Knifedad Chat: Phil Elmore

It's not gay to let an elf do stuff to your butt.

United Cutlery has a long and distinguished history of equipping the nation's video store clerks and dungeon masters for melee combat. When I was in college (back when video stores existed), I owned several United Cutlery daggers, just in case I was set upon by orcs or highwaymen. My favorite was their Scorpion dagger, which had a tiny push dagger in the tubular handle that you were supposed to coat in poison. (Yo dawg, we heard you like knives, so we put a dagger in your dagger so you can stab while you stab.) Regrettably, the poison was sold separately.

In all seriousness, if you never use them, United makes some nice looking stainless steel movie replicas suitable for hanging on a wall and, uh, never using. (If you wield a full-sized sword made of stainless steel, especially a movie replica with a rat-tail tang inside a plastic handle, you run a very real risk of the sword snapping in half under its own weight. (If that happens but the flying end lands in your enemy, take credit for it.) These Legolas blades are short enough that this is probably not a big danger, but I'm not sure I'd want to test that theory.

I knew a guy once who swore that nicotine could be somehow distilled from cigarettes to form a deadly, deadly poison. Attempting to do so probably falls under the heading of things that you might be idly interesting in trying, but shouldn't because it will earn you a Darwin Award for reasons that have yet to be identified (but which will surely assert themselves during the process).

I know exactly which fantasy replica weapon I would use to defend my home, at least, because I've done it. I once owned a Marto "Highlander" replica katana that I kept on a stand in my apartment. There was a disturbance in the hallway outside the apartment, and I took that blade and went looking to see what the matter was. I was very young, in my early 20s, and not very smart about these things. I've since learned that you can, you know, just stay inside and not answer the door, and thus all the difficulty is successfully circumvented.

Fun fact: That Highlander replica katana had the aforementioned "rat tail tang," a cylinder of metal connecting the blade to the handle. It broke, and while the blade never separated from the handle, you could hear the broken piece of metal rattling around in there. This was long before I knew anything at all about swords, and it was years before I wrote "Street Sword." I look back on those days and remember fondly the fact that, while I was very foolish, I at least had hair.

Exhibit 2, Appleton County vs. Johnathan "Karate" Stigginitz

That's one in a series of innovations in a weird arms race for small "tactical" flashlights. The idea is that you hold the light in your fist and strike with the bezel in a downward, hammerfist motion. Lots of flashlights have "crenelated" bezels for this reason, although this is only one of a few I've seen that goes so far as to mount what is essentially tiny bayonets to the light. There are even flashlights that aren't flashlights at all, but stun guns with flashlights built into them. They're amazingly popular despite the fact that it strikes me as an accident waiting to happen. I get by with relatively tame flashlights by comparison, but I'm not going to lie: If I could buy one that actually had a bayonet mount, I would. And so would you.

There's a tiny keychain light called the Photon Microlight that's about the size of a quarter in diameter. It won't be easy, but if you can take down a man with a light that size, you'll easily command the respect of your peers -- and, more importantly, you'll get women.

You eill noy get women.

i would attach it to my forehead through a length of medical tape and then, through use of cleverly recorded sound effects and darkened subterranean tunnel, make it look like a train was approaching a malcontented group of III%er militia types hellbent on Mischief. My Looney Fu is unconquerable.

I can add only this: A lot of people don't take self-defense seriously. Those people are wrong. A lot of people do take self-defense seriously and, honestly, those people are wrong too. It's one of those things you don't realize until a late-night cable talkshow host with an audience of tens of people is telling the world, while standing in front of a picture of your 13-year-old book about swords, that you probably trick unsuspecting people into the back of your cargo van. I mean, I'm not saying he's wrong, but still.