android krav maga take 2
Lately when I'm pacing around the house, stewing over the gravity of how fucked up this moment is and how radically different the world is going to look like on the other side of it and how angry and sad and afraid I feel about all of this— I'll do a sort of standing crunch on one leg to snap out of it and think of other things.
I'm not sure how to explain it better than by what I visualize when I'm doing it: I am *grabbing* a monster by the shoulders and *punching* him in the nose with my knee. Yes, very cool of me. I look extremely cool doing this, I'm sure. But, it does help to refocus.
I have only a vague notion of picking this move up in a Krav Maga class, which I haven't attended in five years.
Then, I remember my very good plan for a start-up, which I genuinely do wish existed, which might be the only ethical use of technology in the age of the coronavirus.
I wrote about this earlier — and I still wish I could get investors on the phone with my pitch, which would be:
"In ordinary times, it would be like an android brothel, except the androids are krav maga instructors in a grand martial arts emporium. But in this time of social distancing, you will order an android krava maga instructor that will arrive in a box. And you can practice with it in the privacy and comfort of your own home. The product is designed deliver routine to its users who no longer have access to traditional gym envioronments. Furthermore, it will instill a sense of purpose to those, in present times, overwhelmed with malaise and despair. If a user should stick to their practice through the quarantines and stay-at-home orders, they will emerge fully equip to physically defend themselves against any threat. These threats could be human, animal, mechanical, even paranormal. Look, have you seen those Boston Dynamics videos? These are no ordinary times. We have to prepare ourselves in the event that the robot dogs go rogue."
Welp, it's just too bad that Silicon Valley is too sexist to respect my genius, since this is obviously my calling.
Meanwhile, the other day, I was reading something and came across a letter to the editor from Michael Moorcock, which he signed along with his location "Bastrop, Texas." There's always been a certain kind of British person who moves to and thrives in LA, but I love that Moorcock seems to be straight up vibing with Texas. It just makes sense that he would end up around Austin. Not LA, not Santa Fe, not Vegas. There was a brief but interesting profile of him recently the San Antonio Current. And earlier this interview in Texas Monthly where he explains:
"I wanted to live in a community where there were few or no other Brits, where I could learn not only what people thought but why they thought it, to understand about American politics and social ideas. These means I’m as much inclined to hang out with so-called rednecks as with intellectuals...I wanted to move somewhere which had its own strong mythology and Texas has that in bucket-loads. The landscape lends itself to a very distinctive mythology which has, of course, influenced much of the world."
Then I read some books I didn’t like very much, until finally I picked up The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing. I still haven’t even read the Golden Notebook, so I guess I should get on that, but this one is really good for this moment. It’s structurally interesting, readable, full of exposition in the form of complaints about an apocalypse so vaguely described she could be talking about the coronavirus or the Blitz, and full on rage toward the “ruling classes” (my jam). There were a few elements that I wasn’t fully on board with, and other things that were mysterious to me that might reveal themselves in rereading. I loved reading it but I wouldn’t call it one of my favorite books. But it’s nice to not hate everything about this week.
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Thanks for reading.