Crazy commenter Lift Lurker grabs control of Mr Jam’s column
FREQUENT READERS of Mr Jam's website know my passion for Lifts, (writes Lift Lurker).
I love Lifts and they love me back. But I am also passionate about airplanes. I want a world free from this mechanical menace.
My distrust of planes is rational. Academics have shown that the primary reason why people die from a plane crash is because they were in the plane that crashed.
The secondary cause is being in the path of the plummeting plane. So long as you keep away from these two causes, you stand a better chance at going through life's colorful experiences: cardiac arrests, aneurysms, metastasis, and dementia.
(Fardel’s airport?)
Most machines can be used for war and destruction. In complete contrast, Lifts are the most benevolent of machines, totally useless for warlike behavior.
Imagine if during the Cold War, the Kremlin made this menacing threat to the West:
"We have completed our massive build-up of elevators. We can now move 30 Soviet Army divisions from the ground floor in Moscow to the 3rd floor, also in Moscow, and then back to the ground floor, all in under one hour."
Newspaper headlines in the West the next day would be screaming: “Fashion Model Twiggy Has New Hair Style!”.
Consistent with their benevolent nature, Lifts are the safest means of transport. You do not hear of Lifts disappearing en route to their destination, or of Lift cabins making unplanned landings in a different building. The biggest danger you face is being trapped for several hours away from a toilet, with a camera aimed square at you 24/7, manned by very, very bored staff. But you will survive that.
Should you fail to hold it in, we in the Lift industry have a program called Embarrassing Disaster Victim Protection Program. If such a disaster befalls you, we simply set you up with a new identity. It's a secret program. Now that I have told you, I shall have to kill you.
But if you ride planes, things will sort themselves eventually.
What is supposed to keep a plane up in the air? Well, air. The same substance that works remarkably well at stopping your coins, spoons, wine glasses, and television sets from hitting the ground when you drop them.
But Lifts obey the first rule of gravity management — if you don't want a thing to fall down, make sure something is holding it up (like a steel cable, or anything with higher tensile strength than oxygen).
Why don't they design planes so that if it suffered a fatal malfunction, it will automatically zoom straight into outer space, rather than fall awkwardly on innocent people below (the passengers are doomed anyway, whether they are sent up or sent down).
"First, do no harm" is good manners. "Do as much harm as possible" is simply not.
Sending the ill-fated passengers out to space makes it easier for their loved ones, too. They can point to the stars and say: "I know they're out there somewhere in the cosmos, having champagne, watching a movie, enjoying radio signals from decades past, or perhaps living among a beneficent alien race who picked them up.
Surely that is why the aliens have been experimenting with cows, to provide milk for rescued humans?" How much better to think of them that way than the horrid: "burnt to a crisp".
We really do not know what Wilbur and Orville were thinking when they came up with the idea. All I can be certain is they were slightly insane and heavily intoxicated (perhaps vice-versa).
That fateful night must have went something like this:
Wilbur (pointing at a large drum filled with gasoline): I bet you I can make that thing fly through the air.
Orville: Well, I bet I can make people sit on it while it flies.
Wilbur: And I bet I can make them pay us to sit on the thing while it flies.
Orville: And what should we call the damn thing? Flying Drums of Burning Death?
Wilbur: How about Air Flames?
*
Next time you're in a plane and you hear the captain command: "Space!Space! Space!" instead of "Brace! Brace! Brace!", let's hope you're not lactose intolerant.
*
*
*
*
NOTE FROM WEBMASTER… The above column was written by Lift Lurker, whose comments normally appear below.
I decided to let him hack into this site and take over the main space because Mr Jam has not emerged from his den this morning. Actually, I’ve had editors on the phone for days wandering where he is. Mr J has apparently written 45,000 words of THE BOOK OF JAM (or whatever it is going to be called) and does not want to be disturbed as he ploughs ahead with the rest of it. Good luck to him.
