Nick Mamatas's Blog, page 22

Don't Think I've Forgotten

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I'm the Nancy Kerrigan of taiji

I decided, in January, to enter the Berkeley Chinese Martial Arts Tournament, in the push hands division, for a couple of reasons:

broken toe in summer 2013 plus baby (which meant no more jujitsu and no more shuai-jiao, though I stuck with taiji) in winter of 2013 plus bilateral pneumonia in early 2014 plus a year of inertia meant I had expanded back into the mid-190s, pounds wise, and stayed there for a year.

CMAT expanded the rules to allow for one round of "restricted step" push hands (which I don't like) and one round of "moving step" push hands (which I do like). Half a loaf is better than none, and that second round seems to have attracted more competent practitioners this year. (In prior years, Cal students seem to have won many of the medals.) At best, restricted step is kind of like fencing footwork meeting collar tie-ups and slapboxing to the sternum. At worst, moving step is like slow less-naked sumo. It was that kind of day on both accounts.

We'll start with a spoiler:


I got skinny, weighing in today at 172.2 lbs, and I won the silver medal in the light heavyweight division.

In mid-January, I started intermittent fasting, specifically an "eight-hour diet", in order to squeeze into the 146-175 pound weight class for the push-hands matches. For me, that mean no food before noon and no food after eight pm, every day of the week. As an inveterate midnight snacker and often a big breakfast eater too—yes, a bagel sandwich with egg and sausage, and why not a brownie too, and I'd better have a banana to neutralize the brownie...—just slicing off either end of the day took of ten pounds pretty easily. Obviously, this won't work for everyone. About three weeks out, I started restricting calories within the noon-eight window: Trader Joe's lentil soup makes a great lunch, and anything for dinner. My home scale and my gym scale disagreed—home told me I was fine so for the last week, I went very hard:

Lunch: one spinach bolani, three slices of deli-style low-sodium turkey, one orange

Dinner: one can of tuna fish packed in water, one banana, one orange, one square of 72% chocolate

Snacks: sugar-free Jolly Ranchers as needed, which have a laxative effect. I went through about four packages.

Drinks: water only, with only about four ounces of water on Friday despite high exercise loads.

I wouldn't recommend this last week's food load at all, especially not coupled with one-two hours of exercise a day. I experienced fairly severe cognitive and emotional deficits.

For practice, I recruited my pal and taiji classmate Gabriel, and we played for between forty-five minutes and an hour twice a week for the two weeks prior to today's event. He's about my weight, but taller and quite strong, and the rules were that he could do all our normal push hands attacks—neck wrapping, grabbing the legs, forearm smashes etc.—while I'd stick with the fairly strict rules for "sports" push hands. I found myself getting a lot "softer" in taiji terms, meaning going with the attacks and succeeding in turning them around.

On non-pushing days, I did my usual taiji exercises, plus burpees (pyramids of 100), pull-ups (groups of 10), and some elliptical and occasional kettlebell cleans and presses with the 28kg bell. Taiji class on Sundays are four hours long, and push-hands club (just once a month: Jan and Feb) are about five hours long, though of course one takes little breaks in between partners.

Anyway, that's how you lose 25 pounds in seven-and-a-half weeks with a forty-three-year-old metabolism.

My taiji teacher had a pinched nerve, so couldn't practice with me much. He did tell me two important tips, which I copied down and brought with me this morning.


"Spine" and "belly." The meaning of these are either already obvious or can't be explained over the Internet.

I got to the event very early, wandered around for a couple of hours, met a bunch of people I know from my local park-based push hands club and soon enough, we were off to the races. I'm so lazy I only put the videos up on Facebook, which doesn't make for useful embedding, but you can always click.

First match, against a UC Berkeley taiji club member named Jack. He was a beginner. I won handily, 7-0. My strategy was to get a lot of easy points in the first, restricted step, round, and in the second round to test how much the judges would let slide as far as rough-housing goes, by pushing my opponent into a judge's lap. (Push hands in the US has a seated judge on three corners and a ref-judge watching the action close up.) I scored with that, then let the clock run out to save some energy. Here's a video.

Second match, against a man with ten years experience in the powerful Zhabao taiji system, and a lot of tournament experience, including five medals. We were evenly matched—he was too well-rooted for me to move; I was too relaxed for him to move. After finishing 0-0 we went into an overtime round. There I got a push on him, but only the ref and two of the seated judges thought it was sufficiently destabilizing to count. (I agree that he was still mostly stable.) Then he accidentally jabbed my neck and I got a point (and a slightly bruised throat) for the violation. Clock ran out, I won 1-0. Here's the video. As he'd beaten his first opponent at 11-3, he won the bronze.

Third match, gold medal round, against a very strong and experienced Chen taiji teacher and artist. He'd torn through his first couple of opponents at 19-0 and 13-0 if I remember correctly. (It might be 19-3 and 13-0.) He was also booked to play as a heavyweight, but showed up at 174.2 lbs and thus was a light heavyweight with me. Anyway, my thought process went from "Maybe I can win!" to "Maybe I can score some points!" to "Maybe I can keep him from getting ten points on me!" I did manage that much—I lost, 8:0. Here's the restricted step round video, and here is the moving step round video.

Anyway, losing the gold means I get the silver. Still pretty fun, and Opie enjoyed playing with the medal.

The heavyweight winner was also a teacher, this one out of Davis. One can't be sure, but I think moving to moving-step rules got more and more competent people interested in CMAT this year. It's certainly why I signed up. My ultimate preference would be to dump the restricted-step round and expand the moving-step to allow for leg sweeps and three-points-of-contact throws.

As for me, I went immediately to a ribs joint for a real meal, then to my friend's barbecue. I think I will stick to noon-to-eight eating periods, which both reduce food intake and something something blood sugar timed digestion for four days a week, and have Fri-Sun for more expansive eating. That should keep most of the weight off, and I think I'll start training for next year...on Monday!

Some Stuff

I got a royalty check for The Nickronomicon. A relatively big one—more than a day at day job work pays, more than a month's cable/Internet/phone/utilities. So, if you've not bought it yet, why not buy it now?

Then there's The Last Weekend, the US edition of which is coming out in September. The UK edition got a uh...review yesterday, that reads in part "And not to nitpick, but where did the title The Last Weekend come from? Unless I missed it completely, I'm not getting why it's the last weekend."

Aaaah, book bloggers! Anyway, there you go. More later.

Stephen King in THE NEW YORKER, Stephen King in CEMETERY DANCE.

Stephen King is one of those busy new writers, isn't he? He has a story, A Death, in the current issue of The New Yorker, and a recent reprint, "Summer Thunder" in the latest issue of Cemetery Dance. "Summer Thunder" originally appeared in the CD anniversary anthology Turn Down the Lights. The question that piqued my interest is this: "Does King write differently for the slicks than he does for the pulps?" My answer: "Well, a little."

"Summer Thunder" is a by-the-numbers Stephen King story. It's effective, of course, but it's all there: New England setting (Vermont in this case), a Cold War/Baby Boomer anxiety come to life (limited nuclear exchange leading to global thermonuclear war), nostalgia (there's a "Dead Man's Curve", references to classic rock), a teensy bit of class struggle (an abandoned fancy housing development, the survivors drink Budweiser), and even a dying dog named Gandalf. I have the sneaking suspicion that a New Yorker editor would have at least circled the name choice. Gandalf is a little gray dog, you see. And yet, the story remained powerful, because people love dogs and hate the idea of being the last to die.

"A Death" isn't all that different: the surface elements have changed, of course. "A Death" takes place in the West, in the 19th century. It's a murder mystery of sorts. A little girl has been killed, on her birthday even, and a man little better than a simpleton stands accused. There's not much evidence, but it all points to him. He's hanged, pleading innocence and fighting all the way, and then as it turns out he actually did the murder after all. Hmm.

"A Death" reminds me of the stories that once appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and other slicks, including The New Yorker back in the proverbial day. It traffics in nostalgia in its own way—the gory details, except for a bit of scatology here and there, are kept off the page. Other Stephen King stories wouldn't be so polite. The language and POV is also different: objective third person for most of it, except when a viewpoint character is by himself, contemplating the case. King even put in a little epiphany at the end!

The wind gusted, bringing the sound of singing. It was coming from the church. It was the Doxology.

The New Yorker loves that shit. "Summer Thunder" has a similar ending, but there's no push toward a character experiencing realization. We're just watching a show.

Robinson aimed for the sign and twisted the throttle all the way. He just had time to hit fifth gear.

(Note to every other writer working in pulp/popular fiction idioms—you can have an ending like these without a single-sentence paragraph! See? See?)

Would "Summer Thunder" make it into The New Yorker? I suspect not, unless there was some sort of theme issue. A number of his stories for this magazine are historical for some reason, and those that aren't tend toward the domestic rather than the post-domestic. (There's always an exception, though.) "Summer Thunder" is a story that's purpose is boil way the setting; "A Death" is about a singular death. If "A Death" is "People sure are funny with their self-destructive tendencies" when "Summer Thunder" is "Well, they were." No wonder the former is in the central magazine for short fiction in the US, and the second in the premiere magazine for horror fiction.

The cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works.

Remember, most editorial cartoonists are idiot slaves!

Originally posted by theweaselking at The cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works.

Tweet of the Day

wanna really really support me? Don't buy on iTunes. Wait for illegal download and PayPal me 10$. HimaSuri at Gmail. Fuck the corporation.

— Eat Pray Thug 3/10 (@HIMANSHU) March 2, 2015

Will this be how it is from now on?

Monday Stuff, Including a Favor Please

My cousin Brandon Contes is part of a radio contest: WFAN's Fantasy Phenom Contest—it's for a paid spot doing broadcasting on NYC's biggest sports radio station. Please take a moment—and it only takes a moment as there are no sign-ups or email or anything like that needed—to vote for him. He's the John Stamos of radio! You can vote once per day per device...how many devices do you own or have easy access to? (My answer is four.)

The litosphere exploded this weekend with the publication of Ryan Boudinot's essay What I Can Say About MFA Programs Now That I No Longer Teach In One. Every time I mention this essay, which is specifically about low-residency MFA programs in creative writing, I get a couple of public objections—mostly from people who have never taught at low-residency MFA programs, and a large number of private messages saying "Finally, someone said something!" Among the responses was this one by Laura Valeri—who teaches undergraduates—that people inexplicably rallied behind. I found it sufficiently horrifying that I tweeted out an essay, which I then Storified for your reading pleasure here. Now more than ever, I am pleased that Westconn, where I teach, is an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing, so at least grads can (and do!) land decent jobs as copywriters and corporate communicators. At Westconn, everyone has to finish a practical track and a creative track.

But honestly, I am still waiting for the names of these good writers who didn't ever take writing seriously that objectors to Boudinot's essay claim exist. Name some names, people!

Hugo voting ends on the 10th. If you are a Hugo voter and would like to see a copy of "From the Nothing, With Love" by Project Itoh, which appeared in Phantasm Japan last year, let me know!

RIP

DENDERA

Some good things happening with dayjob novel Dendera by Yuya Sato, including:

this new Q/A with the author in the Los Angeles Times book blog and

this rave review from SFSignal.com, that reads, in part:


Dendera is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction I’ve read in ANY language. If you love well-written suspense, allegory, and psychological realism, this novel was written for you.

So please check it out!

On the tempest around the Tempest challenge

The other day, Tempest Bradford wrote an article challenging readers to stop reading white, straight, cis, male authors for a year. Naturally, there's been a lot of fussing about the article from the usual corners, and from some unusual ones. The most typical right-wing bellow has been that the challenge is racist—"What if she said not to read any black authors for a year!!!" I'll call that bluff and say that those people who only ever read black authors would probably do well to try some white, Asian, etc. authors for a year.

Too stupid to even critique are the cries of censorship—it's a challenge, you can say no to challenges. Indeed, complaining about the challenge is a way of saying no to it.

More humorous are the Neil Gaiman fans who object to their hero, who is a feminist "ally" or something, being used as an example of All Things Bad and Wrong in the image accompanying the article. Gaiman tweeted that he likes the challenge idea and doesn't mind his book being used in the picture, but...what if he secretly does? I tweeted my impression of him crying over it:

And now, my impression of Neil Gaiman crying because @tinytempest put a red line over his book: pic.twitter.com/yCpJsapHYb

— Nick Mamatas (@NMamatas) February 24, 2015

Not to say that there aren't some problems with the challenge. For example: how do you know who is straight and who is not? Who is POC or not? I am not speaking of colorblindness or sexuality blindness here, nor do I take all that seriously the the claim that people "just read for the story" and "don't look/care" about the gender/race etc. of the author—that is what leads to cishet white (and middle-class, obvs) male as default author choice.

I am instead suggesting that even people on the lookout for demographical diversity sometimes get it wrong, or fumble on the margins based on their own local racial scripts. Most obviously, it's comical how frequently people—especially those who became political fifteen minutes ago and just learned to chant "cishet white male"—don't realize that they may be wrong about someone's sexuality. I remember someone complaining about one of my Five Books I Loved This Year posts, saying that it was full of straight white men—the punchline is that my favorite book of the year was by Somerset Maugham, a gay icon. Chaz Brenchley, aka desperance , was declared straight by some critic of a panel he was a part of last Nebula Award weekend, which likely surprised the hell out of him. The assumption of straightness always strikes me as bizarre, especially given how the politicized folks likely to presume the straightness of the propaganda opponents right in front of them are often the first to point to the ubiquity of subaltern gay/trans identities in the historical and pre-historical past. So, don't assume that some Neanderthal dug up in France wasn't trans, but of course any dude you happen to be cross with right now is straight and cisgendered until proven otherwise.

Race is also, like the kids say, "problematic." There was some recent public fuming about the four brave white men "deciding" the future of publishing. Leave aside the fact that they were "deciding" in the same way Tempest is "censoring", had any of the complainers agreed with what Matt Yglesias was saying, he would have been allowed to be a Latino* again.

Then there's the question of personal interest to me, as the New York Times asked in 1903: Is the Turk a White Man? And if not, what does that mean for people whose families were "Turks" in 1903? Like, say straight-outta-Smyrna Anatolian Greek-American Alethea Kontis?** The remaining Greek population of Turkey is oppressed unto the verge of extinction, so the suggestion of determining whether or not Greek-Turks are white (Like Turks? Unlike Turks?) based on their exercise of white privilege*** as a minority doesn't fly. There were significant population exchanges between Greece and Turkey, to put it politely, but of course borders are a tricky thing. See, for example, the island of Samos, which is very close to the island of Ikaria, from which my parents are from. And which is also very close to Turkey:



A titch less than a mile. Swimmable. People used to live in one country and keep their goats in the other country. Because they were the same country.

Then there's long-lost cousin
Then there is the ethnicity that often remains secret. Indeed, many Roma in the US have a secondary identity for public consumption as Greeks, Turks, Eastern European Jews, Slavs, or Latinos. *shifty eyes*

These are all marginal cases...except that one thing that is very interesting about Tempest's challenge is that it allows for the opportunity to explore and read the margins. It is often some form of alienation from the mainstream that leads people to become writers, after all—marginal endeavors attract marginal individuals. Even all those cishet white male middle-class writers experience alienation.**** But exploration of the margins requires perception of the margins and not just huge population blocs. This doesn't mean that the challenge is bad—if anything it's good if it allows for some good-faith examination of identity as it is lived and as it is overdetermined by performance and even the power of the state*****.

This all seems to be a roundabout way to post a link to Haikasoru for any SF fans interested in the challenge, or the work of Japanese writers, but there you are and here you go. I'm not taking the challenge myself—I literally read fiction by non-whites for a living—but I think it's an interesting one and that most of the criticisms of it are stupid. Anything that makes people think a little bit about what they stuff into their eye-holes is a good thing, but there's more thinking to be done than has been discussed thus far.


*Which demographic box to tick is a big deal among Cuban-Americans.

**Fun fact: it's Alethea's copy of American Gods Tempest is holding in the infamous picture.

***See, for example, the way a white American living in Japan is treated versus the way a black American living in Japan is treated. The ability to sustain privilege as a minority group is frequently a handy measure of "whiteness." Not always though.

****Booze. Late in her essay, Tempest suggests other vectors of identity through which to direct a year's reading. One was disability—if alcoholism counts as a disability, you can likely take the challenge without having to change a thing about your reading habits, baby!

*****Which is often excluded in these discussions, thanks I think to the uncomplicated middle-class statist politics of people otherwise deeply concerned with identity. The simple test is this: if American, do people very interested in the political implications of identity vote for the Democrats in Presidential elections? If so, then there is necessarily almost always a hard and invisible limit to how deeply they're ready to pursue these implications.