Dechristo

Yes, this is the most important of freedoms, but it differs from societal freedom. Most only know freedom and peace within themselves on a circumstantial and conditional basis believing they must fight for circumstances and conditions in society conducive to their experience of freedom and peace: a vain endeavor toward a mythical utopia. It's my experience that those who promulgate effusively freedom, peace, and tolerance own it themselves within narrow confines only. It is foundational to an answer of the ubiquitous question "Why can't we all just get along".

Confucious says: "One who climbs in Turkey becomes stuffing."

Mo brings up a good point: recommendations for gear and luxury items should be made based on whether you will be moving your base camp. The pee bottle is still a good idea... you'll need a Freshette to "go" along with it.

You'll need to become more frequent and aggressive in your execizes... the pain will be inflexibility leaving your body - or torn flesh. Yes, I believe this to be true of us all.

There is no appreciable decay (no odor) - they're veritably freeze-dried. You've probably seen the photos published in National Geographic of the multi-hundred-year-old bodies found in Greenland that were mummified by freezing. Same thing with the ~8,000-year-old dude found on the Swiss/Italian border. Fun, in this instance (explained in acute brevity), is losing two toes instead of six. I expected some sensibilities would be offended by the post; no offense intended. I felt prompted by MisterE's mention of "the Alpinist Syndrome", the prerequisite explanation for qualifying to contend for " The Cutest Thing On Eight Toes" title, and the injury realized probable to those who participate in the central activity of this website. Apologies to you MisterE, didn't figure to hijack the thread. Did the parrot get any birthday cake?

DAMN!!! Looks like Dianne left her hands soakin' in the Palmolive a little too long!

OMFG when did this happen??? Know any Presidents (...or anyone, for that matter) that haven't lied? Each of us find some lies more palatable than others. And, of course, or own lies are the most savory.

I think you were looking for the "Partners You Want to Lie (lay) With" thread.

WTF? Are you listing 46 reasons to believe... what? OR Are you stating you have reasons to believe in the Big 46?

Was it something I said? Just go wit duh flo, maing, and it all BE fun. I'd think you, of all people, would remain Daffy. What's so fun about a duck, anyway? Besides the obvious aspect of having a water-tight ass?

Yep, da wut. Feggin' doctor wanted to take, in total, SIX toes off (all of 'em off the right foot, big toe off left foot). After Sawbones recovered from the shock of me telling him "no" ("My God, no one has had the temerity to actually say that word to me before...") I asked some pertinent questions and: took three months off from work, was gifted plenty of under-the-counter "anesthetics" from friends, ...and waited to see what would fall off. Toward the end, I grew tired of waiting. So, one sunny April morning, sitting in the open doorway of a trailer, with a friend's knife in hand (the tip of which had been laboriously sharpened on ceramic sticks), I cut off the two toes that had given up the ghost; by that time, they were hanging only by tendons. Even still, I found out one has to be careful when you go rootin' around inside body joints with a sharp knife under these circumstances. Yeah, one side is dead, but the other side is as alive as it ever was... and the live side lets you know in no uncertain terms it has been offended with nerves screaming of fire and vessels weeping red fluid. This forum being lousy with alpinistas, there's a better than average chance that someone, sometime, will be faced with a similar predicament: full-thickness frostbite, not thrilled with doctors guessing what and how much they should blithely cut off, wanting to keep as much as you can, and not wanting to bump Mommy and Daddy for the thousands of bucks to pay Sawbones to have his/her way with your digits (my predicament at that time) - thought I'd tell of this alternative. It involves studious attention to two-a-day Betadine cleansings, goldenseal poultices, private acquisition of more powerful pain analgesics than the Tylenol 3 the doctor will give you, and the willingness to dirtbag it for a few months. PM or email me if and when you need the goods (beta)... I'll hook you up the best I can. "Praise the Lord and pass the mescaline" - Willis Alan Ramsey WOW, mannn... look at the pretty multi-colored bird, dude!

Happy Be-late B'day, MisterE. But, you are mistaken... I am the cutest "thing" on eight toes. At least, thankfully, my wife thinks so.

Where? There ? Get piss drunk and have someone slap the hell out of you... you'll be more flexible than a limp dick. Naw... a regimen of stretching exercizes is key. You'll notice a great increase in your range of movement, really.

I recollect an endless procession of crazy fucks I've worked with. A lot of the manifest neuroses, no doubt, have roots in their Daddies swinging the gate of whoop-ass wide-open and beatin' the shit out of 'em over the slightest perceived infraction. Fear-based, yup, most of 'em that had problems with authority were fear-based in their rational. These poor men would lie their asses off, in spite of witnesses and/or logic to deny their involvement in the slightest fuck-up. I mean, it's not like their jobs were on the line. They could not allow themselves to be culpable in any manner... sounds like a prototypical politician, eh? Then there was the guy who acted, dressed, and talked like Rambo on steroids - just the hint of question of his manliness would prompt a loud pronouncement of how fuckin' much a man he was compared to the squat-to-piss offender. And yet, the guy was squeamish beyond belief. Bodily fluids (blood, snot, feces, you get the picture) sent him over the edge. At lunch, I watched for a number of days in succession as he would remove and discard one slice of bread from his sandwich, fold over the remaining slice to envelope the contents, and then he'd consume the wad. Curious, I asked, "what gives?" His reply, "bread makes ma shit float... ah cain't stand it when ma shit floats." The guy had to be on the absolute verge of filling his pants before he'd step foot in a Porta-John. Whenever that woefull day came when he'd absolutely need to shit, the poor fuck would sit in there, gagging as if he had a tird sitting on the back of his tongue, holding the door open with an extended leg. I tricked him, before he knew its identity, into holding one of my severed toes lost to frostbite (it's black with the bone sticking out the one end... hard to identify unless you look close). He thought it was a part of an eagle as I keep the toe in a collection of talons. When I told him what he had in his hand, he threw the thing on the ground and tried to cuss me out between hurls. Two hours later, at lunch, I noticed he had a sandwich bag covering his hand. "What gives?" "Ah ain't touchin' ma foood with the same hand that held that black piece of shit a yours with the bone stickin'... urp... ahhhhrrgg..." He couldn't finish describing the toe without a gagging fit. The man's excess of squeamishness didn't end with bodily fluids. There he was, staggering, bent over double, trying to puke his shoes, all the while begging me to stop telling of - believe this - being intimate with women that didn't shave their legs or armpits.

Thought I'd include a short parody of the climb written in haste to quell calls from a couple friends for a TR. The lack of seriousness of the piece just pissed 'em off. Day One: Drive together in Climblight's beautiful new truck from Bellingham, WA to Bluff Lake. I soil the upholstery of the truck's seats due to gastronomic distress caused by fear of the impending climb. Clean up mess with Climblight's balaclava and stuff it back in his pack before he notices. Use jet fuel from White Saddle Air to cut resultant grime from my hands. Day Two: Fly in to Waddingtons by helicopter. Different seats, same mess, same cause, same remedy. Drink beer at basecamp... lots o' beer... 'till we're singing Tony Orlando and Dawn songs. Fall asleep, CL with his balaclava on. I awake to screams. CL is waving his arms and garbling in tongues during an obvious nightmare. I catch a few intelligible phrases amidst the blathered syllables to discern his hellish stupored scenario of drowning in a cesspool. Convicted in my heart of the invisible stains on the dark balaclava, I wake him from his torment with a well-aimed rock. THUNK! CL: "WTF!!!" DeC: "it was just rockfall, man... go back to sleep." CL takes a few moments to enjoy the "pretty colors" he's seeing due to the concussive blow to his head; he thinks they're Aurora Borealis. CL: "DeC! Look at the freakin' awesome Northern Lights!" DeC: "Yeah, uh, great." Day Three: Start away from BC at 3:00AM. CL complains of a rat shitting in his mouth while he slept to explain the foul vapors emitted through the balaclava. I tell him it's just beer breath... admittedly, wholly noxious beer breath. CL kicks my ass climbing. We establish advanced camp on the Asperity/Serra V Col. Day Four: CL kicks my ass climbing. Summit Serra V. Find summit registry. No pencil. I suggest to CL he use the pencil in his pants. CL: "Fuck Off!" Dec: "Hey man, easy on the umbrage. It's just that your wife told me, before we left, that you had a pencil in your pants." CL inexplicably attacks me with his axes. We fence for hours, up and down, back and across the bouldered summit of the lonely spire through hail and sleet and howling winds (aforementioned gastro distress), the clash of axes sending sparks as though the summit were a cheap, though gigantic, firework. We finally tire, forget what we were fighting about, and begin the rappell and downclimbing 300m descent to ABC. That evening, CL has an epiphany on the source of his balaclava's stench. We finish eating dinner, the usual alpinist fare of tasteless gack, and bed down for the night. CL returns my ritual extension of "goodnight" with his own, but through sneered lips and narrowed eyes. I awake, motionless, to the sound of rustling nylon fabric. From the corner of my eye, I see CL exiting his sleeping bag and discern malevolence in his person. Within the confines of the tent, CL rises to a squatting position and begins to turn with the aim to position his ass over my head. Fully aware of his intentions, I take a gamble. As he turns, while grasping the still raised waist of his polypro pants, I bellow a gargoyle roar. The combination of CL's surprise and loss of sphincter control due to aging deposits CL's large lamentable load fully in his knickers. We exit the tent, take up axes, and once again resume the life and death battle I thought we had left up on the summit. We parried till the morn’s first light. Day Five: Five 60m rappels and crevasse elusion to a mind and body numbing quarter mile traverse across an ice slope that varied 45 to 50 degrees. Unroped, CL and I swung axes and kicked crampon teeth into the unconsolidated, wet, crumbling ice, seemingly interminably; CL kicked my ass at this, too. Halfway across the slope, after seeing a flash of CL's arm from the corner of my eye, a heavy avalanche flew past me to fall 400m over the precipice to the hungry maws of the gaping crevasses below. The flush missed me by four feet. I turned to look at CL as his face turned away; was that disappointment I saw written upon his now obscured gaze? And why was he wiping dirt and rock chips from his throwing hand? CL arrived at an impossibly suspended aerie named Carl's Camp thirty minutes before me. As I arrived, CL greeted me with a proposal. CL: "Thought we'd bivy here and let the snow firm up overnight. It'd make the rest of the descent easier. Besides, have you ever seen a better view from a bivy in all your life?" I couldn't argue that. Our position left one feeling suspended in mid-air, as if the subject of a Maxfield Parrish painting, in the middle of a great alpine rock cirque. The exhilarating power of serac-fall and rock-fall thundered around us; this secure location would allow concern-free enjoyment - but suspicions of ulterior motives by CL haunted me. Would he try to pitch me over the edge as I slept cocooned in my bag? Would he attempt to drive a snow stake through my heart? There were any number of villainous deeds he might try whilst I slumbered. He was right, though; in the warm late afternoon, wet snow avalanches and rock-fall would have constantly born down on us if we attempted to descend the next leg of our journey: the 800m Carl’s Couloir. I assented to the choice to bivouac. The sun went down, we bedded down, but I tried to keep my eyelids up... to no avail. I was plain knackered from the arduous traverse and a strange warmth emanated from a rock below my supine neck that seemed to massage my spent muscles. My nose twitched at the unwelcome scent of what I thought was the balaclava. But, that couldn't be the origin of this new and potent offensive olfactory assault: I had watched earlier in the day as CL had dropped his gastro-greased garment into a huge crevasse. Horror! I now realized CL must have shit a large, partially decomposed animal under my rock-paved bivy-platform minutes before I arrived. I was laying square atop MT. CLPoopPile. I accepted my fate and succumbed to the clutches of sleep while in his sleeping bag CL quietly snickered. Day Six: I awake to a beautiful dawn. My acceptance of CL's retribution is complete. CL shrugs off his slumber, rolls in his bag, and meets my gaze with his smug facial declaration of triumph. His only comment, "An eye for an eye and a poop for a poop." I smile and nod in agreement and relief. The battle is over. We break camp and make twelve 60m rappells, from snow bollards, v-threads, and rock horns, to the valley glacier and the waiting helicopter below.

Gots to have good tunes(Soft Machine, Blues Magoos, Hendrix), hot drinks, and OH(!)... ...don't forget the contraband with which to bribe the border guards! Although, a flash of spectacular thigh will sometimes do the trick.

I tink dem broads got big heads ober dare.

"Colder than a welldigger's ass" "Tighter than Dick's hatband" (a euphemism for tighter than a condom) "Tighter than the bark on a tree" "Like a cheap hotel"... (when wearing pants too tight in the crotch ...no ballroom) "Hotter than the hubs of Hell" "More nervous than a cat in a rockin' chair store" Dumber than a sack of hammers" "Like fuckin' a gunny sack full of antlers" (skinny woman) "That went over like a fart in church"

Come on, Slothy, be sensitive. No need to publicly bring attention to painfull hemorrhoids.

Some dive joint in Neuchatel, Switzerland, 1971.

The same process works using a neighbor's child dressed in pile.

Harry Pi, you are a courageous person. It's not that I disagree with your post. I want to express my admiration for a person that has the fortitude to continue to express their opinion while carrying the weight of a moniker that is a crude euphemism for female genitalia.

"Democrat? Republican? Nawwwww, I'm a pedestrian!" Curly Howard

I dated a dwarf woman for a time. I was nuts over her.