"Martial Artists"

[Sigmund]

Oh, that rocks.

[shooting_dice]

Ah, this one.

See kids, last year I had a couple of things happen:

1) I got a bit chunky from changing lifestyle after getting shacked up/married. (Thank God *that* righted itself.)

2) I had my first screening for colorectal cancer, since it runs in my family. I blogged about over on my lj it because lack of screening is the #1 cause of serious complications (it's what killed my father, actually). Basically, if you're male and have indicators within one step (parent or sibling) you should get it done.

3) I had a day procedure for arthroscopy to clean up around one of my knees.

4) A gamer on Bullshido.net (where people who like to pound each other go, as opposed to  martial arts folks who prefer to contemplate their chi) made an unsolicited suggestion that I just beat the shit out of Nisarg. I thought it was a pretty dumb idea.

5) Nisarg got sand in his vagina over it (translating my statements, linked above, into OMG HEZ THRETENING MEE W> KUNG FOO) and apparently never douched in the intervening year.

Martial arts (including the ol' kung foo, but I've mostly done other things) is one of my hobbies. I was doing some MMA last year but had to take a break to make time for my business. I plan to be back in the fall.

About the discussion in this thread, where Nisarg's sandy vagina is not involved:

I agree that a lot of Western martial arts guys are twits. They're they guys who think you don't know that a katana wasn't hot shit and feel the need to tell you all the time and are basically super-defensive because they're recreating moribund forms and don't want to acknowledge that their work is vastly aided by looking at modern practitioners from other traditions.

Plus, my cousin was a nationally-ranked fencer and thought they're jackasses. She'd get guys lecturing her about how she took a Mere Sport and knew that she could probably stab the shit out of all of them because her sport-trained reaction time is several orders of magnitude better than anything you can learn fucking around with fectbuchs.

Then again, I've met a few nice guys who do singlestick and such. People who are into 18th-19th century stuff always seem to be more tolerable.

About what's good:

Basically, if you don't spar and apply live, dynamic resistance you will suck and whatever you practice will be worthless. If you don't know how to wrestle and grapple you will also probably suck. Right now my ground game is embryonic.

Anything on top of a basic live striking and grappling base is either for fun, a weapon thing or to fulfill some specialized purpose. BJJ experts know lots of submissions that most people never need to learn to effectively protect themselves, but which come in handy in tournament or because it's fun to learn new submissions. I like standing joint locks, but only police and security people really need them or are regularly in situations where they can make them work.

About military combatives:

People used to talk up military combatives, but they weren't necessarily any good either, until recently. Experiments in modern militaries showed that a more comprehensive unarmed combat course raised general fitness and morale, but it didn't really matter what the method was (IIRC, in one they taught Rangers aikido. It didn't help them fight hand to hand but it improved their performance in other ways). Individual groups hired instructors to teach on base by word of mouth, but there was no quality control, so a lot of lousy people taught a lot of US soldiers and then put ads out boasting about it.

Consequently, in the US, nobody really cared about the course's effectiveness until more people came in with legit MMA/ BJJ backgrounds. Nowadays, both the US Army and Marines (with MCMAP, which replaced crappy LINE training) base their combatives on MMA, with a special emphasis on working with a buddy to get into a position to use your *gun* as soon as possible.

I can't say Canada's program is any good. It was based on bog-standard karate, but you could take additional courses depending on where you were. It might be different now; unlike the US, the Canadian MOD is not good about releasing information widely. My current teacher's teacher is actually based in CFB Trenton and we get the odd special topic course through him, though I haven't been to any of those.

As for Krav Maga, there's no quality control. It's a totally commercialized system that people learn in seminars. My uncle was a close protection specialist, was exposed to KM, tried it and in the end preferred basic boxing and wrestling. One of my old brothers from kempo teaches it, though and he was always pretty good, so I have to give it that.

About the point of practice:

I basically try to go for 50% fun/50% practical. Kung fu sets are not immediately practical, but it's fun to work with them. Training the Thai-style round kick is practical, but snapping at somebody's head with a TKD-style kick is more fun. Really, unless you're a combat sports athlete you'll maybe fight without "playing" for an hour of your entire life, so you might as well do more with your practice than obsess over that hour.

[Settembrini]

I´m always amazed when reading such stuff.
Private-Life-Exhibitionism is a puzzling concept, which I still do not grasp.

Why?
Why do you think you need to tell us all this?

[droog]

Learning to love yourself
Is the greatest love of all....

[shooting_dice]

I´m always amazed when reading such stuff.
Private-Life-Exhibitionism is a puzzling concept, which I still do not grasp.

Why?
Why do you think you need to tell us all this?

Actually, it's usually confined to my blogs -- the ones you, droog and Nisarg read.

[Settembrini]

I don´t. I think private lives are the least interesting thing on the world.

[shooting_dice]

I don´t. I think private lives are the least interesting thing on the world.

God knows you never thanked anyone for finding my personal blog or anything.

[Settembrini]

Wow, you don´t have many readers, when you remember every single one of them...
Yeah, and I stopped reading it two days later.
I did read some of your articles, when they were linked by someone else.

There was an article on D&D as a Scenario-Game, and an article on Rifts.
Those I read, those had some interesting ideas.

And I think I visited your site, when I found out you had written first edition feats, which I think is an awesome idea.

All together I read five articles on that blog.

So, until today, I thought you were an asshat, but an asshat with some neat ideas. Now, you are revealed to be...spilling your private life like wil wheaton.

[shooting_dice]

My memory of you comes from the fact that after reading, you had some incoherent, crazy-sounding things to say about my family, which was one of the things that reminded me to reorganize my blogspace to make it less accessible.

Actually, in retrospect it gives me a bit of a chuckle remembering that you bitches actually had to have a conference about how to argue with me and that making an offhanded joke about how people take gaming too seriously a year ago made Nisarg shake in his booties on another continent.

[Settembrini]

I think I don´t really understand what you are saying here. But yes, your posts in in the BlueRoseNutkin thread kinda baffled me. I fully concede to the fact that you are rhetorically more proficient than I, and that I sought out help because of that. Sadly at that time, I didn´t understand most of your stuff  was just being an asshat.

So, I think the post I made proves that I was uninterested in your private moanings and whinings as I am now. Your point?

Really, what is more pathetic:

That I called you on being a wil wheaton twice, or that you come here and remember and dig up all that old shit, that everyone else had forgotten anyway?

Seems I´m pretty important to you, for reasons unknown to me.
You want to tell me anything?

Again, your interesting ego made this thread all about you, which I think proves my asessment of your wil wheatoney nature just nicely.

To make a stop to that, I´m out of this one.

[shooting_dice]

So, I think the post I made proves that I was uninterested in your private moanings and whinings as I am now. Your point?

Sure. You proved you wanted nothing to do with my private life by reading a whole bunch about my private life.

I think you just demonstrated why logic died in continental philosophy.

Seems I´m pretty important to you, for reasons unknown to me.
You want to tell me anything?

Already told you. You basically demonstrated that there's a segment of gamers fucked up enough to make me more guarded when I talk about my family. I'm sure you can read the rest somewhere -- or already have. Unfortunately, since I reorganized and got busier with work, there's less for you to read to show how little you care.

[SunBoy]

Boy, I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard reading something. You two should consider making this a stand-up act.

[Theodore Sign]

shooting_dice--

(I've long wanted to post this, so thanks for the opportunity!)

Here is how the pathology of "Internet Badass Syndrome" (IBS) tends to progress:

Level 1 : I am a badass

Someone will simply enter into a conversation with assertions that they can kick everyone's ass, know 9 martial arts, have spec ops training, are a cold-blooded sniper, et cetera and ad nauseum.  Pretty simplistic, playground level stuff here.  Makes you look like an obvious self-esteem case, so the disease either clears up or quickly progresses to stage 2:

Level 2 : I am an implied badass

A bit more subtle, level 2 goes into a kind of remissive state; using pretensions to knowledge about badass subject matter (martial arts, military history, weapons, etc.), the would-be IB simply allows the audience to draw the conclusion that they must be a badass due to their obvious "expertise": witness discussions about katanas vs. broadswords or MMA vs. spec ops. for examples.  As if knowing a bit about ballistics makes you bulletproof.  Less obvious cases of this level of IBS may even be self-deprecating about the subject, though their posts still have that IBS odor about them.  Most geeks level off here, but some folks, well...

Level 3 : I am an osmotic badass

Stage 3, unfortunately terminal, is marked by rapid-fire bids for any kind of expertise or familiarity with the subjects the victim deems badass-granting.  Many of them will not make sense, but that is okay, since the audience cannot field them all.  Victims hope that by mere association with the subjects, they will be granted more badassery through a deranged kind of  osmosis.  "I know somebody who knows somebody who knows how to kill a guy in 9 different ways" or "these guys don't know what they are talking about...here is the real scoop, as told to me by my Navy Seal father."  Sometimes this can be confused with level 2, but the erratic posting style, exaggerated affect, and refusal to allow anyone else the slightest shred of expertise, is a dead giveaway.  Morbidity and Death soon follow.

[RPGPundit]

Actually, it's usually confined to my blogs -- the ones you, droog and Nisarg read.

I do read your blog, about once every week or two.  
You appear to read mine daily, judging by your own recent entries where you linked to me.

RPGPundit

[pspahn]

shooting_dice--

(I've long wanted to post this, so thanks for the opportunity!)

Here is how the pathology of "Internet Badass Syndrome" (IBS) tends to progress:

Level 1 : I am a badass

Someone will simply enter into a conversation with assertions that they can kick everyone's ass, know 9 martial arts, have spec ops training, are a cold-blooded sniper, et cetera and ad nauseum.  Pretty simplistic, playground level stuff here.  Makes you look like an obvious self-esteem case, so the disease either clears up or quickly progresses to stage 2:

Level 2 : I am an implied badass

A bit more subtle, level 2 goes into a kind of remissive state; using pretensions to knowledge about badass subject matter (martial arts, military history, weapons, etc.), the would-be IB simply allows the audience to draw the conclusion that they must be a badass due to their obvious "expertise": witness discussions about katanas vs. broadswords or MMA vs. spec ops. for examples.  As if knowing a bit about ballistics makes you bulletproof.  Less obvious cases of this level of IBS may even be self-deprecating about the subject, though their posts still have that IBS odor about them.  Most geeks level off here, but some folks, well...

Level 3 : I am an osmotic badass

Stage 3, unfortunately terminal, is marked by rapid-fire bids for any kind of expertise or familiarity with the subjects the victim deems badass-granting.  Many of them will not make sense, but that is okay, since the audience cannot field them all.  Victims hope that by mere association with the subjects, they will be granted more badassery through a deranged kind of  osmosis.  "I know somebody who knows somebody who knows how to kill a guy in 9 different ways" or "these guys don't know what they are talking about...here is the real scoop, as told to me by my Navy Seal father."  Sometimes this can be confused with level 2, but the erratic posting style, exaggerated affect, and refusal to allow anyone else the slightest shred of expertise, is a dead giveaway.  Morbidity and Death soon follow.

I'm currently level 2.  But I saw a guy on TV who said he can knock people out or even kill them just by touching a pressure point on their body, and another one who can use a palm strike to the nose to drive tiny fragments of bone into the brain, killing the target instantly.  Do I get to level-up?

Pete