Aah! Offline content
One of the nice things about modern air travel is the waiting. It's not the hardest part, Tom Petty, I find it affords me that rarest of modern gifts: unstructured free time, absolutely guilt free! In my new backpack (review forthcoming) I have my laptop, now-antique iPod mini, charmingly-retro Nintendo DS non-lite and my new favorite, my aforeblogged travel journal. Magazines have a shockingly low content-to-volume ratio (except Make, of course) and books just go by too quickly. But I love pulling out my travel journal and making a short (or long) for-my-eyes-only handwritten blog post. They don't make me shut it off during takeoff and landing and there's never a shortage of batteries (although I did have to buy a three dollar pen at the Phoenix airport because I traded my regular pen to Xylinia for a Gameworks card.
The other drawback is I want to refer to aforeblogged material that is actually aforejournaled. Three days worth of writing that isn't on the internet? Time to get the scanner out (or better, rewrite the enteries for greater readablity).
posted by Erik @ 9/19/2006 10:57:00 PM
3 Comments:
I am a great fan of the Airport Book. Not that the book is usually any good--I have to find one that is easily interruptable and simplistic enough not to demand great attention or emotional envolvement. (TV for luddites, if you will.)
I usually avoid journaling because I get paranoid about people reading over my shoulder. bell hooks tells a great story about writing her essay "Killing Rage" on an airplane and freaking out her fellow passengers. With your handwriting, people reading over your shoulder isn't really a problem though.
I've posted a sample page of my journal... a lot depends on the quality of the pen I'm using.
I was sorely tempted to journal a list of fanciful or improbable ways to crash the plane. I read a short story that posited that the reason airtravel was possible was that certain people are able to subconsiously levitate the aircraft. The airlines know who these people are (although the people themselves may not be aware) and seat them on either side of the wing to lift the plane. The belief that flight is possible is key to their ablilites so all a fanciful terrorist would need to do is convince the lifters that the bernoulli effect is bunk.
If I just tried to explain Bernoulli's Prinicple, the plane would crash.
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