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Books Lying Open
Soul-Devouring Worry:
Answer of the Day:
Curse of the Day:
Phrase
of the Moment: |
Friday December 3, 2004 |
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD Archives
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --Dwight Eisenhower 1953 speech | |
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All of that would be plenty for today's update; just read a third of it at a time and it'll last you all weekend, but since I want to talk about Kali class a bit, I shall. Class was fun Thursday night; we worked with the stick for a time, mostly to refresh our memories on the proper form and posture for the 12-strike, but also so the one new student (a young woman in her third class) could learn it. I don't really know how forms and move sequences are taught and used in other forms of martial arts, but in our variety of Kali it's very free form, as most things are. We have a thing called "12-strike" but it's mostly to give us a shorthand for the basic types of attack. You need to memorize the hits, but that's easily accomplished in half an hour or so. The sequence isn't for combat either, at least not in that sequence; it's mostly meant to give us a shorthand nomenclature for our sparring and the other things we learn. For example, we'll be learning some new move or combo, and the Gura can just say, "Do a 4, and then an 8." And it's not that we have to do those moves with exacting precision, it's that we hear 3 and 8 and know what to do quickly and easily, rather than her needing to say, "Swing overhand and forwards, sort of down in a slashing motion, and then do a stab towards the throat, but driving up from the chin." Or when we do numerado, (An exercise in which one student walks behind another student, usually with one hand on the leading student's back, and the one in front throws attacks that the one behind counters and then counter attacks against.) Gura can say, "Just throw 3s and 4s." for instance, to limit the attack style for those of us still on the lower slopes of the learning curve. That background info is pretty irrelevant to the following point, so forget it if you didn't care in the first place. Anyway, what we did tonight was hold a knife (or whatever facsimile thereof we could find) in our left hands while we held the sticks in our right, and we learned the proper stabbing position for the left hand after the right hand strike with the stick. It was largely ceremonial, in that we did exaggerated swings and poses just to learn the proper movements, but as with most everything in Kali, you can immediately see how you'd modify it in actual combat, making things faster, shorter, more deadly, etc. The fun stuff was learning to do the usual numerado style blocking and countering with knife/stick, rather than just one stick as usual. It's not a big change; we just block the attack with an "X" shape of the two weapons, rather than taking it all against the one stick. The fun is that your counter begins instantly, since you cut their wrist or forearm or hand as you block and begin to counter, and then follow with several alternating strikes of stick and knife, depending on the range, your speed, their style of attack, etc. As we got the hang of that, more complexity was added with the introduction of long range stuff, where instead of walking right behind as in the usual numerado, the person behind would stay a couple of strides back and counter the strikes by dodging and flicking the stick aside, and then attacking with it cleared out of the way. This part is almost impossible to describe with words while a 5 second video clip would show it very clearly, but the person following and awaiting the attack does what we call sinawali, a double-weapon thing where you keep moving your arms around each other in a figure-8 motion. They constantly overlap and cross, and it looks boggling to the naked eye as the two sticks seem to swim through the same space constantly, but it's actually just a simple little technique to keep your weapons moving and keep ready to attack or defend instantly. Learning to move from the sinawali to blocking or scooping an attack aside without pause, and then flowing instantly into more sinawali or a counter attack, is the tricky part. But it looks oh-so-cool when it's done well, or even done adequately. I'd show you, but I lack a video camera. I'm angling for an affordable digital one for Xmas though, and if I get one I'll start posting some Kali movies, since Malaya wants to shoot some of the master and others of our class just for fun. It was a good class, even though I lack the speed and coordination to flow from sinawali to defend quickly enough to stay alive, and even though I got smacked by hard wooden sticks on the knuckles and arms quite a few times tonight. Another guy got poked, hard, by a stick right below his eye and had an instant welt that looked like a gigantic pimple, so I guess I can't really complain. At least not very successfully.
On to the news and stuff!
¤ Thanks to whoever sent me $10 via the Amazon.com tip jar thingie this week. I'd add your name to the donors page, but all I know from Amazon is that someone dropped in $10 (of which I receive $9.41 after they skim off the top). I do not see any donor information unless the donor wishes me to see it. Let me know who you are and I'll thank you properly. As the rescued damsel always says in the movies before she kisses her hero. Not that that's at all an appropriate allusion to make at this point. That donation came in November, by the way, which means that December is still virginal. So to speak. Also, I'll mention once again that if you have any Xmas purchases to make through Amazon.com, feel free to use this link, or the button on the top of the left side nav bar to click to Amazon. Anything you buy in that browsing session gives the referrer (me) 5% of the price, and you pay the same as you would normally. Think of it as only paying 95% of the purchase price to greedy Amazon.com bloodsuckers, if it makes you feel better. *slurp*
¤ To the surprise of approximately no one, Blizzard's new game, World of Warcraft, has launched and sold madly. Well, there might be someone surprised by it... Blizzard!
You see, they sold far more copies than they expected, far more people got online immediately, the people online played for many more hours than Blizzard expected, and as a result nearly every server has been constantly full, making attempts to actually play, rather than staring at the join screen, problematic. As I said to several friends over ICQ:
¤ A friend forwarded me this promotional email from New Line, about the upcoming RotK SEE DVD.
I'd seen the link online already, but since I'm eagerly-purchasing the disk when it goes on sale in two weeks, I'm not about to watch any more trailers or previews that would just spoil things for me. If you want to see it though, there's the link. Godspeed.
¤ Amusing article about the fashion cluelessness of young adults entering the workplace.
That's why they call it "work," kids. You have to wear things you don't want to wear, and do things you don't want to do. The upside is that they pay you for it.
This article amuses me on several levels. For one thing, this has to be great news for young people with some common sense; if all you have to do is know enough to wear slacks and a button-up shirt to an interview, and that's almost sure to get you the job over the other idiots in their hip slinger jeans, that's quite a break. The other part that actually made me laugh was the "I'm not going to be someone I'm not." part. If you've had dreads for 15 years and you say you're a Rastafarian and you can keep your pot smoking under control... you might have an argument that that's "who you are." If you're wearing club clothing and sporting a nose ring because the minor celebrities on Mtv wear it, and you were wearing something completely different a year ago and will change in another year as you chase the next trend... it's not the real you, junior. Unless the real you is a trendy fashion victim, and that's not something you really want to assert loudly. I'm also surprised by all of the hand-wringing over this from adults. Just stop trying to hire people right out of college, if they're this dumb. A year of failed job interviews, unemployment, and living on ramen once daddy's no longer paying their college bills will welcome these kids to the real world, and the painful infusion of common sense will turn them into reasonable adults. Thus is has ever been; thus it ever will be.
¤ Article about penis size and condom-buying habits in Germany. It's short, so I'll quote the whole thing. (The article is short, I mean.)
Before you snicker too much, keep in mind that there are no "small" condoms sold in the US, since no American man would admit to needing one. Oddly enough, the large sizes are hardly sold either, or at least whenever I see the condom display in a store it looks to be about 90% normal size, with a few large boxes off to one side. There is a ton of variety in colors and textures and lubrications, but very seldom any in size, at least as far as I've noticed. That said, I have several questions about this news item:
You can see more of this sort of nonsense on the Penis Size article page if you've got the stomach for it.
¤ This one depresses me as it simultaneously fulfills my darkest suspicions. Those ridiculous "abstinence-only" sex ed programs the Christian Right push so hard not only don't work, but they are busily spreading outright lies and ridiculously sexist propaganda.
No agenda of disinformation there, eh? I'm sure it's all just a bunch of honest mistakes, rather than a puritanical desire to roll an ancient code of morality back over teens, with no concern for the consequences. As the article notes, 88% of the teens who pledge to save themselves for marriage eventually have pre-marital sex, and they are far less likely to practice safe sex than teens who were properly-educated about the risks and dangers. It's not that these right wing Christians want to enforce their morality on the rest of us; it's that they're so unrealistic about it. Of course kids are going to have sex. Just accept it. You can try to educate them about the dangers, and try to tell them Baby Jesus won't like it and all of that, but you have to have a plan B. Putting all of your eggs in one extremely fragile chastity basket is just idiotic. Teenagers have always had sex, and they will always have sex. The best you can hope is that some education will satisfy their curiosity and they'll put it off until they are mature enough to be safe and not get diseased or knocked up in the process. You can't scare or lie teenagers into doing what you want them to do; they'll always rebel and see through the bullshit. Teen pregnancy dropped substantially during the Clinton years, since his administration funded good sex ed that educated kids honestly. Bush, of course, threw all that out immediately, since in this area as in so many others, he and his backers don't care about results. They only care about ideology, about extending their agenda of control. These are the same people who want to ban abortion, while also banning birth control and doing nothing to help poor mothers with pre-natal care, affordable daycare, etc. "Don't have sex, if you do you have to have the baby, and when you have it we don't give a shit if you or it starve in the street." It's quite sick. One last quote from the article, that shows how far their agenda extends:
Excellent. Just the sort of progressive message of equality we want to indoctrinate our youth with. Welcome to the 50s. Pick up your apron and high heels and proceed to the kitchen, ladies. |
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 ince
I posted my review of Roger and Me on Wednesday, I might as well finish up
the Michael Moore reviews with Bowling for Columbine today. I've still got
my Desperado review, my review of Seabiscuit the novel, another one of a
DVD collection of movie fights, and then another book and movie review
half written, so you can pretty well count on a review per blog all next
week, and perhaps the week after.
Bowling for Columbine is a documentary by Michael Moore about guns, and fear. The title comes from the infamous Columbine High School shooting, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gunned down over a dozen of their fellow students before killing themselves. The bowling part comes from the last class they attended that day... at a bowling alley. It was a sort of elective P.E., where (geeky) kids could go bowling early in the morning, before school, to satisfy their P.E. requirement. Harris and Klebold were in the class, and they actually went that morning, before returning home and getting locked and loaded for their big day. Despite the title, Bowling for Columbine is not really about Columbine at all, and in fact it's not even really about guns. It's more about the culture of fear in America, and why we have such a disproportionately high number of violent crimes and deaths, most of them due to guns. Your average large American city has more gun homicides in a year than every other Western nation put together, and it's not all about the easy availability of firearms; they've got as many or more guns per capita in Canada, for instance, but the people there just don't shoot each other. Why not? The film doesn't really answer that question, since no one can, and since it's just trying to get the viewer to think about the issue. It succeeded, in that regard. To the scores.
Quick review: surprisingly entertaining. After mostly enjoying Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and being sporadically bored by Roger and Me, I didn't have real high hopes for this one. I was afraid Bowling for Columbine would be deeply depressing, as it droned on about how violent and crazy America is, how evil the NRA is, etc. With those expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by almost everything in the film. The two most famous bits were far from my favorite parts, too: In one Moore goes to K-mart headquarters with two boys who were shot (one of them is in a wheelchair for life) in the Columbine massacre, and who still carry bullets, bought at K-mart, in their bodies. This makes for some interesting theater and puts K-mart on the defensive, but I didn't see the point in it. What are they going to do? Forceps the bullets out and give the kids store credit? It's not K-mart's fault that we have ridiculously lax gun laws, especially as they relate to ammunition. In the film Moore plays a clip of a Chris Rock routine where he talks about how gun control is pointless, and that we should just make bullets cost about $5000 each. It's funny, but doesn't really go anywhere. The biggest coup of the film, is when Moore simply drives up to Charleston Heston's gated mansion, speaks into the intercom, and gets Heston to agree to give him an interview the next morning. Heston was the head of the NRA at that point, and while his position was clearly an honorary, "celebrity for the publicity" sort of role, Heston was allowing himself to be used as a figurehead and was going around the country and making his rabidly pro-gun speeches as a political tool. He spoke at a convention in Denver, very near Columbine just a few weeks after the massacre, and did the same thing in Detroit, just days after a 1st grade child shot and killed another young child, in school, with a loaded handgun he'd found lying around his uncle's house. The Heston interview has become legendary, but it's really not that impressive in the movie. Heston is exposed as old and clueless, with absolutely nothing to base his opinions on when Moore very lightly challenges them. Moore just asks him if he thinks the NRA could or should have postponed or moved their conventions, rather than appearing in cities so recently scarred by horrible gun violence tragedies, and Heston sort of nods and mumbles before finally walking off and just leaving Moore and the camera crew sitting there, wondering if he's coming back or what. As I said though, while those are the two most famous/infamous segments of the film, they don't take up more than maybe 10% of the running time, and they're far from the most interesting bits in the film. The rest of the film covers a ton of material, most of it related to why Americans are so afraid of virtually everything, and why, by extension, we have such a need for anti-fear talismans like guns. It's not dry and academic though; and there aren't a ton of boring statistics either. One of the more amusing segments is in Canada, when Moore heads north of the border to investigate why there are so few gun deaths in Canada. Canada is a big hunting and fishing and outdoors country, so they have as many guns per capita as we do in the US. They also have crime, with a crime rate that's comparable to most of the US. It's just that their crimes are things like robbery and assault and vandalism and such; but not involving guns, or murder. Anyway, Moore heads across the border from Detroit to Windsor. Windsor is a good-sized city, with a population of about 250,000; smaller than Detroit, but it's not all that different, demographically. While there Moore talks to a cop and asks about recent murders, and the cop just stares at him as he thinks it over and finally says something like, "I can't remember the last murder. Maybe there were one or two in the last fifteen years?" Meanwhile Detroit annually has one of the worst murder rates in the US, and usually has 300 or 400 or more people die every year, most from being shot by a gun. Moore then follows that up by talking to a bunch of Canadians in public places, asks them if they lock their doors, and when they all say "Nope." he actually goes house to house in a suburb, trying front doors at random... and they're all unlocked and the people are all very friendly when he apologizes for barging in. Just imagine doing that in the US? First of all, virtually every door would be locked, and even if you did find some that were unlocked, you'd run at least even odds of getting blown away by some trigger happy idiot. (I'm no exception to that, by the way; I always lock the door, as does everyone else, and if I heard someone trying to get in my immediate reaction would be to worry about defending myself and my girlfriend from unknown attackers. And no, the fact that nothing like that ever happened doesn't make me think it never will.) Moore segues that segment into some coverage of the US media; how every time anything bad happens to anyone it's on the news. He shows sweeps week local news intros, and everything is just so ridiculously overblown towards fear. One report after another is like, "Invisible killers in your home! Your children could die the instant you turn your back! How to keep prowlers from hurting your family!" and so on. Meanwhile the Canadian news has nice features about communities helping each other, good news about new roads being built, etc. The point being that there's crime in Canada, but they're not obsessed about it, and they don't spend all of their time in fear of it, and therefore live much happier lives. Unfortunately, the film doesn't tie it all together in any way. Why are Americans so terrified by potential crime, and why do we think things are so much worse than they are? Why is there so much violence in this country? People often blame the entertainment industry, but Canada sees the same violent movies and TV shows as the US; they play the same murder-filled video games, they read the same serial killer novels, etc. The movie doesn't answer the question, but I don't know that it could; the issues are just too vast and interlocking in so many weird ways, but while Bowling for Columbine is interesting and lively and informative, it leaves you with lots of questions and no real answers. We have a ridiculous amount of guns in the US. We feel we need them since so much in the news is bad and scary. Those guns endanger us far more than they protect us. The NRA is a parasitic organization devoted to fanning those fears and increasing gun ownership. The murder rate would drop dramatically if there weren't so many guns out there. Etc. There are many other fascinating segments in the film, and the scenes with James Nichols, brother of convicted Oklahoma City bomb accomplice Terry Nichols, are frighteningly creepy. James talks about his brother's normal life, what they do on their farm, how all the alleged bomb-making materials the FBI found were common farm fertilizers, etc. James is paranoid and somewhat delusional, and when he says that he sleeps with a loaded .45 under his pillow, and Moore asks to see it, James takes him in and shows him the gun, then points it at his own head and talks about killing himself then and there. I was literally squirming on the couch watching that portion of the film, and there's lots more great stuff I'm not mentioning here.
Overall though, you get a lot of facts from the film, but what are you going to do with them? How is anyone going to change the US news from scare tactic bullshit to positive and informative information, when fear gets ratings? How is anyone going to remove the tens of millions of guns from our society? Why are Americans so much more likely to use guns to kill each other than the citizens of any other nation on earth? It was a good movie, a lot more entertaining that I expected going in, but if it could have just taken that last little step to offering some solutions and conclusions, it would have gone from "good" to "exceptional." |
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