…of divers topics lately arisen within my sphere:
Advancement
Blood, mine (again)
Consciousness, the question of
Employment
Exam preparation
Expansion, activity participation
Faith, questions of
Family, fundamental trade-offs
Friends, new and old
Growth, personal
Imperative, Kantian
Purpose, eternal
Swordplay, brilliant
It’s not the life we would have chosen, but it is the life we have made for ourselves.
Things are tentatively set to be really great / tough on the employment front. I shan’t too closely calculate my flightless avians until we’ve reached an appropriately post-gestational point.
Hope to have some presentations and surprises re: HEMA prepped in a week or two. I imagine it’s not much of a priority for anyone but me, nowadays, given where we all are in our respective lives, but I’d like to share it anyway.
And finally, it’s been quietly exhilarating to know that my secular humanist faith has been tested and found sufficiently robust. Many atheists and less rigorous believers in science find in times of crisis that theirs is a brittle faith when they suffer too-great personal loss or challenges. It sometimes gives spontaneous rise to some sort of home-grown agnosticism, and possibly eventual conversion.
But I feel.. well, blessed, if you will, that I’ve successfully upheld my faith in the god of Science. That is, science as a metaphysical philosophy. It can be a tough reconciliation to make, in the face of multiple deaths and personal losses, difficulties, etc.
Apparently, I made mine years ago, b/c I’ve weathered recent events with an almost indecent aplomb. I had moments of doubt, wondering whether I was just callous and insensitive to e.g. my parents’ problems. Objectivity can seem heartless, but I have the best reasons I can find for the manner in which I’m helping them — which no longer means doing what they want me to do. There’s no calm postgame here — it *is* tough, and we’re not nearly done yet.
And a lot of my strength to face it has come from the fatalistic belief that we are all ultimately in a zero-sum game. It has led others to nihilism, cynicism, Gen X angst, or emo (goth, punk, or grunge in earlier eras). But I think the billion-year death throes of our planet’s constant decline are beautiful.
As the sun dies ever so slowly, it indiscriminately casts its prodigious energy into the void. The merest ray happens to glance off our planet, which itself is slowly cooling from its fiery birth to a lifeless, cold end. Ancient light fed and induced unthinkably random molecules and compound substances to recombine again and again, until seeds and squirrels, mushrooms and mammoths, sea cucumbers and swords, and pretty girls in short skirts all came about.
Now we have chemical combinations existing in such complex dynamic stability that they each perceive themselves as a gestaltic consciousness beyond mere molecular reactions. We have created sorrow, war, religion, anger, joy, romance, spoken word poetry, and whimsy. It’s like a firework rocket that explodes and cascades into countless swirling submunitions — they all flicker out after a too-brief flash of brilliance.
How is that *not* grand in its tragic elegance, its simultaneous sophistication and simplicity? A beautiful profusion of life inevitably headed for death.
And when it all ultimately ends someday, either when our star becomes a red giant, goes supernova, or beyond at the heat death of the universe, it’s okay. Because, for a brief billion-year instant, we existed.
So it comes back to us individually: No death is cause for grief, because it means we existed for a short while. That is our wyrd, and it is the wyrd of our gods. All that remains is how we go to meet it. Concern yourself only with what’s within your power to effect; don’t worry about what you can’t affect. Live the best life you can, always growing, learning, doing, screwing up. Be satisfied with what you’ve done, who you are, but never settle. Difficulties and failures serve to teach, and thus are natural parts of our existence. There can be no stasis so long as there is time.
So what is consciousness, then? A computer runs on on/off bits, zeroes and ones. Put gajillions of them together, and you get… an electronic copy of the entire corpus of Shakespeare’s work. Hydroelectric turbine performance figures. Rag doll physics and first-person shooters of unnerving verisimilitude like CoD 4.
All of which is meaningless zeroes and ones without a human observer to interpret them in 32-bit color. A dog or a fly wouldn’t see all the color and detail of the computer screen.
The natural world would similarly be meaningless without a human observer to appreciate fresh spring breezes, smog-tinted rosy sunsets. Glass-sheathed skyscrapers and Argentinian tango are just as natural, though we usually and arbitrarily call man-made artifacts unnatural or artificial. All of our endeavors are natural, because we’re part of the natural world. There is nothing unnatural in the universe, because it all *is*. And we can each say about ourselves: “I am.”
In their own way, maybe that’s what the ancient Hebrews were trying to capture — that sense of the self — in their simpler, pre-Kierkegaardian language.
And when it all dies or burns, it will be. What is, is natural. Nothing to regret about a lifeless lump of rock — because who will be around to regret it?
But I am working at living a rockin’ life long before we get to that point, and to ensure the best possible quality of life for my spiritual or genetic descendants.
“Mommy, why is that man in the car next to ours holding a can or something to his ear?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“There’s blood. He frightens me.”
“I’m scared too, honey.”
Between cupping a block of ice to my left ear with my offhand b/c driving with proper signaling trumps habit, and realizing that forgetting my glasses while driving down commercial office parks and residential streets with patchy lighting poses a navigational challenge… I’d say this evening lacked even a soupçon of what normal people would call good sense.
(more…)
…Or just crazy.
[People not interested in HEMA can skip down to web links of late. Be forewarned that this entry reads like a Joseph Conrad story printed on cheap, splintery Soviet TP.]
Gawd, CAS Iberia put out some awful thing on sword and shield combat. I won’t link it, b/c it doesn’t deserve any more viewings. It’s already ranked 1/5 on YouTube, thankfully.
OTOH, www.achillemarozzo.it has a number of YouTube clips posted on sword and buckler, round shield, and single.
User Tossetoke has some very cool vids extrapolating Viking shield combat from German fechtmanual techniques. I’ve seen articles before (by e.g. Paul Wagner), but this is the first accurate set of clips I’ve seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXPujfwQJUg
Or you can do a search for HEMAC 2008 vids. Three guys have posted a fair number of bouts from the longsword tournament. Some terrible footwork, some decent demonstrations of skill (timing, distance, etc.)… Maybe I’ll go next year and show ‘em how an Asian fences. I’ll be the Cuong Le of HEMA!
Other web links perused of late:
http://members.aol.com/illinewek/faqs/casting.htm
http://www.theodoregray.com/periodicTable/Stories/030.1/index.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99519.htm
http://www.rc-soar.com/tech/casting.htm
How the hell can you consume 2900 calories in a single drink?! Most days, I struggle to reach 2200 (assuming crude estimates of 1200 for my main meal, 300 in nuts and dried fruit, and 800 in milk / OJ / assorted no-sugar-added fruit juices).
http://www.menshealth.com/eatthis/20-Worst-Foods/index.php
http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/5027/americas-unhealthiest-drinks-exposed/
http://health.yahoo.com/weightloss-motivation/how-to-lose-weight-like-a-guy/prevention–23299.html
Go, market corrections.
http://promo.realestate.yahoo.com/five-cities-with-biggest-decline-in-home-values.html
This was happy good webtrawling for combating depression. Started off innocently enough, with searches for ballistic ceramic.
http://www.armorusa.com/Ballistic%20Ceramic%20Composite.htm
This led to a thirst for greater understanding of what NATO peacekeepers can do to misbehaving targets.
http://www.dec.fct.unl.pt/projectos/impacto/Public_Papers/Report%20on%20Ceramic.pdf
The average insurgent often experiences difficulty in procuring B4C ceramic / aramidic-weave polyethylene fiber plates. Morbid curiosity prompted the search for ways to evaluate bullet performance on flesh.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/gelatin.html
In the name of science, the expression denoting unfeasibility “…like nailing Jell-O to a wall,” had to be assessed for veracity.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/j-wall.html
A side jaunt into enzymatic interactions and effect on proteins was called for here.
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/activities/proteins/advice.cfm
Busting adages with the liberal application of science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%28season_2%29#Needle_in_a_Haystack
Then a resumption of the descent into madness and the merely insipid.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/beer.html
By random link association.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/viagra-flowers.html
The very heart of darkness.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/condoms.html
If you read this far, you need to get a life. If you followed every link, someone should take you out to the pasture and put you out of your misery.
That said, I leave you with a cliffhanger:
The past two months have seen WW I-era Gallic quantities of angst, resignation, fear, sweat, tears, and blood (*mostly* internal lacerations). The blood was from HEMA practices. Everything else was not. Within another month, I should either have stupid-good news, or I’ll be evicted from the poorhouse and put in a Frigidaire box.
It could be worse — I could still be doing door-to-door sales.
A tear in Hanko’s beer. He gets no love. :)
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=371
That’s pretty cool, though.
Having gotten pasted in the man-boob, right pinky, right forearm and nearly the nuts at Sunday’s practice, I can’t say I’m eager to fence sans masque despite it being quite the accepted convention up through the late 1700s.
(And yes, I am also aware of the various wicker / wire masks devised prior to La Boessiere’s invention.)
(more…)
Man, that was one of my favorite lines from previous productions (’96 and ‘04). Well, at least the ‘08 Hello, Hamlet show gives a lot of songs the old heave-ho — the show was starting to look a little long in the tooth. I think Grease and a bunch of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s tired recyclings of Barbara Streisand are getting the collegiate spoof treatment.
[OMG (and I say that non-ironically) — that dig at ALW was a completely random stab in a dark room with a new moon. And I squarely skewered the grand poobah’s liver. Google it for yourself.]
Trivial goings on further below. First, some soul-scourging and rokking out.
The nutshell:
I rock!
Everything rocks!
Wait, no. Backyard fu sucks hairy, unwashed monkey nuts. But everything else still rocks. (the Three Stooges, cheese, concealed handgun licenses, and sunsets among all other things — but only one of these mentioned items actually bears on this month’s mega-post. See if you guess right.)
(So I lied; no soul-scourging today. Whaddya do? :P)
(more…)
Well, someone’s lower body isn’t up to the challenge.
Thursday had 2 focused hours of ba gua / taiji / shaolin kung fu. Low intensity, but very productive.
Saturday saw seven hours of constant, mid-intensity workout (half with longsword body mechanics, half with running (gack!) and various conditioning things inc. broad jumps, inverted crab walks, bear crawls, and some random yoga). It had my legs in constant cramps. I guess priming my system with three bananas early on Saturday was possibly too little too late.
Sunday saw another 4 hours of longsword and kung fu.
Probably the best workout week *ever*. Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll round it out with a focus on upper body and core. It was going to be Monday, but I don’t think I’ll have recovered by then. Exercise totally beats out getting drunk to forget things.
For now, stretching poses an interesting problem. Any major group I try to stretch requires contracting or at the very least compressing another group, which often revolts and cramps.
Re: longsword, thanks to training with Scott, I’m rediscovering some vital basics I’ve neglected for … nigh on 5 years now. It’s not that I never worked them in that time, but I certainly never focused on them for more than a few idle minutes here and there.
(more…)
Or maybe not so much.
I’ve known the security guard at one of the places I frequent for probably 2 years now. Every week, regular as clockwork.
So her older daughter is getting married in March, and they can’t find a photographer to suit. So she asked me if I could suggest anyone in the $500-$1000 range, me being a student and connected with other students and all. I said well, I could mention it to a couple people. She asked, wait, don’t you take pictures too? And I replied, well, yes, a little — I enjoy candid photography. I’ve never officially done a wedding, and I said so. Family and friend type things often enough, as one of the familial paparazzi.
So I was quick enough on the uptake to recognize an opportunity. I said, why don’t I show you some of my past pics, and if you like what you see, I could do it for her / you. So I got her daughter’s e-mail address, and I’ll be sending along some pics by Monday.
Having hung around enough weddings, I have a vague inkling of offerings and pricing. These folks are pretty working class, and I got the understanding that what they really want is just the goods — a set of nice keepsake photos to trot out every few years for friends and family.
Report on Monday.
Couple nights ago I was hungry after a workout, and the peanut butter crackers I cribbed from work didn’t cut it by 1 a.m. So I stopped by the usual Kroger Signature for some ingredients. Now, they say that one should never go grocery shopping when hungry. That was definitely true, as I browsed for ideas. In the end, I spent just into the teens, b/c I splurged on a jar of olives steeped in olive oil with herbs.
[Random synapse firings remind me that I’ll likely never buy anything but the cheapest dark rum when cooking. Recent taste tests suggest it just doesn’t flippin’ matter. At least to me. Gif, who I once observed finishing a bottle of Mount Gay — on the rocks and without help — in an evening of casual chatting, may have a different opinion. Which will never manifest here, since he doesn’t read this.]
So as I wended my way to and fro amongst the aisles, I crossed through a group of folks hanging out in one of the aisles. I figured 1+ worked there and had just gotten off-shift. One of them asked if sir needed help finding anything. Sir replied that he didn’t merit a “sir” and was just browsing for late-night munchies. We exchanged some light banter, then I moved on.
Halfway across the store, at the olives, it hit me — caprese! Mark and I had just talked about them a few weeks ago. That required passing back by the earlier group, and I was so excited I shook my olives at them and said I had gotten it — caprese!
When I came back that way again, the girl in the group asked me what I’d told them b/c she’d missed it. I repeated myself, and she asked what it was. So I laid it out briefly, and 5 minutes later was talking about parkour with one of the guys. 5 minutes after that, the girl grabbed another guy who wasn’t paying attention, and said, “Honey, he makes swords!”
“Well, a falchion and some knives so far,” I demurred. Close enough, for their purposes. They were gaming geeks, and could identify falchions well enough.
Another of the guys wants to get into kung fu so hard, he’s like Seann William Scott in Bulletproof Monk, even though we both aren’t fond of that movie. And he has a friend who is ex-HACA/ARMA. There seem to be a lot of those around.
An hour and a half later, after a conversation spanning AD&D 2nd through 4th ed, the pope and the Hitlerjugend, art school, leatherworking, yoga, bodyweight conditioning, environmentalism, and spiritual centering (none of which I brought up first), we exchanged e-mail addresses.
Tonight, one of the guys came out to the shop, and proved to be a very able and enthusiastic assistant in the shop. He used to be a Boy Scout, and seems like a do-it-yourselfer, so score one for the shop. We’ll see how Pat turns out in the long run. Initial impressions of long-term qualities are favorable.
In a productive 12 heats or so, we forged the beginnings of some prototype scentstopper pommels out of a 50-lb bar of steel. Pat’s stout forearms were trembling, but he declared our choice of work to be the shit. 15 minutes after he left, I got a call from him asking me if it’d be OK to bring a very interested friend out with him the next time. I said we could meet someplace (for me to vet the guy), and go from there.
OK, so 1st checkpoint passed with honors. Next are the 2nd-visit, 1-month, and 3-month checkpoints. If he passes those, we’re probably set for the 6- and 12-month marks.
And while we were monkeying with the fullering tool (at Mark’s pointed suggestion), Mark was doing round 2 on his first raised copper work. He took the slightly complex four-lobed bowl from last time, and peend out the larger imperfections with his new raising hammers. It looked awesome, though he was less than pleased. I said something less elegant than but along the lines of: You’re seeing it as the sum of 9 hours and probably at least 15,000 imperfect hammer strokes; I’m seeing an intentionally hammer-rough (we’d have used the English wheel in the later stages if a rough texture hadn’t been intended), hand-crafted bowl with some nice curves and lines. He liked the discoloration induced by the annealing heats and quenches, but ended up scrubbing them off.
And every time I see him, he has a new knife or two or three to show, it seems. Plus he’s managing to be a real trooper with work — shut up and soldier, as it is said. Mark is a huge inspiration.
In work news, my Kaplan hours are steadily increasing as things come up — more than I’d thought I’d get. First classes went alright. I think I’ll get into the groove by 2 or 3 or so.
And in further work news, I’m starting to hit the PPAs in hopes that maybe they can get me an in where I’ve been unable under my own sails. :/ Rather not talk about it until I have something to show for it. Grr.
Longsword practices have been really satisfying, though we still have about 5 folks (split between the two practices) missing in action post-holidays. Not too worried about most of them, though have to check on 2.
So I have a little dish of raisins sitting in some dark rum. Not sure what I’ll do with them, since I’m not a baker type. Maybe I’ll wedge them up my nose, get completely arseholed, and make omelettes at 3 a.m. completely naked.
In actual news, I did up a leg of lamb roast in 20 mins inc. prep time. Due to the constraints imposed by my mother’s control of the kitchen, I was forced to shoehorn the roast in between rounds of oven-roasted rock cornish hens. So, when a certain amount of energy input is required, limited by time, what do we do?
We violate every meat-grilling cook’s rule about sealing the juices in!
I diced the roast into large cubes. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle kosher salt, cracked pepper, basil, and fresh orange zest. Knead with chopped garlic bits. 4 mins, turn, and 4 mins again under the broiler.
I can’t help but feel a little smug when my mother always goes nuts on me about, “How come you bought groceries!” “How are we going to fit all this in?” “I don’t have enough time / space in this kitchen to fit you in!” when most weekdays, it’s, “How come you never go grocery shopping with me?” “Why won’t you help more?”
And every time I’ve comandeered a corner of the kitchen, it’s worked out OK ranging from “passable” to “aw, you didn’t make enough for 3rds?”
(Previous efforts aren’t many, but include most of my signature mid-brow entrees — salmon in white wine, poached pears, chicken marsala, caprese, and the current incarnation of that crazy pasta thing that started in 2001 with Doug and me and some oregano and olive oil. I apologize to anyone who’s had to endure these dishes in their beta-testing phase, and offer to make them now that I know which side of the skillet holds in the green beans.)
And three of my sisters went for more, two of them going for 3rds.
To be fair, my mother and sisters made a lot of good food too — the orange zest was left over from a really good rum cake thing Linh Dan made and served with ice cream and caramel-drizzled pecans.
But this ain’t their blog, so nyah.
Thu invited over a friend of hers, Rouslan (sp?), for dinner. His brother was supposed to come too, but was working that evening. She kind of demanded that my parents let her bring him, on the pretext that she wanted to have a holiday family dinner for all her friends w/o family in town. I thought it was either A) rather presumptuous of her to impose that on my parents, and / or B) a flimsy pretext to introduce a guy she likes.
Whatever the case, he turned out to be pretty nice. Reserved, Russian, pretty old-fashioned. Passed the bar exam with her. Used to be on the national Belarus wrestling team. He brought a dish of cabbage stuffed with ground beef (served with sour cream) and another of vegetable-stuffed eggplant wraps. Both were pretty good, the cabbage more so.
Finally, what post of mine of late would be complete if I didn’t mention a workout? My wrists and shoulders are pretty sore from a boxing / kung fu workout. Basic stuff, but intense: jab, jab-jab; cross; uppercut; pass, deflect, hook, knee strike; moving footwork; foot sweep. Music? The Cars and Pulp, with a little Ofra Haza.
[Read on at your own peril.] (more…)
While that title could apply to the seasonably idiotic driving I observed today to and from Intergalactic AH, that’s not the main theme here.
[Though on a tangential note, I’m pretty proud of sticking to my 70-or-under rule, for reasons of more efficient highway driving. Guess I don’t need the radar detector anymore. It may take me 3+ hrs instead of 2.5 to get to Austin this year, but I’ll get there. :P I won’t consider 55 mph, though, b/c anyone going that slow is a menace to traffic, given usual local driving conditions. Didn’t stop some git from blockading me for two exits at 40 mph the other night, though. Sheesh.]
Worked on basic jumps and warm-ups for vaults today, plus some wall run-ups. Quadrapeding, etc. We did this one variation where you crabwalk with your feet on a low wall or railing and hands on the ground. My upper body has a lot of room for improvement. Abs too. :P
But I’m slowly improving the run-ups. I’m not running smack into the wall anymore — I actually push off and up most of the time. I still tend to push back off the wall instead of a sprinter-style push up the wall. slicknic gets some serious altitude, by comparison. We were going for touches on bricks on a wall, and he consistently got about 15 inches higher. Aardvark and I poked around the same height.
I think I yoinked something muscular in my groin during my jumps, though. Not badly. Just enough that I’ll be sore and hobbling tomorrow. :)
Usually, it takes me about 4-5 jumps to warm up and relax the posterior chain, so that I lessen the sapping effect of its eccentric contraction on my jumps. Going up stairs, I start off at 3-4 steps, and can get 5 by the time I’m loosened up. Kind of like the Kipping pull-up is for pull-ups, jumping that high (or about 7 feet in broad precision jumps) really stretches the body out into a hang position — briefly, before hitting the apex, after which one has to contract into the landing position (knees tucked up, feet forward). It’s a pretty full-body sort of workout.
Hrm.. According to Top End Sports, I am below average, at 7 ft. Well, except that I usually jump onto a low bench about 18″ off the ground. Not sure how that works out to level ground, but I doubt I’d get even another full foot out of it. 8′4″ is considered excellent; with skill level increments every 4″ below that.
Little things are today’s topic.
Ever since last Tuesday’s rockin’ presentation, I’ve been running an orgiastic back-to-back schedule of preferred physical activities to celebrate.
In rapier drills with Andrew, I (re)discovered how to better integrate mass and movement into the cavatione. For the reader’s easy reference, this is per Guy Windsor’s description of rotating the sword about its center of balance rather than at the crossguard or the wrist. I’d figured that part out back in ‘04 or ‘05, and hadn’t done much exploration of it in the time since — mostly just maintenance exercise. So last week, I realized how much easier it is to accomplish with a relaxed wrist.
Serious “No duh!” moment.
unggoy gave the group a pointer about vaults: spot your next landing with your eyes. In a saut des bras, spot where the feet will contact the wall, and upon hitting the wall, spot where the hands will catch the lip of the wall. In a kong, spot where the hands will land, then as you pop up off them, spot where your feet will come down.
For me, specifically, I need to be bolder or crazier on approaching walls: plant one foot ~2.5 feet from the wall and push off/up harder — actually launch instead of merely stepping up — then plant the other foot on the wall and push up again, like a sprinter taking off, but vertically. Right now, I’m just kinda running into the wall; no vertical component. Improving this will greatly facilitate my pop vaults and tic-tacs.
Went running (gasp!) with R again. I have a much sturdier brace for my left ankle now. That, running on the unexpectedly soft turf / grass, using an extra T-shirt as a balaclava under my hoodie sweatshirt, plus taking pains to minimize the impact of my stride, have all helped me to run about 1.7 mi while keeping my asthma and ankle strain in check. The first .8 mi or so is virtually no problem whatsoever. I can’t run 22 miles, like one of my friends just did yesterday, but she does marathons and I don’t. I may try taping the ankle/foot for further support around the foot-to-ankle area; the brace is awesome, but leaves a little to be desired below the ankle bone.
Overall, I’m really pleased with my baby steps, considering this is the first time in my *life* I have ever gone running as a form of exercise.
I can barely lower myself into my office chair right now using my arms, b/c my triceps are up in arms like an Afghani uprising. I have to alternate stretching each of my hamstrings out as I sit here. Life is pretty good. :)
And right when I got home, I got an e-mail from leondrian, a HEMA fencer from Gothenberg (GHFS school). We’ve corresponded for a couple months now. It goes slowly, but it’s cool to hear what a totally different group is doing on the nuts-and-bolts level — in techniques, exercise regimens, equipment, etc. And getting an e-mail every week or two or so is kinda neat.The modern version of having a penpal.
Doesn’t hurt at all that he’s a very positive and constructive kind of guy. Said that my WMA explanation style (via e-mail, anyway) is very clear, direct, and easy to understand. I think it’d be the coolest thing ever to one day get the chance to fence him.
These are likely not the first words that occur to many readers when choosing adjectives for Dakao. As much as I’d like to think I’m good at such things, I have to concur that verbosity is a problem for me (witness this and any other entry).
Still, my ego’s a little bigger now, and that’s a nice thing before bedtime.
Next Page »
"
"
