inferior people need a steeple to climb and shout their views about.*

Here's a rant I wrote a long time ago after attending an adult gymnastics class at MIT, thrown together quite possibly after glass or two of wine (fun fact: I'm bad at drinking):

Dear The Man Who Thinks Kung Fu Is Useless But Was Nice Enough To Teach Me Butterfly Kicks,

You don't need to apologize to me for your opinions- I wont be apologizing to you for mine. And: just because I'm respectfully not arguing with you about Wu Shu, Ballet, Mixed Martial Arts, and The Chinese Government, doesn't mean that I agree with you.

Silence is not acceptance- it is a timid and fearful lot who believes that. (Silence is, apparently, bitching on the internet. But seriously.. I have thoughts.. So.. Onward!)

Have you considered, The Man Who Thinks Kung Fu Is Useless But Was Nice Enough To Teach Me Butterfly Kicks, that the example you gave to me, of the one time you had to use your Kung Fu in a street situation and it worked, didn't support your argument? You see the example you gave to me, in relation to your real life experience, gives Kung Fu a %100 success rate?

PERHAPS this is because relating the story as a failure MAY have painted you in a bad light, do you think?

Let's be honest here, as long as YOU look good, Kung Fu can suck it, right?

It's really easy to say something that is notoriously hard to understand and difficult to do well is useless.

Lets assume for a bit that I am an insecure and small minded person (this, dear reader, is a horribly arrogant statement) to me, in my small minded insecure head-bone, all things I can't do are useless.

Singing? Useless.

Mini Golf? Completely irrelevant. (..mini golf kinda is irrelevant.. )

Tennis? ZOMG who does that shit anymore?

You see this makes me fine. Perfect even. Because all the skills I have, all the simple tasks I have approached in my little life I have immediately gained Universe-Conqueror  Level status at. I am amazing. And those things I'm not good at? Or take more than one or two tries? Irrelevant. Those people who dedicate their lives to getting good at these things? These "Crafts"?? They are fools. They know nothing. They are out there to lie to you and take your money- they don't actually know anything. How do I know this? Well, in all of my Universe-Conquering, I have gained ALL THE KNOWLEDGE. All of it. I can replace anyone or surpass them with my completely shallow understanding of very simple AND very complicated things (I mean seriously I READ WIKIPEDIA. GOD.) These "learned" people are useless.  Except the cable people or netflix fairies, 'cause you know what skill I have in spades, among all my countless others? Sitting and staring. Boy howdy I can do that like it's going out of style, so it is clearly a useful task which makes me amazing, desirable, and charismatic.

**Maybe you get the idea? I'll stop pretending like I'm someone else. Not like I'm NOT entirely secure and massively wizened and perspective laden, but let's just go back to normal? I think I just confused myself.. maybe the other me confused me? wait.. (remember: bad at drinking)..

Anyway.

I'm bummed out by these people. I'm further bummed out when they want to talk to me about something I'm excited about and throw their nasty, woolen, heavy, stifling, pee stained wet blanket on my stuff. So stop it.

.. AND ANOTHER THING, TMWTKFIUBWNETTMBK, what do you think the duty of these kung fooey teacherly folk really is? To teach ballet? To teach fakkin' head kickin', mo-fuh?? One of the reasons Kung Fu is so fucking awesome is because it's truth inevitably lies in the spirit and the heart of the practitioner.

...CAN I GET AN AMEN??

Mr. Miyagi was totally dead on when he told Daniel-San that  "Karate here, (head) Karate here (heart) Karate never here (belt)."

Clearly, along the path of teaching volatile creatures volatile material, from a volatile platform, mistakes will be made, dogma created, and the biggest, loudest, and dumbest will end up responsible for far too much.

Unfortunately for martial arts, MANY mistakes have been made and there's a lot of bad teachers, bad students and stupid movements (read:poorly interpreted movements over long periods of time which turn into.. oh.. who the hell knows what) which reign supreme at the helm of ye olde kunge foo shippe.

So. How do we fix it? We google it. OBVIOUSLY.

*cm kornbluth