I’ve always said that sport fencing gets you up to speed and fencing for aerobic fitness way faster than the historical stuff does. Lighter weapons, safer play, etc.
But I’ve never been to a real tourney, so I didn’t know how tough it could be.
On Wednesday, the RFC had a mock tourney, mostly for the new folk to cut their teeth. I think it was a good experience for them. One of them has been coming to practice regularly, and she put in a pretty good performance — good, clean guard stances and lunges.
Coming out of the first-round pool of 6 competitors, Chris Z. and Brian were 1 and 2. I’d taken it easy on the beginners, to give ‘em more of a run. I didn’t actually think ahead to what would happen after the first round. When I found out I had to go one match more than Chris and Brian, I thought, “Well, crap! I’m not going to last that long.”
So I felt torn over squashing my 2nd-round opponent, but put her away 15-0 b/c I knew Brian and Chris wouldn’t cut her any slack, and I needed to preserve my strength.
It almost wasn’t enough — after Brian, I had to face Chris. I knew he was good — he’d taken me down 5-2 in flurry of attacks in our first-round match.
It was somehow fitting that I had to face the big level boss last… :) He kept a 2-1 score ratio over me until 8 points. After that, I managed to hold a 1-2 point lead, though my right leg cramped up and stayed cramped for my last 3 points. I was forced to score only by virtue of riposting after parrying Chris’s attacks, which is exactly how he scored so many points on me in the first match and for the first 8 points in the second match. I wonder if Chris took it easy on me — I’d think he’d rather have done so by finishing me off faster.
I also wonder how I might have done against Ryan or Tim. But Tim’s busy these days and Ryan’s gone to grad school in California.
All things considered, it was a blast, and thus far my historical techniques have served me well in sport fencing. I strove to maintain decent form, but Grant observed than my stance and lunge were frequently off-kilter, esp. against Brian and Chris — which shows I’m easily flustered. My off-hand also kept trying to creep up and parry for me (wrong game to do so!).
If someone were to defeat me in the future, I think I can confidently say that it’s because he’s a better-skilled opponent, and it’s not because I suck.
[Warning: blog contains anger sufficient to upset a Jedi’s digestion.]
So a couple of weeks ago, I was poking around, and spent an afternoon reading news.bbc.co.uk. Today, I found an interesting article about Saudi Arabia’s status quo.
It doesn’t solve our silly beef with Iraq, but it does highlight the overly simplified attitude we as a society tend to take towards the ragheads. It certainly seems that a good deal of the Middle East’s tension would go away if those peoples were shown / taught the means and infrastructure to compete economically, and consequently bring about a higher standard of living and education for their people. A man who has lots isn’t willing to risk it in war or revolution, but the man who has nothing has nothing to lose.
But we don’t collectively seem inclined to take such an enlightened stance. (And some of the enlightened bits of our collective may have a take on stances different from mine…)
Then I thought, “Hrm, what has the average well-informed American read in recent times about the Saudis, anyway?”
So I polled CNN’s world news section. That had nothing on Saudi Arabia, so I did a keyword search on the site. Last mention: 5/18/03, wherein U.S. lawmakers criticized the Saudis for not fully committing to the U.S.’s self-aggrandizing campaign against hapless Middle-Eastern victims of the U.S.’s past policies. And yes, I’m only referring to the Iraqis and their government’s past 2 decades’ involvement with the U.S. I know that we can blame many of the Middle East’s oldest problems on those pesky steppes nomads, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. The upstart U.S. can’t claim to have oppressed the Middle East for five centuries, crushing the Arabs’ flowering civilization of sciences and arts. Don’t let anyone tell you that we or the Crusaders were responsible for the current state of the Middle East. :)
We’re certainly not helping matters, though — that’s for sure.
Um, I’ll get off my Ottoman rant now.
So I don’t know if American news actually is on par with the BBC for fair and well-rounded, meaningful reporting. I’ve heard lots of self-proclaimed enlightened people tell me that the U.S. media is a joke, is too sensationalistic, and too fluffy. This is certainly borne out by my random encounters with MSNBC or CNN. But who knows? Maybe the WSJ and NY Times are actually intelligent.
All I know is that I always come away feeling better — better informed and better cheered — after reading the Brits’ take on world news.
American news just makes me feel empty. Look at our president, see how stupid he is! But don’t mind how cleverly he and his political machine have implemented many of the key points on their party agenda, all the while apologizing for his irrelevant pronunciation goofs.
Not that this is really news to me or you. Oh, look at me — my social consciousness has been newly awakened, and I feel motivated to go out and make a difference.
Oh, wait. I’m not gonna overturn any governments or institute reforms. I’m not going to save whales or feed hungry Somalian children.
There’s nothing that makes should into must, despite what our more extreme elements of society say.
I’ve done useful things for society and myself, and I will continue to do so. I may admire and adopt others’ causes, but I won’t let ‘em guilt me into adoption. Anymore, that is. We’ll see.
Can anyone recommend some good news sources? Joseph recommended some good ones a few years back to me, but that was two mail readers and two computers ago. My preference is for nothing extreme (conservative or liberal).
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