Digital Cowboy

I promise I’ll stop posting about Mike Tyson for a while after this. But there’s another notable thing I haven’t pointed out yet.

If you watch his early fights, you’ll see that as soon as he was allowed out of the neutral corner after a knockout, he was checking to make sure that the other guy was OK.

It’s almost like he felt guilty about being so dominant.

After some of the really early fights, he would even rub the side of their face or the top of their head as if to say, “Sorry. I didn’t want to do that, but it’s my job.”

Apologizing for knocking them out.

The man loves people. And the whole world demonizes and provokes him. Then they demonize him again when he responds to their provocation in the only way he knows how. (For the stupid, lemme spell it out: It’s a hard left hook.)

It seems nobody understands him. I can understand why he often seems confused. Cus was the only one that ever cared about him. Everyone else just wants to use him like he’s a circus animal.

OK. I’m done for now.

Of stupid.

“Tell your doctor if you have blood in the stool, high blood pressure or diarrhea.”

This is from a commercial for a constipation drug. In and of itself that’s retarded. And you’re warning me that your constipation drug might cause diarrhea?

What the hell has happened to this country?

Looks to me like doctors and lawyers have conspired to ruin it.

I’m just about done. Can you please point me to the cashier’s window so I can cash out my chips and get me and my daughters completely the hell out of here?

A lot’s been said about Mike Tyson’s knockout power, his hand speed, his aggressiveness. What positively astounds me is his defense. If you really want to know what it takes to get knocked out by Mike, the answer is “Take a swing or three at him.”

His greatest knockouts came when he was under attack. You’ll never find him and while you’re trying, he’s gonna lay you out. Don’t piss off Mike. You don’t have anything for him.

It’s been almost 20 years since his peak and we’ve never seen upper body movement like that since. The boy (nothing racist there, he was 19 and I respect him) could bend 90 degrees at the waist while going side to side. Try hitting that!

I’ve seen video of him training, bobbing back and forth under a rope barely higher than his waist, at high speed. That’s what made the difference. Cus was a freakin’ genius.

And, while you’re looking for him, he’s never lost track of you.

Watch for the uppercut. It’s coming. And it’s gonna hurt.

I like Ali but he was a wannabe compared to Mike.

When he was 22 and 0, he had already had 20 wins by knockout and 14 of them were in the first round. He was only 20 years old then.

If you must. But I’ve wept twice watching coverage of the Tennessee/Winkler family story.

It’s all sad all the way around. I don’t know what her motive was yet, and I don’t care. Nobody has won and something is wrong. As usual, the kids are going to suffer the most. I can’t even count their injuries.

If you’d like to criticize, be prepared. I’ve already decided that YOU are the problem.

My children’s mother sent them a link to a silly video yesterday. It was cute but took forever to load and was WMP, which I despise. The page was covered with links to “Women seeking men,” “Hot Girls,” “Swingers sites,” “Cheat at online poker.” etc.

They can both read anything you put in front of them now, so that’s a problem. “Daddy, what’s a Hot Girl?” “Why did Mommy send us to this page with all these a-dult per-so-nals links?” “Go play in the other room while this downloads.”

The day before that, we got an envelope from her “dad” with $5 in it. The note enclosed was to let us know that it was “tooth fairy money.”

She’s seven years old, has already lost 5 teeth before this one and never believed in the tooth fairy. I saw to that.

We’ve also gotten promises of kittens that grampa is keeping for them (and will be cats long before they get back there to visit again), trampolines (that have never been assembled – “Did you play on the trampoline, honey? “No, but we saw the box. He really has one.”) new bikes and the list goes on.

You ruined your own daughter very badly with very bad parenting and you think that the same tactics will make you a good grandparent? Children cannot be bought.

Let me give you something to think about…. “By the time I was eight years old I had figured out that they didn’t love me and didn’t know any way to show love except with money. So I decided to get as much stuff as I could from them!” That’s a pretty close approximation of a statement my children’s mother once made to me about her parents.

I see the same damage already being inflicted on my children. I don’t allow it. So many of grampa’s phone calls go to the machine until he learns how to love without money.

By contrast, we got a package in the mail today from the wife of a friend of mine that contained, primarily, a very nice hard back children’s dictionary. The kids won’t lay it down. They would rather look up things in it than watch TV.

That makes me very happy and also does not surprise me.

I wonder why the folks I know in Georgia are so completely ignorant about raising kids? I try hard to assume the entire state isn’t this stupid. But I haven’t seen evidence yet.

It sure appears that I was foolish when I picked a mother for my kids. I really have no regrets because I wouldn’t give them up for the world. I just wish she would get it together and get back to what she’s supposed to do. Every day she spends in Georgia makes her dumber. She’s surrounded by morons. One of ‘em even came from England to teach her how to abandon her children. He may not be good at it, but at least he’s experienced.