FILLER ISSUE

I drug myself to the gym yesterday afternoon (!!!) and got in a fairly decent workout considering I had taken a full three weeks off while KT was in town. It felt good to finally be burning off the fat and softness that had accumulated while I spent time with my daughter. Other than trying to figure out when I am going to take Flat Ruthie out, I have not really given much thought to my personal life. There really is not much to it. The people that complicated my life are in my past and the challenges that I face now are all part of my “mission to boldly go where no closed-head injury patient has gone before!” 

 Many of the pictures that I took of KT were mostly with my phone. Getting the camera out and ready was a bit too complicated to catch the moments that I really miss, like the shot of her looking out of the window as we went to the mall. I miss just LOOKING at my daughter and having her around was the most relaxed I have been since the last time that we were together!! Speaking of Flat Ruthie, if anyone desires to host her and take her around “the provincial town that you jog ‘round”, let me know either in the comment section or my personal email, markonit@aol.com. You can send me your address and she will be on her way for an adventure in your town before you know it! Hopefully I will motivate to go to school and get my classes for next fall and start to bear down and get ready for school.


(Look, the Knockout King does NOT need an excuse to be a part of any entry of mine, after all, he is the Knockout King!!) 


 Listening to the commentary provided by the annoying Emmanuel Steward, I get what he is talking about, as he criticizes the lack of excitement as this fight unfolded. As the video starts, one of the featured boxers he speaks of, Andy Lee, got his hat handed to him in a fight he was training for, so there goes how effective his sparring was!! And I never looked at fighters who wanted to be the “gym champ” with much respect. Show me something when the bright lights are on and the little gloves are brought out. So at :42 seconds of the video you get to see Randall Bailey doing what he does best, which is punch. What makes him so unique is the nature of his ability to punch. Unlike a Hearns, or a Tyson, or even a Duran, whose blend of power and savagery made their punching power almost superfluous, Bailey is a howitzer with each and every punch he throws, but he is not as complete a boxer as those that I mentioned. He is not going to “set up” his punches or put them together in a brilliant combination. He does not need to get you to look for “this” as he loads up on “that”. You know what is coming and all you have to do is not let it happen to you.


  I can imagine that (Who?!?) Mike Jones was busy taking advantage of his skill, moving and staying clear of the range of Randall Bailey’s power, pitty-pat punching and holding and all that mess. Still, the kind of power that Bailey carries does not depend on stamina, or any of the other things that make most a feared puncher. Like Julian Jackson, his power depends only on the opportunity for it to be deployed and once that happens…


At the 2:00 minute mark and I am going to quote Jim Lampley here, who says on the replay of the knockout punch, “When you take a shot like that from an authoritative puncher like Randall Bailey, good luck on the getting up!” And it is the replay of the punch at the 3:35 mark where the crowd gets to OOH! as they get to really see what had happened to Mike Jones (Who?!?) grill is the kind of sound that I used to have crowds making when I was boxing!! 


I guess I could explain why I cut the ties to people the way that I do and how comfortable I am with living with them being severed the way that they are. For example, I received a message from my sister in Chicago asking if she can come out here for a visit. So once I stopped repeating “you have got to be sh*tting me” to myself, I calmed down and thought about all the options at my disposal through which I can decline her request. She is struggling through the first year of her marriage but hey, THAT IS NOT MY PROBLEM. Sure, she whines enough on Face Book about her issues and I glance through her status updates, just to know how bad it is for her and to ready myself for when things begin to fall apart for her. And while I am not sure if they are crumbling, what I do know is that it is not a good sign that she wants to come to Omaha. When I went to walk her down the aisle, I PROMISED MYSELF that was the last time I would extend myself for her. There were other additional storylines that were at play that made me swear to myself that “this would be it”. I have always known how selfish that my sisters can be, and though we are the closest between her and our other two sisters, she still gets no pass from me. Besides, one of the things that crystallized while my daughter was here is that my margins are still razor-thin. I cannot guess wrong, and when past performance has indicated what may lay before me in such a consideration, it is a risk that I dare not take. 


 This, I may add, is definitely not the same as being risk-adverse. My decision has nothing to do with anything that has taken place in our past as much as it has to do with the future that I am out to make for myself. Speaking of which… I have not really been contemplating the various ups and downs of my personal life as everything is generally trending upwards for me. If anything, my biggest concerns are political. Using the social safety net as I am, and with cutting that net and letting everyone fall through seemingly the goal of the right, my worries tend to be about that more than about my own day-to-day. See, I am going to keep on going on, and on, and on, until I cannot go anymore. But I guess I can examine the more intimate details of my dealings with the world… just not going to happen in this entry! What I do figure is if KT had to watch Randall Bailey go all RANDALL BAILEY on someone, that others should have the same opportunity!! Snootchie Bootches!!