by Chris McKinley on Tue Nov 04, 2008 3:03 pm
cdobe,
Cool, good enough for me. Erle I have no idea about, only met him the one time in Jersey and that was in '01. As to being full of myself, here's what I'll cop to: I'm just another asshole with an opinion. I probably do have more time in front of the elephant than most of my fellow chuckleheads on this forum. No big deal. I've been posting regularly on martial arts forums since '96...folks familiar with my huge catalog of posting history will note that while I don't deny blowhard status, I really don't take myself (or any other martial artist) very seriously. What I do take seriously is the genuine curiosity of folks interested in learning more about how to defend themselves or their loved ones from other predatory humans. In pursuit of fulfilling the latter, I can't afford to worry too much about whose sacred cow was in my cheezburger.
If I have to choose, my loyalty is to my students and those interested in learning real information over anybody's lineage or sense of Confucian courtly manners. Too much bullshit exists in the world of Chinese IMA. As a result, the vast majority of it is horseshit for real life-or-death combat. That other little bit is rather a gem, so I stick around and defend it. It really doesn't get a lot more complicated than that for me.
