Ammunition > Heroics

So.
I have not posted in quite some time.
But for this last week I was at camp. And then today and yesterday I was working with my pictures; uploading them to Facebook and all that.

And now here I am.
I have decided to get back to posting every day. I thought yesterday that I would just do it in the morning before doing anything else on the computer, but I kind of forgot about that and started uploading photos, so... that didn't work out.
Anyhow. If I'm on MSN/Facebook/whatever, be sure to remind me that I need to do a blog post. Unfortunately, I'm likely to be busy with something else.

Well, we'll see how this goes. Hopefully I can get started again. I have a LOT of stuff I wanted to post about (I wrote it down in a notebook):

I saw Prince Caspian maybe a month ago, and wanted to post about it... but I never did. And then I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull about two weeks ago. So now I have two movies to post about.

I wanted to write about cartoons I like. Not on television... On paper. Like Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes (those are my favorites, I think). Actually, I had some random comments on television cartoons as well, if I recall correctly. And comic books. Ooh, that's going to be a good post.

Then I was going to talk about some games (mostly on the computer, but on DS as well) I like to play online, and how I'd rather play against people I know than faceless nobodies, so you guys should all share what games you play too... Later, though.

And there was another post I was planning on doing; it's kind of complicated, and I'm not sure how to summarize it. In my notebook I wrote the word "international" because I knew I would remember what i meant about that. It won't make any sense to you... I suppose it's sort of about culture, but that's just part of it.
Anyway, it should be a pretty long post, so don't necessarily expect it any time soon.

Ah, vigilantism. Adam and I had an interesting conversation about this. It might be a pretty serious post, it depends on what angle I end up taking.

Here this just says "FTP." It was written lightly on the bottom of the page; I think I planned on posting that day or the day after, but I never did.
Anyhow, I can just say that quickly right now: I got FTP (File Transfer Protocol) stuff working so now I can actually update the Egoboo website. I've already done it a couple times... but I have quite a few more things I'd like to change (it needs better screenshots, for example). Unfortunately, there are certain directories I have difficulty uploading to, and I'm not sure what the problem is.
It also says "Food" here; I was going to talk about the Food channel... it's pretty much the only thing we watch on cable (which is why we will probably not have cable when we actually get our own house). I'm not sure why this did not justify a full topic, but I'm going to transfer that so it does.


Anyway, I'm not going to talk about any of those things just yet because I want to talk about camp. So I have taken a break from sitting at the computer doing almost nothing and listening to the remixed soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 until my brain rots, and am... Oh, wait. No.
I'm listening to it right now.

It's here, if you were curious. I really don't know whether any of you will really care for the style... I didn't used to, either. But that was before OCR.


So, umm... moving on.
Camp.

So Sunday afternoon we went down to Iowa. The trip doesn't seem so long anymore; I guess I've made it a lot now? Not enough, at any rate.
Of course, we also travel an hour and a half or so every Sunday and Wednesday, so that might have something to do with it as well.
Anyway, we stopped in a gas station or something, and I realized I could breathe properly. You'd be surprised at how quickly you get used to air; it takes probably five seconds. So I had sort of forgotten how stifling it is in Illinois. I didn't get water until later, but that's better too. Especially in Ames.
We arrived at about... I don't know. Some time at night. Six or seven, I suppose. Something like that. We spent the night at Ben and Nathan's house and spent most of our time playing Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart.
Then the next day we went to camp. This is where the story gets slightly blurry, because I don't exactly remember what happened on which days.
Anyway. I do know we went climbing on Monday. I didn't really feel up to it, which is weird, because I had been planning on it.... Anyway. I just took pictures. Then we played Mao. Or maybe that was on Tuesday.... Anyway. At some point we played Mao. We sort of taught "Big Dan." I think he'll have to play a few more games before he understands it fully, though.
We played again on Friday, and I decided I want to type out all our rules, so there is no confusion about how we play (everyone plays the game differently, you see). There are some things I'd like to change, actually, that are either kind of dumb or just unclear.
So some of you can expect an email with that file attached at some point. Don't bother asking for it, though; I'm not giving it to someone who hasn't played with us. :P
Anyhow. We also did some weird games, as you might expect. There was this one game where you had to grab a big rubber ball with a plunger and get it through a goal... and one in a pool where you throw sponges into buckets. Then there were some more ordinary things like dodge ball and tug-of-war (why isn't it "war of tugs"?). Also, there were huge, crazy games like a giant game of kickball except it was actually... six games. With a common outfield, and... lots of water. It's sort of hard to understand unless you've played it before.
We also played this game called Ga-Ga; it develops that it's actually a fairly traditional Israeli game. It's apparently popular at Jewish summer camps (here in the United States) or something like that. Anyway, it was an interesting game, and pretty fun. Basically it's like a sort of dodge ball kind of thing, but you want to only hit people at the knee and below. Here's the Wikipedia article.
...I'm pretty sure this is all Seth did all week.
Then there were tournaments; I did carpet ball every day except Thursday and Friday (because I won on Wednesday and figured once was enough). I won a fifty cent concession stand coupon thing. And fame and glory.
...Or something.
Then we played Squinney Ball in a tournament on Friday. Either this game was invented at this particular camp, or it goes by a different name elsewhere, because Daniel and I were trying to look it up and couldn't find anything.
Basically, it's like a sort of human foosball. So it's sort of like soccer or something, but you play with your hands, and you can't move, because you have to stand in these big barrels buried in the ground. It has always been one of my favorite games at camp... or ever since a couple years ago, or whenever they got it; I guess it was pretty recently.
Anyway, we lost the tournament in the first game; it wouldn't have been too surprising if you had seen the other team... they were all pretty huge. I came up with a great team name, though:
"The Champions Will Eat Us For Breakfast Versus The Fabulous Lamprey Collaboration Because a Rolling Stone Never Strikes the Same Place Twice in a Bush, Featuring Bent Leg, Nigel, Rocky Balboa, Big Dan, Alien, and What?"
...Yes, we really did have the word "versus" in our name. The stuff after "featuring" was our aliases.... A couple we had to come up with on the spot, but the rest were already established (Maybe some time I'll talk about how I got the name "Nigel," but it's not a very interesting story). I knew that they wouldn't use the full name, as I intentionally made it ridiculously lengthy. Also, I already knew the people in charge have no sense of humor... Or, more accurately, they don't have my sense of humor. So our shorter name was just "The Fabulous Lamprey Collaboration" (that was my original name idea before I ended up making it so long).
Oh, and I should also explain the phrase "The champions will eat us for breakfast."
See, everyone gets put into big teams for the whole week, and this year they took their names from breakfast cereals. We were the Wheaties. I think it was on Tuesday that I said "So that means we can't lose, because we're the breakfast of champions! Or... wait, no. It means we can't win, because the champions will eat us for breakfast." It pretty much became my motto for the week, much to Seth's dismay.
I think we ended up in tenth place out of thirteen.
Then there were some other things we did... there was a zip line thing, which is always fun.... And we did archery. I did really well considering I only get to do it once a year. It's the sort of thing I might invest in doing on my own, but... I don't have that kind of money, particularly now, when I have no job (no, I still haven't gotten hired at GameStop, but my hopes are still fairly high for once the school year has started up again).

Then there was, of course, the important part; the speakers.
I don't think I had heard either of them before, but they both did a really good job. Apparently my dad went to school with one of them... that's not too surprising; I'm pretty sure he went to school with everyone.
Anyway, he also had these optional Bible study things that were really interesting. I didn't go the last couple of days, though, because we were signed up for archery right before that and it ended up sort of overlapping both times.
Also, the camp director (or at least I think he's the one who does it) puts together these nice devotionals for every day, I got a lot out of those too -- sometimes more than I did from the speaking.

The week ended with a big bonfire thing where people gave testimonies of what God had done in their lives that week. I couldn't decide what to talk about, so I didn't go up.

I took a lot of pictures of the week; you can see them on Facebook... if you don't have Facebook, well... too bad? I guess I could email them to you; I'm already sending them to a guy who was in our cabin.


I'm sure I forgot a lot of things, but oh well. If there's a specific interesting story I should tell, remind me and I might do it later.


So... anyway.
Today I sent my letter to Lemony Snicket.
Basically, there were some people trying to organize a "Worldwide Fan Mail Day." I think it was part of some efforts to revive this website and save it from being shut down (I really don't think they're in any huge danger of that happening).
Anyhow. You'd think meeting him in person would have been enough, but... no. It's not like I had much time to ask him questions.
Besides, I did not actually meet Lemony Snicket. He was... unable to attend, and his personal representative Daniel Handler was there in his stead.
Now you're going to go look up those people on Wikipedia and be really confused, and treat my like a child who does not understand that Santa Claus does not, in fact, exist.
But no. It's sort of hard to explain. Actually it's a lot like Mao. But I don't think I'll expound upon that analogy, and I'm not sure how I would anyway.

Anyway, I think I'm done for today.
Was this a long post?
*scrolls*
Well, it was decent. But then again, I was talking about an entire week of activity, so... yeah.
Anyway. That's it for now. Expect more posts in the near future.