The Bone Yard

 

Where Past Opening Rants Go To Rot

 

 

All the dirty little lies we've whispered in your filthy ear while in the throes of passion notwithstanding, we're really not the rocket surgeons we've led you to believe. Far from it. It takes us for-friggin'-ever to come up with a couple of witty little paragraphs to keep the About Us page fresh. In fact it takes us twice as much work as the next guy.

And you expect us to just delete them when we're through? You heartless bastard.

 

 

February 2009

Okay ... it's the dawn of a new regime, our country is poised on the brink of greatness, and the Administration's vaunted stimulus package is in the mail. What we want to know is: Does this "package" include beer, exotic dancers, and a lifetime subscription to Maxim? Because if it doesn't, well ... you can just count us right out.

As the suits in Washington begin to toil and sweat over how to deliver all that government cheese and how best to get our troops out of Iran/Afghanistan/New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward,  we would remind you, gentle climbers, that while there's precious little one man (or woman, for that matter) can do to turn around a country's economy, there are no limits to what a group of morons (us for instance) can dream up.

And so, in honor of Charles Ponzi himself, we are proud to roll out a little scheme of our own design. Here's how it works: First, you sign up to go on an expedition with us, then you tell a friend, and he tells a friend, and so on ... until eventually our once humble little operation is sitting on a pile of money the size of Rush Limbaugh's head.

The magnanimous part is that we promise to donate all the money to the needy. Namely, us. Well, anyway, whatever is left over after our bankers drop some serious coin on private jets, super-stretch Hummer limos, hot tub parties with Paris Hilton, and a lifetime supply of Pez for every man, woman, and child in the developed world.

Look, we trusted in the likes of Bernie Madoff and they screwed us. Isn't now as good a time as any to go climb a big, pointy pile of frozen rock somewhere far away from this craziness?

 

 

December 2008

Well, all the leaves have fallen off the trees here at 10,000 feet; about the only thing still falling around here is the stock market.

Hey, let’s get out of the country until this whole economic downturn “thing” blows over, huh? The way we figure, we did our best in trying to talk our financial advisor in from the ledge, so screw him if he still wants to jump.

Come on … let's get our five-mile-a-gallon, monster-truck-driving, global-warming-inducing-selves to the airport and jump on the first thing smokin’ to Mexico, or even South America. At least now we can afford to fill that thirsty V8 to the half-way mark before maxing out the platinum-card. We promise it’ll be good for what ails you.

We’ve always said that sometimes the best solution to a morale problem is just to fire all the unhappy people. And, well, we don’t know about you, but we’re buzzing like third-graders on Pixie Stix in anticipation of January 20th, when Barack Obama becomes the 44th president … and our first king.

One thing that will be different about Obama's time in the White House is that there are going to be young girls running around the Oval Office.

It's been a long time since that happened, if you don't include interns.

 

 

October 2008

Is this a great time to live in America or what? Really, we can't remember another time when the future looked so damned bright and full of opportunity. Even if you're just Joe the f***ing plumber.

Check it out: Your banker threatens to foreclose, but the very next day his institution goes belly up and now he's wearing a paper hat at Taco Bell. After all the years of boning the little guy, The Man is finally sticking it to himself. That's flippin' schweet!

And how about the upcoming election?

If Obama wins we get two guys with PhDs from really good schools who have some pretty good ideas on how to patch up this leaky ship; if McCain wins we get to stare at that little hottie Sarah Palin for the next four years. Yeah, she's dumb as a bag of hammers, but so was that one chick you "dated" in college, and you still catch yourself thinking about what a wild carnival ride she was.

So don't think twice about taking the climbing trip of your dreams. What with the boys in the pinstriped suits DOW-jonesin' for some bullish market action, and those 700-billion bailout-dollars about to give the economy a desperately needed crack-hit of whatever the hell it is the economy desperately needs a crack-hit of (cut us some slack — who do we look like, Alan Greenspan?) ... well, anyway ... we just have to believe everything's going to be all hunky-dory and zippedy-doo-da. This is Amurrica, dammit (there's no place like home, there's no place like home).

It's like when traffic on the interstate backs up for two hours because of an accident and you miss an important appointment, but then when you finally drive by the scene you see that it was a gasoline tanker that exploded in flames when it plowed into a busload of beauty queens. Suddenly you're at peace and filled with happiness, because you realize that for every bit of bad news there comes an equal or greater amount of good news to temper the sting. The Lord provides.

Keep it moving, citizens; there's nothing to see here.

 

 

September 2008

This is the part of the show where we roll out all the hip buzzwords in hopes of convincing you that we're a "green company", and that we're "minimizing our carbon footprint" through buying "offsets" in some East Tajikibuttistanian bong factory. That's right; we love our Mother: we're "zero-waste," baby!

Or maybe we should appeal to your inner hippie with something like, “The high, windswept summits of the world are magical places where we  go to commune with the spirits, channel the forces of the universe, and find ourselves."

Thing is, here in our little corner of world we have stuff to do. You know, like, well ... important stuff. Stuff that doesn't involve sounding like a bunch of blissed-out corporate eco-stoners. And with all the time we put into making sure you wonderful people get the kind of high quality mountaineering experience  you'd expect from us — über-guides, good eats, that sort of thing — we’d be hard pressed to spark up enough brain wattage to figure out where the hell East Tajikibuttistan is, much less come up with any of that “commune with the spirits” crap.

And, dude, really ... if you're still trying to "find yourself" at this point in your life, well, good luck with that. We have a Volkswagen bus-load of 70s self-help books we'll swap for a bottle of halfway decent single malt.

Right about now you’re no doubt thinking, Wait a minute, this is no average guiding company (you’re smart; you know stuff).