catbirdseat

Maybe the guy will now turn his life around in a new career as a motivational speaker.

Is anyone surprised that the people could hate an evil person, who holds corporate interests above those of the average citizen?

Dude, don't you remember those folks we saw on the North Face route the day we pulled into camp? We saw their names in the register the next day.

Johnny Destiny will surely scold you for posting such evil, satanic images, where impressionable young lads can see them.

I think the guy was actually a failure in that his goal was to die. How would that make you feel if you sucked so bad that you couldn't even manage to kill yourself by going over Niagra Falls.

You just had to trash the thread, Dru. Didn't you? I agree with Roger, Scott and especially Jay. You don't have to share feelings of grief with strangers to show them consideration and recognize they have feelings. As long as there is the remotest chance that what you write may be read by a relative or friend of the deceased, one should show a little sensitivity.

That one is as old as the crust on your butt.

I just did a route at Vantage called "Strokin' the Chicken" in the Kingpins. It starts out as a double crack and then turns into a narrow chimney that gets wider as you go up. The good thing about this is that you can practice a variety of stemming moves as you go up. There is even a chockstone you can sling on the way up. It protects well. Although it is rated at 5.6, it seemed harder than Seven Virgins and a Mule (5.7) which I we did the same day. I think the reason is fewer face holds on which to cheat.

"Everett Barbie: This tobacco chewing, brassy-haired Barbie still has not learned that you can't wear high-heeled sandals from Payless with no pedicure and without breaking a heel and falling while you chase your beer gutted mullet wearing boyfriend. Her make-up is dark red lip liner with lips covered in a sparkly pink color or no fill-in at all. Her ensemble includes low-rise acid-washed jeans with assorted colored G-strings that stick out the back of her jeans, a white barely-there see-through shirt. Her long, layered hair is bleached/highlighted and BIG. Accessories include: CD-player equipped with Bon Jovi, and a 1996 Camaro Z-28." That sounds like a description of trask's girlfriend.

The usual place It is Seattle again Dante's Steak and Grog

Iain, that isn't far from the truth, but I am trying to make amends now that I am in my dotage.

You sprayers have reached new nadir. You can do better. I mean even trask seems to have gone away out of boredom. Polish Bob is right. You are all so suck!

Here is an example: Anchor Failure with Two Fatalities.

I support the freedom of the individual to choose the media and entertainment that he/she likes, regardless of whether or not I perceive it to be socially unredeeming. (Child pornography, etc excluded!) I believe this freedom is not for citizens of this nation alone. Why are "liberals" here so concerned with the (read) conservative idea of cultural preservation elsewhere? It sounds like you support efforts to preserve local programming. Good for you, Fairweather.

My basement sump pump is running frequently. It hasn't come on in the last five years, so I know it's a wet year. This morning there was no hot water. The float must have malfunctioned at some point in the night and extinguished the pilot light on the water heater. I had to go down there and light it at 6 am.

Hey, I think that was Distel's first efforts at haiku. Nice.

Here's a story about me and my dad, although not about climbing. We raced his 37 foot sailboat from Newport to Ensenada. The wind blew so hard it was a fast race and we didn't need to run the engine to charge the batteries. Finally tried to start the engine as we approached the finish line and it wouldn't turn over. Water had sucked back in through the exhaust from the following seas and into the cylinders. Even with the compression release, the diesel wouldn't turn over. We managed to sail into the harbor and drop the hook under sail like in the old days. Went into shore to find we had taken first in class. My Dad was so excited. I've never in my life seen him so elated. We partied all day on shore and forgot about the engine. After the trophy ceremony, the rest of the crew jumped on the bus and off they went, leaving my dad and I to figure out what to do about the boat. We took one of those crazy water taxis back to Cat's Paw and pondered what we should do as the other boat left the harbor for home. A neighboring boater explained we had to pull the injectors to get the water out. My dad doesn't touch engines, but I was willing to give it a try. I got the injectors out, but it turned out there were some metal rings that I could get a hold of, left in the sockets. We put a towel over the engine and cranked it and the water shot out with the rings. One of them went missing, and I couldn't find it anywhere. I poured a jigger of motor oil into each cylinder to protect them and cranked again. Well, we at least had protected the engine from destruction, but didn't have it to use. It was getting dark now and probably the smart thing would have been to hit the bunks, but that's not what we did. We caught a tow out of the harbor until the wind came up and then cast off under sail. It's something like 70 miles from Ensenada to San Diego where we figured we could find a Yanmar mechanic. Of course the wind was 20 knots on the nose. We went with a reefed main and a full 140% genoa and pounded into it, tacking back and forth hour after hour. The only dry place in the cockpit was either under the dodger or on the high side near the rail. We took turns steering through the night and arrived in San Diego in the afternoon of the next day. San Diego Yacht Club gave us a temporary place to berth for the week, since we both had to get back to work. My mom came down and gave us a ride home. The next week, Dad went down by himself to meet the mechanic. They sent a flunky down to tell my dad it would be two weeks before the new parts could be ordered from Japan. "Ah nuts", my dad thought, "I'll give you twenty bucks if you can find that missing ring". The guy crawled around for about ten minutes and finally found the thing under a flange of the engine pan. The mechanic came down and reassembled the parts and the engine ran fine. I came down the next day we motored home with our big perpetual trophy in the forward berth. I think that was about as much adventure as my dad had had since his days in the Army.

Talkin' to yourself?

It's called Level Head. It's a stiff 5.6, but probably not a 5.6MA. There is a 5.3 chimney called Rock and Roll Chimney that is a definite 5.3MA. There is a 5.7 crack climb to the right of the rap route that is a 5.7MA.

Or lame-brained? The left is the linear, analytical side. The right is the creative, geometric, intuitive side. What say you?

Does this skew the results worse than Gerrymandering?

That quote really captures the essence of Bush, doesn't it?

One thing is for sure, his replacement will be every bit as conservative as he was. He's made certain of that. The new pope will continue to preach against the evils of contraception.

Basically, Bush created a "voluntary" compliance program where polluters could reduce emissions if they felt like it. The results are ambiguous. While they are not dramatically worse, they aren't better either. They are worse relative to another city, Los Angeles. Since the business cycle has an effect on smog, comparison to LA has the effect of normalizing the results.