Read Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 Online
Authors: John Michael Scalzi
Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (30 page)
Larry discovered what being drunk and belligerent and vertically unaware can cost you: he was sentenced to three months in prison by the Bristol Crown Court, which said to him, “This sort of behaviour will not be tolerated on an aircraft.” Exactly right. He should have waited until he was inside the terminal.
A hint for Larry, don't ask any of your new prison friends to “step outside.” You won't have a 25,000-foot buffer zone to protect you then.
Source:
The Scotsman
(Scotland),
The Sun
(UK)
Â
W
e think it's a fine thing
if the people who work for the Transportation Security Administration are a curious lot. They are charged with keeping America's airplanes safe and secureâand for a job like that it helps to wonder if a belt buckle is hiding a little knife or if someone's shoes just might have soles made out of explosives. So, yes, curious TSA agents get a big thumbs up from us, just as long as their curiosity doesn't involve
us
having to get a full body-cavity search.
On the other hand, we think that the TSA screeners should focus their curiosity on things that are materially relevant to their jobs. So as an example, “Gee, I wonder if I should put that guy's carrying case through the X-ray machine to see what's in it?” is an excellent use of TSA screener curiosity. “Gee, I wonder if I should put my own head through the X-ray machine to see what's in it?” is not.
But it was the latter sort of curiosity that gripped several TSA security screeners at a number of different airports. Who can blame them? Aren't we
all
curious about our own bodies, especially the parts we can't usually see without exposing ourselves to serious bodily harm? And here were the TSA screeners, in full control of X-ray machines. It was only natural that sooner or later some of them would pass themselves through the machines, as these several screeners didâthey just slid themselves on the conveyor belts and rolled on in. The X-ray machines, 30 inches high and 18 inches wide, were big enough that they slipped through without problem. They didn't have to get a doctor's permission or anything.
Ah, but they
did
need to get the TSA's permission, a small detail that eluded these screeners. Here's what happens when you don't: the TSA confirmed in February 2004 that several of its screeners had been placed on administrative leave for passing themselves through the machines. Mike Fierberg, a TSA spokesman, denied to a Denver television station that passengers were ever put in danger because of the hi-jinx of the screeners, but he did allow that the TSA screeners' going through the X-ray machines themselves was pretty stupidânot to mention curiousâbehavior, and not in the good sense.
Source: KUSA-TV
Â
H
ere's a lesson we think is valuable for every pilot:
top off the tank before you take to the sky. There may be things in life that are more unpleasant than running out of gas when the only thing between you and the ground are a few lucky updrafts, but they are few and we don't actually want to spend any time imagining what they are.
Topping off the fuel tank also might make you look a bit less foolish than the pilot and reporter in the KCBS Sky Three, a Cessna 172 used by the San Francisco radio station and other stations to monitor traffic in the Bay Area. We don't know that the pilot didn't fuel up before taking to the air that May 2004 morning, but we do know that at about 8:30 a.m., the plane's engine started sputtering, indicating that the tank was dry.
Well, you know what happens when a plane runs out of gas: gravity. The pilot looked for places to land and spotted a few school grounds, but in each case there were children on the grounds, and the pilotâwiselyâdecided that teaching the children the joys of playing with a falling Cessna should not be the lesson of the day.
That left the highwayâitself not a bundle of fun at 8:30 on a weekday morning in the Bay Area. But the pilot managed, setting down on the Westbound 580 at the 238 split (i.e. traffic central). Then the plane, which was supposed to report on traffic slowdowns, created one as commuters gawked at the sight of the plane on the highway shoulder. At least there was a reporter on the scene to cover the news.
Source:
Chronicle
(San Francisco, CA),
Tri-Valley Herald
Â
T
ry to follow this reasoning here,
because we know it's got us a little confused. “Bobbi” was on a plane that was taxiing down the runway in Miami on its way to Philadelphia, and she was standing up, merrily chatting away on her cell phone to a friend. As anyone who has traveled by plane over the last few years knows, when a plane is just about ready for lift-off, they like you in your seat, and they like you not to be on your cell phone, which airline maintain can mess with cockpit communications.
So Bobbi was toldâseveral timesâby the flight attendants. Bobbi's response: “It is rude to hang up on people. I don't have to turn my phone off.” Well, in fact, you do; it's a federal case if you interfere with a flight crew. Moreover, it's entirely likely the plane won't take off if someone is actively ignoring the flight crew. Strange as it may seem, it makes flight crews jumpy. So we ask you: what is more rude? Hanging up on a friend on your cell phone? Or inconveniencing an entire plane because you simply won't shut up? See, that's what we think, too. But not Bobbi.
The flight crew having been defeated by Bobbi's obnoxiousness decided it was time for the air marshals on the flight to tell her what to do. One of them told her to sit down, and put his hand on her shoulder to get her attention. Whereupon Bobbi slapped the air marshal smack in the face. We ask again: which is ruder? Hanging up your cell phone or physically
assaulting a federal officer? Once again, we are in agreement. But, again, not Bobbi.
Sadly for Bobbi, this is when a bit of rudeness was visited upon her: she was taken down, handcuffed, hauled off the plane, and then charged with assaulting a federal officer and interfering with a flight crew. We wonder if she was allowed the customary phone call, seeing that she'd already been on the phone. But we guess that refusing her that call would be, you know,
rude.
Source: Associated Press
Â
S
omething to know about a Coast Guard inspection of your merchant vessel,
should you have a merchant vessel: it takes a while. Yes, as highly trained and efficient as the U.S. Coast Guard is in performing its duties, individually and severally, there is still an excellent chance that the performance of said duties will, in fact, consume quite a bit of time. Please find some way to amuse yourself until they are done. We hear solitaire is fun.
Our Turkish captain “Khamel” was apparently not a patient man. And so when the Coast Guard personnel from the Port of Philadelphia did not perform their duties in a manner that Khamel deemed timely, he struck upon an innovative strategy to speed them along when he blurted out that there was a bomb on board.
This did
not
speed things up. On the contrary, the Coast Guard ordered the ship back to sea, where rather than the quick inspection the Coast Guard had been performing, the ship got the full inspection treatment complete with bomb-sniffing dogs brought in for the occasion. Khamel, realizing he'd stupidly extended the time he had to wait before his ship could dock, tried to take back the comment, but as one Coast Guard official said, “He'd already rung the bell.”
Khamel himself found another, exciting way to wait. He was detained by the FBI for making a false statement to a federal official, which is a felony. More proof that patience (and honesty!) is a virtue.
Source: NBC News, Delaware Online
Travel Travails
O
ne of the stories is a round trip ticket to Truthville. Two of them lead to an infinite layover in Falseburg. Which is which? Pick your choice and then board to discover your destination.
1
.
Â
The skies are filled with stories of drunken passengers abusing flight attendants. But drunken flight attendants abusing passengers? That's a new one on us. And yet it happenedâand perhaps stereotypically, it happened in Russia. It was there, on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Nizhnevartovsk, that the flight crew caused a scene, first by disappearing for most of the trip, then reappearing near the end of the trip to drunkenly pass out food to the passengers. One of the passengers complained about the service, and three of the male flight attendants took it upon themselves to give the guy several knuckle sandwiches and blacken his eye. The man, naturally enough, has filed a lawsuit against the airline, and the flight attendants are looking at three months each in a Russian prison. Have a nice trip, guys!
2.
Â
The Quantas flight from Los Angeles to Auckland was going along swimmingly, until somewhere over the Pacific, the plane's in-flight entertainment system gave out with six hours left to go until touchdown. This could have meant nothing but hours of staring at the South Pacific, but the
Qantas flight crew had another idea. “Robert [McGee, one of the flight crew] remembered that a passenger brought a guitar as her carry-on,” said head attendant Sarah Nelson. McGee, it turns out, had been a guitarist for a wedding band in Australia. The result: hours of passenger-request singalong. “I'd been looking forward to watching
Bruce Almighty,
” said 19-year-old Jane Stross, whose guitar had been borrowed. “But this was pretty cool, too.”
3.
Â
As part of their in-flight entertainment options, many airlines allow their passengers to listen in to flight deck communication between the airline pilots and the air traffic controllers. The prospect of messing with some of those listeners proved to be irresistible to two Swiss International Air Lines pilots, who on a flight between Geneva and London decided to re-enact a famous episode of
The Twilight Zone
in which an equipment-destroying gremlin is spotted on the wing of the plane. It was a fine joke until that woman in the first class cabin who had been listening in freaked out and started screaming uncontrollably, forcing an emergency landing. Turns out the woman, who hated flying, had self-medicated prior to departure and was not in any mental position to distinguish reality from puckish pilot jokes. The after the plane's eventual arrival in London, the pilots were put on paid leave pending an airline and pilot's union investigation.
Turn to
page 329
for the answers.
Today's Episode: Supertrain
Starring in this Episode:
Robert Alda and Ilene Graff
Debut Episode:
February 7, 1979, on NBC
The Pitch:
It's
The Love Boat
! On rails! Apparently convinced that a nation that considers Amtrak as the transportation of absolute last resort would buy into the idea of a super-luxury train, NBC greenlit this one, in which the train, in gross violation of physical laws, features an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a mall, and a disco, and travels at 200 miles an hour.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Because:
Well,
The Love Boat
was a big hit at the time. Also, one of the creators of the series was noted novelist Donald E. Westlake, who by this time had several successful novels (and movie adaptations thereof) to his name.
In Reality:
The Love Boat
had apparently slaked the nation's thirst for traveling B-level celebrities (like Lyle Waggoner, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Billy Barty) and amusing romantic adventures. There were also substantial production problems as well. Early on (in a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps?) the very expensive model of the Supertrain crashed while the show producers were showing it off to the NBC brass, which required an
equally expensive alternate version to be constructed. The first five episodes rated so poorly that the show's executive producer was replaced; the new executive producer added cast members andâon episode nineâa laugh track, none of which seemed to do any good.
How Long Did It Last?
Nine episodes, with the last airing on May 5, 1979âalthough NBC (likely out of programming desperation and to make back its money) played the show again during summer re-runs.
Were Those Responsible Punished?
NBC programming head Fred Silverman would eventually lose his job for this and other bad series (see
Pink Lady . . . and Jeff
on
page 94
). Donald E. Westlake survived apparently unscathed and would later be nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay adaptation of
The Grifters.
Answers to “The Really Stupid Quizzes”
A Hunk, A Hunk of Burning Dumb: 1
Sex and Other Naked Activities: 1
The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Stupidity: 1