My careful study of why I despise TKD so much led me to one conclusion: it's all about sparring practices. I don't care if you trained at Miletich if you were doing their non-sparring aerobic kickboxing class. Even worse is if you are a master of kickboxing because you trained under someone who trained at Miletich's non-sparring kickboxing class.
All light contact and no contact martial arts run the risk of being worse than no self defense training at all, since they could create bad habits that a completely untrained person may not have while giving no real actionable skill in return.
The name of a Martial Art is too broad, we need to look at individual schools. I trained at a Choy Lay Fut & Tai Chi school that eventually dabbled in MMA and boxing, while consistently training kickboxers, but your average Choy Lay Fut or Tai Chi school is not on that level. Likewise I have seen an Aikido school where students do Judo at the same school, but not all Aikido is on that level either.
My rating of martial arts is dependent on sparring quality and range of sparing. There are four ranges relevant to martial arts classes:
Grappling on the ground.
Grappling while standing up, including close range strikes like knees and elbows.
Striking standing up with punches, kicks, and weapons with very little reach like box cutters and brass knuckles.
Weapons with significant reach such as billy clubs and baseball bats.
When I say "full contact sparring," I don't mean contests where there is a permanent record and the object is to prove who has superior skill and strength, and participants do anything they can within the rules to win, that is "fighting." Full contact sparring means the participants are really trying to execute techniques against each other while fully resisting each other, and there is continuous action throughout the round, while the action is never broken up for more than a few seconds by the participants or onlookers. Many consider Kendo and Fencing to be full contact, I don't.
One star includes no contact/light contact* instead of real sparring is worse than nothing at all.
Two stars includes full contact* with extremely limited techniques: Olympic TKD, Boxing
Three stars includes full contact with a reasonable amount of techniques to master a general range of fighting: BJJ, Kickboxing, schools that compete in San Shou, Knock-Down Karate, etc.
Four stars includes full contact with a enough techniques to cover multiple ranges: schools competing in MMA, Sport Jujitsu, Pankration, etc.
To be "four stars," you really need sparring with three of the four above ranges. Two stars refers to schools that focus on only one range, or have extraordinarily restrictive rules in two ranges (such as wrestling having no submissions what so ever, Boxing no kicks, TKD no leg kicks or face punches.) It does not matter what range of techniques is covered by one-star schools because the sparring isn't serious enough to deliver skill superior to whatever bad habits they might be teaching.
This is a declaration of my love for industrial and my hate for the criticisms being leveled against Aesthetic Perfection in 2014.
I listen to more industrial music than any other kind of music, and strongly identify with the themes frequently presented in that music - studied those themes in college, and wrote a Masters Thesis related to some of those themes. Growing up in Bremerton I have been wearing a special blend of clothes seen as military surplus, hip-hop sports gear and office casual, as well as hair styles involving the 1/8 inch shear since long before they started selling imitations of that style to Nine Inch Nails fans at Hot Topic. My first CD I owned was the "Head Like a Hole" 60-Minute EP, before any of the music stores in my area carried "Pretty Hate Machine."
Industrial started with a highly experimental pre-disco band in the 70's focusing on what kind of music they could make if they threw aside the normal ways of making music at the time (electric guitars and other instruments) and focused on important yet ugly subject matter neglected by other music genres at that time. This band was Throbbing Gristle, and as designed, they were genuinely unpleasant to listen to (do not try to listen to all of this song unless you are feeling it right away):
The heavy use of electronics, the insistence of approaching subject matter directly without any sugar coating, the video back drop behind the band, carefully composed music, and the heavy use of musical experimentation are the hallmarks of this musical style. So called "industrial metal" bands are only worthy to be called industrial in so far as they embrace most of this tool set.
The band that took Throbbing Gristle's vision and turned it into a musical genre was Skinny Puppy. This band started off in the early 80's in a very ugly place, basically equating violence to animals with violence to humans. This band paved the way for more popular acts like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, and today is more prolific (including side project Ohgr) than those bands:
Starting with Skinny Puppy, individual songs on an industrial album are like a 20 second clip of a pop song, industrial bands don't write songs so much as they write albums, each song is only part of the whole album, and by itself is out of context.
In the 90's when industrial had its day in the spot light, it was very focused on dark themes mostly avoided outside of metal at that time. Consider Sister Machine Gun's "Nothing":
At this time there was a lot of Rap/Metal fusion going on, such as Public Enemy & Athrax's "Bring the Noise," and so at this time industrial was considered to have a "heavy hip-hop influence," which you can hear in "Nothing," but yet the over all album "Torture Technique" is clearly something beyond metal or hip hop both in its style and its depravity.
Understand that the Hip Hop of that era was itself more experimental and dynamic than what "gansta rap" would later become. Consider the industrial qualities of Sir Mix Alot's "Gortex":
If you haven't identified a few unrelated and ironic connections between this song and industrial music, listen to it again, paying attention to the electronics and content of the lyrics.
Industrial of this era was incredibly influential, heavily involved in movie sound tracks and pushing the use of electronics in other music genres. You probably wouldn't be able to pick Pop Will Eat Itself out of the industrial acts at that time, but one of it's band members went on to write one of the most important meme songs of all time, "Requiem for a Dream" (strong relation to the film of the same name):
Now think about this song for a second: is it not everything that industrial should be? Yes, it is probably THE industrial masterpiece. You can hear the anxiety, despair, frustration, and the all consuming urgency that it conveys without a single lyric, and it does this through the tool set established by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny Puppy.
Soon after Skinny Puppy started to be known in the music world there were parallel developments in Europe. They were not as constrained by American marketing definitions as industrial, so that when industrial's popularity fell in the USA, the music continued to evolve in Europe. This was "aggrotech," aggressive techno music, a type of industrial that evolved from disco, as opposed to predating disco. Consider Grendel's industrial classic "The New Flesh":
In that song you clearly hear the club/dance/rave elements. Remember when Depeche Mode got darker and darker album after album until "Violator" was released? That movement was the genesis of aggrotech/euro-industrial. But they didn't stop there, they radically experimented and continued to evolve the genre. The one ultimate example I would give of this is "Desperate Youth" by The Retrosic:
Notice that it is a natural continuation of the genre: massive amounts of dynamic innovation, similar themes to "Nothing" and "Requiem for a Dream."
European band Combichrist and related side projects most clearly define industrial today, with songs like "Throat Full of Glass":
Combichrist does not avoid or deny the hip hop influence on industrial music:
Incredibly prolific, some of their artists were involved in other projects, notably Panzer AG:
Notice the similarities between "Battlefield" and "Requiem for a Dream." Notice the actual singing in "Throat Full of Glass."
Here's where things get controversial in today's industrial scene - apparently if you aren't screaming with voice distortion, you are "selling out" and "not really industrial." These guardians of industrial style (or "GIS" for short) actually have a far more narrow definition of industrial than this, so much so that some of the more important works above would be disqualified from being industrial by their definition. Keep in mind that this trend towards singing is even embraced by the above mentioned Grendel, arguably with more intense effect than what their previous voice distortion vocals had:
If Depeche Mode's "People Are People," Tears for Fears's "Shout," or Eurythmics's "Sweet Dreams" came out the decade after "The Downward Spiral" instead of the decade before, they would have been classified as industrial.
Aesthetic Perfection is the most innovative major industrial act going today, and they are getting all kinds of flack for "not being industrial," and even for playing in front of audiences who are not already dedicated industrial fans. Even though numerous Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy/Ohgr songs have heavy piano elements, these GIS take huge issue with this Aesthetic Perfection song:
(Aesthetic Perfection did an excellent song, "Under Your Skin," using only human vocals as instruments on the same album.) Does "All Beauty Destroyed" fit into the genre of music started by Throbbing Gristle and established by Skinny Puppy? Careful how you answer because it's the same answer to this question: do you understand the industrial genre well enough to be able to say what is and is not industrial?
Aesthetic Perfection has PLENTY of aggrotech-style in other works, but in the songs and albums they are being criticized for, they are taking on industrial's most important obligation: to innovate. Aesthetic Perfection - like them or not - is the SALVATION of this genre, keeping it alive and growing, and from becoming an inbred inaccessible mess like Death Metal. More willing to play for audiences not already established as industrial fans than lot of other acts, their spreading the industrial gospel earns them my official title of "Industrial Messiah."
Industrial must continue to innovate in order to continue to be the king of musical genres. If we define industrial through static marketing terms, we are rejecting the tradition established by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny puppy - if it's not innovative, it's not industrial. Such narrow views blind us to industrial's future. Consider the following Tom Wait's song "Filipino Box Spring Hog," which has an industrial sound and is clearly on a level beyond most industrial being produced today:
Hip hop has some artists bucking marketing definitions as well. One of these acts - Die Antwoord - combines extremely aggressive rap with rave music - essentially a South African styled aggrotech - and seems to be lost on most industrial fans in spite of obvious industrial overtones in the art in some of their videos:
Be very careful, GIS, before you declare what is and is not Industrial.
Now this is a whole lot of very dark music I have mentioned here. How can I listen to so much of it? Well back in the early days there was religion-themed industrial that didn't "preach" (thankfully,) but had more progressive listener-empowering messages than say "The Downward Spiral," so I could mix in a little Mortal with my Sister Machine Gun. However in today's scene the progressive industrial band that really sticks out for me is Imperative Reaction. The first album they made that has the sound that they are developing now is called "As We Fall" and I have been listening to it a lot lately:
I recall one GIS online referring to this Imperative Reaction sound as "more electro-punk, not so much industrial, IMHO." Well his opinion was humble indeed, because you could say the same thing about Throbbing Gristle. If you think all industrial out there should basically sound like Psyclon Nine, then I have bad news for you: you aren't an industrial fan, you are just a fan of "bands that sound like Psyclon Nine," and you need to take it easy with your parent's credit card at Hot Topic.
There is a martial arts food chain, some martial arts are much better than others:
Here's the basic formula to understand: light contact martial arts < boxing/TKD (any full contact striking sport without knees in the clinch or without kicks to the leg) < kick boxing (any sport with full contact kicks to the leg and knee strikes in the clinch) < grappling < mixed martial arts.
This formula is sound and highly accurate: an MMA guy will typically take out a grappler with no striking, a grappler will typically take kick boxers off their feet quickly, while kick boxers consistently make short work of boxers, who in turn make short work of light contact martial artists.
The problem is it takes time, work, and often money to train in any of these martial arts. Depending on how dangerous an individual's natural instincts are, it's possible light contact martial arts could be worse for self defense purposes than no training at all! However once we get into the realm of full contact martial arts like boxing, training clearly trumps "killer natural instinct."
I categorize Boxing and Tae Kwon Do (as well as "American" kick boxing and Savate) as the least effective full contact martial arts, and suggest they are actually closely related:
Neither allow significant amounts of fighting in the clinch, depending on the referee to reset the match every time they get too close to each other.
Neither allow full contact kicks to the leg with the shin.
Both are injury prone (TKD practitioners suffer from frequent knee injuries, when boxers fight without glove hand injuries are common.)
Both are practiced first and foremost for sport and glory, and only secondarily for fitness or self-defense purposes.
Both tend to use very long stances inappropriate for most kick boxing, MMA sports, and self-defense situations.
Few who practice real kick boxing (with knee strikes and shin-to-leg kicks) ever expect to be famous or bring home trophies, be that sport San Shou, knock-down karate (Kyokushin, Enshin, etc,) Muay Thai or one of several other southeast Asian kick boxing sports:
Kick boxing delivers very efficiently in terms of time, energy, and money on its promise of fitness and self-defense skills. Nothing delivers on the martial arts promise of being able to take on multiple attackers like kick boxing.
More fundamental to any self defense situation however is a fighters grappling abilities:
Not all grappling styles are equal. Judo, once hailed as the only martial art anyone would ever need, becomes so bogged down with new rules every year that some are starting to question its relevance:
However grapplers, unlike previously mentioned martial arts practitioners, are almost always open minded enough to exchange ideas with grapplers from other sports. For example, most Brazillian Jui-Jitsu practitioners have exposure wrestling techniques not normally emphasized in their sport.
Mixed Martial Arts is what happens when grapplers get so open minded that they start adopting kick boxing techniques:
In a nut shell, the more like MMA your martial art is, the better off you will be. This is why when someone says "I have been thinking about doing Tae Kwon Do," I often reply "how about if you just Tae Kwon Don't." See also: http://www.bullshido.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-47730.html
I hate push ups. However in absence of another strength-training exercize, if you do them right, they are a much better than nothing at all:
Push ups are an indicator of minimum body strength. In general there are certain thresholds for how many push ups a person should be able to do. When I was doing kickboxing in the mid 90's, the standard held by some professional athletes at the time was 1 set of 100 reps or 3 sets of 50 reps. In particularly demanding martial arts such as Judo and Choy Li Fut, 1 set of 50 was considered a standard minimum to work for.
I have seen good arguments for 4 sets of 10 push ups as a minimum workout, and of course there's all sorts of workout routines that use different sets and reps of push ups. However, the least number of push ups I have seen as standard in any full contact martial art is 1 set of 20 reps.
1 set of 10 reps has in fact become a warning sign that the martial arts class is a no-contact "karate for kids" type waste of time. In general I would suggest to you that if you can't do 1 set of 20 push ups, you are not "in shape," (though just because you can do 1 set of 20 push ups does not mean you are in shape.) All people concerned with their health, male and female, should be able to do 1 set of 20 push ups, in my opinion.
When Purge 2 came out this summer agitators started suggesting we have a purge in real life. Here's an example that doesn't make me want to break my computer:
Just for the record, this is only a good idea if you want Salt Lake to replace Washington DC as the most important political city in the USA. Here's what happens:
1st Year: Mormons (already 25% prepper in the first place, still remember and study the violence around their own exodus from the United States,) come up with extreme game plans for the night of the purge, gathering around stake centers and building up walls (as per various Book of Mormon battles.) Mormons hunker down DAYS AND WEEKS before the night of the purge even begins. Mormons end up wasting a lot of jerks who thought it would be funny to taunt them in a threatening way. No LDS casualties, but Muslims have massive casualties.
2nd Year: Everyone is trying to figure out how they are LDS. Many convert spiritually, some claim cultural heritage, others become really-hard-core BYU football fans, huge movement of athiests claim transhumanist LDS religious status. They all also show up with resources to the LDS fortifications, which this year are far more extensive than before. LDS reach out to Muslims and pull them into their fortification projects. Few are stupid enough to challenge and taunt LDS fortifications directly, but get sniped from LDS fortifications anyways while causing trouble in near by neighborhoods.
3rd Year: Non-LDS religions have now figured out how to be part of Mormonism or they are losing membership fast. Non-LDS religions emulate the LDS efforts, but not as effectively, but still making the Purge far less effective for what it was intended.
4th Year: Mormons now control vasts purge-free areas, where no one is allowed inside the area unless they are anti-purge. In purge-free areas, religious jihad-type laws call for the death of anyone participating in the purge, long after purges are over. EVERYONE wants to live in these areas, and making Salt Lake happy is a priority for 90% of the voters n the USA.
At this point it's not just the Purge legislation that's getting scrapped, it's anything else Salt Lake doesn't like.
I last blogged on advice for reluctant bachelors looking to settle down, based on some epiphanies I have had around sex roles in society. Before I continue with my advice for the ladies, let me start by saying you do NOT need a man. If you want one, that's great, but you absolutely do not need one. This is the single most important thing for you to remember about finding a man: it is not possible for one person to give another person "complete happiness." That is hyperbole we use in romantic music in our culture, it is not literally true. Never burden a man with the responsibility of your happiness for two reasons:
Notice the three year old daughter making demands on her father: with in reasonable limitations he can improve her comfort and give her attention, but taken to an extreme she will wreck his ability to be happy when she is around, no matter how much he cares for her. As a female in a relationship with a male, you are constantly running the risk of crushing who he is, who he wants to be, his ability to care for himself, and thus his ability to care for you.
The three year old daughter can not be content until she decides to be content. Yes she certainly needs a certain amount of physical and emotional support from her father to be content, but if that is her only source of contentment she can not ever be content. If you depend on a relationship with a man to be your main source of happiness, you cannot be happy over a long period of time.
To understand why this is important for you getting a man, we now should look at my big epiphany that was the core of my last blog post:
In order for a man to impregnate a woman under normal circumstances, he MUST be attracted to her. A woman does NOT have to be attracted to a man to be impregnated by him. This means that a man has to initiate the first steps in the relationship, because only he knows who he is and is not attracted to. A woman then has to choose her best option from her list of suitors.
This is absolutely a generalization and very far from universally true. But ultimately if you go looking for a man, to succeed you must get a man you are after to become one of your suitors, or else biologically speaking, things aren't going to work out. There are then three ways to manage your list of suitors: 1) being efficient with your list of suitors, 2) going hunting for new suitors, and 3) attracting more suitors.
By being efficient with your suitor list, I mean taking a good look at the guys who you are already rejecting. Chances are your 'best friend who you just aren't that attracted to' has being hanging out with hotter females than you, and his interest in you is based on being realistic about what kind of life he wants to have. Your are physically attractive enough for him, and a cool enough person for him to spend his life with.
But you just find so many other more bad boy or more mysterious men more attractive. Think about how self-destructive that impulse is. Is it really wise to mate with a 'man of mystery?' What secrets does he hide that could negatively effect your long term happiness and the happiness of those you are responsible for? If you are so messed up that you can only get into 'bad boys,' do yourself and society a favor and get counseling to get cured of your thug love, because that is going to end very badly and have dire consequences for someone. Some men are wise enough to never date a woman who has ever dated thugs in her past - that laps of judgement shows a real disregard for the well being of anyone involved.
When it comes to hunting for suitors, do note that because of the epiphany stated above, this is the most difficult way to go about getting a man, the least efficient and most expensive in terms of your personal social capital and emotional resources. Should you go down this road, my suggestion is to follow three steps:
First befriend the guy you are interested in. Make very sure he is no longer 'mysterious' to you, and see if he passes the test of being someone who you enjoy to spending time with.
Drop a hint, but don't be subtle. You can't communicate with most men your feelings with body language and vocal tone. Don't give him an ultimatum either: that will warn his subconscious that you disregard his own personal agency and personhood, and kill his ability to be attracted to you. Approach it in casual conversation, something like "We are good friends. Have you ever wondered if we would make a good couple?" Get a conversation going - not necessary a serious-tone conversation - about the pros and cons of you being a couple. The hint you want to drop here is AFTER this conversation, say "Yes, it's a good idea. I think we should be a couple." This lets him have room to disagree, think about it, maybe change his mind, or maybe just agree outright.
Mother him. Guys are attracted to their moms. If you are able to do any cooking, cleaning or laundry for him, he will instantly start seeing you in more erotic terms, he can't help it. Get on his case about saving more money, or nag him about getting out to the gym. Demonstrate to his subconscious that you are going to cultivate his well being, not be a drain on it.
When it comes to attracting new suitors, physically speaking, contrary to the vast amount of marketing being directed at you personally, men are not attracted to your clothes, your make up, your perfume, your hair conditioner, your facials, your manicures, or any other products being sold to you. If you want to improve how physically attractive you are to men, exercise. I do not mean take your dog down to the park to relieve himself. Get into something serious that you enjoy, and make it a permanent non-negotiable part of your lifestyle, and make it something just as challenging as you can handle, such as some combination of: running, lifting weights, martial arts, Soccer, yoga etc. It should be something demanding enough that you find yourself doing extra physical conditioning outside of that activity so that you can get better at that activity. On a 1 to 10 scale, this is going to pump up your hotness by 3 points or so, guaranteed, over the course of the first year, and even more as time goes on.
The reason why women think men are attracted to skinny women is because the models used to sell women products are skinny. The reason why models are skinny is so that their bodies do not distract attention from the product. Men aren't physically attracted to the product, they are physically attracted to your body. Men are attracted to physically powerful women, we like curves that indicate health and prowess, almost regardless of weight and height.
But exercise demonstrates to a man something even more sexy: you realize that your happiness depends first and foremost on how YOU take care of yourself. Believe me when I say men are far more attracted to a normal body-mass-index woman going out for a morning jog, than we are to a anorexic girl showing off her new breast implants and fake tan on the beach.
Work on your personality and your finances. Be the person who you want to be. Think about how you treat others and ask yourself if you are good with the person in the mirror. Act in such a way that you are happy to look at yourself in the eye in the mirror.
Don't try to buy happiness. No man wants a relationship with a delusional uneducated wreck, but no man wants to settle down with crushing student loan debt either: have an education, but make it as affordable as possible. You can only get happiness through doing what you think is the right thing to do, and by appreciating what you already have, even though you could always use more. That secret to happiness is also the secret to getting a man.
