Cold Water Diving

[etype]

dearest nitroxbabe: sorry babe, the crassness is on your part; and i wish you may understand this...despite the moral complexity, concerning your insistance, irregardless common sense, that the use of this word is vulgar. It is not vulgar, it is a perfectly appropriate english word. A lurid imagination does not pre-empt the lexicon...full stop..whether you like it or not. This was the purpose of the definitions cited from the O.E.D... instead of MTV.

KrisB’s excerpt ‘nails’, (if you will excuse the oppressive, masculinist connotation that is primarily in your mind), the intended meaning, namely;

Pussy: N. Amer. informal a weak, cowardly, or effeminate man.’‘

If personal offense, right or wrong, misinformed, deluded, whatever...is the ultimate authority...then i am offended...yes.., a victim of your lexical callousness. And with my ‘fresh’, elevated and contemporary status as a language usage victim, i point a finger trembling with righteous moral outrage, at all you drysuit wearers...You despoilers of mother nature...You callous consumers and wasters of tri-laminate and neoprene, (most likely assembled in non union and glue addled sweatshops by the oppressed for minimum wages in third world countries, like uhm...Canada.), You despotic, arbitrary rubber barons...You inflated blobs who paddle about like autocrats in tyrannical and absolutist, imperious comfort whilst the fish cannot even afford scarves, let alone warm socks..while pelagic proletariat huddle in neglect with only their ripped, aquasealed farmerjohns or their scales or blubber, whathaveyou for comfort, ....and especially..You ‘babe’s’ with your ‘fancy-pants’ nitrox, your lips red with enhanced O2, (as if with the blood of resistive language victims...sob) while the downtrodden bob about the surface with ashen faces, their sunken eyes swollen with salted tears.....how dare you! How dare you assume to police the language of Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Dalton, Boyle and Cousteau (well, his 2nd language...but i’m sure he would not suffer this moral outrage from the bourgeoisie...the french know how to handle your kind.) between huffs of nitrox in your monster SUV while swervedriving through the suburbs i imagine! What do you know of it? Nothing i say!....your too busy oppressing posts noble with rosseauian savagery with your cliquey schoolmarmism and trendy gestapo language initiatives...

‘ A hand...hooked and blue with cold and unenhanced oxygen levels...rising slowly from the 45F surface...clenches into a neoprene fist of staunch, collectivist rebuttal! We shall overcome! Wetsuit Divers Unite! Overthrow the Drysuit Bourgeosie!’ etc. etc...

(too much espresso...i think.)

 

[KrisB]

etype once bubbled...
If personal offense, right or wrong, misinformed, deluded, whatever...is the ultimate authority...then i am offended...yes.., a victim of your lexical callousness. And with my ‘fresh’, elevated and contemporary status as a language usage victim, i point a finger trembling with righteous moral outrage, at all you drysuit wearers...You despoilers of mother nature...You callous consumers and wasters of tri-laminate and neoprene, (most likely assembled in non union and glue addled sweatshops by the oppressed for minimum wages in third world countries, like uhm...Canada.), You despotic, arbitrary rubber barons...You inflated blobs who paddle about like autocrats in tyrannical and absolutist, imperious comfort whilst the fish cannot even afford scarves, let alone warm socks..while pelagic proletariat huddle in neglect with only their ripped, aquasealed farmerjohns or their scales or blubber, whathaveyou for comfort, ....and especially..You ‘babe’s’ with your ‘fancy-pants’ nitrox, your lips red with enhanced O2, (as if with the blood of resistive language victims...sob) while the downtrodden bob about the surface with ashen faces, their sunken eyes swollen with salted tears.....how dare you! How dare you assume to police the language of Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Dalton, Boyle and Cousteau (well, his 2nd language...but i’m sure he would not suffer this moral outrage from the bourgeoisie...the french know how to handle your kind.) between huffs of nitrox in your monster SUV while swervedriving through the suburbs i imagine! What do you know of it? Nothing i say!....your too busy oppressing posts noble with rosseauian savagery with your cliquey schoolmarmism and trendy gestapo language initiatives...

‘ A hand...hooked and blue with cold and unenhanced oxygen levels...rising slowly from the 45F surface...clenches into a neoprene fist of staunch, collectivist rebuttal! We shall overcome! Wetsuit Divers Unite! Overthrow the Drysuit Bourgeosie!’ etc. etc...

That brought a tear to my eye. [holds back emotion]

Anyone want to sign a petition banning drysuit use by recreational divers in waters warmer than 45 degrees?

I mean, really, it's an egregious abuse of overinflated egos and the elitist attitude that the dive industry has tried so hard to avoid!

Truly, if you must wear a drysuit in water warmer than 45 degrees, you deserve to be called any of the following: pussy, wimp, wuss, weakling, namby-pamby, sissy, mollycoddle, baby, pantywaist, mama's boy, sucker, among others.

 

[etype]

Agreed KrisB...these drysuit wearers perfume themselves with ‘eau de cologne’ and then float around lazy and sentimental. And their stooges the ‘nitrox syndicate’ attack any who oppose their hegemony with bombastic bravado... What barefaced cynicism....


Wetsuit Divers!...Veterans of Nature!....And those familiar with the sea...

Should i not protest these cruel and brutalizing libels by perfumed gigalo’s and their cohorts, the ‘blue-stocking oxygen sniffers’ that pretend to eclipse our natural and enduring sublimity? Should i not raise my voice now before these sybarites travel about with submarine suburban sport vehicles and blight our crystalled waters with clouds of hydrocarbons and the odour of sauteed salami at 30 meters seawater?
Should i not rise up against those who would strip from the language the most essential and euphonic utterances of the ancestral legend poetry of our aquatic avocation and art?

Should we not stand together against these credit card bon vivants and their voluptuary off-gassers that attack the best and most ardent of our sport with elaborate political strategems and polyeurathene double coated picket-fence schemings? That would replace resilience, strength and endurance with dialectical materialisms and bungalow aesthetics agreed to by a committee of machiavellian Kevin Costner afficionado’s ? These hi-rise playboys and the condominium secret police, searching us for banned paperbacks and chiding us for not growing goosedown on the back porch to supply their military-industrial complex?

Je refus’e

Aqua fortis nam credo — "I dive because I believe."

 

[Soggy]

Somebody please close this thread. It has degerated beyond belief.

Definitions or not, "pussy," in our vernacular, is generally considered an offensive and insulting word. Quoting a dictionary will not change that.

 

[jbichsel]

Soggy once bubbled...
Somebody please close this thread. It has degerated beyond belief.

Definitions or not, "pussy," in our vernacular, is generally considered an offensive and insulting word. Quoting a dictionary will not change that.

I agree with Soggy. What started out as a useful discussion on exposure protection, has degraded into a vulgar rant on who's right about being the most disgusting.

Wimp would have been a more appropriate and acceptable term.

Profanity and vulgarity are the signs of a weak mind and limited vocabulary.

 

[KrisB]

jbichsel once bubbled...


I agree with Soggy. What started out as a useful discussion on exposure protection, has degraded into a vulgar rant on who's right about being the most disgusting.

Wimp would have been a more appropriate and acceptable term.

Profanity and vulgarity are the signs of a weak mind and limited vocabulary.

Hey etype...

apparently you spoke right over this guy's head with your last two messages because it seems that our insistence on the lack of profanity and vulgarity associated with our term of choice evidences a "limited vocabulary"

Funny, I'm one of those guys who is generally offended by almost any vulgarity and the term we've been using here (in this context) does not offend me in the least! Maybe us Canadians are just a little thicker skinned... taking things a little less seriously or something.

 

[etype]

agreed KrisB: it seems scuba has become the sport of the rogaine addled, suburbanite ice-cream eating, franklin mint collecting set. For them this is no longer sport, but a shopping safari. There used to be a time when you could expect divers to have a bit of ‘tone’...the type of people you would share adventures with...you could count to have your back. Now it’s ‘Look,what have i bought’...and worse... a sad, sad state of affairs.

Look drysuit invalides’...there is nothing wrong with wearing a drysuit if your more comfortable diving with one...i’ve said that repeatedly. But repeatedly you state that ‘you have to wear a drysuit, it’s the law... either you can’t afford one, or don’t know any better.’...this is what gets me...these statements by naifs, and Padi instructor hoi polloi.

The fact is, and this is reality, not the climate controlled ladyland you prefer to covort amidst.... a healthy, in-shape diver can dive easily 45F with a 7mm suit by choice, love every second of it, and not have it any other way...get this: ‘they may prefer it over a drysuit for single dives! Some foreign language about streamlining and building endurance. It’s like ‘did you ever hear of excercise? Developing tolerance?’ Things that require a bit more effort than reprogramming the remote control and lubing the levers on your barco-lounger?
If you prefer a drysuit, no problem, but when you start pretending wearing a wetsuit is suicide to cover up the fact you’ve become a viagra addict...thats where i say stop...what’s happened to reality...when was it taken over by corporate lackeys?

As for those who propose ‘wimp’ as a better word than the luxoriant and palate tickling ‘pussy’....look, i like Quaker furniture and i have no problems with polygamy or mormon millenniumalism...but frankly, i suspect you find

‘See Jane Run.
Run Run Jane’
a little wordy and unnaturally focused on Jane running. Maybe just return to your video’s about the apocolypse...it’s all be over soon...

Maybe i’m old fashioned but i remember a time when you’d expect divers to be men and women of substance, of character...not weepy eyed mall rats or retired elementary school hall-monitors..crying mammy over a beautiful and luxioriant word.
When some monosyllabite comes on and monotones:

‘Profanity and vulgarity are the signs of a weak mind and limited vocabulary’

This is vulgarity standing up on hind legs and staring you straight in the eye.

Just my humble opinion.

 

[KrisB]

etype once bubbled...
As for those who propose ‘wimp’ as a better word than the luxoriant and palate tickling ‘pussy’....look, i like Quaker furniture and i have no problems with polygamy or mormon millenniumalism...but frankly, i suspect you find

‘See Jane Run.
Run Run Jane’
a little wordy and unnaturally focused on Jane running. Maybe just return to your video’s about the apocolypse...it’s all be over soon...

This is getting way too funny. But first, let's correct a stereotype -- putting this in perspective: I'm currently studying at Bible college in order to become a pastor... so this really has nothing to do with religious background!

I think it's just that some people take a word and can't stand the fact that it may mean different things in different contexts. It was obvious we weren't calling those drysuit-insistent sissys a part of the female anatomy... I mean, really.

And people say that television is the cause of the moral decay of society! Peshaw, I say! It's that nobody has a 2500 page dictionary in their house anymore! If the people that complain about the use of vulgarity would get over it and start improving their vocabulary, the world would be a much better place and we wouldn't need those four-letter words that always refer to something vulgar.

Why is it that people use that wonderful f-word in place of 'extremely' or 'very'? It also seems to mean 'hate' or another form of expressing displeasure with someone. All in a word that, not even 200 years ago, was just a synonym for rape.

 

[etype]

agreed KrisB: if people had richer vocabularies, they could see that anything at any time is just a facet...or something or other (cue the sounds of monks chanting in the background). Even if we were calling those drysuit clenching blanky cuddles a part of the female anatomy...this could be a very sincere form of affectionate address and personal interest in their warmth and well being.

my spiritual base is christianity but i have no crossover to censurers, talibs that are get their kick from prohibition, instead of focusing on positiveness...the strength and freedom when you become what you are. So there is an aptness to some stereotypes, even to religions...but no rules.


That said, it seems only one person realized that all the hyperbole was in jest... coincidence that person had a decent english dictionary?

(no hot potato comments about national cultural values...hehe)

jbishell, Nitroxbabe, soggy...sorry, i was just ‘gooofing around’. I apologize for posting like a diva. We all have our aria's...

Read some other threads about cold water diving. I’m sorry, your assertion that only newbies and the poor dive wet is flat-out, plain ignorant. It’s newbies that think the only choice is drysuit, because the choice is always to buy something. Even more experienced divers who dive dry know that some dive the same water wet and dive freer and farther, with less air, more freedom, because they condition themselves to do it and they have methods to offset the difficulties of being wet. (and anybody can do it...it’s natural.) And very experienced divers know that for free diving, with the right choice of gear nothing can touch a wetsuit.
There are two types of sport scuba divers: bounce divers and free divers.
Bounce divers are typically padi trained divers. Descend, flap around, ascend, look around, get on the boat. Their lead and their bc does the swimming for them. The dumbest, most useless fins seem excellent to them...diving is an up/down proposition. They keep buying gear because they think that will improve their diving. Buying Computers instead of going over every dive with your table until it’s second nature and you can recalculate at any time accurately. Buying Drysuits instead of getting in shape and swimming like an athlete who creates their own warmth exploring the undersea enviroment. Buying on advise from magazines and divestores instead of extending their skills and range and finding out what they need and what is just drag. This is called industrial age diving. These people once they have experience always look to go deeper, because although it’s dangerous, it’s easier than going farther....with less.

Then there are free divers. Who dive the least amount of gear and weight and learn to swim strongly and naturally, they sync to using the least amount of air...so they can go farther. That do tables ‘every’ dive until they know it by heart. Who dive on horizontal angles because they trek through their enviroment...thats why they go underwater... to swim it. These are also the safest divers, the diver least likely to be unprepared and confused by crisis...overwhelmed by gear malfunctions...out of touch with themselves and the enviroment.

Because, the best, most expensive, most redundant and most formidable, spectacular piece of gear you can ever acquire for a dive is yourself...fit, aware and in tune....everything else besides the essentials are trinkets. You take what you need and leave the rest. If you need a drysuit, you take it. If you don’t, leave it.

And the above, is the most useful comment in this discussion on exposure protection...brother jbichsel, soggy...not affirmations on purchase decisions.

And as for the ‘pussy’ thing, nitroxbabe, i love that word. It’s a wetsuit type of word..a free divers mantra:

“So he haue
his pretie pussie to huggle withall,
it forceth not.”

 

[jbichsel]

Let me dispel any presumptions you may have that I am anywhere near "yuppy, Franklin mint collecting..."

Originally from Montana (Yea, where the men are men, the women are too, and the shepp are nervous). Grew up in a log house built around 1890, raising horses, sheep, cows, etc....getting up at 4am to milk cows and take care of the animals before school. At age nine, gained a step-father who was less than stellar, but not bad, just had no financial sense. This caused myself, my mother, twin step-brothers, and him, to live from July 1, 1976 to October 30, 1976 in a GP medium tent in Montana. How about having the school bus pull up outside your tent? No such luxury as 'indoor plumbing'. Baths were taken in the Bitterroot River, toilet facility was a log behind some bushes and potable water was 30 gallon barrels filled in the neighbors corral. After that, we got a 14 x 70 trailer house, but still had to run 30 yards to an outhouse. Ever had your butt-cheeks set on a piece of plywood when it's -40F?

I've been covered in sheep, cow, and horse excrement. I've fought forest fires, thinned timber, spent six years as a tank gunner and commander in the Army, lived for a week on insects and raw frogs. I've never been to college and own my own business. I've been stranded in snowstorms while fishing the backcountry, treed by bears. I drive a 4x4 pickup that is 5 years old and paid for.

I probably know more slang, vulgarity, and ways to describe human body parts than a fair amount fo sailors.

I collect hugs from my daughters, kisses from my wife, fishing gear, guns and scuba equipment. I am remodeling our house by myself. I dive wet down to 40 degrees. I do not own a dry suit.

My point was that this thread went off topic. I know all the meanings of the word 'pussy'. Don't even need a dictionary. I am not thin skinned, but do know the time and place for certain things.

Sorry for the drawn out reply. Just wanted to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. No offense taken or intended.