Manmachine201's uneasy guide to flight safety.

I have always been very interested in science, occaisionally in pseudo science but more often I am interested in things that are not very scientific at all. Like photosynthysis, or maths.



Even the name manmachine201 indicates as much. There is Man, which isn't very scientific, machine-which is- and 201 which indicates that, as a number you would assume that a certain level of maths had to occur to simply to get to it. (It wasn't in fact I hate maths.)

In fact whenever I am on a plane I sit there looking at the screen telling me the altitude, the speed at which it is flying and I think "If a plane has travelled 1145 miles in 8 hours and has 1145 miles to go and has a constant speed of 545 miles an hour ..." then the screen changes and tells me how long until the destination. A total of 3 minutes of working out a mathematical problem, wasted. The next game on a plane I like playing is 'guess which passenger is most likely to be a terrorist'. The game itself has only been around for about 10 years but has proved so popular that it has led to several arrests.



Am I bovvered?

Planes by their very nature are viewed by flatlanders such as myself to be the work of Satan. Nothing over 5lbs should be able to lift off the ground, let alone cruise at an altitude of 75000 ft. Christmas puddings can't fly, cats can't fly and even flys aren't very good at flying, although they weigh so little that when you put one on a weighing scale it wouldn't even register. But a plane weighs tuns and tuns, so shouldn't be able to fly.



The Fly

FOOL! I hear you cry, flying is a simple matter of physics. That may be the case but try telling me that the wright brothers were not possessed by some kind of demonic creature and that the first man flight was not more to do with witchcraft than physics. After all, physics wasn't invented at that point, it was a simpler time. You could leave the front door open back then and not worry about getting robbed... doors were not even invented at that point. The first door wasn't even on a house but on a plane.



Freddie Mercury showing us how to use plane emergency exits.

Next up came the band 'The Doors' whose lead singer got so fat he had to move to paris, then died jerking off in a bath.

After Morrisons death everyone got doors installed in the front and backs of their houses in some kind of twisted tribute. A key thing that annoys me about the elderly is that they always talk about how it used to be safe to leave your door open without worrying about being raped bummed buggered fucked and robbed and basterdised. Then they complain about not being able to afford heating bills. This is because they leave the door open letting out all the heat. the idiots. Then again the elderly are not really known for their rationality. My gran once shat in her shoe mistaking it for a toilet, once we cleared it up she shat in the other shoe because she thought she was a naughty puppy. Fortunately we don't have to worry about shit in our shoes anymore because my gran died of a ruptured bowel.

So thats the bit about doors done.

This piece has bent so far out of shape but I think it was simply to try to distance myself from the fact that my name is lazily stolen from a kraftwerk album title with a random number at the end to make my online persona more googlable. Maybe it is because on some level the idea of German electronica, the themes of industrialism, the relationship between man and machine, resonate with me. Or maybe I just want to seem poncey and clever when actually I've just copy pasted a load of garble from a Phillip K Dick novel...

Hang on, that wasn't it. I was talking about Freddie Mercury opening an emergency door on a plane, what a fucking maniac, he's going to kill us all. We should have seen it coming, he is of Iranian origin. I looked for some other instructional pictures to see if they resemble anyone.



Sigourney Weaver circa Alien 3 showing us how to dry our faces with a hand dryer.



Art Garfunkel with a seat belt on.

And even Cate Blanchett donning an oxygen mask.



If life was a big safety card I'd just be sitting here in front of a computer with a blank expression on my face looking like I was typing something, while you were sitting on a plane. but unfortunately this is real life. you are not on a plane and you have to read the result of real life occuring.

It's all getting totally out of hand, I wasn't sure if I had an idea to begin with but just needed to channel some thoughts and look what happened. My mind sicked up all over the internet. I'm just like my dead gran shitting in a pair of my shoes.