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Crunches aren't as boring as running on the spot....and thats probably all i've learned this week aside from the fact that getting a job via the jobcentre, joblinkage, jobcentre associated websites etc its like, well, its like climbing a wall of ground glass, in the nuddy, while steve o takes all your painkillers and laughs inanely.
b*stard.
In other news, never buy a VW Golf. mechanically they're great and quite powerful thanks to clever compression but the electronics will let you down faster than you can say 'English summertime weekend'. once its wet you might as well have driven it in the sea. first the MPG calculator went, not vital, then the CD player died, replaceable, then its service counter failed, meh, but now, NOW it won't lock without setting off its own alarm. Vorscprung durch techniq may be, but the wiring was clearly done by dodgy dave's reclamed electronic emporium (and grill).

not a long one today, things still need doing before i can go out and play. though i apologize if i came over as some all knowing beardy airsoft guru. i say what i see and make no pretension that i'm some kind of pro player, i'm probably below average, but i've been around long enough to make some at least remotely qualified an hopefully entertaining observations. so for those in the audience who started shouting 'snob!' i quote clint eastwood when i say 'get up and leave', but he'd be more gravelly.

Saturday was G day. the day i started going to the gym proper. using all those machines that look like the belong in a dungeon and generally being totally unpleasant to my body. Thats fine, my body and i have an agreement. it looks bad and i hate it. we get on fairly well in the abuse stakes. apparently running on a treadmill is somehow harder than running outside, i find it hard to balance so i get tired in funny muscle groups. crunches too are a new exorcise to me, though i can 'feel them working' as in, the muscles hurt because they've had it easy up until now. ho ho ho, we;ll show them.
Meanwhile though, i've got to start focusing like the ninja, because if i don't fight through this next two weeks of muscle pain my body will reject the new regime and the pain will cause me to psychologically be averse to exorcise. pain in this case is not a teacher, it is a result of inactivity and laziness. i really have noone to blame but myself for years worth of junk food flab and atrophied muscles. i'm going to do it, 100% of whats possible, then 25% more.
Thanks though to snake. 'just one more'  is the training slogan i think everyone should have. it'll get you there, and back.
i think i'm learning more about managing pain too. i've gone too long in comfort really and i think thats why my tolerance is so low. another reason to drive through the emotional and physical 'wall' and see whats on the other side. it might be 200 feet high, but i can smash a couple of bricks off at a time.

Look out Spartans, here comes a Reaver.
  

Back on the blog bycicle. Work finished, sadly. though i was ill for some of it and sick the rest so i don't remember the finer points as well as i should. christmas day was perfect (thanks to ash and northernshore. family cooking to a whole new level of delicious) and newyears eve was a great link up back with my friends. i don't think Squeak enjoyed it as much though. its not so much her thing and i don't think i give her enough attention when my friends are around and we're doing retarded man child things.
    Fast forward to this week then. Back to aikido, which makes me very happy even though i'm stiffer than a salted dead parrot, and a new year of unemployment brings me to the jobcentre...
    Jobcentre, hah. my meeting is scheduled for 9:00am sharp. As in 'faliure to turn up on time means we won't give you any money, so there'. i turn up, the nice yet slightly intimidating G4Securicor chap leads me to a small sofa and i wait. for FIFTEEN MINUTES. I sprinted down and icy high street and nearly poleaxed a flower shop owner to get here on time, and now i have to sit on my bum with a thumb in it waiting to be called to a desk, where for the entire time nobody has been sitting. Maybe i'm just bitter because i slipped getting out of the car and smacked my head on the doorframe. So much for ninja reflexes.
    All this aside the situation  in the Gaza strip clonks along. It'd be funny if it wasn't so tragic. just a strip of land and nobody there is brave enough to do the ultimate brave thing. Share it. I guess my problems aren't really that much compared to the horrible meat grinder out there fueled by old hate and new money.
     "I was unhappy because i had no shoes, then i saw a man with no feet."

On a positive note (and slightly ironic if you don't understand my moral spiraling) i get to go to sheffield on the 25th to demonstrate the finer points of what the americans like to call MOUT and we're supposed to call FIBUA, fighting in built up areas, and CQB, close quarters battle. what i prefer to call it (at length, and to anyone who;s unfortunate enough to listen to my drivel) is FISH and CHIPS. that is to say, Fighting In Someones House and Causing Havoc In Public Spaces. This will be at the Phoenix CQB site, and i'm glad they're having us back there. Apparently words have been said and without going  into detail some of the regulars were not very nice about us.  It doesn't really bother me, people get worked up on the day, its a fairly intensive sport after all, and tempers flare a bit when the testosterone is flying about as fast as the ammo. I've learned in my journey to being a more laid back, seasoned player, that there are alot of things people do and say and theres bugger all you can do to stop them. I had one gentleman swear blind he'd knocked me out of a game, when in fact he'd hit my teammate, but he couldn't tell the difference between us in our uniforms through the pink mist he was surely looking through. I walked away from that one and called myself out. never a point in arguing, after all, its a game.   
    In fact, there are alot of players who used to annoy me and now just tend to raise a smile and a shake of the head. The first party to crawl up my nose and drive me mental has always been the snobbish gucci crowd. an unfair term, as I hear gucci makes some nice stuff. but still, its a kind of phrase thats dated back hundreds of years. 'all the gear and no idea' . Even the samurai had a word meaning a similar thing, though for the life of me i don't remember it. You've seen the types, flush with money and weighed down with too much shiny kit. it might very well be great gear, and i'm sure much of the emnity stemmed from the fact that i personally and darkly coveted some of it but alot of these people come across the same way. bigtiming it at the beginning of the day with the shiny toys, making comments about the less 'well equipped' players . first hour in they're shouting with the best of them and getting stiched up for their trouble, then the rot really sets in. all the kit is heavy, the shiny weapons haven't been properly calibrated, or worse, have but they haven't been practiced with, and to them, this is crushing. they paid for the suit, the sights, the super tactical gloves, but they aren't better players. how come the guy who games wearing his dads old soldier jacket and a pair of wranglers just leapt out of the darkness like some kind of trendy ninja and took them down? Why did the speccy lad with the low end hong-kong made sniper rifle pick him off from 100 yards while he helplessly sprayed rounds at him that fell short, or went wide? from here on out it goes one of two ways. they gut it out, leave all the bits of kit they;re not using at the safe zone, ask earnestly for some help getting their guns working properly and listen to some friendly banter and advice over lunch. they get to know their teammates a little, and go out again for the next round ready to improve. there are plenty of guys out there who go this way, and really do earn the right to look good in their gucci kit, even if i am jealous from afar.
To be continued...

Whatever plague has been gripping me for the last few weeks has managed to turn particularly nasty, we've all been there, sitting on the toilet at two AM because we don't know if we can get up and stagger back into bed only to have to run back to the porcelain torture throne. I'm lucky, since today i don't have to be at The Book Shop 'till four so i've had most of the day to sit in bed and recover.
By tonight i'll have missed aikido twice in a row, and thats just not on, but since i can barely stagger around at work i'll probably hurt myself more on the tatemi than learn anything, which is the really frustrating part.
Yesterday i had a treat, one of the traveling players formerly a part of the pan pipe group APU was performing near where i work, so i got to listen to him playing in my lunch break. I love the sound, though it makes me feel very nostalgic and not a little sad, seeing this short man wearing bright clothes playing beautiful music in a horrible gray dirty city full of chavs*. He should be home for christmas.
How sad? this sad:

Incidentally, i did enjoy Gears of War, and i'm rather behind the recent slough of game adverts that use rather good if relatively unknown artists to provide backing music.
oh, and you all need to read this:
http://www.thedevilspanties.com/
Its not satanic porn! its feminist, in a sensible way, which is the only sensible thing about it...
just read it a bit, if its your thing, then you'll read it all, if its not, then you don't have'ta 'kay?

Time to go get dosed up and brace myself for another four hours of retail hell.

CURAHEE!

*If you don't know what a chav is, you're lucky. CPS refers to them as 'nominals', that is, people who are normally commiting crimes and getting caught. drug and booze addled lowest denominator idiots who dress like they think harlem gangsters dress, despite being white and about as well armed as pound-land(tm)  kitchen utensils can make them.

www.screwattack.com  is a gaming website. its very good, honest.

In other news i've just been working my butt off and trying to learn new Aikido without much success. being tired doesn't help my lack of talent and any promise i showed with a bokken (wooden sword) was marred by the fact that at one point i could not get off the floor. Not so good, Sensei Paul was not amused at my lack of resolve. For the most part i blame the damn plague, whatever it is this particular pathogen is starting to get on my tits.
     There's not much in my life i can really say i regret but alot i would like to change. I wonder if i could have another trip around and be less of a sickly whelp. Ah well, this is my path and i must walk it, bare feet ashes and all.
    oh, in much better news, Sparahawk and her Partner in Crime are reopening a club in stockton-on-tees on the site of the former Angels lapdancing club, it is named Midian and looks to be bloody great, whatever you're into, if its on the alternative side you'll love Midian. Its frankly unbeleivable how much work has been put into getting the place off the ground and running well in the last couple of weeks.  With that kind of resolve i'd say its a dead cert to be a well established cavern of, well, anything they damn well want it to be and a little bit more.
   

first of all, the Sensei Alan Ruddock course was an absolutely amazing experience. i had to sacrifice a bit to be able to go and do the weekend (and i'm sorry to those people i had to say 'no' to, i'm honoured to have been invited to ALL your parties, functions and heavy metal concerts) but i felt it was something that i had to go and do. i think i am finding what tsunetomo referred to as a 'way'. My way might not  be Aikido, but its close. I'm very tired, sore, bruised, dehydrated and confused, but it was awesome. I have learned more than i can possibly put into one post but beleive me, this man has to be seen and heard to be truly appreciated. Friendly, approachable, willing to help, and so very very highly skilled.
          ""   ..."AAARGH!", this is not Aikido, if i was giving my grandma a piece of cake i wouldn't scream and throw it at her. the cake is in front of me, and I pass it forward. simple... ""
    As a vicious counterpoint to this flowing martial arts weekend extravaganza i just returned from nearly two hours of instruction in ground fighting that las left me bruised and twisted. This too in its way has been awesome, but don't think i'm too much of a wuss if i say 'oww'.  I think the last time i almost had my knee in my ear-hole  I was having altogether more fun.
 now is shower and sleep time. more to follow

Well, unfortunately although yesterday went really well my 'mild' head cold has laid me out. I'm dosing up on probiotic and other meds to try and shift it by tomorrow. I think it was standing in the cold yesterday waiting for my bus. Ah well, it all balances out. The rough weather meant not too many people turned up for the book release and the ravening horde was really only the usual afternoon rush of Christmas shoppers. So a not-so-hellish day for me yesterday and a not so grand one for me today. Karma and all that.
    Certainly I'm better than i was at this time last year, I think I managed to be Ill through christmas and into the new year. Touch wood i don't have swollen glands and joint pain so this is just a bout of me being a wuss about my sinuses and I'll be ready to rock tomorrow and try to learn some cool stuff from Sensei Ruddock.   
    I called one of my teammates yesterday, Trooper1975, and I'm glad his mob are doing ok. They live in the Cheshire area where this measles epidemic is going on, so my thoughts go to them and all the other families in that area. its kind of frightening, icy weather and a measles epidemic are two things that light up the board on the 'worst case combination' monitor so I'll be keeping an eye on things and praying my paranoia is just that. The mass vaccinations being rolled out by the NHS prove that the specter of British Health-care can still be dragged out of its golden chains to do some good though, and its reminded me that just occasionally i can be proud of something my country does.
     No doubt the picture of me wielding what appears to be a firearm AND a bottle of liquor, however satirical, has piqued the interest of at least some robot at the home office, for reference, its an RIF (Replica Imitation Firearm), and I am a member of the UKARA (United Kingdom Airsoft Retailers Association), but since you're looking;
   
                                        Dear government,
                                           Don't bugger things up.
                                                              Thank you.

My god its cold, the electric fan is going like the clappers I wish i was. *badum tish* tomorrow is my journey unto the rainbow bridge. Wish me luck, and if i die in battle, fear not, I will clear the way to Valhalla before you.