Indigenous Ability

  AKA: Strangulations, Jugulations, Cervical Cranks, Torques, Face-Locks, Hyoid Crushers, “Meat” Compressions, Garroting & More Beginning on The Black Box Subscription Service Volume 34, we will codify and offer 251+ ways to choke, strangle, jugulate, crank, and garrote your fellow man. The tactics have been culled from many resources, amongst them… ·         Old School Scufflin’ ·         Indigenous Wrestling of the Americas ·         Congo Square “Enders” ·         Barroom Bye-Byes ·         Alley-Way Garrote Work ·         And more…   This is NOT just for my grapplers . This volume, in particular, is ALL on the feet work.   Fractional Breakdown A Rough Third of this material can be used by my sport cadre. The Next Third by my M...

  [A change of pace as we highlight what may be my favorite "fictional" incident of gunplay in a lifetime of reading.] Brother Bill wasn't like me--he was a real lawman. You could tell. He looked lop-sided without his gun and he had a bullet-notched ear. He had a way of coming into a room and closing the door with his foot, like he didn't want his hands full of doorknob at the wrong time. And he would stand there and size everybody up. There was some good marshals there in those days, like Heck Thomas and Bud Ledbetter and Bill Tilghman. Brother Bill was cut from the same hide. They was all good with a gun. Fast? Well, fast enough. You didn't hear much about a man being fast with a gun. Folks would say that so-and-so was good with a gun. There's a difference. Being fast was a part of it, all right. But being slow is something, too. That is from the 1961 story, “The Fastest Gun” by Will Bryant. Bryant asserts that although cast in fictional form it is base...

  If you make a decision to skip a training session this evening, be that walking, MMA, CrossFit, yoga, your flavor of choice—if you decide to skip this session, thinking, “ No worries, I’ll get right back on the horse and be fine .”   Well, the odds are against you—an expansive exercise science study conducted in the UK found that a decision to skip a training session Today did not mean that the odds you would be consistent the next time went to 50/50—rather there is a 61% chance you will skip another session within 7 days.   You walk into a casino with better odds.   Each decision to skip puts more odds against your good intentions—the bookmaker ledger never re-sets to 50/50.   If you choose not to skip, you better your odds of continuing your momentum. You chisel away at that 61% against.   I repeat, no matter how much we think, “ Well, this time is fine, watch me go the rest of the week!” The data does not support the fictional...

  When one thinks knife-fighting, or tomahawk fighting, usually the mind drifts to a simulacrum of tit-for-tat sword adaptation or cobbled together “sets” purporting to be “ This was how it was done, chilluns .” This kinda-sorta-but-not-really-fencing misses the mark by far. This thinking is weapon-before-the-horse territory. By that I mean, we often become weapon-focused, we tunnel on the implement and often fail to see that in the beginning of man’s adoption of any tool there was an intent, a problem to be solved and the tool was developed to resolve this problem or exercise this intent. That is, “ I need to accomplish so-and-so task, how can I effectively do so with what is at hand?” Rather than, “ I have this tool in hand, I can do this with it, and I can do that with it, and if I flip it this way, I can do this with it” in endless drum majorette iterations. A Plains Example of Beyond the Edge Let us now look to an eyewitness account of a Lakota buffalo hunt witne...

  We begin with a few extracts from the Diary of William Calk, from 1775. Daniel Boone had recently blazed a route dubbed The Wilderness Road from the settlements in the East, through forests, mountains and numerous rivers into what was then called Kentucke. [In his fascinating diary Calk refers to the Promised Land as “Caintuck.”] The hazards were many—both natural and indigenous attack. Calk’s journal tells of many who turned back. I offer a few of the copious selections regarding rivers, as fording and ferrying were hazards that no one looked forward to. The dangers of drowning, loss of property were always on the table and, as any good skirmisher knows, catching an enemy at the river is a prime time for attack. Good rivermen were a much-valued frontier resource, whether it be men good in canoes, pirogues, flatboat, keelboat, ferry, or those who were River Pilots [spelled “pilate” by Calk.] River Pilots could read “lines” that is where to ford, where not to ford, whe...

  Lend an ear me hearties for some delicious red-decked mayhem! In support of Black Box Volume 33: Pirate Boarding Ax Tactics: The Melee Edition I offer the following historical support. For a podcast version of this essay-- Click Here! First things first, we are discussing pirate endeavors more than privateer endeavors—a subtle but important distinction between sea raiders. Your definition of pirate is likely the correct one, that of a ship of villains who have declared “ War upon all ” and see each sail in the offing as a potential prize ship for plunder. Whereas a privateer was a ship sailing under a letter of marque , that is, a decree that would allow merchant ships to attack enemy ships in times of war. It would be as if, let’s say today the United States has declared war against Norway, and each Carnival cruise ship [a British-American company] under a letter of marque would be allowed to attack any Norwegian Cruise ship they come across. The privateers of old w...