I've started on the GOMAD diet.
The above awesome acronym stands for "Gallon of Milk a Day." In this diet, one (get this) drinks a gallon of milk. Every day. This is on top of all of the food you'd normally eat.
When coupled with doing a shit-ton of squats, this has the miraculous effect of making the human body put on weight. So far, I've put on four pounds since I started the diet.
I started the diet last Wednesday.
And I was doing it wrong until today.
What I'm trying to convey is, this is fucking awesome.
If you're worried about potentially side affects of consuming that much milk, don't be. My ancestors raised cattle, and my body is lactose-friendly. Other than that, milk is pretty damn nutritious through and through.
I've taken to carrying around a gallon of milk to sip from wherever I go, which is pretty fun. I kind of want to get a clay jug or wine gourd to drink it from instead, so I can be like the alcoholics in kung fu movies.
I've been lifting weights for years, and though I've made strength gains, size gains have been hard-won. I gained less fifteen pounds throughout all four years of college, which I was lifting regularly for all of. I am now positive that I just wasn't eating enough.
My goal in this is to put on upper body mass (which, as far as I can tell, is largely accomplished through doing squats. Yeah, I know, weightlifting is wierd) until I have the classic 4:3 chest: waist ratio you see on bodybuilder's from the 50's and statues from the renaissance.
It's a modest goal; I just want to look like Michelangelo's David.

So after seeing the first skirt I made, my good friend Amanda decided to commission one for herself.
I finished it a while ago, and finally gave it to her last night.

Back view:


A closeup:


A closeup of the choker:



The skirt is made from large aluminum-clad steel scales, with black steel for the trim. There were a few stylist changes, in order to differentiate it from the other skirt; smaller and more frequent petals, no belt, different metals, etc.
There are about 1500 scales total in the skirt. It's all held together with butted rings.
The choker was made from scales I had leftover when I finished the skirt, and was sort of a surprise gift. She had mentioned that she liked the idea of a scale choker, and it seemed appropriate.<input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... ><input ... >

I may have discovered the most brilliant video game of our time.
That game? "Chef Boyardee's Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden."

For a long time - budding from when I first set my hands on a collection of Norse mythology at the age of ten - I've had a love affair with the cultures and traditions of pre-Christian Europe. As I grew up, these were intensified by my rejection of Christianity and it's unwholesome influences on Western society, which led me towards a (sometimes dangerous)  tendency of idealizing Western thought and civilization in it's pre-Christian forms. This, in turn, imparted me with a strong desire to re-connect with these pre-Christian cultures on a personal level. I did, for a time, half-identify as a pagan myself.
However, I was never able to fully identify with paganism as a religion, for much the same reason I could never identify with any other religion; when I get right down to the bare bones of it, it's nonsense. The Great Bearded Sky Patriarch is just as dubious whether you call him Yahweh or Zeus or Odin. Hercules has as much divine blood in him as Jesus did. The earth was just as likely created by the death of Ymir or Tiamat as it was by the events of Genesis. There are as likely to be Aesir and Jotun battling for the fates of man as their are angels and devils. Which is to say, not very likely at all. In terms of an actual understanding of the universe, pagan beliefs are just as nonsensical as their mainstream Christian counterparts. If I were to try and convince myself of the truth of any of these things, or of the authenticity of any of these divinities, I would be knowingly deluding myself.
And So, once again, I began to identify as agnostic. Which left me with a problem; I couldn't believe in paganism, but I still really liked paganism. It left me feeling like I had somehow abandoned something I wanted to be a part of.
This very evening, as I was taking my nightly shower, I finally feel as though I've reconciled these. I was contemplating, as a non-adherent of any pagan gods, whether or not it would be hypocritical of me to wear a Mjolnir (a pendant depicting the hammer of Thor). My conclusion was that while I don't particularly believe in the existence of or pay homage to the Deity of Thor, I still identify with and am an adherent of The Character of Thor. Norse mythology and pre-Christian traditions are, for lack of a better word, a fandom for me. Thus, much as I hold dear to my heart the characters, stories, and world of Outlaws of the Marsh and The Sandman, I I hold dear to my heart the characters, stories, and worlds of pagan cultures. The existence and non-existence of the Aesir and the like as actual supernatual beings who influence the world becomes a non-issue.In this way, I feel like I can still fully express my admiration, love, and enthusiasm for pre-Christian religious beliefs without actually having to try and delude myself into thinking that they hold truth.

I've got videos up from my smoker!
I lost by a split decision, but DAMN did I have fun.
Round One!
Round Two!
Round Two and a Half!
Round Three!
Decision!

I'm the one in the pink shorts, of course.
The video isn't the best quality, as a lot of the action is blocked either by the corner of the ring or the ref. The second round is split because of what I am told was a nut shot (though I could've sworn I kneed him in the body), and he got a couple minutes to recover.
I got thrown about a million times, especially in the first round. This mostly due to me panicking in the clinch because I was fighting a taller fighter (height is a huge advantage in the clinch), and forgetting everything I ever learned in favor of schoolyard headlocks and hopping on one foot.
Those noises at the beginning of the second round(s) are me screaming.
The video for the third round starts with me in mid-air as I threw a superman punch (jumping overhand) from across the ring. Next time, I'll throw a butterfly kick instead. I managed to land some solid punches in this round, and he got a standing eight count.
I was completely unaware that there was music playing for the entire time I was fighting.
The last video cuts out before I stood up on the ropes, shouted "OOOODDIIIIN!" and accidentally knocked out a light fixture by throwing my fist to the sky.

I'm fighting in my first Muay Thai smoker tomorrow. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a smoker is an informal competition between gyms, in which members are matched off roughly by weight and experience to beat the snot out of each other. It's sort of the step below an amateur fight.
The fight is going to be amateur rules, three two minutes rounds with shinguards, 14 oz gloves, headgear, and no elbows or knees to the head.
I am, obviously, more than a bit nervous. While I've been punchin' dudes for many years, I've only been doing Muay Thai proper for about a month and a half now. However, I've been wanting to fight some kind of amateur full contact competition since about senior year of high school, and I just can't pass up the opportunity.
So wish me luck. I'll emerge with either victory, wisdom, or (hopefully) both.

Like so many Americans, I have struggled for years to get into the habit of flossing on a regular basis. A while ago, I got the idea of making a motivational poster to remind myself to floss and hanging it up in the bathroom; just a simple picture of Mr. T, pointing his finger in an aggressive Uncle-Sam posture, with the caption below reading "FLOSS, FOO'!"
I never made the poster. But somehow, it's worked anyway. Now, every time I leave the bathroom at night without first flossing my teeth, I'm stopped as though by a phantasm of a gold-chained B.A. Baracus, mohawk blazing, shouting "I pity the foo' who don't floss on a daily basis!"
And I am incapable of leaving until I have run the filament between each and every one of my teeth.

Life in Kalamazoo is treating me fairly well. It is, in fact, pretty damn awesome.
I the main source I attribute my good mood to is training my ass off. I've started training at Southside Dojo again 4-5 times a week. Southside is something of a legend in my own life, and it keeps getting better; Muay Thai, Judo, and MMA every night, unlimited classes for 25 dollars a month. That is, for those of you who don't do martial arts, outlandishly cheap. Additionally, I'm riding my bike there and back, which is 8.5 miles each way. So basically, every day, I'm training for 2-4 hours and cycling 17 miles.
I talked to my coach last night about my desire to compete once I'm in the full swing of fightin' and can minimize my chances of getting my shit rocked. There's a Muay Thai smoker (an amateur competition between a couple of gyms) coming up in October, and another in November. I'm possibly going to fight in one of those to get some ring experience.
And, oh yeah: I have pink muay thai shorts.
Aside from that, I've been working a fair amount doing construction-stuff for my dad. It's pretty good money, especially considering I'm not paying rent, tuition, or otherwise have any major living costs.
Evan and I have undertaken a project of systematically cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen, which will hopefully expand to the rest of the house, and then the world.  I am downright amazed by how much (still edible) food we had just hiding in dark corners of the kitchen. I even more amazed by how much space we were able to create just by shifting stuff around. It's about as epic as cleaning a kitchen can be.
On a related note, the same Evan has moved into the loft attached to my room. So I sort of have a roommate. We're shifting around furniture (which seems to be the latest theme of my life) and getting set up, but it seems to be working out pretty well.

-I've moved back to Kalamazoo for the foreseeable future. I'm going to miss Ann Arbor, but hopefully this will be alright too.
-I've started looking into Massage Therapy schools for vocational training. Constantina suggested that I look into it as a career, and who am I to disagree with the lass? I went down to one school (the Everest Institute), and their comically high prices mean I won't be studying there.
-I've made a resolution: attempt to, whenever possible, be more like a pirate.

A few weeks ago, I produced what I consider to be my journeyman project: A chainmail shirt. I had been working on it for about eight months, but the vast majority of the work was done between January and April. Altogether, I'd estimate it at about 40-50 man hours of labor.
The end result is naught but one thing: beauty.


This photo has a bit more glare than I'd like, but it gives a decent front overview of the shirt.


This back shot highlights what I consider to be the Pièce de résistance of the shirt: the scale mail shoulders. Each contains about two hundred scales, and is fastened to the shirt all along the edges to prevent them from flopping around.


Both the side laces and the belt serve the same dual function: firstly, they tighten the shirt around the body so as that less of the weight rests of the shoulders. Given the weight of chainmail, it makes for a tremendous difference in comfort depending on whether the belt is fasthened and the laces are tightened or not.
Secondly, it makes the shirt look more interesting and be something other than endless expanses of gray steel. My main inspiration for these additions were old-school motorycle jackets, and their plethora of fasteners and tighteners to keep wind out. I figured it should work for keeping weight off as well; and I was correct.



Well I couldn't very well not take a picture like this, could I?


After all that hard work, there's nothing quite like a refreshing bowl of cornflakes.

I finally finished watching Blake's 7.
For the past year or so, Blake's 7 (along with Law and Order: SVU) has been my principle watching-but-mostly-just-listening-to shows that entertain me while I'm working on chainmail projects. Blake's 7 is much akin to classic Star Trek, if Star Trek had been better acting, worse sets, and constant moral ambiguity. Of these factors, it's really the third that makes the show interesting.
Blake's 7 tells the tale of a group of escaped convicts (who, while they are led by a man named Blake, rarely number seven in total) who decide to start a revolution against the tyrannical and Orwellian Federation which rules the better part of the Galaxy. The titular character, Blake, is a ruthlessly idealistic rabble-rouser who was brainwashed, then later falsely accused of child molestation so as to ruin his name against future rabble-rousing purposes.
The drama of the show focuses around the ethical conflicts between Blake and the program's other principle character, his subordinate Avon. Avon, who was quite rightly imprisoned for large-scale white collar crimes, possesses a callous sense of self-interest that counterbalances Blake's idealism. While it seems like a pretty straightforward hero/antihero dynamic at first, it evolves into something deeper: As the show progresses, Blake's idealism becomes a willingness to sacrifice others for his own goals, and Avon's cynicism of these ideals becomes of a voice for the sacrificed. By the end of the second season, I began questioning whether Blake would be better classifed as "freedom fighter" or "terrorist".
The moral conflicts do not limit itself to just the main characters; Blake's 7 repeatedly does an excellent job of fully-fleshing out those minor characters who only appear for the scope of an episode, and bringing the "redshirts" out of just being generic good guys/bad guys. In one episode, in which one of the heroes needs to undergo surgery or die, they attempt to check him into a politically neutral deep-space medical facility without revealing their identities as outlaws; when the doctor discovers who his patient is, he decides to call the Federation in while letting his patient die on the table. His assistant, conversely, identifies with Blake's cause, and finds himself morally incapable of not treating a dying man. The rest of the heroes, alerted by the assistant of the surgeon's plans, force the doctor to perform the surgery at gunpoint.
Unfortunately, the show takes a pretty unfortunate turn in the third season, as Gareth Thomas (the actor playing Blake) left the show. That's right, for latter seasons of the series, Blake's 7 has no Blake. Avon assumes a more central role in the show, but loses much of his draw as a character without Blake for contrast. Lacking in the principle dynamic that made the first two seasons so enjoyable, the latter two feel much more like generic scifi space adventures without much draw. The last episode does recapture the Blake/Avon dynamic, and puts it to a very fitting close; it's just unfortunate that half of the show were bereft of it.
I would highly recommend the first two seasons of the show, and if you enjoy them well enough, the latter two are worth watching as well.

I've realized that I've been remiss in my academic duties since I got back from Europe.
It's been a solid three weeks now, and I'm declaring my "vacation" over. I need to get cracking again on my Fulbright, and I just sent the latest letter in my quest to get a host institution. I'm going to start going through the letter of recommendation process tomorrow, with luck.
I've also started looking into Mongolian language-learning software. I should probably start teaching myself a bit of the language.
I also need to get back into Chinese. Apparently Wenlin comes with a lot of classical texts, and that seems like a good place to start.
No rest for the wicked.

No updates for quite a while! My apologies, fair readers.
Yesterday was the day of the Three Point Fifth Detroit Area Bullshido Throwdown. Bullshido, for those amongst you unfamiliar, is an online community for tremendously rude people who happen to be fond of martial arts.
You may recall a similar post some time ago, when I attended the last Throwdown, and posted several videos of me fighting/goofing off in a cage, as I am about to do:
Dagon Round One:
My opponent is the middle school English teacher referred to in the title of the post. He practices a style of kung fu known as Wing Chun, which required me to respond with the deadly CRAB STYLE!
Dagon Round Two:
Here, I abandon the Crab Style for the Repeated Knees to the Leg style. Though he didn't feel it much during the fight itself, Dagon was limping around for the rest of the day.
In the end, he taps due to a combination of the body lock I and the repeated punches and elbows I was throwing to his midsection. Apparently, the combination of the two made him start to throw up a little bit, leading to his submission.
I am extremely proud of that suplex.
Bustardo Round One:
Chris, (or "Bustardo," as he is known in the gallant fraternity of internet bullies) was my next opponent, as you can tell, he's a good deal larger than I; as in, two hundred and thirty pounds to oppose my one hundred and fifty.
Bustardo Round Two:
Given that our first match was so short, I challenged him to a second. He whallops me soundly in this one, too.
At the end of the throwdown, a friend and gymmate of Bustardo wanted to hop in the cage. Though also a large fellow, was fairly new to the gentleman's art of fisticuffs and grappling, and I was able to achieve a more pleasing outcome in two out of our three matches.
Round One:
Just not this one. I make a foolish mistake in attempt to hold him down via a scarfhold, and consequently lose my back.
Round Two:
I get my vengeance quite swiftly, via triangle choke.
Round Three:
I come quite close to actually hitting him with a butterfly kick, but alas, I'm a few inches off. I still win.

Ok, I'm back in the States. In fact, I've been back for half a week or so, so sorry about not updating.
The last stop on our journey took us the exotic land of Greece, where Constantina's family hosted us in turns. I was amazed at just what a gorgeous city Athens is; wherever chunks of ruins from the ancient city have been dug up, they city has simply been built around them. It's spectacular to just be walking down the street or through the subway and have a chunk of two thousand years ago lying at your side.
Constantina's family were amazing hosts; we spent a weekend chilling out on the beach, eating seafood, swimming, and terrorizing our skin with massive sunburns with her uncle. Aside from the solar radiation part, it was quite nice. We then moved back into Athens, where her aunt Kiki gave us a constant supply of amazing Greek food. It seemed that whenever we got home, regardless of the time, she had just finished making some elaborate, delicious, and massive meal.
What's more, we met her cousin Kostas (fun fact: everyone in Greece is named Kostas), a music student who was more or less majoring in death metal. Pretty awesome, right? He even gave me a free guitar lesson in his living room.
The journey back from Greece was quite a trip, and involved me being awake for 45 out of a 48 hour period. We left for the airport at 2:30 AM, giving me a solid one hour of sleep that night. My ability to sleep on airplanes once again failed me, giving me little more than a one hour nap during our flight to the Amsterdam airport. Somehow, after all of this, I stayed up until 2 am my first night back.
So yeah, quite a trip in all. I'm glad that I went, and I'm glad that I'm back now.

Jesus Christ, Italy was intense.
As it turns out, there was an awful lot of Italy that we wanted to see, and ended up in four different cities in the course of five days.
Day one brought us to Venice, where we were for less than twenty four hours. Just enough to wander around at night, see the canals, go to bed, get up, wander around some more in the afternoon, and hop on the train out.
It's really cool looking city. Just in the way it's designed, half sunk into the water, made it a blast to wander around aimlessly. Not too many cities can boast that.
Next, it was off to Rome, a city which I will forever associate with tearing-your-hair-out frustration. Our hostel had numerous problems, such as not actually being at the address listed in the booking, "three beds" actually meaning "a double sized bed and a really uncomfortable cot", and "Free internet and breakfast" meaning "no internet and some apples in the fridge."
Aside from that, things were not too bad. We managed to hit the principle Really Old Stuff (Collosseum, palace ruins, vatican, etc.) and grab one fancy Italian dinner before we left.
After two nights, in Rome, I had my Three-City-Day. Woke up in Rome, spent the afternoon in Pompei, and landed at night in Brindisi. I know that may sound like a hip jetset lifestyle, but trust me, it's mostly just a lot of stress. My rail pass expired the day we left Rome, and our ferry to Greece left out of Brindisi, so my only way tto see the ruins of Pompei was to either leave the same day we arrived our spend a hundred or two euro on train tickets. I opted for the former.
Depsite the time crunch, Pompei was enjoyable. As someone who loves Really Old Stuff, it was quite a joy to be able to walk around an entire mostly-preserved city.
I arrived in Brindisi at 11 PM, and, despite not knowing where it was, decided to walk to my hostel. I got some directions along the way, but unfortunately, instead of taking me to the Carpe Diem Youth Hostel, they took me to the Carpe Diem Pizzeria. Fortunately, there was woman there who knew the owner of the hostel, and was able to call him and get me detailed walking directions to my destination. I'm pretty sure she was a Boddhisatva in human form.
I came in right around midnight, after an hour of wandering dark and foreign streets. It was good to be able to rest at last.

As you can see, I'm running out of puns.
Switzerland was.... Swiss. I'm not sure how else to put it. There were mountains, there was fondue, there was chocolate.
We stayed in a little touristy mountain town called Interlaken, which I'm pretty sure boasted the highest train stations per capita ratio that I've ever seen.
The Alps were gorgeous, but really, after a while, mountains are mountains.  They're neat and all, but I their novelty runs out after a while.
 

I forgot to mention something aboiut the Netherlands, on my last day there, while waiting for the train to Germany, I think I was accidentally Born Again.
it seems that much like America, the Netherlands also has street preachers. Fittingly, they're susbtantially more reserved, polite, and upbeat than their American counterparts. I was quite impressed that in their little Christ pamphlet, though they still quoted Revelations like all the rest, they quoted from the last chapter of Revelations. The one that's a brief description of Paradise, as opposed the previous fifteen chapters which describe the torture and mutilation of the unsaved in gory detail.
I talked to them for a little while (just chit chat, they weren't flamboyant enough to do any counterpreaching), and managed to get two of them into an argument with each other, after I asked if sin was part of God's Creation, or something outside of Creation. I also covertly cited Adrian Veit from Watchman as part of a counterargument. But that's not the important part.
The important part of the story is: I think I was accidentally Born Again. Yeah, surprised me too. One of them had me recite along a little prayer, which I was under the impression was a prayer for safe travel, so hey, that's cool. By the time I got two thirds of the way through it, it turned it was a prayer for renouncing my past life and letting Jesus into my heart.
Whoops.
The curious thing, though; towards the end of the prayer, I had a brief image flash by of a very grumpy looking Odin and an unidentified section of Sayings of the High One , an Eddic poem consisting of common sensical advice, presumably coined by the same Odin.
So  I think I accidentally let Odin into my heart, instead. Which is unfortunate, because he's not a terribly trustworthy patron deity.

Netherlands, still pretty cool.
I first went to Amsterdam six years ago with my brother and a friend of his, on a much briefer tour of Europe that we did when I was sixteen.
I'm happy to see that it's still a groovy city filled with canals, windy roads, and cheap foods. I was saddened to see that it's infamous red light distict is nearly half the size it was then. Apparently, the poltics in the Netherlands have taken a swing to the right, and when they're not taxing smut out of existance, the government there has taken up a policy of buying property in the red light district just so no one can use it.
Ah, nothing like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
For those of you visiting the Netherlands, here is my recomendation: go to the zoo. Seriously. Despite being half dead from malnutrition, and it being kind of a small zoo, the Amsterdam Artis zoo was amazing. It was the perfect break from museums and old buildings and walking tours and the other usual fair of tourism, just a quiet afternoon of hanging out with some monkeys.
You should do it.

Ok, so Germany.
Is amazing.
Especially Southern Germany.
We spent a day or two in Freiburg in the awesome hospitality of Andrew Nicholson and a group of U of M expats. It was quite a lovely experience, and I dare say that I love Southern Germany.
We later, after a three day excursion the Netherlands, came down the super-gorgeous city of Fussen. Fussen is a small town surrounded by gorgous castles, gorgeous mountains, and buildings that inspired Disneyland. Seriously.
We met a woman in our hostel who was bicylcing across the Romantic Road (a region of Bavaria filled with ancient castles and otherwise awesome old stuff), and I have decided that I am totally doing that someday. Germany has an an amazing infrastructure for transporting bicycles on trains, and I think I would enjoy nothing more than cycling cross the Bavarian countryside for a week or two, then heading up to Scandanavia for a while.
What's more, it seems that one can break down a bicycle, shove it in a cardboard box, and check it as checked luggage on a plane.
The idea of being able to travel in other countries without having to leave my bicycle behind is redifining my idea of travel. I am so pysched to try this out the next time I leave the US.

Ok, I haven't updated in quite a while. Like, four or five countries.
But first I need to say something I forgot about Ireland. Perhaps, the most important thing about Ireland - The Dublin Spire.
The Dublin Spire is art taken to it's worst possible conclusion, a giant, silver spike that penetrates the heavens, an obscenity of bad taste that towers over the demure city of Dublin, jabbing itself into the eyes of all for miles around.


This picture (no, I didn't take it) captures a glimmer of the sheer awfulness that is the Dublin Spire. It is hard to appreciate through a photograph just how much it doesn't fit in with the city, how many times taller it is than any other building in Dublin, how flat and gray and lifeless it is.
So if you're ever in Dublin, be sure to see the Spire. It seems to me an impossible thing not to do so.