Presentation of Self Using Text Generated by “The Generator Blog”

I went back to The Generator Blog linked to in one of my posts, Hunting for A Science Fiction Story, to see if it was still there.  It is, but last updated in 2013.  Which is a shame, but the site still has links to many working and amusing textual and imagistic “generators”.

I thought it would be fun and absurdist to make a post out of the site’s output.  I won’t always put the name of each generator, but you’d be able to figure it out if you took a look at the website.

Let us begin:

Artist’s Statement:  My work explores the relationship between multiculturalism and life as performance. With influences as diverse as Derrida and John Cage, new synergies are manufactured from both mundane and transcendant narratives.

Ever since I was a pre-adolescent I have been fascinated by the unrelenting divergence of the zeitgeist. What starts out as vision soon becomes finessed into a carnival of temptation, leaving only a sense of failing and the dawn of a new reality.

As shimmering derivatives become clarified through frantic and diverse practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the outposts of our existence.

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A song dedicated to the song writer in all of us:

Soul Wolves

Verse 1:

Game is in your hands.
He led my mother
The ceiling is invisible
Yeah, I’m gonna take you for a feel good meal

Chorus:

Have you got a fine place to slip to
Let’s go moon some cars
Looking through a broken diamond
Never pawned my watch and chain

Verse 2:

Acid casualty with a repossessed car
Hairy fairies spinning the golden looms
Reap the reward
Who’s gonna answer

Chorus:

Have you got a fine place to slip to
Let’s go moon some cars
Looking through a broken diamond
Never pawned my watch and chain

Bridge:

And I am not a bone
Like a voodoo curse in an old lady’s purse
One by one
The demons just came through the window

Verse 3:

[repeated]
A thousand miles away from home
Dead right
Make notes, burn like broken equipment

Chorus:

Have you got a fine place to slip to
Let’s go moon some cars
Looking through a broken diamond
Never pawned my watch and chain

Have you got a fine place to slip to
Let’s go moon some cars
Looking through a broken diamond
Never pawned my watch and chain

—

Please, let us go moon some cars.  I like that line.

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Anthropomorphic Personification Plot Generator

Truth finds himself stranded in a bird sanctuary in the form of a man. The experience is changing him.

Can he escape before the transformation is irreversible, and will he even want to?

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Kung Fu Movie Script – Scene One

SCENE ONE – STUDENT MEETS MASTER

INSIDE MASTER PONG’S ONE-ROOM COTTAGE – EARLY MORNING

Master Pong stands in the center of the room, facing Student. Student stands shyly in the corner near the door.

MASTER
You are the new student. Come closer.

Student walks to master, does a double-take as he notices that master has no elbow.

STUDENT
You cannot see!

MASTER
You think I cannot see.

STUDENT
I cannot imagine living in such darkness.

MASTER
Ah, but fear is the only darkness. Also, you forget, I live in North Vancouver. Now… take your octopus and strike me with it.
Student hesitates.

MASTER
Do as I tell you – strike!
Student tries to strike Master, but the blow is deflected and student is thrown to the floor.

MASTER
Never assume because a man has no elbow that he cannot see. Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Student closes his eyes, pauses with concentration before answering.

STUDENT
I hear English Bay, I hear firecrackers.

MASTER
Do you hear your own nose?

STUDENT
No.

MASTER
Do you hear the balloon which is at your feet?
Student opens his eyes and sees the balloon on the floor.

STUDENT
Old man, how is it that you hear these things?

MASTER
Young man, how is it that you do not?
Student looks pensive.

MASTER
Now, we will commence your battle training. Go to the weapons closet and choose an item.
Student walks to the closet, grabs the cutting board and rejoins master. Master holds a kitchen whisk.

MASTER
Ah ha… you’ve chosen the cutting board. Excellent choice.

They bow and begin to fight. Master easily defeats student several times. Student is thrown to the floor and injures his chin. He rubs it to ease the pain. Master laughs while student has a look of hope.

MASTER
Arise slightly, young frog, and brush the indignity off of your vest.
Student does so.

MASTER
You fought blindly, frog. A geezer nerd could’ve beaten you.

STUDENT
Yes, Master Pong, forgive me.

MASTER
Forgive yourself, you have suffered for it. What is the cause of your anger?

STUDENT
It is anger at Stephen Colbert.

MASTER
Yes, but what is the reason?

STUDENT
For being nasty.

MASTER
Ah. And when did you discover this?

STUDENT
About 1 hour ago when Stephen Colbert and I were attacked by 11 big bullies at Walmart. I was struck first. And Stephen Colbert, out of fear, did nothing to help me.

MASTER
You were only two against 11 larger than yourself. What do you think Stephen Colbert should’ve done?

STUDENT
Fought back and tried to help me.

MASTER
Yes, frog, that would’ve been heroic.

STUDENT
You agree, then, that Stephen Colbert was nasty.

MASTER
The body is nasty when it understands its weakness. The body is remarkable when it understands its strength. The cheetah and the squirrel march together within every man. So to call one man nasty and another remarkable merely serves to indicate the possibilities of their achieving the opposite.

Student looks confused as scene fades to black.

—

You may now imagine the rest of the movie.

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Thoughts on Aikido Promotion

I wanted to mark the occasion of promotion to 2nd Dan or Nidan in aikido by writing a few words here.

First, it’s an opportunity for a mild pat on my own back, and if you can’t do that on your blog, well, where can you?

Second, it’s led me to think more about why do I practice aikido, anyway?  What is the nub of it that has kept me at it over the years?  (Although I do practice less now than I used to.)

I came to aikido through t’ai chi chu’an (as a martial art, and some of which I’ve chronicled in the post Adventures in T’ai Chi Ch’uan).   I boxed – very amateurishly – and wrestled in high school.   I also did a little judo in university, and a lot of recreational Western fencing afterwards.

While I was in San Francisco for less than a year in the late 1970s and making like a t’ai chi bum in parks and various studios, I got a copy of the book Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere by Westbrook and Ratti.  Published in 1973 in hardcover, it was one of the very few books available on aikido.  It has the most wonderful, flowing diagrams of the art.  I still have that book.

I had to give aikido a try, so for about seven or eight months I joined the old Aikido of San Francisco on Turk Street as the rankest of beginners in the midst of what seemed like hundreds of students.  The dojo was run by three of the most famous non-Japanese teachers of their generation, although perhaps not so well known in those days:  Robert Nadeau, Frank Doran, William Witt, all sensei’s of the highest calibre and with different stylistic approaches to aikido.

Robert Nadeau was the most “California” of the trio, with some unorthodox training exercises and discussions of energy in the body.  Nadeau is featured in books related to aikido by human potential pioneer George Leonard such as The Ultimate Athlete and Mastery.

Frank Doran was a practitioner of almost magical technique, who could be quite severe in his teaching.  This reflected his background as a former hand-to-hand combat instructor in the US Marines.  He always moved and pivoted with such an erect, precise, and effective manner — watching him (as I’ve just done on You Tube), I’m inspired again by how he moves.

William Witt always seemed the most accessible to me, with his often humorous and down-to-earth straightforward way of teaching.

After I left San Francisco to return to British Columbia and resumption of life as a reporter and photographer for small newspapers, I wouldn’t practice aikido again for a number of years until later in the 1980s.  Even after that there could be interludes of a year or more between dojos and teachers as I moved around from job to school and back to work again.

I used to say, after returning to practice after being away for one of my lengthy periods, that aikido “gets in your blood.”  I’m not quite sure what that means, other than to indicate the attraction is not purely rational or intellectual.

In some ways, I am almost a reluctant aikidoist.  Japanese culture does not intrigue or attract me very much, although I fully appreciate the instructive helpfulness of aikido’s Japanese nomenclature.  Attending seminars now that I’m in my sixties is not something I push myself to do.

But I do enjoy teaching beginners which I’ve started to do on a more regular basis under guidance of my sensei.  I have no inclination at all to be a “teacher” but I do find satisfaction in helping people who are newer to the art than I am.

I am blessed to still be relatively light on my feet and with a range of motion only minimally curtailed as yet by sore toes and tight hamstrings at almost 63 years old.

I think the attraction of aikido comes down to interaction, which is a cerebral word for the very physical experience of throwing and being thrown, of understanding where the other person is in space by touch.  (This is a wonderful and subtle process of learning, one shared with t’ai chi — and even greater there.)  There is a great deal of satisfaction in executing a throw properly at speed, or even slowly, and in receiving one well too.

It’s something to do with that touch and relationship with the person you work with on the mat.  It can make you smile.

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Notes:

The illustration is by Oscar Ratti from the book Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere.

I’ve written before once or twice about aikido.  One such post is called “The Irony of Aikido”.  There are a number of aspects to that title, the main one being that my father fiercely fought the Japanese in the Pacific during WWII.  He died when I was quite young.  I often still wonder how he would receive my participation in aikido.  I like to think he would be okay with it.

Bruce Tegner and Self-Defence

“Self defence is Nature’s eldest law.”
— John Dryden

Bullying has become a hot topic of conversation in my part of the world in recent weeks.  Such a spike in interest and general pontification about its reality among young people is due to a recent suicide by a vulnerable teenage girl after she foolishly flashed her breasts on a social media site.

If it’s anything like when I was in school, so many years ago, being bullied is both a terrible experience and a pervasive fact.  People, especially immature kids, will take advantage of their larger physical size, higher status, or greater power of most any kind to wreak their will on the less fortunate, especially those whom they deem weak or undeserving of respect.

In the long time since my youth, or even five years ago, the sudden pervasiveness of social media, and the myriad avenues of communication they make available have provided more ways for the dedicated bully to make him or herself felt.

It seems to be part of being a social animal, unfortunately.  I remember seeing this, as a boy in northern BC where we had a lot of room, among the litter of dogs — perhaps six or seven — we once allowed to grow up together.  The puppies after a very few months had it in for one of their number.

He was just a little smaller, with perhaps more of a whiny disposition, and his siblings took to ganging up on him without provocation.  The poor thing couldn’t even eat without being set upon.  We tried to protect him and separate him from the worst of the rest’s attention.  But he liked to run with the pack, never mind the consequences.  We hoped the pack would grow out of this obsession towards the runt, but as the dogs grew, he got more savaged.  Eventually the others killed him.

I was fortunate not to have been bullied too much in school.  Although bookish with glasses, I was of decent size and prone to fight back if excessively provoked.  But I tended to hang out with fellow outsiders, you could call them, who did receive more than a little attention from schoolyard bullies.

Perhaps because of this, I did take an interest in self-defense at an early age, and being bookish, of course I looked for writings on the subject.  I also took up wrestling in high-school and built my own boxing ring at home, where, after taking off my glasses, I could spar inexpertly with my neighbourhood friends and acquaintances. So it wasn’t purely a theoretical pursuit for me.

Before Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris

In the days before Bruce Lee and the more mainstream acceptance of martial arts, there were very few books available on karate or judo or on self-defense in general.

One of the few authors who did write such books in the dark ages before martial arts magazines was Bruce Tegner.

He is little remembered now — there is only a very short article at Wikipedia — but in his day during the 1960s and into the 1970s he authored as many as 25 books on judo, jujitsu, karate and even aikido and savate.

(The short article on Wikipedia has now disappeared, I’ve noticed.  That’s a shame.  He’s surely as important as some of the more obscure musicians you can look up there, for instance.)

Interestingly both his parents were professional teachers of judo and jujitsu.  Bruce Tegner was born in 1929 and his parents apparently began his instruction at the tender age of two years old.

There is a video available here of Tegner and his mother demonstrating jujitsu, although he’s much older than two!  (The other mustached participant in the video may be his father.)

He became California state judo champion by the time he was twenty-one.  From 1952 to 1967 he operated his own school in Hollywood, California and had a number of actors among his students, including Ricky Nelson, James Coburn, and George Reeves.

He choreographed movie fight scenes, perhaps most famously the one between Frank Sinatra and Henry Silva in the Manchurian Candidate (you can see it here.)   Tegner has Silva using one of the common fighting stances from his writings.

He was also said to have taught military police and coached sport judo teams.  By the mid 70s he was teaching judo at several colleges including as an instructor for a criminology program, and continued to write books.  He died in 1985 of a heart attack at the age of 56.

You can read one of his early works, Judo For Fun, at the wonderful Sandow Plus website.

Tegner had a modernist attitude towards the martial arts.  He was more interested in effectiveness than tradition, and in keeping techniques simple enough to be employed by those who weren’t trained athletes.  He went out of his way to demystify the esoteric aura of the martial arts and to downplay any imagined superhuman abilities of black belt practitioners.

Between the popular nature of his books and his lack of awe about martial arts culture in general, he was largely ignored and forgotten by the martial arts community.

But for a teenager in northern British Columbia wondering how best to defend himself, if it came to that, acquiring Bruce Tegner’s Complete Book of Jukado Self-Defense in 1968 provided what seemed to me then, and still does looking at it now, a workable way to dealing with physically aggressive people.  “Jukado” was Tegner’s combined approach to martial arts with elements of Judo, Karate and Aikido.

Even now I retain some of his key concepts.  One is the ‘thoughtful guard’ as if thinking, one hand near the chin, the other in support at midriff, hand near the raised hand’s elbow.  This is particularly useful in ambiguous circumstances where an aggressive person may be shouting but not yet prepared to take a swing. The stance doesn’t show belligerence nor indicate a challenge.

Another concept that I still appreciate is the idea, especially if confronted by a baton or knife, of moving or even jumping to one ‘corner’ and delivering a serious kick to the knee.  This makes so much more sense to me than fumbling around with some ‘technique’ at closer quarters.

The other book of Tegner’s that I have is Stick-Fighting: Self-Defense which I found in a second-hand bookstore decades after the first one.  It covers use of the cane, the yawara hand-stick, umbrella and walking stick.  I must have got it in preparation for my elder years!

There is a place for books such as these on self-defense, but unless one practices some method in a regular way, and finds a way to bring it into your body, all of that information usually flees in difficult circumstances.

For those who may wish to investigate a more modern book on self-defense, I would heartily recommend Attack Proof, by John Perkins, Al Ridenhour, and Matt Kovsky.  This is a very thoughtful, insightful approach to self-defense with topics like “Guided Chaos Body and Mind Principles” and is endorsed by real world police and military types.

Many of the drills they recommend have similarities to the essence of what is also trained in aikido and tai chi.

And I was glad to find their recommendation, for instance, of what they call the Jack Benny Stance, which is the same as Tegner’s ‘thoughtful guard.’

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Notes on photos from top down:

The first three are from an online obituary for Bruce Tegner.

And the last is Jack Benny of course, found of all places on a site called Gutterfighting….

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On Turning 60

“Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.” — Leon Trotsky

At the aikido dojo recently, we got to talking about our ages. Sensei is 54, one of my fellow students just had his fiftieth birthday, and I turned 60.

The fellow who turned 50 allowed as how he was bothered by that milestone. Sensei asked me how I felt about mine. I said, “For some reason, I feel insanely proud….” The words just came out, but they’re true.

What am I so proud about?

Oh, I don’t have anything much to brag about. I’ve written no symphonies, no museums have hung my paintings, there are no patents in my name from these six decades. Objectively, I haven’t accomplished a hell of a lot.

Yet, here I am, and I feel immensely grateful to be up and around at all… I’m even swaggering with the joy of it.

All four limbs are working, I haven’t changed my glasses prescription for 35 years, and I’m closing in on being able to do 100 push-ups at once. Physically, I’ve been blessed. I’ve never been that much of a jock, just strong enough to do whatever I needed or wanted to do. I’m sure it comes from growing up in northern British Columbia. (My doctor tells me 60 is the new 40… I’m not sure whether I quite believe that.)

While my wife and I have occasional differences, I’ve been very lucky to have her for more than 20 years. I have a couple of old friends. Work relationships are good.

My mental faculties seem to be fully operational. Of course, one is often the last to realize in that realm…

It’s not that there are no signs of aging, there are. My stretches at aikido don’t go as far now. It’s a little easier for me to get tired. I’m not as interested in martial arts and other physical challenges as I might once have been. (Although I do have that push-up goal I’m going to accomplish.)

It is scary to realize that in 10 years I will be seventy. It’ll be a lot tougher to pretend then that I’m not so old, if I make it.

What do I want to do in the next decade?

Things to accomplish

I would really like to write another novel, of good enough quality that I don’t feel that I have to hide it in a drawer like the one I wrote in my thirties. I’ve got some more living under my belt, I know more about how people tick… I think I can make something of it.

My notes are finally coming together for it. Some more foundational work on characters and a little more background research, and I’ll be ready to try to lay out the scenes following the Butler strategy.

I love to learn blues and rock guitar. I’m studying with a working rock musician, teacher and music producer, and I’m slowly making progress. Maybe by the time I’m 80, I’ll be able to really rock out.

And painting… I still struggle with it, and still love it, especially when an image actually comes together for me… unfortunately not that often.

But in the end I will have as much time as I have, and not a moment more. You can take nothing with you. There is just this moment, and this one… I am so fortunate, and yes, blessed, to be here to witness as many as I can. And to meet a few people along the way.

I do sort of subscribe to the crazed Hunter S. Thompson take on the end, although in my own sedate and restrained way:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

Pacing… That’s the thing.

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Choice Videos: Tai Chi, Aikido and Fencing

Recently I had a yen to see what good viewing I might find in martial arts videos around the web ( at least in the realms I’m acquainted with) and bring them back to this blog.

I’d like to start with a common perception of tai chi as a martial art in this presentation of …Tai Chi Masters!

I’m not sure what the mouthful of white milk is all about…

Moving on from the ridiculous to the sublime, here’s a video of Cheng Man Ching teaching and playing push hands many years ago in New York City. Senior student and teacher in his own right, Ed Young, stands by to translate with a microphone.

The video gives a sense of the Professor as not superhuman, but very poised and balanced.

I’ve admired other tai chi video chronicles of Mike Martello playing push hands with masters in Taiwan. Here’s one I hadn’t seen:

“Push hands” is really kind of a misnomer. It should be something more like “sensing hands” or “by touch I know you hands”…

In this next video, one can see power and relaxation working together. The demonstration does suffer sometimes from “too sensitive/anticipating” students.

It does bring up the matter of what push hands is for… it shouldn’t be thought of as fighting. It’s a kind of wonderful training that teaches your body and mind to listen and respond with right timing.  It’s a laboratory.

Alright, on to aikido, but first with a sort of push hands slant. An aikido group is using a kind of push hands or sensing hands to teach awareness of the other person’s balance:

I think they would benefit from a more standard form of push hands… the way they’ve chosen lacks connection, but you can see how much fun they’re having. The first time I did push hands, the laughter just bubbled out of me, the enjoyment was so huge…

This also highlights one of the difficult aspects of traditional aikido training. Typically, you pick up the sense of relaxed connection and awareness of your partner’s body only through many long hours of training as a kind of by-product of efficient movement.  It’s relatively easy to pursue the wrong path of using a lot of muscle; and bad habits are hard to change. The kind of sensitivity and awareness that push hands teaches is often left unspoken, although you see it regularly in the old senior teachers.

You won’t find undue strength at work in the next video, only a squirrel surprise:

Here’s a clip of O Sensei, the founder of aikido, moving very well at an advanced age. What I especially get out of this is how he immediately moves to blend with his partner as soon as his partner begins to advance.

You do have to remember that this is a demonstration and not a fight.

To show a little more of the dynamism of aikido here’s a clip that concentrates on the technique of irimi-nage (entering):

The demonstrator is Christian Tissier of France, considered a shihan or master teacher.

Moving on to my last martial art, fencing. Well, actually it’s nowadays more of a sport than a self-defence discipline, while also persisting as a theatrical art:

That has some of the best movie sword work I’ve seen. Basil Rathbone seems to actually be able to fence, although the script requires him to be run-through in the end.

Modern fencing has evolved (or devolved) into a kind of linear back and forth tag as the following shows.

Foil fencing in particular is so fast it is hard to follow and machines are necessary for accurate scoring of hits. As artificial as it is, though, I think it still can teach us martially, especially with respect to feeling the distance between the two parties.

There are those trying to return to the old ways:

There are a number of groups trying to revive aspects of traditional western martial arts.

Finally a comparison of the old and the new.

Unfortunately, human beings like to fight.

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