Friday, October 28, 2005

Fitzmas Cards!

Well, it's official. The first Fitzmas card went out:



So who's been naughty?



Looks like Dick, Karl, and Butt-monkey will just have to wait and see if
Fitzgerald has something special for them stuffed in the bottom of his Fitzmas sack.

In other news: Looks like everyone gets a pony.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

A Double Butt-Monkey!?!

We all know that the National Security Advisor Steven J Hadley is a butt-monkey. But now Laura over at War and Piece has a story up claiming that Mr. Hadley may actually be a double butt-monkey!

The mind boggles.

Kevin Drum Has Got To Stop Making Sense!

Kevin Drum says:
The plain reality is that the only way to solve Wal-Mart's problem is for the United States to adopt some form of universal healthcare. It eliminates the perverse incentives inherent in our current healthcare system, it dramatically reduces paperwork costs, it provides greater heathcare choice for nearly everyone, and it's pretty much the only chance we have of seriously reining in the skyrocketing healthcare costs that are currently borne disproportionately by private sector corporations.

When will Wal-Mart and the rest of the business community figure this out?

Word.

Gary. Al. Please. Say it with me once for practice:
Universal heathcare my little bitches!


Now get on the mike!

We out.

Humming. Reading. Wishing. Waiting for Gary...

So I just happened to be humming an old hit, and thinking about the first time I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show (last Tuesday, as it turns out) when I stumbled (via Atrios) on an editorial by Gary Hart.

Now I happen to thing of Gary Hart as a credit to his country who is unafraid to speak truth to power even as his country drifts, rudderless through a long dark night.

[Ed: This is the point where may people who know Mad start to roll their eyes and prepare the "Your are so fucking melodramatic!" speeches in their heads.]

But when I start thinking about Gary hart I inevitably wind up wishing I could vote for him. Preferably sometime soon. Unfortunately Gary Hart is a smart, qualified, democrat who once boned a hot chick on a boat. That makes him the political equivalent of a softball sized sphere of pure plutonium and only slightly less electable than tall, bearded men on dialysis whose' names rhymes with 'Ben sodden'.

Granted, Gary could run on a ticket with Al Gore, who has never boned a hot chick, That would help ease some of the voting publics 'democrat zipper' angst. But even wall to wall cable news coverage of Mrs. Gore's non-hotness and her stubborn refusal to put out on boats would not erase the 'smart' and 'qualified' stigma of a Gore/Hart ticket from the public zeitgeist. And I doubt that god himself could convince a certain 52% of America that 'smart' and 'qualified' were anything other than a pair of bullet ridden albatross corpses rotting around the 2008 democratic ticket's collective neck.

[Ed: To paraphrase from serendipity - Yes, Mad has read a poem. Try not to be shocked. ]

But I digress, back to the story .

[Ed: You know the one about humming a song and reading an editorial...]

Gary's editorial is about the Agee case and how Agee's actions got Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Greece, whacked by radical Greek terrorist. That lead to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act which is one of the laws being waved around in the Wilson/Plame case. A case that goes all the way up to our current VP: one Dick Cheney. Some of you might have heard of him.

Turns out that after Richard Welch's unfortunate whacking, Gary Hart was the guy who called President Ford's Chief of staff on behalf of the CIA in an attempt to get presidential approval for Welch to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Ford's chief of staff jumped right on it and, befitting the honor due a man fallen in the service of his country, got the job done in under 2 hours.

Of course Ford's chief of staff was Dick Cheney.

Now back to that song I was humming; everyone cool knows that after the line
"Whatever happened to Fay Ray?"
the audience shouts
"She ate ape-shit and died!"

So whatever happened to Dick Cheney?

Monday, October 24, 2005

The Wages of Butt-Monkeyness

Long, long ago, from a keyboard no so very far, far away, we blogged about America's chief Butt-Monkey/National Security Advisor Stephen J Hadley.

We had hoped that our blog post would cause Mr. Hadley to rethink his butt-monkeyness and perhaps even seek redemption in the form of a very public Xander moment.

All Mr. Hadley would have had to have done to redeem himself in our eyes would have been to call a press conference and say something like Xander did when he was freed from Dracula's control :
Xander: "Damn it! You know what? I'm sick of this crap. I'm sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm finished being everybody's butt monkey!"

Buffy: "Check. No more butt monkey."

That's it. We would have been happy with that. But now it looks like it's too late for Mr. Hadley. If the rumors we are hearing are correct, the butt-monkey is going to get paid by the end of this week. And as we all know, the wages of butt-monkeyness is Indictment.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Plus 5 To Kick Girl-Ass

Via The Poor Man Institute for Freedom and Democracy and a Pony we discover that batshit crazy nutjob Vox Day is a girl-ass kicking machine!

Seriously.

Kicking girl-ass is something that Vox can go on and on about. He really wants the internets to know that he's got him some mad kung fu fight'n skilz and he's not afraid to use them - on girls.

Vox says he trains at "the most notoriously brutal fighting school in the Twin Cities" and obviously a you don't earn a rep like that without demonstrating your willingness to beat the shit out of anyone unfortunate enough to be weak, small, and/or "challenged" in the testicle department. So when Vox throws down with an upity girl half his size you just know he is proud to pop the top on that tall, frosty can of 'Bitch-Whup-Ass' just like his sensei taught him.

The Koufax Awards are coming up soon and we think it is about time someone nominate Vox for this years Andy Kaufman award.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Progress In Iraq

According to Digby, we have finally smoked al Qaeda's senior Hair Stylist out of his spider hole.

This means we could have the senior al Qaeda pedicurist in custody by the weekend. And that my friends could be a real turning point.

Just think about it! What self respecting terrorist would want to meet his maker with ratty toenails?

[Updated : Honestly who the fuck misspells 'In'! Can we please get Mad some help? - Ed.]

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

MMA Props to Josh Whedon!

We saw Serenity over the weekend with to Jumpin Junipers. Tarsius and his lovely wife were there to.

The movie rocked, but I want to give special props to Josh Whedon for making Mel the kind of hero that would avoid the guillotine in the climactic fight scene.

Mel had the villain in a classic over/under with the villain's head trapped in his armpit but instead of going for a lame and unreliable guillotine choke, Mel goes strait into the stocks.

One small matter of continuity. Since the stocks is a cervical neck break, should the villain really have been walking around two scenes later?

Blogging shift

Recently I have been forced to make the following observation:
Irony is clearly dead while sarcasm and sardonic snarkyness are both in ICU.


People keep asking me if I'm "shocked" or "outraged" and I keep having to grab them and shake them until they bleed from the nose. I know that sounds like something I would enjoy doing, but all that shaking tends to aggravate an old shoulder injury of mine.

I'm also getting horse from constantly shouting things like
"Of course I'm not shocked. I was shocked 5 years ago."

and
"Outraged? Why would I be outraged now. I've been paying attention all along."

as I shake people.

In an attempt to lower my stress level I am going to shift the focus of my blogging to MMA and submission grappling. Regular readers of this blog should find these new topics at least a facinating as listening to me prattle on endlessly about my weird hobbies has always been.

Word.
We Out.

Mad's Martial Musings : Rehabing the Guillotine

Those of you who have all been watching The Ultimate Fighter have probably been wondering :
Why the fuck do these yahoos keep using the guillotine choke? It never works.

And you are totally right to ask this.

Those of you who are wasting you time on that other show, "House", probably don't even know what the guillotine is. Fear not, I'm here to e'splain it to you.

The Guillotine is a choke applied when you and your opponent are squared off facing each other. Generally you push his head down, wrap your arm over and around his neck, secure the hold with your other hand, and then either pull to a closed guard or stand your opponent up to get the submission. You can get the guillotine from the guard, you can get it from standing, and you can get it from just about anywhere in between.

It seems like a great technique, but it's got some weaknesses. Those weaknesses however are not where the responsibility for 99% of blown guillotines lies.

Lets look at what we've seen on TUF so far :

Episode 2: Melvin vrs. Josh: Melvin tries the guillotine over and over and over from every conceivable position. Josh escapes every one of them and usually improves his position in the process.

Episode 3: Rob catches Brad in a guillotine. Brad escapes. Rob catches Brad in another guillotine and pulls so hard that he tears his own biceps. Brad hardly notices. While Rob is busy thinking "Oh dear! My arm. My arm." Brad catches him in the weakest, slowest, most pathetic triangle ever and taps him out.


What's the problem here? Why do supposablely seasoned fighters like Rob and Melvin keep going back to a technique that costs them energy and position and gets them nothing?

The problem starts because the guillotine seems so simple. So simple that you don't even really pay attention when your instructors teach it to you. There's no reason to: it's simple and it's easy and you get it all the time when you're wrestling. Of course you're not tapping people with/getting tapped by the guillotine because you're a good wrestler doing good techniques on the mat. The guillotine works for you and on you because you're a beginner wrestling other beginners. You and your opponent fumble around for a while, eventually one of you gets the guillotine, cranks and someone taps.

Once you've wrestled for a while you start to use your head and neck like a 3rd arm. You get used to bearing weight with your neck. You get used to people pulling on your head. You get used to people crushing, squeezing, and twisting your neck. These sensations become business as usual and you start being able to beat the guillotine.

You also start wrestling a better class of opponent. This is where your troubles start. Your better opponents are used to beating the guillotine. They have a whole collection of moves based on the fact that they can beat your guillotine. While you are wasting valuable strength and wind on a guillotine that's doomed to fail, they are getting something useful done - like passing your guard, pulling you back into their guard, or getting a takedown.

If you're smart you start learning those guillotine counters. But if you're really paying attention you take an even more important step. You stop using the guillotine! Seems obvious, but I think it's an important step in a wrestler's development and a hard one for a lot of wrestlers to take. Wrestling is chaotic and there is a significant amount of comfort to be found in a hold like the guillotine simply because it slows things down and makes it seem like you have some control. But you don't have control, and feeling like you have control when you don't will usually get you tapped.

Of course the same thing happens with other techniques as well. I can't count the number of times someone passed my guard and I tried in vain to block their hip and pull back into guard when I should have just curled up, got the underhook, gone belly down, turtled, and looked for a double leg sweep. In both cases you're just holding on the a futile hope instead of going with the flow and trusting the skills you have been taught.

How does the saying go? "When I was a child I fought as a child ... but when I became a man I put away foolish things."

Welcome to Guillotine-aholics anonymous. The first step is "Stop using the guillotine." The second step is "Stop using the guillotine." The third step is "See steps one and two."

It's a shame that Melvin and Rob did not learn this lesson before their fights on TUF. I would say it's surprising as well, but it's not. Both of them where successfully highschool/collage wrestlers with the physical attributes that suit a MMA fighter. In the ring they are physically impressive but technically immature. An unfortunate combination that sets MMA fighters back by a decade or so.

Anyhooo ... back to the guillotine. Quit using it for long enough and eventually one of your instructors will teach it to you again. This time you will realize that you never really knew it to begin with :

1. You hip out, get some space. You can't do the guillotine when someone is right on top of you.
2. The opponent's head goes in the center of your chest. Not in your armpit. This increases the force you can put on the choke by a factor of 10 or so.
3. Your elbow points strait down, giving you a shot at blocking both of your opponents carotid arteries. Nighty night.
4. The opponents head stays in the center of your chest. No matter what!

A few days later someone will try to drive his head into your armpit and sit back to pull you into guard. You'll get some space, push his head into the center of your chest, get the correct grip, and start to crank. He'll do all the correct defenses (because you don't wrestle chumps any more) but it will not matter. You'll stand him up and he'll tap.

Welcome to the mat.