Saturday 1/3/26 People say a lot of things aimed to get others--and themselves--to think how well they are doing. How content and fulfilled they are. Both out in their lives and on social media. Now, too, with social media, people post a lot of photos meant to achieve the same ends: To elbow reality out of the way and grant the stage to appearance. If appearance is all that anyone else gets, then appearance becomes...voila...what is presumed as reality. I think of much of thi

Friday 1/2/26 Typical social media post: Why people hate small talks these days when it is the key to a meaningful conversation? No matter how much of this I see, no matter how well I understand how mentally limited we now are, this never fails to blow me away regardless. That we are this way. That it's possible for humans as a species to be so mentally...little. I mean...look at that. How dumb can something that is technically a human be? How is it possible to be that dumb?

Wednesday1/1/26 I've had a single New Year's Eve in my life that I consider special or memorable. I was a young boy and my parents had gone out for the night. I don't know what I did, but I must have gotten at least a little sneaky because I stayed up later than I should have, without the person in charge of us kids being aware. I was in my parents' bedroom, watching the Bruins play the Canucks out in Vancouver. The Bruins had Barry Pederson at his best before he got injured

Thursday 1/1/26 New Year's Eve isn't a thing as it's thought of/venerated and you shouldn't care. Nothing changes when the clock strikes midnight. Grow up, get a clue. Those resolutions? You'll ditch them straight away. New Year's resolutions are like MFAs in writing--if you ever think you need them/one, you will never be that thing you say you want to be because you don't have it in you. If you did, you never would have thought along those lines. Can you imagine me ever havi

Monday 12/29/25 Drake Maye was close to perfect yesterday. What else can you say about a quarterback who goes 19-for-21 for 256 yards, five TD passes and no interceptions, for a 157 rating? Okay, the Jets are bad and on top of that they barely showed up, but it's still an NFL game. Call it a late MVP push from Maye. I don't think he can overcome the narrative/career recognition boost that Matthew Stafford has going for him/will get, but there are stats are very similar. Staff

Monday 12/29/25 I still haven't sent some of the few people I know the story for Christmas 2025. I must see where it's at. It's still the season anyway. I don't think I mentioned this--maybe I did--but my sister's family got a puppy shortly before the holiday. His name is Cody. Amelia insists that she is the dog's favorite despite the opposite probably being true. For now. She picks him up and he's getting bigger at a faster rate than she is and so he's jerked around maybe a

Saturday 12/27/25 The mind bending narcissism and brokenness of people, so many of whom are exactly like this person below, doing what they do, and nothing else save the likes of this on social media--constantly--is inescapable now and getting closer and closer being the only versions of us, the only "us," that remains. We venerate weakness, excuses, and lies to self. The virtues of today's world. Those "virtues" will make you more of a puddle than a person. A big, blob-y pud

Saturday 12/27/25 The Bunker Hill Monument opened in 1843. It's 221 feet high and has 294 stairs. Since it opened, the most amount of times anyone has gone up and down the Monument in a continuous session is twenty times. Only one person has done that. I am that person. After yesterday, I've now done so six times, with four of those times happening in this year of 2025. As has been noted, the Monument was closed as part of the government shutdown, which commenced on the first

Friday 12/26/25 Shortly after midnight on Christmas morning, I awoke and began work again on "Love, Your Mouse," which I have returned to in the early hours of this morning. It has felt like a holy experience. But that is the story. A holy experience itself. It's a humbling work, which has required all I have to give, all of my ability, all of my effort to master that ability, and the person I have worked to become, in the doing of it. I think I shall finally be finished toda

Tuesday 12/23/25 Does anybody actually have anything of any significance and value for anyone else? Or even just of honest intention? Another question: Is any aspect of our society more dominant than inauthenticity? I ask rhetorically, but there's always a statement in a question which says, "This may be possible." Hardly anyone or anything is what they or it is purported to be. You go through your day and look at this person, and this thing being sold, and this service, and

Monday 12/22/25 Drake Maye had his signature game of the season last night, and with it the signature game of his young career. The Ravens aren't a good team, but this they had something to play for, they have two guys on offense who are going to Canton, the Patriots defense has a bunch of injuries, and this was a prime time Sunday night game on the road after the Pats had lost the week before to the Bills who had won earlier in the day. Another Patriots loss and the two team

Saturday 12/20/25 I thought Alabama shouldn't have been in the college playoff and then they come back and beat Oklahoma after trailing 17-0. You never know. This year's MLB Hall of Fame ballot has to be one of the weakest ever. If we leave out the steroid guy in Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, the only Hall of Fame-caliber player is Carlos Beltran and he's not a very exciting Hall of Famer. Andrew Jones will eventually get in, but I won't like that selection. My surmise: B

Friday 12/19/25 I don't think I've ever known anyone who apologized for an aspect of their behavior who then didn't simply continue behaving as they had been. Apologies for an oversight or the out-in-life version of a typo are different. But to stop acting a certain way? Stop treating me a certain way? That's never happened that I can recall. People, with the rarest of exceptions, don't change. It's not just that--they won't change small parts of themselves or what they're do

Wednesday 12/17/25 Why do so many women on social media look like they were drawn with a marker? Is that a filter option? Marker-sheen? It's like their features are missing features or they haven't dried yet. We're so reluctant to be our true selves no matter the context or the stakes. We hate to do it. We're increasingly incapable of it, too, with so many people not having a true self or any foundational self. We piss it away by doing, and pursuing, and being all about these

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