make it so, number one

[rone]

<kanzen> I think I want a tshirt that reads "Xenu is my copilot" with a picture of DC-8 somewhere on it

Comments

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

I had no idea what the fuck you're talking about until I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
"The kidnapped populace was loaded into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The space planes were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, "except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." DC-8s have jet engines, not propellers, although Hubbard may have meant the turbine fans."

At the point Hubbard wrote this crap, was he clinically insane, or just demented?

[frosch.livejournal.com]

he was probably thinking of a DC-3 (http://www.centercomp.com/dc3/).

I had no idea wtf he was talking about, either, except that I knew that it probably wasn't Doug Comer (http://www.cs.purdue.edu/research/xinu.html).

[frosch.livejournal.com]

I miss DC-8s, btw. Nice airplanes to ride in.

I miss L-1011s, too. Sadly, though, Boeing hasn't retired an airplane that I was sorry to see go.

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

All I remember about DC-8s was the crash near Toronto when I was a kid, and one very cramped trip to England in one. I couldn't tell you any difference between a DC-8 and a 707 from my experience on the inside.

The L-1011 was a seriously nice airplane, though.

As for Boeing retirements, I have one word for you: Stearman.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

The only 707 I was ever on was an AWACS. Plenty of legroom on those.

The 727, on the other hand, was a cattlecar, in every seating configuration I ever saw (when you buy a jet airliner, you get to do a fair amount of custom tricking out; Boeing has a dedicated engineering group for seat layouts and practically a whole plant devoted to custom engine installations).

Good riddance.

My guess is that Hubbard was a spectacularly successful troll

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

He was more sociopath than anything else seems to be the concensus of the older s.f. writers who remembered him.

The people who fall for this are another story.

I remember hearing a tape by another cult master, the Bagwan who took over the town in Oregon. He was actually telling his disciples that (a) afterlife, who knows or cares and I certain don't care what happens to you when I die, (b) if you want to give me money, I'll take it, (c) craving after spiritual advancement is silly. The woman who played the tape for me heard the whole thing metaphorically. I gave her a copy of _Karma Cola_ when I left Albany. Lady, the guy says it's just about getting chicks and cars. Really, there's no deep meaning there at all.

If people like Hubbard and the Bagwan didn't exist, the kinds of people drawn to them would invent them. (Some of the more spectacularly short lives cults seemed to have been precisely this sort of thing where the founder *was* as nuts as his followers).