2005: Year of the Walrus

02 aug 05

I finally did it -- I set up my punching bag. It's full of sand, is harder than the average bag (maybe even a little bit too hard), and weighs 250 pounds. The weight and hardness have seriously modified (created, actually) my striking techniques.

My bag is named "dan" for some reason.

The strikes that are most effective for me are those executed with my heels. My knuckles bruise easily and painfully, and I don't even want to talk about my insteps or shins. My knees don't suffer seriously, but they do get a little sore, especially when I connect just above the kneecap. Elbows are a mixed bag -- I have to be very careful to hit directly with the tip of the bony end (on either side), or else I get welts that have to be iced with packets of frozen vegetables while I type on the computer.

Striking surfaces toughen up quickly, though. After three days of pummeling the bag, my elbows, knees, foot-heels and palm-heels are less sensitive.

These strikes are uglier, lower, shorter-range, and about a hundred times more forceful than those I learned in taekowndo. The trick to connecting with the heel is to focus on it the while preparing for and executing the kick. I have the problem of connecting with the ball of the foot, which is painful and ineffective. But, I'm getting better.

Strikes are as follows (ranges are general guidelines -- if one can safely pull off a strike at a shorter or longer range than indicated, go for it):

All kicks connect with the heel. Red arrows indicate forward direction (towards the target). Matt-fu heavily favors the short-range, which I think is realistic; fighters tend to close in quickly.

Palm-heels are the only hand-strike I'm considering, and the only ones I would suggest for those of us without conditioned knuckles. Knuckles and metacarpals break easily (as I know from experience), and bruising/chaffing on a canvas bag is unpleasant.

"knee and forearms up" is my universal defense. My knee guards my abdomen and legs, while my arms guards my chest and head. With these, I can parry or absorb blows. I practice this by swinging the bag back and forth, and getting in its way.

Formal training in the matt-dojo would consist of 1) hitting the heavy bag with combinations to practice hitting a body full-strength and speed, 2) slowed, two-step, solid-contact sparring to perfect technique, and 3) light-contact sparring, focusing on speed, while wearing groin-protectors.

Head-butts and groin-strikes are, of course, the most effective weapons in anyone's arsenal. This is why they're not allowed in pride fighting or any of the "no holds barred" mixed martial arts competitions that have come in vogue -- they work too well, and are too dangerous. i remember a sentence in a martial arts book: "the head can be a formidable short-range weapon, but that will not be discussed here." I also remember another line from another book (paraphrase): "instead of striking at the groin, the defendant would be well-advised to use less reprehensible techniques." these attacks are taboo, because they work.

This is all to say nothing of biting, finger-breaking, eye-gouging, testicle-squeezing, stomping, beating with nearby objects, injecting PCP beforehand, knifing, shooting, throwing CDs like ninja stars, projecting concussive energy blasts from the hands, etc.

I've ignored grappling, but I'll nod at it here. It seems to me that the most effective element in grappling would be an incredibly strong grip. This is one reason I want a pair of finger-exercisers, the other being that it'd improve my guitar-playing.

I'm extremely suspicious of the geeky "martial arts hack" mentality, in which nerds fantasize about killing a man with their pinky while deftly twisting a 1,000-pound right-cross into a pretzel.

I don't think 140-pound grandmaster sung-myung moon would stand much of a chance against mike tyson, nor would any one of the scores of martial arts-geeks who pay korean businessmen, who wisely focus on the 5-10 year old kid/soccer-mom-with-wallet market, for instruction in the deadly art of yowling while kicking the air above the head, like some kind of deranged rockette.

In all of my years in taekwondo, I never actually HIT anything -- opponent or punching bag. It was more or less a dance class, and frankly, I'd like a refund.

I tend to think there's a lot of unfounded lip-service paid to the smaller, weaker, quicker, more precise opponent laying waste to the bigger one. There's a reason boxers are divided into weight-class; no amount of tricky hand movements can defy the laws of physics. If a 300-pound man throws even a sloppy, lumbering side-kick at the abdomen of a little aikidokai, a magical parry or tricky joint-lock isn't going to matter.

And there we have matt-fu (tm), inspired by a 250-pound sand bag. I think it's basically a rip-off of muay thai.

01 aug 05

I've been spending some time on ishkur's guide to electronic music. He's got one of those ranting, nerdy, rock-critic writing-voices, one that's very similar to mark prindle's. I read prindle's site at the counseling center at UMBC while employed there, because I was never given any work to do. I suppose I should have been "taking the initiative" via various file re-organizing projects; I think that's the norm for the gung-ho when they're left idle.

Ishkur doesn't have a great deal to say about the sound of his numerous categories, but rather talks a lot about the history and culture surrounding them, as well as how stupid certain forms, devotees and categorizations are. Really, he IS mark prindle.

I wonder if this is a common voice in music-writing: pissed-off, sneering, witty, and failing to describe the music, per se, with anything more concrete than a few subjective adjectives like "wet" or "bubbly."

I've been spending a lot of time on ishkur's site, trying to get an aural handle on some of his categories. When I first started visiting, the samples of EDM all sounded like "untz untz untz," and I was ready to write something snide about it, call it all "techno," and chide the human race in general for its obsession with categorization and naming in a futile attempt to, with language, control and compartmentalize the one-ness of reality.

Now that I've been fiddling with his flash interface for some time, I'm beginning to see that ishkur is not completely full of shit, and that there are some aural differences between forms of electronic dance music, even though you'd never guess it by ishkur's accompanying blurbs. But his categories are probably as good as one could expect a set of any categories to be, with a few odd exceptions (the band "autechre" grouped under "jungle," for instance).

I couldn't throw up such a slap in the face of the tao as ishkur did, at least without drawing a lot more questionable interrelationships than he has. So, I give him due props.

This brings me all back to postmodernism/eastern philosophy vs. Science/logic. It's obvious that no system of analysis or categorization is perfect. In the face of obvious errors and inherent ambiguity, do we just toss out all of the categories and surrender to the wisdom of "everything is one," or do we sweat and furrow our brows, and continue to draw finer and finer lines until, for all practical purposes, the lines "work" for everything beyond philosophical abstraction (the computer in front of you wouldn't exist if it weren't for the theory behind the science behind the engineering behind the computer)?.

Back to ishkur. Thanks to him, I discovered what I do and don't like, EDM-wise -- I generally like trance and house. I generally dislike techno, jungle, less so drum-n-bass, and breakbeat, excepting some other things that might fall under breakbeat, like just plain old rap. Rap is one of my staples.

I'd like to hear some rap without a soul beat, now that I think of it -- without those annoying hidden triplets, coming across to the ear as "that swing, man." I think it'd sound good.

I'll give my simplified interpretation of ishkur's analysis now.

I can only begin to imagine how many excited, self-proclaimed EDM aficionados have embarked on their own categorization scheme. I'm going to do it too, but I have some server space, so more people will see mine than will see yours. Haha. Anyway, here's a diagram that illustrates my take on it all:

Allow me to define the terms:

1. electronic music: music made with electronic instruments (keyboards, computers, drum-machines, etc).
2. dance: music you can dance to, with a drum track, and a sufficiently quick and accentuated beat.
3. syncopation: a beat other than BOOM bap BOOM bap -- specifically one with groups of three beats within longer intervals of 4/4 time (a reggae beat is an obvious example).
4. soul: african american musical and cultural influence (soul music, r&b, jazz, hip-hop, etc).
5. synth: euro-caucasian musical and cultural influence; techno-germans in tight suits, safety goggles and with died white-blonde hair.
6. ambient: background music, basically.
7. mechanical: little "dit"'s and "doot"'s that aren't really associated with what is commonly called "tune" or "music."
8. major: happy-sounding, with a major (raised or natural) 3rd ("mary had a little lamb").
9. minor: sad-sounding, with a minor (flatted) 3rd ("the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out").
10. weird: unusual timbres, phrases or rhythm.
11. normal: usual timbres, phrases or rhythm.

Be advised that this is wrong. Also, be advised that everything under "dance" sucks after about 30 seconds of listening while not actually dancing to it, and is really more or less the same. Furthermore, be advised that everything in the universe is more or less the same.

31 jul 05

I've been trying to mount a heavy punching bag in the basement for the past two, almost three weeks. I first bought a punching bag on July 7th. It's the 31st today, and it's not over yet.

I've wanted a heavy bag for some time, so I could variously pummel it, getting some exercise and perhaps even improving my pummeling skills. I searched froogle for a heavy bag, and came up with one offered for about $30.

For some reason (because I am an idiot) I expected my new bag to arrive stuffed, which makes no sense considering that free shipping was offered (i wonder how much it costs to send a 200-pound sack through the mail). When I received a little cardboard box, about 8" x 8", I was surprised. I thought maybe this was just the hardware, or hanging utilities, or something, and that an enormous stuffed, larval punching bag would be sitting on my doorstep a bit later.

I opened the box, and of course saw an empty canvas sack. The first thing I did was google about for things with which to stuff a punching bag. I found: metal sawdust, gravel, sand, rags, water, rice, wood sawdust, and probably some other things.

I went to a sporting goods store to see what experts recommended as the best, tastiest, creamiest filling. I also wanted to see what the ready-made bags were stuffed with, because I thought emulating them might be a good idea, but neither the salesperson nor I could get the top of one open to look. I decided on "sand," since it has some literary value as "the stuff you fill a punching bag with."

Then, I drove to the hardware store to get a strong-looking screw-in hook and 300 pounds of play-sand for about $20. The six 50-pound bags were a little bit labor-intensive to get from the store into my car, and then from my car into the house. But it was fun -- I burned some calories, and felt manly.

the screw-hook, driven straight into a rafter with a pair of locking pliers

First, I screwed the pointy driver-end of my hook into a rafter, using a pair of locking pliers to grab and twist it. I tried hanging from the the hook -- 250 pounds of deadbarnacle didn't seem to bother it in the slightest; the screw-hook's threads must have been pretty big.

I hung my empty bag from the embedded hook, and proceeded to pour the 50-pound bags of sand into the dangling, limp canvas. This turned out to be a bit of an ordeal, for three reasons: 1) the bags weighed 50 pounds each. 2) the mouth of the punching bag was six inches or so from the ceiling. 3) the open top of the bag was being scrunched closed by the surrounding suspension-chains.

a 50-pound bag of play-sand

Filling the heavy bag took a while, and a lot of sand spilled all over the concrete floor below. I poured 200 pounds of sand into the canvas -- I still had two sand bags left. Getting sand into the final 1/6 or so of the bag proved next-to-impossible. Instead of properly topping it off, I stuffed in two leather place-mats that had been used to cover the area of carpet on which our first dog used to pee. The dog, of course, peed on the leather place-mats, and after the dog died the things were stored down in the basement for some reason, in case they ever came in handy. Well, they did.

I stuffed a few of them into the top of the bag, thinking it'd be easier than filling the last bit full of sand. It seemed to work pretty well. So, everything was all set up -- a bag full of sand (and pee-soaked leather) was hanging from a basement rafter, as planned. I beat on it that night, working up quite a sweat, and bruising my knee, elbow, fist and shin.

I put some ice on my areas of injury, and retired. The next day, when I assaulted the bag for the second time, I noticed three things: the hook was starting to warp, the rafter was starting to crack along the grain on either side of the hook, and the whole thing was making fearsome, ungodly creaking noises, along with shaking and twisting the whole rafter, and subsequently the house. I realized that this didn't bode well.

My mom was again called into service, in what would turn out to be the first of two tours of duty. I wrapped my arms around the 200-lb beast (the bag), and lifted it a few inches in the air, just so it no longer exerted downward force on the hanger. Mom gingerly lifted the bag's hanger-ring off of the hook, and I lowered the behemoth to the floor. It stood up on its end, squatting there like a great, tan, canvas pupa.

It remained there in repose for three or four days. Every once and a while, I'd go downstairs and kick at the grounded bag, sometimes knocking it over and sending 200 pounds into my aunt's old boxes of books.

I was impressed that the thing stood up on its own -- by the fourth day or so, the sand at the bottom had been compressed to rock-hard. While the bag was down on the ground, it was obvious that the upper quarter was really pretty empty, so I fished out the pee-soaked leather place-mats, and replaced them with another 50 pounds of sand. Now the bag looked properly like a beige, now 250-pound tootsie-roll.

Just to see if I could get the bag off the ground, I tried to squat it. I did, but it nearly killed me, and there was no way in all creation I'd have been able to get it across the room, let alone up to a new roost. I knew I'd have to call for help if I ever wanted to get it back up.

Hanging the bag by a chain wrapped around a rafter would have been the best solution, but the rafters in this house are right up against the floor-boards -- you can't get anything wrapped around them.

One of those nights, I went along with james while he visited his parents, and asked james's dad for advice. mr. White suggested a 2x8x8 board, screw-bolted in two places onto as many as six rafters. Then, I might hang the bag from the center of the board, distributing its weight across six rafters. I didn't think of this myself because, again, I am extremely stupid.

I bought a board, and set to getting it attached to the rafters. My brilliant idea for seeing where I needed to drill holes involved a tube of blue paint. I squeezed it out in a thick strip onto each rafter I planned to involve, then pressed the board up against them. This would have worked, except that of course the bottoms of the rafters aren't anywhere near even. So, I ended up with maybe three out of the six desired blue indicator-lines on the board.

the 2x8x8 board, with screw-hole indicator-lines composed in blue paint

I also bought twelve pointy, four-inch screw-bolts, a socket driver-bit, a 600-pound link and 18 inches of fairly serious chain. I borrowed a drill from mrs. White. The pointy ends on the bolts made me think they'd screw into the wood on their own. When I discovered I was mistaken, I used a masonry bit I had lying around and tried to drill holes in the board. It didn't work too well, but I managed to put two holes in it.

After driving two bolts in, mrs white's drill conked out on me. It didn't matter much, since I didn't know how I might actually get the board up and attached to the rafters. I thought it might involve drilling more holes in the rafters, or maybe working the bolts in on their own, or maybe something else. I was confused. Anyway, at this point the drill stopped working, luckily, before I could fuck anything up too badly.

Back at the hardware store, I bought a 4-inch titanium wood-boring bit. Then, I asked nick that he come over with a working drill, and help me get the now-grounded bag up to its new mount. In return, I would buy him a fajita at "chipotle."

I drilled holes along what blue stripes had been painted on the board; remember, not all six rafters managed to imprint. Then, since every rafter wasn't represented by a blue strip, I measured from rafter to rafter, and then transferred these points to the board.

the same strips of paint on the rafters

My first thought was to get the board mounted onto the rafter-bottoms in one, central place, and then drill through the holes I'd made in the board and into the rafters. Then I'd drive the bolts through both board and rafter. Or something.

I measured the horizontal width between two holes on the board, and transferred this measure to the rafter, where I drilled two more holes. There was a problem at first, because the bit wouldn't penetrate a rafter. Nick pointed out that a (thankfully) shielded electric cord was in the way. We moved the holes over a few inches. Then, nick lifted the board up and tried to get the two ends of the bolts protruding from the board into the holes in the rafter. This was hard.

I think we may have gotten it to work a little bit, but maybe not. I don't quite remember. For some reason, we moved the board to another location -- I think maybe the electric cord was impossible to get around. Of course when the board was moved, the holes drilled into it no longer even remotely matched the placement of the rafters. I think we got the board in at one place, and then nick had the idea of just drilling through the board and into the rafter above it.

I had thought of this before, but I abandoned the idea because I didn't think the drill-bit was long enough (all they had at the hardware store was 4"). But, it turned out to be, because the bolts screwed right into and through the board, and about an inch into the rafters.

Mounting the board was easy sailing from this point. Drill, drill, drill, drill. Screw, screw, screw, screw. Voila, a seven-foot 2x8 board with some blue lines of acrylic paint on it, was bolted onto six rafters. Both nick and I dangled from the board, and it didn't budge. It was clear that this board was there to stay -- it was basically as sturdy and solid as the frame of the house.

a fairly serious chain

I wrapped the chain around it, and attached the little fastening ring that was rated to hold 600 pounds. I called my mom downstairs once more. Nick and I got the 250 pound bag over and up to its hanging hardware, and my mom slipped the bag's ring through the 600-pound link, then screwed the link shut. It was ready!

I beat my new bag a couple of times, and nick pointed out that the 600 pound linking ring had rapidly bent from a solid "O" shape to a hook, from which the bag was now hanging somewhat precariously. I mumbled something about how "maybe it'll still hold." I think nick said "um", but I was enjoying pummeling the bag too much to notice. The next kick was the decisive one.

the bag, fallen, rended, and leaking sand

The link-turned-hook warped beyond even a hook and more into an "L" shape, and the bag plopped to earth with a flat thud. It split open, and 250 pounds of sand was oozing out of the wound in the canvas onto the floor in front of the washer. I stood there, staring at it for a few seconds, then wandered off with nick to dinner.

the warped 600 pound link compared with a healthy link

The next day, I started to get sad. Here I had put all of this work and money into my project, and had gotten so excited about it. Now it was broken. I felt exactly like I remember feeling as a child when I broke a toy.

I resolved to continue the project; I'd put too much in to give up then. I bought another model of the same bag from the web, new sand, and a combination-lock to hold the chain together. Shortly thereafter I realized (after hearing mrs. White's advice) that this was dumb, and I replaced the lock with a much thicker high-tensile bolt, clamping the two ends of the chain together and around the bolt with a nut and two washers. James later sent me an email echoing his mother's sentiments that using a combination-lock to join the chain to itself was dumb. I really can't even begin to take credit for the project myself.

instead of a combination-lock or a 600-pound link

I realized, in the hardware store parking lot and after buying 200 more pounds of play-sand, that the solutions to the problems of "how do I clean up and dispose of the sand that's all over the floor?" and "with what do I fill my new bag?" might possibly be interrelated. At this point, I think it's appropriate to mention again that I'm really, really dumb. I returned the new bags of sand I'd just bought two minutes ago.

Now all is ready. I only have to wait until Monday (i tracked my package and its projected arrival-date via UPS's website), and then labor through getting the sand into the hanging bag. Maybe I'll ask someone for ideas or help, since my record isn't good.

In the "deadbarnacle with a brain in his head" utopia, here's the procedure:

Ingredients:

1. one six-to-eight foot 2x8 board.
2. one canvas heavy punching bag.
3. one 18-inch length of fat chain.
4. one fat, strong bolt, barely small enough to fit through the chain's links, nut and pair of washers.
5. twelve four-inch-by-1/4 inch bolts.
6. a corded electric drill
7. wood-boring (slightly smaller than the core of the bolts) and bolt-driver bits.
8. 250 pounds of cheap sand.

Recipe:

1. hold the 2x8 board up against the rafters.
2. drill holes through the middle of the board and into one rafter, and immediately thereafter drive in two bolts.
3. drill/drive-in the remaining holes/bolts, so that a total of six rafters are involved, the board bolted onto each in two places.
4. run a chain through the canvas bag's suspension-ring, around the board, and join the chain-ends with a short, fat bolt.
5. fill the bag with sand while it hangs.

I just don't have a head for this sort of thing. But, at least it's done now (hopefully). When I get the sand out of my old bag, I'm going to return it for a refund, citing faulty merchandise, which I think is perfectly reasonable -- canvas bags should stand up to being dropped on concrete while stuffed full of 250 pounds of sand. Seriously.

Well, that was long and boring; maybe it'll drive some of my accursed readers away. I'm sure they're encouraged to come back for the next installment of "deadbarnacle botches and barely accomplishes simple hardware projects."