Bruce Picks Away

Here's a few pics of me picking the deadbolt of my door.

Making Mr. Miracle

Someone broke into my house yesterday.

ME, BITCHES!

It took an half of an hour. Not more or less an half hour like less than an hour or more than a few minutes but exactly 30 minutes. That's as long as a TV show or it takes to make a decent supper or... well I'm sure you all know how long an half hour is but, but, but I'm just excited. This was my first time sitting down with them. I think I've found my calling - maybe I shouldn't be practicing to become Batman but rather should be trying to make myself an illusionist like Mr. Miracle.

Picks in the Post

I got my lock-pick set this morning. It's gorgeous. It's a 20 piece lock-pick set of from LockPickShop.com although that was my mistake - since ordering it, I found out that the maker, SouthOrd sells the exact same set for $10 cheaper than LockPickShop.

The MPXS-20 is a set of 14 picks and five torsion wrenches (there's also a key extractor - also known as tweezers). The picks come in a case which I like because it has a zipper rather than a button which most seem to have. These picks are called Slim, meaning that they are for narrow U.S. locks or European and Japanese locks. Narrower seemed like a better choice than wider to me.

The only other set that I really considered purchasing was the PXS-14 but it wasn't on sale when I ordered.

Batman Haute Couture

Masked vigilantes are en vogue this year. These cowled ladies showed off Narciso Rodriguez fall collection in New York last week. The blog Red Carpet Fashion Awards aptly identified these bucket hats as Batman-esque. I'm looking forward to high-fashion renditions of Batbelts, myself.

Suspicion

I stopped by a local locksmith's today to see if I could buy a set of picks locally instead of over the Internet. The lady who was working the shop came around from the other side of the shop. Because I'm fairly young, I made sure to use all the lingo that I knew when asking her if she had any. I asked if she had an torsion wrenches and picks for keyless entry. I was shocked at how quickly her attitude changed.

She told me, "We don't carry that kind of thing here" and when I asked her if she knew someone who might, she said "No" and returned to the other side of the store leaving me standing alone in her shop - a surprising thing to do to someone you suspect is a thieving criminal.

I've read in the Visual Guide to Lock Picking that picking a lock is not exactly the best method of fast, keyless entry. Drilling sounds easy or acid or if it's a pad lock simply cutting the BAR. That being said, I'm sure that there's a lot of superstitious cowardly thugs who could think of all kinds of crimes to commit.

Hopefully I'll tell you about bumping, shimming, skeleton keys and other keyless entry techniques beyond picking - the right tool for the job, they say.

Rolling Hitch

Good job, Plastic Man. You'll be able to sell that tape on e-bay or maybe bring it to the JLA's monthly poker nights.

It's very easy to make the clove hitch a little more secure. By wrapping the working end around the post one more time, we have a Rolling Hitch. Because this double turn reduces slipping, this knot is useful for situations where the pull is along the same direction as the post.

1) Pass the line around the post, going over the standing end once you make it around.
2) Make a second identical turn, which follows the first turn.
3) Finish the knot in the same way we finished the Clove Hitch: with a half hitch
a) Pass the line around the post on the other side of the standing end.
b) Feed the working end underneath the third loop.
5) Cinch the knot.

Clove Hitch

Sometimes a magic lasso is just the best fashion accessory that one could ask for.

Today's knot is the Clove Hitch. This is a great and super easy way to tie a line. It's so unbelievably fast.


1) Pass the line around the post or bar or whatever.
2) Pass the line around the post on the other side of the standing end.
3) Feed the working end underneath the second loop.
4) Cinch the knot.

The things that you should keep in mind are: a) leave a bit line past the knot since it might slip a touch before catching b) if wiggling the standing part will loosen this knot.

Figure of Eight Coil

You know, I don't think that this picture is the worst one I found...

I did get one thing done for Building Batman this month: I found a use for the figure eight knot. If you have a rope that you don't use very often - like the ice-batrope that goes along with the Bat-antarctic-suit or the underwater rope that goes with the Bat-diving-bell or... well you get the idea. What you need to do is coil your Batrope. But something nice like the Alpine coil (we'll learn that one someday) is more for short term. For storage you want something like the Figure Eight Coil.


1) Make the entire rope a bight (fold it in half).
2) Coil the doubled rope (the animation only shows one coil but of course you do as many as you need).
3) Wrap the working end (the bight) around the coil.
4) Once around the coil, feed the bight through the loop.
5) Pull tight and you have a coiled rope with a nice small loop to hang your batrope from.

Reach For The Sky

This is why you need to be born a millionaire to be able to become Batman. It's been more than a little while since I've posted on my blog and trust me I would have posted if I could have. My secret identity's life has been a hectic series of demands. My physical training has been off and on and I haven't developed any new skills. That being said, I was able to make an animation for a knot just now, plus I ordered a lock-pick set. It should arrive very quickly. I'm not promising that the rest of this month will be any easier on the ol' playboy persona but I will make sure to post many more knots than I have recently. And then we will be able to move on to lock-picking which promises to be very interesting although a couple of the knots that I have learned have proved useful on more than one occasion already and carrying a knot book and a piece of rope around has really entertained alot of people I meet in my day. Not many people are willing to teach me knots they know but they are often interested in trying out whatever knot I am trying to learn at the moment. Maybe knots are really a lost art.

Radion

So I guess I have to add "Learn to Fire a Gun" to my list of Batman-skills.


PS Is it just me or is it twisted that this week's Smallville dealt with this theme?

Figure Eight

Remember, according to Dr. Marston, she is only bound until she wants to break free.

Figure Eight
This knot sucks. I haven't figured out anything to do with it. I must have to work on my detective skills soon. I hear that the figure eight is the basis of many other knots but I don't really see any use for it by itself. I guess it could stop a rope from going through a hole or something.


In an case, this is how you tie a figure eight
1) Make a loop.
2) Bring the working end around the standing end.
3) Feed the working end through the loop.
4) Pull to tighten.

Reef Knot

I think "DEATH" must be the safety word they are using.

On to knots.
You and your sidekick are chasing a sexy villain across the roof tops. The cat-burglar is able to dash to the edge and gracefully jumps 20 stories to the distant ground. You boys are stuck and the vileness is taunting you with her stolen goods and gorgeous, criminal body. Sucks to be you, Batman. UNLESS you remember today's knot! The reef knot is used to tie two ends of line together. This is how it goes.

REEF KNOT
1) Pass the working end once around the other line.
2) Bring the ends up with the working end underthe other line.
3) Pass the working end over the other line.
4) Tighten by pulling both ropes on both sides simultaneously.

You now have a reef knot. If you tied this one with me, you can maybe see why it's often called a square knot. You can now use it to go down the side of a Gotham skyscraper. One note of warning: This knot is secure when the knot is pressed against something (like the side of a building). If, say, Catwoman had gotten to a distant building and Batman needed a longer rope to swing across on, he would not use this knot. He would use a different bend. We'll learn many more in the days to come.

I Digress, Cut Me Some Slack

You may have noticed that there was a Wonder Woman cover above yesterday's post. In the picture WW is bound to a buoy with a huge torpedo, rocketing toward her.

In order to encourage us while we learn some knots I thought it would be fun to have pictures of tied-up damsels-in-distress, you know to remind us why we are learning knots in such painful detail. Since finding the right kind of pictures for this blog wasn't working so well, I started searching for tied up superheroes, like drawn version of Batman and Robin captured and placed in some ingenious but evil trap.


As I looked, I started to notice a trend - Wonder Woman! She was the damsel-in-distress. She was tied up at everywhere I looked. And I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous! The hero who was designed to as an tool for empowering women, is constantly shown helplessly bound and absurdly sexualized." This from the creator of WW, a guy who said: "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power... The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." And I thought, "What a dick! He talked about empowering women but really just had bondage fantasies that he couldn't express."

Boy was I wrong!

Dr. Marston
I did some digging into WW's past in order to understand this paradox. Everything that you need to know about Wonder Woman can be found in a study of her creator, Dr. William Moulton Marston. He's often called alot of things: a feminist theorist, inventor of the lie-detector, a comic book author who created the character Wonder Woman. But you have to understand a few things: he was a psychologist but to call him a feminist is a little misleading since he pre-dates modern feminist thought. He was instrumental in creating Wonder Woman but much credit should go to his two wives, Olive Byrne but especially Elizabeth Marston. He didn't invent the lie-detector(which is a misnomer, by the way). He invented the systolic blood-pressure test which is one component of a polygraph. According to a review of a book written by Marston in his FBI record, he seems to have gone out of his way to convince people that he created the lie-detector and that his method was infallible.


A Woman's World
That being said, he actually seemed to trust his test to a fault. After he and Olive took the lie-detector on the road, he became convinced that it proved women were more honest, more reliable and could work better than men. He was quoted as saying, "Women have more emotional power than men, they have greater endurance and more resistance to disease they live longer, and they can endure pain far better." So what was his conclusion? The problem with the world is that it is ruled by men! If women were in charge the world world would become perfect. In this new world, "loving submission" would replace war and passion would replace violence.

Suprema
Wonder Woman was the embodiment of this belief. She was designed as propaganda to convince the world. How to convince girls? Give them "... a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." How to convince the boys? "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"


So what does this have to do with bondage on comic book covers? In Marston's view, women already seemed to hold the secret of "loving submission" and needed to seduce men into accepting it. Once women did that, men would realize that they preferred such a world over the current, violent one. Marston minimized violence in Wonder Woman books. Instead of focusing on violent enforcement thrashing criminals into line, Wonder Woman books showed binding by loving submission. There was definitely sexual context. He envisioned women ruling by feminine charm. It's no coincidence that the Amazon's famous rule "that they must never surrender to a man for any reason" is Aphrodite's Rule. Marston said, "The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society. ... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element."

And that's the story of why Wonder Woman spends so much time tied-up by her rogue gallery. And to help herald in the new era, let's learn some knots.




If you want to read more check out

• Adventures of a Comic Book Girl whose posted school essay got me thinking
• AntiPolygraph.org who discuss and have copies of Marston's FBI files
• The Wonder Woman Pages who print Olive's interview with Marston from Family Circle
  
• League of Substitute Superheroes who have a great essay arguing why Marston was not a feminist
• DC Message Boards: WILLIAM MOULTON MARSTON especially the posts by jameslm which finally made me get my head around the idea of "loving submission". Expect some of the normal bickering that accompanies reading forums.
  

What Are Knots Good For?

Why don't we start with a knot that everybody knows? And I know what you're thinking: "I don't know any knots! I'm not a sailor, batboy." But trust me, you know this one. It's called a thumb knot. It's the basis of a lot of other knots. For example, it's the first part of tying you shoes.


THUMB KNOT
1) Begin by making a crossing term (Begin with a loop).
2) By going under the loop, pull the working end through the loop (the working end is the end you are working with while the standing end is the end attached to something or just not being used).
3) Cinch it (tighten it).
4) Voila! A thumb knot.

You can make this more interesting by making the knot slipped. Slip knots are knots that can be untied in a hurry. The slipped thumb knot is tied exactly like the thumb knot except it uses a bight.


SLIPPED THUMB KNOT
1) Make a crossed loop.
2) Pull a bight through the loop. A bight is a "loop" formed by folding the rope back on itself.
3) Cinch it.

Obviously, the loop that's formed in the slip knot is not very solid. If you want to make are really simple loop out of the thumb knot, try:


THUMB KNOT LOOP
1) Make a bight out of the loop.
2) Make a regular thumb knot using the bend as the working end and the two parallel pieces of rope as the rope.

One last thing you can do with a thumb knot: you can make a very simple noose. A noose is any sliding loop.

THUMB KNOT NOOSE
1) Make a very loose thumb knot with a short working end.
2) Feed the line (the standing part, not the working end) through the hole left by the thumb knot.
3) Cinch the thumb knot around the line. You can tighten it so much because the thumb knot really sucks and so it won't catch unless you are using string, thread or fishing line or something.

Ya I know. Those are really weak knots but look at all the terms we've learned:

Crossing term - make a loop
Working end - the end of the rope being used to tie the knot
Standing end - the part of the rope fixed or not being used
Cinch - to tighten
Slip - easily undone
Bight - formed by folding the standing end back on itself
Noose - a sliding loop

Becoming Batman

I had planned to introduce our first knot today but thought instead maybe I would reintroduce the Building Batman blog.

The question is this: To what extent can an everyday person develop the skills obtained by the dark detective, Batman? That is the underlying motif of the Batman, isn't it? Given enough determination any person, not inheriantly an hero or a superpowered knight, can conquer the greatest monsters in the dark scary world we live in.

With the release of the second Nolan film, I noticed a lot of talk on forums about the kind of workout that might be required by Batman (not to mention the kind of workout routine used by Christian Bale in preparing for the film) and more general discussions (online and in print) about the possibility of an actual person achieving the kind of skills held by Bruce Wayne.

Last October, I began this blog and started learning skills. Though it's self-evident that I will never be as good as Bruce Wayne at anything, I will introduce myself to a wide variety of activities. Each of these activities will undoubtably profit me in the future and many will be just plain fun to learn. My goal is to become a better, more competent person (rather than say become a valiant vigilante with a valid vendette to vanquish villainy [take that V]).

So far I have begun training my left hand to do everyday activities. Although, I may never become truly ambidextrous, I am far more comfortable writing, drinking, using keys and really just getting by without my strong hand. I still practice this quite often.

I also learned to throw a boomerang. Where developing ambidextrity is a frustrating exercise in perserverance, throwing a boomerang came surprisingly easily. They are a fun hobby and I expect I will enjoy it forever. I'd recommend them as a great (and easy) way to have fun.

Next I removed substances in my diet which are addictive and potentially harmful to my body. After a month of abstaining from caffeine, alcohol and nicitine, I have now loosened my fast. The important thing for me was to demonstrate to myself that I was not so thuroughly addicted that withdrawl symptoms would hamper me. Furthermore, I found that coffee(in moderation) can have many positive results as can red wine.

I have started a small exercise routine to develope my upper body strength. When I began doing push-ups, I did 100 every day. A month later, I have quadroupled that to 400 push-ups daily.

I have memorized a small set of knots which continues to grow. I'll post my drafts and loose instructions starting tomorrow.

I've also begun learning to pick-locks. This one is slow going and it will most likely be a while until I can tell you much about that. All the while I have been dropping Batman news and other odds-and-ends as I find them interesting.

So that's the idea. Along the right hand column you can see a proposed list of skills which I will get to. If anyone has ideas I have not included or suggestions or can offer help of any sort, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me or leave a comment.

I hope that you will enjoy reading this blog as I enjoy making it.

Batman: Black and White

I read about a fan-film called Batman: Black and White today on a really great Batman blog, BAT-BLOG. Then I took the time to watch it.

This is a good fan-film, especially for how long it is. These things aren't usually over an hour long and that's impressive. It takes itself pretty seriously but doesn't come off as ridiculous for doing so - it's pretty easy to look stupid for treating your project too serious in any fan-film, let alone one based on a comic book. Shooting in black and white was an inspired choice since it probably hid much of the unavoidable visual problems that go along with having no budget.

The only problem I had with the film was the extremely weak characters. Every single time, each and every character took the easy solution to his conflict. No strong characters. And by the way, I don't mean the acting. For a fan-film, the acting was bang-up fantastic.

Batman was passive (even worse in Bruce form), Catwoman a victim, Tim was straightup helpless. Let's just talk about Batman. I recently read Batman Unauthorized and in the essay by Lou Anders there is what could be called a check list for properly representing Batman:

1. Batman's force of will must be staggering. "The Batman of the comics, as he is portrayed today, is a "normal" human being who can enter a room full of super-powered beings and command their attention and send a chill down every spine there -- despite having no powers of his own -- by his mere presence and force of personality."
2. Batman always has something to prove.
3. Batman's refusal to kill is paramount.
4. Batman's secret identity is not his core persona.

Batman: Black and White misses all of these.

1. Nobody in the film feels Batman's presence. Not the criminal's who run from him, not Robin, not the Tallyman, not even Selina (and if that's not what's attractive about Batman for Catwoman, you've missed something).
2. Batman is portrayed as confident. He walks like Tim Burton's Batman which isn't so much of a problem for me. But it's the wrong kind of confidence. It's an old man's confidence. It says, "I've been doing this forever and I'll beat you" rather than "I'm the goddamn Batman and I WILL beat you." It felt like Batman was just going through the motions.
3. Batman always walks the line when it comes to killing. It's the one thing that separates him from those he hunts, therefore it works well as his great temptation. However, other characters were dealing with this, not Batman (which is fine) but if you're not going to have Batman tempted by it he must be thoroughly against it. In this fan film he's pretty apathetic to the deaths happening three feat away.
4. This one implies he has a personality. Superman doesn't have to have a personality! Batman does. (That was a joke - I love Superman. I just mean he's more of a Christ-figure, a morally untouchable god)
   

I probably felt this all the more because I was reading Batman: Ego and Catwoman: Selina's Big Score both by Darwyn Cooke who's characters are all so strong. He captures the staggering heroic proportions of their mettle and then contrasts that so well by refusing to give herculean form to the art of his heroes. Great stuff but I might have just digressed.

While re-reading this post for errors I realized it may seem like I really rag on this film. But that's misleading. I really liked it. If it had been bad, I wouldn't have mentioned it at all. The fact that I took the time to think about it and critique it means it had an effect on me. Well done 27th Letter Productions.

50 More

After posting earlier this morning, I read Elroy's comment on the Dec. 20th post. I still had a few minutes before my hour was up so dropped down and was able to do 50 more. That means I'll be doing 200 not 150 each day. Anyway, I hope that each of you that celebrates Christmas has merry day tomorrow.

Push Batman Push

A big set back yesterday. Having done my ten days of alternating A days (100 push-ups over spread over an hour) and B days (100 push-ups throughout the day) and then taken two days rest, I tried to do as many as I could in a single set. My big number: 55. Ouch. I've got to raise this. I have a whole set of excuses but the Batman doesn't get excuses and so neither do I. Next week I must have a significant improvement. So I'll up my number from 100 push-ups to 150 and try to do fewer sets of larger numbers. I don't think that I can jump right up to 200.

Also I have been learning knots (I've memorized my fourth one and have completed a couple more) but I don't have access to Gimp or a steady stream of internet right now so I'll hold off until after Christmas to post about them.

Batman and Ropin'

Today is day ten of the push-up regiment. That means it's the last day of Round 1. I still feel good about it although I have to admit, I'm a little bit stiff. After a two day break I'll see how many push-ups I can do consecutively. Before I started I could do about 45ish. I hope to double that on Tuesday.

I received two books that I ordered for this Building Batman project in the mail today.

Book 1: The Knot Book by Budworth and Compton. Batman knows knots. Trust me. Climbing up and down building... oh ya he knows knots. Tying up baddies for Gordon to pick up. Some fun with Catwoman. Mooring the Batboat.

Book 2: Visual Guide to Lock Picking by McCloud. That's right, not only am I learning from a friend but also on my own. It will probably take me quite some time to understand lock-picking well enough to explain anything but sooner or later we'll cover this stuff.

So here's the plan. Over the next few weeks I'll introduce you to a knot or so a day as I learn and practice them. As that happens I'll learn as much as I can about lock picking. Learning these couple of skills will be big step in becoming Batman.

Home Made Equipment

My lock picking friend came in this morning with an old lock, a homemade Torque Wrench, a make shift Slim Jim and a WR3 bump key.

Of course, I'll explain what all those things are in blog posts as I learn to use them.

Batman: Lock-pick Extraordinaire

I haven't mentioned it yet but I've been looking into lock-picking a bit. It's not quite next on the list of Batman's Skills for me to learn but it's pretty high up there. So you have something to look forward to for after Christmas now.

I was talking to a friend of mine about being interested in lock-picking and it turns out he has some experience from his days in a hardware shop. It turns out that this shop acted as a minor locksmith's and part of his job was to pick the locks that came in without keys.

Anyway, he offered to teach me how to make a pick set. If all goes according to plan not only will he teach me how to pick locks but also how to create makeshift picks and fashion more sturdy long term picks. Great coincidence that I plan to take full advantage of.

Welcome to Wayne Manor

This is the funniest thing I have seen since... I really don't know... I'm speechless. The art is amazingly fun and the stories are hilarious.

The webcomic (if I can call it that) is called Welcome to Wayne Manor and it's amazing (did I already mention that?). The guy who does it also posts his stuff on deviantART but it's nothing different than the blog site.

Please!!! You must go leave this artist a comment or two encouraging him to keep going. The blog hasn't been happening for that long but I laugh and smile so much every time something new is posted.

Who Has The Time To Fight Crime?

You know the worst thing about push-ups? The ups.

It's actually finding time to spread the sets out evenly throughout the day. It's tough to find the little bits of seconds here and there.

Push-Ups

Four days ago I started doing push-ups following the Blog Comics, Films, Kung Fu, and Whatever the Hell Else. I'm starting easy since I've never been a particularly athletic guy but I'll try to improve fast.

The routine consists of picking a number of push-ups to do (I'm doing Elroy's gentle 100). On day one you do 100 over the course of an hour. The next day, you do 100 hundred sometime throughout the whole day. Then you repeat. You do this for ten days and then rest for two days. After the two days of rest, you try to do as many as you can in one go. Then start all over again with a larger number of push-ups.

I don't know what Batman would think about two days of rest but I think in the real world there's wisdom in giving yourself a break of some sort.

Drink Up, Batman

I made a mistake yesterday.

I drank an espresso and an americano. They were decaf so it was ok, right?
Wrong!

Getting off of caffeine wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had a couple of restless nights and a few days with minor headaches but really it wasn't so bad. Since quitting I had drank a few decafe coffees here and there when others went for coffee and I wanted a break.

If I had just checked Wikipedia first I would have known that the international standard of decaffeination is only 97%. That means that my espresso and americano gave me about 45mg worth of caffeine (calculated from this website) which is equivalent to about a can of diet coke.

This is terrible! I was up until early this morning (I read some of a book called Varieties of Religious Experience by William James which I would recommend highly as a must read to anyone who just loves lecture series from over a hundred years ago on the psychology related to religious experiences. Oh and I also reread Justice) and had to sleep in this morning all because of the equivalent of a pop?

So what do I do? Drink no coffee so that when I do finally drink it (as is bound to happen since its the most consumed drug in the world) I'm messed or need it every single day so that if I don't get a cup I have withdrawl?

It depends on the other side-effects of coffee. Are there long term problems? Long term benefits? Is there a way to be immune to caffeine? That last idea would be best but try as I might, I could not find a believable method of becoming immune (which is different than normalizing and being able to sleep again or drink more without getting jittery which is called caffeine intoxication).

It seems one major side-effect is that caffeine makes it harder for your body to retain calcium which means weak bones. But it sounds like this is not really serious if you drink milk. Despite your kidneys doing all the processing of caffeine, coffee doesn't seem to pose any health concerns for your kidneys.

Children and pregnant women might not want to drink tonnes of coffee since caffeine is a drug that primarily effects the nervous system and children's nervous systems are still developing. That being said there are no documented longer term effects due to drinking coffee while pregnant.

So what about benefits? Caffeine seems to have poorly understood but positive effects on athletes
and metabolisms. I suppose that this would appeal to a crimefighter without superpowers.

To the obvious benefit: caffeine is a stimulant. People use it to increase energy, decrease fatigue and make them more focused. Fine. But there is something else here. Studies seem to say that caffeine boosts short term memory retention.
That's amazing. Even better, not only does it improve short term memory, caffeine may also reduce memory decline in the elderly (especially women) and prevent memory loss.

Conclusions: There's enough benefits to caffeine not to stop. From this little experimental diet of mine, it seems that I can stop anytime I'd like given three or four days. But the moral of all this seems to be "All things in moderation." Governments seem to take a pretty conservative stance of saying that you shouldn't ingest over 400mg a day if you are a healthy adult (that's a venti at you local Starbucks). So here is my revised plan. I'll finish the month-of-no-caffeine but after that I won't be so strict. However, I won't drink coffee daily, making sure it isn't a habit. In this way, I'll cash in on the benefits by being able to chose when I wish to drink it instead of "needing my coffee to get through the day" while avoiding worrying about caffeine intoxication in everyday situations.