Zaine

That's an interesting question. I think I would have Itosu Anko, Funakoshi Gichin, Kano Jigoro, and Matsumura Soken. Mine is very karate centric, with a nod to Kano for the way we rank things in karate. I imagine that it is incorrect, as well. There are just so many things that I don't know that it's difficult to pick 4.

I know the feeling. An issue with content on the internet is that just anyone can post whatever they want on social media. For every person posting a drill that is so far from having real world application that it just cast a magic spell, there are plenty of people doing good drills... they just don't post. Which is a shame! I would love to see a lot more traditional martial artists posting drills and bunkai videos. The issue, in my summation, is that modern sports karateka feel they have nothing to hide. All of their content is out there for the world to see by design. Traditional karateka, on the other hand, are trained to believe that their way of doing something should remain a secret known only to those on the inside.

Happy new year!

I hope everyone had an amazing holiday!

Getting a framed picture of the guy is absolutely hilarious and I might do that to some of my friends as a joke. The worst thing I ever got was mega-blox instead of legos. Or a t-shirt specific to my aunt's church that I wasn't very interested in. Altogether, I've been pretty lucky in that the people in my life usually ask directly what I want and then get it, provided that I haven't asked for something asinine like a go-cart or a laptop.

I have a few goals related to martial arts. The first is MA adjacent. I found out that I have tachycardia this year and I want to get that under control so that I can continue to train at the level that I enjoy training at. I want to get a few karate papers that I am writing published. I want to get my Nidan. I've been a Shodan for 15+ years, it's probably time to rank up.

I make an apple pie like cookie that I call Oatmeal Applebottoms that I make every year. They taste just like an apple pie, they're great.

Whoa! I am once again honored to have such an impact on this amazing community! Thanks for all the votes! And thank you, Patrick, for hosting such an amazing place for us to get together and talk!

Most things by Remi Wolf. She is definitely on the explicit side with her lyrics, but the upbeat songs really get me going.

The tournament circuit that I compete in costs $50 for 2 events, $55 for 3. It's a smaller circuit made up of a decent number of schools within the DFW metroplex that I live in (which is not small at 9,286 square miles). There are other tournaments within DFW that are more expensive, ranging from $75 - $150 depending on who is running them. However, the average seems to be around the $50 - $60 USD range. I have personally never traveled to another state to do a tournament, but I don't run in tournaments like that. Local stuff is all I do.

This year I am asking for a vacuum cleaner. My wife refuses to get me one for Christmas (although she did commit to replacing our old one which doesn't work). Most of the martial arts related items that I get for myself, recently, have been books. I hadn't thought to ask her to get me anything martial arts related but I might point her in that direction now that you bring it up.

Right now I've been spending some time at a chain down here called Free Play. There is a cover charge, but they have a punch of old school arcade games (that rotate, depending on popularity) and a bunch of pinball machines. There's also a bar and kitchen to buy some food. Another bonus is that after a certain time, I believe 7PM, it becomes adult only.

I hope everyone had a relaxing time!

I think that a tenet of life is to be happy and find happiness. Is that the meaning? Who knows? I would certainly like to believe that the meaning of my life is to find happiness in myself and others.

That's awesome! Where are you doing HEMA?

Just rest. There is no point in overtaxing your body. Some people say that it is good to "sweat it out" but there's no evidence that this does anything but make you feel more miserable. It's okay to take rest days when you are sick. The progress will still be there when you get back.

I would certainly argue this point. The meaning of life is to live it. Good, bad, or somewhere in the middle, it is our life to lead. We can focus on the bad or we can uplift the good. In searching for the meaning of life, we often lose the plot of it all. We focus so much on the future that we forget to enjoy the now and it sours our memories of the past. There is no one answer. For Tesla, the meaning of life might have been to invent the things he invented. Perhaps Davinci felt that the meaning of life was in his paintings. For me, the meaning of my life is not in either of those. It's in my family, my writings, my martial arts, the world around me paints the picture and I get a chance to be one of the artists.

I definitely think that you should talk to a therapist about this, if you haven't already. Death is complicated for the survivors and simple for those that have passed. We all struggle with the end in one way or another and coming to terms with that end is something that not everyone can do. To quote Hamlet: I do not have a good answer for you as to how to accept death, nor can I give you the ability to do so. It is something that I still struggle with from time to time even though I feel that I have accepted my own mortality. There is not secret to accepting death, it's something that we don't have a choice in. I would say, perhaps reductively, to make your life worth living. Take part in things you love, learn from the things that cause you pain, try to make the world around you, whether immediate or otherwise, a better place. Worry not about the future, but focus on the present. Life is difficult and it is easy for us to focus on the difficulty. Find those things that make life easier and create a habit of surrounding yourself with love.

Congrats!

I'm not a big horror movie fan, I don't find them very entertaining nor scary. However, I do really like camp and B movies. So generally, if I choose to watch a horror film it's a bad one.

Last year I went as Sailor Jupiter. This year I'm going as Link from The Legend of Zelda.

My oldest son has been playing that. He seems to enjoy it. I hear it's quite a vast game.It is very vast. I'm not sure that I will be able to see everything this game has to offer, though not for lack of trying.

I am playing the Xbox version. You can find a good priced refurbished series s at GameStop, that's how I ended up getting my Xbox and I've had no issues. However, if you've got an adequate computer, then it's probably better just to do it on PC. I will say, as someone who loves Skyrim and considers it to be their comfort game, Starfield scratches the itch in a lot of ways. It isn't quite as good, in my opinion, and there are things that I wish that they had done differently, but I have over 60 hours into it as of right now and I could easily see myself putting in another 100 at least.

I have been playing a lot of Starfield instead of D4.

One of the reasons that I joined was because I was getting bullied, and I've met plenty of people who joined for the same reason. I can't speak to how common it is, but my anecdotal experience says that it isn't exactly uncommon.