Karate Instructors portrait

[pegkerr]

Today we had karate portraits taken. Fiona and I both had triple exposure pictures taken to celebrate our new black belts (Fiona, second degree and me, first degree) (See the example in the icon, the one she had taken when she was awarded her first degree black belt in 2008). Fiona was also included in the assistant staff portrait, below. Fiona drew the short straw and had to hold the pose in the deepest stance:

Assistant Instructors - May 2011

I'll post the triple exposure portraits of the two of us when they arrive; they will be sent out later.

A small semi-related unpleasantness: I've been getting a small flurry of insulting comments the last several weeks on the various karate videos I've posted on Youtube. Total strangers (one from Sweden!) dropping by out of the blue to make disparaging remarks about how Fiona is doing a crap job at kicking or at self-defense, or calling our school a McDojo (based on the colors of the uniforms!!!) and today: just a pithy "National Karate sucks." Thanks for sharing. Not. WTF? Puzzling and unpleasant.

Very weird. I very rarely get trolls on my blogs. I wonder what on earth is drawing them to suddenly start dumping over these videos.

Comments

[serene]

It's YouTube. It's the culture there. I recommend not reading the comments unless you're having a really strong day.

[cyllan]

Seconded. CommentSnob is your friend.

[flourish]

People get super bitchy over martial arts in particular - people who feel like their art, or their strain of their art, is somehow more awesome than others. It definitely shows up in Taekwondo, and I've been guilty of making fun of people whose dojangs don't conform to the international competition rules about poomsae. (In Taekwondo, there are sort of two schools of thought about poomsae - there are dojangs that consider themselves 'traditionalists' or similar, who don't conform to the competition rules for a variety of reasons but mostly because the competition rules are a compromise between many dojangs' traditions and therefore not exactly The Way They Learned It, as I understand it; and there are dojangs that do conform.) Of course, it's all really silly in the end - the only time it actually matters is when some poor sap who goes to a traditionalist dojang tries to compete on the national or international scale, and then they get thwacked pretty hard - there's no point in being a troll. (And I'm sure that if I showed up at a traditionalist dojang and did poomsae by the international rules, they'd think it was a real laff riot, in return.)

People in the martial arts community can be real dicks, is all I'm saying, and for no good reason either. Very into "I'm more badass than you!" "I'm more traditional than you!" etc. It's all pretty much pointless, a big pissing contest.