well they say that rock is dead...

And the victim-mentality continues. (Read my review of Touching the Void to know what I'm talking about.)

Nearly 20 years after the fact, Joe Simpson continues to relive the worst few days of his life over and over again.

First through a book, Touching the Void, which, like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, recounts a mountain-climbing expedition gone horribly wrong. Then with the making of a movie based on his book, which toured the festival circuit last year and, just this past weekend, won the 2004 British Academy Film and Television Association (BAFTA) award for Oustanding British Film of the Year. And now, as the film expands to 25 more American cities and continues crawling across the country over the next few months.

Far from being therapeutic, however, the experience of making and promoting the film with Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September) has been less cathartic than horrific for the 44-year-old British mountaineer, dredging up memories long since buried under an avalanche of snow and, ironically, driving a wedge in a friendship that had heretofore survived a test no relationship should have to undergo.

Oh how very tragic! Let us all bow down to this guy and praise his strength of spirit in the face of his utter lack of judgment! Ugh.