Friday 7/12/24
I'm charging up.
Had to do some unpleasant things yesterday as preludes to other unpleasant things with publishing people, but I'm ready. It's a very easy and straightforward matter, as one example, showing what a bigot Andrew Chan of the Criterion Collection is. He's the editor of their online journal and a member of that incestuous Brooklyn circle of these odious people. You have the facts, the information, and you just put it out there. And there it is. For all to see. It's factual. No one can say it's anything else. No one will. Then it's just out there, viewable by the public. The truth about someone like this. And you see all of the other people--also featured or to be featured on here--they're in bed with. All of the points of connection.
I even told him he was busted. Very politely. I don't want to have to do this. I give you every chance to stop the discrimination. I knew what he was doing and I had proof. I can even break down the email he had sent--the first he'd ever sent me--and show exactly what he was doing with certain words he was using. These people are so simple and so stupid. You'll learn all of their little tricks inside of a week. I'll show you the emails later. This went on for years and it was only yesterday that I said something. Again, very politely. Professionally. Giving someone their final chance to knock it off.
Now, what would you do if someone said something like what I said to this guy--about being busted--to you and they were in the wrong or making these false accusations? You'd say something, right? But if you were caught--red-handed, as they used to say--and knew these things were true and that you had been doing them? That person says nothing. What can they say? "My bad, you're right." Not going to say that. They could say, "I understand where you're coming from, you're right, things got away from me, would you be open to..." Easy. In theory.
But these people don't have those social or life skills to do that or, frankly, much of anything. They're helpless and even when they might want to get out of their own way, they can't do it. So they turtle (while also going around to their little cronies and saying, "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, do this to him, yeah, get him for me, don't let him advance where you are, I hate him, I hate him," etc.), which I don't like writing, because I respect turtles. They might try some facile excuse, but they're also apt to know that that's going to make things worse and will also be used against them with everyone seeing all of it. So they take their chances. They do nothing and hope it doesn't become a problem for them, or not too big of one.
It's really your choice. Personally, I don't have a choice when it comes to taking your discrimination indefinitely. It's not an option for me to say, "Yes, I'll do that. By all means, get away with discriminating against me. The person whose work is better than any you publish. We can put it side by side. The person whose track record dwarfs that of anyone you publish. The person who is the leading expert on everything and which is easily proven. The person who does every kind of writing every way. The person with the fount of excellent ideas. The kind person, the professional person, who has never done a single thing to you, save be better than you are."
Yeah--I don't have a choice there. Many people have been given years or decades of rope. Two decades in instances like with our friend Sy Safransky of The Sun. When really all you should get is one chance's worth of rope. I'd like that to be how it is going forward on here. I simply need to commit to that mindset and do what I need to do.
I should add this: People who aren't a victim of them really like the prose offs. I've been getting reports. A prose off is foolproof. It just pulls the truth right out into the open and shines a bright light on it. There's nothing anyone can say to justify what they've been doing after a prose off. It's impossible. I love a good prose off and there are many of them upcoming. When you're trying to get away with what these people are trying to get away with, you're not figuring or prepared for the likes of this. Who else would do it? Who else could? It's just me.
Did some of those unpleasant things whilst running stairs inside of the Monument. When I was going in a ranger queried, "You going to do five laps today?" These are all different rangers saying these things. I felt like I would have been letting the guy down if I said, "No, just one or two." I did the five, walked three miles, did 100 push-ups. As a rule of thumb, if you're doing five circuits of stairs inside of the Bunker Hill Monument in this July soup, then I think you're probably doing okay, heart-wise. Or at least I hope so.
Had to send someone a photo yesterday for a op-ed that will run this weekend. I actually haven't had an op-ed run with this venue before. Wouldn't even write back. Then I'm sitting on here on the Fourth of July, I send the piece, ten minutes later, we're good to go. Why? Did I get better? Right. I simply ended up with someone who was going to be however much open to the idea of something being possibly good. It's never the writing. I've done other things for this place and they didn't pay me the last time and I'm worried they're not going to pay me this time and it's a big place. I think I screwed up the photo. Sometimes venues ask for them. Once something is in print, or up online, I don't even look. All I do is get the link for the site, put that in the News section, which needs to be updated. And it's also supposed to go in one of the subject sections, but most of those are badly--we're talking like a thousand links--out of date, un-updated, however you want to term it, and I need to fix this. The site needs real work. The site is an atomic tank. It needs to be properly kept up and kitted out, and I must commit to that. Scrooge isn't even listed in the Books section. That's obviously bad. The Op-eds section is up to date, at least, but it needs to be reconfigured so there are fewer links on each single page and it's consistent across the site. Anyway, there were all of these guidelines for the photo. You had to be looking this way, positioned at this angle. I'm all alone. I don't really have proper photos. I did send them something.
I spoke briefly to my buddy late in the day on FaceTime when she was over at Grammie's. I'm often not available at that time but she wanted to talk--but then she didn't, because when we were on the phone she learned that she has to go to her brother's baseball tournament game today up in Milwaukee. The girls go to a lot of these games and there isn't often a lot for them to do there unless there's also a playground. You have the drive, it's hot, all of those hours. There goes the day. So she stormed off to my late sister Kerrin's room to pout.
Grammie tracked her down eventually and when she came back on the phone she had this expression of pure four-year-old "oh woe is me" on her face, and I said, "Hey! What kind of face is that?" and she hung up on me. You have to try to make the best of these things. Doing stuff you don't want to do. I texted Grammie to tell her that I am still her buddy because sometimes a buddy gets down in the dumps and that's okay and buddies understand.
Lilah was also there but she doesn't talk to me very much and she's always doing something. Yesterday she was reading Heidi and I asked her how grandpa was doing and if she'd read it before (she had) but she didn't have much to say.
Red Sox blanked the Athletics 7-0, taking the series, with Houck getting the win. His command was still shaking, though, despite going six scoreless. High percentage of balls. Yankees lost. I'm not really expecting the Red Sox to catch the Yankees, but rather to see them in a fight for that third Wild Card spot. But who knows? Let's see what happens. I like to watch the Red Sox run--get on the base paths and fly. Big game from catcher Connor Wong.
This is from a letter yesterday to some people:
"Finder of Views" went over 11,000 words this AM. It may get longer, it may get shorter. It's the second work in Big Asks: Six Novelettes About Acceptance. It and ten or so other major works should be done soon. Things like "Friendship Bracelet," "The Ghost and the Flame," "May Showers," "Go and Come Back." I can't say the things I want to say about a work like this one because of the existence of those other works. I can't single it out. But wait until you see this. In the meanwhile, here are a few paragraphs that have been worked on today.
More soon enough.
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