A New Perspective on Paintball

The title of this blog post is a very (very) insider gag. Damned funny but don't bother. You're not going to figure it out. Anyway, here's the thing. VFTD never took a wrong turn either pointing out Paintball's failures or mocking the same--but I've been forced to reconsider my editorial stance regarding the industry, leadership & direction of Paintball--if we can even say such things truly exist.
For purposes of this blog VFTD tries (mostly) to stick to topics related to competitive paintball although I do, on occasion, sprinkle the posts with commentary, metaphors and jokes based on things occurring in the big wide world apart from Paintball. All that extra stuff though is secondary (at best) to talking paintball. But paintball doesn't exist in a vacuum.
In the guise of security the TSA gropes children because it's inappropriate (and un-American) not to believe that every 5 year old or grandmother with an underwire bra is as likely a terrorist as anyone else. Militarized police conduct warrantless midnight raids into people's homes and threaten, assault and arrest citizens for videotaping their public actions. Everyone giggles (VFTD included) at the hubris and foolishness of (ex-)Congressman Weiner cyberstalking young women on Twitter with pictures of his package and the latest celebutant arrests or incarcerations, weddings & divorces. Less entertaining are the immediate family ties of the ex-congressman's wife to the Muslim Brotherhood. Or Delta Airlines plans to add Saudi Arabian Airlines to their SkyTeam Alliance which would compel Delta to screen for Jews and/or holders of Israeli passports. Or the ATF assisting in the sale of weapons to the Mexican drug cartels in an operation code named, Fast & Furious. And that's just the run-of-the-mill stuff. There are big ticket items like the fact the Congress has failed to pass a budget in over two years or that the GNP includes debt in the calculation for "growth" and if you take out all the "money" the Feds have dumped into the economy in the last three years out of the equation our growth disappears like a magician's sleight-of-hand. Or that there are six sets of statistics kept on determining unemployment and those out of work but the media routinely only reports on two sets of figures. Or when CPI indexes begin to hint at inflation the Feds change the calculus--they've changed their methodology threes times (at least) in the last twenty-five years.

And that's just in the good old U.S. of A. All I'm saying is look around. Is it any wonder Paintball is frequently a mess? By comparison it's practically a well-oiled machine. Now there's a scary thought.