oh, and i love Very Good Tea and Very Good Coffee, too, Gollnick, so after the Highland Park (or Lagavulin or Springbank or Glen Morangie or ...), we can have some Ministry of Tea selections or perhaps some freshly roasted coffee from my friend who roasts her own ....
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Oh, I do love a good scotch. Any of the aforementioned will do fine, and in a snifter, please. I enjoy the aroma as much as the taste. In fact, I think I'm gonna get me some right now.
But, I eschew cafine. It's not a religious thing. I'm Lutheran, so coffee is no problem there. But, my body just seems to over-react to stimulants of all kinds. I dislike the smell of coffee to for some reason, but some teas have a very pleasant smell. My FMA instructor sometimes makes a sort of herbal tea with cinnamon in it. I like most anything with cinnamon in it. The taste is nice, but the smell is better.
A lot of "knife people" drink scotch, I've found, and a lot smoke cigars too, the later of which I refuse.
I've paid as much as $120 for a glass of scotch (actually, my then employeer paid for that). It was nice, but I didn't think $120 worth of nice. (Fortunately, the sales guy in the party picked up the bill and ran through the expense report and it was just part of a very expensive dinner for about twelve people, so it really didn't show up. We had several bottles of expensive wine, etc., so my scotch was just a minor thing. I don't think I was the only one who partook either.)
Anyway, there are people on this forum who are interested in knives for hunting/fishing/camping type uses. There are those who use knives as tools. There are those who fancy themselves some sort of assassin, mercenary, former special forces operative, part-time ninja, man in the backwoods, youth gangster, and psycho murderer in the backwoods and are interested in knives for that reason. There are those who realize that a fine knife is just one of life's little necessities, like a pen or a watch, and who's tastes are simple: they only want the best, so they look for a fine knife. And there are those who see the knife as a form of art.
Me? Well, with an interest in balisongs, one might initially put me in the assassin, mercenary, former special forces operative, part-time ninja, man in the backwoods, youth gangster, and psycho murderer category, but I think anyone who knows me and/or has seen my collection will tell you that I'm somewhere between good taste and knife-as-art. I'm afraid that I've studied knife fighting to much to have any romantic notions about it or about fighting knives. Knife sparring is the best workout you'll ever get, but I pray to God that I never have to face the real thing.
Man uses tools. In this respect, he is unlike any other animal on earth. Oh, you can point to some ape who may pick up a rock and use it to break open a nut, but that's hardly in the league with man's tool use. Man is the only animal who purposefully designs and builds his tools. He is the only purposeful tool user. In this respect, he is completely set apart in the creation.
In debates over evolution vs. creation, the issue of "the missing link" often comes up. Genetically, we may be missing only a link or two, but in terms of tool use, we're missing enough chain to reach to the moon and back. I can not accept the idea that the leap from an ape smashing a nut with a rock to a man designing and building a step-and-repeat camera to fabricate a deep-sub-micron IC chip microprocessor in order to solve thousands of simultaneous equations in order to build himself an atomic bomb is just a minor missing link. No, this huge gap proves that man was created to be different.
God's instructions to man were to take charge of the creation and bring it under control. Man's use of tools is an essential part of that.
The knife is probably man's second or third class of tools. The first were doubtlessly pounding tools, clubs, sticks, rocks, etc. The second might have been some use of sticks and so forth to make simple ladders or other tools to help him climb. Knives, first in the form of a rock with a sharp edge, were probably number three.
I am aware of some use of pounding tools by other animals and also of sticks as simple climbing aides. But I am aware of no other animal that uses any sort of cutting edge. This is where man separated from the animals.
Man alone is artistic. Man alone has a sense of design and style.
So, a knife with design or style is the first expression of man's uniqueness in the creation. So, to have something as purposefully made, as styled, and as artistic as a custom balisong is to say, "I am man and I am apart from the creation!" Then, to add your own energy and your own creativity to that balisong in manipulation is only to further personalize that and to further separate yourself from the rest of creation. No other animal manipulates his tools in the stylized ways that a balisong artist does and no other knife gives you the opportunity to rise so far above the rest of the world.
Pens are much the same for those who love them. No other animal writes, obviously. No other animal takes their tools to the wonderful extremes that pens often go to. And when a skilled penmen takes a great pen in hand and writes an inspired verse in flowing cursive script then, well, it elevates him above the rest of this world in way that nothing else can.
Clocks and watches are a total expression of man's mastery of the creation, even of time itself.
Fine scotch is like nothing that any other animal makes. The bees may make honey, and that is nice, but they don't spend ten or even twenty years on a single batch nor do they go to the efforts that scotch makers do to bring such wonderful creations to us. And even a few sips can, as you can see, carry one far above the mere mundane of shelter, food, and water, to think thoughts that tie knives, pens, watches, and even scotch together with a ribbon of theology.
And with that, I've had enough for tonight.
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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.4cs.net/~gollnick
