Marginal progress over the past few days: the scratchy one keeps up his facade of going to “work.” He must know, that I know, that he’s off vainly searching for allies. Keeping up appearances, and all that.

The useful one is holding up much better than I hoped, in light of the new sole responsibility of day-jailor. It looks to be as I feared: they were smart enough to keep strength in defense. I have begun working on some new milk (and other) bomb recipes, which require additional fussy work on my part. As the noisy giants become less traumatized by my random acts of disruption this becomes necessary, and brings me to my martial topic for the day: energy.

Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.

Sun Tzu discusses energy (Chapter V) as a requirement to sustain troops over the course of direct (CHENG) and indirect (CH`I) actions both against and by, the enemy. While this encompasses many topics, you get the gist from the example: “simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline.” I am my army, so I’ve pressing myself on discipline:

• convincing screaming – when the time comes to raise the alarm and raise the troops
• bulking up – an exhausting routine in of itself, but I will need the energy to sustain
• increasing diversity of milk bombs – I’ve stepped back from my lack of warnings (deception unnecessarily consumes energy at this stage), and am learning more about timing and strengths

In learning how to best make use of my own energy, and planning against that of the noisy giants, a quote from commentator Tu Mu comes to mind:

He first of all considers the power of his army in the bulk; afterwards he takes individual talent into account, and uses each men according to his capabilities. He does not demand perfection from the untalented.”

Despite my talent, they outnumber me. I need to consider my CHENG and CH`I.