“
While an elderly man in his mid-eighties looks curiously at a porno site, his grandson asks him from afar, “‘What are you reading, grandpa?’” “‘It’s history, my boy.’” “The grandson comes nearer and exclaims, “‘But this is a porno site, grandpa, naked chicks, sex . . . a lot of sex!’” “‘Well, it’s sex for you, my son, but for me it’s history,’ the old man says with a sigh.” All of people in the cabin burst into laughter. “A stale joke, but a cool one,” added William More, the man who just told the joke. The navigator skillfully guided the flying disc among the dense orange-yellow blanket of clouds in the upper atmosphere that they had just entered. Some of the clouds were touched with a brownish hue at the edges. The rest of the pilots gazed curiously and intently outwards while taking their seats. The flying saucer descended slowly, the navigator’s actions exhibiting confidence. He glanced over at the readings on the monitors below the transparent console: Atmosphere: Dense, 370 miles thick, 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane Temperature on the surface: ‒179°C / ‒290°F Density: 1.88 g/cm³ Gravity: 86% of Earth’s Diameter of the cosmic body: 3200 miles / 5150 km.
”
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Todor Bombov (Homo Cosmicus 2: Titan: A Science Fiction Novel)
“
There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.
”
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Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6))
“
I try not to be angry, bitter at the unfairness of it all. I wish I could make sense of it. I once met an ex-Iranian pilot who was traveling through Canada looking for a place to settle down. He said that Americans are the only people he’s ever met who just can’t accept that bad things can happen to good people. Maybe he’s right. Last week I was listening to the radio and just happened to hear [name withheld for legal reasons]. He was doing his usual thing—fart jokes and insults and adolescent sexuality—and I remember thinking, “This man survived and my parents didn’t.” No, I try not to be bitter.
”
”
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
“
The craft passed directly below Scathach and she released her grip and dropped onto the top of the vimana alongside Joan with enough force to send the larger craft plunging down. The French immortal laughed. "So nice of you-"
"Don't you dare crack any dropping-in jokes," Scathach warned before her friend could finish.
The vimana dipped and spun, but the two women had firm grips on the transparent dome and held on while the pilot tilted the craft,attempting to shake them off.
"So long as he doesn't get too close to the lava," Scatty said, "we should be okay."
At that moment the vimana dropped straight down, zooming dangerously close to the lava's sluggish bubbling surface.
"I think he heard you," Joan said, coughing as the air became almost unbreathable.
”
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Michael Scott (The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, #5))
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There's a joke in the aviation industry that the ideal aircrew in today's modern aircraft would be comprised of a man and a dog. The dog is there to bite the man if he so much as tries to touch the controls, and the pilot's one remaining job is to feed the dog!
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Lim Khoy Hing (Life in the Skies: Everything You Want to Know about Flying)
“
You bought a one-way ticket to New York with no return flight booked,” he says. “I’m flying to New York and I’m not coming back for a month or two,” I explain. “I’m not booking a round-trip flight at this point.” “I understand. No problem. We’ll be finished right after a quick thorough search.” I think he’s kidding. He’s not. I keep trying to joke with him as he frisks me a little too eagerly. “I thought you’d buy me a drink first,” I say. “I guess the only people drinking fifteen minutes before a flight are the pilots.
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Billy Crystal (Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys)
“
As a former pilot in World War I, Walter had always preferred flying as a means of travel, rather than going by sea. Whenever he was in the Dakota, flying over to Northern Ireland, he always asked for the front seat, joking that if it crashed then he wanted to die first.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
Uh," said Alec. "Can you fly a hot-air balloon?"
"Of course! Magnus declared. "Did I ever tell you about the time I stole a hot-air balloon to rescue the queen of France?"
Alec grinned as if Magnus was making a joke. Magnus smiled back. Marie Antoinette had actually been quite a handful.
"It's just," Alec said thoughtfully, "I've never even seen you drive a car."
He stood to admire the balloon, which was glamoured to be invisible. As far as the mundanes around them were concerned, Alec solemnly gazed at the open air.
"I can drive. I can also fly, and pilot, and otherwise direct any vehicle you like. I'm hardly going to crash the balloon into a chimney," Magnus protested.
"Uh-huh," said Alec, frowning.
"You seem lost in thought," Magnus remarked. "Are you considering how glamorous and romantic your boyfriend is?"
"I'm considering," said Alec, "how to protect you if we crash the balloon into a chimney.
”
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Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
“
The question that lingers is, how much was I a factor in my own survival, and how much was science, and how much miracle?
I don't have the answer to that question. Other people look to me for the answer, I know. But if I could answer it, we would have the cure for cancer, and what's more, we would fathom the true meaning of our existences. I can deliver motivation, inspiration, hope, courage, and counsel, but I can't answer the unknowable. Personally, I don't need to try. I 'm content with simply being alive to enjoy the mystery.
Good Joke:
A man is caught in a flood, and as the water rises he climbs to the roof of his house and waits to be rescued. A guy in a motorboat comes by, and he says, "Hop in, I'll save you."
"No thanks," the man on the rooftop says. "My Lord will save me."
But the floodwaters keep rising. A few minutes later, a rescue plane flies overhead and the pilot drops a line.
"No, thanks," the man on the rooftop says. "My Lord will save me."
But the floodwaters rise ever higher, and finally, they overflow the roof and the man drowns.
When he gets to heaven, he confronts God.
"My Lord, why didn't you save me?" he implores.
"You idiot," God says. "I sent a boat, I sent you a plane."
I think in a way we are all just like the guy on the rooftop. Things take place, there is a confluence of events and circumstances, and we can't always know their purpose, or even if there is one. But we can take responsibility for ourselves and be brave.
”
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Lance Armstrong (It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life)
“
With apologies to the folks in Redmond, I’ll end on another Microsoft joke because it makes the point well (a point that applies everywhere, not just at Microsoft): A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when a malfunction disabled all of its electronic navigation and communications equipment. The clouds were so thick that the pilot couldn’t tell where he was. Finally, the pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said WHERE AM I? in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drawing their own large sign: YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER. The pilot smiled, looked at his map, determined the route to Sea-Tac Airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the copilot asked the pilot how he had done it. “I knew it had to be the Microsoft building,” he said, “because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.
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William Poundstone (Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?)
“
snuck into the vacant copilot’s room next to our victim, carrying a bucket with the sea cucumber. I crept through the room, being careful not to make any noise. I removed the sea cucumber and slid it into our victim’s toilet, being careful not to splash any water. The sea cucumber looked like a world record, giant turd. It was jet black, about fourteen inches long and thick around as a coke can. Neither of our pilots was a scuba diver and I guessed they would never suspect the giant turd was really a sea creature. The humongous turd impersonator lay motionless in the bottom of the toilet bowl, leaking a faint reddish dye. When they discovered the state of the toilet the pilots began a heated argument, blaming each other for not flushing the disgusting mound of excrement. This was a serious breach of etiquette for an officer and gentleman. The hapless pilots finally tried flushing and the toilet backed up and flooded the bathroom. They had to summon a plumber who immediately recognized the turd for what it was, a sea cucumber, and said it must have somehow crawled up through the pipes. Neither pilot ever guessed they were the victims of a practical joke. The prank was flawless and I still have the picture of the cucumber in their toilet.
”
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William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
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Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them—if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix. Making mistakes is the key to making progress. Of course there are times when it is really important not to make any mistakes—ask any surgeon or airline pilot. But it is less widely appreciated that there are also times when making mistakes is the only way to go. Many of the students who arrive at very competitive universities pride themselves in not making mistakes—after all, that’s how they’ve come so much farther than their classmates, or so they have been led to believe. I often find that I have to encourage them to cultivate the habit of making mistakes, the best learning opportunities of all. They get “writer’s block” and waste hours forlornly wandering back and forth on the starting line. “Blurt it out!” I urge them. Then they have something on the page to work with. We philosophers are mistake specialists. (I know, it sounds like a bad joke, but hear me out.) While other disciplines specialize in getting the right answers to their defining questions, we philosophers specialize in all the ways there are of getting things so mixed up, so deeply wrong, that nobody is even sure what the right questions are, let alone the answers. Asking the wrongs questions risks setting any inquiry off on the wrong foot. Whenever that happens, this is a job for philosophers! Philosophy—in every field of inquiry—is what you have to do until you figure out what questions you should have been asking in the first place. Some people hate it when that happens. They would rather take their questions off the rack, all nicely tailored and pressed and cleaned and ready to answer. Those who feel that way can do physics or mathematics or history or biology. There’s plenty of work for everybody. We philosophers have a taste for working on the questions that need to be straightened out before they can be answered. It’s not for everyone. But try it, you might like it. In
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Daniel C. Dennett (Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking)
“
What do you call an evil leader digging a hole? Darth Spader What do you call Obi Wan eating crunchy toast? Obi Crumb What do call a padawan who likes to play computer games? i'Pad' me What do you call a starship pilot who likes to drink cocoa? Han Coco What starship is always happy to have people aboard? The Millennium Welcome What did Yoda say to Luke while eating dinner? Use the fork Luke. What do you call a Sith who won't fight? A Sithy. Which Star Wars character uses meat for a weapon instead of a Lightsaber? Obi Wan Baloney. What do call a smelly droid? R2DPOO What do call a droid that has wet its pants? C3PEE0 What do you call a Jedi who loves pies? Luke PieWalker? What do call captain Rex when he emailing on a phone? Captain Text What evil leader doesn’t need help reaching? Ladder the Hutt What kind of evil lord will always say goodbye? Darth Later Which rebel will always win the limbo? Han LowLow What do you call R2D2 when he’s older? R2D3 What do you call R2D2 when he’s busting to go to the toilet? R2DLoo What do call Padme’s father? Dadme What’s do you call the Death Star when its wet? The Death Spa What do call R2D2 when he climbs a tree? R2Tree2 What do you say a Jedi adding ketchup to his dinner? Use the sauce Luke. What star wars baddy is most likely to go crazy? Count KooKoo What do call Count Dooku when he’s really sad? Count Boohoo Which Jedi is most likely to trick someone? Luke Liewalker Which evil lord is most likely to be a dad? Dadda the Hutt Which rebel likes to drink through straws? Chew Sucker Which space station can you eat from? The Death bar What do call a moody rebel? Luke Sighwalker What do you call an even older droid R2D4 What do call Darth Vader with lots of scrapes? Dearth Grazer What call an evil lord on eBay? Darth Trader What do call it when an evil lord pays his mum? Darth Paid-her What do call an evil insect Darth Cicada What sith always teases? General Teasers Who's the scariest sith? Count Spooko Which sith always uses his spoon to eat his lunch Count Spoonu What evil lord has lots of people living next door? Darth Neighbour What Jedi always looks well dressed? Luke TieWalker Which evil lord works in a restaurant? Darth waiter What do you call a smelly storm trooper? A storm pooper What do you call Darth Vader digging a hole? Darth Spader What do you C3PO wetting his pants? C3PEE0 What do you call Asoka’s pet frog? Acroaka What do you call a Jedi that loves pies? Luke Piewalker What rebel loves hot drinks? Han Coco What did Leia say to Luke at the dinner table? Use the fork Luke. What do call Obi Wan eating fruit? Obi plum What do you call Obi in a band? Obi Drum What doe Luke take out at night? A Night Sabre What is the favourite cooking pot on Endor? The e Wok
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Reily Sievers (The Best Star Wars Joke Book)
“
In the broadest sense, there are at least two ways to use the danger of norms for comedic effect. The first is to feint across the norm boundary, but then retreat back to safety without actually violating it. The second way is to step across the boundary, violating the norm, and then to realize, like a child jumping into snow for the first time, “It’s safe over here! Wheee!” Here, for example, is a joke that flirts with, but doesn’t actually consummate, a norm violation: MARY: What do you call a black man flying a plane? JOHN: Uh . . . I don’t know… . MARY: A pilot. What did you think, you racist?! The humor here plays off the norm against racism. After Mary’s setup, John starts to squirm uncomfortably, afraid his friend is about to tell an offensive joke. But when Mary delivers the punchline, it’s sweet, safe relief. She wasn’t telling a racist joke after all. She was just playing! And a hearty chuckle ensues.42
”
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
Once a plane crashed somewhere in the mountains, only a monkey who was traveling in the plane was left alive. Fortunately the monkey was intelligent enough to understand English and reply. The officials went to see the monkey in the hospital and had a talk with the monkey. Officer: “When the plane took off what were the travelers doing?” Monkey: “Tying their belts” Officer: “What were the air hostesses doing?” Monkey: “Saying Hello! Good morning!” Officer: “What were the pilots doing?” Monkey: “Checking the system” Officer: “What were you doing?” Monkey: “Looking for my people” Officer: “After 10 minutes what were the travelers doing?” Monkey: “Having beverages and snacks” Officer: “What were the air hostesses doing?” Monkey: “Serving the travelers” Officer: “What were the Pilots doing?” Monkey: “Handling the steering” Officer: “What were you doing?” Monkey: “Eating & throwing” Officer: “After 30 minutes what were the travelers doing?” Monkey: “Some were sleeping and some were reading” Officer: “What were the air hostesses ?” Monkey: “Make up” Officer: “What were the pilots doing?” Monkey: “Handling the steering” Officer: “What were you doing?” Monkey: “Nothing” Officer: “Just before plane crash what were the travelers doing?” Monkey: “All were sleeping” Officer: “What were the air hostesses doing?” Monkey: “Kissing the pilots” Officer: “What were the pilots doing?” Monkey: “Responding” Officer: “What were you doing?” Monkey: “Handling the steering !!!
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Olav Laudy (4000 decent very funny jokes)
“
Pilot’s joke: In the airplane of the future, there will be a man and a dog in the cockpit. The dog is there to prevent the man from touching anything, and the man is there to feed the dog. Ziggy
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Felix R. Savage (Freefall (Earth's Last Gambit, #1))
“
But Mrs. Wiggins only said that a joke was a joke, and old ones, that had stood the test of time, were the best. “I don’t like to have to figure out what the point is,” she said.
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Walter Rollin Brooks (Freddy the Pilot (Freddy the Pig))
“
When you’ve heard a joke fifteen or twenty times, you know just when to laugh. Although,” she would add thoughtfully, “I like to laugh at ’em whether I get the point or not.” Mr.
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Walter Rollin Brooks (Freddy the Pilot (Freddy the Pig))
“
Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me." Peter Rommel USA-ret
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Peter Rommel
“
From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker
Behind “The Exciting Story of Cuba”
It was on a rainy evening in January of 2013, after Captain Hank and his wife Ursula returned by ship from a cruise in the Mediterranean, that Captain Hank was pondering on how to market his book, Seawater One. Some years prior he had published the book “Suppressed I Rise.” But lacking a good marketing plan the book floundered. Locally it was well received and the newspapers gave it great reviews, but Ursula was battling allergies and, unfortunately, the timing was off, as was the economy.
Captain Hank has the ability to see sunshine when it’s raining and he’s not one easily deterred. Perhaps the timing was off for a novel or a textbook, like the Scramble Book he wrote years before computers made the scene. The history of West Africa was an option, however such a book would have limited public interest and besides, he had written a section regarding this topic for the second Seawater book. No, what he was embarking on would have to be steeped in history and be intertwined with true-life adventures that people could identify with.
Out of the blue, his friend Jorge suggested that he write about Cuba. “You were there prior to the Revolution when Fidel Castro was in jail,” he ventured. Laughing, Captain Hank told a story of Mardi Gras in Havana. “Half of the Miami Police Department was there and the Coca-Cola cost more than the rum. Havana was one hell of a place!” Hank said. “I’ll tell you what I could do. I could write a pamphlet about the history of the island. It doesn’t have to be very long… 25 to 30 pages would do it.” His idea was to test the waters for public interest and then later add it to his book Seawater One.
Writing is a passion surpassed only by his love for telling stories. It is true that Captain Hank had visited Cuba prior to the Revolution, but back then he was interested more in the beauty of the Latino girls than the history or politics of the country. “You don’t have to be Greek to appreciate Greek history,” Hank once said. “History is not owned solely by historians. It is a part of everyone’s heritage.” And so it was that he started to write about Cuba. When asked about why he wasn’t footnoting his work, he replied that the pamphlet, which grew into a book over 600 pages long, was a book for the people. “I’m not writing this to be a history book or an academic paper. I’m writing this book, so that by knowing Cuba’s past, people would understand it’s present.” He added that unless you lived it, you got it from somewhere else anyway, and footnoting just identifies where it came from.
Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me.
The Exciting Story of Cuba has the exhilaration of a novel. It is packed full of interesting details and, with the normalizing of the United States and Cuba, it belongs on everyone’s bookshelf, or at least in the bathroom if that’s where you do your reading. Captain Hank is not someone you can hold down and after having read a Proof Copy I know that it will be universally received as the book to go to, if you want to know anything about Cuba!
Excerpts from a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer Peter Rommel, USA Retired, Military Intelligence Corps, Winter of 2014.
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Hank Bracker (The Exciting Story of Cuba: Understanding Cuba's Present by Knowing Its Past)
“
Pilot’s joke: In the airplane of the future, there will be a man and a dog in the cockpit. The dog is there to prevent the man from touching anything, and the man is there to feed the dog.
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Felix R. Savage (Freefall (Earth's Last Gambit, #1))
“
Will" Rogers, known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son,” was born on November 4, 1879, in what was then considered Indian Territory. His career included being a cowboy, writer, vaudeville performer, movie star and political wit. He poked fun at politicians, government programs, gangsters and current events, in a home spun and folksy way, making him one of the most idolized people in America. He became the highest paid Hollywood movie star at the time.
Will Rogers died on August 15, 1935 with his friend and pilot Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in Alaska. He once said that he wanted his tombstone to read "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.
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Hank Bracker
“
PILOTS IN A HURRY SHOULD TAKE CRASH COURSES
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Lynn Byk (The Fearless Moral Inventory of Elsie Finch)
“
Q: Where does a sailor go when he’s sick? A: To the dock. Q: Why did the robin get a library card? A: It was hoping to find some bookworms. Q: Why did the pilot paint his jet? A: He thought it was too plane. Q: What did the girl snake say to the boy snake? A: “Will you be my boa-friend?” Q: How do artists get to work? A: They go over the drawbridge.
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Rob Elliott (Laugh-Out-Loud: The 1,001 Funniest LOL Jokes of All Time (Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids))
“
the pilots on the Carl Vinson rarely talked earnestly about the risk this close to flight time. They joked about it instead. Because if you let yourself get too serious, you will get too scared, and once that devil is out of the bottle, you’re on a runaway horse. Fear is good. Too much fear is not.
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Laurence Gonzales (Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why)
“
plane. Bill was putting gas in the left wing when he looked over at us and said, "You okay with a little turbulence?" Without hesitating I answered, "Yeah, no problem." I thought about it for a minute then asked, "How much turbulence are we talking about?" "It shouldn't be too bad." Then why did you mention it? I thought to myself. Now I was the one worried. I dug through my backpack and found my tube of ten-year-old Dramamine. Karen had a full water bottle so I swallowed a pill with a couple of long gulps. Bill asked which one of us wanted to sit up front with him. I looked at Karen and she said, "God no!" Karen climbed in the single back seat and Bill placed our backpacks next to her. Karen kept the plywood Kobuk sign at her feet. With the co-pilot seat pushed back into Karen's knees, I wriggled my way across the pilot's seat and settled in the front right seat of the plane. It was hard getting in without bumping against the controls and switches on the dashboard. I could imagine the windshield wipers flapping and the radio blaring like a high school practical joke when Bill started the engine. Or worse, that in flight he wouldn't find that one critical setting that I'd changed until it was too late and the plane was plunging to the ground. I decided to not say anything and assume he would check them before the flight like pilots are supposed to do. Besides, I'm sure he's had more clumsy passengers with bigger butts than me shoehorn themselves into the co-pilot's seat before. Bill taxied the plane slowly to one end of the pond giving us room to takeoff and allowing the engine to warm up. When Bill turned the plane toward the direction of our takeoff and gunned the engine, I was surprised at how close we were to the trees on the approaching shore. But my concern was unnecessary; by the time we reached the trees we were well above them. In an instant, we were high enough in the sky to
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Matt Smith (Dear Bob and Sue)
“
Kelly began receiving all kinds of complaints and threats of lawsuits from communities claiming the Blackbird had shattered windows for miles around. A few times we announced a bogus flight plan and then sat back and watched the phony complaints pour in. But some complaints were for real. One of the guys boomed Kelly’s ranch in Santa Barbara as a joke that backfired because he knocked out Kelly’s picture window. Another of our pilots got in engine trouble over Utah and flamed out. The Blackbird had as much gliding capacity as a manhole cover, and it came barreling in over Salt Lake, just as our pilot got a restart and hit those afterburners right above the Mormon Tabernacle. There was hell to pay.
”
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Ben R. Rich (Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed)
“
John Ogden, Appelbaum’s counterpart at the water management district, joked that CERP was exactly like the Apollo mission- except no one was sure where the moon was, or how to find it, or whether it was made of cheese. But the plan at least recognized these uncertainties, and included $100 million for pilot projects that would test the four speculative technologies before they were deployed. And if one of them didn’t work, the Corps intended to adjust the plan. CERP called for “Adaptive management,” a scientific way of saying the plan would be flexible.
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Michael Grunwald (The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise)
“
Barron wanted to laugh, but he held it back. His grandfather had told him stories about the pilots who had served on his battleships, of the crazy things many of them had done. He’d never been entirely sure the elder Barron hadn’t been joking, at least to some extent. But now that he had his own squadrons, he was certain that every one of those tales had not only been true, but probably understated
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Jay Allan (Call to Arms (Blood on the Stars, #2))
“
Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter, all three of the living Democratic Presidents, are flying back on a luxurious fuel-guzzling private jet from a conference where they all collected million-dollar fees to speak on the evils of capitalism. Jimmy Carter brought ten adorable young schoolgirls from his church choir to sing at the conference, and he insisted that they fly back on the top-of-the-line jet with the former Presidents. As the plane is over the Atlantic, they encounter terrible turbulence, rocking and shaking the plane. Suddenly, one engine dies. Then the other engine dies. The plane begins to plummet toward the ocean below. The poor young girls on the plane begin to cry. Jimmy Carter gets up to check with the pilots and returns with bad news. “Gentlemen, we’re going down, and there aren’t enough parachutes on the plane for us and all the girls.” Barack Obama grabs a parachute and said, “Fuck the schoolgirls.
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mad comedy (World's Dirtiest Jokes (World's Greatest Jokes Book 4))