Clif High - Red tape

Jan. 28, 2025 - Clif High

07:08

Red tape

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	Hello humans.
	Hello humans.
	Still January 28th.
	It's 5.24 in the morning.
	Still cold.
	Down to 29 now.
	Anyway, I wanted to do one of these about red tape.
	Not like the phrase red tape applied to bureaucrats, right?
	This is red tape from dojo's martial arts training.
	So in martial arts training, you get injuries.
	It's inevitable.
	You'll never be quite stretched out enough.
	Your muscles might not, you know, and it depends on if you eat a heavy meal, all different kinds of things, right?
	You go there and you train and you end up getting injuries.
	Mostly they're little tiny injuries.
	Muscle strain, you know, tendon stretched a little bit too much and so on, but you feel it as pain.
	And so it's wise and there is a procedure and what you do is you, the dojo has this little piece of, or has a roll of red tape.
	And what you do is you tear off a little piece of the red tape and you put it on your gi.
	A gi is like the judo uniform, right?
	In the arts I took, it was not like jujitsu, which uses a much lighter fabric.
	We did very heavy giis, especially in the early days of judo in the late 50s and early 60s.
	These are very heavy canvas things and they protect you, but nonetheless, you'll still get injury.
	So you put a little piece of red tape where your muscles are sensitive and that kind of thing, and then your partners in the contention will know to take it easy on you, unless they're buttheads and then they'll really work that side of you and you may get into a tussle with them over it.
	But in any event, the idea is that you're telling your partner in the contention, oh, I have a sensitivity here, right?
	And sooner or later, everybody gets injured and then you really understand.
	It's like, oh, okay, you take it easy on them because you too have suffered that particular kind of pain, right?
	And the pain from the martial arts from training like this is irritating because you exercise one day, get the strain or stress, the next day you get the pain from it.
	But even in that day, even in that pain, you still have to do your training.
	And so, you know, you've got to be careful of yourself.
	So you put a red flag there for yourself.
	Oh, I can't stretch that calf muscle or I'm going to damage, right?
	And that's what you're trying to do.
	You're trying to avoid discovering the difference between injury and damage.
	Injury you recover from, damage you must repair.
	And so if you get damaged, maybe you can't train.
	So you avoid damage to all of these different parts and you put these red flags there, not only for yourself, but also for your partners in the contention.
	And so I've got to bring one up.
	And so basically a red flag covers a sensitivity.
	It tells people a little piece of red tape says, oh, I'm sensitive about this, right?
	That muscle, that knee, that shoulder, that elbow, whatever.
	And so I'm going to put a little bit of red tape on me here, and this is about attitudes, okay?
	So I understand to some small, small extent, how people perceive me.
	And I also understand that some people get this idea, and it's like, it kind of irritates me.
	I'm a little sensitive about it because there's this feeling, and I get ribbed by it, believe me, by people about it, about this cult, okay?
	And I'm not trying to set up a cult.
	I don't want anybody to think of me as a cult leader.
	You know, I'm in no way special.
	I'm really a nasty bastard if you push me.
	I have very limited threshold for stupidity, and thus I am often off-putting, to say it mildly, and brusque with people I just meet, right?
	And I may also offend you greatly just by pointing out shit about yourself that you're not prepared to face because I can see it, okay?
	So here's the thing.
	I don't consider myself a celebrity.
	I would never want to be a celebrity.
	It really freaks me out when I'm locally famous and people think they know me and know me by name, and I have not a fucking clue as to who these people are.
	I've never met them yet, right?
	I don't go out of my way to annoy you, but if I do, you're just going to have to suck it up because I don't have the time to deal with that aspect of things.
	But I do have a sensitivity about it.
	So I just, it's kind of like, hey, everybody, just back the fuck off, right?
	All right, so we're going to do it this way.
	We're going to say, in the next life.
	So it's okay for you to have this attitude.
	Tell me about it in the next life, right?
	Don't express it to me now because I'm sensitive about it.
	And you understand that, you know, from my side of seeing it, I don't know individuals like this, and I'm paranoid.
	So it is quite factual that in the last three times a stranger has spoken to me and called me by name, and I've never met them before.
	In one of them, we got in a fight and I lost a tooth.
	So I'm not, and you know, it was a stalker, right?
	So I'm not inclined to accept such things graciously.
	You know, and I don't mean to offend you, and I certainly don't mean to attack you unwarranted, but you can see it from my perspective, I hope.
	Anyway, so, and hey guys, too, I got people I've got to work with who are, you know, giving me shit about this cult stuff.
	Oh, look, there is Cliff's cult again.
	It's like, oh, my God, guys, give me a break here.
	We've got things to do.
	And this is going to be an issue because I've got a couple of very big projects, okay?
	And so like a couple of years, maybe the whole thing on this one might extend out five years.
	I don't know.
	Anyway, and so I'm going to have to do some things.
	I'm going to have to make some moves.
	And I just don't want to drag this whole cult sensitivity shit along with me.
	So if you want to say something online and that kind of thing, I would appreciate it if you would, you know, sort of acknowledge my sensitivity by saying, oh, it's that, you know, it's that nasty fucker Cliff saying something.
	Or, you know, boy, is he bastard this time.
	Anyway, so that's just my red flag and I'm my red tape and I'm sharing it with you because I am sensitive about it.
	I, you know, it's not anything I want.
	I'm doing this because I like humans and I can see, I don't like general stupidity.
	And large amounts of humans together have a tendency to be generally stupid.
	So I'm just trying to clean up my local environment in that sense.
	And unfortunately, you know, I can't do it.
	I can't go out and make the appropriate decisions and all of this kind of stuff.
	So for people, right, obviously.
	And so my approach is to sort of be an irritant and just point out, oh, look, that path over there saves you, you know, 20 steps and you don't have to fight the alligator.

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