A night sky

<Written in a plane, mostly with one hand.>

It’s a wonderful night in Australia, the air con is going, the ears are popping, the stars are shining and I’m cramped as hell.

That’s right. I’m in a plane. It’s even a big one, an airbus. But is it big enough for me? Well let’s check;

Arm rest: firmly in thigh

Knees: firmly in seat

Shoulders: pushed forward by neck rest

Arms: squashed by wall and nice guy next to me (also on his laptop)

Laptop: unable to sit flat

Movie: Independence Day (the first one)

Now I am aware that some of my readers will have experienced some or all of these symptoms, but there will only be a select few who truly appreciate my pain at the moment.

There is something very levelling about this sort of environment. Sitting here I can see clear above everyone else in the cabin, as far as the bulkhead in front of me. This is similar to experiences I often have at the mall. You see, dear reader, there is a kind of immunity that tall people build up. When you spend your days, nights and weekends with the same people, usually notably shorter people, you become used to their shortcomings. It’s only when you go somewhere like a mall or sit on a plane that you realise just quite how tall you are.

You start to notice the sea of hair that sits just below your nose, and observe the strange human prediction to not look up; and as you walk past those of lesser stature, you wonder what life in their world must be like. A world in which you can have those clothes that look cool without having to take a picture and have them custom made, a world where you can go and buy a suit off the rack and sit in a plane chair without feeling like an accordion.

But this is also a world in which indecision rules, where you don’t automatically know where to stand in a class photo. Where you need to use a chair or even a ladder to change a simple lightbulb.

The other world, is one where you were always tall enough to ride on the fun looking ride at the festival and where you can spot your family in a crowd because they too stand head and shoulders above everyone else. This is a world where giants live. A world where three year olds look up at you in awe and reverently if they too might be allowed to touch the sky and ask precisely how tall you really are. This is my world.

Sadly this is also the world of minuscule aeroplane seats, and my one hand is getting a cramp.

Internet reeeeepting

Perhaps I’m getting old, so let’s review,
Birth of me: 1983
My first computer: 1990 (Amstrad PPC512, in case you were wondering)
Birth of commercial internet proper: circa 1995Learning that man learns nothing from the past not studied: ongoingThat’s right, boys and girls, I was alive in a world before the Internet, in a world where Windows came on about 20 floppy disks (that weren’t) and games came on 3 or 4 floppy disks (that were).I saw the birth of the internet, grew to both love and hate the sound of the 14.4k (that’s kilobits per second, people) modem, lived in fear of someone picking up the phone, and saw the birth of the much loathed html blink tag.But now, as a true veteran of the internet, I am beginning to see things come around that have been before. You may be a little, young dear, reader to remember some of these things, but some years ago there was a massive farcical campaign to stop the use of Dihydrogen Monoxide in all sorts of products. Apart from being something that any student that has passed high school should be able to recognise as the formal chemical formula for water, there have been e-mails from companies that have sworn that they do not use that “chemical” in their all natural products, or that they discharge any amount of it into rivers or the sea.
My main problem is not with the massive lack of education of the general populous who have gone through the education system, but that these same people have not learnt from massive internet trolling that has come around only years before.Nor is this the only example of the repeating trend. I am amazed that there are still people who believe that there is a one-day-only (no date provided) sale on ray bands with 90% off. And that if you type “7” after sharing something on Facebook, that an amazing thing will happen to the static picture that you just shared. Worse than that, I have actually seen this post grow in real time: it grew to fill up two pages worth of scrolling before I was forced to de-friend the person in question or lose my general sanity.So what is it that causes people to lose all sense of memory when it comes to the wide world of Facebook? Is it perhaps the constant flow of information of websites like this, that almost require you to have knowledge that is a mile wide but only an inch deep? Is it just that we have replaced Google as our repository for knowledge and instead focused on the pleasure of the trifling and fleeting?I have often been told that my memory is unusual, that most people don’t remember things in the same way I do. Perhaps this is what I am noticing, merely on a grander level. But perhaps, to quote from memory from a TV program,
“‘Nowadays, kids have got all these diseases, ADD, ADHD. In my day, kids were just stupid.
‘What’s wrong with my kid?’‘Oh, him? He’s stupid. Next!’”
Are we all just suffering from stupid? Are we suffering from the google era? I mean, I’m all for self-driving cars, but is it at the cost of our intellect? We are already starting to see memes of possible future wedding vows using emotes as part of the wedding ceremony, of brides and grooms not kissing without first snapchatting the moment. Or is it just that stupid people finally have a massive voice that the rest of us must suffer through?

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