How long has this place got?

[Tacos]

Recent MIA list:

Fansy - thinned out after vlindsaygate
The Belgian - fuck knows?
Sri Lanky - FUCK KNOWS?

I reckon there's about ten regular posters here now, and regular means weekly amirite?

Cheers

Still here.

[flipflop]

Good lad, now pick up your rifle and join the south rampart, the Zulus are thickest at that point of the Drift

Cheers

[seektravelinfo]

so now, what's this, counting how much testersone (sp) one has? This has elevated the pissing contest.

No. The testosterone theme originated from RYP giving FF shit for being grumpy. Although it's quite quite possible "what's your T?" will replace "how much can you bench?" in bro pissing matches.

Bearing boys actually changes your brain permanently. Having girls, too, because you lose about 15% of your brain mass starting at about seven months pregnant, and it gradually rebuilds until you're about five months postpartum using your child's, and the father's, DNA. If you have a boy, your restructured brain really is influenced by heightened testosterone. There's a whole suite of subtle changes that have been documented anecdotally and scientifically, including slightly more aggressive tendencies.

Interesting. Didn't know pregnancy changed brain structure significantly.

Yes, Friendlyskies. Do keep posting your research and knowledge about pregnancy and motherhood. It is so interesting.

[2 Charlie]

Ummm, V got a PhD for studying us. Where can I read this? I need both a chuckle and the address of this school. Going to go back to school and if you can get a doctorate for this place, I should be able to crank one out on beer consumption and the lifestyle of the miscreants who make money off supplying beer to the Islamic heartlands for fellow miscreants.

[svizzerams]

Ummm, V got a PhD for studying us. Where can I read this? I need both a chuckle and the address of this school. Going to go back to school and if you can get a doctorate for this place, I should be able to crank one out on beer consumption and the lifestyle of the miscreants who make money off supplying beer to the Islamic heartlands for fellow miscreants.

Vive La Educacion!

I think a PhD on smuggling supply lines sounds like a valid course of study - you could perhaps broker it into a Nobel prize in Economics. Bootlegging is always in style.

[seektravelinfo]

Ummm, V got a PhD for studying us. Where can I read this? I need both a chuckle and the address of this school. Going to go back to school and if you can get a doctorate for this place, I should be able to crank one out on beer consumption and the lifestyle of the miscreants who make money off supplying beer to the Islamic heartlands for fellow miscreants.

Groovy. Another thesis. Go for it. Think though: Do you really want to become an academic? Are you prepared to knock boots with the women of the BFC (apparently a research methodology)? Will you be using the same editor that the last thesis writer used?

[svizzerams]

Ummm, V got a PhD for studying us. Where can I read this? I need both a chuckle and the address of this school. Going to go back to school and if you can get a doctorate for this place, I should be able to crank one out on beer consumption and the lifestyle of the miscreants who make money off supplying beer to the Islamic heartlands for fellow miscreants.

Groovy. Another thesis. Go for it. Think though: Do you really want to become an academic? Are you prepared to knock boots with the women of the BFC (apparently a research methodology)? Will you be using the same editor that the last thesis writer used?

No - he would have to knock boots with smugglers - unless there are women smugglers on the BFC.

[rickshaw92]

Going to go back to school and if you can get a doctorate for this place, I should be able to crank one out on beer consumption

Need a study partner?

[nowonmai]

Ummm, V got a PhD for studying us. Where can I read this? I need both a chuckle and the address of this school.

You can't. You appear once obliquely when Slam's profile is listed and his signature includes this quote: "Don't worry about life, you will
never get out of it alive." – 2 Charlie

Ask RYP for a copy, he's the one that read it on our behalf and decided it was okay for an academic to infiltrate the forum and then write fictitious information about the posters on it.

[RYP]

why do dogs lick their balls?

Because they can

[friendlyskies]

Yes, Friendlyskies. Do keep posting your research and knowledge about pregnancy and motherhood. It is so interesting.

And I can't wait to hear about your daring and fascinating travels to dangerous places! Please, publish those photos of your recent trip to Syria. Oh wait, that was Rickshaw. Maybe you need to hop on a plane, since you don't have a baby to worry about. I'll be waiting with bated breath.

[seektravelinfo]

Yes, Friendlyskies. Do keep posting your research and knowledge about pregnancy and motherhood. It is so interesting.

And I can't wait to hear about your daring and fascinating travels to dangerous places! Please, publish those photos of your recent trip to Syria. Oh wait, that was Rickshaw. Maybe you need to hop on a plane, since you don't have a baby to worry about. I'll be waiting with bated breath.

My trip to Syria wasn't that recent. It was over 5 years ago. I don't have any pictures to post because I didn't take any of merit. I did have a digital camera at the time but had left the battery charger in Turkey so it ran out of juice. The only thing I got was a picture of Salahhdin's statue in Damascus and it was covered in pigeon shit. Then my battery died. I did have my film cameras with me and tried shooting medium format, but it felt to creepy to be taking pictures, like being watched while I was watching. Which I was. I'm generally pretty bold with my cameras in approaching my subjects but in Syria I hit a wall. I chalked to up to breathing the air of a dictatorship and let sleeping dogs lie. Call me a coward I guess. But let me tell you, when you're physically present in a dictatorship you can tell, you can just tell. The torpor was more than the heat (it was summer). Then I got sick from a bad falafel and sprayed my hotel bathroom with shit and vomit. Then I took Cipro and got better. Then I went to their spectacular souk and Omayyad Mosque where I had to wear an abaya and it felt silly like the time my mother made me wear my halloween costume to kindergarten class which was a hula outfit which my grandmother had brought me back from Hawaii.

As far as travel to dangerous places I live in fucking Cleveland, land of existentional terror and misfit toys. It suits me well. I don't have the money to travel right now because I am building a camera. It starts with an 8 x 10 Deardorff body w/bellows to which I have to add a lens, a lensboard, film backs and about 300 bucks worth of trial and error in film. My mentor who is helping me with this endeavor tells me I can't take the camera into the field because it is so cumbersome and I say watch me. I'm a gonna do this. I am skilled in traveling in a cumbersome fashion. I imagine my first trip with said camera will be to England. I haven't been to England yet and feel like I should. They have magnificent faces there. That will be my test run. Then I'm gonna photograph the folks at the tailgate parties in the municipal parking lot adjacent to the Cleveland Browns stadium. You may think that it is not dangerous. It's not, but they are some bad-ass motherfuckers those Browns fans.

Then I'm gonna take my Deardorff to Luxor and shoot the Coptics (as in photo'ing). They have a significent population of them there.
So yeah, scoff because I haven't been to any "DP's" as of late, but I"m a poor girl, and it's not nice to look down on the poor.

[friendlyskies]

Oh please. You "scoffed" at me because I'm not talking about what you want to talk about… which is what exactly? How some guy flirted with you at your job? How you know the names of a bunch of tribes in Syria, and can cut and paste articles about it? I don't give a shit if you don't travel (although you totally could be traveling right now, I *made* money while traveling like most of the people on this board, you could very easily do the same thing.) I was just pointing out that you don't. You choose not to. You'd rather build a camera. FINE. But that means that, like me, you have zip zero nothing nada to offer the board as far as recent first-hand experience in a dangerous place. Fine. Whatever. I have no problem with that.

My problem is the complaining about how I talk too much about baby stuff. This isn't the first time. You bring it up a lot, more than anyone else, including nowonmai and flipflop, which is just weird. The whole thing where you went on and on about how I could abandon my kid and husband to travel in order to satisfy your dumb requirements for posting on a random, half-abandoned board in an obscure corner of the internet was truly nuts. If wonder if you are picking me, a person you don't even know except as a carefully curated, relentlessly cheerful Facebook profile, because your life sucks in some way.

Guess what? If your life sucks, that's not my problem. There's nothing I can do about it. You need to make it not suck. So instead of making snarky, bitter comments about how I talk about Chainsaw, why don't you address the problem in your own life? Figure out why you're unhappy, and deal with it. Frankly, I bet you need to travel more than build a camera. I lived for $400 per month in Nicaragua, Chele probably made it on half that. You can make that kind of money editing for a few hours a month, or working at a restaurant or bar in any tourist town in the world. If you're here, on the BFC, that kind of life may be the one you're yearning for. Think about it.

You know, I was on the road for almost ten years, and now I'm taking a break while I'm still young and fertile enough to do something different. Which is awesome. Best decision I ever made. Chainsaw has enriched my life in ways I never imagined possible. But, I'm somewhat socially isolated and therefore value the BFC more than ever right now, even though I don't have as much to offer. Am I supposed to stop posting until I get back to traveling? So you and nowonmai don't get bored? I'm still travel writing, sort of, and may get a gig in Guatemala (one of the most dangerous countries in the Americas, incidentally) as early as June - then I can come back? Or is Guatemala not good enough, since it falls outside your narrow range of interests? That's a rhetorical question, by the way. RYP has no problem with me. The mods have no problem with me. Hell, even flipflop is being sort of tolerant and laying off, maybe he's bored of me and that's FINE, because I have no problem with him as long as he doesn't give me a rash of shit every time I post. The puppy is fucking cute and the Afghanistan pics and info are fascinating. [Please, ff, don't start fucking with me again, I much prefer just letting each other be.] That leaves two people who complain about me - you and nowonmai. Two people who don't travel to dangerous places either.

Uuuuugggghhhhhhh I don't even know why you want to haze me when I've been here seven years, helped several flaggers plan trips in and around Central America, met several others, traveled in loads of semi-dangerous countries, contributed to numerous discussions, hell, I even won "post of the year" once for the 21-nuclear-weapon salute when Paul Tibbets passed away. Just lay off. Relax. I had a kid. People do that. It's a big part of my life right now. No one is forcing you to read my posts anyway.

[2 Charlie]

Does anyone have a copy of the thesis or know where I can read it? Send me a PM

[friendlyskies]

And seeks, I know I'm bitchy, but you are too. Hell, most people left on the BFC are bitchy now. That's why everyone else left. But you're the, or one of the, best writers on here and I adore your longer posts when they aren't about how Gen Xers talk to much about their pregnancy or whatever. That's all. But that thing you wrote on the Vlindsay thread about meeting her boyfriend that time was comedy gold. The world is a better place for that post being in it, and I am formally nominating it for the best post of 2013.

Anyway, the real value of this forum, for me, was

(1) Everyone here is an experienced traveler in challenging destinations, so you can talk about your adventures without people getting jealous, freaked out, or asking dumb questions like, "Don't you ever get scared?"

(2) People had really specialized knowledge of geopolitical realities and situations, and were eager to discuss them. Even with really emotionally charged, mythologized conflicts, like Israel vs. Palestine, or the Cold War, you'd find new, interesting, down-to-Earth perspectives that would make you consider things in a different way. That sort of where I thought my value was on the board - I happen to know a lot about Central, and Latin, America, so when Hugo Chavez was making trouble or there was a big narcotrafficking situation, I had a lot more depth of knowledge and level of research than a lot of people on the board. Since the majority of people specialized in the Middle East, I learned one hell of a lot about that region, above and beyond the mainstream news synopses or half-baked, subconsciously racist blather floating around everywhere else. And the information I got about the Balkans, mainly from nowonmai, was amazing. I watched every single movie, and read every single book, you recommended, btw.

(3) I had a network of people all over the world. Not just people, but fucking cool people! Who were happy to host me in their countries, or meet me for drinks in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I mean, really, a bunch of danger travelers and private military contractors? That is the goddamned cream of the crop of all humanity, as far as I'm concerned.

(4) Unlike Facebook (is this irony?), I can be myself here. Which is socially retarded and bitchy. But really just needs to be socially retarded.

ANYWAY.

I think those of us interested in having a cool BFC again need to make some kind of internal ground rules to keep us from being bitchy. Guidelines, not laws, not bannable offenses. Remember flipflop's obsession with logical fallacies? Like, that would be great, if we could ban logical fallacies. Especially ad homenem shit. Informally of course, in the heat of battle it takes a very rational, sober mind to avoid all logical fallacies, and we don't have many of those on a good night. Maybe some other rules. Like don't attack each other based on shit that happened three weeks ago. I don't know. Formal debate rules maybe. And then, if we can stop being a bunch of little bitches, invite people back. You know who I miss? Jumper. And Tarkan. And denise. And redharen. Ugh.

Anyway, I guess the change you want to see in the world, you have to see in yourself. So I apologize for my bitchy post seeks. Peace.