Car Tossing

When too much time meets a creative imagination.



At the end, watch for the firebomb.

Posted By: gdanea - Fri Jul 03, 2009 - Comments (4)
Category: Flight

Fly Air Weird!

Next month sees the launch of a new airline, which in today's economy is weird enough, but this one is only for animals. Pet Airways, America's first animal-only air service, will initially only fly between NY, Denver, LA, Chicago and Baltimore carrying 50 'passengers' at a time in individual pressurized cabins. Private lounges and overnight accommodation for long-haul flights will also be laid on (Dream Dogs).

Clearly this is an idea who's time has come, as Air Canada has also announced this week that it is to carry pets on its planes, as long as they board as hand-luggage. From July, passengers will be able to book the space under their seats as stowage for up to 4 pets in ‘leakproof carriers’, let’s hope no-one thinks that means Tupperware (Telegraph).

And when airlines are not treating pets as luggage, they’re usually treating their customers as cattle. Ryanair, for example, this week announced plans to have the passengers load their own luggage, saving the company an estimated 20 million euros (Belfast Telegraph).

A worse fate greeted passengers on a Thomas Cook charter plane recently when due to a mechanical failure only the front hold could be loaded with baggage, hence passengers were asked to move to the back of plane as ballast, to balance it out. After seeing people disembarking from the service’s previous flight kissing the ground and putting their hands together in prayer, 71 refused and made other travel arrangements (Daily Mail).

Finally, if you think the customers have it bad, spare a thought for the staff of British Airways, which once billed itself as "the World's favorite airline". Times are now so hard for the company it has asked its workforce if they'd mind taking a pay-cut or even working for free for a month, just to tide the company over. BA's chief executive has lead the drive, promising to lead by example and forgo one month of his £735k ($1.2m) salary (Guardian).

(Picture from The Bognor Birdman Event, a semi-serious competition to fly 100 meters from the end of a seaside pier.)

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Wed Jun 24, 2009 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Business, Flight, Pets

Buy Your Own Piece of Armageddon

Be the envy of every other survivalist and have your own converted cold-war Atlas-F missile silo home! You too can live in complete cold war safety and luxury. The converted missile launch site is marketed as a getaway, luxury home, and in my opinion is every survivalist’s dream. The property includes its own private runway, 2000 square foot luxury home above ground with master suite, a private airstrip, and a hangar/garage. Below ground, past the 2000 lb. blast doors and three feet of reinforced concrete built to withstand brutal missile assaults lies two additional stories of space in the converted control room where you will find two additional suites with luxury marble Jacuzzi baths and an escape hatch to your private hangar.




More in extended >>

Posted By: chris_cantwell - Wed May 06, 2009 - Comments (4)
Category: Architecture, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Buildings and Other Structures, Destruction, Flight, Government, Military, Real Estate, Science, War, 1950s

Snarge

I learned something new after the US Airways flight crash-landed in the Hudson. When birds fly into jet engines, the resulting "bloody goo" that they're transformed into is called "snarge".

A Sep 2004 article in Flying Safety magazine provides some further details about snarge.

• The most common method of collecting snarge is "by spraying the impact point on the aircraft with a water bottle and swiping it down with a paper towel."
• Snarge is "Smelly by nature, and often packed with mold spores, gooey bird fat or amorphous bits of flesh."
• Snarge looks like "something you find in your handkerchief after a bad cold."
• However, bird experts regard snarge as "the ultimate identification challenge!"

Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 19, 2009 - Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Flight, Science

Spring Heel Shoe

These ridiculous shoes come in many different styles at the J. Rubio website. I saw a guy wearing a pair when I was passing through an airport recently, and he looked like the dorkiest dork that ever dorked.

The verdict is still out, however, on whether wearing them will turn you into the mythic monster known as Spring-heeled Jack.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 22, 2008 - Comments (14)
Category: Fashion, Shoes, Flight, Human Marvels, Stupidity, Technology, Fictional Monsters

Harvey Comics

I loved reading Harvey Comics as a kid, and into "adulthood." (They're not published anymore, alas.) Their universe was quintessentially wacked and weird. As famed comics scribe Grant Morrison has remarked in an interview, sometimes the willed naivete of Silver Age writers following the Comics Code produced much stranger stuff than any consciously avant-garde writer could.

Take the two page strip to the right for instance, from an old digest-reprint of some Casper stuff. To parse it is to risk madness.

Is Nightmare indeed a mare, ie, female? if not, and even if so, is that the gayest hairdo ever, on horse or human? Why does a forest gnome like to hang out with a ghost horse? Why is playing human cowboys popular among the gnomes? Likewise riding an airplane. And finally, how demented does a ghost horse have to be, to stick planks up its butt and into its chest, and then purr like a cat, all in an effort to emulate a mechanical device so as to placate a gnome?

How I miss Harvey Comics! Thank goodness Dark Horse is reprinting some.....

Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 09, 2008 - Comments (15)
Category: Animals, Art, Comics, Pop Art, Surrealism, Body Modifications, Drugs, Entertainment, Flight, Games, History, Inventions, Pets, Writers, Cartoons, Hair Styling

Follies of the Mad Men #21

[From Life for March 10 1952. Two separate scans, top and bottom.]

The weirdest thing about this ad is the notion that an airline would give a customer something for free!

Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 02, 2008 - Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Flight, Travel, 1950s

Hurricane Fun

I joked earlier on the blog about waterspouts lifting a swimmer off to Oz.

Well, yesterday down in Chuck Shepherd country it practically happened.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 20, 2008 - Comments (7)
Category: Flight, Hospitals, Nature, Weather, Sports, Stupidity

Jetpack Dreams

That most silly and pointless and inutile, yet much desired of flight mechanisms, the jetpack, is back in the news. You can read a New York Times piece about the latest model here.



And a review copy of this book recently arrived in my mailbox, portending lots of fun.











Yet such mechanisms pale before the magnificently insane accomplishment of Yves Rossy, who, a couple of years ago, basically turned himself into Iron Man. Watch his jet-powered flight below.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jul 29, 2008 - Comments (4)
Category: Eccentrics, Flight, Inventions, Literature, Science Fiction, Movies, Obsessions, Pop Culture, Technology, Travel, Yesterday’s Tomorrows