This’ll make you feel better about yourself, although you may have to lie down
Greetings, Steve here, welcoming you to the second in a series of When Reality Knocks columns hopefully helping us all feel better about ourselves. I wrote one column about feeling better about ourselves a few months back, just offhand, and it’s turned out to be extremely popular. Feeling better about themselves, apparently, is something many people would like to do. The essense of my approach is not strictly clinical, nor is it actually psychological at all. Basically, I’m just going to post absolutely crazy things I find on the web, in the hope that this will make us all feel better about ourselves, by helping us realize that we could be doing something more insane with our time. Tell me what you think:)
Today, I’m focusing on something I found online about a man who pulled a truck with his penis. Yes, he pulled a truck, a large truck, a mechanical invention designed specifically to move on its own, with his penis, a natural appendage specifically designed never, ever to pull anything. This man, 50 year old Tu Jin-Sheng, a veteran martial arts practitioner and grandmaster of the 99 Qigong or Iron Crotch system (yes, that’s right), gave a public demonstration in Fremont, pulling a truck several meters…twice. Qigong, as it turns out, is the ancient Chinese art of being insane.
No, actually, Qigong is a very real method of building up your ji, or internal energy, giving you enhanced health and fighting ability. I have practiced a few different Chinese martial arts, on and off, for several years and have done some Qigong training myself, but I can honestly say, and call this a failure of imagination if you must, that it never occured to me even once to utilize Qigong training in this way.
Grandmaster Tu, however, doesn’t suffer from my narrow-mindedness. Being an ‘outside the box’ thinker, he has developed great ability to support large amounts of weight…with his penis and to pull large objects, such as trucks…with his penis. During the attempt in Fremont, his genitals looked like, quote, “a ball of flesh that looked ready to burst.” Reporter Grace Rauh describes his newest project: to strap a dozen of his students to 747 (a 747!) and engage in the largest penis pull of all time. {Pause while we wait for snickering to stop.} Rauh writes: “All he needs in an airplane.” Um, yeah, and maybe some chlorpromazine.
I don’t know, this just doesn’t seem like a good thing to me. It strikes me as using a body part in a way in which it was not intended, like sanding a deck with your face. However, as it turns out, Iron Crotch is practiced by over 60,000 people worldwide and they claim many health benefits. KungFuMagazine.com reports that, although “penis training is often ridiculed in the martial arts” (yeah, I can see that) Grandmaster Tu, “claims it can prevent old age {no comment} and diseases, increase energy and vitality, make muscles and bones stronger, reduce arterial blockage, cholesterol levels, diabetes, allergies and ear problems.” I don’t care! I’m still not going to do it. This seems like one of those the cure is far worse than the disease type of things.
However, the magazine article goes on to report on three hardy souls, far braver than I, who, “hauled 10 tons of truck and passengers by roping their penises to the truck fender and pulling backwards{see above}.” I asked my girlfriend, Meghan for her opinion. Innitially she gave one of those typically female responses designed to indicate utter distain for male cognitive abilities, namely “Okaaaaaaayyyyyy…” and then she paused. “Bet he’d be great in bed.” In fact, Grandmaster Tu claims this benefit as well: “I imagine that if you can tow a truck, that is going to give you some skills.” Once again, let me state emphatically, once and for all and for the record: I don’t care. I’m not doing it. I’m certainly not saying that others shouldn’t enter into this exciting field of martial conditioning (ouch!), and you can, of course, buy the training video (yes, of course there’s a training video, OUCH!), but the article gives one final note of caution to all interested parties: “For this type of training, you must have a qualified teacher, or you might get hurt.” I did not need to be told that. I assumed that. That seemed self-evident to me and I expect to you as well and hopefully this has made as us all feel a little better about ourselves.