danger in the ring
i had the bi-annual pleasure of donning the horrible horrible monkey suit (click here to see what i mean... what you can't see are the gray slacks and black shoes to decidedly NOT match the navy blazer and red tie.) to act as an official for sunday's district AAU tourney. i feel sorry for the competitors since my shodan ranking qualifies me to judge them, and that's about it. i actually turn different colors according to the event i'm judging: red for weapons (since you have to actually score them), gray for kata, and white as a sheet for fighting since i don't know what the heck i'm doing. on sunday i lucked out, having to endure only one jumbled up group of mixed divisions in weapons where my scoring was usually off of everyone else's. guess which one was mine: 7.2, 7.5, 7.4, 8.0, 7.3... i was then moved to a kata only ring, which was much easier with flags. two people performed their katas at the same time, and we three judges held up the flag for the one we thought performed a better kata. that part's easy. the hard part is keeping a straight face when the karate students do something odd, such as the guy who kept getting SO close to me that i would have to move my flags in order not to impale him in the ass with the pointed end. or rather, have him impale himself. wearing the suit conveys an enormous and surprising amount of power, and with great power comes the great need to conduct oneself with decorum before you insult someone's parents and get jumped in the parking lot.
current mood: i don't really know what i'm doing