This looks like a hoot

[Colin]

I'm sorry, I didn't realise the question was aimed at me. I do not know what yardstick Stoccata uses for half drunk. I guess I could ask Paul.

Personally I would interpret it as still being coherent (and stable) enough to fight, but lacking fine motor skills; probably immune to feints as well as not noticing soft attacks (even if they connect).

[Elspeth]

I may be wrong, but I'm guessing that calling someone "Thin Skinned" in the same sentence as using the word "Frickin" and an extreme use of CAPITOLS is what constitutes name calling, and is exactly the kind of thing that feeds the previous arguement?

I mean, Mr Moderator has a point. Personally, I'm a little fed up with having 20 new e-mails a day of pure banter, and having to scry them all for the one or two that contain interesting and helpful advice. Considering going off the list altogether if it keeps up.


Which makes me sad, because I'm really interested in learning from what people have to say!

~Elspeth

[gt1cm2]

Elspeth, you should change your settings so your not getting the emails then you only have to log in and read what you find interesting, saves time because you can skip past all the crap reading.

[Elspeth]

Thanks Gt1cm2, think I may do that!

Cheers,
~E

[Carl]

Elspeth I humbly apologise for any offense I have caused.

the sole reason for my language, use of capitals, whatever was to try and get noticed by someone one this board to answer my question, I was not involved with the Jackie Chan digression, I was attempting to keep the discussion flowing on the topic, and I had a genuine question, but i was repeatedly ignored in favour of dealing with something, that in my opinion, was a total waste of energy to begin with.

Frustration makes me grumpy, and when I get grumpy I do not get shy about it.

cheers
Carl

[Gaius Drustanus]

Hi Elspeth
I am sorry but I suspect that I am. me myself I, implicated in generating much of the superfluous social blanter, flippancy and blather that is currently posted and you allude too so eloquently in your earlier commentary. I apologise for this and that you find this superfluous candy fluff a nuisance. I sincerely hope that this will not motivate you to leave the Gathering Darkness. That would be a grievous loss for Reenactment.

Sadly I am such a demented, mysogynistic, decadent misanthrope that in a weirdly sadomasochistic way I revel insanely in the debauched cut and thrust controversy provided gratuitously on the pages of the GD. I guess that's how it is.

[Hawkwind™]

[Robbo]

I enjoy what I do, I enjoy serious discussion about it. I'm also a remarkably silly person and I enjoy a bit of digression.

We're re-enactors, living historians and practitioners. We're not a University, or a College or somewhere that tries to be devoid of humour.

Having said that...it IS nice to try and stay vaguely on topic. lol

[conal]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4455912.stm

I'd say, judging by some of the evidence at hand, that fine motor skills were in short supply.

Going out on a limb, western civilization has spent a significant amount of the last 3000 years pissed off its gourd.

Summerians, Egyptian, Greeks, Romans, Barbarian interludes, Early-Late medieval... up to and past the British Redcoat's ubiquitous imperium... fighting whilst drunk may indeed have required a master.

...A Drunken Master Too!

[Gaius Drustanus]

According to Greek sources preliminary drunkeness was a fundamental precursor for the Macedonian Phalangites and the Classical Hoplites of Athens and Sparta before they could swing into action in the Ancient Phalanx pike squad battle formation.

Date Wine too was an indispensable wartime prescription supplied to War Elephants before you could get the terrifying Pachyderms to charge toward the Enemy (and that often ended in tears too).

[Robbo]

Just so as we're not being biased here, don't forget the Hashashin.

"dutch courage" wasn't always found in a bottle.

[Gaius Drustanus]

From which we get the Modern word "assassin".

Both Modern Archeology and the Classical Historian Herodatus jointly agree that it was the ancient scythians that distinctively favoured that botanical.

[Victorius]

OK, so we've established that some form of inebriation was part and parcel of fighting life. That would effect day-to-day combat, would it not?
It also might (and I'm certain there are other, possibly more valid reasons) explain why duels took place at or near dawn: presumably the deullists were sober.

[WarGod]

Paul discusses his experiment on Swordforum here: http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=97382

[Robbo]

Funny to watch