For whatever reason, I started thinking today about the different schools of thought concerning fighting with the staff (maybe as a distillation of the different schools of thought on how to fight in general?). The kind I'm most familiar with, from Okinawan styles generally, holds a rigid staff near the middle, splitting it in thirds. For example, in a staff-vs-spear form, one end of the staff hooks away strikes or thrusts as the other end hits, for simultaneous offense and defense; another focus in the same style is on disarming movements. In contrast, almost every Chinese style I've seen holds a semi-flexible staff at one end; in contrast again, I've noted Filipino styles holding a rigid staff in the middle as well, but with training integrated into sinawali/weaving drills. I've also heard many times over of English quarterstaff fighting, but haven't been able to discern much from the few old documents I could find.
      Secondarily, my experience with the short staff has been almost exclusively Japanese, though I know of a few Korean, Filipino, and even Arabian styles. From my own experience, the short staff is either taught as held at one end, mimicking a sword for the most part, but with an emphasis on thrusts and the availability of a staff's two-end no-blade versatility, or held almost at both ends, and used for in-close grappling and throws.
      So, the two points to the rambling: it's just interesting to look at how the same thing can be looked at so many ways, and any thoughts or information or pointers to more information would be much appreciated.

-interesting, if true-
"In South Korea, police officers carry guns but do their best not to take them out because, according to Oh Sok, a police officer who shoots a criminal--regardless of the necessity of it--has to pay the criminal's medical bills (or funeral bills). As a result, many police officers there become damn good at unarmed combat, and from the sounds of it they get plenty of practice."

      Disney's Aladdin takes on a whole different aspect when postcolonial ideas are applied to it; I'm still contradicting myself in my head as to whether its orientalism is insidious or ingenuously clever kid-entertainment. One tangentially interesting little tidbit I noticed was near the end when Jafar says "So long!" in the middle of a song to Aladdin. At first I thought he said "Salaam!" (peace!) which doesn't make any sense, then I realized what he actually said. What made it interesting to me was that I remembered recently reading that the phrase "so long" came to English from Malay (I think, or at least from that lingual-region), wherein "salang" as a variant of "salaam" arrived there by way of Islam. I don't suppose the Disney writers thought of that as a really oblique ironic angle, but hey, what with the supposed hidden sexual references I suppose one never knows. And did they spell the title of the movie the way they did to avoid making it look like "Allah-din"?

Targete Art - lots of nice paintings

      A while ago, I was driving around with my dad and we saw a large hawk's nest at the very top of a long-dead and dried up tree. A moment after passing it, my dad said: "The tree's dead, so..." I'm not sure why, but that statement almost gave me goosebumps; it was almost as if the at-first seemingingly banal nest had been shifted by the words into another kind of existence where it wasn't just a hawk's nest in a dead tree, but something else, if only in my mind. Another kind of existence that gave me the heebie-jeebies.

-kind of seemed like an easy ego-booster, and I'm not sure of its veracity at all, but nonetheless:
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."

Cool dialogue of the day:
"'How many times, dear father,' Richard asked through tears and gritted teeth, 'must I slay your shade?'"
-and something about this line seemed poetic to me:
"Put words to your need, Richard Cypher."

      In the process of moving, I found some old dit da jow (aka "hit wine"). I bought it years and years ago in some horribly foolish conditioning scheme, but it turned out it was well worth it's money in terms of the seemingly magical way it made bruises disappear. Lo and behold, it still works after who knows how long (I thought it would have evaporated) - one of my middle fingers has been painfully jammed for a while now, the joint still being swollen, but a little dit da jow started loosening it right up. Drawbacks to it are that I've never seen any but one brand actually work, and they're not selling anymore, and that it is quite pungent (thought not exactly unpleasant, kind of an herbal kahlua).

      I think I must have been driving along or some such when I conflated these thoughts: the exploration of identity (ie, Lacan's mirror image I think it was, or the uncanny nature of the double) I went into for my term paper in literary theory, and the many variegated identity issues that are addressed as problems in understanding in yoga (ie, one's identity is not one's emotions/I am not anger, I just feel anger, or, I am not pain, as pain comes to the nerves as light comes to the eyes). That's the extent of my thought at the moment, in any rate; I just wonder if one approach could be used to compliment the other approach, like I did for zen and existentialism.

      In other news, I'm 0-2 in recent weird fruit acquisitions. The honeydew nectarine seems about on par with the mango nectarine; less flavor than a regular nectarine, and not that much different flavor at that. In fact, the only differences I could tell were in appearance and a possibly imagined slight melon aroma. I am quite interested in how a melon and a pitted fruit would be crossed, however, unless they never were and this is just an odd and oddly named nectarine variant.

The English Gipsies and Their Language, by Charles Leland. Yes, yes, I know that appears spelled wrong, but its examples of daily "nomadic and vagabond" life seem interesting historically. And, anyone wanna buy a dag?

I OK, You OK: English Pronouns in Malay - it seems the poor Malay speakers sometimes get sick of dealing with an overload of excessively complex native pronouns. Crazy.

Cool! to the nth

tuesday comic - this hasn't been going since forever, but I always thought it was cute and clever

Word of the Day - anagogic - A mystical interpretation of a word, passage, or text, especially scriptural exegesis that detects allusions to heaven or the afterlife

      The monsoon season in Tucson is nice for several reasons, but the one in particular I'm thinking of might be a bit silly, I suppose. Back in some survey class for British literature, I think it was, one of the concepts we covered was the sublime. The sublime is such that whatever one is viewing or experiencing is awe-inspiring, or even terrible (in both senses of the word); it's gigantic beyond words, utterly inscrutable, incomprehensibly beautiful, etc. So, my thought is that nigh everyday for a while now the skies over the valley have been on the order of sublime, with storms bigger than mountain ranges, sprites and fountains of lightning, curtains of moisture and sunshowers, and that's quite enough waxing bad poetical, I suppose. And is there a word like sublemon? There should be.

Free Words - I have to say I'm not exactly sure what the message is, but it reminds of the better parts of the poetry classes I've taken, and it makes me smile

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson just concluded; it's pleasant, and calm, and the end was quite moving
-----in a similar vein, circuity was less sensical, and though I only think I understood what happened, was moving nonetheless

55 words - ironically, I find I have no words for it; great idea and execution

avp - to be quite shallow, I find I also have no words for this, but it also made me quite happy to find

"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. . . . we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. . . . Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." Rainer Maria Rilke

      With as much as conventional power sources and their byproducts of smoke and waste and runoff figure in scifi art and literature genres like cyberpunk, I wonder if there can be an opposite side to that. That is, would it be a boon to more unconventional power sources (wind, tidal, solar, geothermal) to put some effort into aesthetics? For example, would setting up solar panels in a circular-flower arrangement in a public area boost their image in the public eye more than their practical benefits? Or, failing making the apparatus itself aesthetically pleasing in its form, maybe decoration, like colored or mural'ed windmills?

"It's life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice Age makers, scientists report." - I'm still not sure how they don't know it was used for something else entirely and just happened to look like a penis; I don't know, whenever I see something like that in archaeology I think of this school exercise from way back when where we had to imagine future archaeologists trying to make sense of our stuff

Bruce Lee statue? - hm. No mention of JKD

the dance at the end is crazy

Runaway Jury, with Rachel Weisz and John Cusack. Though it had three of my favorite actors in it, namely Weisz, Cusack, and Marguerite Moreau, and several other quality actors, I was totally distracted the whole viewing time by a new very masculine hobby. All the same, it looked interesting and engaging even with my mostly vague understanding of the plot. And it had a nice ending. I think. All in all, it was nice just taking in some great actors all put together.

      That, and we caught a bit of Gigli, which seemed quite as horrible as it had been touted. But: it did have this nice scene of Jennifer Lopez doing yoga in spandex and extolling the feminine form, in a monologue in the same vein as Al Pacino's near the beginning of Scent of a Woman. And this wonderful gem presaging a love scene:
(girl): It's turkey time.
(guy): Huh?
(girl): Gobble gobble.

      This instructor from way back in the day just randomly showed up in the middle of class at the dojo today. We knew he'd been having some hard times back before he disappeared, and he had always looked strung out and gaunt. So now he's all nicely dressed, oddly wearing a David Carridine/Kung Fuish hat, a nice haircut instead of perpetually mussed cornrows, and he's found religion. And, apparently, a kind of kung fu I've only heard of - water boxing - of which he might be teaching a class at some point. The funny part was, as much as he seemed to be talking crazy talk (martial arts-wise, what with humming birds and biting praying mantises and bears and trances, and otherwise, I suppose) what he was doing had an elegant and practical flow to it, as best as I could tell. He's like this odd wandering mystic, of sorts. Which would explain the David Carradine hat, now that I think about it.

Google Moon - mark my words, I'm going to use this to plot out my future house

Word of the Day: elan - enthusiastic vigor and liveliness, or, distinctive style or flair, or, the blonde character

      Well, I wasn't particularly impressed by the mango-nectarine. As much as I seem to have developed a reputation with anyone who's gone to a market with me for making a beeline for the exotic fruits section, on my side of things I'm often disappointed with the result of my treasure-hunting (notable exceptions: starfruit, green plums, prickly pear fruit). The mango-nectarines just didn't seem to have much of any flavor at all, and an unremarkable texture; now that I think about it, however, I suppose in that regard they might make for good filler in fruit salads. Meh.

Cassini Zeros in on Saturn's Strange Satellite - for fans of Evolution's Shore (even if it does change shape in the novel, it really might be hollow?!) and alliteration in article titles

Sweet Mother of All Catfish - I mean, in the thumbnail I thought it was a megamouth shark; though, when one of the aikido students at Ko Sho came back from the Ukraine she said there were monster catfish near Chernobyl

The 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die - Yeesh, morbid title; and it would help if they explained why for each. Nonetheless, this being dedicated to Wyatt and his adroitly concise burger reviews, I'll just add the burgers we had in Anchorage....mmm, peach brandy sauce...

Word of the Day: callipygian - having beautifully proportioned buttocks
               "A Brooklyn woman was acquitted of manslaughter due to lack of evidence; she was accused of killing her husband after he mocked her for her lack of callypgian rondure." -- for any Farscape devotees, that sentence almost recreates a hilarious joke between Crichton and Aeryn (I just think the almost-paraphrasing is funny)

      So there I was, standing in the rain, kind of languidly hitting one of the posts of the pullup bar at my parents house, talking with my dad who was adjusting the gutter to fill his barrels of rainwater for the bonsai. Then it hit me (no pun intended): that's why one's hand is turned palm up for an uppercut. I think, anyway. That is, I was tapping the post with vertical and regular (3/4 turn for Shuri Karate) punches, and I noted that the regular punches felt like they could extend a little bit through the post further than the vertical punches. So I was all, "Hmm." Then I turned my hand all the way palm up, and my punch didn't even reach the post.
      So, then I started thinking, and as far as I can figure, it seems to me that since an uppercut is shortened as such, one can get more power out of it within a closer range; if a regular or vertical punch was tried inside trapping range, it would be too hard to generate any impact to be useful. But the uppercut in being foreshortened is perfect for the same, and also because it can adjust to go straight up, as the other two longer ranged punches cannot. Interestingly, I also noted that palm-heels have a more extended range as well, but at the same time can also be adjust for straight up angles. And this is all discounting hooks, as I was bracketing off circular strikes. And the lightning waspretty awesome at that point in time, beyond any of that. Lots of pretty lightning and thunder.

Visiting Patients, with Dictionary in Hand - I've only had occasion to witness this particular kind of occurrence a few times, but I've certainly seen a lot of trouble caused by (both) horribly tactless doctors stuck on stereotypes and patients/families who don't know how to listen

I want one - I especially like how it can be dedicated to different to scripts for different languages. And gaming stuff, that's fun too.

      Crazy wind today, huh? It wasn't quite the skirling, spiraling blast that lives in the canyons behind the Catalinas, in my humble opinion I'd say it was about as much as could be in the valley. It did make for a great combination of city-lit dust and blue lightning over the city, and for this strange liquid-seeming dust that flowed in waves across the roads, with little ripples and everything. The other odd part about the wind where I was for part of the evening was that it didn't stay in any semblance of a consistent direction; just standing in place I almost felt the buffeting was twisting me around two or three different ways at a time (I counted). Crazy.

      In other news, we finally got to see the premieres for SciFi Friday. Stargate SG-1 - the show I could never quite get into - left me with a split opinion. On one side, I adore the acting and rapport of Ben Browder and Claudia Black, and the Farscape jokes and almost Whedon-esque atmosphere (except not witticisms, but more gestural/or dry humor?) had us hooting (literally) with laughter. On the other hand, the characters they seem to have left over (I was hoping for a total overhaul) from the show's previous incarnation just bugged me. Stargate Atlantis left me with the same feeling I had for it in its previous season - great ideas and concepts, nice execution of same, acting....hm. Now, Battlestar Galactica far overarched the other two in terms of writing and acting and effects quality, as usual, but that is to be expected I think in terms how seriously each of the shows takes themselves.

      Unusual technique of the day: the diaphragm choke. As differentiated from blood chokes, air chokes, cervical chokes, and the rare face-numbing brainstem choke. Basically, the only way I know to do it is to just adjust a knee-on-stomach mount (a kind of lazy high variant) such that the weight goes specifically onto the solar plexus. Of course, knowing that pin, the diaphragm choke isn't so much an end-goal as a stunner for transitioning to other techniques. Or hitting things. That too.

      Is the valley girl's use of the word "like" similar to the role played by the prefix "al" in Arabic? Though "al" is a fixture of that Semitic language and is variable in morphology according to what sound follows it, both "like" and "al" in their respective language/dialects are ubiquitous and somewhat variable in meaning. Or I could, like, being talking a bunch of hot air.

      While oftentimes the issues of Black Belt range from corny to downright misleading, every once in a while there is a real gem. For example, the cover article for this month is a discussion of kali tudo, or kali as applied to mixed martial arts (one of the reasons I particularly like kali is because, as is illustrated so well in the article, it shares a particular kind of angular footwork with the martial arts at the Ko Sho schools). Similarly, there is an article which initially put me off as a jargon-based martial art (that is, one that makes up polysyllabic terms for simple techniques as a marketing gimmick), but the ISR Matrix stuff actually had some decent variations on jujitsu techniques that were immediately useful in class.
      And though I consistently disagree with him, Bill Wallace's column provides some talking points. If anyone happens to read it, I think he left out shin-roundkicks, in terms of his discussion instep roundkicks are more dangerous than ball-of-the-foot roundkicks on the basis that the latter are not done in the same way as the former, as he assumes they are, and I don't think that sidekicks are inherently bad for the body if one turns their hip over enough or with proper conditioning, and I think that they shouldn't ever be done with the blade of the foot.
      And, I liked the fight highlights that mentioned a TKO by spinning back-kick (I thought no one used those effectively except Cung Le) and a judoka who didn't get his ass knocked out and actually "controlled and took his opponent down at will."

Phrase of the Day (from the Swahili): kufa ku-zuri - to die beautifully

"Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be." - Goethe. Another one of those one's I might have brushed off as initially idealistic, except for two examples that brought it back to me relatively recently. One: how some of the drunks/gangbangers/manipulators/what-have-you are treated during their in-and-out ER stays makes a big difference; I'm not saying they're made into "what they should be," but different sides of them come out depending on how the staff interacts with them. Assuming they're lucid to some degree, of course, otherwise it's a whole different ball game. Two: at the Air Force Academy, one of their base principles of making the cadets into officers seems to be something like Goethe's assertion.

Feral Cheryl - I think she's way hotter than Barbie

Ketka's world - a bit of art (and it's Russian, which is also cool)

Entrances to Hell - clever-ha ha photography, or no? I think the sheer amount of Angel I've been watching with my dad has biased me enough to wonder a tiny bit

      I recently learned that ballet dancers are often taught to tuck their pelvis when spinning to spin better on a straight axis. While I gather that this is perhaps more directed towards multiple spins, my thought is: can it be applied to spinning techniques in martial arts? I haven't really tested it properly, but I'm going to try running through some capoeira spinning crescents just to see if the principle applies, as I never use those, then some more taekwondo-ish spinning hooks or what, then the techniques I actually regularly use to good effect, spinning elbows and forearms. Then, seeing how a tucked, tilted or neutral pelvis affects throws and grappling - for example, a tucked pelvis I'm thinking will be better for holding some pins (as one tucks their pelvis for a proper crunch), but a tilted pelvis would obvously be better for bridging, as one tilts their pelvis to get full curvature of the back in similar backbends in yoga. I know that all sounds way overboard, but I guess I get excited when somebody points out something that had otherwise been going right by my kinesthetic sense.

Word of the Day: bellwether - one that serves as a leader or as a leading indicator of future trends (interestingly from Middle English, being the lead ram [technically, a castrated ram] with the bell around its neck)

Phrase of the Day: cheeky monkey!

Other Word of the Day: koine - a regional dialect or language that becomes the standard language over a wider area, losing its most extreme local features (I just thought it was an elegant word for what it defines)

War of the Worlds, with Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. Generally, not so great. [probably spoilers, but not if you read the novel, I suppose] I usually like Fanning okay, but her hysterical and bratty character was way out of line for my taste. As my dad pointed out for Cruise, he pretty much plays one character, over and over and over; which I happen to like to some degree, so that was fine, I suppose. The special effects were the highlight of the movie, in my opinion. The story, as it was pretty much true to the novel from what I remember, unfortunately is not really enough to carry the weight of the actors and special effects; I mean, it makes for a great scifi short story or Outer Limits episode, but a Spielberg epic? Not so much. The aliens were great (always a fan of nonhumanoid), and the way they brought to life the novel's three-legged design was clever (I read that the effects and concept crews took issue with it at first, as it is really just not a very effecient idea).
      The movie did bring up in my mind a few things that kept me from dwelling on Fanning's shrieks. One, that the scenes with the alien walkers were similar to the exciting unscripted interactions with similar large walkers in the latter part of the game Half-Life 2, so if one wants to experience their feelings from the movie again, voila. The plants at the end reminded me of two things, in their sense as a motif. One, Evolution's Shore by Ian MacDonald, in which there are no aliens per se, but only the plant life (or an approximation of plants as such). Two, the Invid Invasion novels and animation, where aliens invade because an alien plant has taken up residence on Earth. It might make for an interesting essay to confer the three and see what comes out of it. I suppose even the plot of Half-Life 2 could possibly enter into it, if one could tie in suppression of the ability to procreate with maybe something symbolic about the plants (ooo, maybe a Narcissus angle).

The Story of Language, by Mario Pei. Great stuff - basically, a book about linguistics that heroically resists the seemingly pervasive tendency of linguistic books to descend into ill-explained jargon. Apparently I like multi-syllable words. Part one delves into what exactly language is, and its history in terms of the human race. Part two is probably a bit slower going generally than the other parts, involving various aspects of grammar and study of pronunciation. Part three picks up again with the social functions of language, then part four was my favorite, running through the different major and minor language groups and discussing their characteristics. There is one more short part beyond that about the problems of developing an international language, both by logic and politics. Throughout there are practically lists of interesting trivia, and the author's style is sharp and witty at times, thought as it was written in the sixties some of the Cold War ideology is out of date.

PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi - while I am currently suffering from a self-induced fast from collecting actual comics, I do try to indulge my happiness from cartoons whenever I can (re: Foster's or Cowboy Bebop). This webcomic is a nice extrapolation if one enjoys kicking back to the Cartoon Network, as the art is quality, the plot is pleasantly simple, and the cameos and stylized versions of the cartoon characters are great fun.

Rocking phrases of the day/phrases that sold us on things:
"Let them fight the good fight. Someone has to fight the war."
and Xuemei's:
"This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend."

      When I read this: "Every English word is at least in part an ideogram, with the pronunciation offering some clue, but never a complete key, to spelling," one of the first things I thought was spelling bee. That is, I bet that's why spelling bees work so well in English - with rules and roots and quirks from Latin, Greek, Old English, French, German, Spanish, etc etc, it almost makes sense to mess with nervous kids and force them to try to put illogical things together. It wouldn't do to have a spelling bee in a language that is more logically phonetic; it just wouldn't be any fun. Though I can't say I can quite see English words as ideograms, really, even if I kind of like the idea. I suppose one could try to pull something like Arabic calligraphy and stylize some cursive.

Tom Yum Goong x, y - ::glee::

the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards - congrats to two of my favorites, Scary Go Round and Questionable Content for their awards

"...Philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark."
-Cowper, Retirement

      Thinking point: "The 'moment' has not yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and, therefore, has not time." An argument for or possible path to perceptual dilation, that is, a dilated perception of time to be able to react more quickly to what would otherwise be beyond time for thinking, or what other possibilities?

Omniglot - an great website if you're fascinated by language or writing-as-art, with information and examples of all different kinds of scripts; for example, I had no idea that some scripts have been invented purely to write a certain language (like Norwegian or Mandarin), instead of using Roman script, which is interesting if you think about how many accents are needed for some Europaen languages, or the tones in Chinese

Panchok Workshop - art

word of the day: tergiversate - To use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate

Samples from NY gallery show by 'the Creatures in my Head' artist

      Interesting perspective shift (original idea not mine)! In teaching/learning anything, sometimes the method takes priority over any end result, or goal, or what have you. To do a hip throw, you place your feet just so, twist hips across, place arms in any number of variations, or, to do close reading of a text you parse out what's important, maybe bracket off part of the text, maybe go sentence by sentence, etc. Instead, maybe it might be better to shift the end result/goal to the primary position of importance-of-attention - the goal of a hip throw is to bounce the opponent on the floor right in front of you, for example, which leads to questions: fine, how do I go about doing that, and how does it involve my hip? Or, in the the other case the end result might need to be determined to even get started - what do I get out of close reading, or what can I give to other people using it? (cf'ing "The problem is never apart from the answer. The problem is the answer - understanding the problem dissolves the problem")

N8 Van Dyke - art; I like the way some of the titles tie into the pieces

art by alexiuss - and backstory for each!

phrases of the day:
"I had a lot of time to think. I gained some perspective. Some... M.C. Escher perspective."
-
"Bla, bla, poly-syllabic bla."
-
(looking at heart monitor printout)
"Looks kind of like art...I call it, 'Takes more than that to kill me, punk.'"

      In case it's ever shown again for whatever reason, on the National Geographic channel there was a small marathon of the show Taboo for some reason. In lieu of doing the project we were supposed right away, my dad and I sat through some very interesting programs on gender-bending (transgender, inverted stereotypes, and religious festivals), rites of adulthood (alligator-style scarification, whipping and running on the backs of bulls), tattoos (tattoos that possess people, Russian prison art, facial womanhood tattoos) and there were more after that, I gather. I'm not really sure how to describe them, except to say that they were well put together and interesting, though maybe not for the faint of heart/those that can't stand lots of blood.
      Another program on Discovery/Times was about Special Forces operations in Afganistan. Once again, not sure how to describe it except by this (from an entirely different source, which I scoffed at as idealistic, then remembered the soldiers): "We live as though the world were as it should be, to show that it can be."

gah...so rough. but there it is.
-----
Ghostlight

Almost to California, we passed a wildfire.
The full moon did little to dispel the night's desert
of black plains between road and flame; instead,
she only deigned to touch and conjure a genie's cloud
of smoke, lunar blue reflecting on the corpsedust of plants.
In the dark, we passed a funeral pyre.
Life embedded in the sand became dancing citron and ember,
animated in its last throes more than it had been under any sun,
a phoenix held fast at the moment
of rebirth.

      When I was getting my tattoo, the artist somehow got around to talking about how people say the phrase "I'm sorry" a good deal sometimes. His point was that when one says, "I'm sorry," there almost always is an unspoken "but..." afterwards. For example, "I'm sorry, but if you hadn't done that," or, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize..." His suggestion as a counter was to say, "Forgive me," or some equivalent; I'm not sure of the validity of his point, but it seems to have slowly convinced me over time to where I pretty much agree with it, cumbersome as the replacement might seem.

Underground Urban Farm - I think they should have called it Urban Farm Underground, to make it sound more like a trendy nightspot

Art of Aly Fell

"The Basque language contains a tradition of difficulty which the Basques themselves do nothing to dispel. They have even created a legend to the effect that at one time the devil spent seven years trying ot learn their tongue, but finally had to give it up in disgust; but there is another story to the effect that Basque is used by the devil to fight with his mother-in-law."

-as opposed to-

"La inteligenta persono lernas la interlingvon Esperanto rapide kaj facile. Esperanto estas la moderna , kultura lingvo por la internacia mondo. Simpla, fleksebla, praktika solvo de la problemo de universalo interkompreno. Esperanto meritas vian seriozan konsideron. Lernu la interlingvon Esperanto!" - crazy! For some reason some old yarn had got me down on Esperanto for a while, I think something about them suppressing use of other languages at an Esperanto convention, but hey that's pretty readable right there!

-also, but not so easy-
Interglossa, which combines Latin and Greek roots with Chinese syntax
Monling, which only uses one syllable words
Idiom Neutral, which was spawned from Volapük, and is a combination of English and Latin/Romance languages with German grammar rules

-try it, I dare you
"One of the toughest sounds in any language to a person who does not grow up with it is the r with a hook over it, which indicates a blending of the rolled r of Spanish or Italian with the s of 'measure,' pronounced simultaneously." - that sound being in the Czech; of course, the first person I challenge does it right away, naturally

-a point that came up in class the other night
"Balance is the control of one's center of gravity plus the control and utilization of body slants and unstable equilibrium, hence gravity pull, to facilitate movement." - sometimes balance not actually meaning balance and all that, especially when it comes to ju-style throws, though the quote is in reference to ranged fighting

-talking point:
"The problem is never apart from the answer. The problem is the answer - understanding the problem dissolves the problem." -hmmm?

-sleeping, or bleary-eyed snickering? option b.

      New exercise! The dolphin pushup (name from the yoga pose it is adjunct to). Starting from what is basically a somewhat elongated downward-dog position (body bent to about 90 degrees, heels on the floor) but with one's upper body resting on forearms instead of hands, simply move the torso and hips as per rhythm between that start and a plank. It's similar to a dand/Hindu pushup in how it isolates different muscles than a regular pushup and also works on flexibility of the legs and shoulders, but in a much more intense fashion. Yummy.

      Vaguely ok not really tangentially. I was reading about the zen metaphor of the reflection of the moon on running water for being in a ready-state in martial arts - that is, still, but in motion simultaneously (a paradox points beyond itself, right?). Then for some reason I thought of the thought-problem of 'what is one's identity?' that was an oft argued concept in that existential philosophy course from back when - specifically, the part that went, how can one claim to have the same identity over time when one is constantly changing (whether by cells dying or whatever definition of consciousness changing). Then I thought, well, why not apply the zen metaphor to identity? Eeeyup. Mmhmm.

Dark Fury, with voices of Vin Diesel and Kieth David. First thought: how the hell did I end up paying the same for this half hour movie that I did for two two+ hour movies? Luckily, they were all on sale, so I'll take it, especially considering the worth of this short. While I'm not quite particular to some of the stylized faces/bodies, I did end up warming up to them and the wonderful way lifelike and stylized motion was captured in the fight scenes and otherwise. As with apparently any story with the character Riddick, copious badassery abounds, and some of the scifi ideas were neat.

"The Amazon River...was so named by the explorer Orellana after a battle with the natives in which the women fought more bravely than the men."

      In honor of (as apparently the Canadians called it at one point) the Rebel Picnic, I think it is worth noting (as evidenced by the journal entries and letters read during the Revolutionary War marathon on the Military Channel) that many of the most random people around that olden time were all kinds of articulate and eloquent. It was like, man, they were even casually eloquent when needed. Whoa.
      Also, could someone explain to me the almost ten second long fountain of green sparks that spewed out of La Paloma tonight? No way in hell that was a regular firework.

USA 1, Comet 0

It seems they actually managed to finish translating one of Sappho's poems

Word of the Day - splendidophiropherostiphongious - the acme of desireability

"Yucatan, in Mexico, means 'What do you say?' in the langue of the local Indians; this was the answer given by them to inquiries as to the name of the country."

      I didn't particularly enjoy the 'Native Americans in Film and Literature' class I got stuck taking a while back (aside from seeing Dead Man and doing a term paper on White Comanche), but one aspect of it lingers on. That is, the entire class was devoted towards breaking the unconscious urge to accept any image of Amerindians presented to us, which led to a tendency in the class to say, well duh, look how obviously bad those stereotypes are. But after a semester of it, any just-plain-bad image became glaringly obvious, like a mini-paradigm had been shifted, to be cliche. In any case, the point I've been getting to is that I think more classes or efforts in a similar theme would do well to exist; that is, anything that breaks those unconscious assumptions, which I'm sure are innumerable.

Loups-garou is my favorite term for werewolf. In other news, the antidote for previously mentioned.

Filed under aweso: Scott's Sunfire

Word of the Day (as featured) - eschaton: end of the world, end of time, climax of history

Limey's on being clever
also:
"An account of the way an exasperated Cockney tried to spell out the name of the town of Ealing for the benefit of the telephone operator runs as follows: 'E for 'eaven, A for wot 'orses eat, L for where you're going, I for me, N for wot lays eggs, and G for gawd's sake keep your ears open!"

      Back from Colorado! First thought, looking at hooligans in car hooting at pretty girl: those kids ain't got nuthin on my brother. Many and sundry sights were seen. Will probably be written about. Once I get through my giant list, at some point. In other news, Kevin started a bloggie - now it's powm! Rocking hardcore. Talking point: "Just as the universe is created by the participation of consciousness, the prescient human carries that creative faculty to its ultimate extreme." In my periodic Dune reference/connection, there was an interesting article that noted a casino's general distrust of machines for security, and their opinion that the human eyes and mind are far superior. And isn't it interesting that a bird you see flying by your car is going the same speed you are? I hadn't really thought about it. They are speedy.

Episims - I want to see what happens with Ebola...or maybe syphillis...

Bacteria Pull Off Photosynthesis sans Sunlight - you go, little dudes

Word of the Day: paralipsis - to pass over a subject with brief mention in such manner as to emphasize the suggestiveness of what one omits: "If one put her thinking in a nutshell, it would not overflow."