catbirdseat

LBJ was a great man, for all his faults. You can't compare Bush to LBJ.

Bush sucks. The old system screws the taxpayer and the proposed system makes it worse. The same goes for the mining laws. The public always loses out.

Are you talking about he first X-Men movie? There's a new one coming out.

A friend of mine had the bright idea that we should climb the rock gully below the lookout on Mt. Pilchuck. What we hadn't figured on is that people like to piss off the rail. It runs down that gully. What with the broken glass on the ledges and all, they should call it Mt. Upchuck.

Okay, here's one. My Dad and I invited a friend of mine to sail with us on a 27 ft Erickson sailboat from Newport Beach to White Landing on Santa Catalina Island. I warned my friend that the sea could be rough and recommended he take some motion sickness medicine. He said, "I never take drugs, and besides, I fly in my father's private plane all the time and have never been airsick". "Okay, suit yourself", I told him. Within 15 minutes of leaving the jetty my friend grew very quiet. Out came the ham sandwiches. He had two bites before he started to lose it. After puking over the rail, he curled up in a fetal position on the lee settee and remained there immobile for the next three hours. As soon as we arrived at anchor he was the first into the dinghy going to shore. We brought his sleeping bag so he didn't have to return to the boat. He remained on shore until we departed the next day. You better believe he accepted some Dramamine for the trip home. With the drugs he was actually fine and had a good time. Moral of the story is if someone offers you free drugs, take them.

So an example of such a condition would be an old water well that had a bad cover over it that someone could step on and fall through. A large loose boulder wouldn't qualify because it was natural.

Yeah, I've been coming around to your way of thinking, really.

Okay, now that's sick. I always think if it as something someone else who is better, braver, or stupider would do, but which I would never do myself.

I think I have a pretty good idea of the meaning of the word "sick" in the context of hard climbing routes, but is there an exact definition? Is a sick route just very technically difficult, or is it also dangerous, committed all all three? My question would be best answered by citing examples of actual climbs.

That's not very clever. It just sounds angry.

Come on, trask, he doesn't deserve THAT much credit.

DFA, you are a legend in your own mind.

Both royalty and Dear Abby prefer the third person when referring to themselves. I wonder if DFA is really a columnist in disguise? Couldn't be a royal, nah.

I met a couple who were both climbers and physical therapists. They were big on crack climbing too. They just tape up really well and use lotion afterwards. They told me that good technique is the most important thing in avoiding gobies.

I'm disappointed. When I saw "valuable members", I thought you were going to give advice about hygiene, or the proper way to wear condoms.

Hey Dr. jay, I think he likes you.

Have you heard that commercial that starts out, "He's a war monger! All he wants is oil!" Towards the end they explain they are referring to Saddam Hussein. Up until that point I was certain they were referring to George W. Bush.

In carvel built (or planked) ships the boards were placed side by side as opposed to overlapped as in shiplap construction. The resulting seams each had to be waterproofed by being stuffed with a ribbon of a recycled material called oakum made from retired hemp ropes. The oakum was saturated with tar and shoved into the seams, which were then filled with more tar. It was a very messy business and explains why sailors were sometimes referred to as "Jack Tar". If a ship "worked", that is flexed, in a heavy sea, the oakum in the seams could work its way loose and the ship would leak. Since picking oakum was such unpleasant business it was often assigned to prisoners, which explains how the phrase "pickin' oakum" came to mean getting into trouble. Nautical History: Oakum

It sounds like a lot of hooey to me. How is an external bandage going to stop bleeding from lacerated aorta? No way!

You've got to hand it to the folks in Leavenworth. Though we may regard it as hokey and phony, a lot of tourists eat that stuff up, and spend a lot of money there. They saved the town from collapse and economic ruin.

5 for 6 this winter.

Absolutely. It doesn't have to be dynamic, you aren't leading with it.

When life give you lemons, make lemonade.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No sense being a damn fool about it. --W.C. Fields

Oh, yes. That goes without saying.