Dave Portnoy's doppelganger, Keats and sedge, first time flossing, a pitchers' duel sighting, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, big Sabbath for the Boston sports fan

Saturday 4/18/26

Dave Portnoy looks like toilet paper that didn't go down with the flush and is later discovered to still be there. He is also the morality version of this.

Sedge is a great grass. If you grow in a marsh, you seem on the right side of things to me. No wonder Keats included some in "La Belle Dame sans Merci." When the sedge starts to wither, you know things are getting real.

I like my dental floss old school and without promises on the package about how gentle it will be--so gentle, in fact, that it's not floss, but dental tape. It's important not to be a pussy in all matters, and floss is a matter. You'll only weaken yourself further, which will make you less capable of fulfillment.

I'm taken aback--which is something I say, but nothing about people on the negative side of the ledger surprises me, though it seems like this is, perhaps paradoxically, still worth saying--when people not only don't floss, but take to social media to convey this information. I saw someone the other day ask how long their gums would keep bleeding now that they've started flossing for the first time in their lives.

Why would you broadcast this to people? You could locate the relevant information in mere seconds if that's what you really wanted. But it isn't what they want. They want attention. Which is mostly all that anyone seeks.

You are better off not brushing your teeth and flossing than you are brushing your teeth and not flossing. So this is like going on social media and telling the world you've never brushed your teeth, but worse. Cool. Great thing to brag about. But anything for attention, right? I won't go outside without flossing.

The Red Sox won 1-0 last night in ten innings over the Tigers. It feels misleading being exact about the extra innings part, because that presupposes the game could have gone however many innings--fifteen, sixteen, what have you--when that's not really the case now, is it, with the gimmick extra innings regular season set-up?

But this was a kind of game you don't see much of anymore: a pitchers' duel. Isn't that awful? This wonderful thing, this cool thing, this dramatic thing, this contest of ability, strength, guile, wills--one of the best possible parts of baseball--is a thing of the past.

In order to have a pitcher's duel, both guys have to, well, keep pitching. You can't have a pitchers' duel when one or both guys leaves in the fifth or sixth, and how many starting pitchers ever go more than five or six now?

Ranger Suarez went eight for the Red Sox, who...cue the trumpet fanfare...didn't make an error in the field! Wowzer. A Sox pitcher going eight and the defense not committing an error? What are the chances I'll be able to say that again this season for the Red Sox? If the over/under is 1, I'd bet the under. If I bet. Which I never have and never will. But for argument's sake. Unfortunately, the Sox still can't hit. They have to face Skubal today.

I acquired a digital copy of The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) which I'll probably be throwing away after I watch it but I've not seen it yet and given all of my writings on horror films and also things pertaining to Dracula, it seems like I should. I don't pay for these things but rather have methods.

Tomorrow will be a cool day to be a Boston sports fan with the Bruins and the Celtics opening up their first round playoff series. I'd rather have the Bruins start on the road than at home and I just want the Celtics to keep doing what they've been doing. To do their thing. And not let the moment dictate what they think their thing should be. You have a really good team. Be that team.

You can't really predict how most NHL series will go, or which series will be duds and which the better ones--not until they get going, anyway--but here at the outset I think Penguins-Flyers could be pretty good given that rivalry, and also Canadiens-Lightning.