Just saw this video on Mastodon and had to share...
Video is of a small open-air two-seat plane, with the camera pointed at the pilot and passenger. You can see a portion of the left side wing (left from the pilot's point of view). The plane takes off, and shortly after they are in the air, a cat appears on the wing, crawling out from some hiding spot it had found to sleep in. It hangs onto the inside edge of the wing, looking grumpily at the humans. The pilot spots it and does a double-take. The cat meows into the void. The pilot quickly lowers the speed of the aircraft and turns it around to land while the passenger is oblivious to the cat for awhile. The cat shakes itself, clearly not enjoying the ride. As they are landing, the passenger spots the cat, who is glaring at the humans who interrupted its nap. After landing, the pilot quickly unbelts himself and jumps up to assist the cat out of the plane. Once the cat is certain it's safe, it jumps away from the pilot and passenger. Video was posted by romain jantot on YouTube Jun 21, 2015 with the following notes:
A standard flight until... i still don't know if it got in after the pre flight check or if i missed it.
The cat is doing well, she is still our mascot.
Edit :
Ok some details :
- the cat was INSIDE the wing, not on it. she was actually pretty safe in there, the danger was if she wanted to get down to reach us..
- i was the pilote, the woman was on her first flight as a passenger. she smile and giggle a lot, well because that's what flying does to people sometime.
-i told her not to reach for the cat. i told her not to move at all actually. i trusted the cat to not move if we didn't try to reach for her.
-you can see me smile shortly before landing. I was pretty assured by then that the cat wouldn't move and there was a relieve of tension; and the radio exchange with the control tower was kinda hilarious, i couldn't contain a smile.
-cat is a female.
-the flight was normally 20minutes long
It has been many many years since I read A Wrinkle in Time. So many, in fact, that I only remember clearly ONE scene of the entire book. That scene is in this trailer.
I'm at Oz Con International (Winkie Con) in Portland, and here's some fun moments from the first couple of days... in the form of the newsletter that I send out daily during the convention.
Winkie Newsletter OzCon 2017 - Day 0 Report
Oz fans gathered at Cinema21 in Portland last night to watch the classic MGM movie and enjoy commentary and a trivia contest hosted by John Fricke, the preeminent Judy Garland and MGM Wizard of Oz historian.
Fricke asked if anyone had never seen the movie, and a couple of hands went up. Then he asked how many people had never seen the movie in a theater, and many hands went up. He said we were about to enjoy the movie as it was originally intended and gave some hints at what to look for - including the length of Dorothy's hair in the Scarecrow introduction scenes and the horse of a different color attempting to eat itself.
The movie itself was glorious on the large screen, with details rarely noticed suddenly apparent. The loving work that went into the production was obvious with the screen so much larger than life. While some fans sang along and even quoted the movie, others watched and laughed at the Lion's antics.
As the movie ended and the lights came up, a number of people left the theater. However, quite a few stayed for the trivia session. Everyone had been given tickets as they entered the theater, and as numbers were drawn, members of the audience were invited to answer questions posed by Fricke and sometimes other members of the audience.
Among the prizes were an original doll of the Scarecrow by Karyl Carlson, 2005 DVD Wizard of Oz collection, a Wizard of Oz Monopoly game, the Munchkin Oz game, a three-day pass for OzCon, a $25 gift certificate for the dealers room at OzCon, John Fricke's 70th anniversary book, and Eric Shanower/Skottie Young's comic book adaptation.
Two young fans came dressed for the occasion, one as a member of the Lollipop Guild and one as Dorothy. The gentleman dressed as a guild member won the monopoly game while Dorothy was given the comic book hardcover by another winner (and she got the book signed by Eric Shanower, who was in attendance).
Both before and after the movie, John Fricke and Eric Shanower were available for autographs and questions, and had good crowds.
Now it's Friday morning and the convention is setting up... look for the next update tonight if ye ol' newsletter editor is awake enough to write it.
Winkie Newsletter OzCon 2017 - Day 1 Report
Follow or contribute to discussion of OzCon 2017 on Twitter with the hashtag #OzCon17 or #OzConInternational.
Registration was open bright and early at OzCon 2017, with people trickling down through the construction-filled hotel to the convention's lobby. The convention was located in the St. Helens wing of the hotel like last year, but thanks to a remodel currently in progress, the main lobby was blocked off and people had to weave past the restaurant, main desk and gift shop to get to the area.
Ye ol' newsletter editor settled down at a table to write the day 0 report while various people ran around setting up the audio/visual equipment in the two presentation rooms and the dealers set up in Baum's Bazaar. At 10 a.m., the first panel kicked off, featuring Eric Gjovaag, Lynn Beltz and Jay Davis talking about the Emerald City television show and other versions of Oz.
At 11 a.m., Jay presented a number of animated Oz shorts by Ted Eshbaugh and the Oz cartoons continued after lunch with a presentation by Colin Ayres and Sam Milazzo on Cinar's version of Oz.
A lunch buffet was ready at the restaurant for con-goers, who congregated in the lobby to chat and catch up with each other. Although the construction was, at times, a little loud, it didn't affect the presentations and rarely did more than slightly annoy the people in the lobby. During lunch, a large group of attendees got into an involved discussion of the history of Oz fandom and how it is changing.
Just before lunch a news crew arrived from KGW8 Portland to interview Peter Hanff, John Fricke, Eric Shanower and young fan Rylan (who was dressed as the Cowardly Lion and gave a mighty roar to the cameras on live television). The video are available at http://www.kgw.com.
At 1 p.m. a panel moderated by Jay Davis talked about Oz Conventions and how to get the most out of them. It was basically Oz Conventions 101, and attendees reported it to be useful and interesting.
The Cinar presentation in the main room (The Emerald City Room) ran a little late, but after it finished, Karyl Carlson led a discussion on costuming while the smaller conference room (The Winkie Room) held a discussion by Lee Speth, Lynn Beltz and Rick Wiegand on Ozma of Oz. Live coverage of the panel was provided on Twitter by J.L. Bell at https://twitter.com/jlbellwriter
At 3 p.m. the Emerald City room featured a presentation by Peter Hanff, Lynn Beltz and John Fricke on the 60th birthday of the International Wizard of Oz Club. Meanwhile, in the Winkie room, Eric Gjovaag led people in a rousing edition of the British game show "Just a Minute" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_a_Minute) adapted to an Ozian audience. Both events ran a little late due to some set up issues.
Erica Olivera won "Just a Minute" against Colin Ayres, Rick Wiegand, and David Maxine.
A little after 4 p.m., the programs let out and everyone gathered in the lobby and dealers room for meetings and greetings. People slowly drifted away to dinner, with the main program scheduled to resume at 7 p.m. The bar created a new drink for this year, called the "Emerald City", and some fans were seen trying it out as the dinner hour progressed.
At seven, the Oz fans gathered in The Emerald City room for the evening programs. The festivities started with Peter Hanff giving an overview of the history of Oz books leading up to The Lost Princess of Oz along with a slideshow of images from the first edition of the book. He then summarized the book for the crowd, while showing slides of images from the book.
After a short break, Colin Ayres was next up with a presentation on Oz animation, starting with a 1933 short by Ted Eshbaugh and covering a number of other pieces in mostly chronological order, including Tales of the Wizard of Oz. Yes, a significant portion of the audience sang along to the theme song. Ayres included everything from full length films to a short by the American Heart Association featuring the Tin Man. The featured works included traditional animation, stop-motion and CGI. He also included Ozzy moments in other animated works, including the Superfriend's "Planet of Oz". Colin ended his presentation with a promotion of OzCon 2018, which will be celebrating the Tin Woodman of Oz. The convention will be in Pomona, California, which is fairly close to Los Angeles, Aug 10-12, 2018.
As the clock ticked past 9:15 p.m., another break allowed people to move around and get water. The final presenter of the night was Doug Aberle, who did Claymation work on Return to Oz and was there to tell the crowd how to make our own nomes. Aberle, sporting a brown Hawaiian shirt and a well-trimmed beard, started his presentation with a film about how he killed the Nome King. Aberle explains in the film that he was never on the set, but instead was working in Portland on the claymation parts of the film. The film also included an interview with Will Vinton worked into the narrative.
Aberle was the animator on the famous Mysterious Stranger segment of The Adventures of Mark Twain at Will Vinton studios, making the people the Stranger creates and doing "a really cool destruction sequence". He then started to work on the Nome King for Return to Oz with Will Vinton's team. The film told us which animators worked on which segments. The Nome King goes through three phases of claymation evolution before becoming a live actor in a costume for a short time. Aberle got the assignment to kill off the Nome King and explained why he had to do it four times. He also visited the Deadly Desert, which is just south of Tillamok, Oregon.
After the film, Aberle took questions from the audience. He was asked how many takes are usual, and Aberle said most of his shots are first take. Having to do four takes of killing the Nome King was very unusual. He also answered questions about the type of clay they used and how long the entire process took. He said he worked at Will Vinton Studios for 18 years total, and worked on a lot of different projects. He also talked a little about his current work, including a space adventure starring sock puppets. Convention Chair Lee had a hard time getting people to stop asking questions, but finally told the group that Doug will be available for more questions on Saturday. Aberle's son said the video seen by the attendees will be put on the AberleFilms YouTube channel after a few more tweaks.
The location of the after-party was announced by David Maxine, who asked the crowd to give them a head start for set-up. The attendees wandered off into the halls - though a good number found their way to the party, where David and Eric Shanower were serving "Ozma's Enchantment", a peachy drink that will turn you into a lost princess. Ye ol' newsletter editor noted the lack of chocolate and left almost immediately.
If this works, I have embedded a YouTube video of a couple of YouTube "stars" singing a medley of some of the best villain songs from Disney movies. As I thought they did a great job, and I don't have a Hugo review to post, I figured this was worth putting up to amuse you.
In order to showcase crowd rendering graphics, Brilliant Game Studios pitted 11,000 penguins against 4,000 Santas in an epic battle for the pole position. You want your war on Christmas? Here it is, eight minutes of carnage!
Apparently, I haven't been paying close enough attention to him, as he managed to throw up in the front window sill without me noticing. I'm not sure how long ago it happened, as I don't open the front window unless I absolutely have to. In addition, I'd built up a "cat castle" in front of the window, making it a safe space for him to get away from humans.
Well, he took advantage of it.
I just spent the last half hour scrubbing the area and vacuuming up the remaining chunks. It looks to me like it was a dinner, so it probably happened in the middle of the night sometime. It was dried enough that cleaning it wasn't too bad, it just required some scrubbing.
I have been in a major depression with some anxiety attacks for the past few months. It's been bad enough that I've been trying to stay inside and away from people. I'm going to have to break out of it soon. It's not a comfortable way to live. As a meme on Facebook said, "Depression is when you don't really care about anything. Anxiety is when you care too much about everything. And having both is just like hell."
In lieu of forcing myself to be creative, here's a summary of some of my recent Facebook posts - stuff that I found interesting enough to share.
Andy Borowitz again hits one out of the park with Nation with Crumbling Bridges and Roads Excited to Build Giant Wall. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We need leadership that will rebuild our infrastructure, not make stupid promises about walls on our borders.
U.S. Doctors Call for Universal Health Care. A single-payer system is the only moral system. Companies that profit from denying care, which includes most health insurance companies and many pharmaceutical companies, are basically evil. If the goal is increasing shareholder profits and not saving lives, then the companies should go away. Forever.
CharityWatch ranks lots of charities, including The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Foundation. Note the extremely low overhead of the Clinton Foundation, at only 12%. The charity gets an "A" rating because most of its money goes to help people. The numbers being used by conservative critics are not false... they simply count everything that isn't a grant as overhead. Since the Clinton Foundation assists people using other methods besides grants, the critics' numbers are misleading and basically a giant lie.
When we lived in Frankenhaus, one of the biggest problems we ran into was keeping the blackberries under control. Well, we have Luther Burbank to blame. I've spent many days at Luther Burbank Park, so I was a little surprised to read the history of the man. Kind of strikingly eye-opening, and not in a good way.
I quite liked this tweet:
So Sarkozy calls the burkini a 'provocation.' Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we're always, always 'asking for it.'
In case you don't know the backstory, several seaside towns in France banned the "burkini", a full body covering suit that allows Muslim or similarly shy women to go to the beach without exposing themselves. At one beach, a woman wearing one was forced to strip by police. That's right. Police forced a woman being modest at the beach to strip. The French Supreme Court banned the laws, but they are apparently still being enforced and a disturbing percent of the population is just fine with it. On the one hand, I'm kind of relieved that another country is outdoing America for sheer stupidity, but on the other hand, really, France? Really?
Moving on, Phil Plait got really excited about a new astronomical discovery. What does it mean, practically? Not a lot for the average person, but it expands and changes our knowledge and potential understanding of the universe.
A teenager in Montreal showed himself to be a true man by calmly saving a woman from a kidnapper. If that story doesn't bring happiness to your heart, you're probably dead.
A post by a Fort Worth mother of a note from her child's teacher has gone viral. Basically, the teacher was informing parents that the children would not be assigned any homework - only work they didn't finish in class - and urged parents to do evening activities with their children that are proven to correlate with student success. Activities like reading together, eating as a family, playing outside and getting to bed on time. My response is positive. I didn't do homework. I always asked myself if I could pass it if it were on a test. If the answer was yes, I ignored any homework assignments. If the answer was no, I went to the teacher to get it fully explained to me so I could pass it on a test. Homework never figured into my understanding. It was all just busy work. Pointless and useless. If I understood it, why would I want to waste time and energy doing another 50 problems? If I didn't understand it, I couldn't see how struggling through 50 problems would help me in any way.
If you haven't read the Hugo-winning Short Story "Cat Pictures Please", go check it out now. It makes me want to take photos of Inkwell and post them. If only I weren't so upset at him at the moment for his present he left in the windowsill...
I fell yesterday afternoon. It was after 4 p.m. and Eric was just getting home. I was headed toward the staircase, for what reason I do not remember clearly. I tripped, possibly on my own feet, and hit the ground before my brain had registered that I was falling. My left knee and right arm hit first, I think, followed quickly by my face (the right side) and the rest of me. Based on the pattern of pain, the left knee and right shoulder took the brunt of the fall. My right arm was wrenched, and my elbow is sore. My left knee has an impressive bruise starting to develop. The knee itself feels like I twisted it a bit... not too much, but enough to cause pain. I was sure I would get a fat lip or black eye out of it, but my face hasn't swollen at all.
For almost a minute after I fell, I couldn't think or move. Eric came in the house, and I tried to call him. He heard something, because a moment later he was trying to help me. I don't believe I lost consciousness, but I really hurt myself. Inkwell was even worried about me. It took several minutes before I was able to get up, and then I downed some painkiller, which seemed to work to keep me from moaning the remainder of the night.
Today I've been hobbling around, trying not to go back to bed and sleep it off. I wanted to get things done, but somehow got caught up in watching a stream of the Eurovision contest (that is one bizarre thing). I suppose resting and Eurovision were just the thing...
So, Eurovision. The winning song was "1944" from the Ukraine. It's about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in by the Soviets in the 1940s, and might have been a little too political for the contest. But it was allowed anyway, and beat Australia in a nail-biter of a final. Personally, I really liked the guys from Cyprus. The Russian song was just okay, but the graphics and performance were fairly mind-bending, and in my case stomach-churning.
However, the absolute best thing in the contest was "Love Love Peace Peace" by the hosts:
Ok, how about some other links?
I've been thinking about my tendency to drop the opening pronoun of sentences, and thought it might be a side-effect from learning Spanish. This article argues it's just the natural progression of language.
I need to reread this article about identity, because my first reading couldn't have possibly gotten all the nuance out of it. The article calls on Miss Marple to explain some of the ways identity has changed.
Boing Boing has a 360 degree video of a tornado. You can actually drag the video around with your mouse to see all around the car and see what's happening in front or behind them as they storm-chase. Amazingly, at one point the chasers jump out of their vehicles to take photos. It's a testament to the insanity of the human race.
I suddenly have even less desire to fly the unfriendly skies. Apparently the TSA is even worse than it had been, which is impressive, honestly.
If anyone bothered to read my fiction piece on Friday, do you want more, or should I stick with non-fiction?
* * *
A comic con has shot itself in the foot, rather dramatically. Thanks to the magic of screencapping, the whole thing can be read even though the convention took down the post. In short, the official convention Facebook page complained about cosplayers wanting a free ride to the con with a goofy little post showing off a pretend conversation between a cosplayer and the convention. While I absolutely agree with the convention that no one at all should expect a free ride to a con, the message is a teeny-tiny bit unprofessional. Still, not the end of the world, right?
Wrong.
When people complained, the convention doubled-down: instead of apologizing for a post that offended some of their audience, they made things worse, calling some cosplayers "hot chicks in almost no clothes", "over sexual models" and "boob models". The organizer who is posting, who identifies himself as "Jim", also makes the claim that professional cosplayers aren't even fans of the people they are dressed as... in other words, he played the fake-geek-girl card.
Throughout it all, he's completely oblivious why his statements about some portion of cosplayers might possibly be offensive to the cosplayer community at large. Then he even claims he never called anyone names - forgetting his earlier "hot chicks" and "models" comments, apparently.
Jim also decides he's the one who gets to determine which cosplay is "real", saying the people he's deriding aren't real cosplayers, so no one should be offended. *facepalm* Seriously dude? You are going to man-splain cosplay to people? Really?
This naturally made a few people look closer at the convention, and guess what they found? A guest was announced before she had a contract with them... if they'd asked at all. This is a serious no-no in con circles. Conventions who do it cannot be trusted. It's one thing to have a contract then have a guest cancel. It's quite another to promote your con with a guest who hasn't yet been signed.
I hate to see any convention go up in smoke, particularly over something as stupid as a social media blunder. Hopefully the guest announcement was just miscommunication as well. But not matter the cause, this con has some work to do before their actual event to earn back goodwill... and if they don't try, then it's pretty clear they deserve whatever negativity they get.
And to all the con-runners out there: Social Media is a minefield. Do NOT post jokes that insult anyone on them. Someone will always be offended. Always. Just don't. You are a business, play it safe. If you have to rant, get a personal page. And, should you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Apologize for causing offense and learn from the experience; don't defend your actions because you will continue to insult people.
Whew... I'm going to watch Peace Peace Love Love again to cheer up after that rant...
Canada is burning. Well, one town. But it's a scary type of burning.
Honestly? I'm really wishing lab-grown meat would happen more quickly. I would be delighted to switch to food grown this way. It would save water, save land, not hurt animals and still satisfy our carnivore side... if it all pans out. I hope it does.
Having recently read a book on the history of Hawaii (I really should review it), this article makes perfect sense in a pathetic way. Yes, people really were that racist and greedy.
Students are now exempt from stringent FAA standards regarding flying drones. I still want a little drone to use inside the house.
And in other comics, Previews seems to indicate that Rebirth is a reboot after all. I guess I don't mind having my comics rebooted every 20 years, but every five years or so is getting tiresome.
Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag is a writer living in Eastern Washington. She enjoys comic books, rain, and troubleshooting computers.
Her husband, "Hubby-Eric" is a Wizard of Oz fan whose website is the definitive place for questions and answers about Oz. He's a school teacher working in Eastern Washington.
Inkwell is the cat who owns the house Laura and Eric live in, and uses the humans as his servants. Inkwell adopted Laura after being discovered in the wheel well of a car about to leave a parking lot. He is an indoor cat, and is mostly black with bikini white markings.
Disclaimer: If this blog does not discuss a specific issue or event, it is not because this writer finds said event inconvenient to acknowledge - it's simply because she's scatterbrained and irresponsible.
words to live by
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself... Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will."
- Aral Vorkosigan in "A Civil Campaign" by Lois McMaster Bujold
Feel free to link to or comment on anything you find, and you may quote or even reproduce entries on-line as long as you include credit and a linkback to this blog.
The opinions expressed are my own and don't reflect those of my employer.
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