karate

Listen. And Next Time You’ll Do Better.

October 13, 2011

Out of all my children, this is the one that laughs the most. He’s also the one that cries the most. I understand that. Tiny arms moving gracelessly through his first form, face a mask of concentration and trepidation, tongue poking out between his teeth, just like his mom; I watched the teacher watching him, trying to take the mother out of my eyes and failing. “I hate karate,” he had said as we walked into class. My heart was tight in my chest for him. It’s hard to be new. It’s hard to be unsure. It’s hard to be [...]

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Finding Safety in an Unsafe World [The Four Steps of Self-Defense You Need to Know.]

January 10, 2011

This picture is simply too awesome to caption. I spent my Saturday night getting my aggression on: gouging people in the eyes, yelling “I’ll rip your larynx out!” and watching my best girlfriends get cornered by a bunch of threatening men. Makes your screening of Tron, The Legacy seems pretty lame now, huh? No, we weren’t road-testing The Great Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Experiment. (Although now that I type that I have a hankering to try cage fighting. Hmm.) Gym Buddies, Megan, Allison, Michelle, Jeni, Meghan, Becca and I were getting tutored in the art of pain by Megan’s husband, [...]

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Five Dollars and Twenty Four Cents

May 8, 2009

I am the only person I know who regularly gets money in the mail and hates it. The envelope gives it away. If it was post-marked Publisher’s Clearing House and was the size of an ice cream truck I might feel differently but the letter today is from the State Department of Corrections, Offender Obligation Unit. I don’t want to open it. The girl who takes karate lessons and punches until her knuckles bleed wants to just rip it into a thousand tiny pieces and throw them into the spring wind to catch in somebody’s lawn and eventually be made [...]

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Rihanna’s Got a Gun

March 27, 2009

Rihanna – she of the battered by Chris Brown fame (What? She’s a singer too??) – recently got some new ink done: Lots of people are questioning the aesthetics of the tiny tattoos but even more are asking what it all means. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s pretty obvious. She was recently victimized, both by her boyfriend and then by the press, and now she’s sporting permanent guns, an overt symbol of power and violence. Let’s not over analyze this. What is interesting to me is the different ways that victims use to [...]

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Assault: On Causing Pain

February 9, 2009

Yeah, I look all innocent here, punching BOB. It is an oft-repeated axiom that opposites attract. This is not true. At least not when it comes to people. Rather, as any social psychologist will tell you, like attracts like. I know that many people will protest “but my significant other is my exact opposite!” This is almost certainly false, else how would you have met in the first place? Most of us have quite a lot in common with those we love which is probably why the differences stand out so starkly in our minds. This truism has positive applications. [...]

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