Who are you ?

Great pic Mr. Flax. We have alot of good lookin, normal looking, people on this forum. No REAL weirdos like I would've expected.

You even kinda look like your avatar, too, Flax.

Is that good or bad?

Here you go my friends, a few shots of this evening's martial arts ceremony as promised

In this first shot, the smaller "middle youngster" there isn't mine




In this shot it's me and my "little butt kicker"... 80 pounds soaking wet and tough as nails





The "Top Dog" our master instructor and myself.





Kelsey and Master Derek Croley....she looks quite pleased with herself

Maximus1 wrote:

In this shot it's me and my "little butt kicker"... 80 pounds soaking wet and tough as nails

Both you and Childe of Munster have teenaged daughters? Are both your middle names Job?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Great pic Mr. Flax. We have alot of good lookin, normal looking, people on this forum. No REAL weirdos like I would've expected.

Ha! Way to bait the hook.

Just kidding. I know you weren't being ironic in the least.

Mr_Flax wrote:

Here's me from a gig a few weeks back:

Hmmm. What do we have here, a Carlos Santana, a Ry Cooder, a Steve Vai, or a Stevie Ray Vaughn? Lita Ford, maybe?

What? Chick knows how to play guitar.

Please tell me your playing the hell outta the Headcutter's Duel!

z.o.o. wrote:

Both you and Childe of Munster have teenaged daughters? Are both your middle names Job?

No, but I have one.

Great pictures Max!! You and your daughter look really happy, and again congratulations on getting your.... 3rd degree black belts? WOW!

Zer0Morph wrote:

Great pictures Max!! You and your daughter look really happy, and again congratulations on getting your.... 3rd degree black belts? WOW!

No Z, I wish, but that is our Shodan 1st Degree, which took us just over 5 years. It depends where your studying, but it usually takes 3-6 years ( or even a bit more ) to get a first degree, then about 2-3 additional years to get your 2nd degree. Then from 2nd to 3rd is about another 3-4 years. From 3rd to 4th is about another 4 years after that, and then about another 5 years on top of that to get a 5th Dan ( Master ). That's about as high as you can go in many disciplines, unless you have become an instructor as well, and then you can progress upwards to as high as 10th, which is for all purposes a Grand Master, and is pretty much a life long endeavor 20-30 years or so...maybe more. I wasn't kidding when I said I needed about 5-6 more years to get to a mind / spirit level of my arts...it takes A LOT of effort and time

I was in the instructor program ( for the last 2 years ) and was heading that way, but now we're moving to Fla, so that is no longer a possibility. We'll probably find another studio and master level instructor once we get moved and settled and progress from there. Thanks Z If you look at Derek's belt...you'll see one BIG stripe and 3 smaller stripes, the big one is equivalent to 5 stripes, so he is an 8th degree master instructor, he's 36 and has been practicing one art or another pretty much non-stop since he was 6 The man is totally lethal! In the words of old Mr. T ... anyone messes with that man..."I pity the Fool".

Our embroidered belts with our ranking and names on it, didn't arrive in time for the ceremony we'll get those later, so just a plain ole black belt was given to us last night, but made for a good photo op

Mr Flax, very cool picture of you! I once attempted to play guitar, and failed miserably, I can't carry a tune in a bucket...goes for my...er...great singing voice as well

Thanks guys. Sadly, I am actually considerably less cool than the picture would indicate; it was taken by a professional band photographer, a friend of the band, who is bloody amazing.

It's actually a bass guitar, but since it's also a 5-string it's understandable that it looks more like a regular guitar

Yeah it did look like a regular guitar, I noticed you appear to be playing left handed I am left handed as well, but do most things right handed, that's the world we live in!

Hey, Max, are you cross-dominant? I'm right-handed and right-legged, but left-eyed.

It's kind of strange Munster, I grew up left handed and the Sister's ( yep Catholic ), used to bash me over the wrists with a ruler, trying to get me to write right handed. Later as I grew older, I just switched over to doing almost everything right handed, including anything like throwing a baseball, archery etc, etc. I'm right eye dominant as well, though not known if born this way, or just through so many years of training the right eye to do the things necessary. Being able to use both hands fairly good though has many advantages.

As you can guess, I haven't seen the inside of a Catholic church, or hardly any other church in over 25 years LOL. Not an atheist or anything, just not much for organized religion.

Sister with ruler bashing kids? WTF

I was born right-handed, but i trained to be ambidexterous, man i developed some parts of my personality that it's impossible to make the connection between the me right-handed and the me ambidexterous. Turns out that training your non-dominant hand activates parts in your brain that were inactive, so you get the double of brain "activeness" Yep.

Here is one of the sites that helped me http://www.the-biomatrix.net/become-ambidextrous.htm

Also,on the religion topic, i'm a motherfucking atheist and proud of it.
Darwin is my Lord and Savior, and i pray for him for better grades at biology class.

Oh yeah Philosopher, it was a different time in the late 60's, Sister Mary Elizabeth, I can picture that old crone in my mind to this day.

My mother grew up Catholic too, had the same "Sister" abuse. The Catholic church really screwed her up for many years and like me, she is now just a simple Christian, no denomination.

Oh many catholics in the US are sectarian hard beleivers... Even nowadays Oo
Here in Europe, catholics schools and stuff do not bash over left handeds anymore (maybe in Ukraine..).

I'm an atheist too, but I'm engaged to someone studying to become pastor (protestant priest, but real protestant, Luther and Calvin protestant). We are still trying to figure out how we'll marry (I wasn't baptisized as a child, therefore, having a religeous wedding is kind of problematic -although any church will do-). Maybe we'll just go for civil marriage, but then for his church it may become complicated for some hard core beleivers ("you didn't marry under the Eye of God" shit).

Atheist, no baptism here. How to stick to an institution who burnt alive millions of ladies for such motives as having a black cat, justify the treat of the black people by stating their absence of soul and nowadays still prone the non-use of contraceptive method in a country ravaged by AIDS...
Here in the Philippines the Church (even churches derived from the Spanish colonization populate the country like sects with weird sectarian practices) is a plague. You obviously get the pregnant teenagers victim of laws against abortion and absence of sexual education.
I took the catholic church as an example because i come from a country where it is dominant (and I live at other side of the world in another country where it is dominant), no particular grief, I would have study history somewhere else I would have found out the same shit anyway.

I understand people believe but instead of sticking to an institution, spirituality should be an individual path taking some time to explore to find something that I cannot explain at the moment because I never felt the need yet to begin the journey. Not some heritage from your culture that you are drown in at birth.

Après le bon catholicisme franco-français est pas si taré que ça ! Enfin en métropole au moins.. Mais y'a des cons partout. C'est sûr que les dérives catholiques hispaniques dans les anciennes colonies c'est spécial..
Derivated Catholicism in old Spanish colonies can be sometimes completly crazy, but most of it is just basic paganism which is not dangerous to anyone (having a picnic in a cementary has never killed anyone, but anti abortion laws, anti contraception and most of that shit has).

Kelben is about true protestantism (between you, your book and your god), and I agree (although as I explained earlier, I'm atheist too).
Institutions can only go wrong, as it's man-made. I'd bet that Jesus, if the guy ever existed, would be sick of what's been done in his name (although some catedrals are amazing, specially Strasbourg's or Amien's)

I prefer living up to my moral and my convinctions. If there "is" something, then I will be able to say I was clean with myself all along :p

Oui, oui je suis d'accord. Par les temps actuels, je faisais plutot reference aux directives du Vatican et leurs consequences.

The influence in the Philippines is certainly Spanish yes, but also very much American. A friend of me recently coming over from France who is living in Indonesia told me that Manila is like an Asian district of New York to give you an idea.

My main concern with institutions is they control masses and thus are a far too much dangerous tool. The US invasion in Afghanistan and Irak presented to the population as a fight against the axis of Evil. It is somehow natural they use the same tool as the enemy in fact, I am just amazed in such a developed country people get fooled by the same old tricks.

So yes, as mentioned by Claudia, human beings in a society have, I believe, enough good sense to find out what is good and what is bad. That they will be as wise as she is a complete different story.

I'm the most palid guy you'll ever meet.

16 years old, take that old farts!

Also, that smirnoff was planted there by my friends, i don't drink.

I can remember being a young fart Good to see you Philosopher !

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Also, that smirnoff was planted there by my friends, i don't drink.

"I never drink ... wine."

So you're the guy creating all of those lip files for Akeem, nice to meet you finally!