Friday Ephemera
“I’m a vegetarian. It was self-defence.” // Fun with projection mapping. // Pause. (h/t, Damian) // AI attempts portraiture, does pretty well. // Peacock in a liquor store. // “A scientific meta-analysis of whisky flavours and quality.” // Rejection. // Undulations. // Most hated online advertising. // A burglar’s mishap. (h/t, Obo.) // Meanwhile, in Mozambique. // Always respect the media. // Museum of Teletext. // Multi-pass. // Inner peace. // Irony. // These ladies go hardcore. (h/t, dicentra) // I hope they don’t screw this up with identity politics. // Initiative. // Bookshop of note. // How British teachers voted. // Today’s word is touché. // And finally, “Sadomasochist swingers club with a dungeon and torture chamber has been shut down over health and safety concerns.”
Walt Disney and the Bambi story writers have a lot to answer for.
So change writers. Nice music there . . .
Summer is here and a lot of people who have no outdoor skills will be heading to camp grounds with the belief they or their kids can just wander off for a quick ‘walk in the woods’ and never worry about getting lost.
Do not get me started. I’ve often thought of writing a book chronicling the goofy crap I’ve seen people do in the wilderness. I usually keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to be “that guy,” but Jeeze Louise in a chicken basket, people are morons.
Do not get me started
Heh.
One of the attorneys I used to work with has been part of the volunteer Search & Rescue and has told me of all the times getting called out into the local mountains of SoCal for people who have gone off-trail cuz like what could happen?
Do not get me started
It’s not just the people who suffer, either. I hike a lot geocaching and even when my dog isn’t with me I’ve taken to carrying her water bottle/bowl. Can’t count the number of people I’ve run into on the trail with dogs in various stages of collapse because their humans didn’t think to bring water for either of them.
One of the attorneys I used to work with has been part of the volunteer Search & Rescue…
My thing is proper footwear. When my kids were growing up, it got to the point where they would make post-hike comments about idiotic shoe choices of people they’d seen. My absolute favorite was the weeping foreign lady whom I could not make understand that the reason she wasn’t doing well on the ledge overlooking Zion Canyon was the 4 inch heeled pumps she decided were appropriate for the day’s activities.
Then there was the couple in April at Chiricahua N.M. in SE Arizona who thought an eight-mile point to point wearing flip-flops and carrying a single 20 oz. Diet Pepsi for hydration was a solid plan.
See? You got me started. I hate it when you make me do that . . .
Here in the States, we have idiots who hand-feed deer. Every year a few of those idiots are beaten up by grumpy bucks when rutting season arrives. A deer is a large animal! Wouldn’t you think even the most stupid would keep a respectful distance?
Hiking out of Grand Canyon late one afternoon (Bright Angel trail above Indian Gardens), I called up to my wife to ask if she wanted a cookie. Guy in front of me whips around and says “I’ll give you $20 for that.”
By the time I reached the rim (after sunset), I’d given away ALL my food, water, and extra flashlights. People were still straggling (struggling?) out two hours later, in pitch dark.
Oh, that Death’s Head sign 10 yards into the trail starting down? The one that says “You can DIE if you don’t have X, Y, Z basic supplies”? That sign?
Purely decorative, apparently.
Same thing with the sign on the trail to Nevada and Vernal Falls in Yosemite. The one that says “X people slipped and died here in the last 5 years when they went off-trail”. (and X is some non-trivial number like 12.)
I must be a rebel then, because I always buy just two more shoes at a time.
“The Vivente private members (Hehe – they wrote, ‘members’!) club in Sunderland has been closed down for not complying with fire regulations.”
I’m surprised that all the friction going on at these types of places doesn’t cause more fires than currently.
Could this have been forseen?
ideal number of guitars …
I had a friend who followed a different rule: Buy two. Of everything.
Except, apparently: guitars, pointy-toe boots, and crowbars.
I went to him to borrow a crowbar one day, and he grandly waved at the collection in his shed, which ranged from teaspoon-size up to a 2-meter breaking bar (which was just what I wanted that day).
His guitars had their own room in the house. Their own, except for the rows of boots.
Great guy, all in all.
@Fred IV
Last summer, the lovely wife and I did three weeks in Yellowstone and the Tetons, which we visit every four or five years. We were there a week after some idiot decided to get a close up look at a thermal feature, fell in and dissolved in the boiling, highly acidic water. Signs and stories were everywhere in the park, including the front page of the park newspaper everybody gets when they come in. STILL people insisted upon wandering off piste for giggles.
And then there are the ubiquitous selfie-sticks . . . I watched a bus load of foreign tourists walk around the Norris Basin without once lowering those damn things. Their movie of the vacation of a lifetime is nothing but their face superimposed on the landscape.
the reason she wasn’t doing well on the ledge overlooking Zion Canyon was the 4 inch heeled pumps she decided were appropriate for the day’s activities.
I’ve done that trail barefoot, on account of most of it’s bare sandstone. I also do the last half-mile of Angel’s Landing barefoot to get a better grip on the slickrock. Anyone who’s seen the handrails and chains and the 1500-ft drop-off from that stegosaurus backbone of a hike knows what I’m talking about.
I worked in Zion NP for two summers. We called them “tourons.”
I hate it when you make me do that . . .
Sorry, not sorry. I take a perverse amusement from such stories.
some idiot decided to get a close up look at a thermal feature, fell in and dissolved in the boiling, highly acidic water.
Yep, been there and never once was tempted to get off the clearly marked pathways and defy the clearly readable signs.
I grew up in suburbia, but I also had a hardcore Girl Scout leader who would have made a fair Army DI — she took us 8/9 year olds and started drilling us on healthy respect for wilderness and the rules of how to behave (and survive) while camping. As we got older, it was backpacking. I enjoy the wilderness but I have no more trust in it then I would walking naked in a Chicago neighborhood after dark.
(#2 daughter brought home news that a nurse she used to work with a few years back died of exposure in a National Park last month after getting lost by taking a walk – no water, jacket, etc – outside her campsite NOT on a marked trail)
And yes, I have seen things lots of things in National Parks that convinces me that any EMP event will wipe out 70-80% of people in the first 2 weeks who have no clue how to survive without modernity.
Incidentally, Dave Rubin, the squishy centrist liberal who frets about “structural racism” in the Larry Elder clip upthread, is now being described by Mother Jones as “far right.” Note that Mr Josh Harkinson, the chap who struggles with research and who wonders why someone might object to such wild, possibly libellous, mischaracterisation, is a “senior reporter” at said publication.
Remember, always respect the media.
Dave Rubin, the squishy centrist liberal who frets about “structural racism”…
IS LITERALLY HITLER!
As our host would say, “the tolerant left”…
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/16/this-list-of-attacks-against-conservatives-is-mind-blowing/
Tim Newman on Grenfell Tower saga:
Oh, there’s more.
Fines, jail, and/or mandatory regrooving in Canada if one fails to use the proper pronoun.
How one is supposed to know what the proper pronoun to use when meeting someone is not explained, perhaps bits of colored cloth sewn onto ones clothing to indicate which.
Of course Little Potato seals it with a hashtag.
#MiniluvisMiniluv
R Sherman
More goofy stuff
People have always underestimated the wilderness, the sea, etc. Granted it’s fiction, but Jack London wrote of such people in Call of the Wild. Some such people survive and are hailed as great adventurers. Is anyone ever truly prepared to climb Everest? Then along comes a Timothy Treadwell to give us a few laughs at his and his girlfriend ‘s expense. Cest la vie.
The P.T. Barnhum Award goes to Montreal’s own James Turner for founding Montreal’s first adult day care.
I’m so old I can remember people blowing off stress by playing sportsball and other physical activities, or even taking up some kind of hobby.
Because he invites all sorts of people to his show, many of whom espouse right-of-center or libertarian views, and doesn’t verbally assault them, he’s “to the right of Breitbart”.
And he doesn’t like confiscatory taxes.
SEIZE HIM! BURN THE HERETIC!!!
he invites all sorts of people to his show… and doesn’t verbally assault them
He’s part of “the new extremist media,” apparently.
Who said 8 years old was too young to be a superstar!!!!!
Montreal’s Drag Superstar Lactatia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7T6qU16fT4
Does anyone think this isn’t wrong?
Montreal’s Drag Superstar Lactatia
I’ve read about him before. Child abuse.
@Darleen
They were, it’s safe to say, rather unprepared.
What bugs me is that it’s those people who are responsible for the ever-increasing restrictions placed on the rest of us who are responsible adults, good stewards of our natural resources and simply want to enjoy the outdoors in peace and quiet. My inner libertarian believes that anybody should be able to venture off into the public wilds without interference, but sometimes, I think one should have to pass a test about rudimentary preparation and wilderness-craft before being allowed more than 50 meters off the highway.
Surely when meeting someone one says “You”? The special forms of address are supposed to come out when the bizarro-noble is no longer around.
How to start a conversation with a stranger at a party (From RAH’s “Glory Road”):
“Self,” she announced.
“Speak”
“Sverlani. Student food designer. Mathematico-sybaritic.”
“Oscar Gordon. Soldier.”
“Questions?”
“Ask.”
“Is sword?”
“Is.”
She looked at it and her pupils dilated. “Is-was sword destroy construct guard egg?”
“Was-is,” I agreed.
She gave a little gasp and her nipples stood up.
The fun at the Evergreen State College just won’t end.
Rule 12 of the Velominati:
On Mother Jones: this is the publication edited by someone who thought the UK general election was run under a totally new system.
On Mother Jones: this is the publication edited by someone who thought the UK general election was run under a totally new system.
Heh. As someone quips in the subsequent thread, journalism is a field in which blunders, incompetence, and even outright repeated lying, has remarkably little effect on whether or not you remain employed.
“Sadomasochist swingers club with a dungeon and torture chamber has been shut down over health and safety concerns.”
Somewhat Related.
(via Iowahawk)
As someone quips in the subsequent thread, journalism is a field in which blunders, incompetence, and even outright repeated lying, has remarkably little effect on whether or not you remain employed.
Entirely unrelated: what’s Robert Fisk doing these days?
Headline of Note.