Personal Valhalla
Sartre imagined Hell as a room with tacky decor and three irritating people in it. He forgot to mention that it's also full of journals written in academic German. I wish my German were stronger. This week has been very slow and painful going, but I don't know any remedy except to read more German.

My personal Valhalla, on the other hand, looks an awful lot like the salle of the Fighting Arts Collective on a Friday afternoon, with sunbeams slanting in through the tall windows. Yesterday I spent a whole hour dagger fighting with Shawn, the Jeet Kune Do instructor. Just me and Shawn and one dagger between us. It was frigging awesome. yaksman and pencil_mig_in, you have to try it.

After dying many times over, here's what I've learned about dagger fighting with Shawn. First of all, the cruel and mortal thrust simply isn't. I couldn't make a sottano work any way or any how. They all ended in my horrible death. I think they just bear too much resemblance to Filipino martial arts, and Shawn knows lots of ways to make those attacks go very wrong.

On the other hand, he wasn't having much success with sottani either. I managed to make a bunch of them into arm bars or lower keys, and even get a disarm or two. Upper keys are harder to get on him. When he pulls back, he usually keeps his elbows in and goes to unicorn instead of bringing his hand over his shoulder. And he's strong enough that if his hand is even a little bit in front of his shoulder, I can't force the upper key to happen, which I can sometimes do with smaller guys.

If you want to land a clean hit on Shawn, try the fish. A well timed fish works brilliantly. I also had good success when I feinted fendente, swung the dagger over my head in mid-step and turned the line of attack into a high mano reverso. Coming in mandritto, flicking, and then slashing for the femoral artery on his right leg also works, sometimes.

And now I have the usual problem I get when I play with daggers at any kind of speed: I look like a victim of domestic abuse the next morning. There are bruises all over the backs of my hands, my wrists and the blades of my forearms. It's not Shawn's fault; it's just that my pain threshold is high enough that I never want to give up the dagger if there's still a chance of sticking it in him. It's too hot to wear long sleeves this week. I'm just going to have to grin and bear it.