High Crimes
Apr. 6th, 2014 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficFinished reading High Crimes in a binge last night--stayed up way too late, then had a nap today. This was prompted by dropping into B&N and buying two more mountaineering books (there's a whole shelf!), Dark Summit and Buried in the Sky. The latter promises me the Sherpas' perspective on the K2 disaster in the doc The Summit, and since really nobody gets the Sherpas' perspective, it seemed worth it.
What was amusing about reading High Crimes after watching the Discovery channel reality show is that Russell Brice, the star of the show, figures heavily. In that he comes up to the author and his disintegrating expedition and tells them they're a shit show, they've contributed nothing (money, manpower, or equipment) to the effort to install safety lines for the season, and their incompetence is endangering everyone else on the mountain. The author calls him the Wyatt Earp of Everest. He does not seem like a guy you want to get on the wrong side of.
It reminds me a lot, actually, of my college a cappella group. My sophomore year, we put on a major concert--a once in four years concert. This meant that it was our only shot at such a concert in our college careers. As with the Everest expeditions, this meant that everyone was absolutely irrational about. It was their dream! It had to be perfect!!! And somebody else had better make it that way, cause I don't have time for that shit. We also had a really marginal personality in the group, who deliberately made me cry on several occasions and had intentionally abandoned someone on our fall tour. The level of drama--I can't even. It would be two hours of rehearsal, and then two hours of talking to one or two other people about "Can you believe she just--?" People quit. People threatened to quit. People manipulated and railroaded. Some people did a ton of work and only get yelled at by people who did none. One of my worst grades in college was that semester because I was up till 2AM every night with drama, and that did not mix well with an 8AM molecular biology class.
So imagine that, but on Mt. Everest. Except with people who don't just commit emotional violence, but actual real, punch you in the face, threaten to mess with your oxygen system so no one will ever be able to prove it was murder, violence. And where the consequences are a bit more dire than a bad concert.
Of course, if you go look at the reviews for the books, there's a lot of name-calling and he's a whiner and of course he thinks he's the victim, what a loser type of comments.
In summation: people be crazy, yo. Being in a life and death situation does not make them less so, it makes it worse.
What was amusing about reading High Crimes after watching the Discovery channel reality show is that Russell Brice, the star of the show, figures heavily. In that he comes up to the author and his disintegrating expedition and tells them they're a shit show, they've contributed nothing (money, manpower, or equipment) to the effort to install safety lines for the season, and their incompetence is endangering everyone else on the mountain. The author calls him the Wyatt Earp of Everest. He does not seem like a guy you want to get on the wrong side of.
It reminds me a lot, actually, of my college a cappella group. My sophomore year, we put on a major concert--a once in four years concert. This meant that it was our only shot at such a concert in our college careers. As with the Everest expeditions, this meant that everyone was absolutely irrational about. It was their dream! It had to be perfect!!! And somebody else had better make it that way, cause I don't have time for that shit. We also had a really marginal personality in the group, who deliberately made me cry on several occasions and had intentionally abandoned someone on our fall tour. The level of drama--I can't even. It would be two hours of rehearsal, and then two hours of talking to one or two other people about "Can you believe she just--?" People quit. People threatened to quit. People manipulated and railroaded. Some people did a ton of work and only get yelled at by people who did none. One of my worst grades in college was that semester because I was up till 2AM every night with drama, and that did not mix well with an 8AM molecular biology class.
So imagine that, but on Mt. Everest. Except with people who don't just commit emotional violence, but actual real, punch you in the face, threaten to mess with your oxygen system so no one will ever be able to prove it was murder, violence. And where the consequences are a bit more dire than a bad concert.
Of course, if you go look at the reviews for the books, there's a lot of name-calling and he's a whiner and of course he thinks he's the victim, what a loser type of comments.
In summation: people be crazy, yo. Being in a life and death situation does not make them less so, it makes it worse.