Ask the Box

this person should be advised that he's one of the ones i can precisely identify, without even a mere shadow of a doubt, based on his ISP information. i mention this just so you know not to post something like "why are you such a fuck all of the time?" i'm sort of surprised i haven't gotten any questions like that, actually; i'm not entirely sure how i'd respond.

maybe it's because people have a latent fear that i'm going to be able to finger them. but i assure you, in most cases i have no idea. for instance, the question about "everything being an equation to me" came from someone who is either in abingdon MD, ellicot MD, or richmond VA, according to various inherently innacurate databases. first of all, there is no "ellicott, MD". there's an ellicott city, which i guess i'll have to assume the geolocation database meant. ellicott city is sort of arguably close to abingdon, except they're on opposite sides of baltimore, so not really. so, i guess it's maybe somewhere around the baltimore area, maybe. or not.

furthermore, i bother to check the IP addresses associated with hits on form.pl in about 5% of submissions; most of the time, i really don't care.

all i know about the equation question is that it's from someone livng in "this area", which probably means it's someone i know personally. maybe. i don't know, really. in fact, there might be a "reasonable doubt" as to the identities of some of the submitters i claim to be able to ferret out. so, ask away -- i can narrow down about three people with 99% certainty, but, other than those lucky customers, i'm for all intents and purposes entirely in the dark. feel free to insult, belittle, abuse, etc. all i can do is rant and rave here, which y'all like to read anyway. so, it's no skin off anyone's upper lip, so to speak.

without further ado, here is what's new in my life: i'm taking some unnamed classes at an unnamed college, and have applied for an unnamed job. i'm about to return some unnamed electronics to an unnamed store, and i just had an unnamed food item for an unnamed meal at an unnamed restaurant.

work is going well -- no more stress, and they realize that they need me more than i need them (there are a bazillion pizza joints around here that are always hiring new drivers), so i'm not going to have any problems getting the hours i want. my only problem comes from this one other driver, who's also in school, and who always asks me "what are you doing today!?!? what time are your classes?!?!?", trying to manage my schedule so that he can force me to work for him. annoying. i sort of yelled at him the other day, in fact, and said snappishly "i'm not going to work all the time!". if he asks again, i'll tell him that i can work when i can work.

it reminds me of others, who, when you tell them that you can't afford something, will ask for your sallary and then grill you about your expenses, and prepare an on-the-spot budget for you that includes the thing they want you to do or buy. assholes.

but anyway, i'm still quite upset about losing that document yesterday -- it was really long, and i thought quite good -- on par with the famous hester prynne doc. but, i lost it. it's gone. this is the risk of using old files as templates for new ones -- sometimes you forget to "save as", and "save" instead. well atually, i'm not sure if that was the problem. while that's certainly a risk, i don't think that was exactly what happened in this case. one minute i was editing the file, and the next minute i looked back at it and my edits weren't there.

i don't know what it could have been. but oh well -- one has to expect this kind of nonsense if one does creative projects on the computer. i've lost many, many files over the years, and it's always painful. when i lost last night's work, i sat in my office chair, staring at the wall for a minute or so, feeling sad and emptied of all will to go on. then, i went to bed. actually, i'll try and summarize what i wrote now, just to make me feel a little better. but the page that's up where the lost doc should be is going to stay up, as a memorial. anyway, here's a quick summary:

how many unarmed men does it take to kill a full grown kodiak bear?

the number of humans required to kill a kodiak bear is equal to the number of humans required to form a pile heavy enough to crush said bear beneath it. humans have no natural weapons, and are frail and weak; there are no attacks even a practically unlimited number of people could perform that would damage a kodiak bear. i'm not even 100% sure what a kodiak bear is, but i think it might be another name for a brown bear or grizzly bear, which i believe are different races of the same species. but it's big and brown and fierce, which is all ye need know.

we can learn that unarmed humans don't do a very good job at harming or killing one another (let alone bears) by watching the UFC (ultimate fighting championship). there, bouts inevitably degenerate into two men locked in a homoerotic embrace on the canvas, beating at each other ineffectually with their blunt weapons as they role about. finally, the referree says "this is idiotic" and declares a winner based on who's done the most aesthetic rolling. the UFC was originally billed as "there are no rules", but it's since evolved. here is a list of UFC fouls.

martial arts aren't the same thing as "self defense", and people who take "self defense" classes are most often looking for a fight, or at least fantasizing that they're looking for a fight, because they were picked on and/or stripped of power in high school and want to learn a "magic button" that will deflect a 500lb right cross and then twist it into a pretzel.

taekwondo, which i took for a few years, consists of soccer moms being milked dry by korean businessmen ("kyung il sook's laundromat and taekwondo academy"), who have bunches of kids don bathrobes and kick the air above their heads while yowling in unison, like a troupe of deranged rockettes. i earned the rank of "dan-bo" (one belt before "black"), but never took my black belt test, partly because it cost $250. i never saw anyone who paid the testing fee ($30, unless it's for the "black belt") fail a test, which consisted of breaking a flimsy square of paperwood and performing a series of dance moves. people screwed up the dance moves, and failed to break the sheet of styrofoam, and still they passed, once the cash register drawer had closed.

this is certainly not to say that taekwondo classes and their equivalents carry no benefits -- they're good for the mind, body, and dare i say the spirt. but they're not "fighting systems", let alone "self defense systems". i think i'm not alone in reviling and mocking taekwondo -- i've seen similar words written by martial arts writers.

the big problem with eastern arts, at least as i learned them, is that you never actually hit anything, let alone each other. you "spar", but you do so by swishing your arms and legs in the air three or four feet away from your opponent. furthermore, you never even get to hit a heavy bag, so you have no idea how it feels to connect with any of the strikes you are taught. some of them, like the "front kick", are only good for hitting a target pad parallel to the ground, or perhaps someone's head when they're bent over tying their shoe.

and this is reasonable -- the korean businessmen don't want to get sued by the soccer moms when little brandon comes home with a welt.

if you really want to learn martial arts, do boxing or wrestling, which are taken and taught seriously, since they enjoy a long tradition in the united states. problem is, they hurt, are difficult, and are part of the whole athletic tradition and culture that alienates so many of the nerds who gravitate towards "martial arts" in the first place. so, instead of getting some boxing gloves and heading down to rocko's gym on the wrong side of the tracks, stanley signs up at the korean business emporium for some dance lessons.

here is someone who feels the same way (martial arts are silly, and have little to do with self defense). his name is marc "animal" macyoung, which is partially his own fault. i linked you to the sitemap, because there's a truly staggering amount of writing there. it's a wonder "animal" has any time to teach self defense, what with all of the empassioned scribbling he does. marc falls into the category of "eager to dispell myths", but in spite of this over-zealousness he makes lots of smart observations, albeit those filtered through considerable vitriol.

this is not to say that "self defense" is all utterly contrived and without value; consider the co-ed walking across the CUA parking lot at night, clutching her pepper spray. defense against armed robbery is easy: you give the robber what he wants. unless he's a psychopath or a thrill-killer, the robber has an interest in not shooting you, and his goal is only to take your credit cards, jewelry, petty cash, etc. if the prospect of making rounds to the MVA, your health insurance company, auto insurance company, bank, credit card company, etc, is worse than death (reasonable), then by all means stallwartly shake your head "no" when the robber demands your purse or wallet. but keeping a list of all of your cards, along with instructions on how to re-aquire them, makes the prospect of losing a wallet, whether via armed robbery or the sofa cushions, less dreadful.

rape is problematic. some advise that the victim should submit, so as to avoid being injured by a beating that might result from refusal to cooperate, although it's certainly conceivable that an assailant might beat up a woman even if she "allows" herself to be raped. i've also heard some suggest that the rape victim discourage her attacker by defecating in her pants, but i'm not sure this is reasonable; perhaps the woman walking alone at night should down a box of ex-lax before every journey. pepper spray can be effective if used properly, but a woman spraying it haphazzardly might only anger the rapist, or she might wind up spraying herself. gunpoint rape is a no-win situation, it seems.

but most of the time, these realities are moot issues for those ostensibly seeking to learn self defense or martial arts. after you admit that your goal is to maim other human beings or re-claim lost power, a better way to do so would be to join the marines and become a tank commander, which is the only way you're going to kill a kodiak bear.

there. it's about 1/3 - 1/2 the length, but i don't feel so bad now. it might even be better than before, so nyeah. i hate computers.