I have to fly down to Miami on Thursday for my sister in law's wedding and am so freaked out that I actually feel physically ill. I have been looking up stats for the odds of a plane crash, the odds of dying in and plane crash, and more, but nothing is helping. I cannot fly; it sucks. Being in the US, we have that whole worry of a rerun of 9/11, but I have a feeling that if anyone attempted that again, the passengers would probably take the people down before the air marshals got a chance. I can't see it going over well. No one wants to see that happen again, whether you're an American or not. So that isn't what I worry about. I worry about stupid things like human error, weather conditions, and stuff like that. My worst nightmare is plummeting from miles up in the sky to the ground. So technically, I'm not afraid of flying; I'm afraid of falling. Very far.

The last time I was on an airplane was when I flew back from Comic Con last year from LAX to Minneapolis, but it was incredibly relaxing because it was a midnight flight and I was the only one awake on the plane, reading. Yes, I was the asshole with the little light on while everyone tried to sleep. :-) No one cared, they were sleepy. That one hit some really severe turbulence, but I was fine. I just get scared when I haven't flown in a long time. Scared to the point of when we went to Seattle, the flight to go was called and I bolted out of the gate, through the airport. My husband caught me and dragged me on, bawling my eyes out. I cried so hard that I passed out before the plane even took off and woke up in Seattle. I've tried to get stuff to put me to sleep on flights, but I can't because of my seizure meds. If I mix pretty much anything that makes me sleepy, that includes cough medicine, it's like mixing meth. I go psycho. My doctor described what would happen would basically get me locked up for a weekend because I'd be tweaking out so badly. I did it once and it was BAD. Hallucination bad.

The worst of all this is that my dad is a private pilot. I only fly calmly if he is flying because I know that he wouldn't let anything happen to me. That, and I have seen him do an emergency landing cuz I rode in the plane when he was learning to fly. He flies very well. But he gives me such crap about being scared to fly. I also love the little tiny planes, but hate the big ones. So many people find that odd because it usually goes the other way. I like to see what is going on though, which I can't do in the back of a big plane. I just have to trust the pilots know what to do and everything is okay. My claustrophobia has a lot to do with this too, I think. When I am in planes like the airbuses, where the rows are bigger, I'm not as scared.

Ugh, I may have to cancel my trip. I feel like crap.  Oh, god, I just realized the 'scared' mood on my LJ is of Dean terrified of a plane crashing!!!

Over the weekend, I went to go see Dane Cook. I'm not a huge fan or anything, but I enjoyed it. He clearly has a ton of fans because the show was crazy. During the show, he mentioned losing both of his parents within nine months of each other due to cancer and how sad it was. It led up to some more jokes, so the whole thing was really good.

At the end of the show, he came out for an encore and thanked everyone for being so nice when he mentioned his parents. He then proceeded to tell us about the very first time he looked up his name on the Internet. He was unaware of how hateful people online can be until he looked on there and found actual site based on how bad of a comedian he was and all this crap. Well, here's the kicker. He gets an email from someone after his parents died. He had the print out of the email and read it to us.  The email, entitled, Please read this, opened with, "Dane - your parents died of cancer to get away from your shitty comedy." He then told us that the insult stuck with him for two years, making him feel really bad. I mean, how awful is that? As much as you don't like a person, you don't go and say something that horrible to them. Two years passed and he recieved a follow up email from the same person. It stated the following, "Dane - when I wrote you the past email, I was drinking, unemployed, and doing nothing with my life. I now understand your situation as I am living with a father who is dying of a brain tumor. I apologize." To which Dane Cook responded, "Your father is dying of a brain tumor to get away from his drinking, unemployed, loser of a son."

This made me think a lot about the wank over different actors and actresses that I have listened to over the past year. Next time you feel like ripping on someone in the media, really think about it and how it affects their life. Imagine how you would feel if you were to read something so negative (or in the above case, so hateful) about yourself. I honestly don't blame him for answering the way he did.