Fighting your double

Work is sometimes a little more fun than it ought to be.


Lab assistant: "Can you add a pregnancy test to ____?"

Kitsune: "I just did a preg test on that patient about half an hour ago."

LA: "Well, the nurse just called and asked me to do one."

K: "Well, she wasn't pregnant thirty minutes ago. Heeeeey, what's going on in the Urgent Care? What are you guys doin' down there tonight??"

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Friday FOD: Plum Blossom Fist

Saturday FOD: Frolic Of the Five Animals

Sunday FOD: Sil Lum Dao

I'll admit I was not feeling much inspiration for my creative writing challenge assignment, since I had been assigned to write my own fighter's defeat. Last night I sat down to it with a "let's get this chore done," air- but I managed to turn it around. I replaced one character with a shapeshifter assassin. I had him kill somebody else's character, and frame yet another writer's character for the murder. I took someone else's tertiary loan-shark/crooked fight promoter character and had him fixing a bunch of the fights- including bribing my own character to throw his match. I had someone else's character murder him before he could deliver the payouts. Then I offed a whole swath of other people, including my own losing round-one character as well as the host of the tournament. The rules of the project said "no killing" but I interpreted that loosely to mean "no killing the opponent you are fighting in the match". I was fiendishly pleased with the end result. We'll see what the other writers make of it. I hope they run with it!

Monday FOD: Five Animals (standard version only)

Tues FOD: Southern Mantis

Have been researching ancient China, and Nepal folklore, for my WIP. I had to make a few changes (I can't have bobcats in my environment, nor should my characters be eating corn and potato products). It's way more than coincidence, though, how many things I got right- when I was just tossing in random things I wanted and not even *trying* to get the history/geography/culture/etc "right". Your multicultural educational trivia moment of the day: Nepal is the only country whose flag is not rectangular. They also have their new year holiday on my birthday. Hmmmm.

Another thing- Karen Wehrstein is playing with some new graphics on her weblit page, and one of her main characters is brandishing a pair of khukri! Almost fell out of my chair when I saw it.

Saw on the Gracie Barra Seattle site that Vanessa got her blue belt (Whoo-hoo, another female colored belt!) and Jamie got his brown belt!


Thursday: Heigh ho, it's 4am. My unhappy corporeal form usually wakes me up early around FIVE. I hope this isn't a new pattern. I feel like that guy in "Insomnia" by Stephen King. Maybe I'll start to see some interesting ghosts and stuff soon.


Friday: 132.5

Friday lunchtime BJJ GB Seattle. Jimmy Lee was wearing a plain white belt. I asked him if he had been demoted or was just sandbagging; he said he was sandbagging. Later in the class, he was yelling during a break for all of us slackers to get back on the mat- at which point I yelled back that he was pretty mouthy for a white belt!

Spider guard pass: Keep knees bent and weight back. Grab inside of pantlegs at shins. Go to the side (keep your knee in to block opponent from messing with your legs), LET GO OF PANTLEG as you do Wing Chun swirly-hand motion to the outside of the pantleg. (It was amazing how many of us didn't want to let go of that pantleg.) Now the hook is dislodged, so you can press the leg to the mat. Go to the other side and repeat (do not release the first leg). Now get the heck out of this position before he sticks his spider-legs right back in there.

Opponent has spider guard, and sticks hir left leg behind your knee for DLR. Keep your pantleg grips. Step forward with your right leg (to the outside of opponent's leg and body) and posture up violently so that opponent's spider guard leg is now sticking straight up. This causes the power of your entire body to shed the DLR hook, and you are now totally invading your opponent's personal space, and are already pretty much all passed except for the shoutin'. The arms were a little tricky, though. Rodrigo had to come over and re-demo it for my partner and me a couple of times. Your RIGHT arm- the one not involved with the opponent's straight leg- crosses across your chest and you use that elbow to press down the opponent into a little crushed package as you descend. DO NOT LET GO OF THE PANTLEG ON THAT RIGHT SIDE!! (Why do I do this? I always let go of the pantleg when I'm *NOT* supposed to, and fail to do so when I *AM* supposed to.) Now grab the lapel with that same hand. Your left knee drops right behind the opponent's back, all nice and tight.

Exhaustive rounds of positional training from spider guard. I was working with a little blue belt (125lb). We seemed fairly evenly matched.

I skipped round one of sparring, round two was with that same guy. We kept going long after everyone else had left, musta been close to an hour. We were indeed quite evenly matched, and it was fun. I was on top a lot, but part of that was the extra eight pounds (of FAT, mind you) I had on him. I noticed that many of the less effective things he was doing are some of the same ineffective things I do. Someone on Jiu Jitsu Forums brought up the topic of being able to fight your exact double, and how educational that would be. This was educational in that way. I hope I get to work with him more.

His sub defense was good; I managed to get one choke in all that time, and it was from such a weird position that both of us were sure it wasn't going to work. By about 30 min in, we were both literally stumbling with exhaustion, but that was good because it forced us to be technical. I think we kept going so long partly because we wanted SOMEBODY to get subbed, but he finally had to bail due to time constraints.