Buggered to damnation

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 season--or the start of it, at least--feels a bit different when Thanksgiving is later.

For weeks now there have been AI bots from the Far East scraping my site. They're almost always on here. These times of a world with the controls set to death.

I had many bad and upsetting dreams last night. I was back in my freshman college dorm and in the same room, but on the other side. The theme was that I wasn't part of this world and yet there I was, trying to be in it. That wasn't some return-to-college thing. College was the world. I knew this even as I was dreaming it.

I get why John Peel played "Teenage Kicks" twice in a row. It's like they wrote it that way, too.

I'm glad the Bears beat the Eagles yesterday. I didn't see it. But it's nice when the Bears are good as a cornerstone type of franchise so important to the history of the league. Caleb Williams had a really bad game, though.

I don't believe what people call love is really love hardly ever. I believe love hardly exists in the world. I don't believe parents love their children. I don't believe children love their parents. I don't believe husbands and wives love each other. I don't believe friends love each other. I believe people think they do. Want to. I think they act favorably towards people for other reasons and call it love. I'm not saying I don't believe it doesn't exist at all. Just that that's not usually what it is.

Love involves too much. There's a lot of daily effort with love. Constant remembering. Vision. Clarity of vision. Dedicated purpose. I don't believe people are capable of those things. Focus. Selflessness. Empathy. To me, empathy is inseparable from love. Empathy requires imagination and effort and focus. It's a constant decision to try and enter into what it feels like to live someone else's life, or some part of it.

No, I think what people simply call love is something else and other things. I guess that sounds awful. Someone could also, "That's because no one loves you." That may well be true. But I don't think that's why I believe this.

I wrote a piece on the Beatles' Anthology 4 yesterday. It was kind of a grind. Sometimes what I'll do is open a separate document and I'll paste stuff I cut out of the proper work there. In case I need any of it. Or I'll use it as a background to evaluate one version of a sentence against another (though I mostly only do that with fiction). Usually I don't have one of these "side" documents with nonfiction, but I kept cutting and cutting from this thing yesterday. Then I throw the side document in a misc. folder that I have for that year. One for each year. 560 cut words from that Beatles piece.

Accompanying text for shared new Bloodvine piece on Instagram:

New piece in about Thanksgiving horror movies that is also about a lot more than Thanksgiving horror movies. Like capitalism, social media, failed marriages, attention seeking, alcohol abuse, lying, selfishness, loneliness, the end of the human experiment, politics, debt, Pearl Harbor. It’s very funny.

Wrote Howard this morning to say I had gotten caught up on his site in the early hours today and that it was good stuff.

Threads post:

Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is quite possibly the greatest album ever recorded. It's totally flawless, both lyrically and musically. It works better as a total album than individual tracks played in isolation. Been listening to it on and off for fifty years and it's still remarkable and wondrous.

Thanks, chief. That'll get you 140 (and counting!) likes and a bunch of new followers because it's vapid and says nothing. Quite possibly! Wowzers. Shades of our brilliant presidential historian from yesterday. I wonder if there's any relation.

I had a garbage press that wouldn't have even paid me a penny (in other words, I would have been doing/giving them a book for free) say I couldn't do a Beatles book with them because I didn't have enough social media followers. There will be an entry about said press in these pages. Unsurprisingly.

But, if I posted the likes of

Revolver by the Beatles is quite possibly the greatest album ever recorded. It's totally flawless, both lyrically and musically. It works better as a total album than individual tracks played in isolation. Been listening to it on and off for fifty years and it's still remarkable and wondrous.

I would have more followers because it is vapid and valueless and is something you can change the subject of and swap in the name of something else like I just did there because it's ultimately saying next to nothing.

And also if I posted

Paul McCartney rules lol!!!!!!

Hell, I wouldn't even have to know how to spell his name.

But were I to post about how the "I'll Be on My Way," the 1963 Lennon-McCartney original that they played on the BBC, and nowhere else, and which they never recorded in the studio, has a lyric amidst the rest of the song's moon-in-June bromides that led to a line on "Hey Jude" five years later, then no one would hit the like button or follow me because the post would have value, it would feature unique insight, and would be something no one had ever said or thought before.

Which means, to a publisher, that that person who is the ultimate authority on the Beatles and their art with a unique publication and interview record pertaining to that music and that band can't do a Beatles book with them. All of that is cancelled out because he's not an idiot or just about anyone else.

Isn't that something?

How can you not get that this is how it works? How social media works? And the world? You think it's ever because someone is good something? The best?

It never is. It's the opposite. The opposite of being good at things is what success in all its forms is predicated on now.

By the way, I looked at the guy's bio. And I'm sure you can reverse engineer all of this stuff, and find out who the poster was, if you wanted to verify this kind of thing wasn't an invention of mine. He dislikes racists. Says it right there in the bio. Wow. Powerful. Brave. Putting "I have hands" would be on the same level. Ironically.

And Dark Side of the Moon works better as an album than just listening to the individual tracks? Like this one on Tuesday, and then that one on Sunday? Or as if each of the songs should have been a single instead?

You don't fucking say? Really? Wow!!! Are you sure???????? No?!!!!!!! Mind blown, with this thing that has been out for fifty-two years. HOLY SHIT!!!!!!! Thanks for your service, guru. He also dislikes fascists. Take that!

Watched the Northeastern women's hockey team against Penn St. yesterday at Matthews Arena. Northeaster was ranked 7th and Penn State 4th. Northeastern won. I'd rather watch something like this than most football which is increasingly synonymous for me with things that are wrong with our world. I prefer pure sport, where it's just sport. Or purer.

I feel like you have such an advantage in terms of Hall of Fame chances over players from the past if you are a one-dimensional player in baseball now who is akin to a softball player who just goes up the plate and swings from his ass trying to launch one. The game caters to your slob-style of play and one-dimensionality. Gorman Thomas could be on a Hall of Fame track now--at least for a while.

Didn't go so well in the Monument yesterday. It's strange I've had this chest situation for as long as I have. The coughing. It was cold yesterday when I headed to Charlestown. I was under-dressed. A few flakes of snow fell, but very briefly, on the way out, and then again on the way back. At first I didn't think it was snow. My lungs burned some. Stung. A part of my chest, I mean. I did five circuits. My legs are starting to come around. No soreness.

If I didn't love, I wouldn't be here trying to do what I'm trying to do. I create what I do out of love. It could be that the person who can stand no one is the person who has the most love for all. I suppose. If someone wanted to think about that, if they ever know me and my work.

"Love" is often a matter of survival. If that person didn't love that person or people, it would be as if there life had no point to it. That was their identity. It was what they did insofar as they did anything. They can't look back and say there life never had a point to it. So, they loved. Because if they didn't, that knowledge of having lived for nothing, will kill them. No one is going to say, "That's true, but I'm still here, what can I do to live with purpose in the remaining time?" No. That's impossible for people. So it has to be love. Or else they're killing themselves, in a way. They can't carry on.

I became aware of an error I'd made with "Dead Thomas" as I was walking back from Charlestown. Puzzles and games help with writing. Problem-solving games. You have a sentence of two clauses, say, and the same word is used twice. Let's say it's used twice in the sense of "play a game" and "play on words," which is similar to what happened in my story.

Chances are almost certain that it shouldn't be both. If it was going to be both, it has to be for some connective reason. You have to change one. To what? But when you change it, maybe that throws off something in the next line. Or four paragraphs later. It's problem solving. Of course, you have to be aware of the problem in the first place, and few writers are even going to be able to do that. I got home, and produced the solution in ten seconds. First thing I did, as one would expect.

Boston College has their last football game of the season today against Syracuse, which is a winnable game for them, believe it or not. Then they could finish 2-10! I actually think BC will be much better next year. Like 6-6 or 7-5. There are only like thirty people/alum who care about BC football, so the chances of any of them encountering this are nil, but if you one of those thirty and you somehow found this entry, you saw it here first!

They have a running back who could be something, who was just a sophomore this year, and the quarterback has maybe some potential to be decent-ish at this level--he'll actually have some numbers to speak of when this season comes to a close--and presumably they won't have the injuries they did next year that they had this season, where the defense was often back-ups and green players who shouldn't have cracked the line-up this year.

The team has played hard down the stretch and been competitive against some ranked teams who had a lot to play for, and that's encouraging. BC just needs to win 6-8 games each year and on occasion have a nice 9-win season and a ranking around twenty-four. That's what they have to find a way to be. I could be wrong, but I don't think there will be an exodus of the team's important players, as such, i the transfer portal when the season is over. I could definitely be wrong. But maybe Bill O'Brien has instilled some buy-in.

Wouldn't it be better if we weren't illiterate?

Wouldn't it be better if we were better? Think how much better the world would be and life would be. How much happier we'd be. How much less pain we'd be in and how much less pain we'd cause and others would cause us. But we're not going to try to be better. With anything. We're going to keep becoming worse.

My father was a man who was very much about right and wrong. It was something I believe he always thought about. My father wouldn't willingly do wrong. You can say, "No one would willingly do wrong!" in which case I'd say you're a fucking idiot, because that's most of what people do, regardless of their lack of self-awareness or across-the-board refusal to ever think.

But most people don't stop and evaluate. They do what they do--which is almost always what is best for them or feels best--and then they're doing something wrong that on some level they feel isn't right, but whatever. Right? They're conditioned to kind of whatever it, if you will. My father did evaluate. I think it became tied to his nature, rather than a process with a kind of formal beginning and end. My father understood what something meant morally.

I know, for instance, someone who is on my side. From afar, but on my side. They know of the evil of publishing. They believe--then again, how couldn't you, given the volume and quality of the proof--what I say here about various people in publishing. They will know a given person is evil. But they'll still have that person run their work if they say they will. It's sort of both with this person I know, do you know what I mean?

Whereas it wouldn't have been with my father. He would have sought a different way.

But my father is the only person I've ever known about whom these things are true. Which makes me very sad, because they ought to be true for everyone. Or more people. Some people. And I think whatever number of people that is is a very low number.

My father would have reached out to me on Thanksgiving. I'm just adding that. It's not the point of the above. But there is no earthly way he wouldn't have. He would have had to have been a completely different man. Some other man.

These ought to be the basics. Instead they're the almost nevers and the no ways.

Getting to tomorrow is becoming harder every day, especially over the last week, and in particular the very last few days. The grip of terror is tightening. I'm increasingly thinking about logistics. How I would do this. What I'd say in a note. Where to put the note. Instructions that I'm doubtful would be followed about things that no one could probably do anything about anyway. I'd leave behind many millions of words of art, tens of thousands of works, with none of it organized very well. It'd be the work of someone's life to preside over it all, and more like the work of each person of a staff's life. So, yeah--no.

I'm finding it harder and harder to fight it off. There is no one who is going to care. I'm also starting to see--or believe, anyway--that it's going to take my death for anything good pertaining my work to happen, or be seen. I'm not banking on it. But I'm the problem. My being alive is a problem. There is something about me that is made to stand as a barrier between anything good and just. Everyone is so intent on opposing me because of what I am. A person I know who gets a story form me at Christmas wants to oppose me. To not let me have even the kind and true words I deserve.

They'll read with a kind of glasses on, too. That same person will read that same story when I am gone and it will be different. They'll want to say all of these things to me, too, that they could just say to me now but wouldn't. I'm not saying that I'm not still trying to fight--this is fighting--to live to 100 and get out of this situation that is worse than hell and get my house back in Rockport and one on Cape Cod and change the world to the good more than anyone ever has. I'm not saying I'm giving up. I'm saying how things have been, how I feel. I haven't given up as of the very seconds I am writing this sentence.

Maybe we'll look back on this later and laugh. A chilling laugh.

I feel like I should put something nice here now. This is from "Dead Thomas." I was working on this part yesterday (and today).

“Give her her space when she needs space,” my mom advised. “But not too much space if you know what I mean.”

I said sure, but a sure isn’t a yes. A sure can mean you’ll try to understand because you don’t just then. Kind of like with Thomas already. The janitor had a heart attack the year before so we did have some experience with this type of thing, but the implications of an overweight middle-aged man’s corpse in the hallway with a mop beside it are different from those of a dead boy standing in front of your English class.  

"A sure can mean you'll try to understand because you don't just then." That's the stuff, isn't it? You can't fake the stuff. It's either something you have or you don't. That's there or isn't.

"Dark Streets of London" is the Pogues' other great Christmas song, by the way. I could also post that on various socials and there wouldn't be a single like because, again, it's not been said or thought before, it has value, and it's interesting. Doesn't work like that. The trick is getting it to. And unlike with the problem in the story, that's not one I've solved. I'm no closer than I was 5000 years ago before I existed. I don't think so, anyway.

"Time" works just fine on its own, by the way. So does the guitar solo.

Almost every day that I'm in the Monument, someone on the way up will ask someone on te way down if it's worth it. Sometimes the person they ask is me. And in this question, I hear much of what is wrong with the world. It wouldn't be going too far to say that I hate this person who has asked the question. I hate everything about them. Which I basically now know. Is it worth it for me to so much as walk up some stairs?

If I say yes, does that mean you keep going? Or you're more inclined to? If I say no, does that mean you turn around, or think about doing so?

You can't put forward a modicum of effort--ten minutes out of your day, here at this place you will likely never be again--to find out for yourself?

Why be alive if you're like this? Just to make the world worse by being you? Spreading your you-ness?

This is such a simple thing--ten minutes of indulged curiosity and follow-through. Some stairs. And even that might be too much. That this person is asking this question something of briefest duration and minimal effort says it all. Because it's on the verge of the most of what they're willing to do. And they see it as maximum effort. To them, it is. They have no curiosity. Are open to no wonder. If you're asking this question here, then there's never going to be a time when make a point of finding out on your own if something that takes time and effort--real time and effort--is worth it. And everything that's good does. Being a good person. A friend. Parent. Spouse. Writer. Guitarist. Reading a book. Learning about a subject. Conditioning your body. Changing your diet. Controlling your temper. Listening.

It's 294 stairs to the top of the Monument. With windows to look out of and see the world from a new place.

Is it worth it?

And if they're asking the question just to ask the question, and the answer doesn't matter, then that's not much better, because it's just one more person wanting to talk for the sake of talking, of having their turn. Babble, babble, babble. Words without intent, words without meaning. Babble, babble, babble.

I won't even answer the people who ask me this. They are not worth a single word from me. They have less value than a single dead blade of grass.

Is it worth it?