the contender

I pulled a muscle in my neck working on my archives the other night. Eli had two episodes of The Contender on Tivo and he wanted me to watch with him. I decided I could sit on the couch and “watch” while setting up my archive. I’ve been keeping this journal for months and it has always bugged me that the archives were such a mess. But it wasn’t until recently when I had to go in looking for something and it took me longer than three minutes to find it that it occurred to me that I should fix it.

(Here is the finished product)

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about The Contender. First off, boxing is a great sport, and I like a good boxing match as much as the next girl. There’s nothing better than two ripped guys with hard bodies (and faces that look like they were chewed up by dogs and left to heal on their heads) beating the hell out of each other for sport. It’s a pretty great show and I enjoyed it last season. The thing that bugs me is that they go out of their way to show the fighter’s family (and sometimes children) cheering for them on the sidelines during the fight, encouraging them to beat the brain damage into the other guy. I like a little separation of emotion when it comes to sports where the main goal is to use your body as a weapon, delivering and accepting brutal punishment on your organs as the object of the game. I’d rather think of the guys as rock em sock em robots who aren’t real people with real lives and real ambitions and real emotions, but simply fighting machines, born into this world to take a beatdown.

I’m sure I’m thinking about it too much. When I tried to talk to Eli about it, to see if he ever gets emotional about watching two bleeding guys punching each other in a ring while the people who love them scream encouragement from the sidelines, he looked at me like I’d suffered some sort of head trauma myself. “It’s a sport, Jaeme.”

Well, yeah, I know.

This led to a discussion about how boxing is like kittens playing compared to Ultimate Fighting. In UFC fighting they mix it up with street fighting, martial arts, and basically the fighters do anything possible to try to kill their opponent. They don’t actually kill them, and there are rules like no eye-gouging, but it’s still very brutal and bloody. I can’t even watch the Strongest Man competition without feeling a cold chill run up my spine because I know what those guys are doing to their bodies. Watching some burly muscle head try to pull a fucking train with only his body and a rope, waiting for his legs to buckle and break in half or his biceps to separate from the bone…ugh, it’s not for me.

So yeah, I kind of half watched The Contender while fixing my archive, and now my neck is jacked from sitting on the couch bent over my laptop for two hours. I just feel an urgency to get things in order lately because if I start back to work soon, I will have much less time for things like playing around in my blog. I plan to continue updating because it is so easy, but that will probably be the extent of my extra-curricular internet activities.

And I’m saying if I start back to work because nothing is set in stone yet. There are still the background checks and negotiations to get through.

Oh yeah, I’ve also been updating my book log, and I know it’s one of those things most people don’t get into, but I’ve been picking out some real shit at the library so I want to remind you that I am ALWAYS open to a book suggestion. In fact, to be a good sport, I’ll start. I recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Your turn.

===============================

 

Cha-Ching: Show me the MONEY!

If you suck at managing your money like I do, this could help you out. Do you know what it means to sell "at-the-money" or "out-of-the-money" calls on your stocks? Do you even understand this language? You’re not alone. If you want to make more from your money, PowerOptions can provide the essential data you need to invest with stock options, including a suite of educational materials and premium toll-free customer support.

 

Comments

[sherry]

I'm currently reading - and enjoying - Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It actually making me laugh out loud on a regular basis.

[hubs]

"The Good Times Are Killing Me" by Lynda Barry. You'll be able to read it in an evening and still fall in love with it.

[simka]

I read The Myth of You and Me recently (but forgot who wrote it), and also... a couple from Jodi Picoult. Not great, but good beach-reads. I'm reading Memiors of a Geisha (about 2 years after everyone else) and so far it's good...