The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/04/crazy-ukrainian-urban-climber-hasnt-died-yet-somehow/8826/

Breaking all expectations from his previous stunts – like hanging from insanely high places with only two fingers – the mad urban climber "Mustang Wanted" remains alive. New footage shows him dangling a lady off a building so tall the cars below look like grains of rice. (Note to parents: This is how modern-day youth "flirts.")

And that's only the first few seconds. "Mustang," who's in his 20s and lives in Ukraine, has been quite busy. This compilation of his latest pants-moistening feats includes skateboarding inches away from a building's edge, tiptoeing along a narrow construction crane, and doing one-handed pull-ups from an antenna located somewhere in the stratosphere. He's added a new level of surrealism in that many of these performances are executed in freezing, snow-covered settings, and for some reason he insists on wearing just underpants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpS7vhvkIQM


I get vertigo just looking at this. 

[Grey Fox]

GoPros are one of the greatest product and one of the worse of the early 21st century.

[mongers]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/04/crazy-ukrainian-urban-climber-hasnt-died-yet-somehow/8826/

Breaking all expectations from his previous stunts – like hanging from insanely high places with only two fingers – the mad urban climber "Mustang Wanted" remains alive. New footage shows him dangling a lady off a building so tall the cars below look like grains of rice. (Note to parents: This is how modern-day youth "flirts.")

And that's only the first few seconds. "Mustang," who's in his 20s and lives in Ukraine, has been quite busy. This compilation of his latest pants-moistening feats includes skateboarding inches away from a building's edge, tiptoeing along a narrow construction crane, and doing one-handed pull-ups from an antenna located somewhere in the stratosphere. He's added a new level of surrealism in that many of these performances are executed in freezing, snow-covered settings, and for some reason he insists on wearing just underpants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpS7vhvkIQM


I get vertigo just looking at this. 

Yeah, A few months back I saw documentary about him and less talented climbers, I'd assumed he'd be dead within a a couple of months.

[Malthus]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/04/crazy-ukrainian-urban-climber-hasnt-died-yet-somehow/8826/

Breaking all expectations from his previous stunts – like hanging from insanely high places with only two fingers – the mad urban climber "Mustang Wanted" remains alive. New footage shows him dangling a lady off a building so tall the cars below look like grains of rice. (Note to parents: This is how modern-day youth "flirts.")

And that's only the first few seconds. "Mustang," who's in his 20s and lives in Ukraine, has been quite busy. This compilation of his latest pants-moistening feats includes skateboarding inches away from a building's edge, tiptoeing along a narrow construction crane, and doing one-handed pull-ups from an antenna located somewhere in the stratosphere. He's added a new level of surrealism in that many of these performances are executed in freezing, snow-covered settings, and for some reason he insists on wearing just underpants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpS7vhvkIQM


I get vertigo just looking at this. 

Yeah, A few months back I saw documentary about him and less talented climbers, I'd assumed he'd be dead within a a couple of months.

Watch him get killed by tripping over his cat and breaking his neck on his own kitchen floor ... 

[mongers]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/04/crazy-ukrainian-urban-climber-hasnt-died-yet-somehow/8826/

Breaking all expectations from his previous stunts – like hanging from insanely high places with only two fingers – the mad urban climber "Mustang Wanted" remains alive. New footage shows him dangling a lady off a building so tall the cars below look like grains of rice. (Note to parents: This is how modern-day youth "flirts.")

And that's only the first few seconds. "Mustang," who's in his 20s and lives in Ukraine, has been quite busy. This compilation of his latest pants-moistening feats includes skateboarding inches away from a building's edge, tiptoeing along a narrow construction crane, and doing one-handed pull-ups from an antenna located somewhere in the stratosphere. He's added a new level of surrealism in that many of these performances are executed in freezing, snow-covered settings, and for some reason he insists on wearing just underpants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpS7vhvkIQM


I get vertigo just looking at this. 

Yeah, A few months back I saw documentary about him and less talented climbers, I'd assumed he'd be dead within a a couple of months.

Watch him get killed by tripping over his cat and breaking his neck on his own kitchen floor ... 

Yes home are clearly hazardous places, unlike hundreds of metre high crumpling, rusting pieces of old soviet infrastructure. 

[Admiral Yi]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/04/crazy-ukrainian-urban-climber-hasnt-died-yet-somehow/8826/

Breaking all expectations from his previous stunts – like hanging from insanely high places with only two fingers – the mad urban climber "Mustang Wanted" remains alive. New footage shows him dangling a lady off a building so tall the cars below look like grains of rice. (Note to parents: This is how modern-day youth "flirts.")

And that's only the first few seconds. "Mustang," who's in his 20s and lives in Ukraine, has been quite busy. This compilation of his latest pants-moistening feats includes skateboarding inches away from a building's edge, tiptoeing along a narrow construction crane, and doing one-handed pull-ups from an antenna located somewhere in the stratosphere. He's added a new level of surrealism in that many of these performances are executed in freezing, snow-covered settings, and for some reason he insists on wearing just underpants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpS7vhvkIQM


I get vertigo just looking at this. 

Yeah, A few months back I saw documentary about him and less talented climbers, I'd assumed he'd be dead within a a couple of months.

Watch him get killed by tripping over his cat and breaking his neck on his own kitchen floor ... 

Yes home are clearly hazardous places, unlike hundreds of metre high crumpling, rusting pieces of old soviet infrastructure. 

[MadImmortalMan]

Oregon pt 2:

We left Bend headed north, passing into the upper Deschutes River area. This is on the east side of the Cascades, and it's way drier than you think of the Pacific Northwest. It looks like the Reno area, actually. I think the closest thing that it reminds me of in terms of the landscape is the upper Zambezi basin in Africa. Except no lions or giraffes. The river cuts big cracks and cliffsides like the ones that created Victoria Falls. There are a number of reservoirs that create power for Portland, two for power and one that just regulates the flow of the river before it gets south to Bend. Lots of cattle ranches here and some indian casinos in the Warm Springs area. You can see Mt. Hood on the western horizon all the time. I think it might be visible from like half the state, it's such a dominant part of the view. We headed directly for it.

Once you get to the mountains, it's very different. The trees here are way bigger than anywhere we saw previously, and that's saying something. Enough tall masts to make a million ships for her majesty's admiralty. Deliberately deforesting Oregon would be damn near impossible. Easier to build a Death Star. The climate changed too. It went from the veldt to the jungle in an instant. Now we're in the real PNW.

I seem to have connected dryness with cleanliness, living where I do for so long. When I go places like this, I get this strange feeling that everything around me is rotting away. Wetness lingers instead of quickly evaporating. Things actually have mold on them. You can feel it on your skin and in your breath. It's tough to get used to that.

So we came in to Portland and decided we weren't going to take the loop into Washington, but go right downtown for lunch because why the hell not. That's where I saw the guy with the purple panties and elf ears at the taco stand. We went up to the lounge on the 30th floor of the US Bancorp building and sat listening to a half-blind piano player while we had a great view of the Willamette below.

Then we left, crossed the Columbia, speed limits returned to sane levels and that was Oregon. we'll see her again this weekend on the way home.

[MadImmortalMan]

Oh and I forgot Bend itself--That place is a beer heaven. Four breweries within walking distance of our hotel and one of those is Deschutes. And that's only some of what they have. The city is small. Like 70k or something. I think a lot of hops are grown up here.

[mongers]

Oregon pt 2:

We left Bend headed north, passing into the upper Deschutes River area. This is on the east side of the Cascades, and it's way drier than you think of the Pacific Northwest. It looks like the Reno area, actually. I think the closest thing that it reminds me of in terms of the landscape is the upper Zambezi basin in Africa. Except no lions or giraffes. The river cuts big cracks and cliffsides like the ones that created Victoria Falls. There are a number of reservoirs that create power for Portland, two for power and one that just regulates the flow of the river before it gets south to Bend. Lots of cattle ranches here and some indian casinos in the Warm Springs area. You can see Mt. Hood on the western horizon all the time. I think it might be visible from like half the state, it's such a dominant part of the view. We headed directly for it.

Once you get to the mountains, it's very different. The trees here are way bigger than anywhere we saw previously, and that's saying something. Enough tall masts to make a million ships for her majesty's admiralty. Deliberately deforesting Oregon would be damn near impossible. Easier to build a Death Star. The climate changed too. It went from the veldt to the jungle in an instant. Now we're in the real PNW.

I seem to have connected dryness with cleanliness, living where I do for so long. When I go places like this, I get this strange feeling that everything around me is rotting away. Wetness lingers instead of quickly evaporating. Things actually have mold on them. You can feel it on your skin and in your breath. It's tough to get used to that.

So we came in to Portland and decided we weren't going to take the loop into Washington, but go right downtown for lunch because why the hell not. That's where I saw the guy with the purple panties and elf ears at the taco stand. We went up to the lounge on the 30th floor of the US Bancorp building and sat listening to a half-blind piano player while we had a great view of the Willamette below.

Then we left, crossed the Columbia, speed limits returned to sane levels and that was Oregon. we'll see her again this weekend on the way home.

Sounds like fun and awesome scenery MiM.   

And you've a nice way of describing them too.


I'm the reverse, I love the smell and sensation of decay in forest; apparently a far amount of these smells are complex hydrocarbons and things like formaldehyde, so whilst 'natural' there not necessarily good for you.

It sets me on edge, somewhat feaks me out if things are too dry around here, couple of years back I was doing come camping up on the downs and I had to give up as the dryness was getting to me, we'd had something like 8-10weeks with any real rain and it was like the countryside was on the verge of catching fire, it was that tinder dry. 

[Tonitrus]

I would chalk it up to acclimation, or some such, having been raised in the Seattle area myself.

For example, yesterday and this morning here in Maryland, the weather was very PNW-like...wet and drizzly, not too rainy, and the air very moist.  Not too cool, and not very hot, a very moderate 50-60 degrees.  Just walking outside and taking in the air would bring about an almost euphoric exhilaration of the familiarity of my "home" climate.  An instant lifting to my mood, despite what to many would seem grey and dreary.

Dry places, to me, always seem very dusty and gritty, the opposite of that cleanliness that MiM described.  While the PNW feels like the air is alive with life and refreshment.  But rarely ever so hot (unlike here in Maryland) so as to be stifling and debilitating.

[mongers]

I would chalk it up to acclimation, or some such, having been raised in the Seattle area myself.

For example, yesterday and this morning here in Maryland, the weather was very PNW-like...wet and drizzly, not too rainy, and the air very moist.  Not too cool, and not very hot, a very moderate 50-60 degrees.  Just walking outside and taking in the air would bring about an almost euphoric exhilaration of the familiarity of my "home" climate.  An instant lifting to my mood, despite what to many would seem grey and dreary.

Dry places, to me, always seem very dusty and gritty, the opposite of that cleanliness that MiM described.  While the PNW feels like the air is alive with life and refreshment.  But rarely ever so hot (unlike here in Maryland) so as to be stifling and debilitating.

Sounds a lot like a slightly wetter version of this bit of England or Exactly like Wales for that matter. 

[Sheilbh]

The Guardian, Guardianing:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/08/beware-of-cupcake-fascism
'A sickly sweet movement expresses the desire of an infantilised populace to hide from the world while imposing bourgeois values'

Edit:
'If we see the paradigmatic mechanisms of social oppression operative today in the form of a cupcake, then the clue to the overthrowing of these mechanisms exists also in cake, albeit of an entirely different kind. It is precisely in the truly cake-​like, the spongy and the moist and the excessive and the unhealthy.'

I feel that 'if' is doing a lot of work there.

[Tonitrus]

I would chalk it up to acclimation, or some such, having been raised in the Seattle area myself.

For example, yesterday and this morning here in Maryland, the weather was very PNW-like...wet and drizzly, not too rainy, and the air very moist.  Not too cool, and not very hot, a very moderate 50-60 degrees.  Just walking outside and taking in the air would bring about an almost euphoric exhilaration of the familiarity of my "home" climate.  An instant lifting to my mood, despite what to many would seem grey and dreary.

Dry places, to me, always seem very dusty and gritty, the opposite of that cleanliness that MiM described.  While the PNW feels like the air is alive with life and refreshment.  But rarely ever so hot (unlike here in Maryland) so as to be stifling and debilitating.

Sounds a lot like a slightly wetter version of this bit of England or Exactly like Wales for that matter. 

I rather liked Wales when I was visiting there some 20 years ago. 

[mongers]

.....
I rather liked Wales when I was visiting there some 20 years ago. 

Yes, I was rather found of the place when I lived there for a few years. 

[MadImmortalMan]

If I lived in Oregon, I'd have to put off my retirement for 8-12 years. 

I guess that ten percent income tax really adds up in the out years with compounding. Maybe I should live on the border in Idaho or Nevada and do my shopping in Oregon where there are no sales taxes.