TABBY CAT Gamespace

I'll take ya til ya all spun up

It's an amusing process... there are quite a number of martial art teachers out there now who use the branding of the traditional internal arts to attract business, but who claim to have seen through all the traditional bullshit about internal energy and to have re-formulated an instantly effective method (single weekend seminars!) whereby students can learn the truth of the so-called internal power, which in their revisionist view resolves down to stuff like mechanics, vectors, physical structure (static or dynamic), big or small muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments, joints, anatomy, posture, pole-fluttering, and other attractively tangible constituents.

I call these guys the Neo-Internal Mecha-Pimps (NIMP's). 

Neo-Internal because of the cross-branding. They usually have done some kind of bare bones background work in one or more of: Taiji, Xingyi, Bagua, Yiquan, Aikido, Daito, and others of that ilk. They're also generally big guys well north of 200 lbs. Helps to be that size when you are running a seminar and never know in advance what kind of animal may plunk down the fee...

Career trajectory of a NIMP:

Phase 1: DENIAL - Stridently deny the existence of anything remotely resembling the traditional concept of qi/shen/ki etc. To the extent you recognize those terms at all (for business development purposes), you claim that you know exactly what Ueshiba, Yang Luchan, Wang Xianzhai etc. were really meaning when they carelessly and rather stupidly (or deceitfully?) threw around those bullshit mystical terms - they meant your brand of physics/anatomy/mechanics, but hell - you can parcel that out in a weekend. All talk of ki/qi/shen and so on is pure stone age cultural garbage.

Phase 2: RIDICULE - After working for many years you kind of stumble upon the actual qi/ki/shen phenomenon in yourself. Very shallowly of course, just a few buzzes and tingles. But ... whoops... looks like ... hmm there actually is something going on but since you can't really use it for anything, you can still salvage your original marketing message (see Phase 1 above) by now claiming to know all about what the masters called qi/ki/shen etc. it's just a little bio-electric buzz thing, you of course have known about that all along (oops... !) and it was just beneath discussion cause it's so fucking useless. But you can teach/demo it on demand for those small minds that are still easily distracted by the traditional hangover. Basically carry on as before.

Phase 3: MARKET THE FUCK OUT OF IT - Well most of these guys haven't reached Phase 3 quite yet and probably most never will due to the instrinsic nature of their physicalized training methods. But at some point a few of them will finally stumble into the full permeation phase of the energy training and then they really be poleaxed to realize that those old masters meant what they said and said what they meant, end of story. Don't think any of the main guys have hit this yet, but someday maybe they will and it's going to be fascinating to watch how they are gonna spin the cognitive (and marketing) dissonance.

But one basic element you know is gonna be part of their 'Internal Power 3.0' schtick:

"WE KNEW IT ALL ALONG"

 

 

Gym-mate makes good

 

Slightly belated CONGRATS to my Tokyo gym-mate Takashi Uchiyama Super Featherweight champ, KO'ed Jorge Solis (who's fought Pacquiao in past) on December 31st, bumping Uchiyama's no-loss perfect pro record now 18-0.

Uchiyama is one of the two world class boxers I have had the pleasure of knowing and training with. (The other is upcoming Olympian great Queen Underwood who got her start in one of my local clubs). Both of these two scary-good super-fighters are incredibly nice, helpful, ultra-cool people as long as you aren't on the wrong side of the leather... 

CONGRATS and we'll be looking for Queen to score gold in London (if the city doesn't burn itself down first).

Plug

 I don't normally make any commerical endorsements here, wouldn't wanna sully TCGS' sterling rep for probity and rational, highly cerebral and dispassionate discourse but I have to call out one particular app for a very specialized class of people - advanced learners of "exotic" languages. 

It's an iPhone app called "Music Player - All-in-1".

First of all it's a way better generic music player for iPhone than Apple's piece-of-shit iTunes default app. Wouldn't take much. But that's not my main point here.

Main thing for advanced learners of "exotic" languages such as Chinese and Japanese but really any major language is that the learning materials inventory is a strict pyramid. Tons and tons of same old crappy stuff for beginners. Just go into Barnes & Noble, to their Language/Reference section and pick any language, say French. You'll see a ratio of something like 90/9/1 - 90% will be the same old basic phrases and beginner crap (or maybe 100% in many cases), then if you're lucky there'll be a couple of books at the intermediate level (maybe a book of simple parallel text stories or something), and then nothing for advanced at all. 

But even as a fluent target language speaker (such as myself for Mandarin and Japanese), you want to keep learning. There are always tons of specialized and slang words you don't  know. Even professional bilingual interpreters need to learn new vocabulary for every single new assignment. And you have to keep your skills sharp if you aren't living in-country and speaking every day, and there's constant in-flow of new idioms, slang, fads and jargon of all kinds popping up. (Plenty of words you don't know in your own native English too, people.)

Of course, there's an assumption that advanced people by definition can find their own material from the real universe of fiction, native mono-lingual dictionaries, feature length movies, newspapers, and so on. That's true to some extent but there are two additional considerations, (i) Access and (ii) Support. Support can be pretty well-handled by all the excellent 3rd party dictionary apps available for the iPhone. But access is a horse of another color.

For reading and text, it's not so bad. You can get websites and newspapers for your target language(s) on your laptop, PC, or tablet. But audio is trickier. Yeah, there are a few cheesy 'world radio' type apps available but you'll find they are mostly weird music and pretty much "off the air" when you'd want to study anyway. 

So how about target language movies? Yes and no. Movies first of all have access issues of their own, and more than that, movies are language-sparse. After all, on Day One every filmmaker is taught the first principle: show don't tell. So they're mainly visual. There's actually probably less spoken language for a given type of interaction in a movie than in its typical real-life counterpart. So again, podcast - that's gotta be the thing.

But just try to find any good ones. Again even in the iPhone foreign language app space, most of the so-called podcast programs availabe are FOR BEGINNERS, or intermediate at best. They are highly unnatural and in any case totally unusable for advanced people. 

That's where this Music Player app comes in. The app includes a screen list of podcasts, organzied at the top by language. They have all the big languages including the two of main interest to me (though I do Spanish also) namely Chinese and Japanese. Under a given language heading they have a long list of dozens of fantastic podcasts, which are radio shows entirely in the target language and covering all kind of formats and contents, of course news, but also talk, dialog, educational programs, call-in, music mixes, etc. 

And they have all kinds of (audio) navigation aids and controls to help you work with the podcast beyond just raw streaming it.

It's the best single resource for advanced learner / maintainer support I've ever found. 

 

 

 

龙年展望

Dragon Year rez, people  - try harder to ... Understand

 

HAPPY DRAGON YEAR! FROM CAT SCAM ENTERPRISES

Look at this recent photo of Madonna. She's in her early fifties, born same year as me within months. Looks good, eh? 

Any idea why? You think it's cause she's a pampered multi-hundredsmillionaire with servants and security and personal gourmet chefs and drivers hanging on her every wish and command?

Not in the least. It isn't that at all.

It's because she's a dedicated Ashtangi just like me. Does Ashtanga yoga. That's what has kept her looking so well preserved.

So then your natural question might be "Then what the fuck went wrong in your case, Tabby?" (Those of you who know me personally...). Ahahaha! Touche touche... but hey if I were being personally instructed by Sharath (grandson of the Founder, Patabhi Jois), hell it would've had a more salutory effect on my looks too.

5% Solution

One thing I should clarify for the record, since I have a standing "meetup" offer out there for any martial artist who wants to play the kuzushi unbalancing game. 

When I work push hands with anybody I am never using more than 5% of my internal power. May sound weird but that's the fact. It's for a historical reason. Once long ago at one of my teacher's out-of-town seminars, a tough, large guy (outweighing me by 80 or so pounds as usually the case in the past 20 years) sought me out for play. Of course he knew some Tai Chi but he told me his real thing was boxing, grappling - "real world" stuff.

Fine. So we're playing and I'm nudging him here and there in my normal kuzushi (unbalancing) style but I could tell he's getting increasingly unhappy and rougher and roughter in his attempts to counter-attack. Which is normally fine with me, all part of the game. But for some reason as we went on this guy's attitude ruffled my feathers, don't really know why. And his talk was all stuff like "Yeah you moved my foot, but in reality I could've [done this or that]."

Well, yeah. Hey I know better than most that it's all kind of fake. A point I have often made right here on this very TCGS blog, it's an attribute drill, not a combative technique practice. I've known it from day one.

You should all have memorized the TCGS tag line:

Only Boxing Is Real!

... but anyway somehow this guy's attitude bugged me.

So the next time he came in with an attempted killer lunge, I thought just for fun I'd unleash just a bit more of the internal than I normally do, just a flash of irritation on my part. 

Well, I triggered him with over 5%, not full-on by any means, but I did unleash it a little on purpose, and he was blasted back arms pinwheeling, about 20 feet til he body-slammed, helplessly, butt-first into a set of sealed and barred emergency fire doors. Those doors were the type with an alarmed cross bar, so they can be opened but only in EMERGENCY. Well, his whole body weight slammed into the center of the doors (I hadn't really taken the backstop situation into account obviously) and he blasted clear through them and slammed a dozen feet out onto the asphalt parking lot outside, landing flat on his back.

Well, that set off the alarm and the entire building (a high school facility) had to be evacuated according to law and of course the fricking fire department clamored over in a hook and ladder truck - I mean, it was BAD. Bad I tell you!

Was my face red. What if the pavement had been concrete and he hit his head landing? Fortunately the guy was abraded, bruised, and shocked but not permanently injured. But my teacher seriously raked me cross the coals and told me the 5% rule and said if anything like this ever happened again we were DONE. Yikes!

Not that I go around broadcasting this 5% thing all the time. Just saying it now, is all. But when I do occasionally mention it, sometimes it provokes the following predictable response:

"Hey look I wanna feel it - I don't mind getting hurt, I'll sign a Death Waiver, I'll notarize anything you want in blood... c'mon! Just do me!"

And to that I always respond, "Come back when you can stand firm and keep your balance when I work you with my current 5% limit. Someday, when my 5% can't move you any more, when you can do that, we'll talk."

So anyway, whether after our session you conclude that I'm a deftly insightful and delightfully quirky boutique Tai Chi instructor, or just goddamn meglomaniacal blowhard, internet legend merely in his own mind - either way is fine but one thing you will NOT have experienced is more than 5% of the internal power. 

I really hate to just copy stuff over as a guest post, no value added at all, but today I just can't help myself so here's a chunk from the blog AntiWar.com:

 

What a joy to see Ron Paul take down Newt “Chickenhawk” Gingrich in front of millions of Americans. Slogging through fifteen Republican presidential debates was totally worth it just to witness this defining moment. Dianne Sawyer, who sounded like she was on Quaaludes, raised her eyebrows quizzically as she asked him if he stood by his previous characterization of Newt as a “chickenhawk.” Her tone implied she thought this a little harsh. Paul took this opening and ran with it:

“I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments – they have no right to send our kids off to war … I’m trying to stop the wars, but at least, you know, I went when they called me up.”

Ouch! Having drawn the first blood of this presidential gladiatorial contest, the good Doctor moved in for the kill:

“We have hundreds of thousands coming back from these wars that were undeclared, they were unnecessary, they haven’t been won, they’re unwinnable, and we have hundreds of thousands looking for care. And we have an epidemic of suicide coming back. And so many have – I mean, if you add up all the contractors and all the wars going on, Afghanistan and in Iraq, we’ve lost 8,500 Americans, and severe injuries, over 40,000. And these are undeclared wars.”

Gingrich’s response was worse than if he had said nothing at all:

“The fact is, I never asked for deferment. I was married with a child. It was never a question. My father was, in fact, serving in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta at the time he’s referring to. I think I have a pretty good idea of what it’s like as a family to worry about your father getting killed. And I personally resent the kind of comments and aspersions he routinely makes without accurate information and then just slurs people with.”

The trap, so carefully set, was sprung: “I need one quick follow-up, said Paul with a gleam in his eye:

“When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids – and I went.”

The applause was the loudest of the evening. Newt’s puffed up persona seemed to visibly shrink as he stood there on the stage, reduced to squealing like a stuck pig:

“ I wasn’t eligible for the draft! I wasn’t eligible for the draft!”

 

Jan 16, 2012

And so, as detailed yesterday, I did not end up as a spy. But over the years, I have learned the most important element of spy craft. Which I'll reveal to you now.

If you believe in coincidences, you'll never learn anything. There are no coincidences.

Tinker Tabby Soldier Spy

Ah! I finally got round to see the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy... fantastico! Great flick, go for it if you get the chance.

Bit of nostalgia too, as it brought to mind my own personal weird tangential Cold War history with the Agency on our side of the pond... at the time around 1980 or so I was an undergrad at Georgetown University - situated, if you don't know, in the very heart of the Death Star itself ... Washington D.C. 

And I was into Mandarin studies there (along with comp sci) in a big way. You gotta understand the times... back then nobody studied Chinese. Not like today where every freaking little kindergardener is mainlining Chinese via IV drip in the maternity ward. People stayed away in droves. Many universities didn't even offer Chinese language instruction. Despite a short-lived mini boomlet in the early 70's when Tricky Dick reopened the silk road between DC and Beijing, by 1980 it had all gone back to sleep and there were no good textbooks, websites, Skype tutors, iphone vocab apps, or dictionaries, nuttin. Nevertheless I was already fluent from hanging around Taiwan with Kung Fu teachers who spoke no Eng, and I attended GU to deepen my immersion in classical Chinese studies in their Chinese/Japanese language dept. graduate seminars. Plus picked up Japanese.

Anyway, it all began when somebody told me I should take the USA State Dept. Foreign Service Officer written exam. Of course, GU has an actual Foreign Service academic program, but I'd had no truck with that whatsoever and had never remotely thought of taking the text or getting near any such Imperial madness. But I can't resist a lark so I figured fuck it ok I'll take it... next thing you know I had passed the written and was called in for the Oral Exam. By that point I was ready to chuck the lark, gone far enough, but somebody convinced me just go in for the Oral, as a joke, make good after dinner conversation some day...

So I went in for the Oral, given at that time at State's language school in Rossyln... grilling by pairs of State Dept examiner, man what a bunch of weirdo's. Anyway, somehow I pass that also, beggaring belief really in that I was only like 22 or something and the average age of passee's was like 29 or something at that time, mostly with master's degree's and some kind of professional background. Then they wrote me saying report for the physical and so on... I just chucked the notice.

But wait we were talking about me and the Agency, right? The Company. Well I only brought up the FS exam thing because I don't know if it's related or not but right about that time, I get this call out of the blue at my home phone, and was I surprised because I had never contacted or even thought of the Company in any way whatsoever, so I've never known whether they earmarked me for contact via the State test thing above? Or through the University office, or the Chinese department? Or what - I don't know and they wouldn't say. But they identified themselves as the C ... I ... AGENCY (you know!) and they wanted me to come in (no, not come in from the cold, come in for a job interview).

Well since I'd just done the State thing and even though still no interest to be sucked into the Imperial shitstorm but hell I thought, in for a penny, sheep as a lamb, right? So hopped the Metro to their interview location which I won't disclose and had to go through all kinds of searchs and frisks and pass through many bullet proof barriers and finally made it with my escort to the little interview room. And first thing they did, they tested my spoken Chinese. And no I'm not going to tell you how they did that, but I will say - they were blown away, totally. Thus setting the stage for the real interview per se, and thus I met seriously I think the weirdest, freakiest human being I have ever encountered in any kind of professional capacity (or actually, weirdest overall I've met in any capacity whatsoever really, apart from homeless panhandlers at Van Ness and Market). He was a male (to the extent he was human at all), that's all I can say. Not an alien I don't think ... maybe a hybrid?

Anyway this guy threw me a lot of screwball questions and then, seemingly satisifed, he leaned back and began to paint a very glamorous picture of my future with the Company. He said I would be trained on their super-selective fast track, for covert work (I am not kidding here), it was a very special very intense program, but well paid, I had a great career waiting for me with them, blabitty blah blah. But frankly this guy had weirded me out so much by that point that I thought, "ok then in 30 years I can look forward to ending up like you? Fuck you lemme outta here!"

And so it came to pass that's as far as I got in my clandestine operations career... too bad I'm sure I would've been great at wet work... But  this movie even though actually centered on Brit intell service still flashed it all back to me... what might have been.