Wednesday 7/15/26 Ah, but for a draught of vintage--by which I mean, unsweetened cranberry juice for me--with John Falstaff at the Boar's Head Inn and the trading of japes with kernels of truth. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a section in his Notebooks titled, "Feelings & Emotions (without girls)," in which he could make it no further than the fifth entry before they started to become about...well, what do you think? Adam West starred in a Perry Mason episode about a stolen first ed

Wednesday 7/15/26 Saw a decent amount of the All-Star Game last night in between other things I was doing (listening to the Grateful Dead's 10/23/72 Milwaukee performance, watching a documentary on H.P. Lovecraft). It was a tough watch and listen. My interest for a while was in whether the National League would be no hit, which I thought was definitely on the table. Baseball has a strike out problem. It's a huge problem in my estimation. The strike out problem is made worse b

Tuesday 7/14/26 Most people go their entire lives without saying a single witty or funny thing. Wit is beyond their mental and creative capabilities (wit also requires wisdom as to who and how we are), and if the humor happens, it will be by accident and not design, with the laugh being on them. Nor is humor subjective. Nothing is subjective. There's what we're able to discern because of our abilities and what we're not able to because of our shortcomings. But every thing is

Monday 7/13/26 Had an uncomfortable night. Picked up a cold a couple days back and did as is my wont and carried on with stairs, etc., as if I hadn't. Was up to nearly two in the morning today as a result. May have made it worse by not taking it easier but if it goes away soon then it would have been worth it to have soldiered on especially as there could be heat issues this week though it looks like tomorrow is going to be the bad day and that the Monument could avoid any sh

Thursday 7/9/26 The only kind of internet headline I'm vulnerable to--that is, one that will almost automatically get me to click on the article--is that pertaining to health; specifically, what might be my health, especially if the topic is about something you can control. I know the answer now and have for a long time, but if I didn't and I saw a headline, "Best teas for heart health," that will get me to go to the article. Almost everything is hack-y, indistinguishable low

Wednesday 7/8/26 Yesterday was a day of weather relief. One of those good worker days. It rained mostly throughout the day, from early in the morning on through to the night, with temperatures in the upper sixties and lower seventies. Took away a lot of that residual heat that boxes itself in in summer and sticks around. A solid citizen of a weather day. I felt like thanking the weather (shades of the narrator in M.R. James's The Five Jars saying, "Good growth to you," after

Tuesday 7/7/26 There's a kind of nuts in sports which can be very good that is different than nuts in life which is usually not so good. The position where one is most apt to be nuts in this good manner is as a goalie in hockey. This typically gives the skilled goalie an extra edge. Ken Dryden could be nuts--the intellectual version. Billy Smith was nuts. Battlin' Billy. Grant Fuhr was nuts in that he could give up 0 or 6 goals and it was the same to him. Which meant that whe

Tuesday 7/8/26 The passive recalcitrance of Bartleby in Melville's "Bartleby, The Scrivener," is like a pit of nullity over which the narrator hangs. The narrator may be the main character of the tale, which seems an apt word to me. "Tale" suggests something both parabolic and realistic. Those rare people of kindness--which is active and outwards--in today's world face a greater risk, a harder life, and less succor, for Bartelby is legion, not an isolated example. Viewing rec

Monday 7/6/26 You know who is one of the most dangerous people in this country? The sort of person who sees some idiot--not that they're capable of any kind of discernment--talking out of their ass and responds with, "FACTS!" The person who does it once does it a million times. There are millions and millions of them. They're like a plague against truth. A sea of rats swallowing it up and rendering the concept of truth as first obsolete and then virtually unheard of as those

Monday 7/6/26 The publishing industry is a lot like the higher levels and inner circles of the Republican party. A lot of corrupt, compromised people running cover for each other. It's one reason why none of them speak out, no matter what. Regardless of what evil they witness. Because they're filthy, too, and that would increase the chance of someone revealing the truth about them. "The New Republic has a zero tolerance policy with sexual harassment..." No you don't. You have

Monday 7/6/26 Miami is nice, so I'll say it thrice. I’ve never not been glad to have The Golden Girls come on. A part of me always goes, “Oh, good.” Who says anything thrice? Exactly. Film noir doesn’t offer a lot of levity, but a guy will come upon another guy he doesn’t know who got shot and is dying and can barely speak and he’ll rasp out the entire story of how he got here to the stranger who found him. Or two guys will be in a car that went over a bridge and into the wat

Monday 7/6/26 The heat finally broke on Sunday. My sleep schedule is all disordered. I've been falling asleep at times when I'd normally be waking up to start the day. The heat was the main cause, coupled with the Melatonin matter I detailed earlier. I've seen the Red Sox' recent late-starting West Coast games in full (almost). Yesterday wasn't exactly a harbinger of autumn. It was still 80 degrees. But after the prior several days, it felt like a relief. You could be outside

Monday 7/6/26 The Bunker Hill Monument is 221.5 feet tall. Why are you telling us this? I'm just telling you. I saw this video of a shark that wanted to eat a turtle. The shark swims over, opens its jaws, and the turtle flips itself sideways, so that the shark couldn't make a bite because its jaws wouldn't open that much. The turtle did this with great calm and ease. The shark seemed confused. The turtle swam away and, as it was doing so, ate something floating the water as i

Sunday 7/5/26 The people who say, "Does anyone know any book similar to this [great work]," and "Does anyone know any music like this [great album]," and so forth, are really missing the point, or one of them, anyway. A great Poverty Row horror or noir film is similar to a rough-and-tumble audience recording of some band's remarkable gig you wouldn't have heard otherwise. You have this sense of discovery and feeling of good fortune that the thing managed to exist (and got hel

Saturday 7/4/26 Fourth of July as a kid, so this was when I was seven, eight, nine-years-old. My tradition as such. Go out and play with friends in a front yard we imagined was some big league ball park. We'd hang a clothesline and drape a tarp or drop cloth over it for a wall. The Green Monster of a field covered in acorns, with trees for bases, and baselines of markedly different lengths. Then swim in someone's pool. Then I'd go home to read Ben Franklin's autobiography. Di

Saturday 7/4/26 Walked six miles yesterday and did 100 push-ups and that was it and today could well be a fat zero on the fitness front. I've had enough. I need this heat to break. It's boxed in here. The air conditioner barely works anyway. But once the heat settles in, it's there to stay. Like you don't get it out again for a while, even when the temperature drops. It has this residual staying power. The Man Who Came to Dinner. Except it's heat. I'm going to bed late, getti

Thursday 7/2/26 It was even worse running stairs at City Hall today. I only did 2000, and for each of the last ten times up--2000 stairs being twenty times up and down--I was bent over at the top with my hands on my knees. Brutal, brutal, brutal. But it was a notable day for the stair-running resume in its kind of way, just not as flashy as a twenty-circuit day in the Bunker Hill Monument. It is all for my work. Everything is for my work. To be able to keep going. To somehow

Thursday 7/2/26 People will make any excuse for someone twisted as they are twisted. Sick as they are sick. Immoral as they are Immoral. Evil as they are evil. For example, Joshua Boger with David Sedaris. It's unbelievable to me--it shouldn't be, but, again, one feels like it must be said--how people use t-a-r-d, as in "retard." They'll casually, conversationally stick it at the ends of words. How can you not know how disgusting this is? How can you be that bad of a human? Y

Thursday 7/2/26 The heat is miserable. You can't do anything in it. It's like you can't live in it. Today is supposed to be hotter. Do the people who go on about summer and how they wish it was time and again throughout the rest of the year like this? This is fun to them? Preferable? You can't walk a block without sweating. That feels nice? Something to look forward to? The ironic thing about summer is there can be more days that people have to stay indoors than there are in

Wednesday 7/1/26 People aren't going to defend intelligence and effort. They're going to vehemently oppose them and those who exhibit those traits or who extol the importance of learning/knowing and trying hard. (This vehemence can be unexpressed, but it will have total internal sway with how they regard these traits in others and dictate treatment/behavior on whatever relevant/available level.) People will wish to shout them down. They are going to defend ignorance and lazin

Wednesday 7/1/26 I got my hair cut yesterday after a few months. The back of my neck was quite scraggly. Not that I have anyone or anything to look good for. I went with the .5 razor setting on the sides and back and the 1 on the rest of it, so I don't have a lot of hair now. I realized, though, that my head is two colors, which is a ridiculous look, on account of wearing my Celtics headband when I'm out and about for longer stretches for my walks that get lumped into my fitn

Wednesday 7/1/26 Was at the barber shop yesterday and talk centered on Jaylen Brown and the Celtics and how the Celtics "blew it" by not moving him after getting as close as they did. I don't partake in these discussions because I don't fit into them. The language is mangled, there's a lot of ass talking--as in, people saying things straight from their ass. Real common man stuff, with "g's" left off the ends of words, etc. It isn't a space for me, like all spaces, with who I

Tuesday 6/30/26 Red Sox fans are funny. But given that virtually no one in our world is actually funny, I don't mean funny that way but in the ridiculous sense. After sweeping the Yankees (who are without Aaron Judge) in a four game series at Fenway, the Sox turned around and beat the Nationals at the old ball yard last night to improve their season-best winning streak to five games. They've gone from 14 games under .500 to 9 games under. Consequently, Red Sox fans are now st

Friday 6/26/26 I have bad dreams most nights. I don't like being asleep. Of course, I don't like being awake either. The dreams are often about Molly. Even at this late date. They take various forms. Sometimes we are together happy somewhere. That's a strange kind of bad dream that produces a bad wake up as well. The bad dreams involve people who hurt or betrayed me. People I counted on who told me I could trust them. They can be bad dreams by dint of comparison, you could sa