Also, just read this from Cracked.com and thought this was funny:
Yellow bamboo is a Balinese martial art that uses the power of God to blast beams of negative energy at your opponents. And these beams are crazy. Once you have them charged up, a yellow bamboo beam causes everyone in your field of vision to have a seizure. This is not a martial art for someone looking for a fun workout. This is for people who want to be closer to their creator but also liquefy a man's organs, plus the coffee shop and nursery behind him. You can tell when a bar fight has started in Bali because one half of the room will suddenly drop to the floor and die screaming. Right now, there's an Indonesian homicide detective standing over a room of contorted corpses and telling a rookie, "Puke if you need to, kid. This is the job. Now mind-probe those exploded corpses for yellow bamboo residue. You're murder police now."
In most demonstration videos, a yellow bamboo practitioner stands very firm until they have enough god energy ready. Then their friends run at them and get blasted into oblivion. Those who survive give testimonials about how real it all was. It seems like a fighting style vulnerable to unscheduled attacks, blows from the side, and opponents who aren't playing make-believe with you, but I bought the training guide anyway. I'm just some guy making fun of them, and even I was disappointed.
The book lays out a rice diet plan and teaches you some weird meditation techniques, but has shockingly little information on how to summon seizure beams. It's almost as if the author was hoping some other phenomenon had already given the reader energy powers and they were simply interested in some plain white rice recipes. Here's an an actual excerpt from the part about getting your energy beams to work. I added the blood splatter so my friends would think I was good at it:
I'd describe myself as a skeptic, but only because the thing they're doing is ridiculous, they have a financial incentive to lie, and I followed their instructions precisely and gained no superpowers. I don't want to get too political, but when an obvious liar tells me something that violates reality, my brain doesn't freeze up and reboot in Fear of Hillary Clinton Mode. Other people felt the same way and set out to prove yellow bamboo was fake. It turned out to be easier than you'd expect.
A man named Peter Dellys somehow convinced them to demonstrate their powers against his Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a fighting style with less magic but far more field testing.
They all went to a beach, and Peter gave one of the yellow bamboo nutbags all the time he needed to summon his magic. The yellow bamboo master shrieked as he squirted mighty power from his palms, but they were no match for Peter's light jog. Peter rammed into him with the impact of a Steven Seagal punch.
No one knows what happened. Maybe dumbness and wishes are ineffective self-defense methods. They tried it again with similar results. In a final, desperate attempt, they called in the most magical yellow bamboo master to gather all the power at his command. They even had another student stand behind him and swirl extra magic into him. Which means they're allowed to performance-enhance themselves with other people's chi? If you believed any of this was real, you'd have to consider that cheating. Which means these yellow bamboo guys not only lie about a thing they can do, but also cheat while they're not doing it. These are bad people. Also, if you ever find yourself saying, "I will defeat you for questioning me, but first I must devour the life force from my follower!" you're not the hero in that fight.
For this third, ultimate challenge, Peter was replaced by his friend Fraser, another jiu-jitsu practitioner. I guess the yellow bamboo guys figured there was no way a second man could be immune to chi rays. Fraser ran toward the man filled with the wishes of two, seemingly unaffected by God's powers. He took down the world's dumbest and fakest sorcerer and choked him out instantly. If your martial art style was Unprepared Burger King Customer, you would have defended this attack with exactly the same effectiveness. It was humiliating, but it was nothing compared to another notable yellow bamboo incident.
In a documentary called
Three Miles North Of Molkom, a group of hippies are training in yellow bamboo at a metaphysical retreat. Everything is going as planned - the instructor is running at the students while they marvel at their sudden ability to give a man a seizure with their screams. But then both things that could go wrong, well, go wrong. The instructor charges at one of the women, everyone forgets to scream, and he forgets to have a seizure. He runs her over like he's a bus driver trying to catch a Snorlax.
After just laying her out, the instructor awkwardly looks over at her. Quickly, but not even close to immediately or imperceptibly, he makes the decision to fake a chi seizure, even though no one shot him with any chi. So while she wails in agony, he convulses around hoping that the time he Lawrence Taylored one of his students into a wheelchair will get written off as an inexplicable mystery. Plus, it leaves the door open to the possibility that he's not a simple conman but a guy whose nervous system shuts down when he runs, and for years he misdiagnosed his affliction as nearby people having chi powers.
Hope you have a great day today, Saucy!
