Just lately, I've been plagued by unsettling notions of humanity's insignificance in the universe, the cruel illusion of free will, shadowy figures stalking me just at the edge of my peripheral vision and insects flying up my japseye while I'm having a piss and consuming me from the inside.

I lay the blame squarely, except for the insect up the cock thing, on the rather excellent online horror novels, John Dies At The End and it's sequel, John and Dave and the Temple of X'al'naa''thuthuthu.
Well, I say that but really, it's my own overactive imagination and lack of mental discipline that's to blame, but reading those certainly won't have helped.

The insect flying up the japseye nightmare, incidentally, is one of my own creation, possibly influenced by some of the themes explored withing JDATE.
I'm rather proud of it.

While having a piss the other day, my mind, as tends to happen, started to wander.
A tiny little insect in the urinal bowl reminded me of the urinals in Schiphol Airport, which all have images of flies printed on them, right down in the middle, near the drain. The idea, apparently, is to give guys something to aim at so as to cut down on spillages and therefore the cost of cleaning up after guys pissing all over the place.
Thats kind of a clever idea, but fucking hell, who the fuck did they hand the job of researching that to? How the fuck do you come up with that? What ideas failed to make the cut?

"I tell you, we need to land the Airport contract, it'll be worth a fortune to us. We need to put our best pissing man on it!"
"Actually, do you know Petr, from the Antwerp office? He has some amazing ideas for urinals..."

Or maybe I'm better off not knowing...
Out of every marking they could have chosen for us to aim at: a little target, a goal, a cigarette end or even a pair of tits (hey, some people are into that), they figured out, after all their research, that guys would, all things considered, prefer to flush innocent, harmless flies to an awful, horrific death.
I reckon that provides a tiny little insight into nasty corner of man's soul.

As I pondered the little fly walking up the side of my urinal, fighting the urge to flush it to a piss soaked oblivion, my imagination became haunted by the idea of how fucking shite it would be if one of those Schiphol Airport Piss Flies came to life, shot right up your japseye in mid pee and laid eggs in your bawsack, or started fucking eating you from inside or some damn thing.

That would be, all things considered, a pretty fucking shite thing to happen.
Not the worst, but undeniably shite.
The worst thing that could happen, I reckon, would be fate dealing you the hand she dealt our little friend, the tiny flying insect I nearly pissed on. If you believe in Karma, and why the fuck not, it's not like it makes any less sense than anything else people believe, then that little fly must have done some heavy shit in a previous life.
You'd need to have been fucking Hitler, Stalin or worked in direct telemarketing to get hit with the midge in a urinal deal. Or maybe you just need to hose down the wrong insect when taking a piss.

Labels: horror, madness

Did I mention that I got a black belt in Judo recently?
Oh, I did...right.

Now that I could almost legitimately describe myself as a martial arts expert, Lady Wallace reckons I should be leveraging my talents to make us a little money. This, on the face of it, doesn't seem like a totally unreasonable idea. Being a nerdy obsessive, I do know a breathtakingly sad amount about my chosen hobby.
I think she's got something in mind like a website where I would write about the subject. I'm not so sure, as there's already some great MA websites out there - Bullshido for example.
The obvious drawback there is that I write a lot of bollocks and have the creativity of a damp towel. I guess Lady W must not have ever read this blog or she maybe wouldn't be so quick to suggest that I try to make money out of writing.

So, while I'm not too sure about that particular idea, I do tend to agree that my depressingly encyclopaedic knowledge of ways to hurt, maim and injure unsuspecting muggers is going underutilised. The problem is, ways to turn this obsession/talent into cold, hard cash seem thin on the ground.
I have briefly considered the following:

• Freelance Goon. I wouldn't have the temperament for this. I'm too much of a nice guy. Plus the whole illegality angle.
• Pro Fighter. I'm too old, too shite and too much of a pussy.
  
• Open a Gym. A gym for Boxing, Kickboxing, MMA, BJJ, Judo and the like, with a ring, mats, bags and all that stuff. An expensive idea, which may work, but probably wouldn't. Gyms go bust constantly. Would be nice, but difficult.
• Kickboxing/MMA Show Promoter. I have no idea where on earth I would begin.
• Fight Scene Coordinator for TV or Stage. This idea seemed to have legs until I researched it a bit and found out that the Fight Coordinator/Stunt game is a virtual closed shop. And you need fucking acting training. Truth be told, I only really fancied this as it seemed to give me an opportunity to smack some luvvies around without fear of legal consequence.

  Luvvie - "Are you sure that you should be choking him unconscious just now?"
  Me - "Do you want authenticity or no?"
  Luvvie - "Well, yes, but this isn't a fight scene. He's supposed to be talking to his Wife."

• Self Defence Expert/Instructor - Take it from me, the Self Defence game is an absolute racket. 99.9% of the reams of books and hours of video available on the subject is a load of exploitative crap. The best advice you will ever receive on the matter can be summed up by the following - Keep away from dodgy areas/situations/people, don't let your ego get the better of you and it is never, ever, too late to run away.
• Breast Inspector - well, you've got to try.
• Fuck all that martial arts shite and actually try actually spending some of effort I put into training on developing my career....I'm sorry. That is possibly the most stupidly offensive idea ever.
  

So, creative ideas for monetizing my encyclopaedic knowledge of exotic violence are respectfully requested.

Labels: judo, karate, martial arts, training

It is entirely possible that I am, in fact, awesome.
Why?
Because I qualified for my black belt in Judo this weekend, which means I have a black belt grade in two different martial arts - Karate and Judo.
Not that I actually practice Karate any more, but still, two black belts is pretty damn good, eh?

When I was at school, there was this wee dobber that used to talk a load of pish about martial arts. Like his story about a Drumchapel Ninja killing a guy by chucking a pub ashtray at him, like a shuriken. Or black belts having to register with the Police.
Well fuck me, if he wasn't partly right about something. The Council have been in touch, as it turns out that I apparently need to fill out and submit form N1NJ/A - "Registration of Hands and/or Feet as Dangerous Weapons". They say that failure to do so in a timely manner will result in the revocation of any outstanding licenses that permit me to practice, plus the likely brutal murder of my Coach by the Dept of Martial Arts Movie Cliches.

So, yesterday was spent on a high, to say the least. There is nothing like spending an entire Sunday morning fighting, and beating, complete strangers to release the old endorphins.
A tiny sliver of unwelcome reality started to assert itself as the afternoon drew on, though. It began to dawn on me on the way home that no matter how great I felt right at that moment, no matter how strong or how invincible, I was due back at work as normal on Monday morning as a small cog in a big machine and those oh-so-vital user admin requests, customer emails, fault reports and service outage notifications were going to be no substitute at all for the endorphin high courtesy of several hours of full contact fighting.

True enough, I was back at work as usual this morning.
1 hour later I was so pissed off and bored with the usual Monday morning crap that I actually considered stripping to the waist in the canteen, oiling up and issuing an open challenge to everyone in the building to take me on in a best of 3 falls all in Wrestling match.
Sanity prevailed, however.
I made do with knocking fuck out of all the smokers round the back of the smoking shelter at lunchtime.