Just got back from sumer camp!

     The Aikido 2012 Gasshuku (that's Japanese for 'spend a week in the woods getting your butt kicked') was awesome.  Loved seeing Suenaka Sensei and everyone else.  Wont go into it now, but I will relate some of it in later posts (probably).  For now, just a few more of my rules (since it's late and I am tired and lazy).
    
     5. The older you get, the more dead people you know.  This rule has a corollary: you also get to skip an increasing number of tedious social functions (i.e. no, I don't want to come to your pet parakeet's bar mitzvah, your plushy party, your live action role playing event, or whatever--thanks anyway, though, and have a nice time).

     6. Start younger.  This rule applies to pretty much everything, but I was thinking about Aikido when ASM826 and I thought it up.  (Now go read his blog, "Random Acts of Patriotism."  AFTER you finish reading mine.)

     7. Whatever you have been putting off in your life that you really want to do, go and do.  Stop finding ways to rationalize not doing it.

     8. If you give the average person a set of choices to use in response to some stimuli, you can usually depend on them to take whichever course of action is the stupidest

     9. If you are on a date or trying to pick up a woman and you get into a fight, you are NOT getting the girl.  However, if you happen upon a woman who is into that kind of thing, run fast, and run far.

     10. No matter how magical you think your penis is, it cannot 'cure' a lesbian.  This is because there is nothing wrong with the lesbian: you are the one who is fucked up for thinking that crap in the first place.

     11. What count isn't what you know, it's what you can do.  (And yes, I know I didn't make that one up--these are the Rules I Lives By, not The Rules I Made Up.  I'll take good ones anywhere I can find 'em.)
     
     12. STEP AWAY FROM THE YOKOMEN!

     More later.  Y'all take care 'til then.

Made it home (and didn't need bail).

     Made it back from Blade without needing bail money.  The jackass that is ripping off Alan's design did so legally--by altering the design by at least 40%.  He made the knife about 50% smaller, so that it can't even fit in your first two fingers, even though it has three finger notches in the handle.  He just blew the picture up in his adds so that it looked like it was large enough to use, when it clearly isn't.  He also was smart enough not to put any of them on his table, because that would have started a riot.  As it was, by the end of the first day, he was hiding in the back of the booth, with a woman (I think his wife) watching the counter, because of all the flack he had gotten over the knife.  He caught hell for that all weekend, too, thanks to good people like the Jones Brothers, the folks from the Usual Suspects Network, the boys from Columbia River, and a whole lot of other folks.
     Despite that jackass, Alan had a hell of a show--he sold out of just about everything he brought.  I made the mistake of selling a bunch of his new S.P.E.W.s (Google Alan Folt's name or the CKRT website to see that knife and the three "Minimalist" designs that Columbia River Knife and Tool is producing for him) and a few other things, as well as all of Tommy's punch daggers and Ripcords and Darts and more crap than I can remember.  Somehow, that means I have to sit the table at Blade next year while Tommy and Alan sleep in the hotel the whole weekend.  No good deed goes unpunished.
     Especially when you sell more of Tommy's knives than he does (by a ten-to-one margin).
     Think I might have slept for a day straight.  Left my damn pillow at the Sheraton in Atlanta--they are mailing it back to me, though I don't know yet how much that will cost.  Had an awesome dinner with the Jones Brothers (Barry, Phillip, and Bob) at a little Italian place I can't remember the name of (best veal parmesan ever) but am damn sure going back to next year.  Also had a great dinner with some old friends, Craig and April Nolan (glad yer still kickin' dude, too bad we didn't get to see the baby).  They moved to Atlanta awhile back so we usually only get to see them at Blade.
     The end of this week is the start of Aikido Camp (the Wadokai Gasshuku 2012).  I might make a post before that, might not.  I'll be in Cheraw, SC, sweating off some of my considerably large ass, for the next seven days after that.
     I'll be back to rant at y'all then.

"Do what you love and love what you do."

    Ray Bradbury said that.  He died yesterday.  When I read the news I took a moment to try and decide which of his works I liked he best.  I couldn't.  "Fahrenheit 451" was great, and is probably his best-known work, aside from "The Martian Chronicles."  I liked "Something Wicked this Way Comes," it scared and delighted me in equal measure as a child.  I also loved "Dandelion Wine" and "The Illustrated Man," as well.  And too many of his other works to name here.  Mr. Bradbury also wrote for TV and the big screen, in addition to being a poet.  The loss his death has wrought on the world of literature (and the science fiction genre in particular) as well as the entertainment industry cannot adequately be described with words.
     However, if--by some chance--you have no clue as to who this man was, please turn off your damn computer right now and go read a book.
     Preferably one of his.

This is one hell of a hand-me-down.

     The CIA (everyone knows about them, they are the Central Intelligence Agency) and the NRO (the National Reconnaissance Office, who hardly anyone knows about, which is weird because they aren't that secret) are giving NASA (you can Google that acronym if you don't know it) two spy satellites to use.  You can read the story at http://news.yahoo.com/u-spy-satellite-agency-gives-nasa-2-space-194916205.html.  As a former Marine, I know a lot about doing more with less (as NASA is now), and getting hand-me-downs.  And I am glad to see our government doing something smart for a change.  I am a huge fan of NASA, I have been since I saw the first moon landing televised on July 16, 1969.  I was two, and watched it with my grandmother at her house in Maryland.  This is one of my earliest memories. 
     Anyway, NASA is going to use these spy satellites like the do they do the Hubble telescope, which has seen its' last servicing (back in 2009) and will be destroyed by crashing it into the Pacific Ocean once it is no longer operable.  Unfortunately, these two satellites wont be re-tasked until 2020, so they wont be able to take pictures of Venus as it passes between our world and the Sun today (and you can read about that at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9311341/Venus-due-to-pass-between-Earth-and-Sun-in-rare-astronomical-event.html).  This is the second and last day of the event.  Check it out while you can, it's a once in a lifetime experience.
     Unless you are planning to still be alive in December of 2117, that is.