Something cheesy this way comes
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Below are the 4 most recent journal entries recorded in the "thegameiam" journal:
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09:05 pm
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high-energy projectiles
Because Alon is awesome, he organized a paintball outing to Pev's in Leesburg.
I've got welts'a'plenty - the one on my forehead is probably the funniest: apparently that was caused by the direct hit I took in one game or another. However, the annoying one is on my left bicep, pretty much right where tefillin go, so that's going to be noticed for a few days.
We had a bunch of elimination games, which were fun and straightforward, and a few center-flag ones, which were also pretty cool. However, the center-flag field was pretty heavily weighted toward one side: the fort was significantly closer to one pole than the other, and the far pole was downhill. My favorite of the games was a defense one, where a bunch of us had to defend a flag in forts from the attackers who could respawn once.
I had a couple of really cool moments - one was actually being the guy who brought the captured flag, and another was successfully infiltrating the village and picking off several folks. Cool.
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: Rush, "Far Cry"
Tags: paintball
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08:54 am
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photo shoot (har har)
This is a fun photo of the paintball crew, including ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shoshiboo, caseydk, and ReZ.
Perhaps this shirt should be the official garb...
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no word yet from the LYT guy - I hope he hurries up! I don't want to have a pedal-beast for the Grog show (it's short, so minimizing setup time is important)
Current Location: Frederick, Md.
Current Mood:  amused
Current Music: none
Tags: music, paintball
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10:00 pm
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On Warfare
In the full-on WTF??? department: A prominent Democratic Representative wants to reinstate the draft. Now wait just one second here: I seem to remember a whole-lot of leftie-fear-mongering about how "Bush will start a draft" etc - so why is Rangel getting a pass on this?
His stated reason is asanine: "There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft, and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.
you've gotta be fucking kidding me - the arguments for and against war stand or fall on their own merits: it's either the right thing to knock over unpleasant dictators or it isn't. Certainly in some cases, war is the appropriate choice, and is the right answer: we're not so weak-willed that we believe nothing is worth fighting for (at least, I'm not that weak-willed). I'd much rather that the people who are sent to fight wars on behalf of American policymakers be people who chose to be there. duh. And given how much shit President Bush got from lefties about how he got into a non-combat service during wartime in a draft environment, and the accusations of family string-pulling, is Rangel really so naive that he believes that children of privilege who don't want to fight will end up fighting? We've always had people who didn't want to be drafted.
In my family, my grandfather zt"l didn't want to be drafted into the army, so he enlisted in the Navy. My grandmother signed up too (although she was exempt from the draft). My father was either 4F or 1Y (I don't remember) - but his eyesight is bad enough that they basically told him that they probably wouldn't give him a gun if the US were invaded. I believe my stepmother served as a military nurse, but I don't know much about that - other than her, I don't believe anyone in my parent's generation (19 total) in my family served in the military. Some had physical infirmity like my dad, and some were hippie-war-protest-types whose actual whereabouts during the Vietnam war period were pretty hazy. In my generation, looking at both sides, I've got 14 cousins with 4 spouses, 3 married stepsiblings and 3 unmarried half-siblings. Of those, a grand total of one (my older stepbrother) served in the military (just finished his second tour of Iraq - he met his wife when he was in Desert Storm). So in my parent's generation, it was 1/19 served - just over 5%. In my generation, it's 1/24, so just over 4%.
I came very close to enlisting in the Army at one point - I was pretty damn directionless, and was investigating the military as a way to not face the mess I had created for myself after Justine and I moved to Maryland - (see my previous post on that for more detail) - interestingly, I mentioned this to my grandfather, and he strongly counseled me against joining: he described me as "delicate," and said that I could do a lot more good in other ways. I think he's right, but it was still a painful conversation at the time...
So anyway, I think Rangel's an idiot for pushing this, and I'd like to see some Democrats denounce this crap, or else quitcher-bitchin at the Republicans who think that an all-volunteer army means that people did sign up to go to war.
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And if anyone needed proof that I have no business fighting in a military manner, a bunch of us went out to paintball today. I've got about three welts on my legs, my finger is re-jammed, and my knee is all kinds of scraped up. I loved it.
Man, that's a great time, although I see why the civil war was so damn deadly: survival in the games is a combination of luck and having cojones of steel - you can't either totally hang back, nor can you blindly charge - you've got to be willing to take opportunities when they appear without hesitation, and be completely unafraid. Me, I'm a decent lay-down-covering-fire-from-forward-bunker kind of guy: I'm not fast enough to be one of the sprinters, and I'm not accurate enough (yeah, like anyone is accurate with a musket) to really snipe, but hey, I can spend a zillion rounds keeping you pinned down while my buddy grabs the flag...
The big downside? The paint spooge which coats your gloves and gets all over the clothes. I've gotta pat myself on the back for one thing: I did tell one person after we were done that she looked like she had been an extra on a porno shoot (she had big white paint spots all over her face and shirt). hehe :) big laughs followed...
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this reminds me of our initial discussions of our renovation...
Current Location: home
Current Mood:  sore
Current Music: Jane's Addiction, "Just Because
Tags: comics, paintball, politics, porn, rant
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08:22 pm
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Sometimes, you just have to shoot someone
Paintball is fantastic, but more about that later.
When I got home, after making the cholent, I set myself off to the deforestation project du jour:
( progression, in triplicate )
So what's astounding about this to me is the reactions I've received:
I've gotten the completely acceptable pair:
"looks good" or "what prompted the change?"
the moderately acceptable pair:
"that's a dramatic change - it'll take me a while to get used to it" and "I think I like the beard better, but it looks good"
the not-so-acceptable pair: s/"you look like you're 15"/(any other ridiculous age-crack)/g and "Have you seen David? You kind of look like him"
and the ones which are right out: "You look weird" "you're letting us bearded guys down" and "how could you let Sarah push you around like that?"
Now, mind you, these are the UN-solicited comments - there were one or two people who I actually asked "what do you think?" and whether or not they like it, and whatever they say, I asked for it - the reactions there were equally mixed, but nowhere near as rude as the unsolicited comments. Oh, and I forgot: all of these unsolicited comments were received in my synagogue, mostly during services. sheesh.
There was the funny interchange - Ari had reminded me that the way to tell Dave S and I apart had always been the beard, and that I was the evil Spock to his good Spock - now, the implication here is that I had figured out something that would forever elude the evil Spock: if you shave, the alternate-universe people can't tell you apart! hey... maybe there's something to that... So out of the substrate of mediocre and irritating comments came at least one bit of genuine humor. refreshing.
I was starting to internalize the nastiness and criticism, and it was really getting to me: I totally wanted to crawl under the covers and just hide this morning.
Talking to Sarah helped some - she's pretty good at cheering me up - but on the walk to shul this morning, I was reminded of Richard Feynman's first wife, Arlene, who asked him "What do you care what other people think?" Now THAT's a comforting thought - I had let myself forget that I honestly don't give a rat's ass what most people think, and the oh-so-helpful comments of the peanut gallery are doing nothing but second-guessing my decisions. Well. I think my decision-making skills are just fine thank you very much, and I'm not unaccomplished in that regard. Perhaps I should apply the same amount of poor sarcasm to them?
"You looked cool with a beard, now you just look nerdy"
"thanks! by the way, you're a dipshit, and I can grow it back."
Naaaah, my "aw snap" skills are decent, but not much above the "yo mama" level.
Anyway, paintball today was nice, not the least because I got to shoot a lot of the guys from shul. hehehehe... boy, if there's one thing in the world which'll take out frustration, it's shooting someone in the back.
We played 12 games in 4 hours, and swapped teams in the middle. My record was 4-2 before the switch, and I believe 3-3 after. I captured the flag in the last game, so that was particularly cool. Oodles of kills, and while I got knocked out a lot, it was generally when I was running straight up the middle to draw fire for others.
One funny event was when our team recreated Pickett's charge: it was a "center flag" game, and our strategy had previously been to send an unarmed Noah running for the flag to put it under our control, and then slowly advance. This worked well twice. The third time, the other side was a little bit closer to the center than we were, so Noah, Andrew, and I basically were in a turkey shoot, where both of us got hit about 8 times each within about 4 seconds. Geez...
An earlier center flag had had me pick up Noah's spare gun, and snipe away at Michael (who helpfully decided to wear a BRIGHT RED SWEATSHIRT - you could always spot him - everyone else was trying hard to blend in, but a big guy in bright colours? Not going to hide so well...), and finally, I got sick of sniping, and just charged him - he shot me, I shot him about 6 times with two guns, john wu-style, and then got shot in the back by steve. Awesome!
I'm totally exhausted - my run at the end was after I had already run out of gas, so I'm certain I made it up to at least 2 miles per hour, and my left arm is all kinds of sore (I'm guessing that it's from holding the front of the barrel (those guns are surprisingly heavy), but boy, it's totally a great time. I'll definitely do this again.
Current Mood: sore
Current Music: My American Heart, "This Won't Stop"
Tags: paintball, rant
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