Practically a Martial Art

One does not spend more than a day among martial artists before the word "practicality" is thrown out like a padded MMA gauntlet.  Growing up in America, there is always a group of people in every situation who doubt everything ever.  My theory was that it was social "little man" syndrome; a feeling that since they knew less, they were less, so anything they didn't know was not worth knowing in the first place.

We all know their arguments: "but what if I had a gun?"  "yeah, but what if they just did ." "none of that will save you if the guy has like... giant arms".  

By this time, we're all preeety much just bored with them.  Denying the effectiveness of martial arts in the days of MMA is like claiming that dogs can't look up.  We've tested that theory daily.

But, this hang-up on "practicality" in martial arts circles is basically the same thing, but directed at other arts.  It's like being a martial arts racist.  I've yet to know of a style where someone who did a different style, did not question the practicality of something.

"Wing Chun doesn't hit hard."
"Muay thai let's you get hit."
"Karate is the Dane Cook of martial arts."

Granted, there is a degree of questioning one should do in every martial art as to "will this actually work?  I mean, I'm pretty sure it will, but I've yet to master the required Hadoken..."  Also, I've been at "demonstrations" where the proposed art did literally nothing.

I'm looking at you "guy who told me he could knock me out from across the room"...

I hear a lot from MMA fighters that their spor- I mean "art"... no, I meant sport, is "practical".  Frequently in regards to "conditioning", "technique" and "realism".  Which, is hilarious to me, to say the least.  Remember kids, MMA is a fantasy sport, where no one pulls knives, friends don't come in, and you never ate too much before a fight.

On the scale of "realism", MMA falls about equal with the SCA combats.  At the end of the day, if you took an MMA fighter and threw him to a gang of thugs, he'd last longer than a non-mma fighter.  Same can be said for any SCA fighter tossed to a group of sword-swinging knights.

Though I will state right now, that proportionately, the SCA fighter would out last their non-fighter, much longer than the MMA fighter would out last their non-fighter.  Because it's hard to run away crying in armor.

Now, is MMA a martial art?  No, it is a martial sport.  It's the equivalent of Mortal Kombat in real life.  A group of colorfully dressed people with strangely diverse martial arts, fight each other for a bit, but no one actually dies*.

*Because they're still available next time you select characters.

Is SCA a martial art?  No, it's live action MMO PvP.  We have goals, group dynamics, different classes (weapon sets), roles (commanders, scouts...), Moderators, and of course, respawns.

Both systems actually require a detailed knowledge of martial arts, I don't know a single fencer/heavy/MMA fighter who doesn't know at least six horrifying ways to murder someone that could never, ever be used in the SCA/MMA.

Are they practical?  Less than actually slitting throats.  Is it a martial art?  Not really.  What is it?  Martial Activity/Sport... and fun.


Side notes:  Things that happen at both types of combat events:
-Theme music
-Drinking/eating
-Hot girls in revealing clothing.
-Gratuitous man-hugging.
-Old guys debating theory while young guys beat each other senseless.
-Tattoos.
-Everyone is scared of the woman fighters.
-Barefoot adults.
-Armchair generals.
-Support teams.
-Folding chairs.
-Muscle-bound-non-combat men feeling immediately inadequate.
-Sweet after parties.
-People selling over priced clothing.
-Broken, bleeding fighters drinking beer and talking about "things".

Disbelief and Wirework

A subject frequently brought up on both sides of the like/don't like argument for books and movies, is the "suspension of disbelief".  It's commonly used as a "this: therefore I win" part of an argument.  It's supposed to be "telling" what someone will suspend with their disbelief.

Spoiler: It's not.

Suspension of disbelief is "how far can a story go, before it pushes away its' audience".  Not how wacky it is, or how realistic it seems.  The "it's a movie" statement is lazy debating, one has to keep in mind that the whole point of a story is to explain something in a manner that is easy to relate to.

We don't question the Iron Man suit's ability to stop inertia from explosions, not "because... you know... he science'd it", but because we can all agree that in this moment; the armor just works. We're ignoring that minor detail for the sake of understanding the story.

The Jaegers can run and jump without falling apart, because of that thing they never ever mention in the movie. We're fine with that.

We're also fine with idiots dying in horror movies, because they're idiots.  Even the "smart" character will become a drooling moron whenever the killer needs to magic their way into a house.  Even though we'd all love a scene in the teen slasher flick, when the crazy killer (who's really the boyfriend) goes to a college party to kill someone, and runs into a marine on leave.

"I have a knife!"
"And a future filled with expensive medical bills..."

What kills this suspension, effectively cutting the wires, is when things happen that defy the basic reaction laws of humanity.  Not when characters make mistakes, but when we're expected to just "go along" with something that no one in the audience could ever truly "go along" with.  It's where movies that try to strong arm political agenda into movies usually fail.

Examples: Transformers, and The Purge.

In our first example, we come across a movie in many people watching it stopped numerous times and went "are you kidding me?  Am I the only non-moron here?"  Not when giant robots punched eachother, we accepted "alien stuff" as the explanation for that, along with "sure Megan Fox would date... him...".  What kills it is "... is he really going to go to college, the face of the human vs. Decepticon war, without his awesome car/best friend/body guard?  That's like Michael Knight telling Kitt "Nah, stay home, I'm going to solve this case with my Hyundai."  That, and the government strong arming giant robots with no allegiance into exile.

"Hi, Autobots?  It's , heard the US kicked you out... man, we have some great garages here... like, a bunch.  Just saying if you lived here... you'd each get your own hanger."

In our second (and far worse) the Purge breaks a rule that even fantasy and surreal genres are held to: human actions.  We accept that elves are perfect beings, because we're not, and they're not us.  Humans in fantasy are always "strong, dependable, capable of great evil or great good, work hard despite their short lives", it reads like a DnD fortune cookie.  The vast, vast majority of the action and thriller genres literally depend on one human trait that we all tend to share: we love ourselves some revenge.

We're revenge junkies.  How many movies, books, shows, entire series are devoted to revenge.  Even our most popular super hero team of the decade The Avengers, name quite literally means those who take that revenge we love so much.  Why?  Because revenge is the one time, the one time, when a good, mild mannered man is able to put down his glasses and beat some ass.  We love it.  We want to be the heroic Gristle Mc Thornbody, beating down thugs because they killed his second best friend ever.  It's sexy and fun.

The Purge breaks this, by saying that should a night be "anything goes" the streets wouldn't be filled with men with guns, bats, swords, knives, superhero costumes... just looking for evil to smite.  The actual purge would have lasted one time, before everyone realized that "most criminals are just not dumb enough to walk out into the world on the night where they can be brutally murdered for sport by angry mobs."

... that would have been a better movie, a bunch of low income drug dealers, gang members, and petty thieves, trying to hide from roving bands of people who believe they're heroes.

There's your political statement.

A God Complex

If there's one thing every craftsman born wants, from carpenters to serial killers, it's someone to understand their work.

"Because God." is literally the worst answer ever.

Me, being the charismatic bastard I am, I believe in a God.  I won't say the God, because that's assuming that out of the infinite universe I picked the right answer on a multiple choice quiz with an infinite amount of answers.  It's beyond arrogant to believe the "my God is the god, and yours is wrong".

I believe in Gods and Science, for one specific reason: God does have laws over humanity, being infallible, we literally cannot break these laws.  I call these laws "physics".

It makes perfect sense to me, that God would use physics to make things.  Like a computer programmer, using a code to make something work.

God: "I need a planet... let me just physics some of these gasses together around this star, bake at a few trillion degrees for a few trillions years... and bam, planet.  Now to physics me up some life forms on it.  There we go, now let's see if I can teach them not to be assholes before they blow themselves up."

Being a god sounds a lot like being a parent, or a teacher.  Which are really very similar things come to think of it.  God makes sense as a teacher, as someone who revels in our little scientific triumphs.  Can you imagine the happy face (if you know, God has one) God made when humans held up the first book?  Finally able to write down all the stuff God handed to them so they couldn't screw it up lat-... who am I kidding?  I'm sure a god, who gave humans free will, would see that coming.

Yes, "free will", one of the few things that existed before the split up of Christianity.  Where God actually put forth "I have these commandments, you can choose to obey them or not, it's up to you."  Where God let's us know that all the suffering in the world is a direct result of our own actions or inaction.  Boring atheists rely on that "why would suffering exist with a god around? huh?", fearful of the moment someone says to them "ummm.. because some people use their free will to be shits."

Saying "well, that's just how the world is" as a response, is just like saying "because God."  Neither take responsibility for it.

Now, how do I look at Science and God and say "that totally makes sense!"?  Because Gravity and I teach martial arts.  Most people I know, have no idea about how to fight.  I've seen it all, every dumb idea by someone who has no idea what happens in a fight.  When I show them something, I get that same dumbfounded look of "are you a wizard?"  No, it's simple mechanics, ignore the pointy hat.

If I had someone push me, and then I used a complex technique to send them to the floor, they won't understand it.  It's beyond them.  Much like Gravity, and why ice is slippery.  We have no idea.  It's not saying we never will, just that the understanding of how that works is beyond our... well... understanding.

If we don't understand things, but someone out there far more advanced than we does, that makes them more advanced.  Our endeavor to understand how they did it, makes us understand them better.

Understanding is knowing, and isn't "knowing God" what all Christians are supposed to want?  I love Science for that reason, it's constantly asking the right question.  Not "ha! I've disproved something!" it's asking "how does this work?"  That's real science.  Real science is looking at Gravity, at the tiniest particles effected by it and asking "how does this work?"  Because when we know, we'll understand how the universe was created better.  Which means we'll know more about that which created it.

Because the universe contains craftsmanship, and if there is a craftsmanship, then there is a craftsman.  They love it when people go "Hey! This is how you did this!"  Learning that the world is billions of years old was like finding out that it didn't "take God time", but that "God took time" on it.

Science is how we understand God, how we understand what all this stuff around us is.  One cannot just sit back and say "well, God space magicked everything into existence, that's how."  Because that's lazy.  That's like one of my students telling me "you just used wizardry to knock me down, that's how." followed by going about their lives, never caring to know how I did it.  Even though I did it to show them how, so that they themselves might one day do it.

We have all manner of Sciencey goodness because we Scienced it, because a bunch of people asked "how does that work?" and didn't accept "because God said so" as the reason.  You could "read his book", but even if you found the ones that weren't re-written by ghost writers, you're still not understanding.  You can learn about me by reading Tale of the Iron Rose but you'll learn more about me, by figuring out how I wrote it.

How did I know how to do those fights?  About survival?  About the personal issues and struggles the characters had?  How did I, a man, know how hard it is to be a young girl?  The book won't tell you that, you have to find out by researching me.

That's just Science.

Link Between Genders

At E3 this month, Nintendo released the first images for the new Legend of Zelda game, and while it made me question every choice in my life that did not lead to me playing that exact game this very moment, it also raised another question.

"Hey... is Link a girl in that video?"

Not just in the sense that yes, haha, Link is no slate chested, grizzled white guy with a five o'clock shadow and probably a dark past (like every other main character at E3), instead he's usually under powered for his enemies, and tends to be a bit more... feminine.

Which if you're playing the home game, being less manly than a man who's pecs require zip codes, makes you about normal.

No, the question came about with the art, the motion of his body, the different angles of the face... all seemed to point that "he" might be a "her" this time around.

Now, Nintendo did point out that "Link is a guy in this", but the question had already been asked: why not?  Link is probably one of the most easily identifiable characters in video game history, and certainly one of the easiest for players to identify with.  Unlike many protagonists in games, Link works for both genders.

Take the very first Zelda, Link was a blank slate.  Mega Man at that time, was a person with a story behind him.  He was "Rock", a robot made by Dr. Light, who had a "strong sense of Justice" and took to becoming a warrior to save the day.  That's four more points than Link got.  Link was literally "just a guy, basically you".  Link was not a destined hero, he was not a master of all things.  His motivations, history, and all else were up to the player.  He saved Zelda because the player wanted to save Zelda.

Flash forward a few years, and we have "Ocarina of Time" wherein Link is... a kid, living in a forest.  His history is really not given.  He doesn't have a fairy, but wait... he gets one.  His character arch is that Link is summoned by the Deku tree, that's it.  There's no "Link must learn to be a hero", as it's pretty damn obvious for everyone he knows in the forest; Link is already a stand-up guy everyone but one of them is fine with.  There's no vengeance, there's no "I am fated to save the world!"  Link just goes off to save the world because the player wants to help.

All the way through the series, Link is a rather androgynous character.  He pushes no gender boundaries, he exemplifies no stereotypes.  This is likely one of the reasons the bulk of the gamers I know (male and female) have an affection for this game: we're not playing "Link" we're playing "us in a green outfit".

How many female Link's go to conventions?  Less than the amount of girls I've known who love Link as a character, someone they can identify with.  As a guy, I can't identify with Ivy, the bondage assassin lady from Soul Caliber, nor half of the DoA cast.  Playing a shape shifting witch who walks around in vinyl outfits made of hair, is not something I can see myself as.  I can't find myself absorbed into this characters life.

But as a scared, lonely person trapped on an island of savages all trying to murder the hell out of me?  Well, I'm sure Laura Croft and I would have a lot in common on the "oh God I'm going to die" mentalities.  I can see many a young girl sitting before a TV, asking themselves the question as to "why is Link saving Zelda?"  It's not because he loves her, in many cases, he's never met her.  It's not because Ganon killed his wife and kids.  He doesn't have to do anything actually, Link has all the ability to literally peace out of Hyrule forever.

Link fights Ganon, and saves Zelda because he wants to.  It's the easiest motivation to get behind.  We as gamers want to fight to save something, and beat back the tides of evil forces, and honestly, we don't care about what the hero wears under the armor.

The industry needs to stop pretending like we do.

The Worst Defence is a Good Offence.

Offence is one of those things that people take, but never want.  Well, some people want to be offended, it's like candy for bitches.  We've all met someone who enjoys nothing more than meeting someone who's opinion differs from them drastically, because in that moment they get to shout.

They do not get to "discuss" or "educate", no, they simply want to have a reason to be very loud about something they like to think they know about.

Since blogs are nothing more than soapboxes, here's mine:

You should deeply care about if you offend someone, even if you hate them.

Offending someone is not a good thing, the exact meaning of the word negates it as being something to be proud of.  Too many times I have to sit through an entire media feed, filled with posts and pages about how "I DON'T CARE IF THIS OFFENDS YOU!" or "if this offends you, you can fuck right off."

It's trolling, on a more personal level.  Akin to saying "u mad?" after doing something with the intention of making someone angry.  It creates a situation where you have trapped someone into either feeling the intended, ambushed emotion, or lying about how they're a Zen master.

There are likely no Zen masters anywhere near anyone reading anything on Facebook.  Unless you are taking a selfie with the Dali Lama, you've never met one.

Say you don't believe in "God" or any "gods", so you're an atheist.  Now, if you just don't believe because of reasons, that's fine, the only people who really care likely won't waste their time on you.  Though, if you want attention, you can be a militant atheist.  You can post demeaning things about other people, call them idiots, tell them horrible things, insult every aspect of their intellect, and then, after all of it you can just scoff at them for being offended.  It's fine, because only stupid people would be offended for it.

It makes you sound smarter, to dismiss other people, just like pushing someone makes you seem stronger. 

Fun Fact: Scientologists schools spend all day copying words out of the dictionary, which means that their children will grow up having a vocabulary that will dwarf every one of their peers.  They may not have the actual schooling to back it up, but they will speak in words that make "smart folks" feel like "dumb folks".  It's very much like what most atheists do today.

Now, I'm beating up on atheists, and I don't mean to. To be perfectly honest, I don't care if you're an atheist.  I don't care if you literally believe in the Flying Speghetti Monster.  In all honesty, I have never cared about religion, I care about actions.

Believe me, I have strong opinions, ones I will defend, but I will not defend them by offending others.  If you truly want to have strong opinions, you have to learn to explain and defend them while not hurting someone's feelings.  We tend to diminish that, making "hurting your little feelings" into an insult all on its' own.  Remember, suicide and murder both happen because of hurt feelings.  Wars as well.

To offend while speaking your opinion, ruins your opinion's merit, for example:

"Them niggers and faggots ain't too bad."

Well, that sentence is going to offend someone.  Rightly so, because it's goddamn offensive.  Even though it's merit is "these people are good", it's delivery negates that.  The speaker might really care about the rights of those people, to their very core... but who's going to take that?  Even if you agree with them, you're going to feel insulted, and you might even repremand them for it.  Imagine that, you're repremanding someone for voicing an opinion of tolerance and understanding.  Why?  U Mad?

Voicing one's opinion should only be done to educate others to the merits of one's opinion.  If done in a way that rebukes the exact people one is trying to educate, it's not "voicing an opinion" it's "being a massive dickhead."  No one ever says "Hitler was bad", because it's a damned given at this point.  Yes, we're well aware extermination of a people is wrong.  No one would say, to a group of their friends "Hitler is a fucking monster, and you guys are fucking shits if you think otherwise, and if you're offended by this, you can go fuck yourself." 

No one speaks to their friends like that, they don't need to.  Their friends likely either know, or even if they did not, yelling at them and threatening insult is only going to convince your friends you're an asshole.  If you said that line to a person who had never heard of Hitler, you're not going to convince them. 

If you're intention in voicing your opinion is not to educate those who might not fully understand, but to exclude those who may disagree with you, you are not voicing an opinion.  In this, you are secluding yourself from other opinions, so you may listen to your opinions echo.  A person who argues with his echo, is a moron.

#YESALLTHETHINGS

An odd thing in my life has always been that I don't understand my fellow males.  Out of the friends I acquire in my travels, few are guys.  I don't mesh well with my own gender. 

Put me at work, I'll have a great time with the women.  We'll tell jokes, swap stories, be morons at play. 

The guys will sort of... acknowledge me.

I like girls, and not just the drooling staring way.  I enjoy spending time in groups of women.  On my birthday, I ended up having long conversations with two fifteen year old girls.  One was about dying because the vacuum exploded and killed us with bright sparkly stars, and the other was about boyfriends and tennis.

Seriously, it's not even me creeping on young girls, I just find these things funny. 

In school, I sat at the "girls" table for most of my life.  I only left when I made a single guy friend who wanted to move, and a few of the girls followed.  A few of the guys I knew figured out this magical talent I had for simply speaking to girls, and quickly recruited me.  By the way, guys table conversation was usually them pretending to be as stupid as possible, as to not be "smart".  Girls table conversation was about sex, how to do it, what they thought would be fun, and that guy who's shorts showed off his junk in gym class.

Girl talk was never about ponies, unless that was slang for some horrifying sex act.

I enjoyed those days, and I remember thinking to myself when I joined the "guys"; this lot has literally no idea what the hell the other side is.  The notion that girls could think was beyond most of them.  It was not some form of anti-women hate, but mostly pure ignorance.  They were guys, guys talked about cars, how tough they were, and made vague attempts to show they noticed girls.

There's so many problems with that mentality, because it leads to a constant surprise set up later on.
"Whoa, this girl knows about something I like..."
"Whoa, this girl can do things I do..."
"Whoa, this girl doesn't like something I don't..."

You like giant robot movies, because they're awesome.  You can ride a dirt bike, because dirt bikes are fun.  You don't like bad romance movies, because they suck.  It should not surprise you that someone else might feel the same way, just because they're a different gender.  This creates a rift, it leaves people believing they're different on a base level.

I've taught young girls to protect themselves, because the world has plenty of people who'll harm them for no reason.  I taught young boys for the exact same reasons.  Some people just hate women, because some people are fucking stupid.  A similar amount of men are attacked and beaten because someone hated them.  We're not unique in this.  Bad things happen regardless of gender.

Instead of putting women on this alter where we proclaim we'll protect them, why don't we put everyone up on that alter?  Why don't we teach children to not be shitheads when they grow up?  Teach them not to beat their spouses, because 40% of domestic abuse is against the man, and that doesn't include the men that are either ashamed to report it, or who literally don't know they can be abused.

Imagine if a woman did not know rape was wrong, and just something she hated, but oh well, these things happen?  Boys are told to never hit girls, I know grown men who still act like even trying to stop a woman from assaulting them with a weapon is wrong.  I watched a guy get beaten up in school because a girl just wanted to, and no one would let him live it down if he did anything.  That sort of mentality creates a feeling of powerlessness that festers, and eventually grows into a hatred of those that hold it over you. 

If girls could beat you up when you were younger because they felt like it, how hard is it to believe they wouldn't falsely accuse you of assault when you're older, because they feel like it?  You remember that feeling of injustice, where they hurt you in some way, and the world laughed when it happened, and then shamed you for even thinking of defending yourself.

... and they wonder where a "rape culture" comes from. 

By teaching this to young boys, we practically groom many of them to fear and resent girls.  To expect a woman to abuse power of them.  We spend hours telling a boy to never lay hand on a girl, but spare the girl a passing "don't hit him either".  Children are shits, they'll abuse any power you give them (seriously, tell a child it's ok not to like a kind of food, and they hate everything), we train girls to use this against boys... but the girls can grow out of that power.

Sure some don't, some just become horrible people, but that's just the world: some people suck.  It's these boys that still hurt.  Victory is easily forgotten as the real world sets in, but injustice festers.  Adults push this on the young, and punish them accordingly.  They create a future for the boys where they fear and resent women, and a world where women have to wonder if behind each face is a little boy who hates girls.  Is that smile hiding the time a girl abused him?  Was his father beaten by his mother?  Does he view her as a "thing" because he spent his life being told she was different?

If you want to fix the problem women face today, because they face a hell not of their own making, you have to start with the kids.  Tell them that abusing each other is not acceptable.  That they're people, regardless of gender.  Teach them real respect, not the kind that comes due to "oh, they're just too weak...", but the sort where they understand that we're all weak and strong. 

Teach your little boy to think little girls are awesome, and your little girl the same, and you might not have to watch another generation pass by in a world where either of them can have their lives ripped away because of something you did.

Annoying...

Things that Annoy Me: A look at the world of frustration.

We all have things that annoy us, and we share many of them.  No one likes racists, no one likes sitting in traffic, everyone hates people who talk during the movie.  There are, however, some things that we hate as individuals.  To quote Leonard Church:

" It's not about hating the guy on the other side because someone told you to. I mean, you should hate someone because they're an asshole, or pervert, or snob, or they're lazy, or arrogant, or an idiot, or a know-it-all. Those are reasons to dislike somebody. You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise them on a personal level. Not because they're Red, or Blue, but because you know them, and you see them every single day, and you can't stand them because they are a complete and total fucking douche bag."

So, a small list of things that make me want to hit people with old pieces of fish:

-Anyone who dismisses actual science, because they don't like being wrong.

-People who expect people on minimum wage to care if they do a good job.  Remember, you get what you pay for.

-Ex/Current Military who's sole fix for any situation is "you should join the military, they'll do X".  Healthcare, college, job training, sex.  I know a lot of military personel, one thing all of the ones I like have in common; they don't expect everyone's life to be better with a liberal application of "go across the world, stand somewhere and wait to be shot at".

-Clerks in Loan offices.

-Anyone for whom "I don't know" is not an acceptable answer.

-Anyone who complains that movies based on books do some things different.

-Movies that "based on the book", the way Fast and Furious is "based loosely on Ben Hurr"...

-The Phrase "U mad bro?".

-"Extended Universes", I'm looking at you Boba Fanboys.

-People who make popcorn at work.  You will either burn it, and make everyone hate you, or you will make it correctly, and make everyone unsatisfiably crave popcorn for the next few hours.

-My Xbox.

-Zimbo Quizes.

There's more, but this list is now one this list.