Scott Bush

On Sat­ur­day I, along with two oth­ers, tested for my shichikyu (sev­enth rank) belt in Kei Shin Kan karate at our dojo, North­west Mar­tial Arts in Both­ell. It was both fun and stress­ful, despite my feel­ing of pre­pared­ness. But, I sup­pose it wouldn’t be much of a test if not for the men­tal stress of preparation.

The details of the tech­niques I and my fel­low karatekas had to demon­strate are here if you’re inter­ested. In short, we demon­strated five blocks, three kicks, and one strike: a sim­ple lunge punch. We also per­formed one kata (heian shodan), which is a sequence of coor­di­nated strikes, blocks, and stances designed to be prac­ticed solo. It’s the phys­i­cal equiv­a­lent of a solil­o­quy: an expres­sion of your skills per­formed against oppo­nents who aren’t there. Any­one who ques­tions the effi­cacy of prac­tic­ing a set of rote tech­niques in a pat­tern hasn’t seen it done well. Watch­ing a focused prac­ti­tioner per­form pre­cise, quick, pow­er­ful, and grace­ful tech­niques punc­tu­ated by fierce kiyas would dis­suade all but the most stub­born from attack­ing them.

But I digress. Our sen­seis—one karate, one aikido (an art we also practice)—and another black-belt stu­dent judged us; our test was video taped as well. Review­ing that tape and spot­ting the mul­ti­tude of small errors is not an expe­ri­ence I rel­ish, but I’m sure it will be helpful.

Because there were so few of us testing—and for the sake of the audi­ence of fam­ily and friends in attendance—our test included some out-of-the-box com­po­nents as well. One stu­dent was asked to per­form heian shodan in reverse; another to do it with his eyes closed. My task was to per­form it “left handed,” which meant to do a mirror-image: turn to the right first instead of to the left, and so on. I did it sur­pris­ingly well (maybe because I switched my mou­s­ing hand to the left six weeks ago at work?).

Where I didn’t shine was the expla­na­tion of prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions from the kata. I explained how one motion could be used in a fight, but when asked for another I stum­bled through a poor demon­stra­tion of how a knife-hand block could be turned into a throw. I did man­age to hold my own against one of the other stu­dents test­ing when she was asked to throw me. She is a second-degree black belt in jujitsu, so the fact I man­aged to be thrown only two out of four times was a feat. Later, of course, she told me she was going easy on me—and I believe it!

As this is our first test, our belts will not change. Our gis will remain held closed with belts as white as they are. I’m fine with that. The test was an expres­sion of what we’ve learned from our train­ing, not a way to prove to oth­ers we’re any bet­ter than any­one else.

Last week­end I had the oppor­tu­nity to check out JJ Abrams’ mon­ster flick Clover­field. There’s a ton that can be said (and has been said) about this unique film. I won’t try to recre­ate all that here, but I feel it does war­rant a bit of a review. (Spoiler alert… I’m talk­ing about the film so you may want to read this after you’ve seen it just in case I reveal too much for your taste.)

The good

In a word: I liked it. I actu­ally thought I wouldn’t because I expected the camcorder-style film­ing to ruin the expe­ri­ence. (I couldn’t stand the fight scenes in the Borne movies—the hand-held film­ing style was jumpy, too close, and nau­se­at­ing; Clover­field promised to amplify this effect.) Though some peo­ple found it to be the case, sur­pris­ingly I thought it worked. Here’s a hint: sit in the back of the the­atre so it’s not overwhelming.

What I found most enjoy­able was its Love­craft­ian approach to the mon­ster. (If you’re not famil­iar with HP Love­craft’s fic­tion, I sug­gest you read At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness and The Case of Charles Dex­ter Ward, and then dive into his other sto­ries.) By “Love­craft­ian,” I mean that you get very lit­tle direct expo­sure to the hor­ror; much of what you learn is second-hand or tan­gen­tial infor­ma­tion. In Clover­field, this can been seen when the char­ac­ters watch the may­hem occur­ring on the streets out­side on a TV in an elec­tron­ics store. Another exam­ple is the mil­i­tary per­son­nel telling them what lit­tle they know about the crea­ture except that “It’s win­ning,” a par­tic­u­larly good bit of fear-inspiring dia­log. Oh, and what hap­pens to the woman who got bit… that behind-the-sheet sil­hou­ette film­ing was very effective.

In the early stages of the movie, you get only glimpses of the mon­ster. A leg here, a bit of tail there. It’s quite sus­pens­ful. A par­tic­u­larly good sequence comes when the group of char­ac­ters are run­ning along a street one block over from the mon­ster. The char­ac­ter with the cam­era keeps swing­ing the lens from what’s in front of him to the side as he runs, giv­ing us glimpses of the beasts legs (includ­ing an excel­lent tank-smashing stomp). Of course, as the movie draws closer to a “con­clu­sion” the mon­ster gets more screen time. It’s well done, indeed. It’s size and unstop­pable­ness is clearly shown from the heli­copter scene, when the crea­ture can be seen receiv­ing the full might of the US air force.

What cinched it for me: the sub­way scene. Watch­ing the mon­ster­lings attack the group in the dark through the camera’s night vision was so intense and, well, real that I found myself grip­ping my seat’s han­drests and shak­ing with adren­a­line. That was worth the price of admis­sion right there.

Com­par­isons should and will be made with the Korean mon­ster film The Host, which I saw and loved. That movie’s mon­ster had more screen time, was smaller, and had a more in-depth back story. Both films are dri­ven more by char­ac­ters than by their respec­tive maraud­ing crea­tures. They’re dif­fer­ent enough to com­pli­cate com­par­isons, but if you like Clover­field you should see its Korean equiv­a­lent. (And don’t tell me you can’t read sub­ti­tles; if you can suf­fer through Clover­field’s handy-cam film­ing, you can read some Eng­lish lines on a steady screen.)

The bad

So, you get that I liked it. Doesn’t mean I can’t find areas to com­plain about. First, the cam­era… seven hours pass on film, we learn at the end of the movie. There were very few dis­cernible times when the cam­era went off, but no cam­corder can record that long—not to men­tion the movie’s only 85 min­utes. I sup­pose this is para­dox is a tes­ta­ment to Abram’s edit­ing skills? And hon­estly, who would con­tinue to film when run­ning for his life? I don’t care how intre­pid you are; you will drop or at least put down the cam­era when mon­strous crea­tures are chas­ing you through a sub­way tunnel.

And Clover­field suf­fers greatly from “stu­pid movie char­ac­ter” syn­drome. The plot revolves pri­mar­ily around a small group going to res­cue the main character’s ex-girlfriend. It’s totally unre­al­is­tic, from the first phone call he receives from her to the impos­si­bil­ity of reach­ing her atop her destroyed apart­ment building—and down again. Oh well… some­thing was needed to drive the story ahead. It just seemed so glar­ingly unreal that these peo­ple would do what the did in the face of such chaos.

Let’s hope Abrams does as good a job with the upcom­ing Star Trek pre­quel film.

File this post under “gram­mat­i­cal rants,” which I know are a favorite for every­one. Irre­gard­less… this lit­tle gem of a redun­dant, rep­e­ti­tious, and repet­i­tive word reared its ugly head twice in con­texts where it just doesn’t belong. I must draw the line here!

First, I read it in an aikido book. There it was, page 241, star­ing me in the face. How’d that slip by an editor?

Then, I heard it in a pre­sen­ta­tion by an exec­u­tive at my com­pany. He’s a smart guy… why’d that slip into his lexicon?

(more…)

First, a def­i­n­i­tion: LOL­cats are pho­tos of cats in cute/funny sit­u­a­tions that have been made extra hilar­i­ous by the addi­tion of mis­spelled cap­tions, osten­si­bly writ­ten by the cat itself. These cap­tions add humor in a man­ner sim­i­lar to how bat­ter and deep fry­ing adds deli­cious­ness to cheese.

Sec­ond, a resource: LOL­cats are every­where on teh intar­webs, but you should start here: icanhascheezburger.com (don’t ques­tion the name; it’s just the way it is). You can also find other great ones here: LOLcat.com.

Third, a con­tra­dic­tion: Schrödinger’s cat. There’s a lot to this thought exper­i­ment, so read up on it. For this pic­ture to be hilar­i­ous, though, all you need to know are: a) LOL­cats are funny, b) the “Schrödinger’s cat” exper­i­ment sym­bol­ized his asser­tion that you can’t know the state quan­tum par­ti­cles are in, because the very act of mea­sure­ment changes them. He drew an anal­ogy with a cat in a box that may or may not be dead. (Sounds nuts, I know. Read the link above for details.)

Get­ting to the con­tra­dic­tion I men­tioned: pair­ing some­thing as inane and point­less as LOL­cat pho­tos with some­thing as heavy and dif­fi­cult to under­stand as quan­tum physics. Excellent.

Other LOL­cat “cat“egories you should be famil­iar with

Invis­i­ble things Cats in mid-air posi­tions that resem­ble doing some­thing with an invis­i­ble prop. See more.	In/On Ur stuff, doing Ur what­ever Cats in or on things who are eat­ing, watch­ing, break­ing, etc. your food, key­board, etc. See more.
HALP! Cats—especially kittens—getting them­selves into sit­u­a­tion from which they need your help. See more.

I came across this news in the Seat­tle Times yes­ter­day: China is ban­ning plas­tic bags (Other agen­cies have sto­ries, too). That’s excel­lent news. Sure, the ban doesn’t take effect until June, and it only bans the thinnest plas­tic bags (but thicker bags must be paid for; they won’t be free). But it’s a start. And with China’s grow­ing econ­omy and afflu­ence, nip­ping this envi­ron­men­tal blight in the bud is commendable.

I’ve always been astounded by the num­ber of plas­tic bags check­ers stuff gro­ceries into. Yes, a bro­ken bag dump­ing your eggs and spaghetti sauce onto the park­ing lot pave­ment is not good. But does it hap­pen often? No. But to ward off this threatannoy­ance, I’ve seen check­ers put four cans of food into a bag and start a new one. Ever see them put a loaf of bread into a bag of its own so as not to squish it? C’mon.

Trader Joe’s started a trend a few years bag: a $3 can­vas bag. The clien­tele at TJs is more pro­gres­sive than oth­ers and this reusable bag took off (we have three, and know many that have a half-dozen or more). Fred Myers and some other gro­cers are get­ting into the game, too—and that’s a pos­i­tive thing. As more and more stores offer these bags, the stigma of bring­ing your own bag will lessen. Isn’t it odd that we should feel awk­ward for bring­ing in a reusable bag? Doing so saves:

• the petro­leum of pro­duc­ing and trans­port­ing the bag
• that bag from a land­fill, recy­cling cen­ter, or (worse) pol­lut­ing our environment
• the retailer money by not using that bag

China joins Bagladesh and some “30 remote Alaskan vil­lages” that ban bags. Other coun­tries, like South Africa and Ire­land, tax these bags to dis­cour­age their use. The Chi­nese (at least those quoted in news sto­ries) seems to be pos­tive about the change:

“If we can reduce waste and save resources, then it’s good both for us and the whole world,” ~ col­lege stu­dent Xu Lixian

Let’s hope the rest of the coun­try joins San Francisco’s ban on thin plas­tic bags and that we’ll have as pos­i­tive response as Xu Lixian.

Because I work for the largest home­builder in the North­west (and I hap­pened to be in the right place at the right time), I scored two tick­ets to the obser­va­tion deck party at the Space Nee­dle: 520 feet up.

We had to miss most of our friends’ annual New Year’s soirée, which is a hard­ship because they’re Ital­ian and make some incred­i­ble grub. But we headed down­town around 8:30 and, mer­ci­fully, were in our park­ing spot (another ben­e­fit from my employer) by 9pm.

Some brief ban­ter with the ele­va­tor atten­dant (Jere­miah) about despite hav­ing to work on New Year’s, run­ning a glass-faced ele­va­tor up and down one of the world’s best-known land­marks was pretty cool.

It was pretty cool, despite the issues with the fire­works. Les­son learned for the next time I’m given free tick­ets to New Year’s at the Nee­dle: watch the pyrotech­nics from “Sky­Line lounge,” the ban­quet area much lower along the Nee­dle. From the O-deck 520 feet up, most of the fire­works were below us, and we only saw a few arcs. There were, how­ever, some spin­ners attached to the out­side of the O-deck that were very cool. (We also saw the spin­ner that “sim­ply fiz­zled for about a minute,” accord­ing to that PI story.)

A note about the food: my cowork­ers were enjoy­ing a six-course meal (free upgrade to their tick­ets by the Space Nee­dle) that we arrived to late to par­take in. But don’t cry for us, Argentina; we enjoyed the “hor d’oeuvres” served at the Sky­Line Lounge. And by “hor d’oeuvres” I mean baked salmon, chicken quar­ters, roast beef, sal­ads, ravi­oli, poached shrimp and pre-cracked crab legs on ice. Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t men­tion caviar! Yep, the lit­tle fish eggs that you hear so much about. (It was mostly salty and noth­ing I’d spend a ton of money on, personally).

We tried to get on cam­era while King 5 TV, our local NBC affil­i­ate, did their report from the O-deck. Our mild inter­est in wav­ing to the cam­era was noth­ing com­pared to the pre­pon­der­ance of obnox­iously drunk idiots clam­or­ing for a second’s screen­time. So all we have are some pho­tos and our sou­venir noise­mak­ers to prove that we enjoyed the event.