Arms Are For Hugging


I competed in the American National Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournament last weekend. A BJJ tournament is a lot of things. It’s a battle of strength, technique, athleticism, and will. It’s a rare opportunity to go mano a mano against another human being. Most importantly, you get to roll around on mats with sweaty men in front of a crowd of people - teh h@wt!

I haven’t competed in a couple years, and my last experience was horrible. I cut ten pounds, competed a belt level up, psyched myself out mentally, and performed poorly. These days, I’m in decent shape, but have only been training four times a week, and have not been paying attention to what I eat (and drink and drink and drink). I decided to enter the competition heavy, and what I gave up on size I would hopefully make up on endurance and guile from not having to cut weight.

The night before the competition, I checked the brackets online and looked up my opponents. One guy had competed in an MMA event and another guy, who I would face in my first match, owns a martial arts school in Ohio, and has his own instructional DVDs on the market. I was intimidated, and quickly assembled my little ponies in a circle for some advice.


“I don’t know about this.” I asked the quorum of ponies, “This guy has been in martial arts his entire life. He trains every day. I’m not sure I have a chance!”

Pinkie Pie combed her pink hair back and nuzzled against my head, “You’ll do great, Mezz0!”

Scootaloo jumped in, “Yes, Mezz0, you’ll have ever so much fun, and I’ll bet the winner gets a ‘My little pony party play set!’”

“And a new brush for my hair!” Pinkie Pie squealed. The rest of the ponies agreed that the potential upside of Hasbro cosmetics outweighed the downside of humiliation.

“I don’t know, girls, I’ll try to make you proud.” I kissed them all on their plush noses and stuffed them back into the sock drawer.

The next morning, when they announced my belt and age group, I tried to stay loose, and to generate some extra testosterone by playing Flaming Lips "Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots - Part 2" on eleven. By the time Yoshida enters the ring to battle the robots with the single most horrific battle cry (1:30) ever created for musical purposes, I was ready to tear my opponent, the ref, the scorekeepers, the T-shirt vendors, the parking attendant, and random citizens in the greater Long Beach area to pieces.

When my name was called, I stepped on the scale at 191, (three pounds under the limit) and stood in a group of competitors in my age and weight division. They looked big, and W1ll Figgins looked ashen-faced. Was it fear, illness, or rage?

I didn't want to be friendly towards the man, because it would ruin my visualization of ripping off his skull and spinal cord and showing it to the crowd. He tried to shake my hand in the wings, but I bared my teeth and made guttural noises until he backed off.

Match 1: When the match began, and I immediately grabbed his left collar with my right hand, pushed him forward, scooped up his right leg, and drove the motherfucker to the ground for a two point take down.


Once we hit the ground, I passed his guard for three points, and dug my knee into his stomach for another three points (see below):


I went ahead 12-0 when I mounted him for four points, and then stalled out the time to win. He didn't resist much, or very intelligently, and appeared outclassed by the rest of the competitors in our age/weight division, but you never know if he was sick, recovering from an injury, or was just competing for his prurient sexual gratification. If that's the case, he sort of won, I guess, or maybe we both won.

He hit me in the face a few times during the match and apologized, which makes me think he hasn't competed before. In the academy, you apologize for accidental illegal contact like punches, kicks, elbows, etc. In competition, you look for opportunities in which you can get away with "accidental" illegal contact. In fact, there is a huge list of things I would never do in class with a teammate, but wouldn't hesitate to do in a competition.

For example, when he was attempting to escape, I drove my knee into his face, which is not nice, but not illegal, either. You do this in class, you're an asshole. You do this in a competition, and you get to experience the joy that is intentionally hurting another human being for sport.

Match 2: I went through a lot of energy in the first match, mainly due to nerves, and my desire to win the first match at all costs. My second match was against a bigass Persian dude with insanely long legs. He had to have at least four inches on me, as well as a goatee. A loss against this guy could mean kidnapping and indefinite detainment.

"One more match," I told myself beforehand, "you win this one, you get a bronze medal at the very least...And maybe a Littlest Pet Show Frosty Fortress."

The match started and his stand up energy was unyielding. I couldn't move him, and tried to avoid clinching with him. We swatted at each others hands, and finally locked up at which time he pulled guard and immediately slapped a triangle choke on my head. I remember thinking, "How did that happen?" There are some guys at my academy really good at triangles, and I never get caught in them.”


I was having trouble breathing, and stood up as I considered an exotic triangle escape, but his leg weight was so intense, I didn't think I would be able to pull it off. He adjusted the triangle making it even tighter, and I started to wheeze, and my vision turned fuzzy. (When choked unconscious due to carotid artery constriction, your vision gets fuzzy, like static, then darken on the outsides like entering a tunnel.) With my vision fuzzy, I considered tapping out when, like out of a dream, I heard my coach yell "Knee to tailbone! Knee to tailbone!"

I knew immediately what he was talking about, and thought, "No shit – I didn't know that was a legit escape - I thought it was just a guard pass technique." I put my knee to his tailbone, yelled "SPARTAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" and his legs sprung open like a woman of loose morals in a house of ill repute.

I was relaying this story to TNT, who asked, "What a second – is putting your knee on his tailbone some sort of pressure point? If this guy had you nearly choked unconscious, how did that prevent him from finishing you off?"

"Well, you sort of slide your knee up his tailbone a few inches and then drive forward, pressuring his man-sack."

"So you kneed the guy in the balls?"

Long pause.

"Yeah, kind of."

His legs were freakishly long, and while I was trying to isolate one leg, his other leg was strategizing with his coaches, grabbing something to drink, and returning to the mat to wrap it around my back in an obscenely flexible angle. I passed into his half guard and then moved inch by inch until my shoulder was pressed up against his face. He returned the favor by making fists with his hands and driving them into my nose and cheek to relieve the pressure. I passed into side control for 3 points, and then immediately to mount for 4 points,


and at that point he was mentally beat. I rode out the time, pretended to try to submit the guy, and then my hand was raised.


The head instructor at my acadamy greeted me at the edge of the mat, "Nice win, buddy, between you and me, that was probably your gold medal match - he was the champion from last year and the rest of these guys - they got nothing."

This is not the kind of thing that I would tell someone, ever, no matter what the sport or circumstance, in fact, I would avoid saying these types of things to someone prior to their final performance so as not to distract them, or cause them to lose focus, or to take their last performance less seriously than would be warranted. But I'm not a black belt from Brazil, so what the fuck do I know?

Match 3: My last match was boring. We were both tired, and neither of us wanted to make any mistakes. My opponent made weak attempts to take me down, and I stuffed the take downs and made weak attempts to choke him out.


The match was restarted several times when we went outside of the designated area. I passed his guard just as time was expiring, but didn't receive any points because it was too late. I stood up and looked at the scoreboard. At some point in the match, one us received an advantage point. Advantage points only come into consideration if the score is tied at the end of the match, and are awarded for coming close to completing a technique that would receive points.

My opponent had come close to taking me down a couple of times, so I didn't know if the point was for him or me. I though it must be for me or else my coaches would have been going ape shit for me to get a point as time was running out.

We stood in between the ref, who held our wrists by our uniforms. The ref raised my hand, and my defeated opponent bowed his head and walked off of the mat in shame. He would be on suicide watch for the next 24 hours. I won the gold, and brought much honor to our acadamy. My performance would be talked about for at least a few days, maybe for even as long as a week, but the gold medal I received will last forever, and will forever stay in the sock drawer next to Pinkie Pie for comfort in times of crisis.

Now really....

which one of you jokers got me a subscription to Field & Stream?

R.I.P.


To piggy back on The Youngest, David Foster Wallace hung himself on Friday night. What a terrible and terribly inconsiderate way to go. There's nothing quick or painless about a self-hanging, and the wife finds you swaying eerily back and forth, bug-eyed and with soiled pants. I imagine that a high majority of self-hangers have second thoughts when their throats makes cough-gargling noises and their feet point down, reflexively scraping the air.

So when the urge strikes to make a hasty, and premature exit, take a tablespoon of this stuff every day for a few weeks. I take it every day, and I'm right as rain. It doesn't flood your system with serotonin like those nasty, over prescribed SSRIs. It just makes you feel normal, and normalcy is easily medicated with drinking.

David Foster Wallace's only vice was Kodiak chewing tobacco, which he chewed copious amounts of while writing his novels. So let's all raise a plug and spit some tobacco juice for a modern genius of letters.

Here's mud in your eye.

More Dead Writers

















The infant, however, would gaze at the GS-6 auditor fiercely, with a combination of intensity and disdain, rather as if it were hungry and the GS-6 were food but not quite the right kind.

Further selections from David Foster Wallace

My New Pad

The map above contains directions from my new pad to work, as well as local highlights. It's a gruelling .9 miles culminating in a very backed up few blocks. I can cut my ten-minute commute in half by taking the Dirty Whore, riding in between stopped traffic like a UCLA linebacker through a giant hole created by limp wristed USC linemen (What do UCLA and USC students have in common? They both got in to USC - LMFAO!!!!!! USC teh sux0r!!!! WOOOOO!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!).

Everything you've heard about LA traffic is completely true. Somtimes I feel like absolutely flipping out on my commute. I find it helpful to put things in perspective, and to enjoy the time I have to myself. You folks with long commutes should endeavor to do the same.

Ugly Americans


In March of 1998, I was riding a bus in Germany from Munich to Dachau. Everyone on board was either keeping themselves occupied, or quietly talking to the person next to them until the bus made a stop, and four people stomped on board. They were loud and obnoxious, and although we were on opposite ends of the bus, it was immediately apparent that they were from the east coast of the United States. I was irritated by their noise and lack of consideration, and embarrassed to be associated with them. When they finally got off of the bus, a backpacker close by turned to me and whispered "no wonder everyone hates us!"

I sit next to a guy from Iran named Amir. He's insane – sort of like a Persian Kramer. He recently told me a story about moving from Iran to Canada. The first time he took the subway in Toronto, he was confused because nobody was talking. He asked the person next to him, "Why is everyone so quiet?" The person responded, "People here just try to be polite and not disturb others around them." A few stops later, three people stomped on board and began talking in loud voices. Andy thought to himself, "I wonder where these people are from? Wherever it is – I want to move there!" He approached what turned out to be Americans from the east coast who chatted with him for a while. Before parting, they gave him their phone numbers in case he ever made it to New York and needed some help. A year later, Andy moved to the United States.

Now I wear headphones.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish



This could be the end of everything. The LHC goes online tomorrow morning, so smoke 'em if you got 'em. We will, quite literally, be unleashing forces that we do not understand. We, as human beings, will be gambling with the highest stakes possible. We have decided that the small possibility of nonexistence for everyone and everything is worth...Knowledge. We don't know how small the possibility is that we will cease to exist sometime in the next few hours or days, or weeks. We don't know how great the knowledge that will be attained by rolling the dice that is a massive particle accelerator. Nobody is denying that a hungry black hole could emerge and quickly and neatly gobble us all up.

I've been having trouble concentrating today.

A nice couple a few years back decided to bet it all on some knowledge, and the story didn't have a happy ending.



The LHC is a particle accelerator located on the France/Switzerland border; it has been dubbed the largest, most expensive, most powerful experiment ever attempted, certainly dwarfing all particle colliders ever built before, both in terms of size and power.

Some experts fear that the risk of operating the LHC disproportionately outweighs anything science might gain from this experiment. It is not possible to know what the outcome of the experiment will be, but even CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) scientists concede that there is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets and deSitter space transitions. These events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter and destroy our planet.

http://lhcdefense.org/