The fact of the matter is, that while there are many beautiful women out there, there are a select few that you connect with, they make you feel complete in one way or another.  But the truth is this doesn’t always go both ways, for many reasons: age, interests, you work together, education, psychology, body type, this list goes on and on.  It seems these are the ones I seem to find myself drawn to.  I sometimes wish that God, whoever or whatever that omnipotent power is, would give us some way to identify and cause ones paths to cross.  And although I am quite content at being single, there is that one person I run across that makes me wish I wasn’t.  ‘Sometimes’ the feelings are not necessarily mutual.

Games like OFP and ARMA are a hard concept for most to accept, they want action, they want something that what they perceive to be real, actually IS.  Many of us old OFP and ARMA fans no that most games don’t even as close to this as we would like.  But would it be nice if those who played COD, MOF and BF had a closer attachment to a more RL sim.  Sure we know a lot of this is about money, especially during these times where companies are trying to keep there head above water, especially when so many dollars are spent in development.  The fact of the matter is CM needs to make some form of acceptable approach to the gaming community.  Personally, I think they should have never done this under the OFP name.  But I think, that if they can keep ARMA as a more realistic approach to MilSim and use OFP to help those trigger happy shooters over to something a bit more realistic, it’s acceptable.

CM if your listening.  Keep ARMA for us hardcore MilSim fans, and use OFP to show those trigger happy FPSrs that there is something better out there.  JMHO

So your probably wondering what brings this up.

Well the other day I was ordering a Celtic FC Football (Soccer) Jersey for this season.  With shipping, for an official kit jersey, I spent $68 (with the shipping).  It’s still a bit much, particularly since I am such an anti Nike fan, and knowing that the jersey was probably made in some place like Honduras, China, Brazil or some outsourced country for 10% of that if not less.  But when I was looking through the MLS (Major League Soccer) stores wanting to purchase a jersey for the Rapids upcoming first game, I have to say I was appalled by the fact that they were charging $110 for a SHIRT.  Soccer isn’t even big in the US.  Yes, the Rapids won the Cup last year, but ALL the clubs are charging the same amount.  So I am wondering, why would I want to pay $110 for a jersey that advertises for a club, shouldn’t you be paying me.  Afterall, marketing is a companies largest expense, well that is unless the fan is willing to pay the expense for you, at the same time driving a huge profit.  Chances are these jerseys probably cost any where from $5-$20 to produce, if that, which means a $90-105 profit.  INSANE!!  I am all for promoting the world sport, and would love to see it continue to grow in the US, but honestly… your heading down the same road as MLB, NFL, and the NHL  Along with this I find that the largest fans of these clubs are on the end of the field instead of the middle where corporate organizations buy seats yet hardly ever fill them and are as boring as hell during the game, and probably don’t even understand it.  I left going to baseball games, just because of this, and chances are the same will probably happen with soccer.  But HEY, you have your money, that’s all that counts, RIGHT?. I had high hopes in the MLS, but I find myself greatly disappointed.

But lets get to my first impressions of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam.

I love the idea that we have some new maps to play with, but honestly, Map pack 7 gave us something more to work with.  If your not sure what I am talking about, you are probably confused.  The most recent Map pack 7 pulled some of the older maps, which gave players a much broader(literary) terrain to work with.  They actually felt as if there was more going on then there was.  The reason is, because it gave players more terrain to work with.  BFBC2:Vietnam seems very narrow (a tunnel effect if you will).  But in my idea of Jungle style combat is the fact of , where the hell are the enemy.  I don’t get this feeling.  Sure the terrain is extremely ‘OBSTRUCTIVE’ but it does not provide much camouflage.  Just in the first day of it’s release it really didn’t take much for one to find a target once they were on the front line. And honestly this dragged me more into playing the Hardcore Mode (usually less players) than playing the more mainstream modes. But honestly!!, the idea of using obstructions over creating a level of suspense of deep foliage really pulled me back to just wanting the play the original game over the expansion pack.

And I have to ask, where are the Hueys as shown in the videos, I have yet to see one like was seen in the trailer for the game, which looked to be a great map.  Overall, it’s an ok mod, but I think it can be better, much better.

Now I am not against fingerprinting as a whole, I have had it done numerous times on the State level for work, particularly considering the work that I do.  But I am against the Federalization of it, thereby requiring both, instead of inter-State cooperation, like many States do with Drivers License records.

This goes back to a previous post of mine in which State in cooperation with Federal TSA are now patting down customers in bus stations.  Security is slowly replacing Freedom, the Socialism we fought so hard against is slowly taking hold.  In so many ways, the terrorists have won already, they don’t need another 9/11, they already have us running scared.

http://www.ice.gov/about/offices/enforcement-removal-operations/secure-communities/index.htm

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-fingerprint-txt,0,4742737.story

Yellowstone Valley and the Great Flood

This is one of the fifteen legends of the flood that he himself recorded in various parts of the world:

He was an old Indian. his face was weather beaten, but his eyes were still bright. I never knew what tribe he was from, though I could guess. Yet others from the tribe whom I talked to later had never heard his story.

We had been talking of the visions of the young men. He sat for a long time, looking out across the Yellowstone Valley through the pouring rain, before he spoke. “They are beginning to come back,” he said.

“Who is coming back?” I asked.

“The animals,” he said. “It has happened before.”

“Tell me about it.’

He thought for a long while before he lifted his hands and his eyes. “The Great Spirit smiled on this land when he made it. There were mountains and plains, forests and grasslands. There were animals of many kinds–and men.”

The old man’s hands moved smoothly, telling the story more clearly than his voice.

The Great Spirit told the people, “These animals are your brothers. Share the land with them. They will give you food and clothing. Live with them and protect them.

“Protect especially the buffalo, for the buffalo will give you food and shelter. The hide of the buffalo will keep you from the cold, from the heat, and from the rain. As long as you have the buffalo, you will never need to suffer.”

For many winters the people lived at peace with the animals and with the land. When they killed a buffalo, they thanked the Great Spirit, and they used every part of the buffalo. It took care of every need.

Then other people came. They did not think of the animals as brothers. They killed, even when they did not need food. They burned and cut the forests, and the animals died. They shot the buffalo and called it sport. They killed the fish in the streams.

When the Great Spirit looked down, he was sad. He let the smoke of the fires lie in the valleys. The people coughed and choked. But still they burned and they killed.

So the Great Spirit sent rains to put out the fires and to destroy the people.

The rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved from the flooded valleys to the higher land.

Spotted Bear, the medicine man, gathered together his people. He said to them, “The Great Spirit has told us that as long as we have the buffalo we will be safe from heat and cold and rain. But there are no longer any buffalo. Unless we can find buffalo and live at peace with nature, we will all die.”

Still the rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved from the flooded plains to the hills.

The young men went out and hunted for the buffalo. As they went they put out the fires. They made friends with the animals once more. They cleaned out the streams.

Still the rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved from the flooded hills to the mountains.

Two young men came to Spotted Bear. “We have found the buffalo,” they said. “There was a cow, a calf, and a great white bull. The cow and the calf climbed up to the safety of the mountains. They should be back when the rain stops. But the bank gave way, and the bull was swept away by the floodwaters. We followed and got him to shore, but he had drowned. We have brought you his hide.”

They unfolded a huge white buffalo skin.

Spotted Bear took the white buffalo hide. “Many people have been drowned,” he said. “Our food has been carried away. But our young people are no longer destroying the world that was created for them. They have found the white buffalo. It will save those who are left.”

Still the rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved from the flooded mountains to the highest peaks.

Spotted Bear spread the white buffalo skin on the ground. He and the other medicine men scraped it and stretched it, and scraped it and stretched it.

Still the rains fell. Like all rawhide, the buffalo skin stretched when it was wet. Spotted Bear stretched it out over the village. All the people who were left crowded under it.

As the rains fell, the medicine men stretched the buffalo skin across the mountains. Each day they stretched it farther.

Then Spotted Bear tied one corner to the top of the Big Horn Mountains. That side, he fastened to the Pryors. The next corner he tied to the Bear Tooth Mountains. Crossing the Yellowstone Valley, he tied one corner to the Crazy Mountains, and the other to Signal Butte in the Bull Mountains.

The whole Yellowstone Valley was covered by the white buffalo skin. Though the rains still fell above, it did not fall in the Yellowstone Valley.

The waters sank away. Animals from the outside moved into the valley, under the white buffalo skin. The people shared the valley with them.

Still the rains fell above the buffalo skin. The skin stretched and began to sag.

Spotted Bear stood on the Bridger Mountains and raised the west end of the buffalo skin to catch the West Wind. The West Wind rushed in and was caught under the buffalo skin. The wind lifted the skin until it formed a great dome over the valley.

The Great Spirit saw that the people were living at peace with the earth. The rains stopped, and the sun shone. As the sun shone on the white buffalo skin, it gleamed with colours of red and yellow and blue.

As the sun shone on the rawhide, it began to shrink. The ends of the dome shrank away until all that was left was one great arch across the valley.

The old man’s voice faded away; but his hands said “Look,” and his arms moved toward the valley.

The rain had stopped and a rainbow arched across the Yellowstone Valley. A buffalo calf and its mother grazed beneath it.

SOURCE

Ira T. Weiss
That can be construed as confirming that the peoples that crossed the Bering Strait are one of the lost tribes of Israel.

But, as we’ve recently seen in Arkansas, floods can happen anywhere in a moments notice. When your whole world is only a hundred miles circumference, a local flood can seem like it has affected the whole world.

Ira, I tend to think you are correct about catastrophic local floods and myth. A culture’s read into such an event is telling of their faith and outlook too. By that I mean does your story emphasize only a negative, vengeful motive; or do you see the force of life winning out over death and destruction.

Ira T. Weiss
My story? Are we talking the biblical or the Cheyenne story? I’m only aware of the Cheyenne story, and that was previous to Todd’s post, never read it or heard it. I think a reference was made in a fantasy novel I read years ago.

Also, keep in mind that both cultures that begat (sorry, couldn’t resist) each story were oral communicators when … See Morethese stories began. This means the stories more than likely changed shape and meaning based on who was telling the story, their life-experiences, what was going on in their culture, etc. As history goes, it is written down by the victors. By the time the stories were written down it may have changed drastically not to mention the fact the translation of the Old Testament may have been changed as it went from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to Arabic or Farsi and back.

And it happens in the modern age to. Look at what is taking place in Texas. They are systematically changing textbooks to fit their expectations, the way they see the “cosmos.” If this movement were to take hold and spread history would change.

Ira T. Weiss
Oh, my story is a combination of Old Testament and any myths from the People of the Longhouse. Iroqois.

Todd Ricker
Personally I think these stories can come in a myriad of ways.

1) By carrying them over from other stories. We see this in many forms. For example, Mithraism, Hinduism and the Ancient Egyptian religion we see a lot of commonality in their faiths. A messiah who is crucified. A virgin birth. His birth at the Winter Solstice Dec 25. The story … See Moreof the flood could be one of these things as well. It was not uncommon for Christians to come and preach to the Indians. So much like the pagan celts they easily could have adopted these stories into their own stories as well.

2) The theory that there was some form of great flood. This could either be localized as you two are mentioning, or a larger scale. Part of our history in North America speaks of the glaciers creating much of the terrain of North America. Long Island moraines believed to be evidence of that. But did the glaciers just pull back, or did they melt. If they melted, this could be easily taken into the context of a great flood, and could explain some of the evidence of ancient marine fossils and sedimentary deposits found in high altitudes. For example, here in Denver there are evidence of marine fossils along the Eastern slope, this does NOT form into a bowl area like a lake, but instead opens up into the Great Plains. In order for water to collect that high all the way to the Appalachias it would have to be an enormous amount of water.

3) The idea that fits in with Ira’s original context that these stories were carried here by indigenous tribes that transplanted here, like in his example the lost tribe of Israel, or other cultures that may have come across the Bearing Strait.

More info here

So after seeing a posting from my friend Huw linking to a site called Lands of America I figured I would check it out.

To be honest I was quite surprised by some of the prices for just land.  Yes I wouldn’t have a cabin there right away, heck I wouldn’t even have water, but to be quite honest the idea of having a piece of land if my own, something I could pass on, even if to my sister, her kids or to my extended family, meant that I would finally own a piece of America.  After a few days of searching I found this.  A mountain side plot, protected on both sides from the elements by the ridgeline.  2.5 Acres; Deer, trees, and located in a large valley in the Rockies, located in the middle of nowhere all for $5500.  Taxes are only $106 a year, and there is no timeframe to get a structure up.  It all seems too reachable, but after talking with people, this is a very real possibility, and very attainable.  So I have already contacted the seller, and hoping to set up a time to come out and view the land, if I like it, it all comes down to coming up with the funds.

The fact in the matter is, that at this point, and at my wages, I will probably not ever own a home, at least not without putting myself in debt for the rest of my life and beyond.  But the idea of having a place I can go to, a place I can own outright, even if it meant just a simple little cabin with no power for some reason gives me a sense of …

View Larger Map

The spot is located just beyond those trees in the distance before the second ridgeline.

Personally I would prefer the land just above that on the ridge.

I walk aimlessly through this night.