Dar Kush

The Great mariah Moore Knife Auction

2008-07-05T16:02:00.000-07:00

Hi, This is Steve's webmaster coming at you here.

Steve asked me to post this and point you at a worthy cause we are working to support.

This last winter, Steve met a young lady named Mariah Moore at the World Eskrima,Kali Arnis Federation National Championships, which were held in Southern California.

Mariah, who took two gold and one silver at the last WEKAF world Championships, fought her way to a place on the American team to represent her country in this years World's in Cebu Philippines.

Here is a promo clip of her showing off her skills just a bit.

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Because of the rising price of everything, it has been very difficult for Mariah's family to make it possible for her to get to the tournament on their own, so several people and companies have stepped up to help.

One of the things we are doing is auctioning off a knife donated by Tribal Edge Knifeworks to help with the expenses.

You can find out more about the knife and the auction at the Eskrimadora blog.

We are also giving away a couple of autographed galleys from famous author (and friend of the blog) Steve Perry.

Please take a moment to check out Mariah and her auction. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Steve will say something more about this when he gets a spare moment.

(We will now return control of your computer screen to you)

Namaste

2008-07-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

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I wanted to start talking about relationships, and maybe the disastrous "Hancock" isn't a distraction from this. Take away the ability to reproduce, or protect and nurture your offspring, and a species dies. The question of building and sustaining a healthy relationship is inextricably connected to either the rules of relationships as learned culturally or in observation of parents, or arises from a deep well of love within you.

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Love for self, brimming over until you have love to offer others, is a perfectly good starting place, and from my perspective, the very healthiest. It connects you to your survival drive, both being kind to yourself, and being disciplined enough to push through fatigue and emotional detritus to achieve disciplined excellence. Second Chakra is sexuality. While not everyone wants children, I believe we should not open this Pandora's Box before we are mature and focused enough to create goods and services that can be exchanged with our community LEGALLY to put food on our table and a roof over our heads. This is one of the doorways to adulthood.

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A healthy relationship between two adults which includes sexuality should, therefore, be in alignment with the pair bond instinct. Pretty silly to fight against it! Gay or straight, birth control or no, there is no down side to having the most basic aspects in place. And I think that they are:

1) Self-love and love of others.

2) Financial security. More relationships break up over money than sexual infidelity.

3) A body in alignment with your own values: in other words, you would be physically attracted to yourself.

4) Honesty and trustworthiness.

5) Passion for life, which translates into sexual passion, the heat that forges a bond between human beings.

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If we have these things, there is the potential for creating a long-lasting connection that would protect the life and security of a child. And if you don't want children? I can't imagine there being a disadvantage to being ABLE to provide security for a child, even if you don't want one.

Everything here is vital to an individual human life. To a partnership. Or the health of a community.

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When abortions like "Hancock" come out, it is glaringly obvious (from my perspective) that something has gone very wrong. The consistency with which it "goes wrong" when the films deal with black or Asian males, strengthens my belief that there is a core, essential cause that can be isolated and examined like a pathogen.

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This isn't about "are white people racist?" "are men racist?" or "Is America a racist country?" I feel the need to say this over and over again, because I don't want o be misunderstood. It is about the universal human instinct toward tribalism, and the way it manifests in our purchasing patterns.

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In a classic science fiction story, "The Screwtape Solution", aliens trigger an atavistic response in human beings so that men kill women. If you disrupt the breeding patterns of a species, you can destroy the species. The aversion to watching mating behavior in members of a group you are in competition with is the unconscious expression of just such a drive, and we must be very careful of it.

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What could they have done in Hancock to save it?

1) Cast a Latina. History has proven that casting a Latina opposite a black man offends far less than casting a blonde white woman...or, oddly enough, casting a black woman.

2) Have Theron's character not actually married to the PR guy. Girlfriend, or fiancee, perhaps. People still would have been uncomfortable , but not quite as much.

3) Play their relationship as tragic, but give Hancock a romantic possibility at the end. Like, say, the policewoman he rescued. Have her transfer to New York to be near him at the end, offering a ray of hope rather than the "black man sacrifices so that white folks can have hot sex" thing that made "The Green Mile" one of the vilest films ever made.

Enough of that. We want healthy relationships, and want to pursue them in a way that is in alignment with having a healthy body, and a healthy financial life. Starting with passion, health, self-love, empathy, and honesty is great--these are all things that we need whether we are seeking a relationship or not. We need these things to survive and thrive as individuals. It is critical that if we are to grow as a species or society, it starts with individual action. Ultimately, WE are all we can affect. In that way, every hour of every day can be occupied making the entire world a better place. When you love yourself, and love life, it is easy to be kind and loving to others. The sanskrit word "Namaste" means: "The divinity within me perceives and acknowledges the divinity within you." That is a hell of a place to start changing the world: to find God within ourselves, and to learn to see Him (or Her) within every other human being we meet.

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Makes sex REALLY interesting as well. Lovemaking as prayer...sign me up.

Hancock (2008)

2008-07-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

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WARNING: SAMBO ALERT

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I'm sorry. I'm not going to sugar coat this, or beat around the bush. This is the most egregious example of what I've been trying to say, the most blantant Sambo movie since "Driving Miss Daisy"--no, it's worse. Will Smith is not Morgan Freeman. Will Smith can do any film he wants, and what he wants is to make successful films. Well, take a look at the critical reviews, and you'll see that he's probably blown it there. He'll have a huge weekend. And then boxoffice will drop like a frozen butterfly. I admire Will greatly, and don't blame him for this--he's just working the system, folks.

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In my opinion, not one of the reviewers has put their finger on what went wrong. It's all "it was great for 40 minutes, and then it fell apart..."

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No one knows? Really? No one lets themselves know. The truth is too painful, and everyone wants to believe that human beings aren't what they are. And this particular disaster comes out of that. Let me get to the meat of this, and then go on to say why this was one of the most painful, insulting movie-going experiences of my life. Tananarive was crying--THAT'S how bad it was.

Hancock is about a superhero (Will Smith) who is an alcoholic bum. A P.R. guy (Jason Bateman) has his life saved, and decides to rehabilitate Hancock's image. Bateman's Wife, (Charlize Theron) doesn't much like the idea.

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(SPOILERS GALORE. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK)

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Hancock is revealed to be a god-like being, the last of his kind in the world...he thinks. The point at which the movie goes to shit is where Hancock is alone with Therone in the kitchen, and is powerfully attracted to her...and she throws him through a wall. You see, she is also a god, and in fact was his wife eighty years ago (they don't age). When they are near each other, they lose powers.

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The fact is, that this is a brilliant set-up for a send-up of the superhero genre, and the first 30-40 minutes ROCKED. Then they ran into a problem we've discussed many, many times:

1) Statistics show that movies in which black men have sex underperform at the box office--badly.

2) Because this smacks of racism, no one will admit it's true...often, even to themselves.

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This means that the natural erotic tension between these characters cannot be allowed to develop. It is glaringly, painfully obvious that there were extensive re-shoots and last-minute edits in this film. Smith and Therone refer to a kiss that we never see--which must have been clumsily excised at the last moment.

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They also refer to Hancock being beaten eighty years ago in Florida (the South) while walking hand-in-hand with his wife. To raise the specter of the racism that horribly scarred my parent's generation while bowing to it's present-day manifestation is simply vile. So Hancock is doomed to live alone, forever...while Theron can have a husband and child. And we are treated to several tender kissing scenes between her and her husband. So touching.

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The fact that she is a blond South African is some kind of sick joke. They cut the kiss from the kitchen, launch into an incoherant action scene, and the movie never, ever recovers. What's missing? The natural rhythm of boy-meets girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets girl.

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Know what? There would have been many ways to write this so that they didn't end up together, really. But I doubt that for an instant anyone in the gaggle of writers who must have worked on this EVER looked honestly at the producers and said: "this is our problem. We can't have them end up together. We can't show them making love, or kissing. We can't even play with the erotic tension, because the audience isn't leaning forward in pleasurable anticipation...they're leaning BACK, away from the screen, hoping like hell we won' t show them Will's bare ass pounding away at a blond. What do we do?"

If they were honest, they might have cast, say, a Latina, which would have diminished the color shock, and allowed the relationship to progress more naturally. Then, if they couldn't be together, you have a tragedy. And I could have bought that! Really, I wasn't looking for "Happily Ever After." Just an acknowledgment that I am a god damned human being. Will Smith has to know EXACTLY what's going on. But when Denzel tried to comment on this phenomenon years ago, he was accused of being a bigot. He now shuts up and takes the money. As does Will. And Eddie. And Sam. And everyone else.

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Damn it, did she HAVE to be South African? Could they have found a less insulting metaphor? That he needs sacrifice so that the white man can fuck his white wife and have white babies, Hallalujah, Hallalujah?

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Can any of you grasp how it feels to have spent my entire LIFE watching this, while people remain asleep and pretend it isn't happening?

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For God's sake, please no one hide behind the "It's Hollywood." Yeah, and New York Publishing. And Washington politics. And everywhere else. It's the heartland. Memphis. Florida. It's the whole world of people who can't look at their flaws and shortcomings, the fears that plague us all and the way we try to hide in groups and demonize the "other"--or at the very least believe they are less human than us. It is the human tribal instinct, in all it's ugly glory, alive and well in 2008.

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And people wonder why I get pissed when they say that it was to Obama's advantage to be black.

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Will Smith is the first star in history to have six 100-million movies in a row. Oh, Hancock will probably be his seventh. But it will be a real disappointment. Read the reviews. All of them will notice that "something" happened. Not one of them will know why. None of them will LET themselves know. Whites don't want to know because it triggers guilt and shame.

And it is, frankly, to their advantage. Want to know one of the advantags of being white? You can be Seth Rogen and be thought sexier than Denzel Washington. Hell, if I was white, I'd pretend not to notice, too. When you're winning, you don't ask if the deck is stacked.

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Many blacks don't even have conscious awareness--it triggers fear to feel so alone, outnumbered and outgunned by people who smile in your face, tell you they like you (and mean it) and apparently don't give a living shit that they are entertained my images that emasculate and dehumanize you. And don't for a second think that the psychology that allows a "Hancock" is disconnected from the psychology that allows eight cops to pump a hundred bullets into an unarmed black man. Oops!

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As I work in this industry, I've been warned dozens of times not to talk about this publicly--usually by friends who genuinely care, and are worried I'll hurt my career.

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But I have a four year old son. I don't want him wishing he had blond hair and blue eyes so he can get the girl. And when he notices that that's the way it is, I want to be able to look him straight in the face and say that I didn't lie, I didn't go to sleep, I did my part to create images of power, and to scream and rave and try to awaken the sleeping crowd. If you wake up, if you notice it, you have to either do something, or admit you don't give a shit. I think most people would care, if they were forced to notice.

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This was just one of the worst movie-going experiences of my life. I thought we were further along than this.

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If Will Smith can't get laid, Obama can't get elected.

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John McCain should take heart. While I doubt he WANTS the world to be this way, I'm sure he'd be happy to reap the benefits in November.

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My rating?

For sleeping white people, a "C+." For anyone awake, an "F."

New 007 Trailer up!

2008-07-01T09:58:00.001-07:00

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Aintitcoolnews has a link to the new James Bond trailer. Yow! They've definitely learned from Bourne, but that's only fair, considering that Bourne built on the Bond mythology and might almost be considered a specific reaction to it. Hell, even stole 007s initials...as did Jack Bauer. Anyway, the bond movies have lasted 40 years by adjusting to the times, and QUANTUM OF SOLACE seems to be doing this brilliantly. Can't wait. Hey, Dan! Another theater party?

We've got until 4pm tonight to get IN THE NIGHT OF THE HEAT back to the publisher, so today's entry is mighty short. Tananarive is in the dining room doing her run-through checking dates. I cannot even tell you how comforting it is to have someone to watch my back like this. I might even say it's the most important thing in a relationship designed to last.

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Recently, I had a conversation with one of the ladies I knew from the Quodoshka native American spiritual sexuality workshops. Trust me, she knows how to bring the heat, but has reached a point in her life where she wants something lasting and real. A partnership. "Someone to watch her back, and trust her to watch his." The similarity of our thinking struck me. I want to talk about relationships in the 101-Day program (note how that number just shifted? A suggestion from Mushtaq) and wanted to open the door to such speaking. We've all had bad relationships. Hopefully, we've all had good ones, as well. I have my opinions on what bonds one human being to another, and what breaks those bonds. I have a question for you guys: what was the foundation of the BEST relationship you ever had? And what was the basis of the WORST?

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Is it at all possible to predict which will be which in advance?

On weight and conscious humanity

2008-06-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

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Marty S. took exception to my comment that the older generation has to die off before certain social change will take place. Yeah, I know there are exceptions, but in general, attitudes frozen in place before puberty are hellaceosly hard to change. In terms of things like racial images in film (which I see as a litmus test for social attitudes in general) I've been asked hundreds of times what people can do to change the world in this way. Frankly, I get tired of trying to inform people why Indentured Servitude wasn't the same as slavery, or why sexual images matter. I am no longer interested in changing people's minds if they won't meet me half-way. But that hardly means I am pessimistic. Quite optimistic, in fact, and feel that when more of the white males born before 1950 are dead, the problem will take care of itself. If that sounds harsh, sorry about that--I mean you no ill will, and wish you and your family long life. But death comes to all, and in this context, I won't shed a tear.

I'll dig to try to find those stats about Japan and obesity. A clue: people don't pass laws without the perception of a problem.

I want to address the "fat" thing again, after reading the review of Wall-E posted by Nancy. I look at this issue a lot because it is a perfect example of the way human beings warp reality, twist physics and ignore data to protect their egos. We ALL do this--but we do this in different arenas. I can't point the finger, for Christ sakes: I hang my bleeding psychic laundry out in public view every damned day, and anyone who thinks I think I'm above this stuff hasn't been reading.

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So the following comments are not, in any way, intended to say that fat people are less than anyone else: less moral, less intelligent, less worthy as human beings. It is intended to say that their particular wounds "cluster" in a particular quadrant of human consciousness.

The review complained that Wall-E was not "Fat positive." I completely understand why the ego of a person dealing with this issue would want this. But norming something socially isn't the same as making it positive. You can remove the social stigma to, say, illegitimacy, without diminishing the damage it does to the children, or to society, to grow up without a stable family. Norm away.

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A "dis-ease" is something that diminishes functioning of organs, social interactions, psychlogical health, relationships, whatever. By almost any medical standard, anything that decreases life span, decreases energy, decreases function, would be a "dis-ease." And obesity certainly fits into this category. The problem is that obesity arises from some very positive genetic predilections:

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1) To eat as much as possible when food is available

2) To expend no more calories than are necessary to survive.

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For hunter-gatherers, this is great. For people living in an industrial society, these twin tendencies have become lethal. Human beings have NEVER had to expend so few calories of effort to earn a calorie of fat, protein, or sugar. Anyone who thinks that the explosion of obesity is genetic rather than environmental isn't paying attention to what happens as we move toward a post-industrial/information-age society...or as that happens anywhere in the world. People get fatter.

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The very worst cases in my experience are those whose ancestors lived very physical lives. In the Pacific Northwest, where I lived for ten years, I knew a lot of VERY fat people. Their fathers and grandfathers were lean and muscular--I saw the pictures. They were also lumberjacks, one of the most grueling and dangerous professions in the world. What happened? The mills came in, people got desk jobs...but they ATE like they learned to eat as children. And got fat. Simple. That corresponds to physics, biology, psychology, and family dynamics.

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I've heard the same story from people who live in farming communities. Instead of working from dawn til' dusk, people take desk jobs...but eat the same way. What the hell do YOU think is going to happen?

Now then. Does this mean there are not people with slower metabolisms than other people? Hell, yes! Everyone who ever played team sports knows that on a team everyone can do the same workout, eat at the same training table, rise and bed at the same hours...and have differing levels of body fat. This is a reality. But acknowleging this truth isn't the same as saying "I can't lose weight" or "it's my genetics." Everyone has a mixed bag of positive and negative characteristics: more intelligence, less grace, more compassion for others, less understanding of self. This is just the stuff we're given at birth, and we have to deal with it.

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Is it wrong for society to stigmatize the obese? Define your terms. Should we stigmatize alcoholics? Unwed mothers? Cigarette smokers? People who don't pay their bills? The homeless? All of these things are combinations of biological and psychological factors, with differing levels of personal responsibility involved. In a spiritual world, we would see that all of these deserve our total compassion. In the real world, societies attach pain to behaviors that are damaging (or are perceived to be damaging) to the society. The cruelty of children toward the "Other" is legendary. And part of that is the driving fear of being just like whatever "geek" they are taunting, chasing, beating up, mocking, or shunning. Terrible, and damned near universal.

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I have lost many friends to obesity-related illnesses, and I've run out of bullshit on this issue. I will not be politically correct while people are dying.

1) No one's body disobeys the laws of physics. I have literally heard this from overweight people, and it is heart-breaking. These people are smart, good, as moral as anyone else...and flat-out lying to themselves. The lesson is NOT that fat people lie to themselves more than thin ones. Rather, it is that we lie to ourselves to protect from the pain of existence, and then beg our friends and families to cooperate with the lies. We bend reality to fit our emotional needs. When you hear a fat person doing this, ask yourself where in your own life you have done EXACTLY the same thing. Trust me. You have.

2) It doesn't take "hours a day" to work out. Jesus, what a crock of shit this is. It is based on ignorance (you stopped learning about your body after your last High School Phys Ed class) and fear (I don't want to do it, so will exaggerate the time involved so people will get off my @#$## back.) Where pure fitness is involved, no one can work out intensely for more than about 45 minutes--after that, GH release diminishe, and unless you are on steroids, diminishing returns sets in FAST. What is the actual minimum expenditure of time for a serious result? Including warm-up, less than 30 minutes. There are plenty of damned fine workouts taking no more than 15 minutes a day, requiring no more than body-weight and a willingness to be consistent.

3) Weight loss efforts MUST involve BOTH exercise and dietary modification. What people do is do one OR the other, and then fail, and say "see? I can't lose!" Weight is a two-headed snake. If you don't handle both ends, the other head will bite you in the ass. A pound of fat is 3500 calories. An hour of treadmill burns maybe 500-700 calories if you half-kill yourself. Do the math.

4) Don't try to lose more than 2 pounds a week, max. Trying one of these dreadful "lose a pound a day!" programs is just playing into the lie.

5) Diets don't work. Any eating pattern you are planning to abandon down the road is just setting yourself up for failure. Lifestyle changes work.

6) Your ego will kill you to protect itself. This is a nasty one. By the time you identify with a bulky body and think it is "you" you MUST change your self-image to be able to lose that weight. Visualization, therapy, hypnosis, etc cn be mighty allies.

7) Your social networks will support you staying exactly where the #$%! you are. Try losing weight and have your friends start inviting you to fondue parties. It is bizarre, and predictable. You may have to leave your social network if they have "normed" your negative behaviors.

8)You're going to get negative shit from society. Get over it. It isn't fair. It isn't "right.' We should fight to have compassion--without norming the damaging behavior. People who have to chose between being depressed and being obese pretty understandably choose being obese. I would. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE. It isn't a binary universe. The fact is that the average person DOES live as if such choices are inevitable. The average person, given the genetics and social environment of an obese person, would probably be obese. That's part of the reason they give you shit--they're afraid of becoming you, and so anchor pain to that thought by being cruel. There's no excuse for such behavior, but there are reasons. Don't EVER attach your life results to whether other people change or not. I might have a goal of "writing and producing movies" that are partially based upon the behavior of others. But that is not a primary goal. My primary goal is to complete myself in my lifetime, to be happy, healthy, balanced and loved. And society has very little to say about that: my REACTION to society does. Children think they can't be happy unless they are loved. Adults should know better. We all resist growing up. We want to be children with the privileges of adults. It doesn't work.

9) There are no unrealistic goals. Just unrealistic time frames. It will usually take you less time to lose the weight than it took to put it on. But human impatience is a terrible thing.

10) Our bodies, like our finances and relationships, reflect our actions, beliefs, values, and positive/negative emotional anchors. We HATE this. We want people to look at us and see our spiritual essence, as if it is divorced from the reality of temporal existence. We desperately want to define ourselves by our ego-images rather than our behaviors. And become angry and afraid when people judge us as we judge them...and ourselves. One of the harshest moments in any lecture or class I give is when I say that people should be attracted to themselves, physically. When they strip and look in the mirror, they should want to screw their own brains out. They know EXACTLY what I mean, but will blame society, heterosexuality, or whatever for their inability to find themselves lusty. They want, in other words, other people to find them more attractive than they find themselves. Life doesn't work like this. If you want a relationship with someone who is healthier than you physically, you can have it--if you are healthier than them emotionally. Or have greater financial resources (this works REALLY well for guys). But there is no cheating, and no way around it. You just cannot attract and hold someone above your own energetic level. Either compensate in another arena, or make your peace with it. If you want others to see your "inner essence" but aren't satisfied with those who are attracted to you, who are you trying to kid?

The most important thing, that I want to say again, is that in no way, shape or form have I seen the obese to be any less than other human beings. But unfortunately, they are like alcoholics who wear vests made of whiskey bottles. We KNOW they are out of balance, whereas many of us can hide our flaws, our wounds, our inabilities to cope with the changing world or the disappointments of our childhoods. That's the only real difference. They cannot hide.

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Ultimately, none of us can. Ultimately, there is no world "out there." There is just us, and our illusions about our existence. I am totally unattracted to fat bodies, but have been VERY attracted to some ladies who were fat. They were trapped in fortresses designed to protect them from childhood trauma, struggled against it, and often failed...but kept trying. And I loved them, and found them desirable. When you feel sorry for a fat person, feel sorry for yourself--where in the hell do you hide YOUR pain? Where do YOUR lies fuck you over? How do YOU distort your understanding of the physics and metaphysics of reality to protect your ego? Unless you can see the universal humanity in each and every one of them, you are kidding yourself, shielding yourself from the pain of real discovery: inside every cloak of flesh is the same spark of humanity that exists deep within us, the same sacred signal distorted by a different type of static, unique to that person's experience.

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Do NOT support people in their lies and think you can tell yourself the truth. And the biggest lie is that there is some essential difference between the fat and the thin. If there was, they wouldn't scare us so damned much

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We're all together in this, but walk alone. We're all alone in this, together.

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