So today I found a tick on my leg. After a serious day of... sitting around in front of the tv or the computer. Wtf? That shit is not cool. As far as starting my workout program, I did a little bit. I find you gotta break in the muscles a bit after a long period of being a total sack-ass, or else you'll just get blasted and decide not to exercise ever again.

Still, that tick gets to me. Maybe it was that friendly-ass cat, just out to distribute ticks.

So the main topic of today's post will be my friend x. Most of the people that know me don't know much about him, and he's a pretty cool guy.

x and I met through an internet forum, which sounds super gay. We share a massive interest in combat sports and MMA, and we first started talking to arrange a trade of some recorded fights. As time went on, we found we had a lot more in common, but MMA is still central to our friendship.

Here's a picture of x (on the left) and his BJJ instructor, Rey. Rey means 'king' in portuguese, and this man is known for calling everyone 'Rey' all the time the way some people call others 'buddy' or 'dude'. So now his name is Rey. That's weird, but apparently not uncommon with Jiu-Jitsu people in Brazil to get weird nicknames like this. I'll tell you about Parumpinnha and Minotauro sometime.

I don't know if you can make it out in the picture, but x is wearing a purple belt in that picture. In Brazillian jiu-jitsu it takes an incredible amount of work and talent to work up the belt ladder, with most people spending a year with a white belt, and then never moving past a blue belt. So I'm pretty proud of this achievement.

x main interest in life is the pursuit of BJJ; he competes regularly, and trains obsessively, through injuries and pain. Here's a picture of his ear, obviously suffering from cauliflower ear, where smashing force against the ear slides the skin over the cartilage and separates the two, with the gap being filled in with fluid. If you don't drain the fluid regularly and press the skin into place with a bandage so that the ear maintains its normal shape, you end up with little ball ears that have none of their original shape but are hardened like bone.

Anyway, x , while he pursues a career as a radiology assistant is only concerned with the two things: BJJ and finding a wife. One of the barriers between us is that I have the standard fairly liberal American intellectual set of values, while x is a fairly strict muslim, has different views on a lot of things. I mostly deal with this by not talking to him about those areas.

In any case, this value set means he has to find a specific kind of morally correct girl, who meets his parents standards as well. And he has to date with the intent to marry. PLUS all the usual attractiveness and compatability concerns. I don't envy him that, although with his rugged good looks, he attracts some very attractive arab and desi girls.

In BJJ, x bread and butter is the Kimura, an armlock that can be applied from almost any position, although he's recently been choking people out with the brabo choke, a very powerful choke also known as the "baseball bat choke" because of the arm position. x will roll with anyone, anytime. At a recent wedding, he tapped out the groom!!!

Anyway, I just felt he deserved to be more of a person than "My Muslim friend" or "my friend who does jiu-jitsu" to the people I talk about him to.