ivan

"the early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese" - jesus-fuck, what a fractious omen! the season for spelunking once again upon us - last month a rare old time w/ rick n' company for his big 5-0 i think it 'twas - shindig at his new digs afterwards - guitar picking, chili n' gut laughs - howling at the moon around the fire - damn near passed out in opdyke's ride Pondering on the Divine today the best of days for bumbling around belowdecks - adam and i were out to take in the sandcastles after a toke or two - we took his ride, a most fateful decision - rumbling out through the sheets of solid rain and the double-reef gale roaring down the gorge, the truck sure seemed to be missing some beats here and there, stumbling even, but hope is a long-standing strategy of mine, and it usually answers...just not today. pulling into the deep mud of the parking lot, it konked out even before we came to a complete stop. sheeeeit. not much to do but drink an initial tall-boy and have a haw-geez moment. thought we could maybe push it back to the road and maybe get it push-started back to life. that proved impossible in the bottom-less muck and the uphill grade. tried then to rig up a hauling system to jerk it across the morass. had a bunch of pulleys but not enough in the end to generate anything like the amount of force it was gonna take. sodden as hell, it got kinda grim for awhile. short-commons for all the essentials: warm clothing, beers, food, smokes. spring sure seemed a long way off... modern technology managed it all in the end. pretty nice to know, when the shit goes down, that you can always Text the Right People. took a number of hours, but eventually the cavalry arrived in the lot even before the sun fuckered off in drowned dusk. adam's bro andrew, home-bound from the dalles w/ his righteous dame and a good-old boy sized rig, got us jumped back to life, which proved little help though as the truck kept dying anyway. eventually we man-handled the malingering fuck into a better location, then ditched it on the side of the road, stripped of all but the empty beer-cans, and set off in the growing dark tempest. amazing rain and hurricane winds along the 14, like ocean waves breaking over a sea-wall, beacon all about to carry away. and now for the recovery...

I agree, you don't strike me as a gulag type of guy. Quite the opposite. But your friends--not so sure. (Let's let history be our guide here.) i can count my friends on my fingers and i have faith in the lot of them

i don't know enough about this star-crossed pair to cast my lot in w/ them or not, but yes, in principle, i do think all nations have the right to do and act as others, as this is so common-sense a social expectation amongst individuals in a small-setting as to be incredible that it need be explained when scaling it outwards

i'm not looking to rebuild the world or fix all the fuck-wit that humans have wrought - i'm quite certain that treating others as equals though, whether they be so in actuality or not, nation-states or random nabobs rambling along the way, is not going to lead me to supporting gulag archipelagos and the like...

how were they to take those places back w/o a third world war? certainly there were americans in '45 like patton eager to keep fighting the ruskiis, but i don't see how that would have ended up better than what happened otherwise.

wonderful argument (not that it has anything to do w/ what i said?) sure, as you illustrate, the extreme liberal-take on foreign policy has over-tones of kumbaya and utopia, but the other side you seem to favor, the world in which the strong can do whatever the fuck they want to the weaker, dressing the whole thing up in equally bullshit ideologies, is easy to mock w/ a meme too i'm no extremist, but if i have to pick one over the other, i'll take unicorns over buchenwald, flying-pigs over falling heads, ruby-slippers over jack-boots.

this really ain't that hard to intuit through - are we currently in a declared war w/ iran? i don't think i have any right to dictate what government the people of iran have - i think the current shit state of affairs between our nation and theirs is precisely b/c people like you think the opposite - i don't give a fuck about their mullahs and they can do whatever they wish, including build nukes if that's w/n their abilities, so long as they wreck no harm in my homeland - i sincerely hope that, if they produce them, that we can talk out our differences w/o these terrible weapons being used (it seemed to answer in the cold war), but if that fails, then sadly many will die on both sides (many more on theirs, as we no doubt have a huge advantage), so let's focus on keeping the relationship positive enough that doesn't have to happen, eh? treating them like we're a bully doesn't seem likely to produce positive results...

how is that relevant? my point is that either all nations have a right to nukes, or none do. just b/c a nation has a right to a nuke doesn't mean others have an obligation to help them realize that right. indeed, restricting the trade of nuclear technology makes sense to me. but if iranians are advanced enough to build one themselves, than so be it, and we should probably save the lat n' longitude of tehran into the "favorites" menu on our minutemen

i was assuming that, like KK, you are okay w/ the idea that some nations, like some people, are fundamentally better/more enlightened/more worthy/less crazy/etc than others - if so, that IS in conflict w/ a basic jeffersonian concept (which admittedly, he was hardly the best messenger for )

i'm quite certain jefferson wouldn't want nigras, injuns or saracens to have thermo-nuclear weapons

11/26 - 58th beatard day of this becalmed annum - 4th corner crawl of the cruel late fall - tuesday afore tgiving and proud, proud weather - a 5-day weekend waxing full - balmy n' still in camas, but bright cold n' gusty out in the heart of the gorge - growing dark as i pulled into the desolate lot - big old ice block on the approach trail below the east face - a happy ramble up the dry, dry way - anchor booty on tree-ledge, should the offending parties wish recompense - the long way off, half-sweat through my wind-wracked coat - skert the shit out of a falcon all contemplating on his impending incestuous fornicating as i fingered me way up the very last bit - spent the last 100 feet duckign n' diving as i made for the sanctuary of the swaying forest

few people realize the internetz is really just a bunch of pipes n' tubes

Beware, for he is a man of many disguises and passwords. He is sometimes revealed as Ivan's doppelganger by his distaste for all lower case and his insatiable love of self. hardly. the chief difference between me n' he is ole'pat has little compunction about labeling a prick a prick, and awful quick, whereas i have this bizarre 'try to get along w/ your fellow cock-suckers' mentality. as to being in love with yerself, you ought not chuck stones at said structure. i'm willing to bet that tendency won't go a whit unaltered however...

Jefferson's larger hypocrisy goes a long, long way toward esssplaining the modern american liberal psychosis. so, just to get you on the record here then, you admit the entire foundational american ideal of equality for all is bullshit? i'm fine w/ talking to cynical assholes, so long as the cards sit square upon the table. your country, right or wrong, and you and yours more deserving within that country. i'm sure that's a grand place to occupy. the nice thing about being an atheist is not having to defend angels - ole'tj, a man i much enjoy discussing on and who's school i spent many of the best days of my life, was no god, but a politician, the very meanest sort of demi-god - he had some sublime ideas, good guiding-rods as we ramble on into the future - plenty of flaws to pick from too - obama could literally be his son. the ideal is the issue though. you either believe in the ideal of equality, that noble goal which does in fact fly in spite of nature's fashion, or you shut the fuck up when the "star spangled banner" gets played, see?

next time i'm at the national archives, i'll be sure to bust into the display case and edit tj's magnum opus for you then

i disagree w/ the notion that it for the usa to decide what weapons other sovereign nations will have. i don't like the rabbit-hole that entails going down, but that is the inevitable result of the libtard-philosophy that nations, like people, should be treated as equals i don't see the connection you're making. i also have no iron-in-the-fire for gun control. i like the faceitious "1787 solution" whereby everone's restricted to just muskets, but know that's terribly unrealistic. i'm luke-warm on the assault weapons ban as the hassle of the politics doesn't seem worth the minimal results.

I trust Kruschev, Reagan, or Mitterand with a nuclear arsenal any day over Ahmadinejad or his successor. enemies are defined by a lack of trust, so it's a side-show argument my point is it's blatant machiavellianism to assert our rights to have nukes while denying it to others (and blithely ignoring it when israel creates their own) - our nation would never tolerate being dictated to in this fashion - if iran invented a nifty new death-ray but threatened us w/ military strikes if we tried to create one for ourself, we'd go ape-shit, and rightly so. nukes are deeply troubling and there is no ideal solution since the technology can't be un-invented. if we won't give ours up, it's silly to expect nations that percieve us as their enemeies wouldn't want to develop their own. the essential logic of MAD during the cold war worked. iran can have nukes, and i'd hardly be happy about, but that's the bitter-bit. the only thing to do is to remind them we have a whole-lot more and that we have a track-record of using the damn things, so they oughta mind their p's'n'q's

Um, because even the Iranian people know their religious leaders are fucking insane? yup, and them russians never had a fucking insane ruler equiped w/ nukes, or the french, or us for that matter...

i don't believe i used the word "fair" there champ, but feel free to keep firing away anyhow, hear?

hysterical pollyannas, perpetually humorous... hypocrisy is poison itself - why does the usa get the right to point nukes at every nook n' cranny of the world, yet nobody else? why would you expect anybody living in iran to accept this clear inanity?

movember

11/25 - day 57 - a rare-auold wintery plum - shuttered up the work-shed even at the last chiming of the bell, blasted off lickety-split up the columbia-way, wailing at fat-arsed fuck-wad lorries lumbering all too slow as my late-afternoon sun set into the western cloud-sluff - the red devil's engine whining w/ a lack of petrol, that vital stuff - into the lot at the first tendrils of twilight - jim n' sal about to set off - me getting all euro-nekkid as i changed into my war-kit, double-thick, while we jibbered n' jabbered about the way of it - shivering - skert - life slipping away so soon it seems - the very reason for coming - the wind in gusts and lulls, all schizo-like, no where near as bad as saturday gravy lap #3 as the vernal season sets hard into the hibernal - happy look upon my face i reckon as i snot n' snort my way up in the half-gale, hands numb n' fading - gloves off at the slab for the finger-swap - the reborative gut-rumble of safety at tree ledge, reckless as that might seem - a world apart - the short stroke onto the trail - the day's last light fading, fading, fading

nope, not the Horn of Horns as you say dave - the initial overhang has something like 3 horns, of which the middle one is the vital bloke, yes? beyond that, as you move your feet up and swing up over the overhang, there are 2 more jug-horns, the left-most one being the one that usually i pull hard on - the lose one, a mere block now, is the right one above the overhang - it's so untrustworthy now i won't step on it - it can be made to wiggle a good 2-3 inches and completely unseated and could easily be pried off and tossed down...

11/23 - day 56 - low in spirits and drifting in the dank doldrums of dead autumn for a fearful long stretch it seems - dastard showers at all hours, wind and wet and a general wilting of the soul as the sap sucks down into the dying earth - friday afternoon dawned frosty yet clear and i threw my shoes into the red devil on the off hope of a gravy lap in the gaudy afternoon, but emerged from work to a woesome wind - a gale w/o ale, grim and determined, no mettle in me - friday night spent getting good n' soused, a nap at nine, midnight w/ the wife in wondrous modes - saturday slept in a proper hour, then up n' coffeed n' cast off w/o partner or plan for a beacon-wand i imagined ever-much as weather-wrapped as the day before - the lot at mid-morning, much adled the Big Breath of the Bog-god - waves stetched long by the fetch of the far channel - a jog in crocs to the corner-pad, all lit by sun n' sheltered from storm - socks under shoes and three-quarter glove shod, i wandered up, the way so much drier than it has been for weeks now - to the true top and all is well, save that big old jug on pitch 2 that is now a ticking time-bomb if ever there was one the parking lot after - a passage to the boat-launch - wind beats upon wave upon bumper upon brain - a few chapters of my book with a couple of beers n' butts - cross-cat-harpings n' snatch-blocks n' the sweltering chilblains - back to the beacon for a circumnavigation n' curious long-orbit back mike-ways a Fall Jewel For Sure - 2 gravy-laps now since the season's been sucked away...

always weird to see a place you've been a thousand times in person on tv... ...looking forward to a turkey-trot along the hallowed tuff-ways this coming thursday afore getting good n' gut-stuffed n' whiskey-drunk