Another thing I keep meaning to investigate

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Every so often when people watch me dance, they get the idea from the way I move that I know at least one form of martial art, and possibly more. One person even came up to me after I left the dance floor at one point and named off no less than seven different forms that he thought I’d had some amount of experience in. As flattering as this was, it amused me, as the extent of my martial arts training so far is a few weeks of karate when I was in my pre-teens.

Still, I like the movements that I see, and have likely incorporated them into how I move when I’m dancing, so it’s not terribly surprising to get comments like that, even if it does make me laugh. I’ve been interested in exploring some form of martial art for quite a few years now, though I’ve yet to have the available time to take classes — having worked swings/nights for around a decade now, I’m usually earning my pay when classes are going on.

Over the years, there have been two martial art forms that have caught my interest, and it was more than a little amusing to see both of them pop up tonight in my daily reads.

First came yet another in the never-ending stream of silly ‘net quizzes: What Martial Art Style Calls to You?

Capoeira

Capoeira is your Way. An African-Brazillian form developed by slaves, Capoeira is a rhythmic, aggresive style known for its dance-like forms and unpredictability.

What Martial Arts Style Calls to You?\
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I’ve been fascinated with Capoeira for years, likely dating back to the mid-90’s when one roommate or another brought home Only the Strong, which would be your basic cheesy martial arts flick except that it chose to use Capoeira as its signature style.

Originating in Brazil, Capoeira came about when the ruling classes at the time forbade their slaves to practice any form of fighting. To get around the restriction, the fighting style developed from and was incorporated into the slaves’ dancing, resulting in an absolutely beautiful combination of dance and fighting skill. It’s a truly amazing thing to watch if you ever get the chance.

Later on, I read that DeAnna stopped by last weekend’s Asian festival in Seattle’s International district, where she got to witness demonstrations by the Chinese Wushu and Tai Chi academy. Tai Chi is the other of the two styles that I’ve been interested in learnings, and as it turns out, the academy isn’t terribly far away from my apartment. While I don’t currently have evenings free, with any luck that will be changing in the near future, and I just might actually be able to pursue one of the many interests that have been rattling around in my head for quite a few years now.

iTunes: “Tschirm Tschikwirk” by Bigod 20 from the album On the Run (1992, 5:23).

Awww, shucks!

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This was rather flattering to run across tonight…

Which blog has your favorite design?

Only one? eclecticism, by Michael Hanscom. It is the most intentionally designed blog I know, and the design is significant, a protest of stereotyping blog designs according to gender. Go Michael!

Thanks, Alicia!

Amusingly enough, I’m starting to run ideas around in my head to expand the choices a bit, too. No clue when they’ll show up, but hopefully they’ll be appreciated also. :)

iTunes: “Happy Phantom (Live)” by Amos, Tori from the album Y Kant Tori Read (and Other Rarities) (1994, 3:37).

Election Day USA: Protest music CD compilation

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I haven’t downloaded any of these yet, so I can’t vouch for any of the actual songs, but I like the project: Election Day USA.

SEA LION RECORDS is proud to present a CD COMPILATION of ANTI-BUSH, ANTI-WAR music to be released to college and public radio stations during late SUMMER 2004, titled: ELECTION DAY USA

ALL 20 SONGS on the COMPILATION are LISTED BELOW, with FREE RealAudio and MP3 links…  ENJOY!

16 different artists were selected to be part of this compilation. The relatively small number of songs that professionally made CDs can hold did limit how many songs we could include. Our sincerest thanks to everyone who submitted work that wasn’t included. Your efforts are greatly appreciated by all of us, looking for ‘closure’ to this Bush matter in November 2004.

(via BOP)

iTunes: “Fish Below the Ice (Plankton Enriched)” by Shriekback from the album Dancing Years, The (1990, 5:51).

A bird in the hand is worth one from the Bush

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Amazing, the things that go on when people turn out to see the Presidential motorcade…

Sean had to go back to work (he snuck out to join in the fun), so we drove him back to my place where his car was, then me, Adam, and Brendan went to another spot along the highway that we had spied earlier. A friendly Kerry supporter named Mr. Shenk let us use his front yard to display our banners. Now comes the good part. After waiting around for about 45 minutes, the motorcade passed by us again. A few police cars, followed by a van or two, drove by. Then, a Bush/Cheney bus passed, followed by a second one going slower. At the front of this second bus was The W himself, waving cheerily at his supporters on the other side of the highway. Adam, Brendan, and I rose our banner (the More Trees, Less Bush one) and he turned to wave to our side of the road. His smile faded, and he raised his left arm in our direction. And then, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, extended his middle finger.

Read that last sentence again.

I got flipped off by George W. Bush.

A ponytailed man standing next to us confirmed the event, saying, “I do believe the President of the U.S. just gave you boys the finger.”

Just in case you had any doubts about just what Bush thinks about those who disagree with him.

Kevin came through

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Me and Kevin

My little brother stopped by yesterday to hang out with Prairie and I for a while on his way down to Corvallis to scout out job and housing options, as he and Emily will be moving there soon after the birth of their baby. We had a fun time visiting for a few hours, playing music, swapping stories, and generally just hanging out. He’ll be back through town next weekend on his way back to Mississippi, too.

Should make for a fun weekend — I mentioned to Shawna (Shauna?), one of the owners of The Vogue, that my brother was coming through town, and she was kind enough to get me a free “admit two” pass to next Saturday night so that I could introduce my hippie-bluegrass-reggae lovin’ brother to the Seattle goth-industrial-new wave scene. Much hilarity should ensue…

iTunes: “Watermelon Man” by Hancock, Herbie from the album Jazz: The Definitive Performances (1973, 6:30).

The terrorists have already won

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Okay, let me get this straight. Because we’re worried about a terrorist attack disrupting the election process, we’re planning to disrupt the election process in the event of a terrorist attack?

That doesn’t even start to make sense to me.

iTunes: “Breakfast in Vegas (Greasy Eggs and a Line to Go)” by Khan, Praga from the album Breakfast in Vegas (1999, 5:49).

So then — off I fucked.

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Slate has a wonderful look at the history and vernacular of our Vice President’s most notorious favorite four-letter word in A Very, Very Dirty Word.

The following anecdote appears in one of Niall Ferguson’s absorbing studies of the British Empire. On the eve of independence for the colony of South Yemen, the last British governor hosted a dinner party attended by Denis Healey, then the minister for defense. Over the final sundown cocktail, as the flag was about to be lowered over the capital of Aden, the governor turned to Healey and said, “You know, Minister, I believe that in the long view of history, the British Empire will be remembered only for two things.” What, Healey was interested to know, were these imperishable aspects? “The game of soccer. And the expression ‘fuck off.'”

(via Buzzworthy)

Toilets of Doom

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While much was made about the fancy-shmancy automated self-cleaning public toilets that popped up here in Seattle a few months ago, I’ve yet to actually give one of them a shot myself.

This is primarily because while I’ve seen more than a few people go into them…

…I’ve yet to see someone come out.

I’m convinced that they’re not really toilets at all. They’re population control. Self-contained extermination booths. The fifteen minutes that are allowed? That’s actually how long it takes for the acid showers to dissolve everything down to the bones, after which the floor opens and drops any bits that couldn’t be eaten away (watches, fillings, jewelry, etc.) down to a collection bin to be distributed to pawn shops throughout the city.

Or then again, maybe I’m just paranoid.

iTunes: “A Deeper Love (Underground Club)” by Clivillés and Cole from the album Pride (In the Name of Love) (1991, 6:00).

De-Lovely

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Quite aptly titled, this one. De-Lovely, the Cole Porter biopic is wonderful — good music (of course), wonderful to look at, and I wouldn’t be surprised at an Oscar nod for Ashley Judd.

One question, though: fashions have been reaching into the past for “retro” looks for the past couple decades, with a lot of emphasis on the 70’s and 80’s. Could we please cast a little further back so that the fashions of the 30’s and 40’s would come back into style? There’s a level of class that seems to have gone missing, and I’d love to see it come back.

iTunes: “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)” by Morissette, Alanis from the album De-Lovely (2004, 3:21).

Happy Birthday Jacqueline

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Prairie and I spent a very pleasant evening last night at Jacqueline Passey‘s birthday party. There was a wonderfully odd mix of people there, as she’d invited people from all the various disparate areas of her life: webloggers, economists, libertarians, sci-fi conventionists, and school friends. Needless to say, this made for quite a few very interesting conversations over the course of the night, and we both enjoyed ourselves.

Her “crazy peace activist” friend Fred introduced us to a few pieces of slang that he’d discovered recently while following news from the troops in Iraq that he thinks might be recent additions to the long list of military slang soon to become part of the popular consciousness:

Salmon Day
You spend all day swimming upstream just to get fucked and die.
Adminisphere
The “powers that be” above your immediate superior.
Blamestorming Session
The process of determining who in the adminisphere is at fault after a salmon day.

We also met Mike Layfield, who created a Hexagonal Chess game that looks quite interesting. While I’m no huge chess player — my skill level is limited to knowing how the pieces move — the variant looks to be a fun twist on the game, and there’s even a java-based version I can practice on until I pick up an actual play set.

At one point we were treated to Jacqueline’s stump speech — she’s working on running as the Libertarian Candidate for Washington Secretary of State, and is working on getting the funds for her filing fee to officially launch her campaign. While I’m no Libertarian, I have absolutely no problems with the party doing their best to keep our elections as open as possible and keep themselves on the ballot, so I went ahead and donated a little bit to her campaign. Besides, I hadn’t brought a birthday present or card, so I figured it could count for that, too. ;)

Jacqueline had covered one wall of her apartment in butcher paper and left a box of crayons on the floor so that people could decorate her wall if they felt like it. At some point during the night, some unknown person scrawled a complex mathematical formula on the paper, and wrote “Limerick:” above it. This wasn’t discovered until later in the evening, after they left, and soon after the discovery most of the guests were gathered in the hallway, doing their best to solve the equation and figure out the limerick.

Now, my math skills are not anywhere near the level of math that had been written on the wall, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to help with solving the equation. However, while visiting the restroom, I started thinking about it, and realized that solving the equation probably wouldn’t help, as it would merely result in either a number or an expression, and wouldn’t actually produce a limerick — what they needed to do was find out how best to read the equation out loud, following the A-A-B-B-A structure that limericks use.

Unfortunately, by the time I got back to the group, one of the other guests — a math teacher at Shoreline Community College — had realized the same thing, and they were well on their way to solving the puzzle, so I didn’t end up contributing at all. Still, it was fun to watch everyone work it out, and Jacqueline got a kick out of having such a geeky party. :) She’s promised to post a picture of the equation along with the final limerick at some point, and I’ll point to it when she does.

At that point, both Prairie and I were pretty tired — I’d had to work the opening shift at work, so I’d been up since five in the morning (an incredibly rare event for me) — so we made our goodbyes and headed back to my apartment to crash out.

iTunes: “Hold On” by McLachlan, Sarah from the album Nettwerk Decadence (1993, 4:12).