I need to get your thoughts on the man who stole a commercial airplane a few days ago, and went joyriding and did daredevil stunts above Seattle, etc. I was fascinated as a mofo by that story on Saturday. Wild shit! Here’s a full transcript of his conversation with air traffic control. The guy’s cracking jokes and making sarcastic remarks… He seems like a good dude. Funny. I laughed out loud when he asked them if it’s possible to do a “backflip” with the airplane. An amazing story.
It’s sad that he was depressed, and everything that goes along with it. And I’m sure his family is in anguish. But his final day was certainly a memorable one. Right? And he kept saying he didn’t want anybody to get hurt or even be inconvenienced by his actions. It’s a shame it ended the way it did, but it was an audacious and memorable end.
Can you tell I’m dancing around this? I’d like to get your thoughts on it. Please use the comments. Were you as fascinated as I was by this? We’re bombarded with news stories ’round the clock, but this one went straight to Number One on my charts, for a good 24 hours. What about you?
Alright, let’s move on to less treacherous things. Around midnight last night, I uploaded Episode 13 of The Jeff Kay Show podcast. It’s everywhere, or should be. Let me know if you can’t find it on your podcast app o’ choice. Here it is at Patreon. And here’s the description:
In this one, I talk about my three semesters at West Virginia State College. Very little effort was put forth, I received the results I deserved and dismissed it all as nothing more than 13th grade. You’ll learn about a memorable English class, a photography course that still haunts me to this day, and a wild filmmaking class I took with my friend Rocky. And I close it out with another Rocky story, involving vodka and Five Alive. I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know.
I have an interesting plugin (or whatever the hell) installed on this computer. It’s called Grammarly, and it monitors your writing and offers suggestions. And one thing I now realize, after using it for a few months… I don’t know shit about commas. I thought I did, but apparently I was completely wrong. The thing is constantly telling me to add a comma here, remove a comma there. It’s relentless, and feels mildly naggy. Ya know? Also, I don’t always agree with it. Have you used this thing? What are your thoughts? It catches some legit problems for me, so there’s value. But it feels like a virtual backseat driver sometimes.
My new phone arrived a few days ago, and it’s activated and everything. It’s super fast! However… the secret internal clock has been turned on and I’m sure the thing will become sluggish-by-design in about 16 months. Is that paranoid? I don’t think so. I think that shit’s built in. But I’ve got about a year before the real bogging down begins. Loving it so far. It’s the LG V30.
And I need to start winding this one down already. I need to make a big plate of toast and eggs and get ready for work. I’m in a toast and eggs groove right now. It takes a little work, but the payoff is enormous. I’m not hungry for hours, which is amazing to me. And I’m getting better and better at preparing it. They’re near perfection every time now.
I’ll leave you with an additional Question for you guys to ponder. Is there anything that instantly takes you back to a sickness or some other unpleasantness from earlier in your life? I’ll give you a few personal examples:
When I was in high school I got some kind of flu-like horribleness and stayed home for days. It was miserable. I’d just lie on my bed, feeling like absolute shit, listening to an album I’d just bought: Adventures in Utopia by Utopia. You know, that Todd Rundgren band from the 70s/80s? Anyway, for years I was unable to play that record because it transported me back to the sickbed and the all-encompassing yuck of that week.
Also, I got super-sick one time after drinking an enormous number of Long Island Iced Teas with Rocky. It was bad, my friends. And even now, I can’t stand the smell of those things. Or even something like a 7 & 7, which is Long Island Iced Tea-suggestive. I mean, that shit was 35 years ago, and it still holds true today. I can’t stomach the smell, and I’d probably upchuck if I actually took a sip of one. Blecch.
And, when we lived in California I came down with a bad case of what the doctor declared bronchitis. I don’t know, but it took me out, boys and girls. The guy gave me all kinds of shit about not coming to see him except when I’m sick, and I didn’t even have the energy to tell him to ram it up his ass. There’s a time and a place, motherfucker. Anyway, there have been two times in my life when I was so sick I was actually concerned, and that was one of them. It was about 105 degrees outside and I was shivering under a pile of blankets. It was crazy. And the older boy was very young and would watch the same videos over and over and over. In one of those kiddie videos, there was a black woman who sounded like she might be from one of the Caribbean islands, singing a song called “Miss Mary Mac” or something similar. Whenever I heard that thing, for months or years later, I felt actual anxiety. Weird, huh?
What do you have on this one? Anything? Please tell us about it in the comments.
And I need to go now. You guys have a great day!
I’ll be back on Thursday.
Now playing in the bunker
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First!
Nah. Not a fan of that kind of assclownery.
The guy that stole the plane made it maneuver in ways that it was not designed to, is my understanding. A sad end for him, but kind of a glorious way to go out. I’ve lost count of the number of ways he’s been described: baggage handler, maintenance crew, hijacker, etc.
For the QoTD: I’ll never be able to drink Sambuca again, for reasons similar to your Long Island Iced Tea story. There’s nothing like waking up in a hot tent royally hung over from drinking nearly an entire bottle of that sickly-sweet spirit by one’s self.
Also, I associate The Price is Right with being sick. Staying home on the couch with the puke bucket nearby, too worn out to even change the TV channel, drifting in and out of consciousness to the daytime game shows. Seems now like it happened nearly every year, is that even possible?
It took me 2 decades to be within 50 feet of Jamaica. Worst drunk and hangover I ever experienced.
Sambuca. Jeezs
Sambuca, holy shit! For my bachelor party, my best man had the waitress keep bringing tall glasses of sambuca at a comedy club. Except they were really getting icewater. Funny, huh? I eventually passed out, then puked all over myself. A day before my wedding. Good times. Needless to say, I can’t stomach the smell of sambuca.
Welch’s Grape Juice.
That was my mom’s go to salve for anything from a sore throat to a belly ache. Nice memory, vicki
1985, we were stationed in Middletown, RI. I was in 4th grade. Hurricane Gloria was bearing down on New England, and we were living in military housing. I remember being without power, and gathering at a neighbors house for safety. We watched out the front window as the wind slowly uprooted an entire tree across the street over the course of a few hours. When the storm had passed, we went back home and went to bed. We still didn’t have power, and I was scared, so I slept with my radio on. Tears for Fears Head over Heels was the last song I remember hearing, and now I can’t help but go back to being a scared little girl anytime I hear them on the radio.
When I awoke Saturday morning and checked Twitter, I was immediately drawn into this story and couldn’t get enough of it. The transcripts, then actual audio, then the cellphone footage. Great stuff!!!
Too bad he was nuts, but he was “cool nuts” and not some dick looking to hurt others.
I use Grammarly (the little green G is hanging out in the corner as I type this, waiting to pounce). I too suffer from comma deficiency. Maybe we should start a support group. Among other things, it’s taught me that either my English teacher sucked or I didn’t pay attention to what she was saying. It’s probably the latter. The naggy thing it does that drives me crazy is try to correct me when I haven’t finished my sentence. One little pause and it assumes I’m done and I’m an idiot. Also, every once in a while, in an attempt to make me look like a backwoods hillbilly who “graduated” from the school system after third grade, it’ll try to correct a sentence like, “I have three cheeseburgers” to “I has three cheeseburgers”. What kind of shenanigans is that? I’m just glad they haven’t figured out a way for Grammarly to rap you on the knuckles with a ruler when you make a mistake ’cause I’d be holding those cheeseburgers with a claw.
Roxie Roker
I recall a time when there was a photo of Rocky on your site. And the plant story.
Numbers:
1) If you need to hang with somebody named Grammarly and she ain’t your mother’s or father’s ma, you might be headed from la escuela to la esquela. Just follow Rule 13 of commas, and you’ll be fine.
2) My John McCain flip phone continues to run, and to provide excellent twenty-five buck-a-month service.
3) The plane crashed about ten miles from my house, and, other than feeling a little sad, I didn’t think much about it. Nothing like the Manafort Trial. There’s yer action.
4) God please deliver us from drinking stories.
5) Mushrooms, lifelong, for all the right reasons.
Deuteronomy:
jtb
I wasn’t so drawn in by the story about airplane guy, but it’s nice that he was just a benign loon instead of a psycho looking to hurt people.
Does Grammarly have an on-off switch for the Oxford comma? And why does it think ‘alright’ is all right?
Bonus: Vic Tayback will always be Jojo Krako to me.
Saw a YouTube of him talking about his job and life from a time back..seemed pretty normal…
Plane dude is my hero. It was hilarious. Barrel rolls!!
Now there’s another story about some domestic abuser who also stole a place a new and flew it into his own home. He ended up a charred piece of shit but the family lived. Is this the new,way to go out with a bang?
Got drunk on screwdrivers in ’79. Wow does that shit burn on the way up. Never even thought about touching another one.
Got drunk on screwdrivers in ’79. Man does that shit burn on the way up. Never even thought about having another since.
Screwdrivers were really in style with the young crowd at that time. One Saturday night in high school (1979ish) a bunch of us went to the movies and someone had put together a gallon jug of OJ and vodka.
I remember sitting half in and half out of the car in the Burger King parking lot waiting for that concoction to move in reverse. The driver was complaining that he had to get the car home by midnight or his Dad would be pissed. He waited, though and I yakked at least twice. Messy business. Don’t know if the driver got in trouble.
Does Grammarly receive commission for commas? I was a technical writer years ago and someone had told me about this method of writing – I think it serves no purpose and is distracting.
First I’ve heard of this plane episode – I’ve got me some reading to do.
Yup, they get a nickel a throw; semicolons are free. Should you be a humanist, do yourself a favour and avoid the airplane story — it will only erode your faith. If you need software to tell you how to write, you’re writing with somebody else’s style, so why bother? (They throw in the eroteme at no additional charge.)
best,
John
Read about this – very sad. But made me think of my favorite lyrics -‘I’m looking to the sky to save me’.
Jack Daniels and I went to bed together in the dorm shower at college. When I woke I realized I could have been a statistic. “College student drowns in one inch of water”
Back when I was a young and sober teen I had a stomach bug following a meal of hot dogs and German Potato salad. When I hurled it was like nothing had been digested. It took me about a decade before I could look at a hot dog without gagging and I can’t get past German Potato salad period. Just a glimpse of can at the store has ‘my mouth getting that way’ and seeing it in a deli or restaurant has me beating feet out the door.
I will admit I didn’t really like GPS and Mom was a ‘clean plate club’ aficionado, eating it was bad enough re-viewing and re-smelling was too much. Luckily my trip to the WC was sufficient to end the force feeding.
I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism (please hold the ooohs and ahhhs) and my senior year I had enough credits to take a graduate level creative writing class with this cool hippie guy who played a lot of open mic nights, and who was in retrospect, not nearly as cool as we all believed at the time. In any case, one day in class he hands out a sheet of paper with a short story on it that has all of the punctuation on it, except for commas. He says, everybody go ahead and fill in the commas as you think it should be and then we’ll go over them. So, everyone did this and guess what the verdict was. Nobody was wrong! His point was that when you have a handle on the basics of writing and your are able to be accepted into a graduate level course, you can take some liberty with commas and nobody really has much room to call you out on it. His point was that if some glorious, pretentious bastard can write a whole book without any capital letters, then you should be able to just put a comma where it feels right to you. Not saying he’s right, or wrong. But that was my experience in a grad level writing class.
Plane guy rules! Depression sucks and I should know, but looping a plane into the ground ain’t a bad way to go out in my opinion.
Peace!
Horseshit.
I’m not saying that to you — I’m saying it to the underqualified grad school “creative writing” prof. (Let’s forget for a moment that any school that offers a class called “creative writing” should lose its accreditation). I’ve always applied the Dashiell Hammett test to rules about grammar and punctuation: If you can produce work as profound and moving and lively as Dashiell Hammett did, then write, punctuate and, for that matter, spell, any way you’d like. Otherwise, follow the rules unless you have a cogent reason for violating them. Hell, Rule 13 of comma usage allows the writer to “use a comma for clarity wherever necessary”. That should be enough freedom, even for a “hippie”.
I am not a paragon. I’m just a commenter on this dick joke blog. I fuck up grammar and punctuation as much as anyone else who writes here. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t strive to do better and keep learning. Some rules are arbitrary, but language rules aren’t. Punctuation is part of our language: it works in concert with vocabulary, grammar and syntax to produce meaning. Heaven knows we have enough trouble communicating with one another as it is. If we each get to choose how we’re going to punctuate, we continue moving farther apart at a time when communicating clearly and honestly has never been more important.
John
Jesus Smith, I can’t believe I stayed serious for that long. Conscience does make cowards of us all.
I respect a man who takes the power of punctuation seriously. Commas have received their due attention here, but let us also take a moment to contemplate the beauty of a correctly-used apostrophe.
Apostrophe’s don’t make word’s plural. Tell your friend’s.
I’m sure this question has been answered but is there a better way to listen to the podcast? An app or something. Currently i download it to my phone and listen but then my phone is only a vessel to listen to the podcast and nothing else.
The Monday episodes are available on almost all podcast apps, including the one I use, PocketCasts.
Patrons can stream both weekly episodes (Monday and Thursday) through the Patreon app if they choose. You don’t have to download it, you can stream it in the background.
Also, there’s a personal URL for patrons that can be added to some of the podcast apps, which will allow you to stream every episode. Apparently, this doesn’t work in every app, and I’m not an expert on it. But the URL can be found at patreon.com/jeffkay at the top of the right column. It’s a personal URL, and everybody’s is different.
Please let me know if you need additional info. I’ll try to help.
Awesome. I think 1st time i looked on stitcher i didnt find it. Found it. Score.
After drinking too much of it long ago and getting really sick; I still can’t drink scotch. Even the good stuff. I hope I punctuated correctly…..