Complements or not

Saturday 9/19/26

Woke up with a headache yesterday AM and have scarcely been able to shake it now for twenty-four hours. Did the stairs in the Monument with it then didn't want to take any pain relievers afterwards. I like to be Ibuprofen free; that is, not to need anything to "recover" from my workouts, no matter how extreme they are. But this was a head thing and therefore not related to stairs so I figured it was okay and it hurt a decent amount. I have some medicine left over from last summer's root canal which has expired, but I figured it would work some and that way I can save money by saving the Advil I have. Each of these tablets is the strength of three Advils, or once were.

Walking to the Monument yesterday I thought about how I'd done so many circuits of stairs and I had exactly the same amount in front of me if I wanted to reach this goal I've set for the week. The stairs got done; it was a grind-it-out affair. My goal after I reach this goal (allowing I do) is to improve my pace and be lighter on my feet and more athletic on the stairs. But first things first, the grinding through these next two days. If I can do the amount I intend to today, I'll tie the one-week record with a day to spare.

I've been listening to a lot of Big Star lately.

Got some fresh sunflowers yesterday.

Sent two pieces to Bloodvine.

The Red Sox won last night against the Rays in Tampa. Roman Anthony led off with a home run. Take that, Fleming. Thank you, I will. Ranger Suarez was solid again. That's three starts in a row.

Payton Tolle is almost certainly going to start a game in Yankee Stadium soon in which the Red Sox can either eliminate the Yankees or will need to win to stave off elimination. A big moment is coming for him.

I believe my buddy/niece Amelia cheered at the Lake Forest football game last night. They have the little kids come out. First grade seems like it's off to a nice start for her. She gets along with classmates and then comes home and is mean to her brother and sister, both of whom are two of the nicest kids. I joked to my mom that maybe she's a big Robert Louis Stevenson fan and this is her idea of a homage.

Going to send this wonderful reading by Martin Jarvis of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by to some people I know this morning. It's in my top ten of readings. What else is there? Orson Welles reading Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" and the Gospel of Luke, Christopher Lee reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jonathan Keeble reading M.R. James's short stories.

Wanted to go to the Harvard Art Museums and then see The Goonies at the Brattle yesterday but that headache stopped me. Would've really liked to see that on the big screen.

Hoping to make it out to Boston College today for the football game against Maine. Has a late start so I should be able to run stairs and get to Chestnut Hill in time. Their few supporters say this could well be the last game BC wins this year, but I don't think so. The last time they played Maine it was actually fairly competitive for a while. Even my mom said to me the other day that college football is hard to watch now. It really is a turn off. It used to be fun. Had this spirit to it that no other sport did, a feel. It felt...enclosed. Like you were going into this special, self-contained spot. It felt like unity. Of time, place. If you went to that school, you watched players who played for that school, and it meant something to each of you. You were on the same side in a way that you aren't with professional teams. They lived in the dorms you lived in, ate in the cafeterias where you ate, had classes in the same buildings. You each spent formative times of your life there. And you felt that same spirit as you watched whatever two schools go at it. Northwestern at Notre Dame, say. That's gone now.

The frivolous manner in which people use/toss around the word "love" says much.

There are these people who mostly do nice work with the available technology in improving the sound quality of archival tapes that usually have never been released, but more and more I see them doctoring the music itself. For instance, replacing a bum George Harrison guitar note by dropping in a cleaner execution of that same note from early in the song. You can't be doing this. Part of the value of the tape is its historical component. To vitiate that is to lessen that value.

These recordings aren't to be listened to the way one listens to a commercially released single. You have to let their history, their in-that-moment aspect be a part of them and your listening experience. That doesn't mean it can't be out and out amazing music in and of itself. I'd clearly be the last person to suggest that. You want to boost a vocal because a mic was turned down or remove some distortion in the source tape, fine, have a go and see how that comes out. But leave the music that was played alone. That bum George Harrison note was part of that concert and it says something, was something. You want reality, not fantasy, even fantasy in the size of one note.

Keep thinking about that little girl from the other day and her dad with his "Can't you just use AI?" response. A child can theoretically do their own thing. Be them no matter what. I grew up with wonderful parents. Nurturing, encouraging, moral, loving people. My mother was especially nurturing. My father was especially moral. They complemented each other perfectly.

At the same time, I was going to be me if I'd been raised by wolves in the woods. But that's me. A child can naturally be inclined to think, to explore their curiosity, to seek an answer rather than walk away not knowing, to want to hear or read stories, and yet live in, be in, such an environment where these drives are tamped down and lessened, and eventually fade away or are sorely diminished. Also, a young child tends to look up to a parent. Which means following in suit, even subconsciously, with the behavior they see modeled and the attitudes stated and reinforced by their accompanying actions.

Most people are bad people. Most people are stupid, incurious, anti-intellectual, mentally lazy. So how are those people going to tend to and help develop the minds and moral character of impressionable young people who with whom they have far more influence than anyone or anything else? I mean, how do you think that is going to go? How could it not go disastrously?

Yes, there are some exceptions, but that's exactly what they are. And yet, everyone thinks they're God's gift to parenting. Nothing can be said to challenge that. A hell of a lot should be said to challenge that. Because poor parenting, people's inability to parent, how utterly unqualified they are to be a parent, is a huge reason why the world is what the world is right now, in every aspect of that world. Or at least with this country. I'm not saying that's why the situation in the Middle East is what it is.

People are so obtuse, so simple, so incapable of thought, so bereft of purpose, so oblivious as to what matters and what doesn't, so easily distracted, that you could throw a shiny dime on the floor and millions and millions of them would be captivated and entranced and crawl over each other's backs for a better view or to get a hand on the dime as they each babbled something about the dime into this cacophony of the common, stupid man. That's all you have to do if you have resources, tech, and evil designs, and you can hijack the entire world.

Look at this Converse ad. If you're in the future reading this, I'm not going to go into detail about the ad here. Presumably, you'll have means to check it out if that's what you want to do. But the ad itself is less the story--though no one else can understand this--than what people did to make it go viral and then after. You see the emptiness of lives. You see the inability to think. To apply any logic or common sense. Even if this ad was intended as a racist proclamation, people don't even understand what would make it racist. They point to the wrong things in the image. They misidentify the would-be racist aspects. They're too dumb to even understand what it is they're trying to object to.

Great time of the year to watch 1957's Night of the Demon, which I'll write about soon for the Halloween season. If it's a film piece, I often won't mention Halloween, because I don't want to tether that piece to the calendar. You want your work to be free of time. But the films I write about at that time of the year need to films that if you sat down to watch them on Halloween they'd complement the occasion, the feeling, the spirit. That's my yardstick scenario/hypothetical.

Good head work last night while I was lying down with that headache on what may be the last story for There Is No Doubt: Story Girls.