Category Archives: Climbing Info

Laurie and Alex still at the Red

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I can't take pictures, so I take melodramatic close-ups and pretend they're artistic.

Today was a good today, and not just because we had the opportunity to rescue gear for hot straight boys.

We saw an area while hiking around that wasn’t in a guide book yet, and I managed to talk Laurie into it, so we just meandered on over and started climbing routes and the grades were whatever we decided they were.

The Red hasn’t changed much.  It’s still the place where all the men are ripped as shit, even the ones showing up with gear that arrived in the mail yesterday and who are struggling up the 5.7s.  The whole place oozes sex.  It’s the kind of place that gay men would be embarrassed about, but straight people don’t seem to have any sense of shame about what feels like a bathhouse for straight people.  But let’s face it, that’s what it is.  Everyone fucks as many people as possible.  And if that’s not what you’re doing, it’s because you’re not making enough trips to the beer trailer, or you’re not paying attention.  It’s the only place where I’ve heard someone say $2.50 for a PBR was “expensive”.

Homos don’t yet have a really homo climbing campground, but it wouldn’t have the same je ne sais quoi; homos get all shamey about fitting the slut stereotype, unlike the straight whores who would probably just take pride about how glow-y the campground showers would get if exposed to a black-light.

Favorite quote from last season: “I fucked this chick who was on her period, it was like a ketchup bottle,” (squeezing motion) “pfffffbbbbt.”

Laurie testing for parasites

So me and Laurie went climbing and there wasn’t a whole lot noteworthy other than that I rope-gunned all day, rescued the cute straight boys’ gear, and praised baby Jesus that I had brought my aviators so I could check out the view without looking pervy.

We forgot to take photos before we got to the parking lot. But we totally sent the shit outta some shit. Trust us.

The Red makes me feel a little bit like a fake person. Some kind of carapace.  I remind myself that like the people on my ultimate frisbee team in high school, there’s no point in trying to impress them because I ain’t gonna see none these motherfuckers in ten years, and most of them will have stopped climbing by then and be fat and drink a lot of beer and eat chew and replay things they’ve already seen on the DVR.

Or they’ll be late thirty something health nuts getting botox injections, which is probably more depressing.  I’m not sure where I’ll be, but if I’m lucky, I’ll be dead from some motorcycle collision or bizarre sex act (regular readers will know that I refer to this as “going out David Carradine style”).

But maybe that’s the problem, the hollow “this isn’t going anywhere” feeling of transient relationships with transient people.

Laurie is doing something at the campground table that I don’t understand, but it involves large schematics, and making corrections to large schematics to a marker, to make sure that large steam plants don’t explode and kill tons of people.  It reminds me of putting together a criminal defense trial in my underpants.  Although her work is slightly more important because mine doesn’t prevent a fiery flesh-melting doom for hundreds of people.  She smashes a bug on the schematic.

“What are the cloudy lines?”

“It means everything inside the cloudy line has changed.  But this is…” she crosses out more things.

 

 

Laurie and Alex on the way to Kentucky

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image

Laurie and i are on the way to the red.

We’ve already listened to alanis morisette’s version of “crazy” ten times, so we’re figuring out what to do with the next four hours. Scheduled arrival time: 3 am.

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We ate at bojangles in a small georgia town, and the gay shift manager gave us extra chicken.

“Because gays like chicken.” -Laurie

Coco rosie seems to coalesce with the dashed highway lines.

“How is knoxville still 52 miles away? That is ridiculous.” -Laurie

Me and Laurie have been debating which motorcycle she should buy, and I’m trying to talk her out of the Ninja 250. Also we’re happy that we have a reason to wear skin tight leather pants outside of san francisco.

Laurie mentions in passing that we’ve been climbing together for three years, and suddenly i think to myself i didnt realize it had been that long, and this makes me happy.

Knoxville is now 40 miles away.

I make a note to text laurie the songs ive played that she liked, so far goldfrapp, the pipettes, and tokyo.

An exit with candy is imminent.

Facebook Event created for the HC Convention

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Queanh: Reason #21 to attend the HC convention.

I am aware this is hardly news, but there’s now a Facebook event page at http://www.facebook.com/events/273880166021303/ .

The main reason this is of interest: You can use it to mass invite all of your homeys to join.  Also you can use the wall to express your incomprehensible excitement.  Know of a dreamy sack of potatoes you want to be there?  But don’t want to deal with the potential pain of rejection from asking them on a date?  Send them an invite!  Think your congressperson has a few… “issues” they might be working through?  Invite them too!

My Letter in Support of Rick Santorum

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I wrote a letter supporting Rick Santorum’s campaign today, with the subject line, “Thank you for defending long-standing, conservative values”.  If you care to send your own, their e-mail address is Info@RickSantorum.com.  My letter is copied below.

Dad Rowland: "Just the sweater vests alone is enough for me to hate him."

Dear Future President Rick Santorum,

I just wanted to express to you my sincere appreciation for the values you’ve been so valiantly fighting for.  Your resistance to those who would breach morals that have defined humanity across time is nothing short of impeccable.  I was especially heartened by your recent stance regarding contraception:

“One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is… the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea.” You continued, “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.’ It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

I am totally in agreement with you, as are many of my cohorts.  The great majority of them have never used birth control.  I have never used birth control.  You see, birth control hasn’t been around very long, but most couples before the 1960′s didn’t want to live like the Duggars.  So like me, they did it in a way I like to call “Little House on the Prairie Style”.  Because I’m sure when you decided that you had had enough children, you didn’t go out and buy a separate bed or use any form of birth control.  You stared at those beady little eyes in the mirror, you ripped off that sweater vest, and you decided it was time to start doing it Little House on the Prairie Style.  And I salute you.  I’ve been doing it Little House on the Prairie Style for years now, and I have not had a single abortion yet, even though I’m sure I’ve made enough deposits to stock a sperm bank in Everymanisdeadistan.  I can assure you, my little swimmers aren’t coming close to any eggs.  Well, unless my new holistic health remedy starts selling, Chicken Egg Enemas, which I’m marketing under the very catchy trademark “Chickenemas”.  And if those get anyone pregnant, we’ll end up with a race of Chicken-Human hybrids, which will either quickly dominate and destroy humanity, or they’ll be loving, docile creatures that we can ride like horses, in the way that I always wished I could ride an ostrich as a young boy.  In any event, I’m sure as president the reputation of your name alone will constantly remind the nation of the many options outside of the missionary position that we can explore when contraception is outlawed.

I wish I could offer you more than just my letter of support, like a large campaign donation or CPAC, but the dog got everything in the divorce.  I told the judge that she was just going to use the child support to buy Kibbles n’ Bits while she shacked up with whichever jerk slathered himself in peanut butter.  But you know how judges are these days (probably because almost a fifth of them are women).  I cannot wait until you’re the man appointing them, a man who recognizes that a man should be the head of the household.  Until that order is restored, my mother will continue to decide when the TV is devoted to a five hour NCIS marathon, even after she lied to me and dad and told us she would let us have the remote after White Collar, which is totally unconscionable seeing as how she has them all on the DVR and can watch them whenever she wants to.  Please restore us to the time period when mothers stayed home and hired less white moms to work for them.  I don’t know what the less white moms did.  Never really thought about it.  Just so long as I get the DVR back.

Either we can stop having sex, or you can experience what it feels like when I make an up and down motion with my tongue for about five hours. I'll give you a minute to think about it.

And I fail to ignite a Supertopo flame war

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License and registration, please.

I’m a loser.  On Supertopo, you can ignite flame wars lasting hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of posts long about topics as lame as the Compressor route fiasco, shooting bears, putting lipstick on bears, or having sex with bears, but, I totally failed to get a flame war going when I was trying to start one on purpose, and the subject matter I was dealing with is obviously far more controversial than what constitutes proper bear food (hint: you, unless you’re in a car, or are double wielding .44 magnums).

Subject matter being Homo Climbtastic going to West Virginia in July.  Supertopans primarily live out west, and prefer climbing in bitter, dry, cold areas.  Supertopans fear summer in West Virginia like Star Jones fears Nene Leakes:

Although Star Jones rebukes Nene’s approach to interpersonal conflicts as the product of a lack of education, Star just doesn’t know that Nene is reacting in the same way all of us Atlantans do when encountering manipulative a-holes:  Star: “At least let me know what you’re accusing me of.” Nene: “Shut the fuck up.”

Example: I have a summa cum laude English degree and people are still complaining that I sullied the gays’ relationship with our current governor when I kind of sort of publicly e-mailed him regarding my dissatisfaction with his campaign commercials and the most eruditic treasure from my lexicon was ”big ole wad of donkey cum.”  (At least I can say that out of 1,350,000 results, my “big ole wad of donkey cum” is first on Google.)

Atlanta. Shut the fuck up.

So after failing with Supertopo, I started a forum thread on RealJock.  That probably won’t work either, because the most popular forum threads there include:

I just can’t compete with those.  Also, the guys on RealJock all have abs that put the men on the cover of Men’s Health to shame, the result of a body fat percentage low enough to cause renal failure when leaning back against concrete surfaces.  To be fair, the abs/chests are usually an attempt to compensate for the face.  Or brain, or their brain’s face.  But nobody on RealJock cares about those.  Hell, when I get on there, it’s because I’m in that kind of mood where I don’t either.  If you get my drift.  And I think ya do.

Thus, I’m turning to you, Homo Climbtastic members, fans, and friends!  Post about us to places we’ve never seen, heard of, or posted to!  Or just get on the Supertopo/RealJock threads and start throwing flaming poo bombs!  Tell them you’re going to bolt all the walls on Yosemite with two feet spacing between each bolt and you’re spray painting them in bright pink ACROSS ARBITRARY LINES THAT AREN’T ANY GOOD AND YOU’RE GONNA DRY TOOL YOUR 300 POUND BODY UP THE WHOLE WAY TO GET THERE.  Also you’ll be on lead on aid hooks with an infant attached to you with one of those little infant carrying things, and accuse anyone who gets mad that they’re misogynists and that you already bought the crampons and you will not be a victim!  (Editor: Maybe a good spot for another photo?  Ra-ra: I couldn’t find a picture of a fat man dry tooling El Cap on aid gear with a baby attached to him, in case anyone feels like photoshopping one together for me.  Must be believable enough to trick the Supertopans.  Also, he should be wielding a .44 Magnum and be shooting a black bear trying to eat the burrito he left at the base of the crag. Editor: Maybe it would be more offensive if he were bolting while rapping? Ra-ra: Maybe he’s dry tooling, and the infant is rapping?)

Spread the message of our cult far and wide!  I don’t have the time, money, or skill to go chop the remaining anchors on the Compressor route or otherwise bring about climbing infamy the old fashioned way, so please, come up with something that would make me, Nene, and the rest of Atlanta proud!  We’re counting on you!

We Are So Fucking Inclusive

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I was just reading Ra-Ra’s post about the lube wrestling contest being trashed and started celebrating.  I know, I know, so many of you tacky bitches just fucking love watching hot climbers get all lubed up and go at it, but I thought it was a horrible idea.  I may be old gododamned fashioned, or I may be fucking boring, but I shudder to think of HC conventions becoming nothing more than an opportunity to explore the idea of an outdoor gay bar.

Shit's always sexier in your head than it is in reality.

One of the things I’ve always loved about HC is that we seem to have a wrench for every nut.  Whatever your orientation, wherever you’re from, as long as you have a sense of humor about yourself, you’re welcome to come.  Holy fuck I think that may have sorta’ rhymed…look at me, I’m a fucking poet over here.  Anychrist, when I showed up at my first HC convention I was really fucking nervous that this would be another gay event where we adhered to the classic gay stereotypes…everybody get fucked up, everybody sleep with each other, and everybody get dramatic about nothing.  OK, you’re thinking, that sounds like a good time…you’ve spent more time on your knees in the past year than Tebow, and the good news for you is that there will be people at an HC convention who are just like you!  And y’all can all run off and do blow off a West Virginia stripper’s dick!  I don’t recommend it, West Virginia strippers are often lucky to have all of their original teeth, but that’s neither hither nor thither.  Point is you can have that experience.

West Virginia Strippers: You don't want a piece of this.

And I can have my experience, too.  I don’t like gay bars, so I don’t like the idea of gay bar activities being our recreation at an HC convention.  The great news is that there are a lot of people who climb with HC who feel exactly the same way, so even if the lube wrestling contest was still “on”, or someone managed to get a DJ (I cannot fucking believe this is still a ‘thing’…I really did think all the DJ’s had over-dosed and died back in the 90′s) we would find something else to do.  Maybe go off and form a drum circle or nurture our inner child or squat over some mirrors.  Some shit like that, you know, all warm & fuzzy or what the fuck ever.  Hey…I’m old, I’m married, I have kids, and I had to give up the drinking and drugging a long goddamned time ago.  A good time to me is climbing all day, eating with a group of like-minded people, and going to fucking bed.  Oh, and coming up with a way to completely undermine Christianity and civilization as we know it by turning all heterosexuals gay, but only if I can’t sleep.  That one was for you, Rick Santorum…kiss kiss, darling.

Stay classy, Homo Climbtastic!

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You should see them at church.

Despite doing things in consistently poor taste every year we’ve been in existence, HC has suffered the umbrage of those who are shocked (shocked!) by the latest thing we’ve done.  This is because like the red light district of Amsterdam, or Brooklyn, or Janet Jackson, we have to do something every so often to prove that we haven’t lost our edge, and that at any moment, Justin Timberlake could expose our collective titty to millions of people.

Otherwise, the umbrage takers might think their harumphing has swayed us against being a constant affront to morality and the reputation of LGBTAQ people everywhere.  And umbrage takers are like mouses who take cookies: first, they ask you not to fellate someone at the top of popular sport crag in New Zealand and write about it.  Next, they’ll be giving you shit because the hem of your dress doesn’t go down to your ankles.  (Editor: Maybe they’re just upset by the quality of your tuck job?  Ra-Ra: You duct-tape a kilbasa to your taint and let me know if it stays there.)

When encountering the homosexuals, New Zealanders respond according to a very strongly ingrained cultural heritage, which is to offer them weed. (On a side note, am I really that tall?)

Thus, every year we have to do something perverse.  So this year, I thought, I’ve got it!  LUBE WRESTLING!  (Actually, Queanh thought of it. Blame her.)

Lube wrestling offers a great many advantages.  It takes something as gender exploitative as a wet t-shirt contest and makes it exploitative in an entirely fresh way.  In no other life circumstance will you have the opportunity to upload photos of yourself greased up and shirtless in a luchadore mask to Facebook without making yourself seem like a narcisstic crazy person.  And if nothing else, it allows you to manufacture long-standing feuds to build up hype, which may or may not include pictures of me and Jonny Mo’s head photoshopped into a Street Fighter II challenge screen.

You need big hair to look good in 8-bit. I considered asking J.Elyea to put other people on the other characters, but I became concerned that it would turn into a racial/gender stereotyping shitshow. Also Chavez doesn't have as much muscle as Chun Li.

But then, I had to get serious.  You could say, I had a reality check.  As much as I liked the idea of all of our climbers getting lubed up and holding each other down in bathing suits while everyone threw dollar bills on them, after which I could have some kind of Requiem for a Dream moment when I throw the dirty money in the air, shouting, “fooled you bitches, I normally do this for free,” I had a reality check while shopping online.

Luchadore masks are fucking twenty-five dollars.

And I would need at least four of them.

So, that was that, as far as the lube wrestling was concerned.  Sure, I was fine with spending twenty bucks on WalMart lube, and I figured someone somewhere would have a deflated wading pool sitting around, but my God, the luchadore masks!  You can’t borrow those!

Thus, barring the appearance of a generous benefactor willing to pay two hundred dollars to see extraordinarily good looking rock climbers get lubed up and wrestle, I’m panning the match.  This would never be an issue in a bar in Atlanta, but this is Homo Climbtastic, and these people divide up most of their money between gasoline and dry pasta.

People suggested charging admission, but HC never charges admission.  It’s one of the fundamental tenets of the Homo Climbtastic religion.  (#37: “Thou shalt not be an HRC dinner.”)  Now I’m trying to think of alternative ice breakers with an edge.  Possibilities:

  • Make acquaintances with six people who have either committed a felony, had group sex, or acquired scabies.  Preferably with one another.
  • Homo Climbtastic crossword puzzle: “Six letters across.  Triggered Danielle’s memory loss episode.  Starts with the letter ‘O’.”
  • Fill in the blank trivia:
    •  ”Menage a…. 1) Kia.  2.)  trois.  3.) Honda Accord.  4) Jeep Wrangler.”
    • “Timmy sez… 1) pull hard!  2) I don’t have any cooldowns left!  3.) both!”
  • Turn to the person next to you, and ask if you’d be more fuckable if…
    • you had an eyepatch.
    • you were friends with Whitney Houston.
    • you weren’t friends with Whitney Houston.

As you can see, this is a dire situation.  Somebody help me!

He's only pulling hard cause he burned all his cooldowns.

Registration now OPEN for the 2012 Homo Climbtastic Convention

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Wanna come to the largest queer climbing event in the world, at one of the nation’s best sport climbing destinations?  It’s July 26-29, in Fayetteville, West Virginia.  BE THERE OR BE SQUARE.

STEP 1. REGISTER NOW!  LIKE NOW NOW!

Fill out the registration form.  There’s no deposit, and you can fill it out even if you’re not sure if you’re coming.  Make sure you see the confirmation page–if you don’t fill out all the required questions, it’ll take you back to the form, and the unfilled, required questions will be highlighted in red.  If we run out of space for anything… people who registered earlier win.  Even if you’re a maybe, click that link and register.

STEP 2. RESERVE YOUR SPACE AT THE CAMPGROUND… SOONISH

Book under the “Alex Rowland” reservation by calling Nancy at Cantrell’s.  Cantrell’s offers tent camping, rustic bungalows, and fancy-pants cabins.  To make a reservation call 304-574-2500 or 800-470-7238.  They’re holding space for us with no deposit, but not forever… cabins book up much earlier than tent sites.  There IS a deposit to reserve your spot at Cantrell’s.

Experience Southern sandstone and other rock-hard bodies carved by God!

Then What?

Expect to get an e-mail from me (Rowland) within a week or two.  If you don’t get one, shoot me an e-mail.

About the Accommodations

If you’re interested in a cabin, check out the page listing the options with a roof, and note that the on-site cabins are the bungalows, the Deluxe Amish Cabins, the Country Cabin, and the Barn Loft-style Cabin.

Tent camping is $8 a night, so with a 50% deposit, you’re facing the loss of $20 if you end up not making it.  So go ahead and book the damn thing if you’re camping.  Plus I’m guessing Nancy will let you upgrade to a cabin if you decide to get all fancy-pants later.

Split up equally, the bungalows will run about $12 a night, and the cabins about $25. The cabins have air conditioning.

But it’s in the South!

Damn straight!

Dagummit!

We get lots of e-mails from anxious yankees, terrified of rain, Southerners, humidity, and Burt Reynolds.  Well, we can’t promise you Burt Reynolds.  But we can promise you a lake to cool off in about ten feet from the climbing, food so good it’s escandalo, the hijinks of the Homo Climbtastic leaders and members, aaaaaaand world class sport routes (with plenty of trad routes to keep those with high ankled shoes occupied).

If you’re wondering how it is that a small town in West Virginia is so good at playing host to a queer climbing convention, well, there’s only one way to find out.

See you at the New.

Homo Climbtastic: Like North Korea, but less democratic

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This is one of those posts I’ve been meaning to write for years, but haven’t gotten around to because it’s somewhat arcane.  But I’m unemployed now, and I have a lot of time on my hands for laundry, porn, and writing about arcane things. (My clean-up rags have never been so fresh!)  It’s about the belief that HC is an umbrella group for all queer climbing in all the world, or the expectation that it should be so.

Photos of Kim Jong Il is kind of our thing now.

Although a few outside of HC may have suggested otherwise, Homo Climbtastic has never had any control over the other queer climbing groups out there.  They’ve also never had any control over us.  Some of you may think, “well, duh,” but on a somewhat regular basis, people refer to the local clubs as being ”branches” of HC, or mention starting another “branch” of HC.  Or they ask us (at HC) to get a local club to do something, or they ask a local club’s leaders to make us do something.

We’re all independent of each other.  If I were to call up Kris at ClimbMax Colorado, and had delusions of grandeur about our power, it would go something like this:

“Hey Kris!”
“Hi Alex!”
“Hey Kris, if you could throw an HC event sometime next month in Colorado, that would be great. Also, there’s some changes I want you to make to your web site, and can you make me a sandwich?”
“How about I teabag you and spike this football into your nuts?”

I’ve wondered where this confusion stemmed from, as it predates our linking to the other clubs, or the ambassador system, but perhaps those bolster the myth, so I’ll clarify those too.  The ambassadors are simply people we trust to relay important information or to whom we can send people interested in another club.  The links are a non-exhaustive list of clubs we recommend for queer climbers, each with a targeted geographical area, user group, or scope that may be smaller or larger than our own.

The HC dictators have yet to agree on a single purpose for the club, so their individual contributions are probably the best expressions of the various reasons why it exists.  By some criteria, HC may appear to have emerged as a de-facto umbrella group for queer-friendly outdoor climbers (and friends), but as far as I can tell, that status has been simply the collateral damage of what we actually intend to do, which is bring together people we think are awesome.  We don’t do anything to try and dutifully represent all who call themselves queer climbers.  Should we?  Dunno.  But we’re not.  It would be too much work, and half of us don’t even have jobs.

This hasn’t jibed with the occasional donkey-nut lickers who think an organization named “Homo Climbtastic”, as some kind of Grand Representative of All That Is Queer Climbing, should clean up its act, be responsible, stop using phrases like “donkey-nut lickers”, stop posting photos of Ashton Kutcher on the toilet, and stop placing commas outside of quotation marks.

I'm watching you!

Well, we’re not changing, we’re not an umbrella group, and as Miss Kelly Gray has oft expounded, even if our obnoxious behavior meant that it would just be the eight of us sharing a cabin in West Virginia, we’d do it, cause it’d still be the shit.  (And yes, regarding the dutifully flaming messages about our grammar, this actually happens.)  You’ll have about as much luck with us as flaming Porter Jarrard to re-equip one of the hundreds of routes he bolted thirty years ago. (Also happens!  ”You want it fixed? You go do it.”)

Nor will you get any further with the local clubs, whose organizers don’t devote several hours a week to volunteering just to get mouthed off at by strangers (happens!) about membership fees (happens!) or not teaching enough people for free (happens!) or not loaning out their equipment (happens!).

Where these people come from, I don’t know. They’re probably the same people on my condo unit’s HOA board who harass me for parking in an unmarked space.

“I’m not blocking anyone in.”
“You can be towed.”
“Is anyone in a ten unit complex actually going to call to have their neighbor towed on a Friday night? Don’t they have lives?”
“Any of the residents can call to have you towed.”
“There’s like ten people who live here. I’m a resident, does that mean I can call to have you towed?”
“I’m legally parked, the HOA board already agreed on who can park where.”
“I’m going to run to replace you on the HOA board with the single platform that anyone with the spare time to blow running for a spot on an HOA board should not be on an HOA board.”

My complex is bright enough to be seen from space, but not from anywhere else, so I'm pretty sure these security lights are here to make it easier to watch my own kidnapping and murder.

Somehow, perhaps because they’re used to being in neighborhoods with HOAs, student bodies with student body representatives, and so on, borderline personality disordered people have become complacent with the idea that if they show up, that means they can run the place.  They’re probably used to running the place, because nobody bothers running against them to decide what day the communal refrigerator gets cleaned out (people have died for this!).

This isn’t to say that we don’t solicit feedback; I’ll politely inform you, for example, that the budget just didn’t allow for strippers this year, or that we’re still working on t-shirts.  So don’t let our hateful rants scare you away from throwing your ideas into the suggestion hopper.  Except for ideas about how we can move the convention to someplace closer to you. If I put the time I put into HC working a minimum wage job, I could fly to Malorka, so please, please no more of those.  If I die from another stress-induced Las Vegas chocotini incident, my availability to plan subsequent conventions will be greatly diminished, limited to me becoming a ghost and haunting other people into doing it.  And the convention would still probably end up being in West Virginia, because the person who found “PLAN THE NEXT HC CONVENTION” written in blood on their bathroom mirror would probably just assume that’s where my dead self wanted it to be.

All we’re trying to communicate is that the reason we’ve done such a terrible job at being an umbrella group is because we’re… not an umbrella group.

But we love your constructive criticism.  And hell, we love the flaming too, because there’s nothing more fun on the dictator email listserv than passing around hate mail and lol’ing about it.

Now get off the comment threads and go remove “climbing” as an interest from your OK Cupid profile.

Introducing: Poser Captcha

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I’m just gonna be the a-hole on this one: climbing in a gym is gym climbing. Without further context, “I love climbing” or “I’m going climbing” or “I’m climbing on Wednesday” means you will be exposed to sunlight and the stuff you’ll be climbing on will be the product of geology.

The worst offenders in this category are people on online dating web sites.  Like OK Cupid, which is famous for their zillions of personality profiling “match questions.”  I’ve answered 236, and I still keep getting people who think flag burning should be outlawed.

You know I'm not quite sure why I didn't click perverts instead. I really would know better than anyone else on this.

So guys on OK Cupid or whatever buttsecks finding dating web site message to say, “I LOOOOOOVE CLIMBING!”

This is when you ask, “what kind of climbing”, and it all falls apart. Because in the gym, there aren’t multiple kinds of climbing, there is only one kind of climbing, where there’s a rope running up to the top and you’re wearing athletic shorts and socks in your shoes and climbing gloves (note: Julio can pull off athletic shorts, because they are athletic short-shorts, and the indentation of his penis is visibly large enough to create a veil of shame with enough mass that time slows down and light bends around it, but the chances are very, very high that you are not Julio).

Although I’m usually not a prescriptive grammarian, if you’re going to climb at the gym, “I’m going to climb at the gym” is the superior nomenclature. Because to us, when you refer to gym climbing as simply “climbing”, it’s as though we’re saying, “we’re gonna take our Harleys up the interstate” and you say, “I love biking! I own an 18 speed Trek! I, too, take it on the road from time to time.”

But even that isn’t an appropriate analogy, because biking (as in bicycling) is still cool. So maybe a more appropriate analogy would be, “I’m trying to decide whether I like a single speed for mountain biking or not,” and you replying, “well I love being able to adjust the friction in my spin class, so I would highly recommend that feature!”

Not that the people in spin class couldn’t totally kick my ass at spin class. They did. I was well short of whatever it was those people were spinning. Just like there may be some German girl who can crush all your climbing gym projects and offer you struedel afterwards. But if you put her on the Orb, she’d probably fall three feet, hit her head on the dirt, and start crying and demanding why there isn’t 200 square feet of padding. But then again, maybe not. Maybe I’m just trying to make Ann feel better about getting demolished by someone too callous to even offer her a 2nd place struedel. But by gosh, there is something absolutely special about taking 5.12 gym climbers outside for the first time. And by special, I mean retarded. And by retarded, I mean you’re amazing and you can do anything! Except climb outside, apparently.

I thought I had taken enough X for the techno music, but was it enough for the disco ball?

Now, there are those who have presented very compelling reasons why gym climbing is a sport that deserves recognition as its own inherent institution. And to them, I say, your photo of you on a 5.14 gym climb will be discarded by the editors of the Patagonia catalog for a picture of some fat jerk on a 5.8 top-roping outside and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. It is literally easier to collect the money to pay someone to judge your Klingon costume than it is to collect the money to pay someone to judge your gym climbing. You will find more opponents in Scrabble, Street Fighter II, and putting together castles out of popsicle sticks.

So, I am calling for an end to this tolerance of anyone referring to gym climbing as though it’s anything but a training device and a cruel impostor of actual climbing, A) because it’s just irritating, and B) because it’s fostered a massive delusion on gay dating web sites, which should be legally required to have a javascript mechanism double check people who click climbing as an interest with a test question:

“Do you know what lead climbing even is?”
“Have you ever worn a helmet because rocks were hitting you in the head?”
“Are your routes ever marked with anything besides tape or neon colors?”

A kind of captcha for posers. Poser Captcha.

This was by far the least offensive of the captchas on google image search. You try it.

Poser Captcha could really be extended to all sorts of things. Want to indicate an interest in biking?

“Do you even own a bike?”
“You don’t. Be honest.”
“Are you able to even take the wheel off of a bike?”
“When someone buzzes you on the roadway, do you smash their rearview mirror with your bike lock before or after photographing their license plate and uploading it to facebook?”

Comment thread idea: Poser Captchas for your own interest areas!