"You've lost that lovin' feelin'"
Nothing like climbing in the sun for a couple of days after busting my ass for weeks. 50 degree weather, a little breeze – perfect to climb in the sun, lizard-mode instead of vampire-mode like we usually do. At one of the best crags in CA, and no one around but us. Dogs get to run around off-leash, lake below us, no bozos in the parking lot, frost on the sleeping bag.
OK, I didn’t send the proj and I might have gotten a little toe-PO. The light for pix was not good enough to bother — meaning it was too darn nice! No clouds, so no sunsets. Bad weather makes for good pix. But it’s all good. I didn’t die on the way home.
There’s a lot to be said for living in CA. Watch the weather, watch the ski reports. If it’s sunny and warm, head out for climbing. If it’s cold and stormy, go ski freshies. If you can’t get away for enough time for the two-to-five hour drive to (choose your favorite place), then the local places are less than an hour away.
Some people might go to the beach. You could do that too, I guess.
You can now be strip-searched for any offense, however minor. Unpaid ticket, misdemeanor off-leash dog, traffic stop. Or maybe it’s just for use at protests. Protest some government policy, get arrested at a demonstration either to make a point, or just because wrong place wrong time, and you get pepper-sprayed, abused, and strip-searched, thrown into jail for some extra-judicial beatings, taserings, and buggery. All pre-trial, much less post-conviction.
Add that to your list of extra-judicial, unofficial, un-appealable, pre-conviction assaults on your inalienable rights. Right up there with being on a no-fly list, pepper spray, Terry stops, frisks, tasering, arbitrary detainments, warrantless taps on your cell phone and email, the choice of sexually explicit pat-downs at the airport or exposure to untested and uncalibrated radiation machines, buggery, and “resisting arrest.”
That’s just if you’re good. If you’re bad, or if someone thinks you’re bad (same thing – see “no trial” above), you can look for extraordinary renditions to a secret Polish prison, or just getting whacked by drone with no trial, warrant, or evidence needed [2].
And you think you live in America…
p.s. The two best quotes from the NYT comments:
“The party of limited government and unlimited government strip searches. Makes total sense!”
–danfromtexas – Arlington, TX
“If Kennedy doesn’t even want to consider “second guessing” what the jailers are doing, then why even have courts at all? Oh, wait- I forgot. He thinks courts are to set health care policy.”
–S.G – Pittsburgh
Or to put it succinctly, you might have the right to be free of the financial imposition of the government mandating that you pay for your healthcare [1], but you do not have the right to be free of the imposition of government demanding you be strip-searched for a traffic stop.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
[1] and not the rest of us, when you show up at the emergency room demanding free care, or go bankrupt.
[2] I didn’t put links for everything, but they’re easy to find.
Tagged another amendment downThis morning a squirrel fell out of the tree exactly in the midst of me and two dogs. We were all surprised enough that he was able to get up and make it up the tree before either of the dogs could grab him. Swish, THUD, about a foot in front of my face, and all four of us were equally surprised.
I’ve seen squirrels fall out of trees three times in the past five years. Never before that. I don’t know if it’s because I have gained some magical squirrel-paralyzing powers – I would have chosen a different mutant super-power, as I can see no way to either monetize this, or use it to take over the world. The squirrels are only lightly stunned, and get up and run away, so it’s not a “get rid of squirrels” kind of pied-piperism (not that I want to, squirrels keep the dogs entertained, and I don’t have a bird feeder, so what do I care what the squirrels do?), nor does it happen at my mental command, so I can’t take out my enemies by having squirrels fall on their heads. Yes, I’ve tried. Even if I were successful, I would think “squirrel falling on head” is only annoying. It is amusing as hell.
I used to be, at worst, neutral towards cats, and there were a few that I liked. Mostly I’m just allergic, so it wasn’t worth it to like cats. But then I moved into my own house, and the cats have:
So I’m out $2000 and I don’t even have a cat.
So coyotes, come and get them. I have no qualms whatsoever about bad things happening to the local cats. And if that’s your cat…
A lot of times climbing is all Type II kind of fun, if not Type III. Only occasionally Type I [1]. Even the sport climbing, just trying to get better. Driving, doing the same climbs, failing on the same stupid dyno every time, having the same conversations with the same people, over and over.
Then you pull out of an overhang onto a sunny steep face, and you feel the sun on your arm, feel your hand on the rock, and there’s just the sheer joy of moving over stone a hundred feet up and only your wits and your strength between you and the air.
Then you remember. That first step, the first moment of the addiction, and why you’ve been doing it all this time, and why nothing else will ever come close.
So now on DVDs, after the unskippable trailers and FBI warnings and ads, I get a spiel from Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, who both shill for just about anything, about how I should donate to help the poor broke Hollywood studios restore all the film that they’ve been treating like crap for the last century, so that the poor Hollywood studios can sell them to me, yet again, on a different format, Blu-ray this time. After they gigged me for the theatre, popcorn, VHS, Netflix, and DVD. I’m supposed to donate on the advice of Clint and Martin so the studios can restore the films that they neglected for the sake of putting out more crap like Fast 5 or rebooting Spiderman or Superman or Metaman yet again, and suing people for downloading films that they won’t make available in any reasonably priced format, in a reasonable time.
Yeah, I don’t think so. Let them eat nitrate.
Tagged film
Types of fun
Three types of fun:
Of course there are other things that are just not fun at all. Type III is still fun, it’s just a weird masochistic sort of fun.
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