Chapter 92

I laid in bed for a few minutes before 6:00, reflecting on the week so far and the day ahead. Then I boiled water, made green tea, and looked at stupid shit on the internet for a while before getting my yoga on. Today’s session focused on hip mobility, as a BJJ practitioner and someone who spends a lot of time sitting on an office chair, this is pretty important.

The girlfriend called in sick, so we walked the dog together and then parted ways at the park. I rode to school, and when I was at the office I put on my headphones and listened to Burial, a producer mentioned in yesterday’s documentary. I first put on some kind of mix, and then his album Untrue, it was pretty good chill electronic music, miles away from the Skrillex-style “womp womp womp womp” aggressive bass-heavy stuff I associated with dubstep before. I could definitely hear the dub influences in there, which isn’t surprising, given that it’s called, well, dubstep.

I had a period with the strong group of eleventh-graders, and a double with the weak group. I taught the same content, but at half the speed. Then I rode home, listening to a Boyscast episode. Ryan Long moved to NYC to further his career as a comedian, but is originally from Toronto or thereabouts. He talked about people who say “No you’re not!” with effeminate voices when he describes himself as an immigrant, though he is one, by the very definition of the word. He pointed out how racist that is, how those self-righteous woke types are tacitly implying that he is above the status of immigrant. I remember hearing Gavin McInnes make similar comments, as his situation is pretty much the exact same thing. I for one don’t have to think about such matters, I could stay in China until I’m 95 years old and will never get citizenship.

There was a lady with a cart in front of our building, selling cold noodles. I haven’t had cold noodles in forever, so I bought some. You choose between thick chewy spaghetti-lookalikes or some flat half-inch-wide strips of dough (I prefer the former) and she mixes them with spongy tofu, strips of cucumber, sometimes apples in they make it North Korean-style, vinegar, cilantro, crushed peanuts, and a spicy paste. An elderly man walked up to me, stared curiously, then pointed at the noodles as they were being packed in a plastic container. “Delicious”, he said. I nodded in approval. “The taste is very good”, he added. Not sure what else to say. I was just surprised he spoke Mandarin and not some weird broken radio farmer dialect.

I wolfed down my noods and started packing for our weekend trip. The girlfriend came back from putting gas in the car, we want to hit the road as soon as I’m back from work. I made BLT sandwiches, one normal person version, one with soggy bacon and barely toasted bread, and we wrapped them in plastic for the road.

My dad sent me an e-mail, he read my blog, saw that I wrote about our dog dragging his ass around sometimes, and suggested we look into draining his anal glands. I watched a quick YouTube video by a vet explaining the why and how, and we got to work, I took a wadded piece of toilet paper and squeezed around his butthole until some black liquid came out. The smell was enough to gag a maggot, it was like old sardine oil. We then washed the area with shampoo.

I had one hour to kill at work, so I watched the press conference for the upcoming boxing match between Jake Paul and Ben Askren. Jake Paul is an internet personality who seems to have 12-year-olds as his target audience, with an enormously successful YouTube channel of pranks, juvenile humor and snippets of the lavish living he makes with all that internet money, and in the past year or two he started boxing, his first fight against some other YouTube guy. Or maybe that was his equally obnoxious brother Logan, not sure. Anyway I watched one of his fights against a basketball player of all people, he’s OK I guess, he’s athletic enough and definitely trains seriously, not just for the publicity stunt, but for sure he gets way more attention than he deserves, as a very green pro boxer.

Unpopular opinion maybe, but I'm not mad at that. It's prizefighting. People pay money to see two people fight, and yeah that leads to some dumbass scenarios like that one or James Toney vs Couture, or CM Punk, or some could also put Brock Lesnar or Paige Vanzant or even Conor McGregor as fighters who got an undeserved push for whatever reason. Meanwhile, you have workhorse fighters who get left behind.

But my point is that shit is inevitable. Martial arts masters like Kamaru Usman or GSP will have a bunch of IQ-70 inbreds go "gNuH dErP DeRp *drool* aLL hE dOeS iS hOLd hIm aGaiNsT tEh FeNcE" but they will tune in to see some internet vlogger. Still, let's not pretend that as "real" combat sports fans we're above that shit, the UFC will promote a freak $how here and there, and also plenty of "fight purists" will still say stuff like "Stipe is cool but I wish he'd have a more abrasive personality and promote fights more". That said I have very little interest in what those Paul clowns do. I'm just saying that even though they are lower tier talent in the grand scheme of things, it's not just about how much of a high-level fighter you are. It's fucken prizefighting, and yeah, by definition it's a business.

I’m very puzzled by Ben Askren being his opponent, and the first time I heard it I thought it was a joke. Askren was one of the last MMA one-trick-ponies, a mad good wrestler who would grind his opponent with creative and relentless “funky”grappling, but his striking wasn’t just bad, it looked like a joke. So him, boxing?! I won’t lie, I’ll watch it.

So yeah, the presser... well it was stupid, with Jake Paul throwing the most infantile of insults and Askren just laughing it off or coming back with his renowned wit. A shitshow, but it did its job, and made me even more interested in the contest scheduled to take place two weeks from now.

I had a double with Attitude Class, then bolted out of there. The girlfriend sat behind the wheel, if I wasn’t such a useless derp, I’d have my license by now. The only silver lining I could think of is that at least I’d be able to drink along the way. The bottle of coconut milk was about one third full, I added a similar amount of pineapple juice and a big glug of rum in there, and took big gulps of that piña colada as we made our way west.

We had about 250 km to cover, and took a bit less than four hours. The first quarter was amidst Friday traffic on the highway, then it was nice and clear for a bit, then it started raining intermittently, and the last part was on a narrow unlit winding country road. The girlfriend now drives excellently, I remember barely two months ago how inexperienced and frankly inept she was.

Her parents also drove there, from where they live. Their SUV was parked at an intersection, we stopped and greeted one another, before they led us on an even narrower but still well paved mountain path. It was close to 9 o’ clock when we made it to the farmhouse coverted to a hotel where we’ll stay for the next two days, so I couldn’t really see much of the surroundings, plus it was drizzling at that point. Baba-in-law brought me beers from the fridge and a bag of peanuts, then after some small talk we retreated to our respective rooms, and I wrote this. I hope tomorrow the weather will be OK and we’ll be able to go do the hiking we came here for.