Monday, November 4, 2013

Let's take trains!

Dear Planes, 
Fuck you.
Sincerely, Everyone over 5'4"
I don't like flying. It's just not for me. My problem with it is based partly on the fact that it involves helplessly hurtling through the air in a metal tube filled with flammable liquid, while hoping to hell the pilot didn't have the fish. Also, I kind of resent having to pay $60 more for 32 inches of what the airline calls extra legroom but I call not having to spend a five hour flight wishing my knees would stop filling up with so much fluid. I am however a huge fan of parachutes. A backpack that keeps you from splattering at 122 miles per hour? Great! Like, I'd never go skydiving or anything, but after watching this, I totally want one.

More amazing even than this.
No really, actually click on this one. I know you and I have this little game where I say hey, click on this! and you don't and then I end up describing it anyway. And yes, that's what's about to happen here but for really and for true, this is the one you want to click on. It's that amazing. It's video of two groups of skydivers whose planes collided in midair. Since we hew-mons can't do anything without taking a photo or a video and putting it on Facebook, every single skydiver was wearing a helmet cam and holy shit.

 ...and look way more badass.
The incredible part is everyone involved in the incident and subsequent hell-rain of Cessna parts survived. Everyone. How is this possible? Sorcery? Good guess, and sorcery would certainly do the job, but it turns out they survived because they were all wearing parachutes, which begs the question: why can't I have one when I fly? I would gladly trade one of my carry-on for the piece of mind that comes with knowing I can bail out at the first sign of trouble. Instead we get floatation devices for some reason.

What the shit is that? When has a floatation device come in handy during a uncontrolled plummet from the sky? Never, that's when. And if you just said Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, shut up, because that scene where they use a raft to cushion their jump out of a plane was that movie's fridge nuking.
Above: Mola Ram pulling the beating hearts from his victims
while they watch is 100% more believable than the raft scene. 
Yup, his name's Uranus.
Ur- followed by -anus. Deal. 
Anyway, the news over the last few days has been a particularly depressing parade of shootingsracists and spying, I think we should all take a moment and thank Uranus, god of the sky, for sparing these brave skydivers who, for reasons I can't begin to fathom, leap out of planes for fun. Like seriously, they jump out of planes just for the hell of it. What is wrong with them?

"We followed our instincts. We just jumped. And we watched everything falling around us...Our concern was not to get hit by anything. We were in free fall. All we could hope for, at that point, was to fall faster than those wings and somehow get away from them."


-Mike Robinson, skydiver
and goddamn lunatic

No comments:

Post a Comment