textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0037.txt

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    |  |              Hogs of Entropy Text Files Present...           |  |
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    |  |                       "Peanut Heaven"                        |  |
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    |  |                                           By: Black Francis  |  |
    |  |                                                              |  |
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   "Your attention please... We'd like to welcome you aboard the
Trans-Continental flight #369, non-stop service from Los Angeles to, where
the pilot believes to be, Honolulu International Airport.  We'll arrive in
Oahu in just over four hours.  If you have any questions or problems, our
friendly courteous staff will be more than happy to hand you a floatation
device and direct you towards the nearest exit.  Have a pleasant flight."
   With his fingernails gripped tightly into the arm of the passenger
sitting next to him, Alan coached himself on his breathing.  An English
professor on the mainland, his only fault was that turbulence was a
four-letter word.
   The University of Makihakiniwa ( n pr nouns' bul) had arranged to fly him
out to the medium-sized island to be a guest speaker on the topic of
post-mortem misinterpretations of western literature.  The business-class
flight, hotel, and four days were all paid for.  But he had spent most of
his life anchored between sea and shining sea rather than flying over them.
   Flying wasn't all that bad to Alan.  He had just seen one too many
Airport/Airplane! movies and read too many novels about plane crashes.  He
wondered aloud how he didn't want ot be just another subject for 'Airport 
'94: The Next Generation'.  The man sitting next to him, it turned out,
worked for a small movie company in Los Angeles.  His name was Rodrigo, and
he quickly laughed upon hearing Alan's fear of inspiring a movie-of-the-week.
Then in the same motion as tugging on his goatee, he grabbed a pen stuck in
his ponytail and jotted down verbatim what Alan had said on a barf-bag taken
from the seat pocket in front of him.  He then stuck the impropmtu notepad
into his briefcase.
   "Would you like something to drink, sir?  Maybe a hot wash cloth?" Alan
jerked his head to find the stewardess hovering above him.  "We'll be serving
lunch in just a few minutes, but you look like you could use something to
drink."
   Alan scanned the tray which the stewardess balanced in her right hand.
Cola, orange juice, ginger ale, and water, all in miniature bottles or cans.
He looked past the curtain which seperated the classes, towards the rear of
the plane.  He saw that they had just begun serving the great 
aluminum-foil-wrapped box 'o lunches some 35 rows back.
   "Orange juice, please."  It would be a while before he would get some
food in his stomach, so he decided to at least get some sustenance.  He
didn't know that since he wasn't sitting in herd class, they would bring him
his meal whenever he wanted.  With one hand, the stewardess opened the bottle
of orange juice, filled a glass with ice, poured it, grabbed two bags of
peanuts, pulled down his tray and arranged it nicely with a cocktail napkin
folded to look like a WWI vintage biplane.
   "I probably won't finish two bags." said Alan.  He began to hand one of
the bags back to the stewardess, but it was intercepted by his next-seat
neighbor, Rodrigo.
   "You don't get this kind of service in coach." Rodrigo advised in an
excited whisper.  "They usually only let you take one bag.  You never know
when you're going to need another bag.  I got lucky.  Coach was filled, so
rather than bumping me to another flight, I got the only seat left on the
plane and it's right here in business class."
   He pointed to Alan's remaining bag of peanuts, "Hey, are you gonna finish
those?"
   Alan smiled and nodded his head while putting the bag in his pocket on
the side away from Rodrigo.
   He sipped his orange juice and rifled through the pocket of the back of
the seat in front of him when the plane jerked sharply to the left.  Alan
was stunned and Rodrigo was now stained.  Alan felt scared by the plane, but
mysteriously satisfied having spilt his orange juice on his neighbor's shirt.
   Everything seemed to justify Alan's reasons for never having stepped on
a plane for the past 28 years of his life.
   "Your attention please... If you look out to the left side of the plane,
you should be able to see nothing but miles of water.  If you look out to
the right side of the plane, about 600 miles to the north we'll see the
Southern tip of Alaska."
   The sun shone brightly into his eyes, glimmering from the distant Pacific.
The plane jerked once again, this time to the right.  Looking back, he saw
the stewardess, still some 20 rows behind him, struggle to maintain a prone
position next to the meal cart.  He also noticed a teenage boy become
excited that the turbulence had turned his lap into a temporary seat for the
stewardess.
   Alan looked outside the window, past Rodrigo and focused on the sun
shining off the ocean.  But the bright light wasn't from the ocean, nor the
sun.  The reflection from the wing illuminated the entire cabin...and then
he saw the flames.
   "You know..." said Rodrigo while taking down notes on his barf-bag,
"outside of Hollywood, no plane has ever survived a crash at sea."  He said
this apparently unaware that one of the engines had disintegrated at 40,000
feet.
   "Is that supposed to happen?" Alan asked as he pressed his index finger
up against the window toward the port engine which was now engulfed in
flames.  The plane jerked again, this time sending the 3/4-full food cart
hurling down the aisle toward the front of the plane and sending the
stewardess tumbling backward causing her to spill Alan's beef stroganoff and
fresh baked muffin.
   Flames on airline engines are not uncommon.  But what Alan and the rest
of the passangers and crew on flight #369 didn't know was that both
extinguishing nozzles near the engines were sealed shut, caked over with
seagull droppings.  The pilot frantically pressed the extinguish button, but
the power of the seagull droppings proved too much for a man-made aircraft
to overcome.
   The oxygen masks dropped as did the nose of the plane.  Had God been
required to personally answer all the people calling his name in prayer or
in vain, even He would have been very busy this day.
   When he came to, Alan might have laughed, but he was too exhausted.
There he sat, on a sandy beach with nothing but water for 360 degrees.
Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, he presumed, there was no one esle in sight.
No plane.  No debris.  Just him sitting on an island no bigger than his
one-bedroom, single-occupancy apartment in the Valley.
   Just him, sand, and lots of salt water.  His dockers were damp, but he
had no idea how long he had been on the beach, as his watch had stopped due
to water damage some time ago.  The whole situation was a cliche.  At the
same time, Alan was amused and terrified of it.  Was he dreaming?  No. Was
he alive?  Yes.
   He waded around in the shallow water surrounding the island and came up
with various items from the plane.  Alan was now the proud owner of a 
airplane seat cushion, an occupied-seat sign, three barf bags, an airline
magazine, a Trans-Continental Airlines "The #1 one-time airline in the west"
ballpoint pen, and a pair of airline headphones.
   He sat down admiring his booty.  But would anyone ever come?  With the
seat cushion (also doubles as a floatation device!) Alan made a large "X"
in the sand by dragging the cushion in the dirt.
   How was he going to survive?  There were no fish and no birds to catch.
There weren't any dead bodies floating around that he could eat.  But then
he wouldn't want to copy the movie Alive.  He thought about eating his own
limbs, but he was sure he read that in a Stephen King novel, or saw it on a
Twilight Zone episode.  The last thing he wanted was the newspapers to write
about a copycat suicide eating his own fingers.  That would be far too
derivative.
   He crouched down on the water's edge and buried his face in his hands.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed something hanging out of his torn
pants pocket.  He pulled out the still-unopened bg of peanuts.  Food!  Food!
Food!  At least he had something to eat, and there was no one else on the
island with whom he'd have to share his nuts with.  However, he realized
that the only thing standing between him and dying was a tiny bag of peanuts.
   He yelled, and screamed.  But his cries fell upon no ears other than his
own.  When on one responded, he opened the bag and attempted to slit his 
wrists with a wet peanut.  Needless to say, he survived.
   Over and over he thought to himself that he should have asked for that
second bag.  For decades, no one had been penalized so harshly for failing
to take advantage of free peanuts.  Now all the nuts in the world were as
good as on the bottom of the ocean.
   He rationed himself three peanuts and opened up the airline magazine.  He
fashioned a seat out of mud, and put the headphones on, plugging them deep
into the sand.
   Flipping through the magazine, he turned to a page of adult corporate
yuppie toys.  "If you were stranded on a desert island, and could only bring
three things, what would you bring?" he pretended, playing the game we all
play as children.  Water and food were never popular choices at age eight as
long as Star Wars figures and Matchbox cars were around.  It was a good thing
that no one kept tabs on little kids' wishes in case of this situation and
actually granted them, or he would be sitting between a die-cast metal
Millennium Falcon, his Saturday Night Fever LP record, and his cute
7-year-old neighbor Susie Crabsky.  Content with nothing, Alan began to keep
a diary by writing on the barf bag.  They weren't his real thoughts and
feelings which he wrote down, because he feared them being found and making
others feel pity for him once his diaries were inevitably made public.
Instead he wrote about catching fish, being mentally strong, and knowing in
his heart that someone, someday would rescue him.
   Instead, he tried a steady diet of mud pies which proved to be high in
clacium but low in taste.  "I love you but I have to kill you!" he shouted
at the mud pies who scarcely retured comment.
   His peanut ration went down to two a day, but after three days without
salt-free water, Alan tried to reassess his priorities.  There was no sign of
any boat, plane, or ship except the sun which mockingly and monotonously rose
and set every day.
  He looked down at his little toe and salivated.  Did he really need it?
What if it were to "by accident" fall off?  Would he eat it, or would he die?
There wasn't any real use for that toe anyway.  Would it taste good?  Peanuts
made him very thirsty, but he had no idea what a toe would do.  What about
his left pinky?  The only time he ever used that was to pick his nose, or
unscrew a jar of Snapple.
   Out on a small rock, he fashioned a knife, sharpened by grinding it
against the calloused heel of his foot.
   "No... No... No...  They'll find my body and think I'm obsessed with
Stephen King novels if I eat myself." he deliriously considered.  In that
book, he remembered, a doctor was stranded and had to sever various parts of
his body for food in order to survive.  But where would it end?  If he
already ate his hands, how would he hold the knife to cut the next thing
off?
   With all 10 fingers and toes intact, and all the peanuts gone, Alan
dreamed of two beautiful island girls bringing him a Big Mac and a supersize
orange drink on a silver tray along with his die-cast Millennium Falcon.
   He got as far as the special sauce, lettuce and cheese in his mind before
his mouth was filled with sand, and his mind stopped working.  He removed his
contacts, put on his headset, and put his sand-seat into its full upright
position and he went to sleep forever.
   His body was found some days later, with a pointed peanut in one hand, and
a mouthful of mud.
   Most of the passengers from Flight #369 had been saved a few hours after
the plane crashed, including Rodrigo, who read a small sidebar article in the
local newspaper about Alan's unfortunate demise.  He sat in his office and
offered a prayer for Alan.  Then he made a few phone calls.
   A few months later, filming began on the next generation of disaster films
in which Alan was on of an ensemble of characters whose lives and destinies
were traced along with that of Flight #369.  His character was brave, stoic,
and died with dignity.
   The movie had been scheduled for a nationwide theater release, but that
deal fell through.  So did the one for television and the one for video.  The
film gathered dust in a vault for years, never having seen the light of
distribution.  Up in heaven, he was proud that his life hadn't been reduced
to celluloid.  The world didn't need another desert island story to make
people couscious of copying someone else with their survival.
   The only testament which remained on Earth to Alan's losing battle to
starvation was tucked away in the dark recesses of the English buidling at
the University.  The Alan Tubtun Memorial Peanut Vending Machine.  That was
all.
   No one ever restocked the machine.  No one ever had to.  Alan made sure
it was always filled.  As an angel, he always flew around with two bags of
peanuts.  You're allowed to do that in heaven, because you never know when
you're going to need a peanut.
             
               Hey you! Yeah you! Go download every single ReD 
               release ever. Why?  I don't know.  But go do it.
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 Copyright (c) 1994 HoE Publications and Black Francis      #37 --> 12/11/94
 All rights Reserved.