Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in Jeremy King's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
12:27 pm	Christmas Wrapping paper, wrinkled and shredded, covers the living room floor, and the house is quiet, save the quiet whirr of the heater's blower and the ignored din of the television. It must be Christmas's halftime break. It's raining and 40 degrees, so it must be Christmas in Georgia. I can name every present I've received so far. Adrienne got me some shoes, her parents got me a gift certificate to the Crew Outfitters uniform shop at Hartsfield, Maw-Maw gave me some money, as did an aunt, another aunt gave me a tool set, and my sister-in law's parents gave me an orange shirt. Gammaw gave me a nerf gun with a laser sight. Coolest present I've gotten in a long time. Providing I pass training, I'll be celebrating my next few Christmases in such luxurious destinations as New York, Bangor, ME, and Cincinnatti. Christmas will be relocated to the tail of a trip.. Maybe enough so that I can hit the after christmas sales for my shopping! nah, that'd never work. Anyway. I pulled up the word file of my book today, to get back to writing in it. The file is corrupt. So much for the relaxed mood.. Current Mood: relaxed (3 Comments |Comment on this)
11:58 am	The Pilots' World I've no clue who wrote this. It certainly ain't me. Couple of believe it's Ernest K. Gann, but nobody can peg any proof to it. "Pilots" You see them at airport terminals around the world. You see them in the morning early, sometimes at night. They come neatly uniformed and hatted, sleeves striped; they show up looking fresh. There's a brisk, young-old look of efficiency about them. They arrive fresh from home, from hotels, carrying suitcases, battered briefcases, bulging, with a wealth of technical information, data, filled with regulations, rules. They know the new, harsh sheen of Chicago's O'Hare. They know the cluttered approaches to Newark; they know the tricky shuttle that is Rio; they know, but do not relish, threading the needle into Hong Kong. They respect foggy San Francisco. They know the up-and-down walk to the gates at Dallas, the Texas sparseness of Abilene, the Berlin Corridor, New Orleans' sparking terminal, the milling crowds at Washington. They know Butte, Boston, and Beirut. They appreciate Miami's perfect weather; they recognize the danger of an ice-slick runway at JFK. They understand about short runways, antiquated fire equipment, inadequate approach lighting, but there is one thing they will never comprehend: Complacency. They remember the workhorse efficiency of the DC-3s, the reliability of the DC- 4s and DC 6s, the trouble with the DC-7s. They discuss the beauty of an old gal named Connie. They recognize the high shrill whine of a Viscount, the rumbling thrust of a DC-8 or 707, or a Convair. They speak a language unknown to Webster. They discuss ALPA, EPR’s, fans, mach and bogie swivels. And, strangely, such things as bugs, thumpers, crickets, and CAT's, but they are inclined to change the subject when the uninitiated approaches. They have tasted the characteristic loneliness of the sky, and occasionally the adrenaline of danger. They respect the unseen thing called turbulence; they know what it means to fight for self-control, to discipline one's senses. They buy life insurance-but make no concession to the possibility of complete disaster, for they have uncommon faith in themselves and what they are doing. They concede that the glamour is gone from flying. They deny that a man is through at sixty. They know that tomorrow, or the following night, something will come along that they have never met before; they know that flying requires perseverance. They know that they must practice, lest they retrograde. They realize why some wit once quipped: "Flying is year after year of monotony punctuated by seconds of stark terror." As a group, they defy mortality tables, yet approach semi-annual physical examinations with trepidation. They are individualistic, yet bonded together. They are family men, yet rated poor marriage bets. They are reputedly overpaid, yet entrusted with equipment worth millions. And entrusted with lives, countless lives. At times they are reverent: They have watched the Pacific sky turn purple at dusk. They know the twinkling, jeweled beauty of Los Angeles at night; they have seen snow up on the Rockies. They remember the vast unending mat of green Amazon jungle, the twisting silver road that is the father of waters, an ice cream cone called Fujiyama. And the hump of Africa. They have watched a satellite streak across a starry sky, seen the clear, deep blue of the stratosphere, felt the incalculable force of the heavens. They have marveled at sun-streaked evenings, dappled earth, velvet night; spun silver clouds, sculptured cumulus: God's weather. They have viewed the Northern Lights, a wilderness of sky, a pilot's halo, a bomber's moon, horizontal rain, contrails and St Elmo's Fire. Only a pilot experiences all these. It is their world. Current Mood: relaxed (Comment on this)
Friday, December 21st, 2007
10:15 am	Airline 101: Basic Indoctrination I'm glad I didn't let my grandad down. Doyle Agan, retired engine sheet metal inspector from Delta Air Lines, used to keep the shops at Delta rolling in laughter. Pranks ranged from compressed-air contraptions that sounded like a bomb exploding to a box with holes in the top and a fake furry creature that pounced out when you leaned down and cracked the top to see what everyone was whispering about. For the last two weeks, I've been in Basic Indoctrination at Atlantic Southeast Airlines, one of the Delta Connection Carriers. I'm gonna be an airline pilot. As I found out, the airline industry is still chock-full of lively characters who make the industry an enjoyable place to eke out a living. Our indoc class was 22 students strong. We had some great characters. "Spares," a graduate from the FlightSafety Academy in Florida, sat in the front-left corner of the room. He held up the wall when he lapsed into a nap, which was often. He's an great, easygoing type. On the first day of class, though, he had an extra drug test consent form in his packet. "What do I do with this?" he asked. "Take an extra test," we all hollered. From then on, drug test forms showed up on his desk from time to time when he wasn't paying attention, and whenever an extra handout was passed out, he ended up with it. Go figure. "Passport," a wiseass almost earned the nickname "mouth" for his remarks, but on the last day of class before the test, he didn't have his passport - the one and only time we really needed it after the first day of class. He's from Salt Lake City, and when Brad Holt, the new president of the company, showed up to talk to us, Holt squared off on Passport. "Why did you come all the way down here? You could have just gone to work for the mormons in SLC!?" Nothing like being a new hire and having the president of the company jump your case. Jamie doesn't have a nifty nickname yet, but give him time. He's a character, but he hasn't commited any really stupid errors yet.. He had the nerve to ask the president some pointed questions about his goals at ASA - whether he wanted to streamline the operation for peak independent efficiency or to better meld it into fitting SkyWest's managment philosophy. The answer, by the way, was, "Yes." Spotlight earned her nickname, because all attention came back on her in any conversation. Bagger Vance came down from Tri-Cities, VA where he threw bags for the company - he had a couple years with the company and simply transferred departments. Good kid. Holt put him on the spot during his "125 percent" speech, asking Bagger if his bag-throwing days were over. Bagger waffled around and finally admitted that he sure hoped so. Holt didn't much appreciate that - and the ALPA rep nearly choked to death while trying to keep from screaming, "Thats not his job now! He's a professional PILOT!" When Bagger returned from his next break, everyone's flight kits were piled on the desk where bagger sat. He wasn't thrilled. Bam Bam's nickname is simply a play on his last name, a good polish name I never figured out how to pronounce. Freight Dawg flew night freight, for a while.. probably got the most time out of all of us. Super Eight got stuck out in the cold when he showed up for training - the La Quinta was full, and he was the "special one" stuck next door at the .. yep.. Super Eight. He said the smoking rooms here smelled a hell of a lot better than the nonsmoking ones at the 'eight. Really, that's a great name in this business though.. I always liked the super DC-8... let's see, who else.. Roosterville, he's named for his home airstrip, 'nuff said. Last night was our last night in town as a complete class, before we left and split up for different systems class dates. I hosted the first known ASA Indoc Christmas Potluck Leftover Dinner. See, on the elevator I was talking to one of the guys about having one last night of the same old leftovers. The idea clicked that if we pooled our resources, we could share and each come up with something new for our last dinner in town. I pulled out the phone list and started ringing rooms. Sure enough, most of the class took to the idea. At 6:30, they all rallied at my room. We threw our leftovers and perishibles on the coffee table. Freight Dawg stopped by and contributed nearly an entire grocery sack full of frozen dinners and veggies before she split to join friends for dinner elsewhere. Bagger, Super Eight, Quagmire (named after the character on Family Guy, they look just alike...) Bam-Bam, myself, Jamie, and a couple others rallied around the table. Cumulatively, we had five kinds of peanut butter, three kinds of jelly, several brands of bread, lots of ramen noodles, peanut butter crackers, a couple frozen entrees, some veggies, cheese, and beer. Plenty of beer. Bagger had run low on beer and stopped at a nearby convenience store. They had no six-packs - only a twelve pack cut in half and wrapped in packing tape to hold the bottles in the left side of the box. It was one hell of a Christmas Dinner. A mess of us 20-something kids happy knowing we're on our way to flying the big iron.. and really enjoying being around other, similar, folks. Mainly we're glad to know we're not the only ones who are so crazy.. Speaking of Crazy, Bagger Vance decided to show us a trick. He could break the bottom out of a beer bottle, using the palm of the hand. We all smelled BS, so he showed us. He took an empty bottle Bam Bam had been playing with, filled it 3/4 full with water, and holding it over the sink, struck the opening flat with the palm of his hand while holding the neck with his other hand. The bottle shattered, instead of blowing the bottom out. It seems Bam Bam had gotten bored with his empty bottles and had been bouncing this one off the carpeted floor. Apparently, such things can cause small stress cracks that can smash any possibility of performing bar tricks. Ahh, the things we learned in the last couple weeks. Oh, by the way. I passed the indoc test this morning. 50 questions. I missed one. Look out Systems, here I come. Current Mood: relieved (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 16th, 2007
2:29 am	Share a letter you've written. Or, write a letter to someone you miss. Brought to you by HP View 297 Answers Dear Chris, Over four years ago, you walked out to your plane, not knowing it was your last flight - or did you know? You climbed in, started up and in a matter of seconds, you went from controlled flight to a corner of the envelope that, in that airplane, is unsurvivable. Our lives were close for years, and I looked up to you as a father. You left me with plenty of lessons, tools and friends that served me well in the years following. Your name opened a lot of doors for me. Your friends are now mine, all over the globe. I'm writing from a nice hotel room in Atlanta. Airliners are landing right over the top of the hotel, and I'm starting training tomorrow to follow in your footsteps. Years ago, I thought this was a dream job that I could never attain. Now, I know better. I can achieve whatever I put my mind to. This is a dream job, but it is still hard work. Books on my desk hold tons of knowledge I need to be studying - and I will, when I finish this letter and turn the television off. Thanks for the help. And the lessons - from inverted Dutch rolls right at stall speed to learning how tough life can really be - but that the clock keeps ticking, and recovering from upsets in the air or day to day, is what determines how the rest of our lives will pan out. Or dish out. To a man no longer bound to the earth, from a man who is just learning how to break its gravitational bonds, I miss ya. Me. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
10:05 pm	formation The first four circuit breaker switches are on – generator, landing gear, instruments, and starter all energized. Two pumps of throttle then leave it cracked. Thumb resting over the start button, my other hand switches the ignition to both magnetos. I look at my watch. The game already started. If we’re airborne in five minutes, the flight is only 20 minutes. I could land, jump in my car, then make it to the second half. Occasional words drift through my headset. Lead’s talking to someone. No, he’s talking to himself. No, lead is talking on his cell phone. I’m livid. This whole time, he’s known that I’m in a time crunch. After going to the wrong fuel pumps, we topped off on fuel, then he made a run for the little boy’s room. Then he drank a Diet Coke and nibbled a pack of crackers. “Tell her I made you late,” he said. Right. You tell that 5’2” redhead who’s spring loaded to the explode position, tell her, that. This is her home opener. I give up, break protocol, and hit the start switch. The engine rumbles to life on the second blade. Oil pressure good, fuel pressure good. Temps in the green. Idle at 800 RPM. I look over and Lead is off the phone, scrambling to catch up, confused that Two is ready to go. His prop ticks over. I turn on my radio, and watch as his prop stops. Then starts. Then stops. Then starts. Then stops. His radio crackles to life. “What should I do?” “Did you prime it?” “No.” “Good. Did you pump the throttle?” “Yes.” “Do it again.” His prop kicks over. Then stops. I give up. Switches off, the engine chugs to a stop. I un-strap and climb out. “Pump your throttle, then leave it cracked.” I reach in and hit his start switch. His starter slips; I carefully time pulses on the starter switch and the engine springs to life. “I’m impressed,” He says as I walk away. I’ve got places to be. We taxi out, zigzagging back and for the across the taxiway, swerving to see around our aircraft’s long noses. We reach the end of the runway, and his index finger points up, then spins around. We run up for ignition checks. Power down, then his hand reaches back for the canopy, and we roll out on the runway. We power up, and he starts rolling. Five seconds later, I’m rolling too. I float up into position on the inside of his left turn, and his airplane steadies just about 20 feet off my wingtip. It feels like we’re flying 60-year-old fighter planes, not aerobatic competitors from 40 years ago. The snarl. The swirl of wind, the bubble canopy. We skid across the countryside at 600 feet. Kelly used to instruct in A-10 attack planes, and I swear he must get hypoxia above 1,000 feet. He waggles his rudder, skidding his plane left and right. I drift left, out to a comfortable distance to watch for targets – I mean, traffic. Falcon field is just ahead off to the right, five miles away in the haze. I can see the soft outline of the hangars on the fuzzy horizon. I’m worried – the students at rhis airport drift out so far in their traffic pattern, we could easily be lined up for a head-on collision with someone on downwind. Airline pilots. Couldn't imagine being one when I was a kid, couldn't stand 'em as an A&P, can't wait to be one... (Comment on this)
9:41 pm	insomnia Throttle hard against the stop, I felt the plane lunge for speed. With the nose nearly 45 degrees below the horizon, we dove toward the end of the runway, where a fire-breathing dragon waited. The plane surged ahead, 375 horsepower being harnessed by a propeller we affectionately called “the stump puller.” The stick vibrated in my hand. The seat vibrated beneath my parachute. The thin skins on the wings vibrated. The whole plane vibrated. The dragon was a pickup truck that began life as a Chevrolet S-10. Now, it had an engine out of a supersonic fighter jet instead of a V-6; but he had a disadvantage. He was standing still. We had a 450 kilometer per hour head start. Racing a plane against a jet powered truck is nothing new. The air show performer approaches at low power, the wings digging into the air just above a stall. As he passes over the truck, the pilot and the truck’s driver go to full power simultaneously. The truck wins; the drag race is anything but. Today, though, we’d slay the dragon. The driver of Flash Fire agreed to let us do the race a little differently. Today, we’re hitting the starting line at max speed ; we’ll actually be slowing down as we fly to the finish line, the energy from the entry dive dissipating as we transition from dive to level flight. Wham. The truck flashed by to the side. Power’s still up. Speed’s good. This dragon was as good as cooked. Finally, a race on our terms. The runway’s edge is locked solidly off the wingtip; the plane was flying great. The Russians called is “Slava,” the previous owners in Britain had called it “Rivet.” We had a slew of words to describe it: brute, masculine, fast, unforgiving. Where’d the truck go? The radio crackled to life. The truck’s still on the starting line; the driver missed the cue, or it didn’t light off, or something. Crap. This wouldn’t make much of a race. We’ll go around and try again. We pull skyward, hard.. G-meter shows 10. Can’t hurt this plane’s structure, my structure is weaker than it… Time passes like a dream; the senses defy description. The world starts to lighten from a blackness.. too black, then gray… it’s still daytime, right? Fuzzy.. just like waking up. The sound… the roar, the gauges spinning.. the trees… Crap! Pull… nose coming up, plane still falling down.. down.. down… I awoke in a deep sweat, breathing heavily, knowing it was a dream – but a dream that was absolutely real. From the smell in the cockpit to the smoke creeping in through the floorboards to the reflections in the rivets, it was just the way I remembered it. Between dreams reenacting the crash that changed my life and dreams where the dead man called me, on the telephone I didn’t rediscover peaceful sleep for quite some time. But it wasn’t me who died in that airplane. It was my best friend, an aerobatic legend whose regard for safety was without equal. I passed up numerous opportunities to watch video footage of the crash; but I re-live it in my dreams still... (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
9:54 pm	This week, I loaded up and headed north. Alex Wolski had me cornered into checking out a Yak-55 for sale in Illinois. The ride to Chicago was uneventful, and from there, a 50 minute flight put me on the ground in Champaign. The rental car got me out to the airport at Urbana, Frasca Field. David Frasca owns the Yak. He let me into the hangar, then had to step back to his office to finish some work, then he joined me while I finished looking his ship stem to stern. The yak was in excellent shape;; I told my friend Alex to buy it right off. The tailfeathers needed recovering, but other than that, the plane was in fine order. As I worked, we talked about airplanes. I’ve got some experience flying neat planes, but his favorites watered my eyes. His current pride and joy is a Wildcat, and it’s not an F4F like we all know and love. It’s an F2M, the wildcat with a big engine. We talked about flying warbirds, why mustangs are overrated, and other great mysteries of the universe. When we parted for the evening, David left me with an invitation for the next morning. “Come on by the factory, and I’ll show you around,” he said. “Then, we can go through the hangars.” Hangars, plural. The tour of the factory was amazing. The technology going into today’s flight simulators is phenomenal.. and I got to see it all coming together in various stages of completion. But, my eye wandered as we walked through hallways covered in photographs of warbirds and exotic airplanes that I dreamed of. We left the factory and walked to the Frasca family’s hangars. We walked into one hangar, and a 737 nose blocked the view – workers stored it there while they made room in the factory for it. “This came from a salvaged plane,” Frasca told me, “We’re going to turn it into a simulator.” Behind the 737, I immediately recognized the nose-on view of a Foke-Wolfe 190. There are few such menacing shapes in aviation that can make ones blood run so cold – and this one is only a full-scale replica. Eyeballing the project, a homebuilt kit available from Europe, one almost could say it’s a scaled-down replica, until you take a gander at the wings. There’s no doubt that this is the real McCoy. Behind the 190, a Pitts Model 12 project stood on its gear, fairings dangling from the legs, begging for a little work to get her flying. “Come on, let’s look at some airplanes,” David said. Indeed, let’s do. As he pulled a sliding door open, my eyes gazed on the folded wings of the Wildcat, a warbird the public long ago wrote off. Stubby and slow doesn’t equate to sexy when you field the Wildcat against the Mustang in the court of public opinion. I walked around her twice, asnd my jaw dragged hon the floor. The Wildcat was a remarkably simple airplane. The landing gear is mechanically driven by hand through a crank in the cockpit driving a bicycle chain in the gear well that sucks the wheels up into the gear wells. Oil dripped from the shiny skins, and there was no mistake – this warbird was in fine shape, but she flies and is treated as an airplane. No white glove treatment here. David opened up a panel in the aft fuselage and he flipped on a light – some guy had one and installed seats back here, he told me. That’d be some ride – cramped up in the tail of a fighter with a pilot who could shake things up just for fun. The P-40 sat behind the Wildcat, another warrior pulled from grace by the sexier fighters of the late war years. I’d seen this Warhawk plenty of times before at airshows, but never knew that the Frascas owned it. David opened the canopy up and let me peek in, and I had to restrain myself from drooling. The smell was unmistakably warbird, and this was the one I’d always longed to fly. Powerful enough to go pretty fast, light enough to still be fun, the P-40 embodied all I wanted in a warbird. As I stepped from the wing, though, an odd shape caught my eye. There aren’t many ellipses in aviation, A set of Spitfire wings hung from a wall, and I had to ask. Yep. We’re working on it. A bunch of instructors from an A&P school come out to work on the sheet metal from time to time, David said. Wow. I was already in shock, absolutely awed by the collection. I though about asking for oxygen when he unlocked another door and led me into another hangar. An SE5A replica of the famous World War 1 fighter sat by the door, and as my eyes adjusted to the darker hangar, I gasped. Out loud. I swear. An old beleriot-ish flying machine sat behind the SE5A, and beyond them, a silver PT-22 begged to fly. It was restored by Paul Poberezny, Mister Sport Aviaiton. A dusty chipmunk sat behind the PT-22, and beyond that, the airplanes continued. The rear wall was lined by engines of all shapes and sizes: Round, flat, Vee and inline. A couple of small homebuilts dangled from the rafters. Beyond all I saw initially sat a T-6 in yellow, and I had to laugh as I fairly trotted around the Texan. “ I may be an airplane snob, and I hate to slight your T-6, but I know what I’m looking at on the other side,” I said. More ellipses. A couple of them stuck up over the top of the T-6, and one stuck out the side – a Spitfire Mk. 18, the Mack Daddy of all Spits. This one was actually the postwar version, with a Griffon Engine, a five-bladed prop and lines that truly made me want to climb in and start flipping switches. “She’s a year and a half out of annual,” David told me. “We lost our mechanic, and haven’t been able to find a replacement since he left. These aren’t Cessnas and Pipers, but they’re not hard to work on – they’re still airplanes.” I told him I could probably dig a resume out of the car. He didn’t laugh, a sign I took positively. “If the airlines don’t turn out to be all I dreamed of, I’ll give you a call,” I said. But wait. There’s more. He made mention of another hangar with a Stearman and others. I never saw that hangar. But, he did show me a hangar with a J-3 Cub, a polished Luscombe, another Chipmunk and a Great Lakes biplane with a Ranger engine, and as in the other hangar, homebuilts hanged form the rafters. “They’re given to us by guys who’ve built them and flown them, but didn’t want the liability of selling them. I hated to leave. I really wanted to leave my bags there, dash home for tools and logbooks, and set up shop in Frasca’s hangar. For there in the heartland of America. A family continues doing what made them famous – building simulators – and their love of flying is apparent, undiluted by money and all the other troubles of running a big business. And it's all hidden in a field of dreams for aviators. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
9:33 am	Rest In Peace, Mike I don't have a lot of friends on facebook who were from the VR gang, but .. heck.. My heart just stopped for a while, my jaw dropped and I sat here in shock. My first instinct was to start writing... for the first time in a long time. Yesterday was absolutely crummy, but it pales in comparison with the anguish some of my adopted family is in as we speak. I just got word that Stan and Cindy Hardegree lost their son, Mike, in Iraq. The Hardegrees owned the Villa Rica Voice newspaper - I interned with them, then hung around because I didn't exactly know what to do when the internship was over. I crashed in their house, in Mike's room, plenty of times. We started another newspaper in my hometown, and I basically became a part of the family. Mike had a tough time finishing his high school years. He made a couple of poor decisions, and it made for a strained relationship with his dad. His mother loved him, and so did his dad - although you'd not know it at times. Mike enlisted in the army and went through airborne training. He was a third-generation paratrooper; and I believe that made it into some museum or hall of fame. If not a first, it was certainly a rarity. The whole time, it seemed to me that Mike did what he did to try and make amends with his dad. True or not, I don't know - but it sure seemed he was busting his tail to prove himself to the world and to his father. I don't remember seeing them talk much at all, but actions speak louder than words. Last time I visited the Hardegrees, Stan told me a story about Mike's squad going in to clear out an area that was considered a big threat. If memory serves, Mike's job was to eliminate opposition forces surrounding a fortified area, and once they set up a perimeter, Special Forces were to move in and neutralize the core area. I don't remember the details of the story. I remember Stan's animated expressions and the cigar tracing a smoke trail around the room as he told the story. He was proud of his boy; it was the first time I'd heard him come out and say it. Godspeed, Mike. Rest in peace, knowing you've got nothing more to prove. Well done, soldier. We love ya. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 18th, 2001
8:06 pm	life.... blah. more later, sorry for the long break. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 27th, 2001
10:13 pm	New entry.. Happy entry. I read a book today by Richard Bach, I believe that the title was Illusions. It was a thinking novel, kind of like the matrix was to the movie theater. It's easily readable in a couple hours, but it can touch you for a lifetime. I'l post some quotes in a day or two when I wrestle it back from friends.. contrary to popular belief, I do have a pic.. I am gonna post it soon as livejournal bothers to get some of their website straightened out, it won't accept my picture right now. I AM NOT THE INVISIBLE MAN, although it would certainly be nice sometimes. (Comment on this)
9:22 pm	Hi, it's me again. I had classes today and was supposed to meet this awesome girl I think I mentioned yesterday, but I got stood up. Just as I believed that the sorority girl mission statement had been made completely null and void, I had found a sorority girl with a brain, she held a great conversation, had read some great books and could host a variety of discussions on them.. and POOF! of course watch it be my fault, I probably told her the wrong time or place and she is mirroring my thoughts right now. Anyway, heres the mission statement, I hope she turns out to totally defy it in every way... but it is good for entertainment. Sorority Girl Mission Statement I am a sorority girl. I have more money than God. My daddy plays golf all day and somehow makes money by doing it. He gives me everything I want. I buy all my friends. I don?t have a limit on my credit card that daddy pays for, and what do you know, he never found out about those four abortions since freshman year. Daddy still gets me and three of my friends court-side season tickets to all the basketball games. I like sex. Despite what guys may think and what I might say, I really like it. If I have a beer in my hand, that means I?m easy. If I go to a late night party, that means I came to get sex. When I say no, I really mean yes. When I say yes, that means I?m a nymphomaniac. If I?ve been flirting with a guy all night and I leave before we hook up, I?m a tease. I am a closet whore. I have a really tight butt. I gained 15 pounds freshman year, then worked it off by sleeping around, and I haven?t eaten a thing since. If I did, I purged it immediately. I don?t eat in public. I vocalize hating fried foods at the dinner table but I go home and binge (then purge) on my own. I love to exercise. I do it in as many public places as possible. I love sports bras...that is, unless I?ve eaten in the last week, in which case I can always wear my Derby Days T-shirt. I go to the gym at the most crowded times I can so everyone knows I was there. I wear a walkman so I don?t have to talk to girls who are younger than I am, and guys will think I?m butch. When I walk outside, I always wear black leggings, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and a colored short-sleeved T-shirt over it, preferably with Greek letters somewhere on it. I try to impress everyone around me. I either wear enough make-up to kill a small horse or none at all. I hate all girls in sororities other than mine. Actually, I hate all the girls in mine too but I kiss their asses so later in life I will have good connections. It takes me a beer and a half to get drunk. Or a shot of kamikaze. As soon as I have alcohol in my hand I pretend I?m drunk so when I hit on every frat boy I know I can say later that I was trashed. I don?t make the first move...except when I?m ?trashed.? But then I don?t remember so it doesn?t count. I?ve been on birth control since freshman year. I?m not sleeping with anyone right now (well, no one in particular), but I keep my pills on my dresser so everyone will know I?m on the Pill. My breast size has gone from a B to a D because of these cute little pills. I carry my cell phone in my back pocket so in case my hook-up from last night calls during class I?ll know. I have caller ID because I?m psycho about those kinds of things. I don?t tell anyone I smoke pot. But I have to get a frat boy to pull a bong hit for me. I walk in big groups because I?ll get lost on the way to class if someone doesn?t show me the way. I walk over the sun dial so I?ll see more people. I watch athletic contests so I have something to talk about with frat boys. I?m for whomever they tell me to be fore, though secretly I like the team with the best chromatic scheme. I have no idea what individuality is, and the way I live my life is by surveying all that?s going around me, and planning what looks best accordingly. I will marry rich, be dumb, and cook pie all day. I have never had a job in my life. I have no ambition. I miss my daddy. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 26th, 2001
5:45 pm	I don't have a clue where in the heck to start, so I figure the present is good enough. There's always time to revisit parts of the past, but the present can only be caputed in full effect while it is still considered present. Speaking of present, I am presently waiting on someone to respond to my instant message. I ran across her the other day, and found her to be one of the few people I consider to be a "mind" on campus at my school in the middle of nowhere. The world should have more people that can think. On my toolbox there is a sticker my friend Karen gave to me, declaring membership in the partnership for an idiot-free America. It's too late for that, but hey.. one can always hope. If you're just tuning in for some odd reason and really don't know me, I am a strange individual. 'Nuff said. I want to use this space to share some of my thoughts, beliefs and quotes from some readings. Quite uninspired as far as original material right now, I want to share some quotes from Ernest K. Gann's "Gentlemen of Adventure" A book about two characters that manage to get in on nearly every major event in aviation from its founding until about 1960 or so. Quite an interesting story, I find myself resembling Kiffin Draper, a main character who cannot manage to settle long before his feet get itchy. Gann Manages to trap the essence of the flyers of the era, and indeed the essence of some flyers from all eras, in his books. ".. This was a poor man's flying field where real people nursed their flying dreams. They flew for pleasure, not for blood or money, and they nickled-and-dimed their passion into all kinds of schemes to keep their dreams aloft. They would sacrifice almost anything for the privilege of flight, and no one could ever say that Kiffin Draper, wo after all lead such an exciting life, did not wish them the same." Well, it's a beginning. Jeremy, 26 march 2001 (Comment on this)