Day in the Life of an Idiot

I realize I never wrote about my bokken class. My friend Sean (not to be confused with my partner Shawn) and I decided to take a four week class in the art of the Japanese wooden sword through Community Education. The class is being taught at the Center for Mind-Body Oneness by Aikido Sensei Jon.

I had an awesome time because I discovered that Aikido is, in point of fact, the Force.

We spent a good portion of class time becoming "one" with our swords/zanpakto. We didn't do a whole lot else with the swords that day, but I *did* realized several important things about myself and why my personalty doesn't mesh well with Aikido.

I'm too polite for my sensei. Now, you'd think that my default "sir" would translate well from the Korean Kuk Sool Wan to the Japanese Aikido, but that didn't seem to be the case. In fact, Sensei Jon made a point of telling me I only needed to call him sensei in the dojo, and that otherwise he was just Jon. Perhaps I messed with his sense of humility to constantly defer, but, I tell you, once on the mat it's REALLY hard for me not to pepper every sentence or two with sir when speaking to or being spoken to by an instructor. I'm going to try to abide by his wishes next Wednesday, but I may just have to apologize and explain that it's been drilled into me after a year and several months of KSW. But, damn it, dude, you're the sensei. You're also the founder of your dojo, a third degree black belt in Aikido and a pretty seriously ranking guy in the Ki Soceity, suck it up and take the respect I'm offering.

I'm too loud and enthusiastic for Aikido. Guess what? Quite contempation is not my strong suit if you can imagine that. I think sensei was pretty baffled by my ocassional outbursts of, "This is AWESOME!" To be fair, I probably would have been a little less out loud but, as it happened, Sean and I were the only students. It was easy to forget to have on my "inside personalty," as it were. This experience, however, has caused me to have some deep understanding of my favorite Bleach character. There's a scene in the Anime where he's admonished for being too enthusiastic a student. Some of this is clearly about class (for him, given what follows in the scene), but I think, too, self-control is so highly valued that even happy/positive outbursts are considered shameful. I would SUCK as a samurai. I'm too [bleep]ing into it.

Also, I probably should lie more. When sensei asked why I signed up for the class, I admitted that I was a samurai in my imagination and I thought it might be fun to try being one on the outside. I also confessed to being an Anime fan, which caused sensei to think I might be able to count to eight. I can't. I know a lot of the numbers thanks to the fact that the Soul Society's Court Guards have 13 squads/divisions. I tend, however, to visually recognize the numbers better than the hear the words. Regardless, I think that even though being an Anime fan who wants to be a samurai is not only a perfectly valid reason for taking an Aikido class but also secretly the reason a lot of people sign up, I suspect more people keep that sort of information to themselves.

So, even if I end up being the weridest student ever, I'm learning a lot. Not all of it is about the sword, however.

I've been talking to another friend on e-mail about cosplay, and I think my problem is that I care much less for the costume and a lot more for the play. If I went in costume, (which, btw, I am considering for at least one day of CONvergence, depending on my schedule,) I would TOTALLY spend the day in character.

But, as I've determined, I'm a lot more playful than a lot of people. I was also always that RPGer who would demand to be called by my made-up name (and nearly always opposite gender pronoun) and jump up to act out various scenes during the course of the game/campaign. I also almost NEVER broke character out loud. I might pass notes to the GM about plans or plots or such, but most everything I said (outside of those moments when you HAVE to roll the dice) was in character. I came of age in a time before LARPs so I missed out on that trend, which is probably just as well, because I might never have put down the "dice," as it were, to write. I'd probably still be out in the woods somewhere in costume pretending to be someone else all day long (and well into the night.)

Now that I understand that's my own weirdness, I'll be able to cope much better at the next Detour, I think. If I decide *I* want to cosplay at Detour, I'll just be sure to bring along a posse of friends who are in on it with me.

Speaking of Anime, I feel so incredibly stupid. I only just yesterday discovered that I can stream ALL THE BLEACH at the Viz Media Anime site. See what happened was, I bought Shawn a new iPad for her birthday (technically it's a refurbished iPad, not the new, new iPad,) anyway, we were setting it up and I realized I'd forgotten my Shonen Jump password. I had to go through all the rigamaroll to reset my password and, in the course of all that, got shunted at one point to the main Anime page (as opposed to the Manga page.) Imagine my suprise (and Shawn's groan) when I discovered that EVERY TUESDAY there's a new translated Bleach direct from Japan!! Whoot. Okay, so I'm only about 200 episdoes behind where they currently are, but, what this means is, after NetFlix runs out of discs we can keep watching. Hooray. (Yes, I know Bleach is ending this year. But Mason and I aren't fast watchers, actually. We can burn through a disc in a weekend, but that's only four or five episodes usually. So basically I'm set for LIFE.)

If I may go on about this for a moment, I have to say that I think that one of the reasons this series has inspired so much energy from me is because, ultimately, it's both DEEPLY rich and UTTERLY broken. A lot like Star Wars, actually, which was very likely the last bit of fantasy/SF that stirred this kind of crazy devotion in me. The world of Bleach (particuarly the spirit world, the Soul Society,) is dense. There's a lot of cool stuff: magical swords, magical combat techniques, spectacular fight scenes, in-fighting, weird and unexplained characters who clearly come pre-loaded with a lot of issues that you never quite get all of, etc. Then, after this amazing explosion of awesome, it's like Tite Kubo couldn't quite cope with the pressure to remain super. Not unlike George Lucas. Because then he seems to fumble the pass (and I don't just mean in the Anime, which I totally get has a lot of "filler.") This sort of combination (awesome/awful) inspires a lot of fan energy, becuase a lot of fan fic (at least my own) comes out of a passion to "fix" what is broken in a show. For instance, my fav guy is clearly the Han Solo in a way. He stars out incredibly fascinating and then gets used as the punchline in all the jokes. It makes me crazy.

Okay, enough about that. In my real life (tm,) I am still a bit driftless. I sent in a couple of proposals to my agent, but today I should probably try to work on the one she wants--which is more fluffy Tate stuff. I'm having a really hard time coming up with this because I'm kind of tired of it... though I'd pretty much write to spec right now if it meant having a contract.

My Loft class is just about over. I was just asked if I'd be willing to teach on-line again, and I said yes. Despite the weirdness of teaching on-line, I think that there are some real advantages to getting to do this sort of thing from home. So, I'm going to give it another try. We'll see if this next experience gets any easier/better. I suspect it's a matter of getting the hang of things (not unlike my first experience with Detour.)

Mason is home from school today with an upset stomach. I think he just had too many weird foods last night as he got a pair of chopsticks from a tutor who'd traveled to China (she gave a pair to everyone in class, not just the kids she tutors) and so he talked us into Vietnamese food. He got pretty good at the chopsticks, but I'm not sure all the spice and whatnot agreed with him. Plus, afterwards, he had a bunch of desserts including both icecream and watermelon.

At any rate, I'm going drag him along to my Women of Wyrdsmiths meeting because I think he's actually already over it-- thanks to a bathroom trip this morning (TMI)-- and I really hate to cancel that get-together because it's one of my favorite weekly traditions.

Hey, guess what? I got my author's copies of the spiffy new mass-market paperback edition of TALL, DARK & DEAD. They look VERY cool. I've actually long been a fan of mmpbs (as the cool kids call them) because I've always seen myself as a paperback writer, as it were. Low-brow, entertaining. That's me.

But what this means, too, is that the paperback version is coming out soon. Run and order your copies! If you're a long time fan of my science fiction and have never ventured over to the dark side that Tate represents, I will say that I think Tall, Dark & Dead, though sexy and romantic, might appeal. It's one of my favorite Tate books, the other two being Dead if I Do and the not-yet-released Precinct 13. Go ahead, give it a try, I won't tell anyone you're reading a romance novel, and, honestly, with all the vampires and werewolves and such, you won't even notice! (You can skim the sexy bits, I won't mind in the least!)

In other news, I am absolutely JAZZED about a new book proposal that I'm putting finishing touches on. naomikritzer sat down with me on Wednesday and helped me "file the serial numbers off" Bleach to get me thinking about something original I could write that hits all the things I love about that show. We ended up with something that I'm calling, for the moment, Samurai High (as in High School, Mason always wants me to add.) It really doesn't involve samurais at the moment, but that was such a fun play on words I had to use it as a working title. There are, however, high school boys, sword-play, and magic. Also key to the story will be class (as in socio-economic), honor, and justice. I'm hoping to sell it to my agent as hitting that same market as all the Percy Jackson/Lightning Thief books... sort of just out of Middle Grade heading into Teen YA for young men/boys/women-and-girls-like-me-that-dig-that-stuff.

That's what's been eating my brain lately. Also, tonight, I will be back at kuk sool wan for a "Topics" class (where we focus on one thing) about... cartwheeling. I actually really like to cartwheel, but... I'm not consistantly good at it, nor can I really deviate from the standard form. I was pretty excited about this class because, for a long while, Mason and I were the only ones signed up for it. That's like getting a private lesson from Sa Bum Nim (the head instructor) for the low, low price of five dollars a piece. Sadly, a few more people have signed up, so now it's just a regular class.... although, last time I checked, there were still only four or five of us. :-)

Today, too, I have to get a few errands done which I have ignored while letting my various obsessions hold sway. I have to hit the pet store at some point and maybe buy myself a pair of new shoes. I did manage to get back to the fabric store, so I have my "Red Pineapple" tee-shirt, and I think I will also make one that just says "Renji Abarai" on the back, so I have have lots of shirts to wear under my kuk sool uniform that will make me invincible. Because I'm sure that's how that works. Right?