Happy Thanksgiving!

We got snow last night! After a home-made Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday, Linda and I jumped into the hot tub for an hour or two and enjoyed the snowfall. It was a perfect way to start the holiday season!

Enjoy the holidays! Try and avoid the anime.



Pikachu terrorizes New York City


-Ed

Charity

Warning

If the word bitch is offensive to you, please do not read this blog entry, as there are several instances of the word bitch in the entry. If the word bitch is not offensive to you, please continue reading this blog entry. Thank you for taking the time to read this preamble warning of the word bitch used in this blog and thus avoiding any bitching surrounding the use of bitch in this bitchin' blog.


Now that that is out of the way...

I usually don't make any kind of charitable activity public, as doing so (in my opinion) takes away from any personal satisfaction I get from doing it. Helping others is an intensely personal experience and doesn't deserve the dilution inherent in its retelling. At least for me. Well, that and I don't do enough such activity to talk about it regularly. However, I was recounting this particular experience to a friend the other day and the hilarity of it reduced him to tears.

As he was crying and thanking me -- in advance -- for the spontaneous fits of laughter that he will now experience over the next several weeks, I remember thinking: this is probably worth a blog entry. So, here it is.

The story about to be told is both true and unexaggerated which, for me, is really saying something.

---

Linda and I used to go the mass at the St. Jude Shrine in Baltimore City every Sunday. We enjoy the services there and this was the shrine where my father had recovered his faith in the months before he passed away -- leaving me feeling a strong connection to the place. On occasion, panhandlers would be waiting outside of church asking for money -- clearly relying on the guilt of people right after mass.

I have no problem with helping people out, and the little bit of help that $5 could give them is nothing to me, financially. I've learned, however, to never give someone money -- you just don't know where it will go. So, I have a standing offer to those who come and ask me for cash: I won't give you cash, but I will take you someplace and buy you some food. You'd be surprised how many people have no interest in such an offer.

But on one particular day there was one particular panhandler who readily accepted that offer. He was hungry, he said. Very hungry. He hadn't eaten in days -- and he was rail thin to prove it. He was missing at least 5 or 6 of his front upper teeth and we walked a few block to an ice-cream place. He liked ice-cream because it was soft and easy to chew given his dental predicament.

So, Linda and I walked with this man into the store, and I bought him a large amount of ice cream. The person behind the counter was clearly not happy to have such a dirty guy in his shop, but tolerated it because he was "with us". So, we paid, and walked out of the shop, with the guy behind us. He turned to walk down the street, and we turned to walk back to the church parking lot. Before he left, he turned to us to thank us for this seemingly simple gift:

PanHandler:: I'm so hungry. Thank you.
Ed: Your welcome. It is the least we could do.
PanHandler: I hadn't eaten in two days.
Ed:Well, enjoy it.

As we started to walk away, the man must have realized that he hadn't yet thanked Linda. We had just given him his first food in two days, and he snubbed thanking my wife. He was quick to rectify that situation:

PanHandler: Sir!
Ed: Yes??
PanHandler: Thank your bitch, too.
Ed: huh?
PanHandler: Thank you, and thank your bitch.
Then, looking directly at Linda, and will all the sincerity in the world...
PanHandler: Thank you, bitch.

And with that he smiled and waved and walked on down the street, his gratitude clearly expressed.

Whoever said "giving is its own reward" sure knew what they were talking about!

-Ed

My Winter Look

I have a "winter" look that I developed last year, including a wool cap and long wool jacket. I picked it up last year while doing some Christmas shopping at the Haggerstowne outlets. Yes: I went Christmas shopping at a series of outlets and walked away having just bought things for myself.

So, I enjoy the cap and jacket -- it makes me look studiously eccentric:




This was a quick snapshot from our "friend thanksgiving" (blog entry coming). It's always nice when you try a new look and people notice it on you. For example, I had the following conversation a while ago, with a good friend of mine:

Friend: What's up, man?
Ed: Hey, how ya doin'?
Friend: What's with the hat?
Ed: It's my new look.
Friend: Ok, Re-run.
Ed: Re-run?
Friend: Re-run.



re-run?!?!


Ed: That's cold, man. Real cold.
Friend: Sorry, re-run.

-Ed

ps. What package was I carrying? A birthday present for a friend of mine:



Mega-zooka from ThinkGeek


So, yes, even though the hat lends itself to a studious look, I am still a geek at heart.

The Christmas Truce

Something very interesting happened on December 25th, 1914 -- an event called the World War I Christmas Truce. What was the World War I Christmas Truce??

British and German soldiers came out of their bunkers on Christmas, sang Christmas carols together, gave each other cigarettes, and played a few games of soccer in the "No Man's Land" between the British and German lines.




Alfred Anderson, the last known survivor of that miracle, died today at the age of 109.
The story of his passing is here.

Try typing "Christmas Truce" into google.

You'll find articles from
"First World War.com
The BBC
Snopes
History1900s.com

And a few thousand more.

-Ed

Question

I'm 33 for a moment
Still the man, but you see I'm a they
A kid on the way
A family on my mind
-Five For Fighting, 100 Years

If you hit your mid-life crisis at 31 does that mean you are only going to live to be 62?

-Ed

Hit Me

This blog entry is either about violence or BlackJack... maybe... violent blackjack.

I've been doing a certain style of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu for about 8 years now. I've got the black belt. I help teach classes. I try and walk a tight rope between trying to keep the training applicable and trying not to scare off new students with a high injury rate or "machismo" attitude.

Give an example of how I walk this tightrope? Sure.

I wanted to spar with someone who had never really sparred before. I gave him a set of gloves, he was nervous -- I'm bigger than he is. So, I give him the standard instructions:

Just try and hit me. I'll just block and parry and work to "move in" on you. We'll work up to more contact later.

He nods, and takes a slow-motion punch at an area about 2 feet from my head. I'm not sure if he was trying to hit me, or give me some sort of weird "props". This clearly was not going to work -- dodging punches that would never connect, and would never hurt if they did, is not a good way to sharpen skills. So, I try a new teaching technique. I call it the "Ed Face Method". Let me demonstrate it to you:

Ed:Let's try something different. I'm going to stand here, and I want you to punch me in the face.
Guy:Ok. bump
Ed:Good, we have some contact, but I want you to hit me a little harder, please.
Guy:Um.. ok.. bump
Ed:Yes. Better, but, there is alot of padding on that glove, don't be afraid to swing it. Try again, and try it a little harder.
Guy:Are you sure? Ok... bump
Ed: Harder.
Guy: bump
Ed:Harder.
Guy: bump
Ed:Hit me harder or I will put you on the ground so fast you won't get up until next Tuesday.
Guy: thwack
Ed: Ouch. good. Let's start the sparring over, and hit like that from now on.

At the time, I was happy that I was able to help this person "let go" a little bit and work in some more "alive" training. It wasn't until I got home and recounted the events of the day that I wondered...what on earth is wrong with me?

I'm a 31 year old man that just made some 20 year old kid punch him in the face repeatedly. That's my hobby -- having college kids punch me. In High School that was called bullying and we tried to avoid it!

I'm trying to find a decent picture of some of the kind of abuse we do several times a week. This throw looks fairly indicative of the kind of abuse we take:

Thank you, google images

Now, drop like that 50 times in 2 hours and you start to wonder, on the way home to pop the Advil, why this whole business isn't left up to teenagers. I'd be much obliged to understand, from anyone, why anyone in the arts does this to themselves. I've been scratching my head for 8 years on that one.

-Ed

Eternal students

I was looking through some e-mails from several years ago. There was one thing I wrote to someone a few years back which sticks with me today:

There are larger swells on the horizon and we've all some growing to do.



Not sure where that stands on the mixed-metaphor scale, but it is something I find has a nice rhythm to it.

It is a phrase that I whisper to myself when I am in danger of forgetting that the day I stop learning/improving will be the day that I die.


-Ed

ps. Once again, thank you, google images!

pps. Apparently, I think of myself as a puffin.

Visual Aids

I've decided that looking at huge swaths of text that I have written is probably extremely boring to the average peruser of this blog. As I am, most probably, the largest peruser of this blog, I can safely make that statement.

So I try and chop up the English a little bit with pictures that I grab from google. I think it helps keep things interesting. At the very least, it makes it less of a burden for me to have to paint a picture using just my rudimentary writing skills.

For example, were I to write about... I dunno... Alaskan snow dogs, I could find something appropriate pretty quickly:




Alternatively, were I pushing some fiction involving.. umm.. an invasion of dinosaurs from outer space, google would help me there, too:





In fact, images.google.com has become a sort of barometer for my posts: when I have done or thought something so completely unique that I cannot represent its parts as visual snippets from google, then I will know, unconditionally, that I have hit pure

Welcome to my Annals

First things first: If you stumbled across this blog entry because its title happened to coincide with something you mis-typed into a web search engine... move along there is certainly nothing to see here.

Now, back to my annals...

I've tried to keep this blog centered on things that are weighing heavily on my mind at any one time or another. This is, of course, the catharsis that predicates the existence of this blog. but, many times I am reminded of some funny thing that I have done in the past and feel that this blog is as good a place as any to chronical my memoried adventures before the creeping dementia overtakes them.

Chronicle, the first: (thanks Dre)

A very good friend of mine is having a birthday party this weekend -- a birthday party that Linda and I will not be able to attend. In the invitation for this event he stipulated no gifts, please. As we all get older presence is far more important than presents -- a powerfully fond birthday memory is far greater than the latest playstation game or sock monkey.

Thinking of this particular friend, and parties, and gifts in general, I was reminded of another party that this person threw, many years ago: the house-warming for his condominium.

Now, i was very young then. And everyone knows that, as a species, we are all confoundedly dense until we turn 30 at which point wisdom and its accompanying depression set in like wild wolves. But I digress.. In my youthful density I was not aware of the social protocol of bearing gifts to help warm the condominium.



--What one should bring to a housewarming--


And I remained blissfully unaware of this social obligation until someone announced let the gift-giving begin! At the allotted time I watched -- with Hitchcockian horror -- as friend after friend pulled from someplace or another an endless supply of brightly wrapped presents. Boxes and bags and bows and ribbons gushed forth from the "company at large". Plowed back by the generosity assault I was pushed into a corner and there I sat -- staring mightily at my toes waiting for the sounds of crinkling, ripping paper to ebb.


--The cacophany of gifts--

As the presents were absorbed a rather sizeable pile of wrapping paper grew very near the guest of honor. Thinking quickly, I found a way to redeem myself as a house-warmer-of-merit. I announced, to no one in particular, that I was going to throw away the wrapping paper. Working quickly, I purloined several large sheets of the stuff, scotch tape still attached.

On my way to the kitchen (where the garbage can was located) I managed to secretly lift 3-4 CDs from my friend's CD rack. On the way back, I ducked into the bathroom.


-- Purloined CDs --


Quickly, I turned on the fan to disguise the crinkling sounds as I -- using the remains of the wrapping paper from previous gifts -- proceeded to wrap up the CDs of his that I stole from his CD rack. The paper, being from larger gifts, went around the jewel cases readily. A few courtesy flushes later, and I bounded from the bathroom with a stack of gifts and a bow. I was a new man, a contributing member of the house-warming society.

Disaster was narrowly averted.

So I handed my friend the list of gifts, and the exchange went something like this:

Ed: Happy Housewarming!
Friend: Wow! Ed, that's very generous. You didn't have to get me all this!
Ed: It was nothing. Believe me.
Friend: unwrap Wow! I love this band, but, I already have their CD.
Ed: Wow. I guess we just have similar taste in music.
Friend: unwrap Wow! I love this band, but, I already have their CD.
Ed: Wow. I guess we just have similar taste in music.
Friend: unwrap Wow! I love this band, but, I already have their CD.
Ed: Wow. I guess we just have similar taste in music.
Friend: unwrap Wow! I love this band, but, I already have their CD.
Ed: Wow. I guess we just have similar taste in music.
Friend: I guess so! That's amazing! I was just listening to this CD today! NO WAY! You'll never believe this, but my CD has this same crack in the jewel case. That's hysterical.
Ed: awkward silence
Friend:Hey, wait a minute. None of these CDs are shrink-wrapped.
Ed: crickets.... crickets...
Friend: These are my CD's, aren't they?

At which point, I had to point out to my friend that the gift I gave him for his housewarming was, indeed, the gift of humor. And, hopefully, I've given you all the same gift. So Happy Birthday! Feel free to visit this site whenever you feed that I owe you something.

8)

-Ed

What is the sound of no keys typing?

OK.. so I promised myself that my next post would be about martial arts. And you know what? I've been avoiding posting about it like the plague. Which, of course, means that I really, desperately should be posting about it.

I take a beating in my martial arts class, and I'm not young. I also hand out beatings in my martial arts class, but everyone else is young. 8| Trying to make sense of controlled violence when one is not trying to train to be a professional fighter is something that, to date, has escaped me. But for some reason, I love to be there.

Now that's about as deep as a wading pool, but its a start for me, and since this blog is supposedly all about making me think about things I wouldn't otherwise think about, I'll take it as a good start.

-Ed

Hat Rack

Was skimming CNN and came across this article.

Apparently, referring to graffiti artists, the mayor of Las Vegas on a tv talk show said "I'm saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb... that may be the right thing to do."

To which another panelist on the same TV show suggested that the mayor should "use his head for something other than a hat rack."

Maybe it's just a dated joke, but I thought that was pretty darn funny. I can't wait for someone wearing a hat to say something stupid to me. How long could that possibly take?

-Ed

Still Alive

And I promise more witty commentary shortly. For now, it is almost midnight and I am half-way through a viscious problem set which will be keeping me up for the next several hours -- all the while wondering why on earth I decided to pursue higher education.

Note to self, the next blog entry should contain some mention of why my back, fingers, neck and shoulders hurt... I spent 2 hours today being a tackling dummy.

-Ed