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Flight plans, feague, and Fandom
OK, so this morning I found out that JFK Jr. commented before taking off how he really would have preferred flying with his instructor; that means that, in all probability, he knew he was taking a risk.
So why'd he take it?
I don't make much of the fact that he didn't fly a flight plan, as the papers have been doing. (Please go back, if you have not done so, and read my lengthy diatribe on what VFR flight means.) Because this was VFR he was essentially forced to travel the coastline. You can't fly over bare ocean, with no landmarks, if you're only certified for VFR. He wasn't required to file one and it's not as if it would have done much good. We know when he left, we know which route he had to have taken, ergo we know when he would have arrived. That's about all a flight plan would have told us.
Well, he's dead now, saith the Coast Guard, and I'm glad the Bissettes got an extra two days of searching for their daughters because of the last name of the gent flying the plane.
Aside to Kymm: As I said, I don't hate Kennedys. And I don't really care about the excessive news coverage (after all, I'm reading it, so I can't cast stones). What I care about is the idea that somehow this man's life is more important than everyone else's because of who he is. If he were the President I might be able to see some justification in this massive search effort. But, Kymm, they wouldn't do it for you. And they wouldn't do it for me. And frankly I care about you and me and our other friends a hell of a lot more than I care about any Kennedy on earth.
Kymm and Iain both sent me definitions for "feague" (see previous entry before continuing, if you want to take a guess at it). They both went to the same source. As Iain said, in response to my "you could just buy the book" comment:
Or you could look it up at dictionary.com, which pulled it out of Webster's Revised Unabridged, published 1913! (Well, I didn't have access to anything else but the OED, and that's a pain to use, online or otherwise.)
feague \Feague\, v. t. [Cf. G. fegen to sweep, Icel. f[ae]gia to cleanse, polish, E. fair, fay, to fit, fey to cleanse.] To beat or whip; to drive. [Obs.] --Otway.
How in hell did that wind up in normal conversation? (And now I have a vision of the Tattoed Love Slave, wrapped around a post, screaming "Feague me! Feague me!" Thank you so much! You realize that I'll have to use this one as an entry title sometime soon, in purest self defense.)
Alas, this is not the meaning of "feague" I had in mind. Mine is both much weirder and much more specific. Should have used the OED, Iain; that's where Eric got this definition originally.
"Feague" means to put ginger up the behind of a horse. No, really! Apparently the practice was so common when selling horses that they had a term for it. As you might imagine, doing this makes the horse look alert and lively, makes it hold its tail higher, et cetera. The book does not comment on whether this was considered an ethical practice or not, but it seems to have been a common one.
(Horse traders had a lot of nasty tricks. Did you know that racehorses have ID tattooed on the inside of their lips? It's mostly to foil sneaky horse-fakery.)
Conversations with Eric and Rose are seldom dull.
Yesterday I read a book called Get a Life! by William Shatner. Although it takes its title from the infamous skit, the tone of the book is actually the reverse. For many years, Shatner explains, while he appeared at conventions and such, he saw very little of Star Trek fandom - he would come in the back door, speak for an hour, and go right back out again. He says he formed some preconceived notions about fandom because of that experience, and while some of them were true, he missed a lot of the good stuff.
In the last five years or so, though, he's been looking around, exploring (sometimes to the extent of wandering the convention floors in disguise), talking to people - and changing heart. This book is sort of a report on what he's learned. It's funny and fascinating, and I recommend it.
Unfortunately it means I've lost a supporter, if Shatner no longer thinks that capital-F fans need to, in his famous words, get a life. I continue to be a hardliner - Fans need a better hobby. But it's getting lonely on this hill.
One of the things that keeps getting stressed in this book, over and over again, is how ST fandom gave these people a sense of community, of belonging - to a group whose basic principle was to encompass diversity, a group that didn't care what they looked like and what they sounded like.
Maybe this makes less of an impression on me because I didn't care what you looked like and sounded like in the first place. I am interested in your brain, not your appearance; your ideas, not your weight. And I hold "all-encompassing" principles to be self-evident: If you don't use them, you're a jerk.
Furthermore (I feel like I've said this all before), I think the ST-convention version of this warm cuddly feeling is largely a myth. What I've seen at the average SF convention is a group of people who cannot function normally in any real-world arena, playing can-you-top-this with their mastery of this artificial world in compensation. That doesn't give me a warm feeling inside. That gives me a sad one.
Or, to put it more succinctly: I agree that the world is cruel and intolerant of those who are different. Oh, lord, how I agree. But I do not feel that opting out of the real world is permitted, and you are not any less of an outcast just because your fellow outcasts love you.
Being treated kindly only by one's friends is a very hollow victory.
And, yes, that's probably why I don't appreciate the love and the praise I already have. I'm sorry I'm an ungrateful wretch.
© Columbine
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