SEX ED. 101

Guys Like To LOOK.

The sooner wives, girlfriends and significant others learn this fundamental aspect of the male half of the species, we’ll be more than halfway towards uniting Venus and Mars.

I’m very lucky to have a wife who already understands this genetically ingrained trait, accepts it and d0es not interfere in my guilty little pleasures.  I usually get to go through the Fredericks catalog first…

Speaking of which – what guy doesn’t like lingerie?  Its the concealing that’s revealing – right?  The catalog companies are on record as admitting that they ship more to men than they do to women, so I know I can’t be the only one who appreciates thigh-high stockings, stiletto heels, tiny little skirts and thongs, not to mention bustiers, baby dolls, merry widows and corsets.

I’m probably a little more educated than most when it comes to the names they call these things ($150 bucks for two pieces of netting and a strap!?!) because I was seriously contemptlating going into the business (fyi – distributor to dealer markups about 80% average, dealer to retail, upwards of 200% markup).  Most guys just say “wow, how do I get you out of that thing?”

It doesn’t matter.  You don’t need to know what they’re called to appreciate them.  So here’s a little selection for your ‘just looking fix’:  if the S.O. gives you any grief, tell her its all about paintball…

Not bad for a start – leather and lace, with a collar and some built-in tiedowns.

mmmm – velvet choker and garter belts

You don’t need any more logs on that fire…

And a little something for the vinyl crowd.  Do you think she needs to be locked up – or just wants to be?

Just about everything in this one…

And this one you could take to the field with you – but don’t plan on any extracurricular activity out behind the bunkers;  those jeans are so tight they’re gonna take an hour to get off.

Ooo.  Heels.  That lead up to thighs, that move on to hips…

These last two will give you a run for your money.  Kinda looks like they wanna hurt ya.  And make you do things…

Think fast:  Play a game against the Russian Legion with Magued guesting or spend a little quality time with these two doing things?

Images courtesy of Doxy Lingerie and Lingerie Diva.  I don’t think they’ll mind the free PR.

KEE KONFESSIONS

George at Kee Action Sports sent a letter off to his dealers the other day, telling them (and in a roundabout fashion, everyone else) that their prices are going to be going up.  (If you scroll down a little bit you’ll see that I’ve talked about this before…)

Good-O to George and the folks at Kee.  Way to step up in a professional manner, even if it means they’re going to take a hit.  Cudos for being proactive.  At least this time around everyone will know its coming, can try to work the bump into their budget and get the bitching and moaning out of the way before they hit the field.

Now we get to sit back and see if the other paint manufacturers are going to admit to having to do the same thing in relatively short order, or if we’re going to be in for another round of ‘market share, market share, who’s got the market share’.  Of course, those playing that game will simply raise their prices AFTER they’ve squeezed a few extra customers out of KEE’s pockets – but that would be telling.  (If I remember correctly there’s a little clause in those paint supply contracts that exempts the supplier from having to honor their negotiated price for just exactly these kinds of reasons.)

Market share wars or a nice, orderly across the board increase?  (Move along, nothing to see here.) 

Regardless, players are going to be finding it increasingly difficult to make their playing budgets this year as the economy continues to tank.  Our economy – the envy of the world according to some Texans – is on a “solid foundation”.  The ”underpinnings are strong” and it has “good fundamentals”.  And the Titanic was unsinkable. 

***

What’s up with all the advertising for this train that leaves at 3:10 heading for Yuma?  Hasn’t Amtrack been paying attention to what’s going on in the airline industry?  How about mentioning the 4:10 to Kankakee, the 5:10 to Moose Jaw or the 6:10 to Oshkosh?  We’re gonna end up with a lot of folks getting bumped off that 3:10. 

IS THERE ANYTHING STINKIER THAN OLD DIRTY LAUNDRY?

Yes.  Human feces.  But that will be the subject of a different blog.

PSP and the history of tournament paintball (which will eventually lead to a discussion of their recent BPS rule change.)

Did you know that the PSP was founded on a lie and a vain attempt by one Lewis J. Braun to keep himself and his company at the forefront of tournament promotion?

It was.  Way back in 1992 when the teams founded the NPPL, they hired Mr. Braun to be their corporate counsel and also made the stupid-assed mistake of letting this same person volunteer to promote two of their scheduled six events - which later grew to four when Jeff Perlmutter of PMI dropped out of the promotion game. 

Well, ok, ancient history, right? Except for that pesky little saying about being condemned to repeat it if you don’t learn it, that bit of history could be forgotten.

The NPPL dropped its first event, reducing their inaugural season to five tournaments, which it has remained at ever since.  That left Mr. Braun promoting four out of five.

This despite the fact that this same promoter was responsible for the only national tournament who’s champion was decided by a coin toss in the parking lot (no lie – they had to turn on car headlights so they could see the toss.  Mr. Braun’s brilliant scheduling resulted in daylight running out before the game schedule did.)  AND the same person responsible for the world’s first $100,000 prize for a paintball tournament – that ended up handing out only $80,000 in cash.  And the same person who arrived at an NPPL annual meeting to announce that he had signed a deal with ESPN on behalf of the NPPL – any teams that wanted to be in it could pay him $2500 entry fee…(I’m getting ahead of myself.  I hope you didn’t miss the fact that he stepped into the middle of a television deal between the league and the network and then charged the people he was supposedly representing to attend…)

And then somehow Mr. Braun manuevered himself into the position of accepting all of the entry fees and unilaterally deciding how much of the take the league would get from him.  Seems there was always more dollars needed for port-a-johns that weren’t on site, more referees that didn’t show up, scoreboards that were never made…

Then he went through a period of having to ’share’ his wealth with some of the bigger teams who used their own muscle to get a lock on promoting at least one event a year.  Smart Parts got an event.  Bad Boys Toys got an event.  PCRI/PEVs got an event, and others as well.

Somehow they all forgot that NPPL events were supposed to be put out for bid.  Funny – there was only ever one bid meeting…

Oh, and I forgot all about the member teams’ annual dividends.  See, the way things were set up, all of the founding member teams, and any other team that stepped up and purchased a membership in the league were supposed to get a share of the profits at the end of every season.  Year one – everyone got theirs.  Year two – everyone got theres and then decided to roll it back in as an investment in the league.  Year three – no payout.  And there hasn’t been one since.

The above was the result of Mr. Legal Counsel Braun’s suggestion that the league be set up as a shareholder’s corporation like – and I quote – “supermarket chains”. Oh.  OK.  Sure thing.   (“So if that’s the best way to go, how come all the other sports leagues are set up as non-profits?”  “Shut up you!”)  The shareholder thing was a brilliant move to blind everyone and anyone who might question what was going on with promises of money.

Then he moved to disenfranchise the amateur teams (there was a majority of them and they wanted to do things differently) – despite the fact that it was illegal to do so. 

And how was he able to do all of this you ask?  He was the duly appointed legal counsel for the league and, as far as the paper trail is concerned, he never transferred ownership of the corporation to its real owners – the teams.

He also got rid of or bought off anyone in a position to question the way things were being run.  Anyone remember Kevin Donaldson? Jim Anderson?  Steve Davidson? Rosie?  Every one of them will tell you the same story – after they stop throwing up.  Braun used them as fronts and then cut them off at the knees when they got too uppity.

So then along comes Chuck Hendsch.  Chuck had been elected as Vice President of the NPPL the very last time that the organization held legally constituted elections.  Since the President (Tom Cole) had resigned (probably in disgust) according to the league’s legal by-laws, Chuck was in charge until such time as elections could be held again.

Chuck found some friends that gave him the monetary and political clout to take control of the NPPL away from Braun.  He announced what he was going to do (the league’s by-laws were in disarray owing to the fact that there were no legal voting members any more.  Braun killed that too) and then set about doing it, which entailed a complete separation of the league from anything Mr. Braun was involved in.

Go back and check the letter columns in the magazines and the archives of the web forums.  Braun publicly states that Hendsch was stealing the league.  He even went so far as to rename his organization PSP-NPPL in an attempt to confuse the marketplace.  But there was little he could do, since Chuck had been smart enough to secure the league’s intellectual property and Chuck won that shouting match.

The following year, Braun removed the NPPL part of his league’s name and its been in competition with the NPPL ever since.

Over the years, Braun has been alternately praised as having been instrumental in founding tournament ball in the US and reviled as a power-grabbing manipulator.  His reputation became so bad at one point that he had to hide his involvement with various enterprises:  his position with ProCaps as some kind of corporate advisor and distributor, his ownership stake in Cousin’s Paintball, his revenue sharing stake in Paintball Sports Magazine and who all knows what else.  The man was famous for ‘doing favors’ for people and then demanding payment at some future date.

(Quick humorous aside.  Mr. Braun hasn’t always had it his own way.  One company I know used to advertise in his magazine – Paintball Sports International. This company called the magazine up to temporarily stop their advertising since they didn’t want to go in debt.  Braun said he’s run the ads anyway.  The company insisted that the ads stop and stated they wouldn’t be responsible for paying even if they were run.  Braun ran the ads anyway.  Later on that year, the company attempted to purchase a booth at the World Cup.  They were told that they couldn’t have one until they settled their bill with the magazine – just fold it in with the booth price.  The total came to something like $3,000 of which half could be product that would be used for prizes.  The company delivered $1500.00 in bottle o-rings to the event…I’ll bet there are still some players out there using that “prize”.)

One thing is for sure – he’s never given up effective control of anything he’s been involved in.  You may not see him wandering around (which was difficult to do even when he was wandering around), but he’s still out there some where.

So now we come to ramping, rate of fire and the continuing antics of the PSP.  Which will have to wait for part two of this entry.  Except for an answer to Mr. Raehl’s statement in the comments of the previous post.  You are wrong about the history of setting ROF limits.  Everyone in the tournament game at the time was well aware that the ASTM, under major pressure from the American Medical Association, was insisting that there be NO full auto, NO multi-shot modes and that ALL electronic semi-auto markers should be physically limited to no more than 13 balls per second.  13.  Not 13.3.  Not 13 with ramping.  No bouncing.  No ramping.  No memory modes.  One trigger pull per ball.  Period.

They ALL knew it.  Some manufacturers voluntarily accepted the standard before it was finalized by ASTM (Brass Eagle among them).  Others, finding a willing partner in the PSP, chose to steal market share by ignoring the standard – and player safety – instead.

POLITICALLY CORRECT CAVEATS: Hendsch and Pure Promotions have since sold their interest to Pacific Paintball and Shawn Walker.  Since Pure Promotions set up an entirely new corporation, there’s probably nothing that the original NPPL owners (the teams) can do – and at this point it would be a wasteful, disruptiuve and pointless effort.  PSP has been taken over by Lane Wright and company and all of the evidence points to the fact that Lane is at least trying to do things wRight.  In any event, Lane wasn’t around when most of the foregoing occurred and doesn’t carry any resonsibility for any of it.

A CHEEZY ATTEMPT AT SELF-PROMOTION

Sometime during the next day or so I’m going to post a blog on the subject of the PSP and the lowering of the legal RPS rate.

I’m not going to be nice.

BOTH the PSP AND the teams that play in it are going to come under the gun (with an unlimited ROF), so tell your friends to check back here soon and often. 

I’m heading out to see a man about a payloader. There’s just no way possible to shovel PSP shit manually…

GELATIN CARTELS & THE RISING COST OF PAINT

If you are a fan of movies about intrepid, flinty investigative reporters like I am, you’ll be familiar with the concept of having a “nose for news”. 

Its the idea that some people have an instinct for uncovering information and uber skills at getting to it.

You don’t really have to have a psychic news ability to be able to figure out when something is up that needs looking into.

For example.  Right now there’s nothing much happening in the industry.  Or so it seems.  Upon further examination:

Smart Parts, Tippmann and JT Sports have all made recent announcements that they have cut off their distributors and will now be selling dealer direct.  That’s BIG news.  So how come the paintball airwaves aren’t overheating?

Dig a little deeper and start asking questions.  When and why do manufacturers of large, popular product lines stop using the services of distributors?  I can think of only two reasonable answers, which are really different sides of the same coin.  Either their dealer network is so well established now that they don’t need a distributor or they’re tired of squeezing out that middle third of their margins.

In either case it indicates a quest to chop out an expense so that they can be more competitive on the street.

Wait.  Dig deeper.    If a company needs to make more room in its pricing…

Which brings us to gelatin cartels.  (Cue dramatic music.)

Its widely believed that back in the mid 90s, all of the paintball manufacturers got together and formed the Gelatin Cartel for the purpose of secretive price-fixing.  Some also believe that the purpose of the Cartel was to drive a few smaller manufacturers out of the business and/or to keep non-US/Canadian based manufacturers out of the North American Market. 

Of course cartels that monopolize an industry and price fixing are completely illegal, so either the cartel is a myth, paintball was too small for the Feds to bother with it or, or, they were very good at what they did. 

There aren’t any smoking guns to prove the existence of such an organization, but it is interesting that right about the same time, all of the manufacturer’s pricing fell into line with each other, dedicated paint brands hit the market and paint “grades” became a real thing.  Hmmmmm.

We also started hearing stories about how the commodities that were used to make paintballs (gelatin, glycerine, etc) were going up in price, which meant that our brave and ever-sacrificing, ever-suffering, profitless paintball manufacturers were going to be forced – reluctantly, kicking and screaming in protest – to raise paintball prices across the board.  Not that they wanted to, mind you.  Oh no.  Those guys would give everyone free paint if they could afford to.  We all know that, right?  Don’t blame them, please.  Its really DOW Chemical’s fault – the bastards.  They had to go and raise prices on a key component and now the manufacturers are going to suffer.

Oh, wait.  They passed those price increases right on to the consumer, didn’t they?

Its very interesting that right now, behind the scenes, we’re hearing the EXACT SAME STORY.  Commodity prices are going up so paintball prices are going to go up – BUT ITS NOT THE MANUFACTURERS’ FAULT.  Blame the chemical companies.  Blame big oil.  Blame the renderers of horse and cow hides.  But please don’t take it out on the paint companies.  They’re being victimized just as much as the consumer is going to be – as soon as they can get around to it.

By which I mean, as soon as they get you to buy the story of how badly they’re suffering, the prices will go up.  And since they’ll ALL go up at the same time (mightly coincidental – not!) no one will have any choice except to sit and suck on the big one.

Think I’m way out there in left field?  Ok.  Then how come some paint manufacturers are working very hard right now to kill the introduction of less expensive chemicals for paintball formulations?  Could it be that such a thing would kill their excuses for raising prices?  Nah.

PTP & BRASS EAGLE REACH OUT OF COURT SETTLEMENT!

EDITED TO INCLUDE COMMENTS TO COMMENTORS!

This story has been making the rounds on the forums for the past couple of days and the comments on those forums make me fear for the future of the human race.  Why?  Despite the fact that reproduction is essentially instinctual, the complete lack of intelligence demonstrated by many of those posts lead me to believe that many paintballers lack the intelliegence to be able to figure out where to stick it.  If you see someone humping a lamppost, I’ll lay dollars to donuts its a paintballer…

Please.  If you are too stupid to reproduce, do us the courtesy of staying off the forums.  Go and review some ‘tricks of journalism’ – like how to tell the truth without outing your source or how to figure out what ‘no comment’ really means, and then re-read ths post.

That’s the headline you’ll see on 68caliber.com.

You’ll also see those famous and annoying words ‘terms of the agreement are undisclosed’.

What, you didn’t know that Pro-Team Products and Brass Eagle were engaged in an arbitration regarding intellectual property?  I know we reported on it several months back.  Maybe Dale will provide a link to the older story in the new story…

The headline and that disclaimer about confidentiality regarding the results is about ALL you’re gonna see though.  Seems someone requested a gag order as part of the resolution.

So, rather than reporting the news I’m gonna have to stick with supposition, theory, guesswork, SWAGs, assumptions, logical analysis from the facts at hand and any other phrases I can come up with to indicate to all and sundry that I’m not privy to inside information and no one has spilt the beans inappropriately.  (But remember that I’ve got a near 100% correct track record of figuring out the truth from incomplete information.  Not too tough when you consider all you really have to do is figure out what an incompetent, idiotic, egotistical, power-hungry, money-grubbing person would do in a given situation, multiply the idiocy factor by how much money they have in the bank and you won’t be too far off the truth…)

Suppositions and Assumptions: It seems to me that of all the parties involved in an arbitration, the one that’s in the right and wins is the last one that would want a gag order imposed.  Since the folks at Pro-Team have NEVER conducted their business in secret, (at least that’s the impression one would draw from their press releases) I come to the inevitable conclusion that it was they who WON the settlement.

This theory of mine means that the headline on 68caliber.com ought to say “PRO-TEAM PRODUCTS KICKS BRASS EAGLE’S BUTT IN ARBITRATION SETTLEMENT!”  or, if one wanted to be a little more sensational “TINY LITTLE SPECIALTY DESIGN & MANUFACTURING COMPANY TAKES ON DARLING OF WALLSTREET AND WINS!”

Yes folks, if it weren’t for the smarmy, cowardly action of a large corporation insisting that a major event affecting everyone in the paintball industry be kept a deep, dark, dank secret, you’d all know that IT IS POSSIBLE FOR A SMALL COMPANY TO TAKE ON THE BIG GUYS AND WIN!

But you don’t know that because this is just speculation on my part.

What was this all about?  Well – no one can tell you because it must be kept a secret.  (I used to wonder why Brass Eagle had a warehouse inside a cave and now I know:  remember the scene at the end of Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark – a guy wheeling the Ark of the Covenenant deep into the bowels of a US Government Secrets cave?  I think they filmed that scene at Brass Eagle HQ.)

I can tell you what I think it was about.  I think that Pro-Team Products licensed Brass Eagle to use a whole mess of their patented designs for things like locking collets for loaders, (you know the ones that everyone poo-pooed as not patenable?  Was’nt it Smart Parts that proved to us that getting someone to agree to license your patented product  was just as good as getting a decision in court?) pneumatic grip frames (you know, the ones that everyone says have prior art? – the ones that several other companies are stepping on RIGHT NOW – because they believed that Pro-Team’s version was unenforceable?)  Guess what folks – Brass Eagle MADE it enforceable by licensing it from Pro-Team Products and if you think you’re immune from action – just remember that we’re pretty darn sure that PRO-TEAM PRODUCTS BEAT THE PANTS OFF OF BRASS EAGLE!

But of course I know nothing.  This is all mere speculation on the part of a paintball hack.  I could be wrong – maybe Brass Eagle licensed interruptable windshield wiper motors from Pro-Team and this has nothing at all to do with paintball.

But then again – since its all secret, anyone is free to speculate to whatever degree they wish.  For all we know and can tell from the public facts, Pro-Team Products sued Brass Eagle because they couldn’t stand the smell coming from Bentonville anymore.  Or maybe they discovered that in-breeding is still a big thing down there and objected to having to work with web-toed mutants.

Please – feel free to make up your own explanations (the more outrageous the better) as to why Pro-Team Products would sue the largest company in the industry and, most importantly, why they would WIN!

Ain’t secrets fun!?!  Bet Brass Eagle doesn’t think so anymore.

The really sad downside of this whole thing is that Pro-Team Products – one of the originators of the sport and technologies we use,  a company that was regularly consulted by most other manufacturers in the industry – Tippmann, National and the aforementioned Brass Eagle among them – was taken advantage of by a big guy, almost went out of business but managed to hang in there and prevail – and no one, least of all the OTHER companies that were or are trying to take advantage of Pro-Team Products (and you know who you are) will never know the details.  Instead of being able to learn from the example that was made of Brass Eagle, they’ll have to learn the lesson all over again by themselves.

And you – the paintball playing public- you have been deprived of learning everything there is to learn about how a little guy – sticking to their guns against all of the odds, even when things were stacked majorly against them - stayed the course, sweated it out and brought a behemoth to its knees, quaking and trembling in fear of defeat and the consequences of defeat.

Or at least that’s what I THINK happened…

Paintball Gets Sexy

I have to admit that I take guilty pleasure in reading some of the other paintball blogs on the net.

One such missive touches on a subject that I think is particularly, shall we say ”appropriate” for paintball – BDSM.

I think this discussion of IT might have legs, so in the interest of whipping it into some kind of coherent shape, I’d like to offer some comments on this raising of awareness of alternative sexualities:

Some people say that sexual orientation is a matter of genetics and some say its a matter of choice (and some say that even if it is genetic – its not a matter of choice).  I go one step further.  I believe that your sexual interests, not just orientation, are predisposed by your genetics.  If pigs wearing feather boas and stiletto heels turn you on, you were born that way. 

I’ll take that one step further.  You don’t get to decide what your ultimate turn on is going to be.  You may have multiple minor turn-ons and not even know what your ultimate is because you haven’t been exposed to it yet.  If you do discover it some day you’ll know instantly and you won’t be able to help yourself.  Even if you personally consider whatever it is to be vile and disgusting, its still going to turn you on.

This is precisely the reason why there is such a high rate of recidivism when it comes to sex crimes.  To a large degree, these people just can’t help doing what they do.  Its a sex thing – the most powerful drive on the face of the planet.  That doesn’t mean you excuse the behavior.  You control and contain it to the best of society’s ability.

So when it comes to outing someone’s sexual practices – unless it involves something understandably illegal (use of force, use of minors – your list may be longer) – I just look to see what they’re supposedly into in case I might be into it too.  Or might want to be into it.  Or might be willing to try it at least once.  (On the off chance that I’ve never heard of it – which is rare indeed – I can always look it up on the web.  See?  Porn is research!)

And speaking of BDSM.  I’ve always thought that there’s a natural connection between paintball and IT.  Back in the day the only thing you ever heard in the staging area was how much someone had punished someone else or how badly someone had gotten beaten.  With smiles on all the faces and a visible eagerness to go back out and get some more!

All you need to do is listen to the smack talk.  Someone is always doing someone else, violently.  Or at least that’s the way its portrayed.  What better fetish is there for paintball than one that involves the giving and receiving of pain for fun?

Either that or a circle jerk. 

You sure do have a purty mouf…

My last blathering dealt with the history of extortion, threats, lies and overall badness of The Paintball Players’s Bible magazine and how some folks in the industry stepped up to buy them out and get rid of them.  Interesting that even in a society of thieves, braggarts, cheats and liars there are some folks who can still go too far.

I then smugly stated that “those kinds of things don’t happen in paintball anymore…”

(What’s the largest font size I have on here?) WRONG!

Its still going on.  Apparently members of the paintball advertising media are still engaging in the practice of threatening bad reviews, providing bad or no coverage, burying companies behind filters and setting their mindless puppy sycophants on negative word of mouth rampages if you don’t advertise with them.  

Rumor and innuendo have reached me (well ok, FACTS have reached me that I am not at liberty to disclose for a variety of reasons) that the above practices are alive and well in the modern era of internet advertising. 

We play with toy guns because all we have is toy courage. 

No one apparently is willing to stand up to this kind of thing – fearing that the mewlings of a bunch of 12 year olds still in diapers is actually going to negatively affect their sales.  Some are even willing to pay bribes to other folks to keep the fact that they’re paying the ransom money a secret.  I’d want it kept secret too – I’d be so embarassed over having knuckled under to a bunch of fags (and I use that word in its pejorative, not orientation, sense)  that I’d be willing to pay other fags to sweep it under the rug.

Well, maybe I wouldn’t but some folks seem to be.  The cowardice and stupidity of this industry never cease to amaze me.

So, welcome back to the Henrys.  Now I have to go and eat, despite the fact that this whole thing makes me want to vomit.  I don’t think that  Peanut Butter Nachos are going to help settle my stomach.  

THEY PLAYED PAINTBALL IN THE FIFTIES?!?

Talk about prior art!

I like 1950s memorabilia and I came across this ripped magazine cover –

Yeah great, I thought. Yet another science fiction magazine. (Science fiction was big in the 50s.)

Then I did a double take.  There was something very familiar about the way those guys in the funny masks were standing.  It took me a second to realize that what it most reminded me of was a paintball team posing for a cover shot!

Definitely a three man team doing the cover thing.  Or maybe three top players for one of those “Here’s How WE Do It” pieces the magazines are so fond of.

Then I had one of those weird moments when your whole perspective shifts and you see things in a completely different way, all at once.  It wasn’t a cover shot for a magazine.  It was a shot for a product ad featuring the three stars that pimp whatever it is!  There was the name of whatever-it-was up above the players.  The ripped out sections probably had ad copy saying something like -“Whatever-it-is makes you win.  Duh.” – Jarko Fanabian 1952 Champ” or some such. 

While I was trying to figure out what they were selling, something else caught my eye. 

Holy crap!  I took a closer look at the guns these players were holding:

NO!  It couldn’t be.  Well, maybe it could be.  Hmmm, maybe it is.  Nah, not all the way back in the fifties!

But maybe it is a paintball gun.

There’s definitely something that looks like a vertical ASA coming out in front of the trigger guard.  In fact, it really looks like the ASA they have on those WGP Trilogy markers. 

There’s something sticking up over the receiver about where a feed port would be – and a vertical one for that matter.  Behind it could be some kind of force feeding loader.

The barrel is pretty fancy and makes me think that there’s some kind of sophisticated gas-exhaust, rifling, whatever-it-is barrel system.  At least it looks like there’s something going on there.

You know, the more I looked at it, the more I became convinced that these guys were actual players from some long lost stone-age version of paintball.  The only way I can account for the strange, somewhat silly, head gear is that there must have been a surplus of space helmets.  Either that or the technology of the day was only capable of a crude approximation of what we are familiar with.  Or maybe they’re doing a scenario game.

Did I say stone aged?  Wait a second.  I took another, even closer look at the markers –

Old, yes.  Maybe even half a century’s old.  Crude?  Unsophisticated?

I think maybe not.  Take a look at that thing!  That guy’s holding the most sophisticated paintball marker/loading system/power system that used to be on the face of the planet!

I see a detachable magazine fed feed system that’s either electric or pneumatic (or maybe a little bit of both), an integrated air system (I don’t see a tank so it must be in there), something obviously connecting the barrel system to some kind of monitoring system (how the hell they got a chip that had to use vacuum tubes in there I have no idea.  I told you these guys were way ahead of us!) maybe a built-in chronograph or eyes of some kind, or both…Obviously it has everything you could possibly imagine having in, on, somewhat close to if not remotely activated using any possible frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum!

I wonder why they stopped playing?  Maybe the sponsorship dried up.  Maybe someone accused the operation of being a Communist front.  Maybe their paintball was based on alien technology out of Roswell and Area 51 and the government took it back.  Maybe we weren’t supposed to have the technology yet and the aliens took it back. 

Or maybe they had major problems finding photographers who could take pictures without major reflections off of shiny surfaces. Like Fifties era plexiglass.

CLEARINGHOUSE PT. 2

Continuing with my perusal of paintball blogs, we come to the first one I’d actually identify as a blog – paintballblog canada.  A variety of information pieces, drawn from different sources.  Nice link to tournament field layout info.

Paintball Journal is by the same guy who writes for Xtreme.

Paintballskewl (don’t go there for spelling or grammer…) has some informational pieces on equipment, weather, etc.  Not bad, but again, same-old, same-old.  When is someone else going to write about the game, the industry, the people, the economics, the politics, the marketing, the advertising, the culture?

Someone over at PaintballHeadlines had this to say: 

“Eh. A little self promotion never hurt anyone. I’ve launched a new paintball blog on the grounds that all others suck.”

Well, yes they do, for the most part – but I fail to see how you’re upping the ante: pics of markers, mentions of new products, apologies for not posting more frequently.  And an axe to grind… 

Apparently they play paintball in Romania, and they even have a blog in (partial) English.  Dated, but curious.

Technical Paintball:  Yada yada about new product releases – but also some refreshingly new info about the writer’s old school markers.

Ballpeen to the head time. (Say the following in an oracular, fire and brimstone voice.)  Christian Paintball wants all good Christians to enjoy the clean, wholesome fun of paintball while keeping their enjoyment in perspective.  I think that means get your game time in now because you never know when your teammates are gonna get snatched up to heaven by the rapture.  I don’t know for sure because the Christian Paintball Blog is curiously blank.  Maybe they think they’ve said everything that needs to be said. 

(If you don’t know already, I spend far more time at Richard Dawkins site than I do on any site devoted to promoting religious faiths.  And for the record, I think its stupid to restrict your paintball play – or avoid it entirely – just because someone who has a great press agent took a rest one day during the week.  With all the calendar changes we’ve been through over the millennia, the Sabbath might be on Tuesday for all we know.  But that statement gives way too much credence to the idea that someone or something actually created the universe and then had to rest.  Not playing on the Sabbath is like not playing during the week because the Easter Bunny told you not to.  Need I point out the problems you must be having if the Easter Bunny is talking to you…?)

I’ll take my own sabbath right now – except to mention that we haven’t reached Sakworld’s blog on Google yet, and we’re already five pages in…