To be a mountaineer...

When performing a quick google search for "Jon Krakauer" just to check the spelling on accounta a previous blog entry, I saw the first line about him on Wikipedia and it read, "Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer..." and I thought to myself: Wow. A mountaineer. it'd be so bad-ass to have that at the top of your resumé. I mean, you could have the lamest job in existance, but tag "mountaineer" to it and you'd be the bees' knees to just about anybody. Imagine if you were Mr. H. Smith, chartered accountant of Stanford, Massachusets. Dull as your unkept silver cutlery, right? But Mr. H. Smith, chartered accountant and fully qualified mountaineer... woo! Sign me up! But now I feel like I'm walking into and episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, so let's change directions ever so slightly.



After chartered accountant mountaineers, I wondered, what could be an even less respectable, more unexpected career pairing? I then thought: prostitute-mountaineer! That'd be a sight to see! The Swiss would surely dig it.



Desperately trying to find a way to tack this on to my own resumé in a relavent manner, I realized, "Hey. I've climbed mountains before. Loads. Fuck, I've even climbed an Alp!" Then I wondered, How did this Krakauer character get "mountaineer" tacked onto his name? Okay, he did climb Mt. Everest and wrote a book about it. It's called "Into Thin Air" and I read it* a number of years ago. It's hard work, that, even if you've got all your Sherpas and gear and oxygen. But wouldn't a ton of people like him (including myself) climb such ominous precipices as that if allotted the time and vast sums of money? How high does the peak have to be in order for you to achieve such a level of coolness? I'll continue to remain bemused about this injustice until I come to the bottom of it. The bottom being the end of this blog post.

*read: listened to it on tape

EDA: omg. this must be set on US time because I wrote the post about the Dom last night and this one this morning; not each on Sept 1. even though it doesn't say, I have written a post for Sept 2.

More on Heidy

I don't know how many of you are berrated for your system of beliefs on an almost daily basis, but coming from someone who is, it's not great. Okay, normally I don't really care because half of the people are doing it half-jokingly, and I can laugh it off. But still, I'm generally not respected for how I choose to consume both for my nutrition and my generally way of living. It was so refreshing to meet with a bunch of kids who share the same beliefs as myself. We talked about how we cope with others' assaults, vegan things that we enjoy, animal rights, and the lot. Sure, I get this through my vegan internet forum, but I learned that it isn't nearly so satisfying as it is in person. Thank you, new vegan friends, for caring.

A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama made a brilliant speech the other day about race in America. Not the presidential competition kind, but that to do with the colour that Americans have been struggling to gain moral footing over for the past two centuries. The media and the American people have been wondering how much race would come into play in this election and I'm quite pleased that the man himself was first to take the stage in a statement that clarified our best and worst thoughts that all Americans, like it or not, maintain about the colour of each others' skin.

In case you didn't know, Obama was prompted to take this stand after his preacher made a televised sermon damning America for its narrow views of the races held within.

Here's Obama's writted speech as well as CNN's recording of it from Obama's website. With this speech I do see a chance for change.

Meat is for "Pistachios"

A friend of mine posted this rant on his myspace. He's this big tough guy with a strong New Jersey trash accent. Don't read this aloud to your children, but please do to yourself. It took me about 5 minutes.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=37405634&blogID=366243569

Dear New Yorker....

I used to fancy you to be an impressive literary magazine. You used to have provocative, interesting short stories and poetry. I thought that I'd struck a gold mine when I discovered that I could read most any published story for free online; you even offered a printable format! But now that I've given a thorough investigation of your recent publications, I've been thoroughly disappointed. Every short fiction is another disastrous relationship story and your poetry more often than not tends to fall into the "contemporary bull shit" category. Your closed-minded, right-winged leftist view on current politics also fails to interest me. Was I too young when last I loyally read that I was engulfed upon your snobbery?

Let me know if this works for you, dear reader:

The Star Market
by Marie Howe

The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday.
An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout
breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.

Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and
hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:
shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if the Star Market

had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in
with the rest of them—sour milk, bad meat—
looking for cereal and spring water.

Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car
in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have
been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept

out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands
and knees begging for mercy.

If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought,
could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?
(The New Yorker 1/14/2008)

Bored!

How on earth do you city-people live? I much prefer the small-town life where you can just take a stroll "downtown" and BOOM you meet someone and who knows, you might go climbing on rocks or in caves the rest of the afternoon. But in the city, what can you do? Go for a coffee and get your kicks from flirting with the bartender? Go for a walk 'round the park? And for all of this you have to get dressed. It's far too much formula for me. I'd rather run around the woods and spend the rest of the evening with my DVDs and soy ice cream, please.

Subtle Humour

I'm not entirely sure what kind of person it makes you when you find some lines such as this amusing: "Stephen shook his head and smiled in his rival's flushed and mobile face, beaked like a bird's. He had often thought it strange that Vincent Heron had a bird's face as well as a bird's name." (Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916). I'll be reading on the bus and, straight-faced, in between rushed stops and bumps on the road, carefully write a little note in the margine: "Ha."

How far has your sense of humour flown out window when you laugh aloud at a close up of a Dalmatian mouse on the floor of the Tenenbaum household? It's hilarious because Chas Tenenbaum invented them when he was a kid and they're still around! Get it? Ho ho ho! It's funny, right?

Save for the French. I don't really take to their love of puns.


I do respect their efforts, however, to make us take pause before the punch. Too often are we fed our humour. I'm sick of laugh tracks on the latest ABC citcom, the amazed gaffaw at the perverse stand-up commedian. No, I've got too much class. Let's all have a good chuckle now at one of my favorite kings of comedy....
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
(Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, ii)