Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Name that automatic weapon.
Who says research isn’t necessary for soft science fiction? At the moment, I’m working on my novel (okay, technically I’m goofing off) , and I need to know what to call the name label on the breast of a military uniform. Surely they’re not called appliqués. So far, I’ve settled unhappily on calling it a label. But my Google search led me to these grinning, realistic-but-fake-gun-toting Cimmerians here.
What, you ask, is a Cimmerian? As best I can tell, they’re fun-loving Americans who like to hammer each other with paintballs, except these paintballs are tiny enough that they don’t sting. They dress in full military gear and they use weapons that (the website reassures me) are indistinguishable from the real thing.
No snide comments from this quarter. Seems to me, if their weapons are indistinguishable from the real thing, they might take live rounds just as well as micro paintballs.
Reminds me of a story from my indentured servitude in the Kedes Lab. Our lovely dishwasher once put us in line by relating that she’d purchased an ouzi by mail order. It was a bee-you-tiful gun, she said, but so difficult to put together. Still, she’d managed . . .
Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn’t. We didn’t bitch to her much, after that.
D.
I always thought that a Cimmerian was Conan. Or am I wrong on that?