Since a lament was voiced recently that duels weren't in fashion anymore (though it was agreed that a good slogan for a martial arts school would be "Good old fashioned fisticuffs."), I figured why not glance through what we've got going on in that regard in our martial arts school.

Basically, there're two aspects that just recently...ah, came into vogue. One - just plain challenging people. This one's mostly for the little kids, to help them to build confidence in being assertive with their challenge, and to give them a little bit of structure for their roughhousing, as opposed to just randomly tackling someone. It is quite funny to see someone three feet tall call out someone who's about 6'7" for a throwdown, though.

The other side of it grew out of our 'Session' as a practical drill. That is, we have Session, which is a lot like sticky-hands in wing chun, but with less emphasis on trapping and more on unbalancing and joint locks; then there's the more karate side of the same, which is basically striking and parrying at trapping range, but without the trapping. But with the former, the Session-players can get lost in trapping and sticking, and forget to strike or sometimes even do anything of consequence, and with the latter can get lost in seeing who can get the most brutal blows in the alotted time without putting much thought or technique into it.

So: an actual use for karate-style assigning of points - first to three. Instead of flowing for the length of a minute round, say, you pause a moment and start over when someone gets a clean hit or unbalancing. This is practically useful in keeping the disadvantages from above from generating, and generally leads to two variations: either someone gets smacked upside the head without barely reacting at all, which leads to laughter and sheepish looks, or short series of parries which end up actually quite graceful sometimes and end with a clean hit to the neck or ribs, which leads to laughter and admiring nodding. Good times.

Random Quote of the Day: "Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past." - I think we should bring back epic poetry, or at least some long ballads; Autobiography of Red, for example, is a wonderfully eerie example of a 'novel in verse,' as it's billed

Nahh...couldn't be real...but it would cool if it was...