Bleeding Man Wins Saber Gold

From the Associated Press, an excerpt from the report on Men's Team Saber.

Quote:

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After upsetting Hungary, the Americans trailed France 40-38 in the semifinals when Smart came in to fence Damien Touya. Smart rallied to tie it at 44. On the next play, no point was scored, but Smart's saber went through Touya's glove, piercing his hand at the webbing of the fingers, and exiting through his palm. The match stopped so Touya could receive treatment, while France's replacement athlete, Boris Sanson, started to warm up.

With the 10-minute injury timeout set to end, Touya chose to return to the match with his injured and bandaged hand instead of being replaced.

"He was especially courageous since we were tied at 44-44," said Philippe Omnes, the technical director of the French fencing federation.

The two fencers attacked two more times but no points were awarded. On each play, referee Jose Luis Alvarez of Spain determined that the fencers attacked simultaneously.

On the fourth attempt at a deciding point, Smart and Touya both recorded touches, but Alvarez ruled that Touya caught Smart while preparing to attack, giving the Frenchman the victory.

"France ... you know ... man, that hurt," Smart said. "Everyone was there, everyone saw it. For whatever reason the officials didn't want to help us out."

Smart stood in the middle of the strip, his helmet off and mouth agape, after the referee awarded the final point to Touya, who had bloodstains on the leg of his white suit.

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Whoever says Frenchmen are wussy has it dead wrong. They just have better things to do than go to war.

Pictures, anyone?

Hearts of Fencing

Look! It's a Chinese high school romance fencing soap opera!

Proof that tv shows don't come in genres.

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Also! Olympic fencing!

Tuesday at 6PM-8PM on Bravo (Women's Individual Saber. Go Sada!)
Thursday 2PM-4PM on MSNBC (Men's Team Saber)
Thursday 6PM-7PM on Bravo (Men's Team Saber)

I will tape, also.

Went to Monkey Mall (Montgomery, to be correct, I guess. Westfield Shopping Town if you want to be even more correct). With Sharon C, Nick B, Nick S and Allison. It was fun, though mostly wandering around and window shopping than actually going into stores. I was mostly broke so I didn't complain. Sharon and Allison helped Sharon try on various red necklaces to match her red prom dress. Nick and Nick stood around nonchalantly telling her, yes, it looks wonderful, that one looks good, very nice, very nice, alternating with being indifferently casual to the spectacle of girly jewelthings. She finally bought one, but not one that Nick or Nick had seen on her. Which may have been wise, considering their fashion senses.

We (the girls, ahem) went to some department store and tried on prom dresses. Sharon's was incredibly trashy, but in an amusing way. It made her feel better that her real dress was so much better than that. Allison looked nice. I looked poofy. We went away from the department store to look at erotica. We did, and were amused.

Sharon dropped us off at the Bethesda metro station. Nick S peeled off from the crowd to take a bus; me and Nick B and Allison sang Hello Dolly and Damn Yankees songs on the hexagonal tiles under the vaulted ceiling. It had good acoustics and we echoed. People stared at us, and I liked it.

It wasn't my usual social circle, so I didn't really.. talk... Nick S was incredibly witty, which was a riot, but it also left me feeling upstaged. I had a good time though, putting on the act of being a normal bourgeois teenager, and it's what I mean when I said in yesterday's post that I'll settle for, if not best friends, then people I can get along with some of the time.

I am going off for my first foil fencing lesson now. Should be interesting.

Finished Feet of Clay. Believe I said this already. Disturbing phenomena yesterday. Pratchett describes Carrot being shot through the hand with a crossbow, my left palm starts hurting like hell, only lessens when I dig into it with my fingernails, and after I go to sleep. Felt better this morning, doesn't hurt now. It's a condition with me or something. Describe a piercing injury through the palm in fiction (which happens more often than you think) and my palm hurts. Believe it's called "cognitive--..." uh something or other but it's cuz cognition is closely related to emotion, which can mainfest itself physically or something. Aw whatever. I used to, when I was little, think it was because Jesus didn't want me to forget his crucifiction, which is why I couldn't stand the sight of it and it hurt me. I also have a deathly fear of impalation. Fencing has helped a bit. Only when I stand still when people are doing drills and have to *wait* for people to drive three feet of metal into my chest, that's not very pleasant. I used to think that impaling someone would be rather graceful, sort of like cutting butter, and feel like a quick stab of pain through your body before you die, but now I think it'd be more painful because meat and bone and whatnot has got resistance, and if you're driving this long piece of metal through it, that'd probably require a bit of.. twisting and serating and tearing, even if the actual stabbing would probably be quick. The process is probably quite painful. And you wouldn't die instantly you'd have to wait to bleed to death.

I'm wondering about the nature of Carrot's injuries, depending on what type of crossbow Pratchett was talking about. Eddings seems to describe crossbow bolts as actual metal bolts, which, if something like that hit Carrot in the palm would probably smash all his hand bones and turn it into a bloody pulp. But Pratchett's crossbow bolts seem more like normal arrows. But if that were so then the arrow would probably punch *through* Carrot's hand, ew. And Pratchett doesn't describe him actually pulling the arrow out but next thing you know he's fighting like nothing happened to him, which was very weird in my mind because I imagined Carrot fighting with this bigass arrow still like sticking out of his hand. He doesn't even go for medical attention after the fight. Pratchett must've just forgot about it. Hmm. But the pain in my palm is more like a pricking like someone stuck a compass in it, not like someone smashed my hand with an iron bar, so that must be it. Arrow it is. Damn, hurts again. Knew I shouldn't have started writing about it.

More Musketeerisms.

Take a sip every time..

Milady de Winter looks real skanky. Actually, scratch that; she always looks skanky. Take a sip every time she has way too much eyeliner on.
The movie takes on Communist/AynRandWouldHateThis connotations. ("Let's redistribute this wealth!", "Please have mercy! I was only stealing to feed my starving children!")
Louis the XIII exudes Teenage Angst/ looks Moony-Eyed at Anne of Austria. Drink the cup if she looks Moony-Eyed back.
D'artagnan does/says something really really stupid. ("I wanna be a musketeer!")
A musketeer conveniently has some crazy weaponry on hand. (Swiss army knife, bola, crossbow, pistol, etc.)
Bad Guys get hurt when things fall on them. (Take two sips if that falling object is a musketeer and the victim is one of the Cardinal's guards on horseback. Down the whole cup if the falling object is a chandelier.)
The moviemakers bludgeon the Dante's Inferno Metaphor to death in Richelieu's Flaming Underground Dungeon (tm). (Why is there a flaming lake??? Why is there a black-robed ferryman in that flaming lake??? What possible practical use could that have?)
Richelieu wears armor.
Someone performs a move that would make a modern fencer explode. (Ie, circular motion of the wrist and enemy is disarmed, hacking indiscriminately at people tree cutting style, doing random somersaults, punching people in the middle of a sword fight etc.)
Someone reloads a pistol in 3 seconds flat.
Property damage ensues.
A Bad Guy is actually a Good Guy in disguise.
Someone sheathes his needle thin blade in a needle thin scabbard without even looking, and manages not to stab himself.
A Bad Guy tries to stab a Good Guy with a dagger, but the Good Guy catches the Bad Guy's wrist. They start what looks a lot like arm wrestling.
Bad Guys cannot swim. Which is historically accurate, but still amusing. Dammit. Richelieu doesn't even bubble!