No, I Will NOT Respect Your Privacy

I'm sometimes a little distressed at how cool everyone else is. I hadn't read Skywriter before today, but she's got a neat life going on over there from what I can see. If nothing else, she's a pilot. People say that casually, but think about it--these are people whose job or hobby it is to sever all physical connection to Earth (that's the planet on which we live, people, except for pilots) And soar off into the atmosphere so high that they can't even see you or me.
And yet I wave every time.
She also gets to shoot a lot more than I do (but who doesn't) and is a much better shot, too. My wife is a little jealous of my open admiration of Tamara, so it's probably best that I not mention my discovery that there's a gun-toting pilot who looks like Dana Scully out there somewhere.
(Relax, honey, I don't want to date Tamara; I want to be Tamara. You know, when I grow up.)


Anyway, this is the part where I pretend briefly that there's a coherent point to this essay before rambling about Cuban special forces and Mantis Kung Fu. Don't worry; it'll be seamless from where you're sitting. Skywriter says she's added me to her blogroll and asked if that's OK with me. Of course it is, but it raises a question that buzzes around my head sometimes when I should be working.
I sometimes wonder why people ask--honestly, I don't ask anyone for permission to put their link up. My thought is that YOU went to some trouble to post these words on the widest information-distribution network in the history of the human race, so you must be OK with people seeing it.

It wasn't that long ago that a troll on an internet forum, www.bullshido.net, thought he would bluff me by telling me that I had invaded his master's privacy because I posted photographs of his beloved master doing some silly things--things like a gun disarm technique that involved pointing your opponent's pistol at your own face while hitting him with it! Now, I agree that having such photos of yourself posted on an internet forum could be embarrassing. So how dare I post them?

His "master" had already posted them on the internet, on his own website, in an attempt to drum up business. Those pictures actually have been removed now, but it was too late--they're archived at www.bullshido.net if you know how to find them. The internet never forgets.

This is what I had to say at the time. I haven't changed my opinion.

I am endlessly amused at the people who publish information about themselves on a gigantic, global, world-spanning digital information network and then act offended because someone dares to comment on it. Standing in the middle of Yankee Stadium during the season opener carrying a sign with your martial arts claims in flashing lights would be a far more private affair than posting them on the internet. It's the internet, for the love of Pete. It has no purpose whatsoever except to distribute information to the greatest number of people across the widest geographic area possible. MY face is posted here as well, you know, along with my very unimpressive sparring videos. I post as Don Gwinn on every forum I visit with the exception of Bladeforums.com and Glocktalk, where I am still called Gwinnydapooh. I've got nothing to hide.
As for Julio Garcia, Alonzo Jones, and all the rest, if they've got something they want to keep private, fine. Just keep it private. Don't post it on the internet. When you do, it's up for discussion. Period.

And because I'm such a disrespectful and dangerous guy, here are the two photos I posted which showed [GASP!] Mr. Garcia's face. That's right, I'm posting them again, so if you internet stalkers have been frustrated at trying to find out what he looks like from the twenty photos on his own public gallery, here you go.

Here we see Mr. Garcia demonstrating the feared WTR Front Kick (named for its chief exponent, Walker: Texas Ranger.) From the expression on the uke's face, I derive some hope that this was just goofing around and he doesn't actually mean for people to do this.


And here we have the deadliest of the Cuban special forces hand-to-hand techniques: striking a hard object smartly with a pistol while aiming it at your own face. Now, again, he could be goofing off here, but somehow I don't think so. He also could be advocating, not striking the opponent, but pushing the pistol into his cheekbone to get compliance. Frankly that wouldn't make things much better; his attacker's other arm is free and that would amount to giving him back the gun.


I'm still working on tracking down some evidence that Mr. Garcia's biography and martial arts claims are true. He has quite a story; he says he was a Lieutenant in the Cuban special forces and personally guarded Fidel Castro before coming to the U.S. So far, I can't find any information on a personal bodyguard to Fidel Castro defecting to the U.S., which seems odd to me, but what do I know? It's not like he's a baseball player or a boxer or something important, just a bodyguard.
If this guy's story is true, it's the equivalent of a member of the Secret Service's Presidential Detail defecting to China. It's hard to believe that sort of thing didn't make the news, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, so the investigation continues.