The day I lost total and complete respect for PaKua.
10/9...

I was trying to pinpoint the exact time that I lost total and complete respect for PaKua. It wasn't the time that I walked into a PaKua place to drop something off for someone and saw that everyone there was on laptops, on aim and nobody was practicing. Nor was it the time that I kicked a PaKua instructors ass - that's right, 114 pound pathetic ass me put down a black belt PaKua Instructor. No, it wasn't that either.

And then it hit me. It was the time that I walked by a PaKua "store" and saw a sign outside saying "We sell Sukkah's" in the main window. What the fuck? Sukkah's in a PaKua store? This shit was for real, I really saw it. I actually punched myself in the face a couple of times to make sure I was really seeing this, and yes, I really was. Apparently, besides for finding losers girlfriends, boosting their self esteem, helping them lose weight, getting rid of depression, providing them with free wireless internet on the premises, and free medical insurance, PaKua now also sells Succah's. Lest assure that if you go the PaKua way, you are provided with anything and everything you may ever want or need in your life, including Succah's for the dear Jewish brethren. It seems the that only thing PaKua doesn't actually do is teach you how to fight.

This guy I know who takes PaKua showed me his knife defense move. It went something in the line of exposing his wrists and.......and I didn't pay attention to the rest of it because once you expose your wrists to a knife, you're dead shit, so I just turned around and resumed my game of UT. Figured I'm accomplishing more by fragging, than listening to this shit... Anyway....

This friend of mine was standing up for PaKua (mostly because she is a black belt), when I tried telling her that the art must be crap because this other chick we know, who cant fight worth shit, is also a black belt. So she said to me, "well I know how to fight, and I earned my belt, but she didn't".
    -- "Um, excuse me", may I ask, "but doesn't that turn the entire belt system to shit?"
PWNED.

------------- THE MORE BORING PART ----------------- 10/11

You know they offer this one-year accelerated program thing where you can earn a black belt in just one year. That's proof right there that the whole system is shit. In a real Karate class, they don't guarantee you anything. There's no promises, or even estimates of when it will be that you will get your next belt, and most importantly, there is no way in hell that you will be a master of the art and be able to teach others it, in one year's time. You see, PaKua is all about family. Learning the art in a year, making friends, and finally, becoming an instructor at the end of your year (yes, I'm serious!).
You know what I say? I say FUCK THAT. A year is a short fucking amount of time. It took me more than a year just to learn how to make serious dents in my high school lockers without hurting my knuckles. I'm serious, by the way.

You see, one thing I forgot to mention is that PaKua is also about the money. The "one-year accelerated program" is basically a way of "cramming more work into the same amount of hours that you would otherwise be there, but paying more, and getting your black belt by the end of the year". Can you decipher this shit? I know I can't. I guess if you've got serious social problems and don't have any friends, you go for that one. That way, you can complete the art in one year and have friends and respect, instead of taking 20 years to learn a real art, which will take care of your friends problem right there. (Who needs friends when you can kick everyone's ass?"

    This sort of reminds me of this kid who showed up in my class in the middle of the ninth grade. He just showed up one day and sat in his desk quietly during class not saying a word. Then break came and he went over to one of the kids in the class and was like "who's the strongest kid in this class?" We told him who, and that kid was grass by the end of the day. Then a couple of days later the stranger left, probably looking for some real competition in some other school... Legend had it that this kid roamed from school to school winning himself the gold medal and then leaving. I wonder what he's up to these days...

Anyway, back to PaKua and how much it sucks.

The worst part is that I'm sure that PaKua used to be a real art. Probably the guy who was supposed to bring the shit over from Korea fell in a puddle of dog shit on his way here and fucked up his instruction booklet. Fear that his master would chop off his dick for screwing up the mission, he opened up Microsoft Powerpoint and invented his own shitty ass version of PaKua, printed it out on shitty paper, and gave it over to instructors all over America, and hence, that is how the American system of PaKua got to be the way it is.


Goddammit. The Korean people who invented this shit are probably rolling in their graves right now...