05.27.07

kung fu fraud

Posted in the usual stuff at 5:51 am by mr joel

Not being able to sleep, I was randomly surfing around and came across this, a guy named Milton Wallace who claims he is a “Sifu” and a kung fu master, and is making money by deceiving poor ignorant fools into buying into his bullshit.

Curious to see if he was fake, and not in the least annoyed at some asshole using the title “Sifu” irresponsibly, I did a bit of research of my own: seconds later, a quick search on youtube for his name reveals this video, where Wallace, in a blue shirt, exhibits his “mastery” of “muy thai”. He obviously knows nothing about Muay Thai, which uses knees and elbows, in addition to fists and feet, as deadly weapons. Wallace’s exhibition of “muy thai” – dude, at least get the spelling right – shows him clumsily kicking around and throwing some punches. Dude can’t even keep his balance when he kicks, and the way he swings his leg around… horrendously noobish. I could throw a better turning kick as a ten year old taekwondo white belt. Any taekwondo white belt with a month’s worth of proper training can.

Surf around a bit more on youtube and check out his stuff. It’s a travesty and a bastardization of the title “sifu”. Any Thai person would also be really, really pissed watching that video.

Further examples:
Wallace’s side kick.
A REAL sifu’s side kick.

This is just a whole collection of really laughable stuff.

05.26.07

what kind of soul am i

Posted in the usual stuff at 7:42 pm by mr joel

You Are a Hunter Soul

You are driven and ambitious – totally self motiviated to succeed
Actively working to acheive what you want, you are skillful in many areas.
You are a natural predator with strong instincts … and more than a little demanding.
You are creative, energetic, and an extremely powerful force.

An outdoors person, you like animals and relate to them better than people.
You tend to have an explosive personality, but also a good sense of humor.
People sometimes see you as arrogant or a know it all.
You tend to be a bit of a loner, though you hate to be alone.

Souls you are most compatible with: Seeker Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

05.22.07

xenophobic journalism: foreign nba players’ “real” ages

Posted in joeloholic commentary at 4:17 pm by mr joel

Why is it so that foreign, talented athletes have to face an age-doubting problem once they come over to the US – that their ages are always put to question? The same thing happened to a number of good Euro players, as well as Dikembe Mutumbo.

Yi Jianlian, a very promising basketball player out of China, may see his draft stock plummet if his age is in doubt.

We really have to question ourselves: is this just North-American society’s underlying xenophobic tendencies emerging to the fore? Particularly with US-China relations getting edgy recently, this appears to be the case. I’d rather not this get all political – but it already is.

To prove my point, take a look at Lebron James. Honestly, with that Olympian physique of his and that big beard, he doesn’t look 22. Not to mention his absurd skillset. If four years ago Lebron had come out of, say, Nigeria or Cameroon, all the “experts” would’ve been doubting his age too.

Respected NBA journalists, “experts” and bloggers are already questioning Yi’s age – and are in fact challenging him to prove his “true” age of 19. So I’ll ask the opposite question then: What level of proof do we need to prove he’s 22? By the assumption that he’s already older, we’re already guilty of bias.

If Greg Oden or Kevin Durant were from Nigeria, we wouldn’t be rating them as the surefire top 2 picks. We’d be questioning the legitimacy of their ages, too, and they’d drop all the way down to being mid-first rounders at best.

Look at Oden in particular. Does he even look like a college freshman? As Oden is now, the entire sporting world is salivating over his “maturity”. However, had he come from overseas, we would’ve seen this “maturity” as “being 3 years older than he claims”, and questioned his age, just as Yi (and Mutumbo before) is being subject to.

Unconvincingly 19
Some sports “experts” find it hard to believe Yi is 19…


…yet they praise Oden (19), the surefire number one draft pick and future star, for his outstanding “maturity”…

Lebron James. He's 22? I'm 22 too.
… Lebron James is 22. No doubt about that, but had he come out of a foreign country, people would say he’s 30. And he looks it, actually.

05.14.07

dreams of war, dreams of liars, dreams of dragon’s fire

Posted in the usual stuff at 1:29 pm by mr joel

blink.

i wake up a genetically engineered super soldier, my body strapped to my seat on the transport helicopter. next to me are my comrades, equally steel-faced; like me, they stare forward into the briefing screens, where an officer, our platoon commander, barks out the mission briefings.

there are 3 platoons of us, led by 3 officers who are fully human. with

blink.

flashback: not remembering anything before our “creation”. earliest memory of self already an adult soldier, undergoing grueling training by day, and by night, being strapped to chairs and forced to watch indoctrination videos of wars, death, destruction; of better ways to inflict pain, of battle strategies and hand-to-hand combat instructional videos. utilitarian brainwashing to ensure we become the deadliest, most efficient tools of destruction.

this goes on until we soldiers, who are less than human, without names nor histories to call our own, are ready for battle.

blink.

one night, something goes wrong with the videos. there is a mistake in the indoctrination video programme; instead of the usual videos of gore and suffering, someone puts in one that talks of religion, of philosophy, of Jesus and Plato and Buddha and everything in between. the soldier next to me, his usual emotionless, forward-looking stare unchanged, had tears running down his eyes. as i watch the videos and listen to the commentary, i begin to feel things i had never felt before, feelings i would later come to realize were “compassion”, “fear” and “sadness”, among others.

one of the platoon commanders, before long, realizes the mistake, and soon enough the videos are pulled, amidst a lot of yelling and confusion. the damage, however, had been done.

blink.

an old village in eastern europe, where we had descended upon with our assault rifles, our grenade launchers and our knives. it is raining. there is blood everywhere. mud everywhere.

the assault is long over; our orders were to kill everything in the village, due to the suspicion that enemy troops were hiding there and masquerading as villagers. the attack went well, meeting with little opposition, as hundreds of lives are snuffed out in a matter of minutes – not by bombs or firepower, but by the cold, brutal efficiency of my unit.

however, toward the end of the assault, several villagers had escaped and had fled toward a church, which they ran into and hid amongst the pews, the altar, wherever they could. our unit stormed the church and shot everything that moved. one last villager, a child, was cowering beneath a giant wooden crucifix, we perforated his body with bullets, sending a spray of blood onto the crucifix above.

blink.

outside the church, the platoon assembles, awaiting further orders from our superiors. we wait at attention in a parade formation; all but one of the soldiers, who lies on his side, clutching his hair, his eyes huge and stricken. he moans, again and again, to no one but everyone, “he so loved the world he gave his only begotten son… who did? WHO?” and we, his fellow soldiers, get increasingly distraught by this. not understanding where this… memory or this phrase had come from, but knowing nonetheless that it deeply moved us and disturbed us.

blink,

our platoon commanders arrive – two male and one female. they see that the madness among us has spread; by the time they arrive, several other soldiers had also succumbed, and were sprawled over the blood/mud floor of the village, mumbling unintelligibly of “truth” and “virtue” and “salvation”.

the platoon commanders, desperate to stop the spread of this madness among us, start firing upon the “lost” soldiers. they fire back, and after the ensuing crossfire, officers and “lost” soldiers have all fallen. a few soldiers, seemingly unaffected by the madness, continue to stand stoically and unmoving.

blink.

i wake up