ptftw?

The books get better and better. The movies vary wildly in quality, but I thought the most recent one was solid.

And yes, Twilight sucked gigantic amounts of ass. If you have a chance, though, check out Let The Right One In. Awesome swedish vampire movie that does well everything that Twilight does poorly. Very old school vampire stuff that somehow doesn't feel cliched.

And I think such gender alternation looks too forced. I'm tending toward "they" these days, but I don't like it.

Jay

i find it forced as well. the whole thing can be avoided:
"These days, a climber heading off to try 'Incredible Handcrack' is well-advised to rack some Big Bros"

Sort of like how Captain Janeway's preferred to be called 'Captain' - avoiding the whole Sir/Ma'am thing entirely.

And DS9 sucks.

Hey, firstly I never said she was not cool or unattractive, I just implied I wanted to meet her in person before making a comment.
Secondly, I wasn't talking to you (who is no doubt wanting revenge for my brutal cockblocking of the you lady mentioned earlier), I was talking to Tiff, thank you very much.

300th post! WOO!
ptftw?

You don't even bother do you? You can't even gloss the thesis of Messner's article, clearly know nothing about the history of The Grand Wall, have no interest in lifting a finger to do the tiny bit of remedial reading that would be required, but still bust out with a definitive moral judgment.

I really didn't want to get involved in this thread, but I'm really not happy about your casual and ridiculous insult to Perry or your incredible laziness. If you want to have some moral high ground from which to make judgments, then do the goddamn work.

Go read the Messner article and thinking about what exactly it said, where Messner climbed, and what he might've been talking about. Then go read about the FA of The Grand Wall. Then think about the Messner piece again.

Edit to remove a sentence in which I said what I really thought.

If you're reading the thread, does that mean that you like to watch?
Aren't you missing a comma?
Wouldn't there be more wanking in the Navy than in the Army?
Isn't every thread on this site full of wanking?
Is this doing it for you?

I've read it. I wouldn't have spoken about it without reading it.

If you're talking about simple straight lines, then yes, Perry brought the climb more in line with the feature (as opposed to going straight up). However, I still don't see how bolting it did anything but make it convenient. Yes, I know that they didn't have the gear back then, so it was less of a convenience than it would have been today. But still, 11+? Doesn't that get crushed by a lot of non-elite climbers these days?

Hey, I know he did his homework. I know he asked around first. People accepted it. Fine. I just don't think he left any room for a future generation.

Look, we get different things from the Messner article. Sorry about that.

Greg, just to clarify, Perry's layback is not 11+. More like 11a, though I've not been on it.

And I don't think that he really "stole" anything from anyone; hell, there's a 13b slab involved in the free version of Grand Wall, which I'm sure most elite climbers are more concerned with than a fricking bolted wide section.

You seem to have understood that Messner was unhappy about Diretissimas, but that wasn't the key to his complaint. He was unhappy about bolts. Bolts allowed climbs to cut loose from natural features and lines. The politics of the Direttissima matter, but I wouldn't expect anyone without a pretty good grip of mid-century European history to understand them. But Messner's point was that each time you and your post-literate blogging buddy clip a bolt, you are participating in the muder of the impossible.

There is no way to climb something like Grand Wall without violating Messner's strictures. Cooper and Baldwin's bolt ladders had already pretty much realized Messner's worst nightmares. Even if Perry had chopped that bolt ladder instead of moving it over a few feet, there would still remain all those bolted belays, as well as the protection bolts on the most popular approaches. "The Murder of the Impossible" is irrelevant here. Like "The Brotherhood of the Rope," it's just a piece of decorative slang that your blog has draped across that random hash of incoherent ranting.

Look, I don't care that you're a career gumby or that your buddy is writing derivative drivel that can't even get its historical references straight or that you're pimping your blog here. I'm used to the celebration of mediocrity that is old RC. com. I am really tired of the current cultural contempt for competence, and training, and skill, and experience. And yes, it does irritate me to see folks who not only have no craft, but don't even aspire to it or aren't willing even to contemplate the labor it would require to master a craft-- climbing or writing or whatever --to wander around like flaneurs. But I had no intention of commenting on the actual content of the blog until you then used the "ideas" expressed there as a foundation for attacking Perry Beckham.

Perry Beckham has actually mastered a craft. He is one of the most respected professional guides on the West Coast. He's been a top alpinist since the late 1970s. At the time he moved the ladder over to the layback, he was already a solid 5.12 climber and could as easily have led the damn thing with one or two homemade cams. The ladder itself was a rotting mess of corroded and missing studs, plumber's tape, and rusted hangers-- probably A3 if not worse. The "different things" you've taken from Messner, apparently lead you to believe that Perry ought to have erased the Grand Wall entirely. That would be a remarkably pure stance to take. But I don't believe it for a second.

The truth is, you have no frickin idea what you're talking about, you don't even know who Cooper is, you will never so much as see this route unless you hire someone to fix 1500 feet of static line that you can rap, and yet you seem to believe that for some obscure, mysterious reason, you have earned the right to make a judgment. But you haven't. You don't have an informed opinion. And you are apparently incapable or unwilling to put in the work that would be necessary to make an informed judgment.

...there are a lot of things in this world where people make judgments without mastering that subject. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. Sometimes the brightest and best people fuck up. They aren't perfect. Sometimes they need gumbies mired in mediocrity like me to say stupid things to get them beyond the crux of where they are stuck. I've had people with less knowledge than me correct me, and I've done it to better people, too. It happens.

. . . Why does the lesson from Messner's essay have to be so black and white? Why can't it be more pragmatic? I just don't see why a message has to be read and applied to the letter. OK, so is it my interpretation? Yes. Does that hold as much weight as Messner's literal message? Of course not. Does that mean my interpretation means zilch?

If you only listened to the elite then you'd be eating out of a spoon

Look, there are a lot of things in this world where people make judgments without mastering that subject. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. Sometimes the brightest and best people fuck up. They aren't perfect. Sometimes they need gumbies mired in mediocrity like me to say stupid things to get them beyond the crux of where they are stuck. I've had people with less knowledge than me correct me, and I've done it to better people, too. It happens.

klk- i'm sorry that we don't agree. i'm ok with that. i'm sorry that you're not.

What are you referring to? Did I miss something?

the modern usage gender neutral form of the word "brotherhood" would be fellowship. i understand that the root word is still "fellow," but still; fellowship is a far more amiable word.