Mi Chiamunu Orazio. Orazio LaTuga. Mi scusati chi stava schirzannu. Iddu ie u me pirsunaggiu favuritu 'i BriganTony. Ma veni, talia chiddu chi c'ie cca ntu me webpage e rista cu mia ppi nu momentu. Binvinuti! Ca si circa a na pirsuna ca sapi parrari u Sicilianu, e chi facissi na chiacchiarata 'i menza ura ppi telefunu cu mia n'u Sicilianu un iornu ugni sittimana. Binchi sacciu scriviri e leggiri u Sicilianu, 'un u cabisciu beni quannu mi parranu. Aiu quachi canzuni (quasi cinquanta) 'i Brigantony e sulu cabisciu nu cinguanta ppi centu 'i chiddu chi dici n iddi. Vugghiu putiri capiri tuttu zoccu dici.
BINVINUTI!!!
I reached out to my Hindi speaking moslem friends in an effort to try to make sense of what happened. One guy told me to go to google.com or lukol.com and do a search on Hamza Yusuf. I did, and he did seem to be a voice of reason for them at the time. When one of them told me to read Noam Chomsky's book "9/11"-I had to hesitate (though if you want to read a book about a highly controversial, widely publicized and yet widely misunderstood topic here in the U.S.; have your favorite bookseller get ISBN 0-87666-660-8 for you!). Fortunately, another friend gave me a moslem book called "Conference of The Books" by a guy named Khaled M Abou El Fadl. That explained certain moslem views from a moslem perspective. Though none of them impress me as much as the non-violent Sufis of places like Hyderabad in India-although even they seem to renounce all worldly endeavors for the spiritual, including much meditation much like their Buddhist and Taoist brethren. But because of decisions made by people other than Jesus, much like the Edict of Milan, the Council of Nicea plus the fact that no one reads the oldest available texts of the New Testament in their original Greek, or the older Neo-Syriac texts acquired by Yale's Theological Seminary, my own personal views would tend to correspond more to those espoused by Friedrich Nietzsche in part 47 (Sieben und Viertzig) of his treatise "Beyond Good & Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Bose)": "Wherever the religious neurosis has hitherto appeared on earth we find it tied to three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude, fasting and sexual abstinence ‑ but without our being able to decide with certainty which is cause here and which effect, or whether any relation of cause and effect is involved here at all. The justification of the latter doubt is that one of the most frequent symptoms of the condition, in the case of savage and tame peoples, is the most sudden and most extravagant voluptuousness which is then, just as suddenly, reversed into a convulsion of penitence and a denial of world and will: both perhaps interpretable as masked epilepsy? But nowhere is it more necessary to renounce interpretations: around no other type has there grown up such an abundance of nonsense and superstition, none seems to have hitherto interested men, even philosophers, more ‑ the time has come to cool down a little on this matter, to learn caution: better, to look away, to go away. ‑ Still in the background of the most recent philosophy, the Schopenhaueran, there stands, almost as the problem in itself, this gruesome question‑mark of the religious crisis and awakening. How is denial of the will possible? How is the saint possible? ‑ this really seems to have been the question over which Schopenhauer became a philosopher and set to work. And thus it showed a genuinely Schopenhaueran outcome that his most convinced adherent (perhaps also his last adherent, so far as Germany is concerned ‑), namely Richard Wagner, brought his own life's work to an end at precisely this point and at last introduced that dreadful and eternal type onto the stage as Kundry, type v�cu, just as it is; and at the very time when the psychiatrists of almost all the nations of Europe had an opportunity of studying it at close quarters wherever the religious neurosis or, as I call it, `the religious nature' ‑ staged its latest epidemic parade and outbreak as the `Salvation Army'. � But if one asks what it has really been in this whole phenomenon of the saint that has interested men of all types and ages, even philosophers, so immoderately, then the answer is, beyond doubt, the appearance of the miraculous adhering to it, namely the direct succession of opposites, of morally antithetical states of soul: here it seemed a palpable fact that a `bad man' all at once became a `saint', a good man. Psychology has hitherto come to grief at this point: has it not been principally because it has acknowledged the dominion of morality, because it itself believed in antithetical moral values and saw, read, interpreted these antitheses into the text and the facts? What? The `miracle' only an error of interpretation? A lack of philology?"
INTEREST #2
In addition to languages, I like music. In addition to R & B, I'll listen to music in any of the languages I've studied to maintain fluency.
THIS STUFF CAN'T BE TRUE!!!???
The alternative health treatments espoused for illnesses such as diabetes and cancer by Wong Kiew Kit, B. K. Frantzis and Gary Null also interest me. I would like to find out exactly how effective they are (B. K. Frantzis was spitting some wild game about his experiences in his book OPENING THE ENERGY GATES OF YOUR BODY!). And I loved the books from www.forloveofnation.com-which having read them made me feel like I'd been walking around all my life with a human body, and NOW someone gives me the instruction manual!!!
MY FAVORITE SPORT
My favorite sport is Boxing-My least favorite fighter...well, I was expecting great things from this guy and he went and really disappointed me as well as the rest of his fans...but there are worse guys out there (I think). I'm talking about the defected Cuban 3 time Olympic Super Heavyweight Champion-Jorge Luis Gonzalez (I think his invincible aura was maintained by the cool-as-hell dialect of Cuban Spanish he speaks too). When he defected to the U.S., at 6'5" and 230 lbs, I thought he would clean out the heavyweight division. But instead of going pro with Lou Duva (the Champion Maker), he signed with Luis de Cubas (the Champion Breaker) and quickly earned a record of 31 wins-all by knockout-and no loses. The problem was, each of those 31 opponents was a buster. So when he fought Riddick Bowe for the championship, Riddick was the first legitimate professional he had ever fought. That and the fact that Riddick looked right through Jorge Luis' bravado and scared the hell out of him by slapping him in the face at their press conference. Ok. It wasn't a slap and it wasn't at the press conference. It was really that Riddick didn't like something Jorge Luis' translator told him he said and threw like a glass of Vodka at him, hitting him in the face, at one of the promoters' Presidential suites on one of the top floors of the hotel. It was in front of both of their entourages and everything. But that did it, because as soon as the bell started for the first round the night of the fight you could see Jorge Luis was so scared he wouldn't even throw punches back when Riddick would hit him. He just kept pretending he wasn't hurt and telling Riddick to hit him again until Riddick knocked him out. All that potential out the window over a glass of Vodka in the head. Minnchia! Well, let me finish up as tribute must be made to the old greats such as: Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake LaMotta, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey and Sandy Sadler.
BRUCE LEE
Now, I want to mention martial arts & Bruce, to pay homage due to the significance I personally feel he had in their popularization here. From what I understand, Bruce Lee's greatest social contribution was to give back a sense of pride to masses in a country dominated by Japanese and European governments & cultures for decades. He made the average guy on the street feel that in spite of the fact that they lost the Boxer Rebellion, Chinese martial arts were not, indeed, inferior to Japanese and Western forms of pugilism; that Cantonese language and culture (even in its rural forms) were as dignified as any others, and were not "backwards" as the colonizing powers many times tried to make the populace feel.
And Bruce could fight. Although I never heard of him ever having to defend himself against any of the reknowned masters of the time, he could get down. And he had an advantage over many. Beside his intense pride that made him practice fanatically, Bruce Lee's first martial art was Yip Man style Wing Chun Chinese boxing. If you're familiar with this art, then you know that a properly trained practitioner has hands like brass knuckles (although here in the States, many choose to forego the hand, arm and leg conditioning due to its inconvenience and later they wonder why they can't defeat their attackers), he practices speed and reflex drills to the point of exhaustion, he learns to throw an endless succession of techniques or attacks that flow one in to the next ad infinitum, and most of the techniques they master are executed from trapping range. Until Brazilian Jiu Jitsu became popular, being comfortable fighting at trapping range gave you an advantage here in the West. No one really practiced combat at that range (except practitioners of the empty-hand Philipino arts of Kali, Arnis and Escrima). When boxers find themselves at that range, they generally clench until the referee breaks them up. Wrestlers don't really do too much at that range either because their goal is to take you to the ground and pin you. So when you consider that even a 9 yr old could break someone's nose with a pair of brass knuckles-adding the lightning speed, endless flow of attack and the less-than-arm's-length "close range" that these blinding attacks are coming at you from, to the fact that the practitioner's hands are as hard as brass knuckles, you really don't have to think too hard about how someone well-versed in Wing Chun like Bruce Lee could fight. But that was just the foundation the rest of his skills were built on top of. And although its well known that Bruce wanted to be rich, famous and known for creating his own martial; I've never heard him quoted as saying he was the world's best martial artist or fighter. He just considered fighting a serious and dangerous endeavor, and did his best to take as much of the risk to the practitioner of his art (Jeet Kune Do) as possible, out of it.
MY THIRD GREAT INTEREST AND HOBBY
As I return to the topic of my own interests, I'd like to mention that I also have a strong interest in Filipino, Malaysian/Indonesian and Chinese martial arts. I studied Wing Chun Kuen here on the North Side of Chicago as a teenager under Steve Lee Swift when he was here. He was really the baddest American fighter I had ever seen-and I've studied different arts since I was 11. But I'm also fascinated by the concepts of Chi Kung, Chi development, Chi harnessing, Chi projection and the transformation of Chi to Jing. What does any of this have to do with Kung Fu? Well, according to "The Combative Elements of Yang Taijiquan By Peter Lim Tian Tek", Chi and Jing are the most important elements of Tai Chi Ch'uan's success as a combat art: "Other than the fact that it's name can be translated as `The Supreme Ultimate Fist', Taijiquan has always been noted as a highly effective combat art. It first became widely noted as a combat art when the art was brought to the capital of China, Beijing, by Yang Lu Chan when he taught at the imperial court. Yang was challenged many times but no one ever came close to defeating him. So great was his skill that the martial artists bestowed on him the title `Yang The Invincible'. More recently Yang Lu Chan's grandson, Yang Cheng Fu, promoted the art until it spread far and wide. Yang Cheng Fu taught his art as a combat art which can be used to strengthen the body, his three books attest to this fact. There is no substance to the commonly believed assumption that Yang Taijiquan is solely health oriented and not combat effective. By practicing Taijiquan as a martial art, one can gain the health benefits..." And B. K. Frantzis recounts some wild internal force experiences after beginning his 2 hour a day practice of Fukien White Crane Tsung He chi kung in OPENING THE ENERGY GATES OF THE BODY (but I guess you'd have to read the book to found out exactly what they were). And all this is on top of the foundation in martial arts of increasing bone, tendon and connective tissue strength and density rather than muscle mass, thereby increasing strength without impeding speed of movement.
For these reasons I'm really fascinated by Taoist Chinese martial arts and specifically what I've read and heard about the Taoist arts of Pei Mei Pai, O Mei Pai, Bak Fu Pai & Bak Mei Pai. Imagine, if you would, a child raised to young adulthood under the strict physical, mental and spiritual regimine of the Shaolin Temple-the highest institute of Buddist Martial Knowledge-and after it's burning, making his way to the temples of Wu Dang-the epicenter of the most advanced Taoist martial knowledge-where this now adult person spends the next 25 years of his or her life combining the highest Buddist and Taoist Martial, Spiritual, Herbal and Medical knowledge into one comprehensive system. Bak Mei Dao Yun, Ng Mui Dao Goo and Fong Toh Tak Dao Yun each did this; producing Bak Mei Pai Kung Fu, White Crane Kung Fu and White Tiger Kung Fu-each the art of priesthood as their corresponding creators perceived it (and as for BriganTony, the great Sicilian Folk singer and comedy skit artist, his life philosophy would seem to me to be more like: "Laugh often, eat your fill, make love until you've sated you every most hedonistic desire and live life to the fullest!!!").
But back to the Taoist art of Bak Mei Pai. I read a short description of it I found on www.wugar.com (which has since disappeared from the net) last year: "Bak Mei Technique-The Bak Mei style is fast and furious that does not does not leave the opponent standing, there motive being when the hand strikes out it should return back with blood on it. They do have a form of sensitivity training similar to Southern Mantis and Wing Chun. This type of training develops a strange bridge and speed that is blinding. They track with the fingers so that they can pierce through soft body tissue as well as being able to rip the muscle off the bone. They utilize the phoenix eye fist to strike certain points on the body. This is one of the reasons why this style is kept a secret. The forms practiced are done with a lot of fling meaning very loose until the moment of impact and then it is if the whole body goes into a lock. The forms should look as if every move is an explosion onto itself. There are weapons in the system such as the tonfa, tigerfork, broad sword, and staff. There are usually three to five forms. The footwork in bak mei is pretty straight forward. There is not much retreating in this style. Bak Mei will take a shot to give one because they feel, they will take one shot and then they will deliver many strikes. All kicks are thrown low to the knees and ankles although there is an occasional stamp front kick. They will utilize something called the sackers lead, meaning if they have there left leg forward their right hand will be forward giving the illusion that the rear hand is really the front hand, so they will have that much more reach on there left hand that the opponent does not think they have, because they think the right (rear) hand is in the front." (they also stated on a different page how the style is famous for its use of the elbows to breaks opponents' forearms during confrontations and that much meditation is required because concentrating & harnessing the body's vital energy in the manner of the advanced Bak Mei Pai practitioner makes one's nature extremely aggressive and one's intent destruction; the meditation causes the mind and body to revert back to it's original peaceful nature)-and have been trying to find a person who's mastered the art to learn it from since then. I saw the video Master Man Kwong Fong (Shifu, nei hai bin to aah???) did with espy-tv, and I had never before-nor have I ever since then seen something so impressive. And the only thing the sixty-plus year old master did, was part of the Sub Jee Kuen form at full-lightning-speed (oh, and he did some techniques from the form). But the real value of the video for me came when I played it in slow motion; and saw all the vibration, wind-up and violent jiggling of the master's hands and fingers as he used what the narrator called "Geng Jak Ging" or "Sacred Power" and what most non-initiates simply call "vibrating" or "bone-breaking" chi, to power his techniques. You could even see additional parts of the techniques when you played the video in slow-motion that weren't visible when you played it at normal speed.
If I could learn the whole system from him-or anyone else who learned the whole system including the healing herbal and higher-level taoist meditative practices, I'd be real happy. .
MARITAL STATUS, ETC.
As far as my marital status; I am single and am seeking a double-jointed female Iris Chacon-look-alike/super-model/yoga instructor with an open minded twin sister. I will accept pictures and subsequent private interviews.
FAVORITE ENTERTAINERS AND ARTISTS
And to end, I'd like to leave a list of some of my favorite artists:
Sicilian: Brigan Tony and Ciccio Pasticcio.
Nnapulitan: Tony Bruni and Jimmy Rosselli.
Cantonese: LMF/The Online Gut Yeah Team, Ekin Cheng, Rain Li and Karen Mok.
African: Baba Latika, Abass Obesere, Kollington and Meganstar.
Puerto Rican: Iris "Terremoto" Chacon-"Tremendo Coolant!!!".
Hindi: Salman Khan and Amir Khan (and the chicks are all pretty krunk).
Lebanese: Alain Merheb and Wadi Al-Safi.
Syrian: George Wassouf.
Chicano: Freddy Soto, Carlos Mencia and Paul Rodriguez.
Salsa: Victor Manuelle, Tito Allen, Jimmy Sabater, Huey Dunbar and Pedro Jesus.
Congueros: Tata Guines, Patato Valdez, Poncho Sanchez and Mongo Santamaria.
Urban Comedy: (Pre-Visit-to-Africa) Richard Pryor, Martin Lawrence and (the old) Eddie Murphy.
R & B: Marvin Gaye, Jaheim, Aretha, Howard Hewitt and Gerald Levert.
German R & B: Ayman.
Italian R & B: Tizziano Ferro.
THANKS & HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!
Y para rematar, permitanme mandarles un tremendo saludo a las ex-novias. A la senorita Mayaguez, la senorita Bayamon, la senorita Caguas y la Senorita San Juan! Damas: "Pa'lante, pa'lante com'un elefante-no dejen que nadie les tumbe su plante!!!"-El Gran Ismael Rivera. Y tocan la salsa mas bestial por la red alla en el ultimo link alla pa'rriba a la izquierda (www.WLUW.org) todos los Domingos desde las 2 a las 6 de la tarde aqui en Chicago en el aire con los companeros de la emisora! Que les guste el programa!
Esta que arde!!!