Wednesday 12/17/25 I think "Love, Your Mouse" is going to be the story I send to people for Christmas this year (allowing I finish it). I had planned to go all out and try and do this other story I'm not going to mention here until I'm formally working on it, but I don't want to rush myself. There are a half dozen Christmas stories in development. I'm thinking in terms of a book of them. But the changes in the last several days to "Mouse" make me feel very good about it. It's

Sunday-Monday 12/14-15/25 Four in the morning on Sunday. Snowing outside. Save a car alarm going off in the direction of City Hall, it's quiet, peaceful. I'm working on "Love, Your Mouse"--yes, again--and doing push-ups in the hallway. I want art that is good for me, that helps and inspires me. That makes me feel alive, that helps me keep living. The same as the art I want to make for other people--except more so, because that's what I have in me and am capable of. I don't th

Sunday 12/14/25 I'm baffled by what Philip Rivers is doing. Intrigued to see how it plays out, but baffled as to the motivation. Why would you want to return to the NFL at age forty-four, after having not played in five years? You're going to show up, take a few days, and just jump in there? He must know something I don't. Surely. Because I don't see how that can go well. If it does go well, that's not going to look great for the league. That it's that easy to play the quarte

Thursday 12/11/25 I've been writing my ass off the first week and a half of this month. Excerpt from this morning's new piece about The Wizard of Oz , Christmas, and horror. Compare it to Salman Rushdie's soporific, naked emperor twaddle from his volume on the movie in the BFI's Film Classics series, now headed up by our friend Rebecca Barden , with much to come in these pages detailing her discriminatory ways. *** Why does The Wizard of Oz  feel like a Christmas film? It’s

As it says. Part of a conversation with a writer/professor I know. *** People have no idea that agents usually just want someone like themselves but with whom they get to act like they're Yoda or this guru. The unchallenged guide. The doctor to the patient. The shrink to the person on the couch. It's never about money. It's not a commercial business. It's a pettiness business. An ego business. That's the actual business of publishing. I know many writers who have never made t

Thursday 12/11/25 As it says. A Christmas Dream is a stop-motion Czech film. *** A Christmas Dream is a film that can go a couple of ways. Either it soothes your festal soul—a cinematic version of dancing sugar plum visions—or it disturbs you. The girl’s dream is remarkably “awake.” Real. There’s a tactility to this experience. A dream with wakefulness—it’s Christmas, when such things are possible. And danger as well.                         The rag doll is willing to risk

Thursday 12/11/25 We've now entered the stage of our regression to total collective illiteracy in which major media outlets don't understand the difference between "apart" and "a part." Keep an eye out--you'll notice now, if you're capable of noticing things. They are opposites! So if you write "apart" when you mean "a part" then you're not saying what you think you are! Want to do another one? You will also notice many people of late using the word "articulation" to try and

Wednesday 12/10/25 Van Gogh lived in big houses. Thoreau lived in a big house. Van Gogh made no money at all, Thoreau made very little. Here, have a big house. My hair grows fast. I got it cut the shortest I've ever had it not that long ago, and already I could go back in. I'll space it out. Didn't wear a belt the other day and if I didn't tend to the matter my jeans would hang around the middle of my ass. I had to keep pulling them up and trying to roll the waist over. I may

Tuesday 12/9/25 Excerpt from a piece I wrote this morning. *** Had you told someone who didn’t know of this film that you accidentally encountered it on Christmas Eve at two in the morning and watched the whole thing wondering if this was really happening, they’d think you were putting them on and you might begin to wonder if that’s what you were doing to yourself as well. The cold light of winter morning won’t help. Back-checking the TV listings may give you peace of mind in

Tuesday 12/9/25 People who talk about the teams they root for in the first person plural are likelier to be obtuse. There's no risk in saying this--true as it is, too--because they're unlikely to know what it means. What, for example, can a person like this Forget the bama talk how does Ohio state loose and drop 1 spot. We loose by the same amount in 2023 and we drop 4 spots. Make it make since. know about anything, realistically speaking? Average American right there. I have

Sunday 12/7/25 Doing some prose. Very good. *** Murderous Santas have been around longer than you may think. Andrew Caldecott’s short story, “Christmas Re-union” from his 1947 collection Not Exactly Ghosts , is subtly rendered, but it’s a work of St. Nick-based bloodletting regardless. We’re left to fill in various gaps for ourselves amidst the score settling, the same of which can be said about the 1980 film Christmas Evil  from director Lewis Jackson.             This isn’t

Sunday 12/7/25 I stayed up late last night--given when I get up--thinking, planning, reading, listening to "Dark Star" (Wembley 4/8/72), watching The Wizard Oz and football. I say, "Okay, this is very bad." I feel how bad it is. I shut it down. I tourniquet the day. Then usually I'll start to build back up and ready myself to keep going. I guess I wasn't doing anything, but I was as well. Woke up at four today and got back to it. I'm finishing a piece now here just before si

Saturday 12/6/25 I find myself trying to get myself to just give in to this being the end. I am aware of this kind of transpiring shift--or a would-be shift, unless I fight it away--in mindset taking the form of these gathering clouds. They carry this idea, the rain they hold within, of "It's not going to happen, you see that now, and if this is how it is and you're leaving, take as many people with you as you can." My days are darker than ever before under those clouds. If t

Saturday 12/6/25 Sometimes in the very early morning I can hear the trains and their horns all the way from North Station. The trains aren't running then, of course, but are being moved around the yard. I did ten circuits in the Monument yesterday, so that was better, though it did take a while. Still ramping back up. But my cold is gone. No rattling in the chest. A bunch of middle school field trippers had stuffed their jackets between the spikes of the fence at the bottom o

Saturday 12/6/25 Every last thing in our society, our culture, our world, gets worse. It's uncanny. Unilaterally. Whether that's college football, writing, films, morals, baseball, discourse, romance, manners, neighborhoods stripped of any character. It's like this big algorithmic vortex of homogeneity and soullessness. An all-encompassing death swirl of beige. And clicks and printouts. Predetermined outcomes. Blindness. The vortex. And everything is within that vortex and n

Friday 12/5/25 I was looking at these amazing photos of the Grateful Dead playing at the Matrix around this time in 1966 . Bobby Weir is playing a Rickenbacker, which is surprising. What stands out most, though, is how small the venue was, with people sitting at tables doing nothing but watching the stage and listening to the music. This is the same spot where you could have seen the Doors and the Velvet Underground. Take a look at these photos of the Dead--they're easily fou

Friday 12/5/25 What follows in bold is something I felt I needed to post as a comment beneath a "review" on Goodreads after I created an account this morning in order to do so. Said review was Matt Hanson doing his unhinged Matt Hanson thing for the latest time. I'm not going to link to any of that, because this isn't middle school lunch. And this pretty much speaks for itself anyway. I'm Colin Fleming. I'm not active on Goodreads, but this is something that was brought to my

Thursday 12/4/25 Longtime Minnesota Vikings quarterback (with a mid-career stop in New York with the Giants) Fran Tarkenton had a most interesting career. He played from 1961 to 1978. Or, from the time of Roger Maris's big 61 homer season to the time of the Clash's third album. He won the MVP in 1975, his age thirty-five season, leading the league in touchdowns for the only time in his career. He then led the league in completion percentage for the only time in his career in

Wednesday 12/3/25 Listened to an episode of Suspense called "The Lost Ship" from late August 1962 at the very end of the show's twenty year run (come the close of September, Suspense was no more). That must have been strange when the remaining dramatic radio programs all basically went off the air at once, becoming a thing of the past--generally speaking--and television took over. We lost much when that happened. Radio is like reading in some ways. You form pictures in you

Wednesday 12/3/25 A letter I sent to a few people today before getting going with work. Thought I'd put it here, as it's useful in speaking to larger issues. The person in question didn't leave their name, because people like this rarely do. They're cowards. But we must remember about them that they hate themselves more than they hate anything else, which is formidable loathing. It's fine if one doesn't wish to pity them, but we should be aware of where they're coming from an

Tuesday 12/2/25 Pisssssed that I just binged the first 4 chapters of Stranger Things 5, all in one night. Now wtf am I supposed to watch?!   Yes. Whatever could you do with or within your (perhaps) one precious life? The tiny brains of the masses are held hostage by streaming services. The tiny brains enter their holding cells willingly and agree to know of nothing more than the four walls of the cell in which they can barely turn around. Then they go on social media and disc

Sunday 11/30/25 Some predictions: Josh Allen won't win a Super Bowl. Lamar Jackson won't win a Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes won't win another Super Bowl. Mahomes also won't win another MVP, won't be a first team All-Pro, and probably not a second team All-Pro. Drake Maye will win a Super Bowl. Connor McDavid won't win a Stanley Cup. Observation: The two best hockey players in the world right now are on the same team: They are Cale Makar and Nate MacKinnon. Aaron Judge is drama

Saturday 11/29/25 Shane MacGowan's narrators do a lot of walking in some of his best songs. An example: As I walked down by the riverside/One evening in the spring/I heard a song from day's gone by/Blown in the great North wind Another: I like to walk in the summer breeze/Down Dalling Road by the dead old trees/And drink with my friends in the Hammersmith Broadway/Dear dirty delightful, drunken old days Do you in yours? Walk a lot in your best songs, I mean. The Christmas sea

Friday 11/28/25 This entry will pertain to what I've done lately, thoughts of now, a lot of what I did yesterday on Thanksgiving, and items and ideas and aims as the Christmas season gets underway. I can't believe the things that people choose to focus on and partake of. I mean, I can. But they all think alike, and they all do the same things. They can't find anything on their own. They have no curiosity. You look at social media. The endless posts about nothing but Stranger