different Everest folly this year?
rick++
It sounds like the Everest Torch team was chosen more for politcal
correctness than climbing skills, but is this all that much different
than other Everest teams? They are often bragging about first
XXXX to climb Everest or $50K guided tours.
This may be the only team allowed up 2008 spring season if
the weather is tough. And the world's second strongest army is
enforcing it.
Wish them a speedy success so others-in-waiting can make it too.
rick++
^,,^
"Since the training, adjustments and the route fixing are integral
parts of the overall mountaineering event, I think the weather
conditions will not have a great effect on the final ascent"
-Shao Shiwei, Deputy Director of the Media Department for the
Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games
to my small, befuddled mind, the above quote pretty much says it
all.
for, nah, weather conditions don’t have much of an effect on himalayan
climbing –- as long as of one’s ‘route fixing’ and ‘adjustments’ are
on target...
sheesh
~~~
the central committee of the prc seems not only irked, but genuinely
befuddled to find that to date they have not been able
to totally control the global response to their global coming out
party. which is at first stunning (and of course funny) until you
realize that these are the same apparatchiks who told a billion people
there was now a one kid max policy – and pulled it off. the ones who
first told a billion people to be meek and obey their bosses, then
suddenly changed their minds and told them to rise up, throw their
bosses down a well, then all head off to the farms with a rake – and
pulled that off too. then they told a billion people to drop their
rakes, leave the farms, and rush to the cities to work 70 hr weeks and
become the new capitalists – and pulled off even that.
with this in mind one realizes that in this circus we’re not just
talking about your standard issue weasel narcissistic control freaks,
like those who populate most of san francisco and much of the florida
coast. no, here we’re talking actually successful control freaks,
with a staggering track record and beltloads of shrunken heads to
prove it. in this, it is hardly surprising they assumed they could
not only control all those countries whose national debt and consumer
frenzy they already have well in hand – but that and control the
weather on everest too. so, hardly surprising -- though still funny,
albeit in a way that is very dark even for the wicked likes of me.
~~~
that they choose to use "the mother of the universe" (sagarmatha) as
their stage for these hijinks hardly surprises me. hell, it almost
doesn’t annoy me (almost). for we gringos turned that once sacred
space into a bad vegas sideshow decades ago. and what little is left
of my personal morality does even still insist on 'one standard for
all': so, if we can be shits - and congratulate ourselves for it -
then, ipso facto, so can 'they' even if 'they' are borg, or the prc,
or whatever. le meme chose.
~~~
expressing my support for the bho tiya (tribal people of tibetan
ancestry in northern nepal and india) has always been a pain in the
ass for me. it started as i trained for my first trip to khumbu (an
entirely insignigicant afterthought to an eniterly insignificant
'expedition' i stupidly and successfully weasled my way into).
everyone i encountered said "oh, you're a buddhist..." this was in
berkeley in the mid-to-late eighties, when and where everyone was an
almost buddhist. and it really pissed me off. no, i retrorted, i was
a climber. i was going there to climb, not to join an ashram (oops,
wrong religion) or achieve satori (oops, wrong language). just go
away. but i had a pony tail, and round john lennon glasses, and
twenty some earings, so they of course assumed... (the assholes...)
actually, i don't believe in reincarnation. and i don't believe that
a fluttering prayer flag will save even a single molecule of your/my
ass, ever. but i do believe, and deeply, in simple good manners. and
at this the tibetans and their ever growing diaspora excel like no
other group larger than 8 people i've ever encountered. and
massively. they will, always, entirely empty their entire larder for
you, you or anyone else who comes to visit (some gringos fall into the
abyss of believing that it's just that they are so immesurably
charming). by western standards, even the fattest cats among the bho
tiya have pretty much nothing. no one starves among them. well, they
might all starve, but no one is ever cut out from the herd to go
first. on my last trip 'there', last fall, i ran into a guy i had met
on my first trip 'there'. and even i, with no discernable clinical
skills in this or most any arena, and an 8 year old's command of the
local vocab, recognized that he was, sadly. schizophrenic. he could
follow general conversation much of the time, but every so often his
eyes focused on infinity and and twitched and shook as he heard the
howls of angry voices that are as real as mine, or yours, and yet no
one else can hear.
and yet for what, now almost 20 years, his neighbors have found
something for him to do. something that makes him feel wanted,
useful, part of the community. here's a guy that the west would
institutionalize in a heartbeat, then forget in the next heartbeat.
his illness is so profound that he, unattended, would be genuinely
dangerous. and he has no surviving local family to advocate for or
protect him. and yet his entire local community has found a way and a
place for him. one in which he can find as close to peace as fate
allows him, one in which he can be part of a tight community and take
rightful pride in that. and he does, and they do, and it will all be
ok (if not ideal).
that is the best description of the magic of the bho tiya that i can
offer any of you.
a magic that will, almost certainly, be obliterated.
~~~
"Resistance is futile, you will be assimulated"
-the Borg
i remember from my youth a trip to the south‘jersey shore. as close
to heaven as i have ever known. i caught a flounder, i ran with my
bestus dog on the beach as the sun rose, and had the prettiest girl i
ever saw smile directly at me. i was, what, about 11) and there was
this t-shirt store on the boardwalk, and just behind the glass out
front was this t-shirt with this image of a very large cartoon cat
about to pounce on a very small cartoon mouse. the outcome was
inevitable, even the cartoon mouse surely knew that. but, in the
perfect moment of that perfect t-shirt, the cartoon mouse stood up
tall and gave the huge cartoon mouse the finger.
oh, how i loved that t-shirt. not that i ever actually got one. i
had begged my dad for that 'one important thing' and he (in the midst
of 7 kids begging for something) said "um, yeah, sure -- if you work
hard to be an especially good boy." and i did - work hard to be an
especially good boy. which as an 11 year old with 6 younger siblings
is a shitload of work that pretty much never works. ah, but i was
'best boy' and pretty much hyperventilated trying to herd cats, or 6
whining infants. same difference.) and so, on our last day down the
shore my dad (a great soul, though to this day the frustration of all
11 year olds – or so my eldest nieces and nephews have confided in me
in recent years) took me to the t-shirt shop to collect my hard earned
t-shirt.
he took one look at it and said “no way…" he (my dad) walked me up
and down the entire beach (all 7 miles of it -- at least according to
the local promo material) and did his very best to explain to me why i
couldn’t have a t-shirt of a cartoon mouse giving a cartoon cat the
finger in his (said mouse’s) last moment on earth. i could spent 30
pages of ascii trying to repeat it, or i could just suggect this:
rememember that line in "Apocolypse Now" when marlon brando says to
martin sheen "we send our children halfway around the world to kill
other children, but scold them for writing 'FUCK' on their
helmets..." well, that's pretty much what my dad tried to explain,
only he couldn't (or wouldn't) say 'fuck'.
but, me for one, i know precisely what my response is to the prc. i
know precisely which finger to aim at them. and no, it won't make the
slightest difference. the tibetans, the bho tiya, will be
assimilated. and so will the rest of us, though lucky for most of us
paleo-types, we will likely expire before the ugly end stage. and the
prc will, later, be assimilated by the next prc. and soon enough our
silly species will disappear, assimilated by some single celled
protozoa or other. or whatever. as my fabulous niece emailed to me
just the other day "everyone wants to save the planet. But the planet
will be just fine. It's just all the mammals will be gone." my
(well, this) niece is nine years old. she's right, of course. but
imagine trying to deal with that when you are all of nine.
so what do we do? well, we mark time by marking the punctuation
points within our small part of it. like this one. then we give the
borg the finger. then we hopefully drop dead just before we get
assimilated. in the meantime, we do what? the only image in my mind
at present is linda hunt in the film "The Year Of Living Dangerously"
playing a small guy hammering with one finger on an ancient woodstock
(a 'portable' iron typewriter - i wrote my master's thesis on one)
"WHAT CAN WE DO WHAT CAN WE DO WHAT CAN WE...
canis fidelus est,
^,,^
PS: i found out just this morning why i have been, like, waking in the
middle of every night all bathed in sweat, and having like no energy
at all as i crawl to the toilet and only sometimes make it. after
many thousands of dollars worth of fancy tomography and the blathering
of all manner of 'experts' that i will haven't yet figured out how to
pay for, an an ancient, charming, and long retired md at hopkins who
once worked in the peace corps took one look at me and figured it out
in a heartbeat. plasmodium vivax. malaria. the blood smir proved
him right. with this i can now give myself permission to drink myself
to death on gin and tonics -- heavy on the tonic. (that and a quarter
pound or so of toxic chemical at breakfast for the next few months).
eat your collective hearts out...
lekker
> "Since the training, adjustments and the route fixing are integral
> parts of the overall mountaineering event, I think the weather
> conditions will not have a great effect on the final ascent"
> -Shao Shiwei, Deputy Director of the Media Department for the
> Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games
>
> [ref:
> http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/beijing/archive/2008/05/05/summit-of-embarrassment-looms-for-olympic-torch-relay.aspx?print=true]
>
>
> to my small, befuddled mind, the above quote pretty much says it
> all.
>
> for, nah, weather conditions don’t have much of an effect on himalayan
> climbing –- as long as of one’s ‘route fixing’ and ‘adjustments’ are
> on target...
The 'adjustments' sound potentially unfriendly, if not downright
threatening, if you are the type of person who a Deputy Director of an
Organizing Committee might find in need of adjusting. And I suspect you
are such a person, ^,,^
> he could
> follow general conversation much of the time, but every so often his
> eyes focused on infinity and and twitched and shook as he heard the
> howls of angry voices that are as real as mine, or yours, and yet no
> one else can hear.
Sorta the way I see this all but abandoned newsgroup.
> the cartoon mouse stood up
> tall and gave the huge cartoon mouse the finger.
"...a shriek, part despair, but a fine part challenge..."
- Theodore Sturgeon, To Here and the Easel
> PS: i found out just this morning why i have been, like, waking in the
> middle of every night all bathed in sweat, and having like no energy
> at all as i crawl to the toilet and only sometimes make it. after
> many thousands of dollars worth of fancy tomography and the blathering
> of all manner of 'experts' that i will haven't yet figured out how to
> pay for, an an ancient, charming, and long retired md at hopkins who
> once worked in the peace corps took one look at me and figured it out
> in a heartbeat. plasmodium vivax. malaria. the blood smir proved
> him right. with this i can now give myself permission to drink myself
> to death on gin and tonics -- heavy on the tonic. (that and a quarter
> pound or so of toxic chemical at breakfast for the next few months).
> eat your collective hearts out...
Hey! Did you know that a Roman legion once succumbed to malaria, not in
the marshes around Rome but in Scotland? Do you know how hard it is to
empty rain water out of old tires and how huge the international trade
in old tires is? Mosquitoes will prove more successful than humans if by
success you mean lasting for a long time.
Western docs aren't good at things they don't usually encounter. Did you
get checked for leprosy?
You shouldn't get to drink yourself to death until you get something
incurable. But don't let that stop you from trying.
Best wishes,
Andy Cairns
D_Frum...@ndersnat.ch
> They made it!
From what I heard, it was a VERY large summit team (around twenty).
They were making sure that if something went wrong, SOMEONE would still
summit with the flame.
The logistics of this stunt must have been phenomenal.
Bill
__o |Weaning our nation from fossil fuels should be understood as
_`\(,_ |the most patriotic policy to which we can commit ourselves.
(_)/ (_) | -Robert Redford
^,,^
> the marshes around Rome but in Scotland?
as i have so often reminded my pal "Scot's Buy" -- any Scot dumb
enough to actually live in Scotland entirely deserves their wretched
fate.
> Mosquitoes will prove more successful than humans if by
> success you mean lasting for a long time.
huh. well, to date i've lasted as long as i can remember. "I am
immortal, so far..."
> Western docs aren't good at things they don't usually encounter. Did you
> get checked for leprosy?
leprosy? oh god! i'm dying!
what i need is US$22,000 in MRI's -- that or some ancient soul who has
actually travelled a bit. ideally, one willing to sit and carve an
ancient orange with an even more ancient opinel as they explaned the
downside of protazoa..
(lucky me).
> You shouldn't get to drink yourself to death until you get something incurable.
oh man, you could suck the very joy out of a first kiss. thank god i
didn't kiss you, first.
> But don't let that stop you from trying.
well, with your express permission i will now exeunt Big Earl's DC
scary variant and stumble down the street to nearest pub/crack-
emporium and there attempt to drink myself to death.
and, fwiw, i did write your email address clearly on my forehead in
case i pass out and, well, anyone gives a damn (usually they don't).
here's hoping i drink so much that the US$12 in my wallet couldn't
begin to cover it. (-- for then they'll likely come find you).
sheesh (smirk),
^,,^
Sue
<de3e80e8-01f9-4877...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
"^,,^" <pipwasj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> PS: i found out just this morning why i have been, like, waking in the
> middle of every night all bathed in sweat, and having like no energy
> at all as i crawl to the toilet and only sometimes make it. after
> many thousands of dollars worth of fancy tomography and the blathering
> of all manner of 'experts' that i will haven't yet figured out how to
> pay for, an an ancient, charming, and long retired md at hopkins who
> once worked in the peace corps took one look at me and figured it out
> in a heartbeat. plasmodium vivax. malaria.
hmm. sorry to hear that. I diagnosed a case when I was working in
Quesnel British Columbia a bunch a years back. It was like something out
of one of those crime TV shows. Me and the lab tech down in the basement
peering through a microscope at a blood smear. I felt like a real doc .
lekker
!!!
meaning big congratulations
db malaria, Sue malaria, Quesnel, me in nursing school with a(the?)
Quesnel pharmacist of several years: a strange mix
and one of Sue's UBC committee being my boss, smallish world, I guess
had the Quesnel patient been abroad recently?
how did you make that guess?
Andy
Brent Ware
> huh. well, to date i've lasted as long as i can remember. "I am
> immortal, so far..."
"I used to be immortal, but it went away."
lekker
>> You shouldn't get to drink yourself to death until you get something incurable.
>
> oh man, you could suck the very joy out of a first kiss. thank god i
> didn't kiss you, first.
Oh, suck it up yourself, and deal with your piddling malaria.
I am the one in need of ethanolic escape, from, "some girls mothers are
bigger than others, some girls others are bigger than brothers, some
bugs druthers are are hugger than nuthers..."
Thanks to you.
Infection.