Airplanes, computers and strip clubs. Not necessarily in that order.

So I needed to fly to Atlanta for a job interview. And unfortunately flying meant that I had to take an airplane, flying did not mean that I could strap on a pair of wings, make like Icarus and flap my way across five states. Flying meant that I had to sit down in a plane and feel my stomach and the rest of my body part ways whenever we hit an air pocket. I really, really hate that feeling. But that is nothing compared to the view from the window. For some unfathomable reason, I always seem to have an excellent view of the wings. And the wings….they vibrate. Like tuning forks with Parkinson’s disease. Like a guitar string after a particularly energetic riff. Like a…well you get the idea.

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that deep down I am not convinced that planes should be able to fly. It seems to me that they fly simple because everyone has been tricked into believing that they are able to fly. Talk to anybody who builds planes and they’ll say “Um…air pressure and lift and drag and you know mumblemumblemumble”, and then at this juncture they’ll get a really shifty look in their eyes and they’ll say, “Voila!” and point to a huge plane streaking thought the air.

They’re just like computers, which also work because people are deluded into believing that they should work. THEY SHOULDN’T. Nobody knows how computers work. Not even the people who build them. You have transistors and thingummybobs and stuff and when you turn around, you have sixteen billion circuits on a chip the size of a thumbnail. And if you ask them how they did it, they’ll get that same shifty look in their eyes, and say, “Voila”, and point to a supercomputer streaking through the air.

This is how chips are made. A bunch of hardware engineers get together with a whole bunch of electronic components, and they dance with wild abandon around the parts to call upon the Voodoo. And when the dance is done and the virgins have been sacrificed, “Voila”, a supercomputer streaks through the air.

To summarize, airplanes and computers do not work because of science. They are held together by the Voodoo, black magic and mass delusions.

Anyway, I caught my flight to Atlanta from Pittsburgh, so I drove to Pittsburgh on Monday. It is a very scenic drive, farms and rolling hills and countryside and stuff like that. And then the occasional strip club. Well, not occasional…not even intermittent, it would be more accurate to say frequent. Yup, the frequent strip club. Establishments with names like Divaz and Streekers[sic]. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination, what? It is quite possible that Divaz was actually a school for budding altos, but somehow I doubt that.

Well I have nothing against these establishments, and if I wasn’t in such a hurry to catch my flight I may have dropped by to further investigate, purely in the spirit of scientific curiosity. Really. Honest. However, one such place advertised itself as being or having a drive through peep show. Let me repeat that. A drive through peep show. Now I haven’t a clue how that could even be physically possible. Peep shows by their very nature compel you to peep as the …um show occurs, and driving works out well only if you are actually looking at what is in front of the vehicle. So unless the ahem “show-er” is actually perched on your hood as the show goes on I think they might be advertising under false pretenses.

Airplanes. Check.
Computers. Check.
Strip clubs. Check.

And I learnt about this thing called rephotography. It is really quite fascinating and gets my seal of approval.