got a late start on the blog today, so I'm just going to be briefly autobiographical up here, mention a thing about Kali, and then get to the news below.

Malaya had a minor lingering illness for about the last two weeks. It was never severe; she worked and did Kali and went to the gym and such, but she had a nagging dry cough that mostly kicked in once she was horizontal. No problem during the day, but once she was in bed and trying to sleep she'd start coughing or clearing her throat, and I eventually went and got her a bottle of cough syrup at 4am one night. She took a shot of it every day for a week or so and finally got over the cough this weekend.

So of course I felt sort of scratchy-throated Monday, coughed on and off all day, and then woke up Tuesday morning afternoon with a sticky coating in my throat and very low energy levels. I made it through kali for about 90 minutes, but at maybe 8:40 I started feeling dizzy and had very little energy. Fortunately we were working in a group of three, taking pair turns with someone sitting out, so I was able to go splash water on my face and drink some water and sit down for a bit, and by the time I did a brief session with the Gura just before class ended I felt okay.

My energy level did not increase once I got home and ate dinner and watched some TV with Malaya though, and as I sat here in my chair at midnight, usually the start of my productive writing hours, I hardly had the energy to surf, and did not have the wit to write a damn thing about a damn thing. So I went to bed when Malaya did, and fortunately my cough wasn't as bad as hers, and I was able to sleep about six hours, but only when lying on my back. On either side I'd start coughing, and since Malaya drained the bottle of cough syrup, that was a good thing.

It's now 8am, I've been awake for an hour and a half, and with some breakfast in me I'm feeling pretty okay. The throat is a bit itchy though, and it feels dry and like I constantly need to clear it. I'm medicating the symptoms with a Jamba Juice, and I've got cantaloupe and vitamin C zinc lozenges for later.

The funny part about my sleeping from midnight-ish until dawn is that my schedule lately has been to sleep from about 9am-4pm. I was up Tuesday morning until 10am actually, then slept and got up at 4pm to run some errands before Kali. The late night thing has been working well, since I've been doing lots of fiction writing; I banged out 7000 words of new stuff Tuesday early morning. And then I slept for 6 hours, was up for 8, and slept for 6 more. That's like a baby's sleep cycle, I believe. It's going to get worse too, since I hope to catch a nap this afternoon to be fresh for my night's writing. Plus I just dislike being awake in the day; it's too bright and noisy and such.

As for the Kali stuff, I'm not going to go into a huge discussion (famous last words) but we were doing a moving, punching thing on Tuesday night, and the differences between men and women was once again very evident. Especially at the beginner stage.

The exercise was basic parry check, in which two people take turns punching at each other in a flowing sort of motion. On person punches, the other person counters it and flows back into their own punch, and so on. It can be very fast and intense, or very slow and flowing, depending on how you play it. I've done ones where we're going freestyle and throwing full speed. Left and right handed punches, high, low, straight, hooks, uppercuts, whatever. You keep dodging and parrying or you get a free trip to loose tooth city, though we try to do it with enough of an open fist that no one gets bloodied. I've taken some pretty good ones to the chin and chest and stomach, though.

Parry check can also be very slow and flowing, and one exercise we do is to walk with it. It's basically a 1-2-3 count, where one person throws and walks forward with their punch, while the other person receives it and walks back, usually while turning slightly to one side or the other. They then throw a punch while reversing the movement and walking forwards, while the first puncher receives it and walks backwards.  On and on it goes, and it's rather like a waltz, since you want to keep moving constantly, and you need to flow into each other's movement. And as with everything in Kali, there's a vast difference between beginning, when you're just trying to get the motion down, and advanced, where the two people really look like ballroom dancers as they flow around the room fluidly and gracefully, while throwing punches at each other the whole time.

I've got the rhythm and movement and punching and receiving parts down by now, so what I worked on was doing it smoothly and gracefully. Gura helped me with lots of verbal instruction:

"Bend your knees more!
Stay on the balls of your feet!
Slide your feet when you back up!
Weight forward!
Turn your hips more!"

And so on. I tried, and I improved some over time, but it's hard. The trick to being graceful is to keep your steps smooth and to not bob up and down too much. I naturally take big, fast steps, and I bob a lot when I walk, so I'm having to unlearn and retrain in kali to move the way we wanna move. I can tell when I get it, since my thighs start to ache and I can feel how much more smoothly I'm moving, but it's hard to maintain.  There's more to it than head bobbing and such, of course; the body must flow, and in the stylized form you throw a right punch by turning as you punch and walking with your upper body turned so your right side is in front. You then pivot the other way and receive with your left shoulder forwards, and ideally there is a very smooth, wave-like upper body movement as you take in on the left, roll your right arm up, and then pivot and roll your right arm into them with the punch. It's not something you use for combat, it's more of a training aid to get the movement down, but it's fun and challenging.

I mentioned the male/female difference because it was very obvious last night.

There's one brand new woman in class, and while this was only her second time, and she didn't have the head movements or punching at all, she was moving far more smoothly than all but the advanced men.  She knew how to flow with her partner, male or female, and she kept her posture up and moved her legs gracefully and smoothly. She's never done any sort of martial arts before either, which is actually a good thing for Kali, since she's got less to unlearn.

There were three new men in the class last night, and while none of them are brand new (they've got maybe 1, 2, and 3 months, respectively) and they all punched far better than the new woman did their first day, not one of them could move in anything even approaching a smooth fashion. They're not uncoordinated, and all of them would destroy her in any sort of a fight, but when it came to flowing and receiving and moving around smoothly with a partner, they looked like they were walking on peg legs.  Even the more advanced male students (probably including myself, but without mirrors or a video tape I can't say for sure) looked much stiffer and clumsier than the brand new woman did, and the two other female students there, both of whom are intermediate, didn't look great with the punching and such, but they moved so much more fluidly than anyone but the teacher.

I've got to spend some time in the aerobics room at the gym next time, just for the full wall of floor to ceiling mirrors, since I never know what I look like while I'm doing Kali. I know I need to bend my knees more and sort of sit down over my heels, but it feels like I'm practically squatting like a catcher when I'm doing various things, and all the while Gura is telling me to bend more. Seeing in a mirror that I really am still almost completely upright will help me remember what it feels like to be down in the proper form, I hope.

I also mentioned the benefit of never having done other martial arts, and that's very obvious whenever anyone new starts up, with experience in other forms. I'm not saying other forms suck or that Kali is the best (though I obviously like it); I've not taken karate or tae kwan do or escrima or anything else, so I can't comment from personal experience, and they might be great for actual self defense.

What I'm commenting on is how people with experience in them transition into Kali. Awkwardly, with much un-learning, in a nutshell. Other forms seem to emphasize a lot of standing still and punching, since guys who start up with that experience always have the worst time learning to move, or flow, or to do much of anything with their left arm while they're holding a stick with the right. We use the left hand (or right if you're a lefty) constantly in our form of Kali, mostly as a counter balance with the stick, but there are lots of two-handed attacks as well, and it's an essential part of body control.

The newest guy did some Karate, and while his footwork is okay, he's got no body flow at all. He moves around okay, and he's in his early 20s and quick on his feet and can punch pretty well, but when he tries to flow or do anything sinuous it's like watching a robot move. Everything goes from the shoulders or elbows, and as of yet he's completely unable to do any really powerful hits, since he can't incorporate his hips and shoulders into the movement. Real power comes form the core, and Gura and other experts can do a casual arm movement that looks like nothing, and knock you (literally) across the room with it. The secret is to pivot the hips, flow from there through the shoulders, and then down the arm, and with that they can hold their hand literally an inch from your chest, and still hit you harder than big muscular beginners can with a full length punch. It's even harder if they pull back, of course, and it's much faster as well.

Gura was demonstrating to the new karate guy last night, and having him throw punches at her face literally as hard as he could; all of which she effortlessly turned aside and then used his own force and energy against him to hit him powerfully in the chest or arm before he could even pull his arm back from throwing the punch.  She could have put out both his eyes and opened up his windpipe before he threw a second punch, and if having that demonstrated on you isn't enough to get you eager to learn the Kali style of parry/check, I don't know what is. He seemed pretty excited and eager to learn more, at least.

Oddly, another better-known Filipino martial arts form, Escrima, is similar to karate (and everything else, AFAIK) in that the left arm stays clamped to the chest most of the time, and there's very little movement of the rest of the body. Another newish student, one with 3 months or so, took Escrima for a year or more before Kali, and while he's pretty good with the stick and has decent footwork, his left arm tends to dangle there, dead, when he's doing other things. And he moves like he's walking on bricks when he tries to flow, since his other form didn't involve movement other than straight forwards or straight back. We almost never do either in Kali, since it's all about turning to the side and avoiding the strengths of your opponent.

Completing the analogy, the other new male student is a young teenager, and while he's in good shape and plays lots of sports and such, he never did any other martial arts training, and perhaps as a direct result, he's far better on his feet than the other new guys. He's got miles to learn yet, but he flows better, turns and sidesteps and such pretty well, etc. He hasn't learned to pivot or turn or flow with his upper body at all yet, but at least he doesn't have to unlearn a very stiff, boxy style first, which should help him. I'm just getting decent at flowing like that now, and I've been doing it since last fall, and I've got a female who does Kali and can flow as constant inspiration. Maybe I can get Malaya to do some of the walking parry check thing with me, ideally in front of a mirror, and see how we blend. I saw how blocky the other guys were, and it was horrifying. If I look as stiff as they did, I'll certainly have electroshock-like motivation to improve.

Also, none of this is to say that Kali is easier for women or for men. It's definitely easier for women than most of the "stand still and punch and kick" type of martial arts, but while women find a lot of the graceful movements and finesse arm and hand control required for good Kali easier to pick up, they have to work harder to develop good punching and stick-swinging form, things men usually have right from the start.  For instance, women can start using knives with the quick and finesse form we use in Kali right away, while men often don't get to even touch a blade for 3 or 4 or 5 years, until their control over their hands and arms is good enough that they won't stab themselves or others.  On the other hand, men can do heavy stick and long arm right away, once they're able to swing loosely from their shoulders (things the ex-karate and ex-escrima guys take a while to learn), since that's a type of movement men are naturally good at, and since men have the upper body strength for it.

And if you were wondering about other racial and sexual stereotypes, we've never had a new black male student since I've been there, so I can't say if a hypothetical black man would have more flow or rhythm than (the very little rhythm) the new white guys and Asian guys usually have. There is one black guy who has a super sinuous flowing motion, but he's got over two years of Kali, so there's no telling how much he had going in and how much he's learned.

I can debunk the gay male myth though; there are two gay males in the class (that I know of), one who's done Kali for years, and neither one moves any more or less smoothly than the other guys do. Just to be complete, I'm not aware of any lesbian movement vs. straight woman movement movement stereotypes, but I've not seen any difference in how they move either.

I want to know if this guy's house is just overrun with mice or he lives in the country or what. Our cats have killed hundreds of bugs, mainly spiders and moths, but they eat them, so we don't have much to photograph. Oh, and Friskies seafood flavor... they massacre a huge sack of that each month.

¤ In news you couldn't help but hear about, some woman allegedly found part of a severed human finger in a bowl of chili at her local Wendy's restaurant. Initial news coverage treated her story as wholly credible, but as time has passed the issue has grown a lot more cloudy.  Local Wendy's restaurants just dump cans of frozen chili into a it pot and nuke it, so obviously it wasn't from the restaurant she got served in, but I assumed it was from an accident at a slaughterhouse somewhere. They can't find any evidence of that though, and as investigators looked deeper, they found that the woman had a history of filing lawsuits against small businesses and fast food companies.

LAS VEGAS - The woman who claims she bit into a human finger while eating chili at a Wendy's restaurant has a history of filing lawsuits — including a claim against another fast-food restaurant.

Anna Ayala, 39, who hired a San Jose, Calif., attorney to represent her in the Wendy's case, has been involved in at least half a dozen legal battles in the San Francisco Bay area, according to court records.

She brought a suit against an ex-boss in 1998 for sexual harassment and sued an auto dealership in 2000, alleging the wheel fell off her car. That suit was dismissed after Ayala fired her lawyer, who said she had threatened him. The case against her former employer was settled in arbitration in June 2002, but it was not known whether she received any money.

Speaking through the front door of her Las Vegas home Friday, Ayala claimed police are out to get her and were unnecessarily rough as they executed a search warrant at her home on Wednesday. "Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," she said. "They should look at Wendy's. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?"

Ayala acknowledged, however, that her family received a settlement for their medical expenses about a year ago after reporting that her daughter, Genesis, got sick from food at an El Pollo Loco restaurant in Las Vegas. She declined to provide any further details.

Now today news comes that the woman has dropped her lawsuit entirely, which seems like an admission of guilt on her part.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A woman who claimed she scooped up a human finger along with her chili at a Wendy's restaurant has decided not to sue the fast-food chain.

Anna Ayala dropped her claim because it "has caused her great emotional distress and continues to be difficult emotionally," said her attorney, Jeffrey Janoff.

Ayala, 39, claimed she found the 1 1/2-inch long fingertip on March 22 while dining at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose. She later filed a claim with the franchise owner, Fresno-based JEM Management Corp., which her attorney had said was the first step before filing a lawsuit.

I've never sued anyone over anything. I've never even considered it. But I'll tell you right now that if I ever find a human finger in my food, I'm going to sue. I'd like to think I could get over it, and frankly I doubt a human finger is anywhere near the worst thing you can find in fast food chili, but all the same, I would sue. Not so much for the money, but to cause damage to the company responsible, since hitting them in the pocketbook is the only way to cause companies to clean up their behavior.  Hell, I'd give my profits after lawyer fees and expenses to fund college scholarships, because if Wendy's slaughterhouses are so dangerous that the poor slobs laboring for pesos a day in their maquiladora are losing their ability to count to ten... then they need to upgrade things a bit.

This case isn't over yet though, since after all... there's still finger to be accounted for.  People in the past have been caught tampering with pill containers, and a guy was nailed on video slipping a syringe into a can of Pepsi a few years ago, and they got rightfully busted for trying to defraud the companies involved. But in this case, the woman didn't put a slug or rat head or something into her food... she (apparently) put in a human finger! You don't just find those lying around unattached, and while no one suspects that she murdered someone who flicked her off and took ironic revenge, investigators are curious as to where the found it.

The biggest irony in this is on the other hand though. So to speak. What if she really did get a finger in her chili? What if she had nothing to do with planting it, knows nothing about where it came from, and there's some 9-fingered guy working in a slaughterhouse somewhere who has concealed his injury since it would mean forced time off that he can't afford? And because of the woman's shady past legal dealings she's now unable to press a real and fully-justified lawsuit!

Wouldn't that be the best irony ever? Talk about the Woman Who Cried Finger.

Seriously though, we know she planted it herself, so the question remains; where did she get the digit? Malaya suggested that maybe she's got a friend who works in a morgue or funereal home or something like that, and I suppose that's possible. I don't think the woman has a job in the medical field herself, or the media coverage would have been all over that. Hopefully we'll find out before this case vanishes from the news forevermore.

¤ I read the original article about this pet-pillow entrepreneur some weeks ago and didn't think much of it, other than liking the idea. I've always thought about getting my dead pets stuffed in interesting poses, or perhaps having their skeletons articulated and mounted, but I've never had the money or the inclination to follow up on it. I'd never thought about just turning one into a pillow, but that would be pretty cool too. Jinxie would certainly make a nice soft headrest, and in that form she'd finally sit still and be a good lap kitty.

Anyway, here's the follow up to the initial article. It's from a UK paper, hence the "in America" reference.

And yes, that's an example of her work to the right. From a dog, I'd wager.

As for her price list, it's damn reasonable, and I can see rabbits or cats or even small dogs... but a horse? How in the hell are you going to freeze and overnight her a horse's carcass?  I take it that one would be local, for drop off only? Or maybe you'd chainsaw off just the head? Ick.

Here's some more of the fascinating article.

You should check out the whole thing; it's a good read. They discuss the taxidermist's life history, how rare females are in her profession, and so on. There's even a quote of the day beauty to close things out.

¤ I often post about vicious pit bull stories, so it's only fair that I mention this one, for the sake of balance. Here's the whole article, since it's short.

A true bureaucrat would have ticketed the pit bulls' owner for not having his dogs restrained while he was at it, but I suppose that under the circumstances we can let that one slide.

¤ Elsewhere, personal data broker firms are continuing their push to force harsh government regulations over their industry. This time it's LexisNexus an their incompetence leading the charge.

Given that once someone has stolen your identity it's almost easier to fake your own death and start over from scratch than it is to repair the damage to your credit rating and life in general, it's pretty much inexcusable that these firms are allowed to wheel and deal the info so freely, and with so few protections and precautions for us.

The fact that there aren't laws in place to protect us is just another clear sign that politicians put their corporate benefactors far ahead of their sheep-like constituents. Not that we needed another sign to know how things stood on the "money vs. people" seesaw in Washington these days.