture between my two ears was. Babbling loud mom on my right, and babbling spiritual Adventist on my left. That’s when it hit me, no one would ever believe this – I was obligated to record it to prove my story. So, I snuck out my cellphone and, against FAA regulations, began recording as the two loonies’ ranting crescendoed. And here, folks, I present the audio proof of my flight from Hades, complete with my own transcripts lest you have a hard time understanding what’s going on. Keep in mind, I sat my phone on my lap while recording this – so this is the level I would hear if my ears were on my hips… helps to establish the levels we’re dealing with.
[audio:Record011.mp3]
Seriously, listen to this guy ramble (with absolutely no response from me, completely unsolicited):
… But umm… yeah… I have a hard time… ahh… being able to listen to… something that just, is the same four chords forty times, literally forty times in a song. It’s like, man do something else. This is an insult to human intelligence to say, that, it’d be like saying – and they say it the same way to – for me, y’know, repetition is OK but, they [add it?] a different way.. with your innuendo, and even when you’re talking you don’t talk like that. Over and over again, y’know, just talk in a monotonic way [Howdy Doody?] and all that. So, I don’t know, I think… some… I mean repetition is an essential element of music, but it’s not… it… uhh.. it has to be done right; or I mean it has to be done in a real… it needs to be done with thought, as well as emotion. All the songs really are too… just… uhh… what; most everyone’s been to church and heard hymns played in a lifeless way, y’know, and so I can see different extremes to somewhere where all their years – it’s, umm, there’s all, it’s all emotion but no.. [??] y’know. And then you have… thought but no feeling, so. … Different songs are gonna have different amplitudes and different elements… It’s so amazing because it’s a holistic language. It’s, umm, it effects the body and the mind and the spirit, y’know, it effects every facet, y’know.
[audio:Record012.mp3]
Here’s a good idea of the stereo effect I was getting.. with the Monotone Saint on one side and Cheerleader Mom on the other. There’s something about the “animal kingdom” in there… I swear. What a flight.
I feel like I wrote this thing so fast, I’m sure it’s full of typos – and I’m not going back to proofread.
Goodnight.
Oh. My. God.
I would have killed myself. Hell, 10 seconds into the recording I wanted to kill myself…