'Tis Friday. Hoooray, Friday!!
We had Crackpractice last night and everything went pretty well. Lots of rocking and jamming. Crackbass came up with one bassline, in particular, which I think we are slowly forging into a mighty rock anthem. After practice we watched the Mavericks self destruct (which I'm told that Sigmund caused through some sort of jinxing behavior) and we watched David Hasselhoff's "Hooked on a Feeling" video, which I recommend highly to you Adventurers (well, you should at least watch half of it- it's kind of long. Look especially for the inexplicable appearance of the weiner dogs. So very strange and fascinating...).
Before going to sleep I watched a Nightline story about a team of divers who went diving in Bushmen's Hole, a 927 foot deep water-filled cave in South Africa, in the attempt to recover the body of a fellow diver who had drowned at the site. Well without going into too many details, things went poorly during the rescue operation and someone else died (with another team member seriously injured). The support crew, anticipating a dive that would take hours, sat excitedly at the surface, believing that they were mounting a recovery effort which was nearly unprecedented in the history of cave diving. Meanwhile, their friends were dying and suffering down below. That damn story kept me up for half of the night because I couldn't get over the idea of drowning slowly in a water-filled hole, alone and at least 700 or 800 feet below the surface, with your only companion being the corpse of the man you had come to recover. I couldn't decide whether the divers who attempted the recovery should be commended for their bravery (they clearly recognized the feat as dangerous, but felt it was important) or whether they should be reprimanded for their arrogance and foolishness, for engaging in an activity which was (obviously) extremely dangerous for the simple goal of recovering the body of a fellow diver (who had died attempting the same feat and who likewise knew the potential dangers and who probably knew that he might never be recovered if he died). The issue was made more clear by the the videotaped statement of one of the recovery divers who said that he didn't want anyone to risk their life trying to recover his own body if he died in Bushmen's Hole. Wouldn't the former diver have felt the same way?
Anyway, the "leave no man behind" ideal is a weird one, and it transcends strict logic. I know that some U.S. military units have a policy of risking their lives in order to recover the bodies of fallen comrades, and I have to admit that I don't see the sense in it. It's not like I would relish the idea of my dead body lying anonymously behind enemy lines, but the idea of my friends getting killed in order to recover my inanimate corpse strikes me as absurd. Just light some candles and drink a beer for me, and I'm alright, you know?
So, anyway, I'm not sure why I posted about this rather morbid topic, except that I did find the Nightline story interesting, and in some ways I guess I have a great deal of respect for these recovery divers, even though they may have been misguided. I also found the story interesting because it was such a stark example of man's inability to come to terms with the fact that some things in nature are kind of just meant to be left alone- not conquered.
Ooookay. Sorry this was a bit grim, but from time to time, such is the mind of Steanso.