Manliness and Remington

I'm pretty sure that all men, at least manly men, have in their heads an ever growing list of items and materials that fall into one of three categories:

1. You can punch this, no problems!
2. If you're angry, or you want to show off, you can punch this without breaking bones.
3. Receiving really bad news, when this is the only thing around to punch, is a recipe for knuckleular-disaster.

I excise my pain

and leave it on the walkway.

my memory nears.

P.S. That's pronounced nuck-ole-ya-ler. (Kunckleular.)

Wherein I defend combat sports, trisectionally.

The following is a response to a random Facebook comment from someone I don't know, which I shall present to you anonymized.

STRANGER: "Boxing allows buff, light-on-their-feet/quick with their hands dudes who might be lacking a bit "upstairs" to make a decent living and have a reason for their lack of mental aptitude. Probably just offended a bunch of people just now lol"

lol indeed....

Section the first, entitled, ::AHEM::

As someone who enjoys fighting, whether it be boxing or mixed martial arts (MMA), but mostly MMA, I may not have enough going on upstairs to supply a fitting retort to your condemnation of the pugilistic sports, but just the same, I feel compelled to try.

Section the second, entitled, Analogy

I liken combat sports to debate. Let's look at what debate is. At its root, specific ideological considerations to the side, it engages our desire for competition. Is that good or bad? I'm not sure, but I'm confident people are competitive, and that debate is an outlet.

What does it take to be good at debate? A combination of skills is requisite. The sources of these skills, minimally, are two-fold. They are either innate, or they are developed. (Certainly a combination of those two exists.) So, debate provides an outlet for one's natural abilities, and (I'd say more importantly) an arena to develop those and other abilities.

Outside of the competitive arena, what do these skills provide? Well, they are probably useful in one's attempt to provide for their (and their family's) basic needs - at jobs and the like.

Now remove debate in the above 3 paragraphs, and replace it with fighting. Still works. So why do people stand with their noses in the air, under the brilliant lights of their intellectual abilities, while denigrating physical intelligence and the pursuit thereof? I don't know - it is, I claim, irrational.

In the specific case of combat sports, one could argue that the pursuit is by definition physically harmful, and that that is a reason to look down upon them. In the light of the above, I'd say, bullocks. Some people don't mind getting hit; some people like it. It may seem barbaric to someone whose opinion differs, but it's really just a question of personal preference. Why do you hate purple, and I like it? Why does critic A trash Inglorious Basterds, while critic B sings its praises? Why does grandma love Sudoku, but grandpa will only do crosswords? Who knows... who cares... these aren't reasons to judge someone - it's just what they like.

Section the third and final, entitled, :-P

It's easy to look down your nose at someone, and say they do what they do because they're not smart. But what merit is there in the claim? As far as mixed martial artists, which I know the most about, there are plenty of fighters with college degrees, and graduate degrees, and successful businesses, and who just aren't stupid, that argue against the claim.

As easy as the above-quoted person can dust of the comment he or she did, a fighter can say that people who don't like boxing are tubby slobs with two left feet and not an ounce of athleticism, who use their position in life, their money, and their intellectual achievements as a justification for their laziness and feelings of superiority.

But that claim has no merit either. Maybe fighters don't say these things because they have enough going on upstairs to realize it's elitist, absurd, and illogical.

Pompadour

I got my haircut today, and the haircuttress told me I should wear my hair in a sort of pompadour style.

Then I thought I should photoshop a really bizzarre-looking person wearing a pompadour into a surreal-looking background and name him Pompadour Dali.

But that'd take a lot of work, so instead.... POMPADOUR DALI.

And then... there was talk among the shampootresses about how they "do it from behind at Black Hearts." I would have fled, but the shampoo head-massage was good, so I figured they could do what they want... turns out, at other salons they shampoo hair from the side, and I was (probably) not violated.

My haircut:

P.S. Chunking Shears

Word Games

This morning I was listening to NPR, and they were doing a piece on last year's financial market kablooey. (It's the 1 year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse?) The interviewer asked a woman in the biz for her impression of the time. She said it was literally mind boggling.

Literally mind boggling?

I imagine that the collapse of Lehman brothers, and the subsequent meltdowns, literally turned her brain into a bunch of small cubes with letters printed on them, which someone put in a small box and shook up. When the cubes settled, for a limited amount of time, they used the up-facing letters to spell out words.

I hope nothing is ever literally mind boggling to me...

Cockroach stains sidewalks;

into the bedroom to dust

the nightstand again.

Lockpicks, How I Miss Thee. Or is it how I miss thees. How do you pluralize thee? Nevermind...

The context of part of this blog-entry is in these Myspace blogs of mine from 2006 and 2007. You don't have to read them, but I recommend it, because I'm a middle child. And I'm awesome.

Thievery....

I just got in touch, via Facebook, with an old crime-pal of mine. When we were younger we were big into breaking the law in all kinds of really macho, manly ways. Like lighting a small potpourri fire in a subdivision's model home.

But my favorite memory is when we went to the hardware store one town over. We decided to steal some blank keys. Why? Who the [ExpletivE] knows? What in the world did I need (free) blank keys for? Weirdo...

Anyway, my friend was a pro at the acting casual, as much as a 5th grade might be, and I was really terrible at it. I walked over to the display, looked all around about 6 million times, and eventually took the key and split. Or I would have split if the manager didn't stop us.

He accused us of stealing blank keys. That's silly, why would kids steal blank keys? Actually he just accused me, even though both of us took some. I don't remember what I said, but I remember him telling me he saw me pick up the key, and he saw me looking around a lot, and he didn't see me put the key down. I was freaked the [ExpletivE] out, and must have bumbled something ridiculous... I was sure I was going to jail.

Luckily he had me show him my pockets. They were empty. I don't think he was convinced, but he let us go. He didn't know that any good 5th grade thief drops his booty into his underwear. It's a good thing I don't steal anymore; dropping stuff into my tighty-whites was fine, but it'd fall right through my boxers.

While I don't steal these days, I did take up lock picking as a hobby a few years back, to quite triumphant effect, as detailed in the abovelinked blogs.

Anyway, karma didn't forget about my less innocent days in the general area of thievery (where you might either be a thief, or an a-theif-ic lock picker), and she (karma) chameleoned the [expletive] out of me once again.

My car got robbed a few weeks ago. In the middle of the day, in front of my apartment. The bright side is they didn't take much, and they left the car closed up and locked for me! They just rustled through my stuff. But they did take a couple things: my GPS, and, sadly, yes they stole my lock picks. Which might be ironic.

As a corollary, I always thought people told other people they were using 'ironic' wrong because the things they were describing were nothing like iron.

As a corollary to my corollary, and every good corollary needs a corollary, I sometimes wonder, when I plain-facedly make myself the butt of a joke, if people realize I’m kidding for comedy’s sake, or if they really think that, for example, I actually grossly misunderstood the word ironic. No matter. Corollary.

I don't work for a condo association...

But still they keep including me in their email discussions. It's just some random condo association that has a Joe Conway working for them... What the Pasta?

Don't get me wrong, for a while I enjoyed being privvy to the in-fighting of property managers and heads of security etc. But after asking them to dis-include my email several times, I had to get RPG on them. I reply-all'd this today:

"Hello Adventurers,

I am not the Joe Conway you seek, but I am wise and vengeful. For each condo-related message I continue to receive I will banish one member of the sender's family to a magical land of frost and dinosaurs. I will leave clues that they might find their way to a portal which will return them to the very moment they were banished and wipe their memories of the incident. Though this will go unnoticed by you and them, the emotional scars will return in untold ways later in life.

As fellow adventurers I suspect you will not object to this most fair challenge.

See you in the land of gravy-pasta.

Joe Conway"

We'll see if they're afraid of my magic (it is strong).

It's happening, but it may never happen again.

This blog is named for the likelihood that this blog will get off the ground. I made it because I saw that I could.

Freedom and time fill

my time and nothing is done.

Windows are open.