I Want This Shirt

That's the simple, uncomplicated, uncomfortable truth.

Shirt Text:

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

Fighting & Women

I spend a lot of my time thinking about fighting, and a lot of my time thinking about the women in my life, so it is only natural that every now and again these two themes combine and I begin thinking about women and fighting.

Most women are not attracted to the martial arts, and they are especially not attracted to what I refer to as "functional" martial arts. Functional arts being those that require you to sweat, get hit, and generally learn to fight. I'd love to think that one day women will learn to fight the same as their male counterparts and we will somehow shed this perception that women are weaker, frailer beings and shouldn't know how to fight, shouldn't have to fight.

I train in Judo and Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu, both functional arts, both require me to sweat, struggle, fight. There are two women in my Judo club, none in my BJJ club. Why? Because women almost as a rule do not think about fighting. One day, or a couple hour long, "self defense" classes are rampant spreading a false sense of security and doing little to keep those that take them safe.

I love watching a woman fight. I love watching the speed and agility that women seem to have naturally and I love knowing that at least there is one woman who knows how to defend herself if the need should arise.

I know I've said it before, and I know I'll say it again, but women need to get hit. Women need to know what it's like to have a larger, stronger, resisting opponent doing his or her best to cause them harm and once they know what it's like they need to know what to do about it, and hopefully how to prevent it.

So I Guess I'm Wrong...

I wasn't going to write this, I sat on it for almost a week. I could see no good coming from giving it the semi-permanence of text.

I volunteered for the New York Biathlon club as their webmaster. I did this because my father asked me to. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, I had looked at the old site and what I saw wasn't pretty. It wasn't bad, but it could be better.

That was what I did wrong.

I thought it could be better, and I got bit. I knew I could do better, and I set out to do just that. I looked at the layout, and simplified it, providing a streamlined look that loads fast and is easy to update. I then switched from HTML to PHP, looking for a dynamic solution, looking for ways to minimize the time required to update the individual pages. I then thought of the possibility of moving away from a website to a content management solution, a framework that would allow the users to edit the web page directly. My original thought was flat files, but if I'm going to do flat files why not have a database backed system? So it grows..

There had always been issues with the existing web master, he's controlling to a fault. In a lot of cases he doesn't keep the site updated, and he really doesn't know how to do things better then he currently is, but in his defense he is a chemist, not a code monkey. But he got the ball rolling, he got the site up and maintained it on his own in an environment I rapidly learned was quite chaotic and unorganized.

Then I went to the meeting.

I expected resistance from the organization as a whole. What I got was resistance from my father, the very man who brought me in to do a better job. I'm not going to bother with details of the meeting as the details don't honestly matter. All I'm going to say is there is something terribly sad about telling your father to stop berating a man he claims to be his friend, a man who has done a job to the very best of his ability. I was very careful not to point fingers, I was very careful not to alienate anyone because it simply would have done no good. My father had no such reservations.

I felt like I was dealing with a child who was bound and determined to throw a tantrum. It was sad to watch, and I was embarrassed for him. Not that he saw it, or would have cared if he did.

Musing on my Waistline

I've been overweight my entire life. I've always known how to loose weight, the mechanics of it, yet every time something just got in the way. Loosing weight is not complicated and it's certainly not rocket science. Loosing weight is as simply as making sure that you eat fewer calories then you use. I would be shocked if anyone did not know this.

Yet as I walk through the grocery store what do I find? Isles filled with weight loss aides, pills, bottles, shakes, any product under the sun to try and circumvent that simple mathematical truth. Calories in < Calories out = Weight loss.

I've tried to loose weight at least a dozen times. I've tried Weight Watchers, I've tried food replacement, I've tried a medically managed wight loss program and I'm tried to just "eat better". I'm still fat. I'm currently using FitDay and It's slowly working.

Let's look at our options shall we?

Weight Watchers: When I was on Weight Watchers I lost weight. However, once I was off weight watchers I gained it right back. Weight Watchers programs run off Points, these Points add a layer of abstraction on what should be a trivial subject. Points hide the fact that fiber and protein are good, carbs and sugars not so good. Weight Watchers doesn't really teach you to be cognizant of what your eating and why. However, Weight Watchers works for some people, a lot of people, just not me.

Weight Watchers makes that simple equation above more complicated then it needs to be.

Food Replacement/Medically Managed Weight loss: I'm going to keep this section brief as in a lot of ways it mirrors my concerns with Weight Watchers adding of course the huge cost of involving a doctor in anything. Food replacement is worse then Weight Watchers as it doesn't even give you the understanding of the protein/fiber good carbs/sugar bad that Weight Watchers gives you. Medically managed weight loss is a scam.

Just "eating better": this diet, also known as the "Watching what I'm eating" and "I'm exercising more" diet is the most common. It also simply does not work. Without a fundamental understanding of what is going in your mouth you can not eat better. It's just not possible. Eating five chicken nuggets instead of ten is a start but it's hardly going to turn you into the hard bodied god you so long to be.

So what do we do? What, in my opinion, works?

Simple, uncomplicated, calorie counting.

I first started to go down this route when The Missus was diagnosed with high blood pressure. She had to start watching her sodium. Everything I picked up off the store shelves had to be scrutinized, every label, every can, bag, parcel, Everything. It was not a quick process. We slowly adapted to a low sodium lifestyle. But something more important had occurred. I had begun looking, really looking, at what I was eating. What I saw bothered me. I did not think I was eating poorly, I was exercising, yet I was still slowly gaining weight.

So, I looked for help. What help I found was FitDay.com it's nothing fancy, and best of all it's free. All the site does is count calories. I was forced to look at what I was eating, impartially, as a column of numbers. If that column of numbers added up to a higher total then I was burning in a day I knew I was going to gain weight. if that column added up to less then what I burned I knew I was going to loose weight. It wasn't complicated, no points to track, just the simple uncomplicated mathematical truth of calories in calories out = weight loss.

Now, it doesn't have to be FitDay. The Missus is using a journal, simple pen and paper, and for her that works. I prefer the website. At the end of the day were both loosing weight, and as opposed to Weight Watchers, Medical programs, food replacement, and all the rest I know know what is going into my mouth. I'm looking for alternatives and day by day I'm loosing weight.

Kids These Days....

I saw this spoof of a Calvin and Hobbes comic and felt that it expressed my feelings on what exactly is wrong with our society more succinctly then I ever could.



I'm not going to speak to the message, anyone who has ever read Calvin and Hobbes the message should be clear enough. I only want to try and convey the sorrow I felt reading that. It hits far too close to home for comfort. I was never medicated and I guess I never did get around to thanking my mother for that. I guess I should. Thanks mom for letting me be a kid.

Whistles

I read a blog post yesterday. I can't find it today, I tried looking, checked my history, checked all my usual haunts online and simply can not find it.

It wasn't anything huge or epic or awesome, but it made me think. In fact I was still thinking about it hours later and when I realized that I had to ask myself why. Let me recount the story to the best of my ability.

There was a woman, a nurse if my memory serves me, and she had some ex-boyfriend issues. She asked her friends for advice and one of her friends, the person who's blog I read this on, suggested she get a gun and carry concealed. Her other friends suggested a rape whistle. Several weeks later she was found beaten to death in the parking lot, rape whistle still between her teeth, filled with blood. She blew it till she died and it did her absolutely no good.

I don't know if the story as it was related is true. neither do I care. Details don't matter, but the moral of the story does matter.

A few weeks ago The Missus asked me why I had a sudden interest in guns and I couldn't think of a good answer. I knew why, sorta, but I couldn't articulate what I was thinking, what I was feeling.

I stood outside an IHOP several months ago and watched a man drag his girlfriend out of the restaurant by her hair, spend minutes in the parking lot yelling at her, then hit her and toss her in a car before driving off. I stood there, and watched. I stood there because I had called 911, and the cops were on their way. They arrived minutes too late. Like always.

I ran that night through my mind a number of times, should I have fought, should I have intervened, what if... what if.... what if. At the end of the day I know that my skills might have kept me alive in a fight, he might not have a knife, he might not have a gun, it might have been ok. or it might not.

Let's go back to the nurse in the parking lot. She chose to not arm herself, to not be able to defend herself, to accept that if she were attacked the best she could hope for was someone else to willingly intervene on her behalf, and save her. This decision cost her dearly. It cost her her life. Had I been there, would I have intervened? I didn't in the IHOP parking lot and I'm trained to fight, I know how to strike, throw and grapple yet I did not intervene. neither did anyone else in that parking lot that night.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is I have an interest in guns, I want those around me to have an interest in guns, so if something should happen, if I need that weapon it's there. I want to know that those in my life who matter to me don't resort to a whistle. I want to know that if I ever have another chance to get it right.... that I won't stand there scared to fight, that I would do what was needed.

I'm a sheep, all be it a sheep with eyes open, I don't want to be a sheep any more.