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.