Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see...

This morning was the official bachelor party for my good friend and martial arts instructors (one of them anyway), Nate Smith. In all, there were about 15 of us at this party. Twas a nice morning. In the mid to upper 60's then reaching a peak around 80 or so. We didn't do the predictable bar and stripper combination the uncreative enjoy; no, we went paintballing. It has been about twelve years or so since I last paintballed (in fact, it was with Seppy and Martin), so needless to say, I was eaten alive by some of the more experienced folk. Anyway, it was great fun. I even came home with a few welts for souvenirs and a giant purple-pink-red-brown-and blue bruise on my stomach. I was shot by a gentleman with a pistol from near point blank range. For what it's worth, I shot him at the same time with a more powerful gun at - you guessed it - near point bank range. Even if I didn't react when I did, Nate avenged me himself. This dude ate to rounds from some high powered markers set at the highest acceptable power. He was cool about it. We had a rather peasant conversation on that long walk the dead men take back to the waiting area. By the end of the day, I became a full-fledged member of Nate's paintball team, "Station 8". I have the vinyl sticker to prove it. Good times.

Nothing ellse seriously eventful has taken place over the last several weeks since my last post. I bought a new grill and used it for dinner tonight. It was the best grilling experience of my life once I got the charcoal going. Nothing tastes better than food from a charcoal grill.

Music time. This choice was easy. Since I spent the whole day playing various war games, it only makes sense to go with Dragonforce's "Operation Ground and Pound".

High kicks, low quality acting, and fireballs? YOU BET!

On Saturday, Mike, Justin, and I went to see the new Street Fighter movie. It delivered all the cheese I was hoping for. At the same time, there were elements of it that can be taken seriously. This combination made it an enjoyable experience.

Basically, the movie centers around Chun-Li, but more importantly, they creators are designing this the same way "The Avengers" is being done. They are introducing one main character at a time (the movie alluded to Ryu being the focal point of the next movie). This group of people are known as the Order of the Web. More or less, take all the good-guy characters, and form them into a group of individuals who are not quite superhersoes, but can perform all the tricks in the games. Yes, even fireballs.

We shall see where this series goes. The acting wasn't all that great, but the guy who played Bison was spot on. Oh, and the style employed by Chun Li and her father as Wushu. This is of course not at all a martial art in the martial sense, but more of a glorified gymnastics routine. No wonder daddy lost his fight. Amazing Chun Li won hers.

Speaking of martial arts action, I finally got around to posting the montage from the training festival I went to in October. I am not in any of this because my part couldn't be captured well on camera (unless the camera was 5 feet away). My part was to get pwned by my instructor (the demonstrations were for black belts only).

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy it!