I was recently thinking about how much I suck at drawing, image editing, web design, and other forms of useful art, when I realized there’s a simple way to turn that all around: training in the mountains. Mountain training is a surefire way to get better at anything: martial arts, kendo, ninjutsu, homosexuality, mountain climbing, pokemon, football, rugby, boxing, baseball, and tennis.
You know why the K-ON band sucked so hard? Instead of training in the mountains, they wasted their time (and ours) by “training” at the beach. K-ON’s only funny non-Krauser joke: the notion that beach training might help anyone accomplish anything. Kojima from One Outs used to train at the beach, but that didn’t help him get better at baseball.
Then he went to the mountains to chop wood, the most effective training for anything. One thousand logs were all it took to cultivate the mind, the body, and the soul (and we must always cultivate the soul).
Beach training might have been effective back in 1805 when Judge Tompkins in Pierson v. Post described the beach as follows:
The declaration stated that Post, being in possession of certain dogs and hounds under his command, did, “upon a certain wild and uninhabited, unpossessed waste land, called the beach, find and start one of those noxious beasts called a fox,” and whilst there hunting, chasing and pursuing the same with his dogs and hounds, and when in view thereof, Pierson, well knowing the fox was so hunted and pursued, did, in the sight of Post, to prevent his catching the same, kill and carry it off.
Sadly, the modern beachscape is a commercial candy land wherein the only noxious beasts are fat chicks in bikinis (which no amount of training can overcome). Fat chicks aside, if there’s something at the beach, there’s a more brutal, fiendish version in the mountains:
| Noxious Mountain Beast | Lame Beach Version |
| Mountain Lion | Sea Lion |
| Bear | Sea Bear |
| Yamaneko | Umineko |
| Lavos Spawn | Time Devourer |
Let’s not forget Tengu, Yetis, Abominable Snowmen, and other mountain creatures too ferocious for the beach.
But Baka-Raptor, what about sharks?
There are fewer than 100 shark attacks each year, and less than a third result in fatalities. You’re more likely to die by suffocation from a cave-in. Where will you find caves? The mountains. Even if you don’t suffocate in a cave, you’re stuck with the death threats of oxygen deficiency, iodine deficiency, and, until someone can prove otherwise, deficiencies of all other elements in rows VIA-VIIA of the periodic table. If you can survive the mountains, you can survive anything.