One time, while at Joe’s mom’s house, we came across a MicroMachines garage playset, which wasn’t his.

It belonged to Mindy, Joe’s ex, and was the only thing of hers that we were able to confirm was entirely hers and that she’d forgotten when she moved out of the basement.

Being the well-adjusted individuals that we are, decided to destroy it, and in the most spectacularly awesome way possible.

Without hesitation, we decided to pack it full of fireworks, and blow it the fuck up. That wasn’t going to happen though, since Tom Thompson* had used up all of his quarter sticks, so the best we could do was melt it, but we tried to blow it up, Cthulhu help us, we tried. I ran home and grabbed whatever fireworks were there, leftovers from Tom Thompson’s parties and a bunch of PA legal bullshit that I bought when I was twelve. We packet that shit tight with ladyfingers, M-200’s, Moon Travels facing outward to cut in half, disco flashers, and paper towels soaked in Aqua Net hair spray.

It was all sorry and half-assed. We were rightfully ashamed.

So I went home and got some old model rocket engines from when I was a kid. We packed a handful of model rocket engines in there, and that made it novel, fun and acceptable. We sealed every hole with study tape, to keep the explosives in and though we knew the tape would blow out before the walls, we at least tried. We laughed, because now the toy garage looked like it was all boarded up and abandoned.

“Look at it!” said Mike. “It’s all ghetto now!”

I picked it up and proclaimed it “The Ghetto Blaster.”

Joe keeled over from laughter in the spiteful schadenfreude that I had brought into his house.

We detonated the Ghetto Blaster to initial disappointment, before it erupted in white flames which completely and totally ruined all of its shit. Post-blast analysis, combined with out extensive fireworks experience brought us to conclude that the PA legal fireworks did the most damage, because the Disco Flashes have magnesium in them, and a little burning magnesium goes a long way.

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* Names have been changed to protect those with outstanding warrants.

During my recent trip to the orient, I had the opportunity to train in several different martial arts schools in both Japan and Korea.  This was an amazing experience, but it is not what this blog is actually about.

This post is actually about the origins of the martial arts we practice.  As a Goshin Jutsu stylist, I have some experience with controversial martial arts origin stories.  Goshin Jutsu was invented, based on other traditional martial arts, in northwestern Pennsylvania.  There are two distinct histories of my style, one true and one entirely made up.  This has caused a great deal of internet “debate” as to the authenticity of the style (much of this comes from a single source, some guy with a chip on his shoulder), raising the question, how much do we actually know about the origins of our martial arts?

As I was preparing to go to a Haedon Kumdo school to learn some Korean sword techniques, I decided to give my friend Coons a call.  For one, he was dealing with all of the post-comiccon ridiculousness, and secondly, he has been studying kendo for a while now and I thought he might be interested.  During our conversation, he informed me that kumdo is just a misspelling of kendo, as the Koreans had taken it along with their empty hands martial arts from the Japanese after the occupation.  I would just have chalked this up to more of Coons’ crazy ramblings and paid it little attention had it not been for the fact that several of the Koreans that I talked too told me that exact opposite story.  When they [my Korean friends] found out that I practiced a martial art based on Japanese karate, they each told me about how Japanese karate is in fact based on Korean Tae Kwon Do.  Further, in visiting a Muay Thai kickboxing school, the instructor there informed me that both karate and tae kwon do where both actually based on Thai kickboxing techniques.

It is no secret that we martial artists are, in general, an arrogant lot.  We love telling (and some do make up) stories.  So it is really no surprise that we all think our style is the best and in some way the original.  I have my own ideas as to how these origin stories really  played out, but I am more interested in you, Kung Fu-topians.  What stories have you heard about either your own martial art or about martial arts in general?  What have you been told or read?    Add your own story to Kung Fu Topian lore.

Special thanks to those gracious instructors who let me live my dream and train with you.  Thank you for stepping over the language barrier and welcoming me into your school.

Samara (my dog) has been lighting up the living room all night. Fuck her. My dog’s farts smells like rotten asshole, singed taint-hair….or possibly a combination of both. A Samara fart is best described as “a wind tunnel of poo breath.”

The nastiest thing about it, is when you smell it….. your brain immediately provides a picture of what the corresponding turd would look like (and it’s not pretty).

I can go on record to say that I love my dog as much as (if not more than) family. Yet, this doesn’t excuse her wretchedness.

Before you call me a hypocrite, I will concede that its karma for all the stank-ass shenanigans i’ve put out there all these years: Friend humiliation, pants-shitting, more pants-shitting, and disgruntled wife. All due to my years of tickling my sense of humor at the expense of others. I even have two hemorrhoids that bother the shit out of me (pun), and its all from pushing too hard to exhale the vile.

I can remember being very young, and I swallowed over half of a Flinstones vitamin bottle. My mom was crying as she whisked me away to the ER. The doctor reassured her that I would just have “a little gas”. Apparently this is my curse.

I wouldn’t go as far as to have ever called myself a “Conservative Christian,” but up until I started graduate school, I was both conservative, and Christian. Shortly thereafter, the neocons went mad with power and began to force their Christo-fascist agenda onto most aspects of American life. Upon realizing that the Religious Right was neither, I renounced my erroneous ways in an attempt to atone for my past.

Lately, the whole US is ranting and screaming one way or another about Obama’s plan for universal health care. Last I checked, LBJ and Reagan were the ones who socialized health care in the United States, and no one goes around bashing them for that, or even talks about Reagan’s socialist policies.

I could make all kinds of rants about health care, like the ones available at 10^34 other places on the internet, but I don’t want to go through all that. Instead, I want to show this video i found of some guy, because this is the true face of health care in the United States of America. This is what the greatest country in the world has chosen to to offer its citizens up to now. Keep in mind, this guy could have been sitting next to you at the movies:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a video is worth 1000*[frame rate (frames/s)*video playtime (s)] words. This passes for health care in the US. Beer and some paper towels.