THE DEPARTMENT OF MARTIAL ARTS  BLACKS BELTS GO TO WINDOW SIX! BELOW BLACK BELT FOLLOW THE YELLOW LINE! ALL EQUIPMENT MUST BE IN WORKING ORDER BEFORE A TEST WILL BE CONDUCTED!  ‘Mabel, is Aikido in Department six now? No, oh damn...the computor is down again...Mabel, was that Department Six? In the basement? Fill these out in triplicate...oops, never mind, tea time... Huh? What the heck is going on? You don’t know? Why...it’s the DMA, the Department of Martial Arts. You know, the place you have to go to make sure your promotion is official, or when you want to get a license to open up a class in Pa Kua to go along with that Tai Chi class you’ve been...what? You didn’t license it? Better make sure the DMA police don’t find out...it’s $10,000 or ten years, whichever comes first. I know, you think the above is just a little satire for the heck of it, right? Have you read the Bill in the California State Legislature currently? It provides for more regulation. We need more? So did China before the Cultural Revolution. And if you don’t know what the China Cultural Revolution is then you don’t know the difference between Wushu and Kung Fu, and you don’t know that people were imprisoned and killed for being intelligent and/or rich. And you don’t know that the revolution is not that long ago, that the effects are still being felt, and that Human Rights in China is a big issue on the International Scene. But we’re not China, right? After all, we have protections. We have the Bill of Rights. Heck, we even have the Right to Bear Arms! Of course there have been some two thousand laws limiting these rights. (This writer was recently refused entry at an airport security station, apparently the airport security personnel felt it possible that he would highjack a 747 with a Kubotan, which he had cleverly disguised as a keychain!) Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe all this alarmist claptrap about being able to protect oneself is just that...claptrap. After all, we’re in the 20th century. People are more enlightened now. People don’t fight and have wars. There isn’t crime on the streets. There aren’t drugs which make people crazy so that they steal cars and burglarize homes to support habits and...  Oh...there is...oops. Well, that’s okay, I mean we’ve got the police and all, right? The police will protect us, and they never get out of hand, right, Rodney? And they’re always there when you need them, right Los Angeles. (It is this writer’s contention that the riots stopped the moment the media showed armed Koreans marching along rooftops. Of course, you may disagree...but please do it from behind doors and windows with iron bars on them...)  Okay, I admit, I’m just making a little hoorah to take up a Sunday afternoon on the typewriter and make buck when I can’t get to work and make an honest dollar. And we’ll just ignore the fact that the Martial Arts have been practiced in secrecy throughout various periods of history because governments don’t want people to practice something that would enable them to oppose that government through the use of force. We’ll just ignore all that. And please ignore the fact that you can’t own nunchucks in California, except as the government provides, that the government might be able to stop this magazine from even printing what I am writing, and that if your school is not registered with the DMA it will be closed.  Ignore all that. But make sure you fill out what Mabel has to offer in triplicate. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Al Case, owner of Quality Press, was recently accused of threatening the government with a ballpoint pen. He is awaiting a trial date. Monster Martial Arts index.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0

This article appeared in the June 1994 Inside Karate.