Sharp Phil

Thought the folks here might enjoy this. Forgetting the "Martial" in "Martial Artist" <-- (click, it's a link to my article)

Anyone who's become enamored of stickfighting will amass a small arsenal of sticks in no time at all. I don't know about you, but I find one of the most aggravating things about rattan sticks (and other flexible sticks prone to warping) is that it's almost impossible to keep them out of your way and unwarped. Here's a quick tip: Find yourself some pushpins and some light shoelaces. Cut the shoelaces in half. Two shoelaces, for example, will produce four lengths of useful light cord. Tie a knot around your pinky and then slip your finger out of the loop, leaving a knotted but open loop on the end of the lace. Repeat at the other end of the length. Then slip one looped end through the other looped end. What you've got when you're done is small lasso. The loop on the free end goes around a pushpin stuck in the drywall of any suitable wall space (inside closets is good and doesn't look visually unappealing). The lasso end goes around the end of each of your sticks. Pull it taut and you'll find most sticks will hang against the resistance of the lace. Congratulations -- you've take a stick and hung it from the wall without making any modifications to the stick itself. For best results, rotate it once in a while so it won't warp against the wall.

A pretty good discussion of Pankration appears here: http://www.e-budo.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=117242&highlight=pankration#post117242

A few corrections: Don Rearic does not have his own forum. He does moderate at http://www.selfdefenseforums.com , however, which is where Bustr's post appeared. His main base is not e-budo, as he doesn't post there much at all. I don't believe Don has been "relentlessly attacking the Hikuta community." He doesn't think much of it, however. Many of the posts he's made on the topic have been in direct response to mentions of him by name, in one or two cases by Jack "Savage" Sellner at Jack's own board. If you look at this thread, for example, you'll see that Don does not post to it until after Jack mentions him. Quite frankly, Bustr's post -- which kind of came out of nowhere, and was started as a new thread (rather than as a response to previous Hikuta-related threads) made him look like an Agenda Troll. If you look at the thread that prompted Don to ban Bustr, you'll see that Don told Bustr to e-mail him to explain himself. He reacted to what looked like trolling but provided Bustr with an "out." Bustr responded with profanity. Don's contributions to the martial arts community are a matter of record; I think his website speaks for itself regarding the quality of the material it contains. To return to Hikuta, as I posted in the older thread on the topic, I recently reviewed the 1993 DOK Lee text.

Apologies for resurrecting the old topic. I did a review of the 1993 DOK Lee text recently. (I'm hoping to obtain a copy of the video from a friend, too -- it may shed some light on the poorer sections of the text.) The review is here.