journal.wiredreflexes.com

Due to the fact that my instructor couldn’t make it in time for the class on Friday evening, I spent an hour free-rolling with two other guys, both of them blue belts. I am not supposed to stand a chance against either of them, but I performed well enough to get a lot of praise and supportive comments during and after the class. I notice that I am very strong compared to most others, probably due to the size and weight advantage I hold over most of them, about ten kilograms, I suspect. While it doesn’t stop them from frequently tapping me out with their superior technique — let’s not forget that I have only been practising pure no-gi jits for about two months or so — my wrestling and strength give me the option of powering out of situations and achieving more takedowns. It is also not so easy to get out from under me when I have a dominant position, and if you commit to a sloppy armbar it is easy for me to reverse positions. I also, because of my long legs can put many people in a figure four body triangle, which I often use. But all of that doesn’t mean I don’t get manhandled. (As was evident from the many terrible bruises I carried all weekend.) I am very susceptible to triangles and often I just don’t know enough techniques to finish even though I am otherwise bullying my sparring partner. But so far I’m progressing nicely, and I’m thinking of doing straight jits next to the no-gi classes I follow now, just to get some more time on the mat.

I have a strong preference for music without or with a light vocal element. This is because of two reasons I have been able to identify; the first is that I find it hard to keep music from constantly asking for my attention where there are vocals. I either try to figure out what’s being said, or I try to sing along, both super-annoying when you just want some pleasant background noise as you are working. Second is that few vocals really grip me, which is why I don’t like the majority of hip-hop and rap, because the vocals are the main element. Sometimes, especially with some of the newer stuff being produced, there’s something about the vocals that makes it more of an instrument than the center of a song. But usually I just want to find the instrumental version of a song, good examples of which are Hoedeplank by Opgezwolle and In the Club by 50 Cent, the former of which I am still looking for, in case someone can get it for me.

Anyway, I told you that story to tell you this one; lately, I’ve been getting back into Battlestar Galactica, the incredibly engaging, multi-layered SciFi show that got me completely hooked…until they postponed the last few episodes for a dog’s age. (When I mean the last few episodes, I mean the last episodes of the series.) So I had decided to take a break until those had aired and I wouldn’t have to wait for the conclusion of the series once I had caught up. So I had stranded at episode 04×06 or so when life happened. (Parents dying, etc.) I started watching again recently, and once again, I am hooked. The last episode I saw — oh, this is where the spoilers start — Starbuck and her crew came back from looking for Earth and they’d takena bunch of Cylons along with them. They wanted to help destroy the central reincarnation hub so that no Cylon could download into a new body when they died. (This because a few of them had seen an eternal life as something that blocked them from truly appreciating life.) During the mission Gaeta was shot in the leg by Anders (who looks a lot like Dane Cook, have you noticed?) and is brought to the infirmary. Where he first begged for his leg not to be amputated, he is convinced by Dr. Cottle that it’s a necessity in order for him to survive. He still, however, doesn’t want to “wake up without [his] leg,” so he doesn’t want a full anaesthesia, but a localised one. They cut away from the scene, almost entirely focussed on his frightened face, save for a few, quick shots of the doctor and his saw, right after you start hearing the whirring saw bite into his leg. Really powerful stuff, and masterfully acted, directed and shot. Later, two characters, I forget which, are talking about him, and how the doctor told him that if the thought of him having lost his leg overwhelmed him, he should sing, in order to cope.

This reminded me of a good friend of mine, who does the same thing. When afraid, she sings. When I heard those two characters mention that, because of this, I got sucked into the episode even further.

As they often do, the episode ends on a cliffhanger, and the last part makes a sprint for the finish, like an avalanche, the tension is built up so much it can split atoms. In this case Starbuck reveals something that she’s not supposed to be able to know, that the president’s cancer had returned and that she’d been hiding it. The president demands to know how Starbuck knows and she tells that the hybrid, a single Cylon, submerged in a nutrient gel at the heart of the Cylon base ship they took back from their mission, like a central, bionic computer, told her about the president’s cancer returning. The president immediately goes to the Cylon base ship to talk to the hybrid, who had been disconnected following the arrival at Galactica. Spurred on by the urge to find out how the Cylon knew about her cancer she orders it to be reconnected. Due to some other stuff happening at the same time (Boomer shooting one of the sixes) the moment the Cylon is reconnected it jumps the entire base ship away.

Now, the above might sound like a bit of a dull retelling of what happened. Trust me when I say that I am not doing it any justice whatsoever. The important bit is that Gaeta’s singing is laced throughout all these scenes. It’s so well done. The action and excitement intertwined with Gaeta’s lamentations. I’ve linked a video below that kind of cuts all of Gaeta’s singing bits together to give you a slight impression of it. This isn’t the best representation out there, but it’s the only one that I could find.

(Second, not such a good compilation.)

Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
with my three wishes clutched in her hand.
The first that she be spared the pain
that comes from a dark and laughing rain.
When she first finds love, may it always stay true,
this I beg for the second wish I made too.
But wish no more, my life you can take,
to have her, please, just one day wake.
To have her, please, just one day wake.
To have her, please, just one day wake.
– Gaeta’s Lament

.: Violence Toward Women
Last weekend, my sister and I had a short conversation about violence toward women by men. IN the course of this conversation she mentioned that Tyra Banks had made the statement that there was no situation that warrants beating a woman. That struck me as rather sexist and self-serving coming from a woman and it reeks to high heavens of lipstick-feminism. Any situation where physical violence is used but not in defense is objectionable, regardless of the gender of the aggressor or victim. Everyone has a right, perhaps even a duty to defend themselves from physical harm, and that doesn’t change just because the aggressor is a woman and the victim is a man. Blanket statements like these are probably what contributes to the growing number of abused husbands all across the civilised world. There’s no nobility in being beaten by your wife and not striking back. Honestly, I can recall at least five occasions in as many years where I saw a guy being pummeled in the streets by a furious or hysterical girlfriend wile they just stood there and took it. People let it happen, too, thinking that he was a man and they didn’t need to help. In two vivid occasions bystanders were laughing at the situation! The frustration of being in public was evident on the faces of both guys in question. They were simply too afraid that if they’d strike back they’d become the target of repercussions from the bystanders. However fucked up that would’ve been, it would’ve been in completely in line with my expectations.

In short; if you come to me and throw leather like a man, prepare to be treated as one. Equal rights, equal beatings.

.: Juno Reactor
When I discovered Juno Reactor a few years ago, I had finally found a group that really pushed all the right buttons. They had just releasedBeyond the Infinite, and it was right around the time when AudioGalaxy was big. (If you remember that, you’re probably, like me, slowly turning grey. Here’s looking at you, Eva!) Before that, they’d released Transmissions, which was good, but still a little unpolished compared to Beyond.Bible of Dreams followed, which I liked, but Beyond stayed my favourite. Then it all went rapidly downhill; Shango and Labyrinth started homing in on the World Music genre more and more, and it moved further away from the Goa-Psy I liked so much. And now, with Juno releasing Gods & Monsters recently, I am struggling to find a single song that I’d listen to on continual loop for a couple of hours, let alone the entire album. It still has enough that I keep coming back with every new release, it’s just not as captivating any longer. For a moment it raised the question of whether it was me who had changed, but some deliberation with my audiophile friend (read: Veed) had me convince it wasn’t me, but Juno.

.: Bitter Altruism
Having discovered the kryptonite to my emotional well-being was a step in the right direction, but salvation lies in a lasting solution and not just in the understanding of the cause. I guess I am past the denial phase and have recognised that there’s a problem and have even made strides towards learning how to recognise the situations in which it occurs, but changing my behavior is still far beyond my reach.

In essence I often take responsibility for things that I shouldn’t take responsibility for, whose responsibility isn’t even mine. As a result, I accept tonnes more stress than a lot of other people, and not even in areas that such dedication and effort will yield me anything except being taken for granted. I’ve been trying to keep track of how often it happens where I overreach my responsibility, or I guilt myself in doing something for someone I care about that I really don’t want to do, and I have to say, that shit’s happening a lot! I’ve grown so numb to my own unhappiness, having been brought up with the idea that things that need to happen need to happen, no matter how much you minge about it, and it is taking an awful lot of effort even recognising the situations in which I compromise myself.

Marco used to make fun of Eva for her selfishness, saying that she was a classic product of a family where she was the only child. But he was right, she has clearly defined limit of crap she is willing to take from, and things she will do for others. In essence, if I am on one side of the spectrum, then Eva is on the other. There’s a lot that I can learn from her ways of doing business, and however rejectable the thought is, I have no real choice since what I have been doing has yielded me little in terms of respect, money and emotional well-being. (Though that might well have something to do with how I went about it.) What have I got to show for it? Nothing? Then change the gameplan. Easier said then done, of course, since you hardly ever teach an old dog new tricks, but I believe I still have some adaptability left in me! I just hope I won’t overdo it and turn into an asshole.

.: Gone Back to Kung Fu
Yesterday, I went back to Kung Fu for the first time since I injured my shoulder. My facination with Kung Fu has definitely dried up, perhaps because my fascination for purer combative arts took over. The exercise is still enjoyable enough, but I can’t take it seriously anymore. Looking back, I probably lost the love for it quite some time ago, but I was stubborn and kept plugging away. Now that I view it as a way to keep active, and as a way to maintain some flexibility (necessary for BJJ!) I am as much more at peace with it. As an exercise it I still not even a fraction as soul-destroying as hanging out in the gym is.

So yeah, I might have lost the passion and love for it, but it still beats the alternatives. Well, perhaps I will take up boxing as an aside to the BJJ, but that’s something to contemplate. Swimming is still an option, if I can find a good time to go — which is hard not living in Amsterdam anymore. So BJJ it’ll remain, and perhaps I will pick up a few classes of gi-BJJ soon, too.

I recently found another Jiu Jitsu motivational poster. I already had this one, which I found hilarious due to the fact that it portrays Wanderlei “The Axe-Murderer” Silva and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, both in their prime. And the one below is awesome because, well, because. :)

I have opened a Twitter account, though not to actually update any of you with the banalities and trivial things of my every day existence — no, I have the Facebook status for that, which I just can’t get into either — but rather just to stay informed about the banalities of others. It seems like the more accessible the Internet becomes, the microscopic the level of detail we share becomes. From sharing research data in the eighties, we went to sharing and maintaining personal websites in the nineties. Now we’ve gone to sharing our day to day thoughts with the introduction of one of the most horrible, over-marketed, sloganised concepts ever attached to a good piece of scripting; Web 2.0. And new we are getting to a point where hour-to-hour (and with some obsessed individuals, even minute-to-minute) updates are in demand. “It’s like sending an SMS to the world,” someone told me. I think regular SMS is a pain in the arse, considering the device used will allow you to talk to the person instead of sending a 140 character message, which is clearly superior technology. So unless you can’t talk or hear, are indisposed, or in a loud place, it seems like talking is a clearer, and often faster way to convey your message. Anyway, side-rant over, back to Twitter. An SMS to the world just doesn’t seem at all appealing to me. To use Facebook status messages as an example, some people, like Moulsari, are intelligent and creative enough to turn those messages into a curiosity provoking blurbs, where she barely gives you any real info and still keeps you entertained. I am not gifted in that way, and neither are many others, so all of our messages just read like a list of trivialities.

Mark probably said it best yesterday, (on Twitter, ironically) when he said; “Realizing that I don’t feel self-important enough to keep telling people what I do every minute of the damn day. Twitter is idiotic.”

I swear, whoever came up with AJAX staat waarschijnlijk met het schaamrood op zijn kaken.