i bought an ipod after i killed my other one by thinking it would be cool to take it out for a bike ride in a torrential downpour that was so bad i started collecting pairs of animals for an ark. okay honesty time, i just thought about elephants and squids and said AWWWWWWWW a bunch. anyways i killed my ipod and i bought this replacement ipod so i could listen to essence of the northern fists before my fight and it is such a hilariously bad piece of shit that i have to believe it's an intentional malicious joke. check out this list of awesome features:

-is not recognized by itunes
-files must be drag & dropped like a memory stick
-will not take more than 50 files at a time
-sometimes rejects all the files
-sometimes rejects some of the files, leaving me unsure which were accepted
-will not charge with ipod wall charger
-sometimes doesn't charge through computer
-cannot customize any settings
-does not acknowledge band names or albums (all songs are by "unknown artist" from "unknown album")
-has battery life of 7-11 house-brand AA cells
-sometimes scrolls down when i'm not touching it (the only time the scrolling works)
-fast forwards songs it doesn't like when it's halfway through them
-has no shuffle
-cuts the volume in half directly after i turn the volume up
-turns off just because

and i want to be mad about this but its sense of comic timing is just so good that i can't. also i paid like $80 for it and just need it to play songs for an hour on fight day. but now i keep expecting to wake up and find it setting up ponzie schemes and then posting on stormfront about racial purity under my name.

yeah definitely getting irritable. definitely need to fight.

the grind of training twice a day for over two months (minus injury time, which, the entirety of the time off was maybe a week and a half, and it was spent thinking about fighting and wishing to be fighting) without having an outlet of a fight, or a decisive ending without going home to fucking real life, is leaving me short with people and generally irritable. this is the aspect of myself i dislike the most and the one i'm least able to control. i've got something of a temper at times but i can mostly keep it under wraps; at least nine out of ten of the people i've ever met deserved an absolutely savage beating but i never savagely beat them which can only speak to my impressive temper-control and general worth as a man.

anyways basically i think i should probably fight. my foot is still a mess and improving at a very, very slow pace, but if i give it a few weeks before fighting (and don't re-injure or new-injure myself) i should hopefully be ready to go.

wish someone had warned me beforehand that it was "clownings and savage beatings of the farangs" day so i could've just gone to one class instead of somehow volunteering for a "two vicious beatdowns in one day" day

i mean i normally like to have at least a short nap between assaults

apparently i somehow involuntarily signed up for another go with with sing on friday too, so pretty fucking sweet to get clobbered by a k1 vet three times in one week

boxed with sing today. what a ridiculous monster, he had reflexes like i've never even seen before. as always with the thais, the first round went great for me; i'm so smooth, landing shots, generally looking like i have any idea whatsoever what i'm doing. second round starts and he has my entire game figured out already, slipping and moving around every punch i throw, then countering with ridiculous timing and accuract. dude started completely clowning me with roy jones jr hands-down-chin-out nonsense and i felt like i technically should be mad ? but he was so adorable and fun-loving about it that i couldn't help laughing along with him.

anyways long story short he beat the living shit out of me for the next some number of rounds that i can't honestly be expected to remember in my current state

back at training for a few days now. i don't move well at all and there's a bunch of shit i can't do on my foot, but i also can't sit around anymore either, so i put up with the annoyance of crippled training sessions and feeling like a pussy for not sparring or clinching. and i fucking hate saying "nah i can't do that," to the trainers because they think you're just being difficult or a drama queen or whatever. argh. hope this shit heals fast.

i hate to take sleeping pills, but it's one of the sacrifices you have to make sometimes when you have to start training at 6am but your body tells you to go to sleep at 4am. i got some from the pharmacy a few weeks ago but have avoided using them until last night, knowing i was going to be getting up early to try to get back at least some level of fight cardio, even if i can't do a lot of the exercises.

insomnia is a funny thing. i can be utterly exhausted while running on very little sleep from the night before and still be totally unable to sleep. the closest thing i can compare it to is if you've ever had a muscle cramp that won't let go, that's what my brain feels like. at some point in the night i can feel my brain release its squeeze, and then i can finally go to bed and sleep instead of looking around my room in frustration, focusing on the shadowy right angles of corners until my eyes cross.

sleeping pills shorten or sidestep this period one way or another. some make me feel like i'm sinking slowly deeper into fatigue as my body gets heavy until i am almost conscious of crossing the threshold of sleep, like walking down a nearly level beach into the water. others i won't feel a thing; i'll be lying in bed wide awake wondering when the drug will kick in and then BAM it's morning.

these pills were different than that; i took one around 8pm thinking i would be falling asleep by nine at the latest. eleven o'clock found me lying in bed staring into corners cross-eyed in frustration when suddenly it began to look like coloured veils were being put in front of my line of sight. i shut my eyes but even the darkness went through various shades. i chased the veils across the backs of my eyelids until they floated away over a hillside i recognized from dreamland. i clearly remember feeling relieved in my dream that i was asleep.

so after training this morning (which i thankfully survived without further foot damage and only a moderate sleeping pill hangover) i checked online to see what sort of potency those sleeping pills were, thinking maybe i needed something stronger or at least different. welp, turns out "alprazolam" is xanax ! hahaha this fucking country rules...