Punching Day: The Martial Artists Book of the Occult

Magic grifters sell spells and potions to frustrated men in vests, the kind of men who consider themselves poly but don’t have a girlfriend. Karate grifters sell pokes and death touches to men in American flag shorts, the kind of men who are overcome by bloodthirst but unwilling to do a pushup. Because I’m laughably naive, I assume both kinds of men are too mentally unwell to purchase a firearm, which would solve all of their problems. Where are they to turn?

My motorcycle jacket came with concealed carry pockets that are exactly the size and shape of this book. I’d say it’s a coincidence, but I believe in internet magic. The fact that lightbulbs are lightbulb-socket shaped is all I need to know that reality is a simulation, and therefore you can hack it.

The author, S Rob, is a self-taught British Kindle wizard who writes the first 10% of scam books that promise to teach you magic for everything from male modeling to anal sex. Both real examples!

I say he writes the first 10%, because that’s the default sample size for an Amazon Kindle book. It’s an old grift: You fill the first 10% of an ebook with quality writing plagiarized from another source, and stuff the rest with random text, or nothing. In S Rob’s case, he fills the first 10% with genuine original madness, then once he thinks he’s got you hooked, he stuffs the other 90% with repeating paragraphs of copy/paste mystical nonsense. It has never worked on anybody but me. He has done it 700 times and I own four of his books. He’s made 40 cents, total, for 12 years of work. He considers it a rousing success, and will never stop.

But this time is different! The Martial Arts Book of the Occult is a physical book, published through an actual, real life, non-vanity press. Solar Vision Publishing is an occult press for magic loons and their supportive parent audience, but it still counts as a book deal! S Rob had to bring his A-game for this one, by which I mean he self-plagiarized the find/replace magic spam from several of his other books, but did not repeat the same gibberish in this book more than once. In these very strange, very specific circumstances, that’s high effort!

Let’s dig in, but first, a warning:

This book on how to voodoo curse your fists for maximum lethal spell-punching is never to be used for maximum lethal spell-punching. “YOU SHOULD, OBVIOUSLY, NEVER UTILIZE LETHAL FORCE AGAINST ANOTHER PERSON UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES,” I yell at my wife. “SPEAK THE WORDS IN BOLD OUT LOUD,” I scream at my dog.

Weren’t things better in the old days, when you and your mystical fraternity of karate wizards ruled the earth with an iron chop, or pinch? Look what woke has cost us: it’s like a man can’t even bless his fists with all-father Odin before uppercutting the mailman anymore. This book is going to fix all that. And don’t worry: you don’t need to master martial arts to use it, or even take one of the real ones. You only need a single point in any martial arts tree to unlock kicking, and then you can dump the rest into British foot magic. Let’s see who Sensei Doug thinks is “too fat to jumpkick” after you win a K-6 Taekwondo Exhibition with the help of Catubodua Battle Crow!

The problem isn’t whether or not you’ll win martial arts tournaments with S Rob magick, but that you should actually get two medals: the first for axe-kicking a fourth grader in half, and the second for summoning Papa Legba to turbocharge your kicks without even offering him his traditional hat full of rum. “It is difficult to be a good victorious fighter without fighting,” you should say, up there on the podium. That’s the kind of shit that gets you a high five from a Steven Seagal impersonator.

I know what you, the prime demographic for The Martial Arts Book of the Occult, are thinking: “Giant head in the sky who yells all my sexual thoughts at me, isn’t it cheating to use arcane hexes in a Junior Point Karate Championship? I mean, yeah, I get it - ‘PUT MY DICK ON THE ESCALATOR HANDRAIL SO EVERYONE TOUCHES IT BY PROXY’ - but are these spells ethical?”

“Ah, I see. If I simply win, and keep winning, then I will find that success, which is a form of winning, shall be mine. Thank you, giant head in the sky who yells all my sexual thoughts at me. I think I will FUCK THE GUMBALL MACHINE.”

Now that we’ve decided it would be silly not to channel the spirits of berkserker ghosts into our fists, let’s channel the spirits of berkserker ghosts into our fists!

I wish I had this book when I was a kid. Pausing a playground fight to rip long-dead hallucinating viking souls from their warrior’s heaven just to aid my wild windmilling punches wouldn’t have won me any fights, but it would have made me look exactly crazy enough not to mess with anymore.

Actually, that’s a common misconception. You can’t just trap a god in your fist and start wailing. You need to be careful which moves you enchant with internet grifter magic:

For example, only all blows with the hands, plus many others which the author of this martial arts grimoire can’t name, may be used. BEWARE: blows that affect how someone looks are extra dangerous. If you ask Santa Muerte to karate chop a man’s nose off, he may not take this well if you don’t kill him! So be extra sure to kill him. “YOU SHOULD, OBVIOUSLY, NEVER UTILIZE LETHAL FORCE AGAINST ANY PERSON UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES,” you should yell at your deformed, dying opponent. “SPEAK THE WORDS IN BOLD OUT LOUD,” are the last words he should hear.

Van Damme movies got into my head too early. No matter how many times it’s proven otherwise, I’m still convinced a good spin kick is the key to winning any fight and saving any marriage. Luckily, there’s a section just for me:

Webster’s Dictionary defines legs as: things you move around on, when you’re not using them to kill. I’m not going to sit here and front like caging the power of three giants in each thigh to fuel our superkicks is anything but rad as fuck. But then S Rob takes me right out of it when he says “some of us use our legs for a bewildering range of kicks.” This, coming from the man who needs a cane enchanted with the power of the spear that killed Jesus just to fight astral projections of catholics.

It’s tough to tell when I’m making things extra crazy for a joke, so here’s a tip: I’m not!

Still, I sat through the sexy child parts of many anime just for the promise of maybe one giant’s soul in a ninja’s foot or something. Three? PER leg? This spell rules. I give it 20/10 giants.

Don’t worry, grapplers. It’s not just striking magic. There’s a whole section just for choking enchantments and leglock ensorcellment.

“After all, what would life be without the ability to kill whenever you wanted?” S Rob muses, thinking he’s throwing a little relatable aside to the audience instead of exactly what some barrister needs to hear to close the Chip Shop Murders.

“Don’t worry, you can not NOT unhave the potential of negative redeadliness,” S Rob writes. “Looks good, let’s publish it,” another human being on this planet actually said.

If you’re having trouble with your choke form, might I suggest becoming possessed by the loa? Perhaps a skeleton lord. You want at least one skeleton lord and the blessings of some gravestones before attempting a Peruvian Necktie. Jiu Jitsu instructors hate this one weird trick! (It’s skeletons!)

We have killed our first opponent with black magic headlocks. That’s enough to advance to a yellow belt. We’re ready for the real stuff. Enough with Papa Legba, with ancient battle crones, with all the berserkers in Valhalla. We’re ready to summon a more powerful entity: S Rob.

You can summon S Rob as a Jojo Stand!

I know you’re tempted to use S Rob for his own mighty powers. Like maybe there’s an all you can eat shrimp buffet and the owners of the restaurant killed your father. But no, the S Rob Stand is only here as an assistant to valet Odin across worlds.

Yes, S Rob did write a book in which he required you to say “S Rob, he without limits or boundaries” out loud. If you actually did it, please check your crotch. You will find your genitals have migrated to a worthier host. Please inspect your neighbors for duplicate genitalia, S Rob will teach you how to magick them back in his next book PUSSY OR COCK THIEF MAGICK.

Now, I know what you, the prime demographic for The Martial Arts Book of the Occult, are thinking: “WOLVES HAVE MY BLOOD.” And you’re right, but also, “isn’t this a little arrogant, S Rob?”

There’s actually a good reason why we summon S Rob instead of ancient gods and all-powerful beings: ancient gods and all-powerful beings might have weaknesses.

An S Rob Stand is only weak against shrimp buffets, and even then, we’ve already shown how that can truly be a strength. It’s astonishing that when tasked with making a tulpa, an imaginary being who can take any shape, S Rob came up with: himself. But bigger.

The problem is he’s not big enough. Cenobite glasses? Magnificent. Squiggy forehead-pasted hair curl? Visibly oily? No notes. He’s gorgeous, can we blow him up to 300% and summon him to our bedroom for a three-way with Odin?

Enough foreplay. Everyone bought this book for one reason, it starts with “Dim” and ends with “Mak” and it ain’t a cat choking on a fishbone.

I promised you that by the end of this we would summon Satan himself to grant his dark boon to our death pinches, and I delivered. I actually didn’t promise that, because in my experience people tend to remove you from the work Slack if you promise that. But it was heavily implied this is where we’d end up.

Holy shit, you need to daisy chain a demon combo for like twenty minutes before you can unleash a single pinch with all the dark powers of hell. I already blew my Akuma reference for the month, so this is sort of like fighting Zangief in Street Fighter - if he’s in the corner hopping in circles for a half hour it’s kind of your fault if you walk into the spinning pile driver.

BUT BEWARE!

If you don’t finish this magic, all the devils of hell will fuck the holes left in your soul by lies and betrayal. If you’re served the wrong apps at Chili’s for the last time, you absolutely must finish this 20 minute roll call before destroying the waiter, or the devil will wear you as his condom. If anything happens to interrupt your full-afternoon lunatic’s dirge - if the waiter slaps you in the mouth, if the manager escorts you out to your mom’s Plymouth Cruiser, if you get a breakup text from your AI girlfriend while crying in a Plymouth Cruiser - you will not deliver an infernal death poke. For it is you who will be infernally poked until you are dea- ahh, you get it.

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