.:if i only had a sword:.
here i am sitting in phoenix, az at the airport not enjoying the two-almost-three hour layover i have. why am i in phoenix? to catch a connecting flight to colorado springs, and from there i will drive to pueblo, co. where i will attend my grandpa’s funeral. but i don’t want to talk about that because it’s a sad subject, and i don’t think i’m ready to broach it quite yet.
what i do want to talk about is ‘gladiator’.
we went and saw american gangster last week (it was awesome…go see it…now), and seeing russel crowe made me want to watch gladiator again. using my ever-trusty handbrake video compression software (which, if you don’t have, you need to go get…now…after you see american gangster) i quickly ripped myself a sweet ipod-viewable copy of it and copied it onto my ipod so that i’d have some in-flight entertainment.
man, that’s an awesome movie. it’s one of those movies that i can watch over and over and over again and not get sick of it. i think it might be a guy thing. i watch movies like that and start feeling all manly and stuff…like i start thinking about what it must’ve been like to be some kind of roman soldier back in the day. come on…you know what i’m talking about. you start imagining yourself riding on a horse whipping your swords around in a tornado of steely death…enemy limbs flying…a wide-eyed look of blood fury on your face as you pound over the ground levelling a thorough ass-whooping to the dirty barbarians that are getting in your way. it’s a glorious thought…
…and then you realize how not-so-awesome it’d be to…for example…get wounded. or fall off your horse and break a bone. or maybe even run out food. the testosterone laden fun thoughts you were just having a second ago succumb to the more rational thought that perhaps living in the now is pretty darn cool.
seriously. i mean, let’s say that you just take a freakin’ flesh wound from one of those dirty bastard barbarians. sure, you get it all bandaged up and go celebrate with your pals screaming ‘roma victa!!!’ and stuff…but a week passes and that flesh wound all of a sudden doesn’t start looking so great. it’s the dark ages, for gods sake…and you’re a soldier. the bandages aren’t exactly clean, and they don’t get any cleaner. niceties, like pencillian don’t quite exist yet. disease and bacterium are abound, friends, and the flesh wound gets infected, you get gangrene, and then you lose an arm. or a leg. or whatever. that sucks, because the only anesthesia you’re getting is a shot of whatever foul alcohol is available and a stick shoved in your mouth to muffle the screaming and to keep you from chewing off your tongue as they saw the offending limb off. and if you survive that, then you have to worry about keeping the stump from getting infected.
or how about that food thing? sure, you can hunt and stuff. but if i were soldier, i think i’d much prefer a nice c-ration to having to go and shoot my dinner. and at least if i had to do that now, i’d have the convenience of a nice high caliber rifle with a scope on it that would bring me that much closer to success instead of a bow and arrow. or a spear. or my bare hands.
and worst of all…no video games or world wide interweb.
yeah, i think i’ll stick to the now and leave the medieval stuff to a nice big silver screen and my imagination.
andrew victa!!!
