I’ve concluded that Airline Flights are an extreme form of torture. Forget Gitmo. If you want to talk about cruel and unusual punishment, airplanes are your answer.
It’s not the flying thing that’s so bad, it’s the prolonged time in cramped spaces. I’m not a big guy by any means, but I’m having to bend all sorts of ways to do anything in this plane. Typing would require the skills of a contortionist to get anywhere near comfortable. I’m having to bend my neck to the right while bending the rest of my body to the left and holding my hands what should be straight out in front of me, but isn’t with all the turning I have to do to fit.
Obviously, the answer is to not type, but reading requires the same amount of dexterity, as does watching the in-flight movie from the window seat. It’s a no-win situation, really.
Speaking of reading, I went and dropped a large sum of my remaining money on three new books: ‘Everything Bad is Good For You’, ‘One Nation Under Therapy’ and ‘Cracking the Million Dollar Code’.
I’ve already started into the first one, which tells how our modern ‘junk’ culture is actually leading to increased complexity in thinking. The author proposes that escaping into the world of video games is actually helpful for our thinking processes, not a waste of time. It’s not a bunch of mirrors and smoke either. His point does have merit and is presented very well. I’d recommend this book to anyone.
Well, I don’t think I will be cruel enough to my body to put it through another paragraph, so we’ll just leave it at that. Airplane rides suck. I’ve got another two hours to go…
So… the final day of the trip. It’s about damn time. Disney World is as boring as all get out. So is the hotel. It’s all been boring, except for our stop at Universal Studios which was only semi-boring.
Today was spent grabbing our luggage and move it into the room for holding it until our flight leaves. Then we wandered aimlessly through the hotel grounds, and caught a ferry that went to Disney World and back. On the ferry we made plans for our new theme park, which will be a parody of the Epcot Center.
In “New Epcot” there will be many modifications. “New Epcot” will have Mexico and the US sitting right next to each other, with a border patrol in between. Mexico will have children running around trying to sell you chiclets and fake American products for sale.
Germany will be Nazi-era, with random people sent into the concentration camps. Japan will have a Japanese story-teller like in the original Epcot, but he will have a voice over actor behind the curtains talking for him (way off sync, of course). China will have Tiananmen Square reenactment every hour, as well as Chinese secret police.
There will be an Axis of Evil alley where all those countries reside. North Korea would have an illegal nuclear test ride. There would be an island in the middle where Cuba resided on one side and there was an adults-only Guantanamo Bay prison club on the other that was one of those bondage sex club type things.
It just sounds better and better. There would be countries like Iraq and Vietnam in place of countries nobody cares about like Norway, Morocco and France. It’d be the most fun place on Earth.
Anyway, after setting out the plans for that, we just need some investors. Maybe we’ll find some on the plane ride home.
Day 6 wasn’t very great. It was very boring.
It started with sleep. Sleep’s always the highlight of my day. In fact, I slept right through a voting meeting, which was of course not worth going to anyway. However, I hear I missed out on a pornographic children’s book reading. “See Dick come. Oh oh oh. Jane is on top…” Stuff like that. Why this was read in an FBLA meeting is beside the point.
The rest of the day I just sat there watching TV and reading. Then there was the awards ceremony where no one I knew got an award. I wasn’t expecting to get one anyway, because the Java Programming test was anything but a test of programming. The Java test was more of a vocabulary test. I’d be surprised if half the people who won can actually program in Java. One who was competing said he did C++ but had been studying Java out of a book for a week.
After that ceremony, the obvious thing to do was to sleep some more to be ready for my flight the next day. Sleep is good.
Today is Sunday, and marks the final day of competitions and such. That means that tomorrow will be the awards and then we will be able to go home. I’m glad that it’s almost over.
Today was an enjoyable day however. We slept in as late as we could, watched some of the Law and Order: SVU marathon, and then went to Universal Studios. Universal Studios has better rides than any part of Disney’s attractions. My personal favorite was the Hulk roller coaster, which is quite fun.
When we got to the park, our first stop was the Hulk roller coaster, followed by the 3d Spiderman ride. We moved on around the park but, unfortunately, the other good roller coaster called the Dueling Dragons wasn’t operating. We decided to go get soaked on the Popeye rafting ride and then walked around the park a bit more.
After a bit of walking, we both realized we were exhausted so we decided to catch a movie. We walked out of the park and headed for the theater on Universal’s Citywalk. Unable to watch ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ within time to catch our bus, we decided to settle for ‘Batman Begins’, a choice which I’m glad we made.
‘Batman Begins’ outclasses all the old Batman movies and makes Batman a much more believable character. It’s less shitty costumes and effects (see that one with Arnold as the ice dude) and more believable, gritty action. If you liked the Batman movies a bit but hated how hokey they seemed, this one will do you good.
Anyway, enough with the movie review. We were soaked from our water ride before the movie so we ended up shivering by the time the movie was over. We got bused home and now I sit in my hotel bed in a change of dry clothes, writing this before hitting the sack. All-in-all, a rather more successful day than yesterday, I would have to say.
Orlando day four was similar to day three. Wow. Really boring.