Thursday, April 28, 2005

Taco Bell or McDonalds?

Howdy. I’ve noticed a potentially damaging social phenomenon. You see, I’ve been here at Espresso Royale long enough to have to make two trips to the restroom facilities. The first time, I enjoyed reading all of the literary quotes painted on the men’s room door. From Lao Tzu to Thoreau, it was the most enlightening dump I’ve ever taken. Most recently, however, I stood and waited outside the men’s room for several minutes before giving up and opting for the single toilet women’s room. Walking in, I wondered if there would be a difference in the quotes, but I was shocked to discover NO quotes at all! The entire wall was just a big mirror! I would expect that sort of gender role railroad job in Kansas, but I thought Madison was supposed to be a progressive, women’s lib sort of place. I’ll bet they don’t call on the girls in the math classes here either! The guidance councilors probably just shove them all into fashion marketing and early childhood education and other “Mrs.” Degrees.

In other news, I quit my job today.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

You'll Not See Nothing Like the Mighty Flynn!

Howdy. I’m sittin’ here at Fair Trade Coffee with my new friends, Erica and Jacqueline. They are both working towards Masters Degrees in International Public Affairs so they can save the world. When I told them I take aerial pictures for the government, they decided I must be a CIA Spy. Works for me.

Last night we were all sitting pretty much the way we are tonight, when over my shoulder I heard the loud, sing-songy voice of a lunatic.

“Hi! I’m Errol, and I’m from LaCrosse! Do You mind If I join you?!” He motioned palms up at the empty chair next to me.

“Have a seat Darryl!” I responded.

“Its ERROL, like Errol Flynn!”

“Oh, Sorry.”

He was missing his front two teeth. His eyes weren’t quite straight. He needed a shave worse than I do right now. But he made up for it all with enthusiasm!

It soon became apparent that Erica had unwittingly come to his attention by mentioning an ex-boyfriend in passing.

“Do you want to know the secret of happiness?” he asked her.

We were doomed. With an insane, monotone fervor, he began reading the self-help books that must have been photographically stored in is mind.

“Wow Errol! What was that from?”

“The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck”

Just enough time would pass for the conversation to move on and then…

“I have a theory about that! Do you want to hear it?” Always directed at Erica and followed by more memorized self-help spewings coupled with large gesticulations that seemed disconnected from what he was saying.

“You have the SUBJECT (circular hand movement ) and the PREDICATE (like an umpire calling a runner safe)!! Slappy the clown (SUBJECT) laughs (PREDICATE).” As he said “laughs” he made a downward movement of both fists in front of his chest in the fashion of a pop diva. Then he chuckled maniacally.

“So what brings you to Madison, Errol?”

“I’m here for a mental health conference!”

“I’m guessing you’re not a doctor!” I wanted to say, but didn’t.

“The government is thinking about restricting the amount of meds they’ll pay for, and we’re here to try to convince them not to.”

So we were witnessing Errol in his fully medicated state. Wow. I considered calling in sick to testify that this guy needed all the meds he could get. The word “we” in that sentence also really made me nervous. How many other crazies would be running around town for the next couple days?! Or was he just referring to his other personalities?

Finally, Erica and Jacqueline and I decided in French to relocate for non-caffeinated beverages. They left before I did, and in my brief moment alone with Errol, he asked if I thought we had bored them (again with that pronoun!). I felt bad because I could tell he wasn’t malicious. There are just limits to people’s tolerance for lunacy, and after an hour or so, we had all reached ours.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Except I Get No Lovin' From the Rich Married Chicks.

Howdy! I’m in a hyper and surreal state of mind. I’ve just returned from a Barnes and Noble binge. Something about that place, man, makes me feel like I can do anything! Especially when I have a sizable birthday gift card… I just realized I walked out with the equivalent of a semester’s worth of college course work. Bought a book on Macromedia Dream Weaver, so that maybe someday I can spice up the ol’ blog a little bit. Then I found “The Globalization Reader” which should bring me up to date on the state of the world. I think I’ve been needin’ that. Kansas State at Salina was a little light on the humanities. I’ve also been feeling like I got out of calculus too soon. I know, people say that all the time. I’ve just kinda been feeling like my brain is turning to putty, so I bought a full calc textbook in paperback. Its like Tae Bo for the mind, baby!

Speaking of… I’m just finishing up “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. Talk about a head trip. One of the best books I’ve ever read. That may also have something to do with my rekindled interest in math. He describes the odd situation of different systems of geometry being logically sound individually, but contradictory of each other. Pirsig credits French mathematician Poincare (1854-1912) with the following line of thought…

Euclid’s postulate of parallels, which states that through a given point there’s not more than one parallel line to a given straight line, we usually learn in tenth grade geometry. It is one of the basic building blocks out of which the entire mathematics of geometry is constructed.

…in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and almost at the same time, a Hungarian and a Russian- Bolyai and Lobachevski- established irrefutably that a proof of Euclid’s fifth postulate is impossible.

Lobachevski assumes at the start that through a given point can be drawn two parallels to a given straight. And he retains besides all Euclid’s other axioms. From these hypotheses he deduces a series of theorems among which it’s impossible to find any contradiction, and he constructs a geometry whose faultless logic is inferior in nothing to that of the Euclidian geometry.

A mathematics that admits internal logical contradictions is no mathematics at all. The ultimate effect of non-Euclidian geometries becomes nothing more than a magician’s mumbo jumbo in which belief is sustained purely by faith!

A German named Riemann appeared with another unshakable system of geometry which throws overboard not only Euclid’s postulate, but also the first axiom, which states that only one straight line can pass through two points. Again there is no internal contradiction, only an inconsistency with both Lobachevskian and Euclidian geometries.
According to the Theory of Relativity, Riemann geometry best describes the world we live in.

So is Euclidean geometry true or is Riemann geometry true? [Poincare] answered, The question has no meaning. As well ask whether the metric system is true or the avoirdupois system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false. One geometry cannot be more true than another; It can only be more convenient.


So instead of math being part of the universe, it just describes it, and depending on which aspect of the universe you’re looking at, different sets of rules may apply. Rock On.

Warning: Cynicism to Follow

Got me wondering how often we confuse truth with convenience. A close friend once relayed to me a bit of advice he received from a mentor. “There will be many loves of your life, but only one will be convenient.” Thought it was a crock at the time. I mean if its really love, I thought, don’t you make it convenient? But now I can sort of see what he meant. Take two free spirited people, for example. They may fall totally in love with each other, but the very reason they love each other is the reason they don’t end up together. Someday they’ll change or just calm down or wear out of being so free and lonely, and they’ll settle down with someone. Wouldn’t be that the former free spirit loved the new person more, just that they happened to come along when (s)he was ready to jump off the marriage cliff.
How about religion? In general, I don’t think people shop around for religions too critically. If you’re a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu, its probably principally due to where you are from and who raised you. Pretty convenient, huh? But they all insist that theirs is THE truth about God and how God wants us to live. Is it so far fetched that they are (at best) different cultural manifestations of similar spiritual relationships with the all-pervasive-energy-of-the-universe or (at worst) different ways humans take advantage of other humans’ relationships with said energy?

But hey, what do I know? I’m just an aerial lawn boy.

End Cynicism.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Miracle on State Street

Howdy. I hope everyone is well. I’m doin’ all right. Been running like crazy lately, it feels like. I’m in Madison, Wisconsin checking out the freaks on State Street near the University of Wisconsin. Where else would I see portly old guy with a white beard dressed in a hunter orange sweat suit, carrying an overstuffed hunter orange backpack, pedaling an old bicycle down the street in flip-flops that were…. Yep, hunter orange. Looked like Santa Claus had escaped from prison.

I flew up here from Kansas City last Sunday. I had actually been working out of Lee’s Summit, Missouri for a little over a week, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I already had an airline ticket to KC to be a groomsman in Wes and Jessica’s wedding when I found out that Joe, one of our other pilots was being sent there to map Wyandotte County. I was planning on calling in sick for a couple days for the wedding, but I figured if I was working out of KC there was a decent chance I wouldn’t fly that day due to weather, or at worst I’d only have to call in sick for one day instead of two.

Joe was set to arrive in KC the same day I was, so I offered to buy him an airline ticket to DC and we’d just trade Cessnas. He and my boss agreed and the trade went off fairly well. Joe’s flights were delayed and he didn’t end up getting to the hotel until four or five in the morning. Fortunately, the weather in DC was bad and he had a chance to catch up on sleep.

I worked the Friday before the wedding, but quit a little early to go to the rehearsal and dinner. By the time I landed the winds aloft forecasts for the wedding day confirmed I’d have the day off without having to lie. I'm not a huge believer in divine intervention, but that's sure how it felt with everything working out the way it did. It was so great to be there and a part of it all without having to stress out about getting back to work half way across the continent.

The rehearsal dinner was at Zarda BBQ in Lenexa, KS. I was glad to be back in the land of good barbeque baked beans. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past four months, it’s that nobody makes beans like they do in Kansas City.

The day of the wedding was beautiful and aside from Pastor Ben dropping the rings, or maybe because of that, the ceremony will always be a cherished memory to me.

“These rings are a symbol of unbroken love and it’s fourth and fifty so GO LONG!!”

Tuesday, April 19, 2005


What kind of person takes a picture of a dead bird in the mall parking lot?! I mean, really!

Any Questions?

Sunday, April 10, 2005


My view of the Capital of the United States Of America.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

I am the all singing, all dancing Crap of the World!

Howdy. Its 2:00 in the morning and I can’t sleep. Been trying for a couple hours. Aargh. My insomnia is most likely the result of the four-hour nap I took this afternoon. I took a four-hour nap this afternoon because I hardly slept at all last night. I hardly slept at all last night because I had to catch a 6:18 a.m. flight from Kansas City to Buffalo, which meant leaving the house at 4:30. I’ve never felt so much like Edward Norton’s character in “Fight Club.”

I got to spend a long weekend in KC due to my plane getting a new exhaust pipe. We were having trouble with the engine exhaust distorting the photographs, so they slapped a big ugly pipe to the side of my plane to carry the hot gases aft of the cameras. The work had to be done at our home base in Batavia, NY (between Rochester and Buffalo), so I flew up here from DC Thursday morning. I had been told to expect to go back to DC on Friday. When I landed, however, I found out that it would be Monday before the work was finished. I booked an evening flight out of Buffalo and was having a beer with old friends by midnight. Felt great to be home.

As I sat in the terminal in Cincinnati, waiting to board my flight to Kansas City, I had the strange realization that I this was the first place in three months where I could have known one of the strangers in the crowd. Or that one of them could have known me. They didn't.

“Have I dated that girl?”

I hadn't.

I suddenly remembered one of the impetuses for my taking this job and wanting to get away for a while. It had to do with expectations held by people who are close to me and have known me for ages; expectations of who I am, my personality, my beliefs, my character, my capabilities. Surrounded by friends and family, its easy for one to convince himself that change is impossible, because he has so many voices correcting him if he ever tries to stray from the mold of assumed continuity of being.

I’m finally tired. To sum up, I didn’t think too much about the feeling in Cincinnati after I got home. I had a great weekend in KC. Partied like a rock star. Time to turn into Brad Pitt.