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It’s twenty-four degrees outside, and my bare feet suffered this morning during practice. It was good for me, but it definitely made me appreciate putting shoes on to work against an opponent in the second half of my morning regime. Wow. Good thing I didn’t look at the temperature before I started. I would have whimpered and probably chickened out and donned shoes at the onset. Good for me, though, that I did it, and had a very impeccable (in my triple dragon sash husband’s opinion) session.
Of other interest, we came upon another video of a Tai Chi practitioner who does some very fluid and excellent work. My only complaint is that he tends to jerk his head aside when an attack enters. I think he must have been hit hard somewhere young in his training, and the body memory is affecting that reaction. He also seems to work too hard several places against an opponent. Otherwise, he’s very, very good. See it here if the embedded video doesn’t work for you: http://youtube.com/watch?v=93wy9FBFP24&feature=related
Watch. Pay attention to the details, not the “wows.” Enjoy. Work toward this level of excellence…but watch your knees on those drops. Key’s to this level of mastery, perfect practice, and you MUST own root and center. And, to get to this level, plan on training (meticulously) from youth to adulthood at least four hours if not eight or more hours a day, everyday, and then plan to continue to train for the rest of your life.
I am about spitting bullets here. There are these people who can’t even figure out how to use an email client on their own home computers. Instead, they use one of those flaky Net services (Maximum storage capacity 2 MB) to handle their email where everything is “clicky-clicky follow the bounding ball and you can send an email too clappy clappy.” And suddenly they are bound and determined they are going to send out a mass email to a big list of hand-harvested email addresses they hand-collected and hand-typed into their email address books. Not only do they want to SEND this email, but they want it to look oh-so-official and pretty. So they get ahold of their volunteer webmaster, in this case me, and when their volunteer webmaster advises against it, they go find some flaky service on the Net that says: Well, SURE. Here ya go, Honey! Now all you have to do is send this out with your message typed in here and make sure you send it out HTML email.” And they go all clappy clappy squeal giggle and then, in that hiccupping moment between giggles, email their webmaster flaunting their coup, waving their “sure-we-can” shit, and demanding to know “what’s your problem that you wouldn’t do it?”
“And…but,” they say by the wayside, “but but but I can’t send out HTML emails using my email because it won’t let me.”
(And they can’t recieve them either, and in fact have reported OTHERS for sending them innocent HTML emails, blacklisting innocent folks…but never mind that, right?)
That’s right, folks. Exactly. And so what will happen if they do this anyway? (And they will, because they really can’t read, can’t comprehend, don’t WANT TO comprehend, and are petulantly stubborn and willful.) They’ll wind up with their group’s email, domain, and organization on a spamcop blacklist that they won’t be able to get off of because the email addresses that reported them weren’t confirmed as OPT-IN email addresses in the first place…because they collected them with pen and paper at their real world meetings, then typed them into their address books themselves, hunt and peck method.
When the public education system goes out of its way to indoctrinate our young children, promoting McDonald’s and Burger King in songs and ditties to Kindergartners, when junk food laden with sugar, produced by Beatrice under all its various labels is proliferated as healthy in school classrooms, hallways and cafeterias, promoted as good eating by teachers, one really must wonder. Where have I witnessed this from firsthand experience? A mom whose child was enrolled at Washington School, Sandpoint, Idaho, that child since removed from said school and placed into the Idaho Virtual Academy instead, which is proving itself first-rate as a good, solid education, and not promoting corporate interests and the dumbing down of our children that is now rampant throughout the public school system in the US.
One of the best printing, matting, framing, and drop shippers of art on the Internet, a start-up called ImageKind is leading its artists down the merry road by the nose. They keep promising fixes, and the fixes aren’t happening…not even six months after they are promised. I’m so tired of the “we’re working on it,” and other empty air. It’s totally disillusioning. I’ve typed my last over on their forum. They get it fixed, or I’ll pulll all my ads in their favor.
The muss, fuss, and bother of Monday morning madness — vanquished by the retreat to office where, sipping coffee, I ponder the load of work I have today. A trip through email nets potential irritants, and I close the client, moving on to checks the sites, the blogs, the forums. …Well, I start. Then, input from the tedious goads me to address some nonsense, but not quite yet. First I’m going to enjoy the quiet of my morning without fervor.
It’s always nice to start the day with laughter. A good article poking fun at the state of the Bushite, some welcome news on the eco-front, a brilliant cartoon lampooning some human idiocy. Of course, then there’s that bit of joy with coffee, watching the early morning sky. This sets up breakfast, when, if the eggs turn and hub’s yolks don’t break, the happiness there is its own reward as he daintily dips the end of his sausage into the yellow.
The students were sluggish this morning, and finding a pace and an exercise that would get mind, body, and spirit engaged proved keeping them off-guard and moving to a lesson of principle and concept. After the initial two hours of changing direction on them mid-stride, I finally started to see a real focus begin to happen.
Sometimes, to gain a foothold on surety, one has to keep the student off balance long enough and shift the balance quick enough that they finally find their “feet.”
By the end of session, I was seeing some real use of root, weighting, and attending, all critical to effective martial arts and self-defense.
They bowed in with a lack of definition in their minds and bodies, their spirits sluggish, but they ended the class and bowed out with energy, determination, and a sense of being.
I’m pleased…though it was work to get them there — three solid hours of work. Now for a nap…after I do a few chores.
Whether it is photograph of a model, an actor or actress, or a lawyer defending a high profile client, increasingly it is very difficult to tell if the person portrayed in the picture is real, a plastic model, or a cgi (a computer generated image).
This is NOT just due to cgi getting more life-like, but, rather of life becoming a mimic of cgi — the make-up, hair, and physique mimicking computer generated imaging. They’ve met in the middle, and that, for me, is very disturbing, not because of the inherent implications for fraud as much as because it sets up a very false standard for people as a role model for success.
A lot of it is due to lighting, but it also has to do with skin and bodies enhanced all over, not just the face, by make-up and surgery, well-coiffed and well-dyed hair, impeccable manicures and the like.
Check out these images and tell me which ones are real people, which are plastic, and which are CGI (computer generated):
Without cheating, even if you recognize them, which look REAL, PLASTIC, OR CGI?
1
Real
Plastic
CGI
2
Real
Plastic
CGI
3
Real
Plastic
CGI
4
Real
Plastic
CGI
5
Real
Plastic
CGI
6
Real
Plastic
CGI
7
Real
Plastic
CGI
8
Real
Plastic
CGI
9
Real
Plastic
CGI
10
Real
Plastic
CGI
Now, check your answers.
3, 5, and 10 are CGI.
All the rest are real EXCEPT #2 which is a plastic, life-sized clothes mannequin.
How did you do?
What do you think about this trend and its significance?
Dining with colleagues at a local establishment exposed us to the depth and breadth of local prejudice that is running rampant outside what I’ll term the PC zone. (Definition of a PC zone: All places where one must exhibit the trappings of tolerance and social propriety in order to maintain butter on one’s bread, else lose substantial income.)
We became victim to the proximity of lawyers and business owners who, thinking themselves somehow “off the record,” began to berate and spew hate-speak against anyone and everyone, from Native Americans to Germans, from Chinese to Irish, from English to Polish to Arab to African, and especially against blacks, homosexuals, and women. Obviously together even though they were spread over several tables, these bigots even grinned over at us who are a group of individuals who vary in skin color and sex. It seemed they knew they were being offensive and were totally enjoying themselves.
Then they began talking down anyone who wasn’t Christian. And, after that, came the vilifying of Catholics, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and other recognized Christian denominations who aren’t particularly well-thought-of by the more fundamental. This wasn’t particularly problematic for anyone at our table since most of us are either not affiliated with any religion whatsoever, or, if we are, we keep it to ourselves, well-used to this sort of biased speech.
However, we had, as a group, became very silent. What had been lively, vivacious conversation about progress in our various interests, organizations, and occupations became an embarrassed silence — embarrassment for them and their stupidity.
At the onset of all of this, one of the most locally prominent members of our group who had his back to the rest of the restaurant, glanced around, then pulled out a small box and placed it beside his plate. Lights danced. He then pulled out his cell phone and held it up before him as if it were a mirror. A flash went off.
He had a small, coy smile on his face as he tucked his cell phone away. We ate on in silence.
After awhile, the conversation around us lulled and dulled. Mr. Prominent switched off the box beside his plate, stuffed it into his suit coat pocket, and smiled around the table. “How about dessert?” he asked. Then, “By the way, did you know that, when it comes to recording conversations, we’re a one-party consent state?”
Spirit of the moon,
Rising at the death of solar light,
Furls the wings of eagles' flight
Until the images of night
Are but an echo.
June, 1990
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