Why I like Rambo

I just finished up watching the movie Rambo again for maybe the third time and a thought came to me that many people I have spoken to are shocked and disgusted by this movie, but me? I love it. Is it gratuitously violent and steps over the line in numerous places? Hell yes. Is it a simple and minor story? Yeppers.

However, I think this movie says something that we as a society do not have the fortitude to say these days: Sometimes war, and killing, are justified.

One must wonder what GEN Patton, GEN MacArthur, or probably any citizen of the Alliedcountries would say if you told them we needed to ensure we did not harm any women or children when we bombed Germany. I am sure when the order to bomb Dresden came down, no one said “But poor innocent Germans might be killed!” We did not care then because it was a war for survival, everyone was affected by the way and every knew the outcome if we did not stop the enemy. Can you imagine the uproar today if the US Air Force conducted a similar raid? Good God, the news would erupt in story after story of the poor innocent people killed and the ‘war crimes’ (sorry, that term makes me laugh, its called WAR stupid!) we had committed. Heads would roll. GENs would get relieved (then tried in court) as politicians tried to save their asses and prosecute the military who are charged with doing just these things. Aaah, got to love our politically correct society we have created. Heck, I think it is funny when people get squeamish when they slaughter a cow in a film, I mean what the F* you think you are eating at McDonald’s people?!?!?

Anyway, back to the movie. I fully believe there are people in the world that cannot be reasoned with (Hitler, Kenghis Khan, Mao, that stupid leisure-suit wearing dork from North Korea), and when those fools somehow get into power and are threatening us, by all means they need to be removed…harshly. So why this film? Because it takes that idea and shoves it in our face, it shows us that there is a time for violence. There are times when killing someone is the only way to save others and to put an end to evil. I think as a society we have forgotten this, perhaps because the US population has been so far removed from the everyday violence of the world. Perhaps we think we are above it now, but sadly it still exists, waiting for us to let our guard down. This movie reminds us that it is still there, staring from the shadows. When faced with a losing situation, Rambo steps up and removes evil at the head (sometimes literally). If he had not, the general would have killed all the (misguided) missionaries and continued to torture the Karen people.

Sometimes evil must be fought with evil.

And plus, when he turns the .50 cal on the driver of the jeep….wow…

100 Push Ups & 200 Sit Ups…day one, and a test

Day one of my 100 Push Ups workout. As dictated by the program, I started on Week Three of the Push Ups program. I also took the initial test for the 200 Sit Ups program and scored a 53, not too shabby. Tomorrow I will do Day One of the Sit Up program, and lucky me I start on Week Three for it as well. Damn it.

Push Up: Day One.

Seemed decent, not too hard, until I got to Set 5. I pushed through 20, then it eased up a little and I was able to push on through to make it to 25. Wanted 30, but I was pooped.So far seems pretty good, I can feel it, tired me out, but looking at the next day, where the sets jumps up about six reps and the final set is up to 25.

100PushUps

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this web site and the idea came to me that I should try it out. I have a APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) coming up anyway and a few additional pushups never hurts the old ego of this old man.

Now I must admit that I am about two weeks behind schedule in actually starting, life just keeps getting in the way. Tonight I took the test, probably later in the evening than I should have, but hey late is better than never right? So I scored a 30, I probably could have done a few more, but heck I was tired already after a day at the gymnastics meet….and well, that’s an excuse.

Anyway, so tomorrow I start the plan. Reading it, I guess I skip ahead to week three and go from there, apparently 30 is good. HA! Not even my minimum I have to do for the Army test. I am not sure the validity of this plan, but heck, doing more push ups cannot hurt you…..can it?

So, 30 push ups, and tomorrow I start the plan….

In the mean time, you can check Brennen and Bryan’s progress on their sites. Keep an eye on those two, something fishy about them…..

Risus…so damn annoying

Ok, I love Risus, I think it is a kick ass system that is flexible enough to allow any genre. That said, I absolutely HATE it as well. Let me explain.

Risus is free, the basic rules are available for free from the Cumberland games website. The expansion pdf, The Risus Companion, is a paid for product, well worth the price and I highly recommend it. I am looking at starting up a game and am planning on using the basic rules plus a few from the companion as well, BUT I would like my players to have ALL the rules to read over. Right now, I am thinking I will use like one rule from the companion…one freaking rule.

The creator of Risus encrypted the damn files, so I cannot just copy and paste the one stupid rule as text from the PDF so my players could read this additional rule. Now sure, I can tell them all to go purchase it (probably the reasoning behind it), or just hand jam it in, but damn it, for a FREE game this is annoying as hell. I see shades of the music industry DRM stupidity here: “Buy our product, but we will dictate how you are able to use it.”

I purchased the product, thus I should be allowed to use it as I see fit. It is not like I am going to resell it or make money off of it, and in fact, I am pretty certain that most of my players have the Companion already….I just want to be able to create a sort of “all encompassing rules” handout to give them for reference. I am sure this is a I.O.R. no-no, but jesus, I bought the crap, I want to use it, not have to jump through hoops to be able to use the data. Just reminds me of the hoops you have to go through to get my iTunes, Sony, or WMP encrypted files to play on anything I want. Freaking annoying.

Almost enough to destroy my fascination with Risus. I mean really, is the a market for bootleg versions of Risus PDFs? Really?

Now, the good news. I was able to find two free pieces of software (one is on a trial basis) that removes the moronic encryption and another that converts the file (albeit not 100% perfect) to a Word document. Take that! HA!

Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies!

Bryan, Rob and I set out on our first adventure using the PDQ based setting Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. Bryan has been itching to run a PDQ game for me for about….I don’t know, since I met him, so I think he was very stoked to finally get some movement with this. Neither Rob nor I had a chance to really look over the rules and setting too much besides a quick once over. We jumped in and both came up with characters pretty quickly, the only hiccup was figuring out which of the Fortes we wanted to select. This was the biggest thing that gave me trouble, picking which ones just was difficult (mainly because this would affect the rest of the game). I ended up making a sort of swashbuckling rogue who used to be a scholar and a physician (to a noble house) in his previous adventures.

Now, at this point I must point out that all the Story Gaming that Bryan and I have done, or spoken about, over the last year is really starting to affect his game mastering….in a good way. He walked into the game without any prior planning. This is sort of a gaming mantra he and I have adopted (in my case, derived from the influence of Brennen I think). So as we played, Rob and I threw out ideas and directed the tale in ways we wanted and affected the story as ideas came to us.

We started out at a pub (cliché, I know) where we came across a fellow spinning a story that piqued my interest and immediately seemed questionable to me. I jumped in and used my style die (unintentionally I might add) and added a small detail to the game. I added that my character used his Alchemy to create an intoxicating truth drug that he hid in a ring of a skull on his finger. I drugged the guy, we interrogated him and I stole his clothing to use another Forte: Master at Disguise.  Using the information we gained from the drunken man, we strolled onto the boat. We soon determined that the one boat we knew of was a decoy, and the other one was the real boat.

Overall, this is an interesting mix of trad-style crunch with a story game angle allowing players to add details to the world around them. I am not sure how much of the rules with regard to that were ‘doctrine’ as written and how much was Bryan letting his Story Game goodness run amok. Either way, it worked perfect. I think adding a few players would add to the details and interesting facets of the game only get better. I also think a little more familiarity with the setting, the strange country names, and general weirdness of the setting would only add to the ease of play. I think the mechanic are very, very cool and as Bryan put it…a natural extension of Risus, which of course is always good in my book.

I should also add that we were all messing around with OneNote to create character sheets and create a log of the game as we played. Due to our inexperience with this software, it might have slowed us down a little, but not to bad. I have attached my character for those interested (made using OneNote).

Markato Maldonado (character sheet)

iPad….Apple fails

I will admit here, I love…no LOVE, my iPhone. I cannot imagine living without it. That said, I hate AT&T (and all US carriers). Their pricing structure is insane compared to the rest of the world. In Iraq, yeah THAT Iraq, I could talk on my phone and surf the net unlimited for about $30 USD. It was spotty and at times would fail, but hell, the US carriers do that all the time AND WE ARE NOT AT WAR.

Anyway, so today they announce the iPad. At first glance it is neat, sounds like a good idea, all full of noise and fury, but when you look a bit closer, it is nothing more than a bigger iPhone. I fully believe it is nothing more than that. Battery life, about the same. No multi-tasking, the same. Oooh, I can browse the net….just like I can with my iPhone.

Big freaking deal. I see nothing new or special here. It is as if they took the last iPhone, put a larger screen on it, a bigger battery (to get the same life for the larger screen), and repackaged it. Nothing new or groundbreaking here.

Course, the stupid masses who think Mac is teh awesome, will buy it up in droves. I will wait for the 4th generation and buy it then.

iPad = fail.