mr2mk1g

They hosted a pretty damn good Prodigy gig on Sunday night in Cardiff. Whole place was one giant mosh pit. Great stuff.

Yeah just do the hot towel bit with an M3 power razor and tell the customers it's better anyway. Hot towel bit costs you next to nothing and you can move on to the prep the next customer while they "cook" during busy periods so it ought not eat too much time either.

Fluffy bunnies or bear arms... tough choice.

defo hot towel and cut-throat razor. Doesn't have to take that long and will be far more appreciated than a facial... hell it basically is a male facial.

11 days pooteling down American roads vs. 3 weeks driving across African deserts and trying to avoid minefields in a car worth £100... hmm....

I take it your record would be the largest recorded buck taken down with a bow... I'd be willing to put money on it if your measurements are right... odds are the 2 in the world bigger than yours were taken with a gun afterall.

Having a hard time trying to make my mind up over what I'm going to be doing for kicks next year. I'm signed up to take part in the 5th Plymouth Dakar Challenge (basically a charity thing where I drive all the way down to sub-Saharan Africa in a car costing no more than £100). This promises to be a once in a lifetime trip and is very much in keeping with my mad-cap holiday ideals. But since it's predicted to be over subscribed again there'll be a lottery held to decide who actually gets to do it and I wont find out till June ish. If I do end up doing the Challenge, it will require the majority of my holiday time for 06/07 so it's for sure going to be the only major trip I take. However... I've also got a lot of friends going out to Perris next spring and a possible trip to Ohio for a BASE course... now this is damned tempting and wont use up quite so much of my holiday time leaving enough left over for perhaps a second holiday. Both will probably cost about the same financially. I can always do the Challenge another year... hell, the same goes for Perris... but... ah well I'm stuck... so I'm just throwing it out there for some ideas.

I put a Sabre 190 for a few jumps into my Wings sized for a 170. BUT - the sabre had over 800 jumps on it and I was damn good at packing it up real small. I also had no cypres taking up space. That said, I attribute a couple of very odd openings to doing this and it was a complete pig to pack. With a 170 in there now it's obvious I'll be able to downsize to a 150 without any problem in the future. I only had it in there for a very short time while I was in the process of downsizing. I wouldn't say its a particularly good idea to do this as a long term plan.

Well used F111 canopies as you have probably jumped so far often respond better to that kind of flare. In the long run, a slow controlled flare is the way to go... just now though?... well that will depend. The important thing to do is to flare how your instructor tells you to. They know your kit, weight, wind, experience etc. They should be the one's to tell you how to flare right now. It may be they talk to you about changing the way you've been shown to do it as your skydiving progresses. ...'course you could just be doing it wrong. Your instructor's the only one who's going to know though.

Don't worry - unless they've written to you requesting your policy documents back you will still be covered until the expiry of your policy. Their decision to withdraw cover from hazardous sports only extends to new policies.

Are priests allowed to eat pork or shellfish?

Dunno... I'm talking about a 1h drive home through rush hour traffic. Later!

I can't count the number of times I've seen a US show with an "Ozzy" using a Cockney accent or a "Brit" sounding like he just came in from herding sheep in the outback. I've seen the very same confusion with SA accents. Hell, last episode of "Lost" I watched featured an Ozzy woman who sounded like she'd just stepped out of Mary Poppins. Felt she was about come out with "Shine 'yer shoes govna'?". I've come to the conclusion that different Brit/Oz/SA etc accents are just recognized as "NOT AMERICAN" and then the audience takes a random stab at the first country that comes into their head where people speak English. The accent is then henceforth assigned to that country.

I thought the thread... and Billvon's quote in particular... were only about people's ability to speak out against the Govt. in the US without fear of reprisals.

Agree re American animosity towards Chinese... but I think there is probably a lot of animosity towards China. To anthropomorphize the situation for a moment; it is a fairly natural response to feel animosity towards a rival whom you fear is about to eclipse you. I think I've seen quite a lot of those kind of feelings. There's a fair amount of it expressed on these boards.

'course we do - just like all Yanks from the deep south fuck their sisters, all Californians are dope smoking surfers with a penchant for the word "rad" and all Ozzies/Welsh/New Zealanders fuck sheep. You sound like you doubt the "fact".

It's Doctor Julian Bashir from DS9... ...no? ...just me then? ...anyone?

Baghdad Blogger

Every penny of which is completely wasted unless the US has to go to war (well ok, there are fringe benefits, but it does overwhelmingly represent a net loss). All in all, the country that can remain secure and divert its fiscal attention elsewhere will do far better. Now I'm not arguing that the US doesn't need a military, or even that China wont try to out spend the US on its military... but the mere fact that the US spends more on its military than anyone else tells us nothing about its worth as an economy – or how it will fare in an economic battle with China... which is more than likely what it will boil down to (if anything). Remember, Iraq used to be one of the biggest spenders on military hardware too - its population still lived in shit.

Everyone chip in and buy El-Cap. Refer to it only buy grid co-ordinates and see if anyone picks up on it. You'll be making a political statement as well as opening up the home of BASE.

You can almost guarantee that the first 5 posts in reply to someone asking about skydiving in the UK will cite the USPA, suggest going to Perris, note a BSR, claim they're breaking an FAA regulation or make some other completely inappropriate suggestion irrespective of how many times the original question highlighted the fact they were talking about jumping in the UK. And that's where the original poster bothers to mention their location or fill out their profile. That's pretty much the only cast iron reason I can come up with... but it also goes for many other countries too... it's just it probably happens with the UK most as they're more prevalent here. Other than that it would probably simply be a place for people to meet other UK jumpers. Perhaps all the dozens of threads started by the London Skydivers would be easier placed there rather their being scattered across the site? Perhaps the fact that UK regs are very different alone is enough? One other point would be... why not? Would it cause a problem or safety issue or detract from the site in some way? I can't see that it would. Might solve a couple of very minor ones though – might even increase overall traffic as more uk jumpers might be tempted to come visit their dedicated area and stay for the rest of the site. I'm guessing, but I wouldn't be surprised if UK jumpers were the second most prevalent on here – why not cater to them? It's not as if it's an American site after all. Personally I don't think it'll happen yet. It's been asked for before - I presume there's not enough need for it or time simply hasn't allowed. Either way, creation of a UK only forum would simply increase the perception that this is a US site with hangers on... exactly the opposite of what I think HH is after

Only for the past 150 years though of course... since the British Royal family popularised it... despite the fact it drew scorn from the Church as being anti-Christian... Of course until the last couple of dozen years no one would have been having this discussion yet because until very recently tradition dictated you only put the tree up on the evening of Dec. 24th. So much for tradition. PS. If you want to use the "traditional" name for the thing simply stick to "Tannenbaum" rather than this new fangled invented name "Christmas Tree".

I think it's worth saying that that can never be the wrong answer. Look at it as a kind of "if in doubt" stance.

I took part in a Demo jump into a local Uni a year or so ago where we put 5 jumpers out of a Cessna over their Freshers fair. Apparently there were complaints made to the Uni prior to the event that statically 1 in 3 jumps end in an injury – as such we were statistically guaranteed to expose the audience to witnessing an injury and resultant psychological trauma. Whatever. The jump went fine as I'm sure most of you could have predicted.

Since the very birth of trade, China has been the richest and biggest economy in the world. Historically speaking the last 150 years has been but a tiny blip on their timeline (largely due to us Brits fucking up their country by pushing copious amounts of drugs on them and sending in the battleships if they tried to ban them). China will go back to occupying the position it always has done in the world. The West had better get used to the fact.