My first martial art style was Tae Sho Arnis. I understand that an Arnis stick is a sparring place holder for a machete. I also understand the value of an Arnis stick for disarming someone with a knife. What has caught my attention more recently is a more common stick variation: the billy club.
I saw my first billy club in the late 90's in Pittsburgh, and was immediately impressed by the practicality of this weapon:
It is much shorter than an Arnis stick making it easier to conceal, deploy, swing and thrust at close range. It's round edges make for a finer striking surface than a human fist, and it's hardwood construction makes it far less likely to break. The Billy Club's shorter length can afford more mass and still be swung at the same speed as an Arnis stick or knife. From a self defense perspective this weapon is much more like an improvised weapon you are likely to find to defend yourself with such as a heavy flashlight or a butcher knife than a longer Arnis stick, and it is also more similar to the length of weapon you would be likely to be attacked by.
This weapon has been brought to my attention by people practicing Korean martial arts. Apparently almost all Korean martial arts have some kind of "Dan Bong" techniques:
I would like to see this weapon explored more in free sparring.
I have been going out dancing several times per month for several months this year. I have noticed a strange behavior among women:
If you ignore them, they want you.
If you give them attention, they flee.
It's a sad thing because I am only at clubs to dance, not too hook up. I then have a lot of female attention at the clubs. But in my personal life if I bring a friend to the club with me, and tell her that I am into her, then the next day she is saying something like "I am not ready for a relationship." If I say nothing, she continues to be into me, as long as I am as emotionally neglectful towards her as I can manage.
The worst part about all of this is making women I like jealous in order to get them to pay attention to me. If someone who has given me the "I am not ready for a relationship" line sees me dancing with other women, then they usually warm back up to me right away. However if feels awful to manipulate people like that, and I suppose it's the man's fantasy to have a woman who genuinely likes him for who he is, not as a trophy for a woman in a status competition with other women.
I get it, it's evolutionary behavior: women are better at using their intuition to make decisions, and part of that intuition is looking at other women's opinions, especially with mate selection. However, this then creates huge moral dilemmas for any man involved: men are forced to be emotionally distant and manipulative because that is what women crave. The alternative is to be a good person, and apparently that means being a bachelor.
Notice the overt sin this requires on the part of the Woman:
10 commandment violation: Covetousness
Golden Rule violations: A. going after other women's men. B. Abandoning men who are more than good enough for someone like you, but you would rather die alone with your bones licked clean by your cat than have a husband night quite as amazing as you had dreamed up for yourself. The problem here is they have to die alone also, because of your pride.
The relevant deadly sins are: pride, lust, and envy.
It would serve our society well to have women as a whole consider their behavior in these regards and conduct themselves better. The only real solution on the table is good old fashioned morals and monogamy. It also has me concerned that various sexual problems in society once thought to be caused by men, may in fact be more caused by women, such as polygamy for example:
In the New Testament, when they refer to the "mysteries," they are often referring to the Greek word "mysterion", which applies to religious orders in ancient Roman Empire having secret ceremonies. Jesus makes such references in Mark 4:11, Matthew 13:11, and Luke 8:10 to let his inner circle know that the parable will have extra meaning to those already initiated into his new religious order's specific ceremonies. Jesus's new order was fundamentally Jewish at first, and so it follows that 1st Century Christianity's secret ceremonies would likely be based on the ceremonies of the Temple of Soloman.
(The counter argument to this is that Mysterion refers to the obscurity of the Trinity. However the 1st Century Christians had no concept of the Trinity as it is a post-biblical development, and Jesus was referring to Mysterion before his crucifixion and resurrection, so that his followers were not yet aware that he was God-in-the-flesh, so that there was no questions to be had leading to any concerns about a Trinity or Godhead.)
Free Masonry mythology suggests it originates with the original Temple of Soloman. Considering the historical impact Free Masonry has had on our modern world, we should consider the competency of the Free Mason community over time, and take their claims seriously.
Joseph Smith Jr using elements of Freemason ceremonies for LDS Temple rituals shouldn't be considered a criticism of his work so much as another piece of evidence demonstrating the divinity of his work. Of course first-century Christians has free-mason like rituals that would have had to be restored.
Most of the religious debate I have written about on this blog lately has been regarding debates within the LDS faith. But I occasionally run into protestants that seem to think they have something clever to say about LDS. Let me be clear: we won that debate in the late 80's, and by the late 1990's it was nothing but scorched earth victory in favor of LDS. Since 1999 LDS apologetics has been focused on arguments from Atheism, because the Protestant arguments are road kill thousands of miles behind us on the freeway. This video is from that final period where anti-LDS protestants still thought they had something on LDS:
You can see there that the Protestants have no answer to this basic proposition: LDS are clearly practicing Christianity as is described in the New Testament, while Protestants do not. Every time a Protestant raises an objection to LDS, they end up raising an objection to the New Testament Jesus. More recently Restored Faith on YouTube along with other like minded LDS have gone through the trouble of reminding Protestants where they stand with LDS:
We now have a new wave of Evangelicals that are socially separated for their protestant roots thinking they have something to say to LDS. They are easily refuted the same as Potestants in the 1980's:
None of us LDS believe we are smarter than protestant. Our advantage is simply that we are on the right side of both truth and history.
In 2021 I mentioned how the availability of sparring gear was impacting our training at Tres Espadas. Since then we have done a lot of experimentation on making our own free sparring weapons. Our conclusion is you want a light, thin, ratan arnis-stick core with boffer-style padding, but where we have gotten stuck is what to use as a skin, something that will work against a fencing helmet. The closest thing we have found is gaff tape:
But gaff tape, long term, doesn't stay in place, and additional glue adds too much rigidity and weight to be safe. This means the only reliable weapon in the "padded stick" category that meets our standards is the Nihonzashi Padded Wakizashi (their padded Katana is also nice.) This means that our stick sparring in the future is likely to be done with non-padded ratan arnis sticks. THAT means that our stick cirriculum needs to be the last and most optional stage of training, because it will be the most risky and painful stage of training.
Historically we have been hard rubber knife first, then padded flexible stick, then larger and more rigid weapons. What is happening now is we are still knife first, but then we are going straight to the Nihonzashi padded weapons, and then Stick will be optional at the end for those who want to get into stick fighting specifically, just as our unarmed fighting is optional and late stage.
Since our saber fighting is Tai Chi based, this will be the first time we returned closer to our training roots with Doc Fai Wong's system since we officially started Tres Espadas. That said Tai Chi saber is very late stage training in most Tai Chi systems including Doc Fai Wong's system, were as with Tres Espadas we only have two Tai Chi forms, and the first one is Saber (the 2nd one is open hand.)
Tres Espadas officially has no curriculum besides the Knife Badge, but inevitably people seek training from other members to become better weapon fighters. I expect this Tai Chi orientation at our Bremerton club to be local to Bremerton, I do not expect this to catch on at other Tres Espadas clubs as they arise. Keep in mind our Tai Chi is sparring oriented, for example here is some Tai Chi open hand free sparring for palm strikes and eye gouges that we were doing recently:
Famous shrink Carl Rogers came up with a skill called "unconditional positive regard" which helps someone do "active listening." It means if you decide to genuinely enjoy listening to the person talking, you can get a lot more out of whatever type of interviewing you are doing. I have some kind of mental health issue which I call "universal positive regard", which is where I like EVERYONE. I could have a lot of fun being with a very rude mass murderer for a few hours, enjoying their company and listening to their unique views on life.
My condition not a good thing. Several weeks ago I found myself halfway through giving a stranger who was much larger than myself a ride home, when he started explaining that he thought I was bisexual and that he and I should experiment together. It was really awkward and a little intimidating until I finally got him out o my car. A week later I found out that he was a violent sex offender and that I had probably been in real danger.
Whether or not "attachment disorder" actually exists, the best explanation I have for my condition is that for the first eight days of my life I was isolated from bonding with any adults because of a health condition I had at birth. My childhood was normal there after with breast feeding etc, so presumably I had attachment disorder as an infant but I have had the treatment for attachment disorder (being forcefully bonded to an adult) as an infant as well. So I may have whatever it is people who have attachment disorder have after they have been cured, maybe "post-attachment-disorder?"
Part of this post-attachment-disorder isn't just enjoying the company of people who I should not, but also sometimes getting into a habit of bully hunting. Back in the 1970's people had different ideas about raising kids, and an adult who wasn't blood related to me held me out of a 30 story window at age 3 and joked about accidentally dropping me. On the third day he did this, I snapped and bit his hand so hard he had to go to the hospital for stitches. I have had to watch myself carefully that I am not hunting bullies for sport ever since. So on one hand I find everyone such amazing and entertaining specimens to enjoy, but on the other hand if I identify you as a dangerous threat who is coming after me, I will also enjoy hunting you in return.
If you read this blog often you know I have been anti-MLM since the 1990s. Part of that is I study other scams and exploitation, to keep myself and anyone who will listen to me from getting involved. I am recently divorced and said so on Facebook, and overnight a whole new type of account was interested in me, mostly with East Asian profiles with portraits that looked like they were generated by AI. Soon one that was more convincingly human started talking Bitcoin, and I knew I had a new bully to hunt!
She went by the alias "Sophie Martin." She sent me a digital image of a convincing California state driver's license for an address in Beverly Hills. When I was interacting with her she had 5.6 million in USDT (probably stolen from divorcees by way of a fake bitcoin exchange website.) She went so far as to have a video conversation with me to prove she was a real person, and she presented as a Mongolian woman with a Russian accent, and she claimed to be from Kazakhstan living in Portland Oregon working for a Crypto exchange company.
She never got a dime from me, but we were supposedly exclusive for about 72 hours, at her request. For the first 18 hours and last 18 hours I knew it was a scam, but I really didn't know for the middle 36 hours. Her replies were on point, her story about her x-boyfriend having a gambling problem was really convincing, and she came up with this date for us to go on in Portland that was clearly a bunch of things that SHE wanted to do, that had nothing to do with what I wanted to do (go dancing at night clubs.)
The reason why I never put my guard down around her completely is she kept trying to shame me for not being wealthy enough. I thought it was a personality or character flaw she had. I am not well off, but I am not destitute either, I live the lifestyle I want, and if I made a million dollars a year my lifestyle would be just about exactly the same as it is now. But eventually I had to follow through with the Bitcoin side of what she was about, because this could have all been an elaborate scheme... and when we went down that road it was this crazy fever-pitch two hour crazy rabbit hole of me sending her screen shots from my phone logging into various crypto exchanges and websites...
And then I saw it: a website designed for cell phones that was repeating information that was already on the crypto app. I made an excuse and broke off the conversation and hit the books for the next 12 hours figuring out who Sophie really was and how her scam really worked. Also how the hell did she fool ME of all people?
The game she is playing is that she is both simultaneously scamming and dating at the same time. In my case I think she was planning to sleep with me (she had no real chance as I am an LDS Sunday school teacher, but she wouldn't have understood that very well,) and I suspect she has slept with some of her victims. I think she sexually gets of on having relations with dudes she is victimizing, some kind of twisted power fetish. I further suspect that scammers like her have a chip on their shoulder against male divorcees... law enforcement thinks it's because male divorcees are lonely and alone and easily victimized, but the fact is we are all a gym membership and 6 months from being the most eligible bachelors we have ever been, it's physically impossible for us to be cat ladies. I think these scammers are targeting divorcees because these scammers are getting revenge on an ex-husband by going after all x-husbands (or their divorced dad by going after all divorced dads.)
This was really a dangerous situation, and probably came within 30 minutes of losing $200 to her and within weeks of losing many thousands of dollars to her. Who knows what else she was capable of. It was time to have a fake break up with her for our supposedly-exclusive relationship. I don't have the resources to stalk international criminals and I had learned how her scam worked. (Fake website imitates real crypto exchange, fake website takes your bitcoin and tells says you are getting daily compound interest which is of course impossible, and they come up with an excuse as to why you can't withdraw bitcoin but keep encouraging you to send more to them.)
I told her it was not practical for us to have a relationship if she was in Portland while I was in the greater Seattle area. We don't have the same values, I don't believe you can buy happiness and that's all she's trying to do with her life. This was evident in the date she had planned that ignored dancing. At the end she slipped up and said "I don't like night clubs... but I was hoping you would see me and make me enjoy dancing at one."
Cut back to the Saturday night before. I was at The Forum in Bellevue when as I was waiting in line to get into the club, four tall muscular East-Asian women (aka Mongolians,) one of whom looked like Sophie in our video call, got into line right behind me. All night the Sophie look alike was acting strange near me, smiling at her friends with this huge wolf-like grin, but doing a wall flower type of thing near whatever direction I was facing. THAT WAS NO LOOK-ALIKE!
I have recently been stalked by an international criminal I was online dating. This is what men are dealing with in today's dating world. Understand that when you get on a man's case for not meeting your financial expectations, you are by definition engaged in exploiting him emotionally if not also financially, regardless of your intentions. I will leave you with my last words to Sophie, followed by an inspirational video. "I am looking for dance partners, and maybe a friend I can share the rest of my life with. I am not a communally owned dildo to be passed up and down the I-5 corridor by entitled mean-girl women who should know better."
I recently made SoberClubbing.com which just goes to my Facebook group. Why? It's basically for two reasons, a health/social reason, and then a reason specific to LDS culture.
The health/social reason is: 1) dancing is fun + 2) Dancing is healthy = people SHOULD go dancing a lot more often. Because drinking is 100% heinous, people should be doing this dancing WITHOUT alcohol. Sober Clubbing is one of those things that could make the world a much better place for everyone.
Personally what is happening on my various dance adventures is I am not getting to know not the other regular dancers at the dance clubs, but instead I am getting to know DJs, rappers, bar tenders and club staff, because THEY are the ones who can REMEMBER me. What about the regular attendee dancers? Well they drink, so their memories of previous adventures are spotty at best, and they often have zero recollection of my legendary antics.
In the LDS community we get high school age kids going to Church dances at least once per month. We show them how fun it is to have a sober dance. Up until around the time of 2020 the Young Single Adults used to continue that tradition in this area every single weekend, which is where I accumulated most of my dance experience in the 90's. But now the older-single-adults are having dances more frequently than the Young Single adults, and it's only about once per month like with the Youth/high-school-age.
Here's the problem: if dancing is good for you, and dancing is fun, what are the married couples supposed to do? I have interviewed the elderly on this topic and discovered that in ancient times the LDS Church had all ages dances. Furthermore it appears this tradition may still persist to this day in some parts of Latin America. However I live in the USA, so what gives?
There are various possible solutions, but ultimately if the Seattle Area LDS community is not going to set up some kind of every-weekend 18+ or all ages dance night for all members regardless of relationship status, there is a huge social void in the LDS community. We were all raised to dance, and that was a great way to be raised.
LDS or not, we all need to continue dancing, for both our health and our entertainment. My plan is to get a group of like minded individuals together and go enjoy night clubs without drinking, and it's a plan that is starting to work:
