Have you ever had a really bad day at the office? You know, one of those real stinkers, now known as "Grossmans," the kind of lousy, crappy, drive-you-to-drink miserable days that make you feel like you have absolutely the worst job in the whole wide world?

Well, you can now take heart in the knowledge that no matter how bad your job really is, at least no one is chasing you through the woods with a razor-sharp instrument of destruction.

Maybe you saw the following story. During a training run in Big Bear, California, cruiserweight boxer O'Neil Bell got into an argument with his sparring partner, Larry Slayton, and heaved a hatchet at him. Fortunately for both men, but especially Slayton, the hatchet missed its target, but the incident raises some serious questions.

For example, why carry a hatchet on your training run in the first place? I'm no boxer, I realized that the first time my sister beat me up when we were kids (In my defense, she was two years older, and really knew how to cover up after slugging me), but I've seen Rocky and most of the 794 sequels, and nowhere in any of them does the Rock feel the need to train with a hatchet.

The reason given the police when they asked the same, rather obvious, question was that Bell was carrying it for protection against bears (Good thing Peyton Manning didn't see the story before the Super Bowl, but I digress). My solution to the pesky bear problem might have been to run in some other location, but that's just me.

Another question: What does it say about Larry Slayton's judgement, getting into a dispute with a man who takes violent shots to the head for a living and is carrying a hatchet, running in a remote area with no witnesses and plenty of places to dispose of a body? Clearly, being a boxer carries with it certain risks, if you don't believe that just ask Muhammad Ali for his opinion, but being a professional sparring partner has to be even worse. It's obvious that Slayton has judgement issues, in any event, but at least he's still alive to ponder the issue.

Another question: If you're O'Neil Bell, or more likely O'Neil Bell's agent, what are you going to have to do to coax someone else into taking the now presumably vacant sparring partner post? How much money will you have to pay? How will you phrase the want-ad? "Sparring partner wanted. Must be strong and tough. Fast healer from cuts and slashes a plus. Band-aids supplied, no charge."