The horror of blimps

Last week while traveling I stopped at a Zany Brainy store and saw that
they had a blimp for sale. It's called Airship Earth, and it's a great
big balloon with a map of the Earth on it, and two propellers hanging from
the bottom. You blow up the balloon with helium, put batteries in it, and
you have a radio control indoor blimp.

I'd seen these things for sale in Sharper Image catalogs for $60-$75.
At Zany Brainy it was on clearance for $15. What a deal!

Last night my wife was playing tennis and it was just my daughter and
I at home. I bought a small helium tank from a party store, and last night
we put the blimp together.

Let me tell you, it's quite a blimp. It's huge. The balloon has like a
3 ft diameter.

We blew it up with the tank, attached the gondola with the propellers,
and put in batteries.

Then we balanced the blimp for neutral buoyancy with this putty that
came with it, so it hangs in the air by itself neither rising nor falling.

It was easy and fun, and then I blew up another balloon and made
Mickey Mouse helium voices for my daughter.

My three year old girl loved it. We flew the blimp all over the house,
terrorized the dog, attacked the fish tank, and the controls were so
easy my daughter could fly.

Let's face it, blimps are fun.

Alas, the fun had to end and my daughter had to go to sleep. I left
the blimp floating in my office downstairs, my wife came home, and we went
to bed, and slept the sleep of the righteous.

At this point it is important to know that my house has central
heating. I have it configured to blow hot air out on the ground floor and take it
in at the second floor to take advantage of the fact that heat rises.

The blimp which was up until this moment a fun toy here embarked on a
career of evil. Using the artificial convection of my central heating,
the blimp stealthily departed my office. It moved silently through the
living room and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the
staircase it then entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping
peacefully.

Running silently, and gliding six feet or so above the ground on
invisible and tiny air currents it approached the bed.

In spite of it's noiseless passage, or perhaps because of it, I awoke.
That doesn't really say it properly. Let me try again.

I awoke, the way you awake at 2:00 AM when your sleeping senses
suddenly tell you without reason that the forces of evil are converging on you.

That still doesn't do it. Let me try one more time.

I awoke the way you awake when you suddenly know that there is a large
levitating sinister presence hovering towards you with menacing intent
through the malignant darkness.

Now sometimes I do wake up in the middle of the night thinking that
there are large sinister and menacing things floating out of the darkness to
do me and mine evil. Usually I open my eyes, look and listen carefully,
decide it was a false alarm, and go back to sleep.

So, the fact that I awoke in such a manner was not all that unusual.

On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing
presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my
eyes, and there it was... A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING
ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!

Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a
security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his
feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his
peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINISTER MENACING
FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and
hit every alarm that my body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline
was dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from
"restful sleep mode" to HOLY SHIT!! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a
nanosecond. My heart went from twenty something beats per minute to
about 240 even faster.

I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism
and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our
alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil
and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a
matter of time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to
do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.
When 50 million years worth of evolutionary survival instinct hits you
all at once flat in the gut at 200 mph it is not a pleasant sensation.
Without volition I screamed my battle cry (which is indistinguishable
to the sound a little girl makes when you drop a spider down her dress
(not that I'd know what that sounds like,) and leapt out of bed in my
underwear.

I struck the approaching menace with all my strength and almost fell
over at the total lack of resistance that a helium balloon offers when you
punch the living shit out of it with all the strength that sudden
middle of the night terror produces.

It's trajectory took it straight into the ceiling fan which whipped it
about the room at terrifying velocity.

Seeking a weapon, I ripped the alarm clock out of its plug and hurled
it at the now High Velocity Menacing presence (breaking the clock and
putting a nice hole in the wall.)

Somehow at this moment I suddenly realized that I was fighting the
blimp, and not a monster. It might have been funny if I didn't truly and
actually feel like I was having a legitimate heart-attack.

On quivering legs I went to the bathroom and literally gagged into the
toilet while shaking uncontrollably with the shock of the reaction I'd
had.

Unbelievably, both my wife and daughter had completely slept through
the incident. When I decided that I wasn't having a heart attack after
all I went back into the bedroom and found the blimp which had somehow
survived the incident.

I took it to the walk in closet and released it inside where it
floated around with the air currents released from the vents in there. I
closed the door, this sealing it in, and went back to bed. About 500 years
later I fell asleep.

At about 7 am my wife awoke. She had been playing tennis and wasn't
aware that we have assembled the blimp the previous evening, and that is was
now floating around the walk-in closet that she approached.

The dynamics between the existing air currents of the closet and the
suction caused by opening the door was just enough to give the blimp
the appearance of an Evil Sinister Menace flying straight towards her.

This time the blimp did not survive the encounter, nor almost, did I,
as I had to explain to my very angry spouse what motivated me to hide an
evil lurking presence in the closet for her to find at 7 am.

I can order replacement balloons on the internet but I don't think I
will.

Some blimps are better off dead.

LMAO

I needed that laugh, although I know the feelings you went through.

People ask, "What is difficult about playing the uilleann bagpipes? It looks so easy when you play."

As for what's difficult, a better question might be "What isn't?". Remember when we were kids and saw the carnival geek who played an accordion while riding a unicycle and banging cymbals together with his knees? If I saw that same demonstration today, my sole comment would be "Failed Uilleann piper". Many musical instruments exhibit a simplicity which is reminiscent of elements found in nature. Look at the flute, for example - both simple and natural. Now look at the Uilleann pipe. I mean, *look* at it. It resembles nothing found in nature, and it hardly resembles anything artificial. In fact, the only resemblance I can think of offhand would be to that of steam calliope which had fared particularly badly in a train wreck.

So clearly there was design involved here rather than natural inspiration. This implies that someone sat down and gave thought to the U.P.'s function. I don't know which of my Irish ancestors designed the instrument, but I strongly suspect that the still used to brew poteen that week contained dangerous levels of mercury. Start with the chanter. If U.P. chanters are made according to any well-defined rules, then Rule One can only be this: "Finger holes shall be placed in exactly the position which causes maximum discomfort and instability to the player". Again, think back to when we were kids. Remember watching the original Star Trek? Didn't we think that Vulcan "live long and prosper" finger salute was neat, and weren't we nonplussed when we found that to approximate it we had to use the free hand to wrench the fingers painfully into position! No doubt about it, Leonard Nimoy was a Uilleann piper.

Now we come to the mechanical considerations. Remember Monty Python's Flying Circus? Remember when Terry Jones came into Graham Chapman's office to inquire about flying lessons? Remember his being ordered to stand on the table, place his fists at his armpits, flap his elbows wildly, and then jump? I thought it was a funny-looking position at the time, and never dreamed that anyone would look like that voluntarily; how little I knew! Also, and quite seriously, before you sit down to practice I suggest that you carefully inspect all the electrical appliances and gas fittings in your residence. Because if a fire breaks out you'll be roasted to a nubbin before you *ever* extricate yourself from the contraption.

You may laugh, but a lesser fate struck me just the other week when the front doorbell rang. I began the extraction process with the bellows, reaching with the left hand to undo the arm strap (mine is made of leather and looks exactly like a belt). I would normally do this slowly, but hey - there's someone at the door! So I gave the loose end of the leather a quick tug, and, of course, the strap pulled through enough to catch on the next tighter hole. I now had to struggle quite a bit to undo the thing, and somehow managed (I'm not sure how) to advance the strap to the *next* tightest hole. So now, instead of wearing a bellows, I'm wearing a tourniquet. Well, there *is* someone at the door so perhaps he/she can give me a hand. I took my fully-strapped-in self to the door and opened it, and here is where events get a little fuzzy. I may have tripped on the carpet. I may have slipped while reaching around to prop up the bag. Whatever happened, I was headed downward rather quickly. My natural instinct was to save the pipes, so I twisted myself in midair so as not to land on them, and shot out the door, coming to rest rather unceremoniously on my backside among two Girl Scouts, a Brownie, and a Den Mother with a moustache. I only hope that the youngest one has recovered from the fit of hiccups brought on by her vigorous laughter at this display. As an aside, I did score a free box of cookies out of the deal - presumably for providing such marvelous entertainment. Unfortunately they were those peanut butter and graham cracker monstrosities which are practically indigestible without at least seven gallons of pure water.

And now, reeds. Oh, dear me, reeds. I really can't do justice to the topic. I will, however, paraphrase a well-known quote and state that reeding the Uilleann pipe is such a Black Art that astrology seems a hard science by comparison. I'm serious. Pick up any pamphlet on U.P. reedmaking and you'll find that it's title is usually something like "The Piper's Despair", and the cover exhibits a picture of an ashen horse whose rider is wearing a black hood and cloak.

Actually, the reed issue is susceptible of an easy solution, and I can't believe that more people haven't figured it out by now. Here's what you do. Build a workshop with the strictest possible climatic controls. Set the temperature to 68 degrees and the humidity to 50 percent. Now, however long it takes, build a set of reeds *perfect* for your instrument in that environment. Repeat this procedure for every temperature between 50 and 85 degrees, and every humidity between 0 and 100 percent. This leaves you with 3500 sets of reeds built specifically for your pipes, thus guaranteeing that no matter what the conditions you will have a working set of reeds 11.3 percent of the time.

You are an intelligent person, and so am I. In your frustration, you will decide, as I did, that an analytical approach is needed. Abandon this foolish notion now. After thorough analysis of the instrument, the only firm conclusion I could draw is that production of any musical sound from this Rube Goldberg reject is physically impossible, and guys like Davey Spillane and Liam O'Flynn are simply ignorant of modern science.

So, what is difficult? - Everything. How is the instrument? - Unplayable. Should a sane person even attempt to learn it? - Most assuredly not. By the way, I'm still practicing as often as I can and am having a blast.

Fancy Piper strapped in

Sorry to hear about both of your terrible experiences, and my condolences for the blimp. However, Thanks for the Laughs guys.. needed it..

I feel ripped off... Someone already has posted this same story, linking to another forum where its been posted..