CONFESSIONS OF A PAINTBALL MANUFACTURER

Dale Ford, the Editor-in-Chief of 68Caliber.com, the internet news publication that occassionally prints my editorial scribblings, has asked me for a declaritive statement regarding the relationship of my identity and his identity.

Here it is:  If asked under oath in a court of law, I would have to admit that I am NOT Dale Ford.  Stating otherwise would be perjury on my part.

The foregoing interruption of our regularly scheduled paintball screed was prompted by an email Dale received from one of the scions of the paintball industry who is obviously not too happy with some of the things I said in my earlier blog.  I conclude this from Dale’s insistence that I make the above statement. 

Not being privy to the rantings and ravings (constantly inhaling PEG probably affects the mental processes) I’m at a loss as to how to respond to what Dale described as “facts that refuted (my) statements”.

Refute away oh mighty king of gelatinous substances.  Thanks for reading, btw and forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but there is a comment button down at the bottom of the page.  If you want to take me to task, please, PLEASE to so – but don’t hide behind the great and hairy one over at 68Caliber.  Come on over here.  We’re waiting.

 Provocative title, huh?  No, I’m not a paintball manufacturer – nor have I ever been, but I’ve visited numerous facilities and have been right next to the manufacturing process , not to mention other aspects of the “drug dealer” side of the industry.

***

When I started to write this entry I had in mind passing along all of the questionable business practices that I’ve witnessed over the years.  Things like putting cheap paint into expensive paint boxes, fobbing excess oil off as a ’good thing’, leaving the deodorizer out of the mix (less expensive, much smellier ball), shipping the old, unmovable inventory to major events and selling it to a captive audience at premium prices, that kind of thing.

But then I started thinking about the apparent disconnect between the paint manufacturer’s stated marketing claims and their manufactured designs, and I decided it was much more important to share these observations. 

Back in the day before we knew any better, paint was BIG and HEAVY.  If my opponent was behind a bush, I could use a few rounds to cut branches and leaves out of the way, digging a tunnel through the bush in order to get that elimination.  Try that these days and you end up with an interestingly colored bush.

This is partially because the IPPA began setting safety standards, many of which were adopted by the current standards setting organization, the ASTM.  One of the things they determined was that both the weight of the ball and the maximum velocity it could be shot at needed to have limits in order to insure a safe game.

Using physics, they ultimately determined that the maximum weight should be 3.4 grams and that the maximum velocity should be 300 feet per second. 

Here’s an airsoft site that offers a calculator for determining the ‘foot/pounds’ of a paintball impact.  http://www.pyramydair.com/site/articles/formulas/ Ft/lbs is a measure of force and is essentially how many pounds of pressure are exerted over a one square foot area by a given object at rest or by an applied force.  The calculator uses grains as a measure of weight rather than grams, so here’s a grams-to-grains conversion site: http://www.metric-conversions.org/cgi-bin/util/convert.cgi

The maximum “legal” weight for paintballs is 3.4 grams, which works out to 52.4699 grains.  Let’s plug that and 300 fps into the calculator – it comes to 10.49 ft/lbs.

Just for fun:  plug the same weight in at 240 fps. This is a typical nighttime velocity limit at many scenario games: that yeilds 6.7 ft/lbs, almost a 40% reduction in force. 

 Now try a ball that weighs say, 2.8 grams at 300 fps and you get: 8.64 ft/lbs…

and once again, that lighter ball shot at 240 fps: 5.53 ft/lbs

Here’s those numbers together for easier comparison:

3.4 grams @ 300 fps = 10.49

2.8 grams @ 300 fps = 8.64

3.4 grams @ 240 fps = 6.7

2.8 grams @ 240 fps = 5.53

Pretty dramatic difference.  That night time player with the light weight balls might as well stay in his tent.

It is a truism of physics that if you accelerate two objects of different masses at the same rate, the massier (heavier) object will travel further.  There’s more energy in the system because you had to impart more energy to accelerate the massier object.

Consider that for a moment in light of the energy-at-impact information provided earlier.  The heavier paintball is going to have a better chance at breaking AND the heavier paintball is going to travel further (under a given impulse) than a lighter ball.  More potential breaks over a greater distance.

If that’s the case – then why have paintballs been getting smaller and lighter with every passing season?  Especially in the face of all of the advertising claims to the contrary?  Better range, better accuracy.  Not in the physics lab.

The answer is PROFIT.

While promising you better range, better accuracy and better breakability, the companies are actually making a product that stands less of a chance of breaking, can’t travel as far under present velocity limits and, due to other contributing physical factors, won’t be as accurate.  (A massier object is less subject to wind resistance and less influenced by drag effects.)

Pretend for a moment that you are a paintball manufacturer.  (Porsche in the driveway and a Hummer in the garage, regular three month European vacations, tens of thousands of sycophantic worshipers throwing themselves bodily across puddles so that your Bruno Mali  shoes will not get muddy.)

Now pretend you are a paintball manufacturer pretending to be a balance scale.  Hold both hands up at chest height, palms up.  Let’s watch what happens as we try and balance profit against customer satisfaction.  Let’s put some profit on one scale.  A quarter ought to do.  See how your hand starts to dip down under the quarter’s weight?  Now, before things get out of hand, let’s drop some customer happiness into the other hand. 

Hmmm.  It doesn’t seem to have any effect.  The hand with the quarter is continuing to dip lower and lower.  No matter how much intangible customer satisfaction crap we drop into the other hand, profit still out-balances it.  Even a quarter of profit completely emasculates (that’s “chops the testicals off of” for vocabularly challenged folks) any pro customer arguments the manufacturers make. 

Now take your mind off of that under-age paintball groupie.  You’re not really a paintball manufacturer, only pretending to be one.  You might want to think about taking a shower instead…  

This is NOT an isolated phenomena.  Let’s take commercial field paint as an example.  The stated (marketing) purpose of commercial fields is to help grow the sport.  Give newbies a positive paintball experience and before you know it they’re idiotically spending every moldy penny they can pull out of the couch cushions. 

So then how come most (if not all) field paint is designed to bounce?

We know that bouncers typically hurt more on impact than breakers do.  This is because some of those foot pounds we mentioned earlier are dispersed during the act of breaking, reducing the amount of energy imparted to the target.

This is not circumstantial;  paint companies work very hard to make their field paint with as thick a shell as possible.  They advertise this quality to their field owner customers under the guise of ‘fewer breaks in the barrel and therefore less time doing maintenance’.

Under their breaths, they point out to the field owner that in terms of profit, bouncers are a good thing.  If only one shot in three, or four, or five results in an elimination, the field owners’ paint sales will go up proportionately.  We don’t count bouncers, only breaks.  The player that wants to win is going to keep on shooting at his target until he gets a break.

But is this really a good thing?  The result is that we’re physically punishing our (potential) new customer base.  The very people we’re trying to convince of the greatness and fun of paintball are experiencing pain deliberately inflicted by the paint manufacturers and field owners working in concert with them.  (I don’t want to indict all field owners with that statement.  Some of them are just clueless.)

How many new activities would you be inclined to try if the price of admission was a punch in the snoot from the very person taking your money?  (I know at least some of you would seek it out eagerly – see my piece on BDSM & paintball below.)  If the initiation for skydiving was getting dropped ten feet face first onto a concrete tarmac –  before you even got in the plane - there would be fewer skydivers every year.  If qualifying for a driver’s license meant that you had to first be involved in a high speed front-end collision, most people would be taking the bus.

We’re doing the same thing to our newbies.  Clever marketing, even down to the guerilla level (if you can’t take the pain, you’re not a real paintballer) gets people to ignore common sense and buy into the hype.  But if you think about it for even half a second, you’ll realize that at some point the uncomfortable realities of physics can no longer be ignored.  A lighter ball may be better for the manufacturers’ profit (less material, less cost) – but there is no way to make the claim that it has better range and accuracy.  A thicker shelled ball may be better for a manufactuer’s or field owners’ profit, but there is no way to change the fact that this results in more pain and injury on the field, no matter how much you want to believe that its because rental guns are hard on paintballs.

You can believe in the fantasies.  Most do.  Or, you can take a look at the reality, which is that the paint manufacturers have clearly put their profit way ahead of customer satisfaction, and have amply demonstrated that fact through the characteristics of the very products that they make.  The old expression goes something like ‘make a wish in one hand and take a crap in the other and see which one fills up first’.  In this case, its the marketing claims that are the crap.

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…

MADE IN AMERICA

Paintball, I am happy and proud to say, is an American invention.  A wholly American invention.

I won’t go into the ramifications of the fact that ‘only in America’ do we invent games that involve simulated shooting and death (sorry.  Purists among you will by now be screaming ‘its only a game!’) because that’s not my focus today.  (Maybe next week I’ll pick up that mantle and see how far I can run with it…)

Three guys, living in the New England Region, the birthplace of our nation, excercised their Constitutionally Granted Rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (with pursuit probably being the most important element in this particular story), lived the American dream, made themselves wealthy and famous in a variety of fields and pursuits and then, simply on a whim, invented the greatest of all American pasttimes – paintball.

You know the phrase:  Where else but in America?  Right?  I mean, these guys made their pot in the fairytale, rags-to-riches kind of story we only see in movies.  And THEN they went on to invent paintball.

Do you you think those guys had any clue back in 1981 that their Made-In-America game would be almost entirely manufactured overseas?

I doubt it.  If my age-addled brain remembers correctly, that’s just about the time we were getting all upset over Japanese ownership of American companies, trying to protect the car companies from imports and wondering if there was going to be anything American-owned left in the country.

In fact one of the biggest marketing tools the original manufacturers used back then was to proudly stamp, laser engrave or sew “MADE IN AMERICA” directly onto their products.

You don’t see too much of that anymore these days, do you?

I’m betting that most of you can guess why.  For the slow amongst you its because “HARDLY ANYTHING YOU BUY THESE DAYS IS MADE IN THE USA”

I ran into this issue several years ago when I was still working in the industry.  I and my colleagues became aware that there were an awful lot of cheap, crappy, easily broken, no visible means of support, fly-by-night, here today, gone tomorrow so-called product flooding the market from overseas.

Well, big deal, we thought, American Made puts all this crap to shame and anyone with half a brain and one good eye can tell the difference.

We were right about that.  They can tell the difference.  The problem was they had an overseas budget, not an American Made one.  We got a ton of emails from people saying ‘gee, I wish I could afford your American Made stuff, but I can’t, so I bought a piece of crap. Sorry’.

Well, ok.  We’re still in business and when those kids get real jobs, they’ll remember that they really wanted our stuff.

And they did.  They flooded the market with requests for Made in America stuff and the manufacturers and distributors stepped up and met their demands.

Or so we were led to believe.

There are Federal laws that govern what can and what can’t have a label saying ‘Made in America’.  Those laws are pretty shaky – and pretty damn piss poor if you ask me.  I’m not going to bother re-reading the requirements, so forgive me if I’m a bit off on the numbers (government regulations are pretty dry stuff), but it works out to something like “if 70% of the components are made in the US, or if you assemble the product in the US, you can put a ‘made in usa’ sticker on it”

Say What?  I can buy all of the components overseas (providing gainful employment to thousands of orphans, widows and children)  and if I sit in my garage and attach the grip frame to the body, I can say it was made in America.

Its a little known secret, but some paintball manufacturers have unilaterally decided that PLACING THE PRODUCT IN THE BOX constitutes “assembly”.  I can’t think of anything that comes closer to outright fraud, but given the fact that the people engaged in such gray-area activity have been doing so for years (and to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in product sales), its obviously ok with our government.

I can’t think of a single major manufacturer or distributor serving the industry that isn’t guilty of at least placing non-American Made parts into their American Made product;  that is if the whole damn thing isn’t made overseas.

Go take a look.  Think that Smart Parts Ions are all American Made?  How about Tippmann Model 98s?  Brass Eagle Markers?  WORR Games cockers?

You may be playing an American Made Sport, but you aren’t doing it with American Made Goods.  If that doesn’t bother you, chances are you’re getting an allowance from Mommy and Daddy.  When you grow up you’ll understand a lot better why outsourcing and letting foreign countries suck up all of our manufacturing capability isn’t a good thing.  When your allowance dries up because Mom and Dad need to make the mortgage payment, you’ll have some direct experience of why its not such a good idea to send all of your paintball money overseas. 

MORE 50′S PAINTBALL

Ever since some readers said that I was ’stupid’ or ‘had too much time on my hands’ when I brought the possible existence of people playing paintball back in the 50s, I’ve re-doubled my research efforts.

I have found some very interesting teasers.  There is apparently much more to this than I had originally thought.  It seems that this is all tied in somehow with flying saucers and government cover ups.

I offer the following image of a 50s paintball gun – with a red paintball just exiting the barrel – as additional proof.

I’m really looking into this deeper and should have some more interesing images and information soon.

That’s Just Not Right…

Like everyone else I occassionally visit search engines out of sheer boredom.  You all know the drill:  stare at the text window until some strange, bizarre or completely unbelievable thing pops into your head (like for instance ‘necrophiliac beastiality’) type it in and take a tour.

I was doing that this afternoon.  I honestly don’t remember the search term I used, but it most definately was not something that you would think would lead to this:

I went to the website listed on the image and found a site that has several other action figure mashups (Darth Vader as a Slave Girl, Harry Potter in a very fetching knee-length skirt…) .  The site is also very gay themed, so if you have issues with your masculinity, I suggest you stay away.

Its pretty obvious from the subject matter that someone likes to pull the heads off of dolls.  Considering what I know about paintballers, that little bit of implied violence was just enough to justify putting this into a paintball blog.

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.  

O HENRY!

Back in the pre-history of this great and glorious game (when we used rocks instead of paintballs and saranwarp for eye protection), there arose a media empire by the name of The Paintball Player’s Bible.

At the helm of this yellow rag were two men named Henry.  One was cute and liked to dress in leather clothing. The other was greasy, had a bad case of gout, an ego larger than space and time put together and a background specializing in direct marketing and other bottom-feeding pursuits.

 These guys talked TASO into competing directly with their dealers by opening up America’s Paintball Superstore and then turned around and did the same for one of TASO’s major competitors – National Paintball Supply.  Their genius suggestion for NPS was to open up 888Paintball – the stinking albatross around the neck of paintball’s electronic commerce.

They defrauded the entire industry with a bogus 20th Anniversary celebration – promising major mainstream media hype and forever jaundicing the industry on big family get-togethers. 

They openly (almost)  threatened major companies and extorted advertising dollars for their magazine. The greatest expression of this was the recall of a Brass Eagle product. (They affected BE’s public image and potential sales so much that BE advertised…)

Eventually, Postorivo, Dion-Krischke and a few other unsung heros of the paintball world stepped up and bought them out, banishing them from our world forever.

Fortunately for the paintball world, the paintball media doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore.  That’s why its almost laughable to watch some of the movers-and-shakers tip-toe around their media relations. 

I wonder if they really think they’re putting one over on someone?  Its kind of hard to believe that anyone would think they could possibly slip something so transparent and obvious by a fairly sophisticated audience, but given the number of times they’ve tried, I guess they think it works.

I realize that a little of the foregoing might be confusing to those not in the loop and I apologize if that’s the case.  Its really a message for a select few.

That message means this:  if the industry wants to USE the media to advance their business and political agendas, they have to SUPPORT the media.  What’s not fair are those who don’t support the media but try to take full advantage of it anyway. 

What’s interesting about those folks is that they’ve failed to read - or at least pay heed to – Sun Tzu.  When you send out spies, you risk giving away as much or more than you gain. 

Trying to plant a story? Great.  We like juicy stories.  We’ll look into and print the truth if we think its relevant.  If that serves your purposes – cudos to you, smart boy. 

But do you know what happens when we finally get sick and tired of the attempted manipulations?

Funny thing about the news.  There’s ALWAYS two sides to every story.  

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.