Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Alone... alone... alone..."
¤ Usage: Repeat the word repeatedly as soon as you are left alone in a room, even if someone else can be found less than ten feet away.
¤ Origin: We've got Dusty to thank for this one, since it's his habit. Whenever he's restless, or whenever both Malaya and me change rooms, leaving him alone in the living room or bedroom, he wakes up, looks around and begins sounding in a sonar-like fashion, as he repeatedly meows, each yowl at exactly the same pitch and tone.
¤ Notes: He's not actually saying "alone" of course, at least not that we know, but since he only does it when he's suddenly alone, either due to his wandering or our movement, it seems a reasonably translation, based on the context. Since I made up the "alone" joke, whenever Dusty wanders off and begins yowling pathetically in the otherwise-empty bathroom or bedroom or living room, Malaya and me amuse each other by saying, "Alone, alone, alone..." over and over again, in the same pitch that Dusty uses.

Hey, it beats, "Shut up!" which is what we used to yell, which had about as much effect on the cat as you might expect. -- August 16, 2004

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today he had seen no "strong, hard evidence" linking former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda. He backed away from his pre-war assertions that contacts between the two went back over a decade at an event in New York.

"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way," he told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations after being asked what Saddam's connection to al-Qaeda was.

Mr. Rumsfeld said there were differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was. "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

...

In his comments today, Mr Rumsfeld said he had relied on the Central Intelligence Agency for his information in the past, and appeared to blame the intelligence reporting for the way the relationship between al-Qaeda and Saddam was portrayed.

"I just read an intelligence report recently about one person who's connected to al-Qaeda who was in and out of Iraq. And it is the most tortured description of why he might have had a relationship and why he might not have had a relationship," he said.

 ¤ And after I wrote the above on Monday, part two cropped up Tuesday.

fter Kali class on Tuesday night, Malaya and me were talking to the teacher (AKA Gura) and Malaya asked why there weren't more women there lately. Men mostly work on bare hand and stick stuff, while women do bare hand and knives. Not exclusively of course, everyone learns everything eventually, but when there are sufficient students to break us up into different tasks, that's usually how it goes. And since there haven't been many other women at class for the past month, Malaya's been missing out on knife play.

Classes are very small in the first place; 4-8 or so usually with 6 (including Malaya and me) on Tuesday night, plus the instructor. Even numbers are better, since then everyone gets a partner for the sparring and learning process, since most everything is learned one on one, taking turns giving and receiving the technique. You've got to feel what it's like to have it done to you to do it to others, and when you and another student are learning it at the same time, you learn from each other as well as the teacher.

Anyway, while we were talking after class, the gura (female teacher) told us that she doesn't get many female students who stick with it. Most students don't stick with it at all in the first place, and women less than men. I don't know how the retention % compares to that of other forms of martial arts, but the gura's theory is that since Kali is such a deadly serious form, with killing techniques being taught right from the start and a learning curve of many years (at least five years to consider being expert enough to graduate to guru quality yourself, which just means that you might be competent to teach classes) that it scares off people who aren't serious about learning the form, and about planning for their lives in general.

She told us that few men under the age of 30ish and few women without children stick with it. I didn't see any logical connection between those groups, but in her experience teaching for many years, most women aren't comfortable with the techniques; that the stuff we're learning is too potentially deadly, and obviously so. She said she'd talked to female experts in other forms, women who had been doing Karate or whatever for a decade or more, who saw her do a demonstration with a live (sharp) sword and were freaked out. They were like, "But that's dangerous! You could kill someone!" and gura was like, "Well duh. What do you think a spinning roundhouse kick to the jaw would do? Or an eye gouge?" Not that she said it in quite those words, but it was like the women who were big on other forms never really considered what all that punching and kicking they were working at was for, ultimately. Whereas in Kali, some of the first lessons you learn with knives are diverting an attack with your empty hand, then pushing it aside with your knife hand, slicing your blade along their arm the whole way, and then finishing them with a stab to the throat.

Tuesday night in class we were all working with short sticks, and learning to block with one hand in the middle of the stick, redirecting it sort of like shooting a pool cue. I can't describe the whole thing in words and you don't care anyway, but the point was to block that way and then slide behind them and use your staff for a choking device. It was quite cool, all the different arm placements, the footwork required, the potential counters and counters to counters, throws possible from that position, pressure points on the neck and throat, etc.

Imagine you're holding your stick in your right hand, making a fist, and the other end of your stick is tucked into the crook of your left elbow. Almost like playing a violin with a very long bow. Now your left arm is bent upwards, and you use that hand to wrap around their head, neck, side of their face... whatever, in order to move their head to the proper angle to crush their windpipe, or hit a pressure point and drop them into submission. Techniques include finding the correct pressure points quickly, finding ones that you can't hit without rolling the stick down at an angle, cocking the stick under their jaw to turn their heads and break the neck, and more.  We're working on this with other people, and using hard wooden sticks (Malaya and me just got a lovely pair of dark mahogany sticks that are about as hard as stone.) and yes, you could easily severely injure someone practicing like that, and yes, you could very easily kill a person that way, or at least knock them unconscious, or put them on the ground helplessly gasping for breath.  Then kill or cripple them in any number of ways.

To me, that's what makes it worth doing. Not that I'm going to murder people with the technique, but that it's immediately and obviously applicable to real life combat, and it's very effective. And according to gura, that's what turns off lots of other people to it.

Her theory is that people who are still young or haven't really given much thought to what they want to do with their lives don't like that. They have to think about life and death and how easily they could die or kill, and it unsettles them.

Young men, teens and twenties, usually think they're immortal and nothing could go wrong too badly. That's why they drive 120MPH on the freeway, binge drink, get into stupid fights, and engage in all the other reckless behaviors men are so well-known for. You'd think those habits would make Kali attractive to young guys, but they apparently lack the discipline to stick with it long enough to get any good. Also, it's hard for a lot of people, young men especially, to admit they aren't good at something. And when you're in a class with half a dozen other people all of whom could cripple you without even really trying, especially when they're older, or not in very good shape, or women, or whatever, it's humbling, and a lot of young men don't have a strong enough ego to take that. Apparently.

As for women not sticking with it, I don't have as much insight into their condition, but as gura said and Malaya agreed, most women don't have that old cliché, the killer instinct. The sort of potentially deadly thing we were working on Tuesday night is a prime example, as gura said lots of women just aren't comfortable with that sort of power. To learn something that they could use not just to fight back or escape an attacker, but to go on the offensive with and even kill with, unsettles them. And, oddly enough, women with children are much more able to deal with it, probably because their protective she-bear instincts come to life once they've got young to protect. Like they can't imagine fighting or killing for themselves, but they can do it for their children.  Men who have families are turned onto Kali more as well, since while they might have always had the aggressive impulses, they've now got a family to protect, to stay alive to provide for, and they're accustomed to making hard choices, sacrificing immediate pleasure for long term improvement, and other such adult issues.

Gura also said that there is often a drop off after two years or so, when people sort of plateau in their skills and start to get tired of the regular practice, when advancing further in ability is obviously going to take them years more. I dunno if I'll have that problem, and I'm enjoying Kali so far, but feel free to check back in 23 months to see if I'm still at it.

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