What's a Halusian Gulp?

blahblahblah — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:49:21 -0800

What's a Halusian Gulp? And what does it have to do with fighter pilots? The phrase appears in this passage from Tom Wolfe's Right Stuff (quoted in a political discussion about McCain):

Being a fighter pilot... presented a man, on a perfectly sunny day, with more ways to get himself killed than his wife and children could imagine in their wildest fears. If he was barreling down the runway at two hundred miles an hour, completing the takeoff run, and the board started lighting up red, should he (A) abort the takeoff (and try to wrestle the monster, which was gorged with jet fuel, out in the sand beyond the end of the runway) or (B) eject (and hope that the goddamned human cannonball trick works at zero altitude and he doesn't shatter an elbow or a kneecap on the way out) or (C) continue the takeoff and deal with the problem aloft (knowing full well that the ship may be on fire and therefore seconds away from exploding)?...

Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: "I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try!" And then that truly spooky click on the machine. What do I do next? (In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff.

bonus points for explaining the "nameless spirit of Ahor"...

Work in on state, get hosed in two.

littlerobothead — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:06:31 -0800

TaxFilter: I work in VA and live in NC. My state taxes are already a nightmare... I have a dev job in metro Virginia (Norfolk), but we live in North Carolina because it's so much cheaper. We've just discovered that apparently my company hasn't been taking any state taxes out of my salary, and NC is asking for its penance.

Friends had told me I could file in VA, get a refund, and pay NC with it; that was before we found out I haven't had any deductions taken. We're giving up and taking everything to an account, but before we do does anyone have any idea what I'm in for? To top it all off, this is the first year we're filing jointly and my poor wife is bracing for impact.

Isn't your employer required to deduct something for taxes for the state? I mean, obviously your mileage may vary, but this is Virginia we're talking about; I'm surprised they don't tax the air you breathe here. It seems they'd be pretty gung-ho about employers covering taxes.

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What's a Halusian Gulp?

Work in on state, get hosed in two.