Remember when you first started seriously considering that a climbing partner could also be a life partner? I don't know how old or cheap you are, but I'm talking about back in the day, when climbers tied their own slings. Hanging out in the tent on a rainy day, or on a rest day, or maybe just at home by a sunny window on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you both decided to "organize climbing gear", which is Climberese for "avoid doing laundry or dishes", you thought it would be wonderfully romantic to put the initials of both of you on your climbing gear!
Then you tie the knot. How sweet!
Aah, but for the slings and arrows of fate! You stopped being climbing partners some years ago, perhaps even stopped climbing altogether, and then stopped being life partners more recently.
Now miserable you is left with the miserable half of your climbing gear, with those no-longer-such-a-good-idea other initials on it.
Should you just buy a whole new rack with only wire-gate carabiners and sewn slings and those pansy coloured anodized stoppers? Naah, you would rather first use "Hello Kitty" duct tape to hold the fender of your brand new Ford 150 dirtbag climber truck.
Should you then cut-off those 4 inches with the extra initials and re-knot the slings, and run the risk of desperately trying to protect -while hanging on to a melting crimp on the face next to it- a heinous 1.5" 5.7 crack that your delicate hands can no longer jam, unable to get the shorter sling off your padded-by-the-years shoulder and fat head and the helmet you wear as if anybody cared whether you lived or died?
No need for all that! The "COSMIC sling" comes to the rescue:
and saves you from having to explain - to that cute young climber you just met after she or he soloed the 5.7 and rescued your over-cammed Friend- why you have two sets of initials on your gear.
As Austin Powers would have said when his newlywed fembot explodes on their honeymoon, were he to have been a climber, "Shag-a-licious! I'm now free to re-tie the knot!"
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