Introductions, Please!

Welcome to Plastic Arsenal, for what I hope is to be the first of many warblings about my geeky hobbies. Before we get into models of guns, costumes, manga volumes, rules sets, and all the juicy stuff, a little background about me is in order to understand my perspective.

I'm a fellow in his mid-30's. My grandmother was originally from Japan and used to bring me back Gundam toys and Hobby Japan issues in the late 70's and early 80's when she went back to touch base with her relatives. My dad was a computer programmer who had a closet full of wargames and miniatures and ran a Dungeons and Dragons group on the weekends. He owned the original 3-booklet set. I thought Star Blazers was where the world of afternoon cartoons began and ended until Robotech. In college, I had to be dragged grudgingly into paintball, with a backward, longing glance to the first Airsoft guns depicted in beat-up issues of Hobby Japan. When I purchased the first edition of the Warhammer 40,000 rules, it kept me entertained for a year. I've had the same army of Ultramarines since then. I purchased my first Marui M4a1 back in 1998. I own every Playstation console ever, and still play them all. I thought the Sega DreamCast was awesome.

During that time, I've grown up, gone to school, taken a break from school, joined the Army, fought in Afghanistan and Iraq with the greatest men on earth, gone back to school, gone through a variety of relationships, climbed mountains, driven luxury sports cars, worked a variety of jobs from waiting tables to white-collar office work for international companies, traveled to foreign countries, and managed to keep a pretty good balance between geekery and the real world.

I don't think I'm an Anime character, Space Marine, or Navy SEAL (Army Infantry, thank you, though my unit did get to work with those guys). I do this stuff for fun, although I've been known to dabble in making it pay to support my hobby jones, and I'd like to work in it once I retire from a real job.

This isn't an Ed Anger-style soapbox for me to hurl nastiness at others from to inflate my ego. I've hunted terrorists in the deep, dark, assholes of the earth. My Manliness Meter sits at a fairly comfortable level. However, I may speak out against things I don't like in my various hobbies. I'm not a big fan of ego inflation in Airsoft, for example, or Games Workshop's high prices. But, most of my irritants are pretty common across the board.

I'm not sure what structure I want to organize this thing along, just yet, but I think what might work is a regular update of what projects I'm working on, alternated with a focus on a project or new manga/game/etc. Update-focus-update-focus. Cool?

Happy reading!