How I Unexpectedly Purchased A New Guitar

So, Jeremy from Roseville Guitar Works calls me up today and say "Dude, there's a Blackhurst Tigershark on Craigslist for $350." I dropped what I was doing, called my work and said I was done for the day, and went and bought the guitar.

A little background: Dave Blackhurst was a custom electric guitar builder in Roseville back in the day. I first met him and bought my first custom guitar from him around 1991. I still own that guitar - a koa Tigershark II with a Kahler Spyder bridge and Seymour Duncan pickups. (She's named Sweetheart, and is still my main guitar today.)

Dave and I became friends, and I also became a pretty good customer - all told I think I bought five or six custom guitars from him over the years, plus a few used amps he had laying around. The only Blackhurst guitar I kept was Sweetheart - all the others were traded or sold or given away eventually.

Dave kind of dropped out in the early 2000's - he pretty much stopped hanging out, and stopped delivering guitars. I had heard that he moved to Southern California, but I don't know much about that or where he is today. His website doesn't look like it's been updated in at least a decade (the picture on it is a modified photo of one of the guitars he built for me that I don't own anymore, actually).

The guitar I got today is a black Tigershark I with Kahler Spyder bridge and Seymour Duncan pickups, and came with the original hard case. It's clearly been used, but it's in pretty good condition. If I had to guess, I'd say it's from the early '90s (because I believe that after about 1992 he mostly built Tigershark II's). It's missing the tremolo handle (Jeremy is working on finding one for me), and the black chrome is worn off of the tone and volume knobs, and there's a few minor dings. Not bad for a 18-year-old electric guitar.

Here's one of the pics that was on the Craigslist posting:



Sooo pretty!

My Roommate, Dishes, and Swearing in Fiction

Earlier today, I told my roommate that I'd take care of doing the dishes when I got home tonight - we don't have a dishwasher, so this is a manual task. There weren't very many in the sink but I just didn't have time during the day for it. Generally, he does the dishes during the week, but I try to do them at least once on the weekend, and sometimes both days. It seems like he uses about five or six times as many dishes as I do, so I figure having him do the dishes about five or six times as often as me works out to just about even.

I'm pretty serious about trying to keep the number of dishes I use down - it's just not worth the hassle. If I make Top Ramen, for instance, I'll usually just eat it right out of the pan I made it in, with the spoon I used to stir it. My roommate probably wouldn't make ramen to begin with, but if he did, he'd end up with the pan he cooked it in, the stirring utensil, and a separate bowl and spoon for eating it. He prefers to eat it like a civilized human being, and is willing to do more dishes as a consequence. I prefer to have fewer dishes to handwash, and I'm willing to eat like a barbarian as a consequence. Differing philosophies - I'm not saying one is better than the other. (Well, actually, mine really is better.)

So, when I came home tonight, I find that he used just about every dish in the house before he fled to wherever he is currently hiding. There are even a few things I don't recognize, so I think he may have borrowed some extra dishes from our neighbors, ensuring that my labor was sufficiently Herculean.

As I was cursing and washing dishes, I got to thinking about "foul language". As a general rule, I try to keep my writing rated PG or less, at least as far as the swearing goes. This is an artificial constraint, and I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with the effect it has on my work. In the preceding anecdote about the dishes, for instance, some of the swearing I was doing was actually creative, funny, and really expressed how I felt about it. But, because I'm applying the "no swears" constraint to this very piece, that was left out of the story, and the both the impact of the plot and character development were lessened by it. I could have "toned it down", but it wasn't as powerful or as funny to me, so why bother?

Now, there are some standard arguments I hear in favor of a "no swears" writing policy. In no particular order:

1. Real people don't really swear very often, so it's unrealistic.
2. The Bible prohibits swearing, so a Christian writer shouldn't use swear words.
3. People who swear lack eloquence.
4. When you swear, you give people who disagree with you permission to ignore what you have to say.
5. Swearing may turn off people who would otherwise be in agreement with you.
6. There are plenty of inoffensive substitutes that can be used instead of swear words, so there's no reason to ever use swear words.

There may be other reasons, but these seem to be the most common things I hear, so I'm going to briefly think through each of them.

1) Real people don't really swear very often, so it's unrealistic.
I've never really understood this one. This might seem true if you live in a very isolated situation - you're Amish, or live and work in a Christian Bubble and have no non-Christian friends. But I've been hearing swear words on a regular basis for pretty much my whole life. If you believe this one to be true, I probably won't convince you otherwise, so I'll move right along.


2) The Bible prohibits swearing, so a Christian writer shouldn't use swear words.
Well, I know of three verses commonly used to support this. Let's look at each one:

Exodus 20:7

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. (ESV)

Well, this would prohibit using God's name in vain, but it has zero relevance to dropping the F-Bomb. I personally think that this passage applies to a lot of issues other than swearing, too. I think there are lots of ways to take God's name in vain:

• A plumber puts the Christian Fish Symbol on their business card, just to use Christian symbolism to drum up business
• Someone acts judgmental and uncompassionate while claiming that this is in Christ's name
• A politician uses God's name just to drum up support for his platform

I also don't think that this should constrain a writer - if you're writing about a supervillain, very few people will object to the fact that he kills, even though that violates Exodus 20:13, so why complain when they swear? He's a supervillain - you should write him as behaving badly.

James 3:6 - 10

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. (ESV)

I don't think that this has anything to do with profanity. The dichotomy of blessing/cursing set up in this passage tells me that it's about how we interact with our fellow human beings, and how we value them (or not) with our words. I know people who swear up a storm who are a real blessing to those around them, and unfortunately I've known people who've never used a bad word who are a curse to the people around them. Gossip and slander (often passed around in Christian circles as "prayer requests") are a much bigger violation of this than using a particular set of words for emphasis when you're angry.

Ephesians 5:3 - 5

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (ESV)

The middle of this passage is often taken out of context to argue against swearing:
"Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving."

But taking it out of context is inaccurate - it's in the midst of a passage about sexual purity, not a passage about foul language. And, frankly, it's possible to violate this without ever using a swear word. But, if I hit my finger with a hammer and release some good old Anglo-Saxon cussing, it's not in violation of this passage at all.


3) People who swear lack eloquence.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines 'eloquence' as:

1: discourse marked by force and persuasiveness ; also : the art or power of using such discourse
2: the quality of forceful or persuasive expressiveness

While I have certainly heard people who could hardly complete a sentence without swearing, and who really sounded unforceful and unpersuasive because of it, I have also heard people swear with force and persuasiveness. Used appropriately, I believe that swear words can actually increase eloquence. It's less about what words you use, and more about how you use them.


4) When you swear, you give people who disagree with you permission to ignore what you have to say.
Well, sadly, in my experience people who disagree with you don't need permission - they're going to ignore you anyway. Very few people seem willing to listen to or read anything with which they disagree. So, most liberals I know won't hear anything a conservative says, and most conservatives I know won't hear anything a liberal says. Many Christians I know don't read anything written by non-Christians, and many non-Christians I know don't read anything written by Christians. And so on.

What I have noticed is that the people who are willing to listen to differing voices is that they aren't put off by swearing. So I don't really believe that this argument is true.


5) Swearing may turn off people who would otherwise be in agreement with you.
What this really boils down to is a commercial consideration: "you sell fewer copies, because folks who are anti-swearing won't buy it". This is probably a good argument in certain contexts - if you're writing a children's book, or writing for an Evangelical publishing house, or writing technical documents, you should probably stop swearing, you pottymouth. But, if you're not writing for those markets, or others like them, it probably doesn't matter much - as best I can tell, books, comics, music, and movies with swear words seem to match or even outsell the ones that don't have them.


6) There are plenty of inoffensive substitutes that can be used instead of swear words, so there's no reason to ever use swear words.
This one really annoys me - it feels fundamentally dishonest and pharisaic. It's extremely arbitrary to say that "shit" is unacceptable, but "shoot" is fine. Same with "damn"/"darn", "hell"/"heck", etc. This is the kind of completely man-made legalistic religion that Jesus regularly argued against. I have no time for it.


Now that I've thought through this, I suspect that the occasional bit of swearing may find its way into my writing. Not on Attention Deficit Fiction - one of the rules the writers agreed to for that site was keeping it fairly PG. And since the whole point of the writing on ADF is to work within a narrow set of constraints, I just look at this as another one of those constraints. But in some of my other writing, there are going to be times when the only way to really get a character's voice right is going to be having them swear, so I don't think I'll have a problem with that. I don't want it to be gratuitous, I'm not out looking for it, but I also won't shy away from it if it's appropriate to what I'm trying to do.

So, anyway, the point of all this is: my roommate uses too many dishes.

When Not to Wear a Tie

There are combinations where a tie will make you look less dressed up, not more. Here are a few examples of things you can wear with a tie if you want to look bad:

• Jeans
• Sneakers
• Short-sleeved shirt
• Baseball cap

I just saw a guy in sneakers, jeans, short-sleeved shirt, and baseball cap, who was also wearing a tie. It was a perfect storm! What, exactly, does he think a tie will accomplish in the midst of all that?

John Calvin

Today is John Calvin's 500th birthday. Here's some facts about him that you may not have known:

• In 1547 Calvin had Jacques Gruet tortured then executed for being an atheist and "libertine".
• He debated theology with Michael Servetus in letters, and Servetus asked to come to Geneva so they could talk face-to-face. Calvin replied that if Servetus came to Geneva, Calvin would not let him leave alive. Servetus later did come to Geneva, and was burned at the stake in 1553.
• In 1555, he had a number of his opponents in Geneva captured and executed.

Before you dismiss any of this by saying, "well, they did things differently back then", many of Calvin's contemporaries were very troubled by this. Calvin himself had written (during his persecution by the Roman Catholic Church):

It is unchristian to use arms against those who have been expelled from the Church, and to deny them rights common to all mankind.

One of his contemporaries, Sebastian Castellio, actually published a book arguing that the execution of Servetus was murder, and stated:

To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man. When the Genevans killed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine, they killed a man. To protect a doctrine is not the magistrate's affair (what has the sword to do with doctrine?) but the teacher's. But it is the magistrate's affair to protect the teacher, as it is to protect the farmer and the smith, and the physician and others against injury. Thus if Servetus had wished to kill Calvin, the magistrate would properly have defended Calvin. But when Servetus fought with reasons and writings, he should have been repulsed by reasons and writings.

If we have to remember him, let's remember the complete John Calvin, not just the parts we like.

Slavery and Chocolate

I know I've mentioned the connection between slavery and chocolate before, but it's been awhile. For those of you not familiar with the issue, here's an excerpt from a US State Department document from 2007:

Following international media reports in 2000 and 2001 of widespread child labor abuses in West African cocoa farms, which produce 70 percent of the world's cocoa, the international human rights community investigated the problem. A 2002 joint study published by the ILO and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture found that an estimated 284,000 children on cocoa farms in West Africa were "either involved in hazardous work, unprotected or unfree, or have been trafficked." Most of the children were on cocoa farms in Cote d'Ivoire, the world's largest cocoa producer. The remaining children labored on farms in Ghana, the world's second-largest producer, and in Cameroon and Nigeria.

You don't have to search very hard on the Net to find a lot more information about this. When you buy chocolate, if you're not paying attention, there's a pretty high likelihood that the cocoa in it was harvested by 9- to 12-year old child slaves.

If you buy Fairtrade labeled chocolate, this is not a problem. (This is easily available to just about everybody, and is usually really good, too.)

My friend Paul works for an organization, Oasis USA, that focuses on ending human trafficking. Here's a webpage of theirs with suggestions on how you can help end slave labor-based chocolate. One of the things they are trying to do is convince Hershey to use only slave-free chocolate in their products.

So, check this out, and help out. Knowing that your chocolate is not based on slavery should make it taste even better.

Return

All right! I haven't posted in 70+ days. I've been busy, and when I haven't been busy I've been too tired to post anything. But I'm back!

Here's a wee bit of good news to share with everybody: my writing partner Pieter just took First Place in Sacramento News and Review's Flash Fiction writing contest. The story that won is an old Attention Deficit Fiction post. Good job Pete!

I'll post more soon - this was just me sticking my toe back in the water.

Feeling it

We fenced montante vs. pike today, with the pike as the agent and the montante as the patient. (This means that the pike initiates the action, but the montante finishes it.)

There was one moment where I was holding the pike and Eric (my maestro) was coming at me with a combination of attacks with the montante, and I realized how absolutely terrifying that would be if this was for real. I wasn't worried about being hurt - I fully trust Eric's level of control. It's just that, for a brief moment, I got a tiny glimpse of what it might feel like to have an immensely skilled opponent attacking me with one of these rather enormous swords.

Much as I love the history and art and discipline involved in historical fencing, I'm glad that we don't have to do this stuff for real.

Education as aversion therapy

All too often education actually acts as a form of aversion therapy, that what we're really teaching our children is to associate learning with work and to associate work with drudgery so that the remainder of their lives they will possibly never go near a book because they associate books with learning, learning with work and work with drudgery. Whereas after a hard day's toil, instead of relaxing with a book they'll be much more likely to sit down in front of an undemanding soap opera because this is obviously teaching them nothing, so it is not learning, so it is not work, it is not drudgery, so it must be pleasure. And I think that that is the kind of circuitry that we tend to have imprinted on us because of the education process.

-Alan Moore (in a Salon.com interview).

East and West

...We learn several things from this kata. One: this is a game of centimeters. Two: Japanese swordsmen had cast-iron stomachs in order to apply the K.I.S.S. (q.v.) principle to fencing, or as my instructor, John O'Meara of the Chicago Swordplay Guild, likes to put it, do as much as necessary, but as little as possible. Three: Japanese swordsmen were crazy. Four: kenjutsu, whence the kendo kata are derived, is a martial art.

Crossing back to the other side of the world, we learn several things from this passage in Marcelli. One: this is game of centimeters. Two: Italian swordsmen had cast-iron stomachs, for the same reason their Japanese counterparts did. Three: Italian swordsmen were crazy. Four: Italian rapier is a martial art.

The only differences between the East Asian and Southern European are cultural and stylistic: the first prefers to cleave his opponent's body parts; the second prefers to skewer them.

From a post by Charles Blair on the Order of the Seven Hearts' Rapier & Baroque Sword forum.

Linkblogging

Here are some fun links you should check out:

Wonder of Creation (a relatively new blog by my friend Dean Ohlman) had a great post about his father's hands recently. Well written, and an interesting subject.

VikingDan just posted some beautiful photos he took yesterday at Stinson and Muir beaches. I think he's best known for his black and white pics, but he shows here that he knows how to do color, too.

Datamancer, who made a steampunk laptop I'd love to have (it even runs Ubuntu!), has a Scrabble tile keyboard. I'm not really a Scrabble player, but I still think this is really cool.

FencingClassics has a couple of pictures of a German rapier circa 1610 that is quite lovely.

Jetpacks!

Kids, the future has arrived: the Martin JetPack! This is for reals, and very cool. Check out the video of the jetpack flying. The gallery is awesome too - I particularly enjoy this pic.

Unfortunately, the price is $100k, so I probably won't be picking one up this week. But even knowing that jetpacks are real makes the world just a tiny bit cooler. If I ever get around to becoming a super-villain, I am definitely picking up one of these things.

ADF Commitment Update

As promised, here's my commitment: I will post a new Attention Deficit Fiction story every Friday in 2009.

By the way, I posted one final ADF story for 2008 on December 31st.

Still no word from Danny or Pete regarding whether they are willing to commit to regular ADF storytelling. C'mon, guys, don't leave me hanging - step up!

Historical Fencing Documents

I've just added a new page to my website to host Historical Fencing Documents. I've got nine treatises, scanned into PDFs, available there now. I'm sure more things will be added there in the future.

Check it out!

Writing, Posting, Etc.

So, I've been using Twitter for a while now. My posting here on Imploder has been spotty, and my posting on Attention Deficit Fiction has been terrible, but I try to at least throw something onto Twitter three or four times a week.

You can see my most recent Twitter updates in the sidebar here, or on my homepage, or on my Twitter page. Enjoy!

Note on ADF: I intend to get back to posting regularly. It was good for me to have the commitment of posting twice a week back when we started it - having that discipline in place actually resulted in me posting more often that that. So, for 2009, I will commit to a posting schedule. I haven't decided exactly what it will be yet - I'll probably put something on here later this week once I figure the details out. (I like to make these commitments public, since I think it helps keep me motivated.)

I'm also going to call out both Danny and Pete - commit to at least one ADF post per week. Pick a day and always have a post on that day. C'mon, it's fun, and it forces you to do at least a little writing every week.

Album Thoughts

I think one of things I want to accomplish in 2009 is to record another album. (And not spend ten years on it this time.)

I have enough songs written to do another instrumental rock album. It wouldn't just be a rehash of The Difference Engine, either. So doing an instrumental project would be pretty straightforward - I just need to start recording this stuff.

Some of you may recall a track I had on my homepage a couple of years ago called "Dream of Love". For those who aren't familiar with it, it had techno drums and bass, with heavy guitars, and spoken-word poetry. (Yeah, I don't know what genre that would be, either.) I actually have enough tracks of this stuff almost done to do an EP. I think I have lyrics written for all of them, but haven't recorded the vocals for any of the other tracks yet. I'd also want to add a few more guitar tracks for some of them, but they're pretty close. So, then it's time to mix it and then wrap it up.

Finally, most of the music I've been writing and playing recently is heavy-riffing rock that would need live drums and a female vocalist. (And preferably a bassist, although I could do the bass on this stuff if I had to.) This would be the hardest to record this year, since I don't have a drummer or a singer lined up. At the same time, I have to say that this is what I'd be most excited about.

You ask me: why not do all three? Well, eventually I would hope to put all this stuff out there, but I think I need to pick one and get serious about doing it, or I won't really make progress on any of them.

I'll have to spend a little time pondering this.

History all around us

I wanted to share a really interesting post on how history is all around us - the past does connect with the present, but we are often unaware of it. So, check out John Seavey's post called A Strange and Profound Moment.

Ubuntu

I ditched my Windows XP partition on my home desktop today - I'm running Ubuntu only on this box now. Much better.

Metal!

I haven't posted in a while, so here's something to break the silence. This is a comic my friend Danny sent me. I don't know who created it - if anybody knows please share, because I'd love to link to them. (I'd also like to see any other work they created.)

As usual, click on the image to see it full size.

Distant Planets

Hubble has taken the first visible light photograph of a planet circling another star. The photo with a brief summary can be found here, and a more detailed explanation can be found here.

This is pretty cool.

Sidesword

This is my sidesword.
There are many like it,
but this one is mine.





Apologies for the terrible photography - it's the best I can do with my Blackberry.

This is a used Darkwood Armory 2 Port Cross sidesword.

The quillions are straight with a knucklebow. The quillion ends are five lobed, which is not one of the options on their website. I don't know if this it's custom or something they no longer offer. I must ask the gentleman from whom I purchased this.

The grip is a mix of straight copper and twisted steel, with Turks head wire knots on the top and the bottom. (This exact grip is another thing that is not listed on their website.)

The pommel is cylindrical with fluting.

Finally, I believe that the blade is the DA4SS sidesword blade.

Overall length: 44 inches
Length of blade (from front of cross): 38 inches
Length of blade (from front of port): 35 & 1/2 inches
Width of blade at cross: 1 & 1/8 inches
Width of blade one inch back from tip: 1/2 inch
Point of balance (from cross): 4 inches
Center of percussion (from cross): 26 & 1/5 inches
Width of cross: 9 & 3/4 inches

Note: I'm not 100% on the COP measurement, but I think I got it right. I'd like to post the weight, but I don't have a scale.

I'm pretty happy with this.