Confucius statue at the Confucian Temple, Beijing
1.) Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle –Plato
2.) If you choose, you are free; if you choose, you need blame no man. –Epictetus
3.) …the greatest carver does the least cutting. –Lao Tzu
4.) If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. –Martin Luther King Jr
5.) A gentleman wishes to be slow to speak and quick to do. –Confucius
More photos from my October 2012 visit to Angkor in Cambodia.
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm
Thommanom
Ta Som
Ta Som? or perhaps Preah Khan
Neak Pean
Ta Som (I think)
Ta Som (I’m not sure how this happened, it was a purely accidental effect.)
Ta Som
Rice paddies near the East Baray
Buddha near Srah Srang
Pre Rup
The poetry of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England was thought to have been completely lost when the Earth was demolished to make way for an interstellar expressway. However, a scrap was found adrift in space. Scientists believe the sheer awfulness of the poem may have made it impervious to incineration, which is to say that the rays of the Vogon demolition beams refused to land upon the piece.
Your Love
Your love, it warms me
like a midsummer’s flatulence.
I reel like a sorority girl in her
first instance of crapulence
I’m cocooned in an embrace
that reeks of tepid tapioca.
Tapioca, all lumps and fangs
fangs so very, very… very pointy.
[INTERPRETIVE INTERLUDE: Herein the reader is encouraged to recreate their own impression of the first two stanzas through a capella interpretive dance…
Well, that should be quite enough, shouldn’t it? You got a bit carried away, I should say.]
Your squarish face squishes in my Winnebago memories
I’m a steel town girl on a Wednesday night that is so dim, dimmish, darkid.
Fluffernutter is like butter but jaundiced by mallowy goodness
Spreading it on pickled herring makes a treat that smells like feet
– a quart of milk
– lima beans
– three frozen pizzas
– hemorrhoid crème (not the mint kind this time)
And brings out the wicked amour of one who is without more, sans more.
But I need more; I must have… something, something [you get the drift.]
In summary, you are the wind above my wings.
[Dear estate of Douglas Adams, Please do not sue me. I am so very, very… very poor. That goes for the estates of Bette Midler and Hall and Oates as well… (Oh, you say those people are alive? Really?)]
Takagi Oriemon: Budō Hero of Shiroishi by Mamiya Hyoemon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is an English translation of a book that was written long ago. The translation is by the Jinenkan Honbu Dojo — specifically Manaka Unsui (the head [Kancho] of the Jinenkan) and his students Robert Gray, Maurizio Mandarino, and Eric Shahan. The original is entitled Budo Shiroishi no Ei and was written in Japanese.
The book is the story of the seven-year warrior pilgrimage (musha shugyo) of a warrior named Takagi Oriemon who lived from 1625 to 1711. Takagi founded a martial arts school that, as was typical, branched out over the centuries. As I understand it, there are two or three descendant schools still in existence today.
Takagi was legendary for his strength. The book offers many accounts of descriptions of both his physical strength (from moving boulders to help farmers to chopping down a house to create a fire break) and his strength of mind (e.g. staying where others were afraid to because of hauntings.) However, mostly it portrays Takagi as a supremely humble and virtuous man. He misses no opportunity to assist those in need of help, and always humbly declines reward. He does not use his great power for wanton destruction, but does punish the wicked when no other choice remains.
Unlike Musashi’s Book of Five Rings or Yagyu’s The Life-Giving Sword, which are mostly about strategy, this book is mostly examples of virtuous living with a few strategic concepts thrown in.
I can offer a test for whether a reader might enjoy this book or not.
You’ll love this book if you:
– are fascinated by biographies of great martial artists.
– enjoy learning about life in Japan during the Tokugawa period.
– enjoy morality tales and the example set by great men and women.
– like to be inspired by people who really had their stuff together.
– don’t mind the occasional ghost story.
You won’t like this book if you:
– are an editor or English teacher and things like errant apostrophes make your head explode.
– are turned off by the flouting of conventional writing style (multi-speaker paragraphs of dialogue abound in this book.)
– find that ghost stories or supernatural elements completely ruin an otherwise down-to-earth read.
– find typos grate on your nerves.
– are really grossed out by gory manga-style line drawings (they are not all like that, but some are.)
I had to deduct at least a star for the many grammatical and formatting deficiencies of the book, but I still think everyone would gain from reading it and seeing the life example set by Takagi Oriemon: Budo Hero of Shiroishi.
From my martial arts blog Jissen Budōka.
A duck walks into the dōjō for his first session. He’s awkward and seems to be getting everything wrong.
The Sensei calls out, “Duck!”
The duck snaps to attention and says, “Yes, Sensei” — boot to the head.
Maai often gets boiled down to “distancing.” Understanding distancing is simple, understanding maai is challenging. First, maai understood in three dimensions is maai misunderstood. The fourth dimension, time, is critical. Second, maai is always interactive. Rules of thumb will only get one so far because the peculiarities of the opponent matters. Third, the interval between recognition and response that occurs in the mind is as important as the physical distance.
It behooves the martial artist to see the maai existing in exchanges outside the dōjō. Thinking of maai solely in terms of kenjutsu, for example, can encourage one to focus on the physical distance. The distance gap is what we can see, and that is what is most easily analyzed. However, another area in which maai is critical is joke telling, and in jokes one has to optimize for intangibles –timing and audience response to the joke. Not that this should be an intellectual exercise (that slows everything down); I presume it’s intuitive for people with the skill.
A joke has a two-part anatomy: 1.) a set up that is straight, plausible, and –perhaps even– factual; 2.) a punch line that must turn expectations on their head with punch. The interval between parts 1 and 2 separates masterful joke tellers from horrible ones. If one runs the punchline into the setup, one risks the joke falling flat. If the recipient doesn’t recognize the transition they may start thinking about what was said (ugh –analysis is the nemesis of humor.) However, if one pauses too long, one risks the recipient anticipating the ending. Some jokes are easier to tell than others. The one that opened this post is easily anticipated. Recognition of the dual-use of “duck” happens quickly.
For a more user-friendly joke consider the one that a scholarly survey suggested was the world’s funniest joke:
A woman gets onto a bus with an infant. The driver vomits in his mouth a little and says, “Lord, that is the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.”
The woman is appalled and speechless. She scowls, pays the fare, and proceeds to the rear of the bus.
Sitting down, she says to the woman next to her, “I’m outraged; I can’t believe how insulting the bus driver was.”
The woman says, “Well go give him a piece of your mind. Don’t worry. I’ll hold your monkey.”
The elaborate set up makes it difficult to anticipate the ending, and the twist between kindness and cruelty is readily apparent. (“Monkey” is very visual.) The punchline is really a punchword, the very last word.
Other jokes have more balance between set up and punchline, and that increases anticipation risk.
I was in the bookstore the other day and I asked the clerk for the self-help section.
She said that if she told me it would defeat the purpose.
Here one starts getting clues much earlier.
Other joke concepts are so well-known they invite anticipation.
Blonds all want to be like Vanna White, they yearn to know the… alphabet.
As for rushing the punch line, consider the joke:
I’m thoroughly familiar with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know “Y.”
While in writing the joke is clear, this is the type of joke that can easily be missed and fall flat. It’s not just because it’s not exactly hilarious, but because the recipient may have to reconstruct the joke or, worse yet, have it explained to them –both of which are death.
The other thing that one must recognize is that there are always specific exceptions that work. “Interrupting cow” is the perfect example of a rushed punchword that works.
I hold contrary views to the character Bill, played by the late David Carradine, in the Kill Bill movies. Bill said that Superman was his absolute favorite superhero. The Man of Steel is among my least favorite superheroes. From a writer’s point of view, it’s hard to write an edge-of-the-seat Superman tale because readers have to feel the protagonist is in peril at every turn. That’s a tough sell if your hero is all-powerful and invulnerable. Superman writers learned this quickly, and they responded by creating a rock that could weaken or kill their character by its mere presence. In books and movies, the bad guy should be stronger and smarter than the hero. Lex Luthor is a devious fiend, but he’s no match for Superman in any domain but wickedness.
There’s a lot of talk about this year’s Superman movie, entitled Man of Steel, being darker and grittier with the implication that it’ll be more interesting than past Superman movies. The involvement of Christopher Nolan, who is most famous for the outstanding Dark Knight movie trilogy, makes many optimistic. It may be that they can tap into some of the Dark Knight narrative power. However, it’s easier to have gripping Batman tale. Batman is only human, with no superpowers, and he is inherently a loner (or in some cases a dynamic duo.) Batman may be smart, but he’s not the smartest. He may be strong, but he’s not the strongest. This makes it relatively easy to write him into perilous situations in which he is outmatched.
I have high hopes for Man of Steel, but I’m skeptical.
I took these five years ago… how time flies. But, tis the season.
City Ice Rink next to the Vajdahunyad Castle
This has been one of the most popular pics on my photoblog as of late.
The Neo-Gothic Parliament building as seen from Normafa.
Normafa overlooks Budapest from atop of the hill. On this day the hilltop was dusted while there was not a trace of snow in Budapest.
Normafa near the tower
The aforementioned dusting of snow written over by long shadows of winter.
A cross in the woods
A solitary cross and headstone next to the trail.
Winter markets
It wouldn’t be Budapest in winter without a shot of one of the markets. When it’s blustery and gray outside, the warm scent of roasting nuts or baked goods bring a smile to the face.
The big winter market at
Vörösmarty Square.
Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Merullo’s “Breakfast with Buddha” is a classic road-trip / odd couple tale. I found it to be engrossing and engaging. It is a book that attempts to convey life lessons as it entertains. In my opinion, this type of book succeeds best when the lessons do not draw too much attention to themselves, but rather subtly plant a seed. In some cases Roland Merullo’s book succeeds on this regard, and in other cases his middle-of-the-road protagonist comes across as a bit preachy and holier-than-thou.
The set up is a road-trip from New Jersey to North Dakota in which a spiritual but only vaguely religious skeptic is joined by a Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche. The Rinpoche conveys life lessons, largely of a Buddhist nature but somewhat non-denominational, to the protagonist — often at breakfast (hence the title.)
Merullo does a great job creating a character who considers himself spiritual, but who is not so comfortable with spiritualism that is out of line with western rationalism or which expresses religiosity in the doctrinaire Western tradition.
The protagonist, Otto Ringling, undergoes a sort of transformation that is satisfying –though some may find it to have gone a skosh too far.
Those who my Religious Studies professor called Homo religiosis will likely find the book objectionable, but atheologists (not atheists, but those not believing in religion, though believing in god / God / gods) will probably relate to it quite nicely.
I recommend it.
Chinese classic literature will make a major appearance in martial arts cinema this year, with movies entitled The Monkey King and Journey to the West. Both movies will likely featuring the staff-wielding monkey who made mischief in heaven and on earth. You may be familiar with the tale from Jet Li’s portrayal of the Monkey King in the 2008 film The Forbidden Kingdom. Readers can get the jist of the tale by reading the book.
Japanese classic literature will also be addressed, sort of. In the tradition of The Last Samurai, Keanu Reeves will star in movie that has no business having an American lead. It will be some sort of take off on the famous tale, 47 Ronin.
There will also be another iteration of the life story of Ip Man. Ip Man was a Wing Chun grandmaster who, as one can tell from the pile of films about his life, lived a fascinating life. While his fame is eclipsed by that of his most famous student, Bruce Lee, Man was a police officer who had to flee China to Hong Kong because of his support for the Kuomintang.
The sequel to the Tony Jaa film Tom Yum Goong (Ummm, Tom Yum) is due out this year. It will be entitled The Protector 2 in the west. The Thai star is continuing to give Chinese Kung fu cinema a run for its money.
The Grandmaster
Journey to the West
The Monkey King
Tom Yum Goong 2 (aka The Protector 2)
47 Ronin
Harajuku Huggers
I took the picture above one Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2008 at Harajuku in Tokyo, Japan. For those of you who aren’t familiar, there’s a bridge between the Harajuku rail station and the Meiji shrine where crowds gather on Sunday afternoons to –for inexplicable reasons– dress up in costumes. It’s a festive environment with a mix of cos-players, travelers taking photos and reveling in the weirdness, and conservatively dressed visitors heading to the nearby shrine.
I digress. As I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions, this moment popped into my head. I was thinking about how a good resolution involves going to a place that scares you. That’s how one grows. When I thought about the place that scared me, FREE HUGS leapt to mind.
What if random strangers start hugging you?
What if they don’t?
And I wouldn’t even have to worry about a third issue that the two comely lasses in the photo did (i.e. What if some creepy jerk lingers, reeking of impure thoughts and Old Spice aftershave?)
Does one have to give up one’s clean-cut, god-fearing, Midwestern, conservative club card in favor of a granola-munching, dreadlocked, ganja-smoking hacky-sack club card?
This will sound insane to many because everybody’s scary place is different. I should note that I was in Japan for martial arts training. Having my body subjected to all manner of beatings –I must say– was not nearly as intimidating.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 