Early morning Labor Day 2026: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gilmore Girls, Dorothy L. Sayers, the Fugs, Trump, Arsenic and Old Lace, conversationalists, post-apocalyptic world, last of the artists, Box 13

Monday 9/7/26

55 degrees in Boston in the early hours of Labor Day 2026. Comfortable.

The big morning swig of olive oil for the heart.

Another morning in which I have the Fugs' "The Rhapsody of Tuli" stuck in my head. "Hypothalamus Hypothalamus Hypothalamus/That's the brain for me..."

Finally went to the post office to mail "Hero of Mine" to Lilah on Saturday after running stairs.

From F. Scott Fitzgerald's poem, "Thousand-and-First Ship," one of my favorite works of his, from his Notebooks, one of my favorite books:

There’d be an orchestra Bingo! Bango! Playing for us To dance the tango And people would clap When we arose At her sweet face And my new clothes.

But more than all this Was the promise she made That nothing, nothing, Ever would fade— Nothing would fade Winter or fall Nothing would fade, Practically nothing at all.

The opening of Dorothy L. Sayers' weekly column of mystery book reviews in 1933: "While every detective story is a blend of thrill and puzzle, there is a great deal of variation in the toughness of the amalgam. Some readers prefers to be thrilled by the puzzle, and others to be puzzled by the thrill. This week's assortment ranges over the whole scale of toughness." So different from today's barrage of AI writing and writing indistinguishable from AI.

It’s amazing—but also depressingly expected—how many times each day I have cause to think, “Maybe some headphones, you entitled ass.” These people are always listening to/watching garbage as well. It isn't Eric Dolphy and Booker Little at the Five Spot.

"Do we go in or do we just stand here reenacting 'The Little Match Girl'?" A literary joke in the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls, which I have now seen as of Saturday morning. I wonder how many people got that then, which nonetheless was surely a much greater number than would get it now. All of 900 words long, that story. You can read it in four minutes. Has more in it than many novels combined.

If you have good taste in cinema, comedy, and horror, you've likely seen 1944's Arsenic and Old Lace, but you're apt to be less familiar with the 1952 radio adaptation starring the man of the horror match, Boris Karloff. A fine way to transition into autumn before busting out the big terror heavies of the season.

People often think Donald Trump is the cause, when the truth is he's the result of what we've become. He's a byproduct of society in which no one can read or think and wants to do neither, stares at screens, cares only about themselves, has no interests, no purpose, no friends, can't speak for themselves in their own words, and is intellectually, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually lazy to the point of not wishing to expend the slightest effort if it's not absolutely needed--and it rarely is--in any of those areas.

That's why I don't focus on Trump that much. He's an issue, but he's not close to the issue. He's what you get when this is how we are and how we live. Those are the two real issues. Ironically, the people who rail against Trump are almost always as guilty of the same above things as the people who treat Trump like the Messiah. Which is to say, equally the issue.

One glances at the news--which isn't really a thing anymore, but rather a case of "what's trending"--and sees that a toddler who happens to the the president of the United States now wants to change the name of New Mexico to New America. This man, if you want to even call him that, is such a base simpleton. He runs on baseness. No light could permeate his fundamental darkness. The darkness of ignorance. And as childish as this renaming efforts always are, they're perhaps even more unimaginative. He just retitles everything "America."

If you went back to the 1940s and told Americans that this was the future, and someday there'd be a person in office like this, they wouldn't be capable of believing you. It sounds so...corny, too. So carnival-y, too. Barker-y. Lowbrow. First grade. Those people in the 1940s wouldn't have been able to conceive of and credit the idea of us getting stupider and stupider and stupider. They'd have thought the opposite was going to happen, believing in and thinking progress was the natural way of things.

But if it once was, it no longer is, and it's hard to imagine anything but further devolution and the end of humanity will be the result. Humanity can end with humans still existing on earth. But if none of those humans can think, can't speak, are all the same, have chips in their brains--which is coming--then humanity is over.

You are going to end up with what's similar to a post-apocalyptic world, with the difference being that the population won't have declined. When we think about post-apocalyptic scenarios, most of the race has been wiped out. Technically, everyone would be wiped out, but you know what I mean. The "survivors"--which means billions of people--will be ruled by a shadow network of enslaving overlords, with roots, however far back they go by then, in the corporate, AI, and private equity sectors.

I am certain that's what is at stake and what will happen unless things are made to change within my lifetime. It'll be too late if they haven't by then. I am already the last of the artists, or the first of something else. Among other things.

"Snacks" has become an annoying word used with fake cute coyness which is then used that way out in the world because the world becomes what social media is.

Been listening to a lot of episodes of Box 13 with Alan Ladd lately. It's an excellent radio series. One of the best. In one episode, Ladd's Dan Holiday character--who is a writer--describes someone he had lunch with--who drugs and kidnaps him, but setting that aside--as a formidable conversationalist.

A conversationalist. They don't exist anymore. People don't even know that word. Most have never seen or heard it in their lives. But there isn't anyone who could fit this bill, because you'd have to speak in your own words in an arresting way. You couldn't say literally, GOAT, hill to die on, objectively, clapped back, give him his flowers, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, and if people can't use those word modules--which is all anyone uses--then they are incapable of saying anything.

Not that they are saying anything. But they have no words of their own. They have no thoughts either. It's all about looking at the pile of the established word modules--a big pile of junk--and pulling out a few. That's how people talk and think. There's no thinking to their thinking. It's looking at the word module pile and pulling out some broken linguistic deck chairs of the sinking ship of humanity and humanness.

I was at Trader Joe's on Sunday morning in the Seaport. It opens at nine. If I get there right when it opens, hustle through the store, I can drop things off back here and make to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown right at ten o'clock when it opens or a minute or two after. I get to Trader Joe's a few minutes early rather than risk being a few minutes late. There are people waiting outside. Many of these people are couples. They sit on benches, side-by-side.

And you know what every last person there is doing, without fail? Including all the couples? They're staring at their screens. The couples aren't talking. If I liked someone enough to want to be with them--though I'm certain I'll always be alone--I wouldn't want to sit next to them and look at a screen while they looked at theirs. I'd want to talk to them. There are an endless amount of things to talk about.

People don't even care about each other. They rarely care about their "partner"--a ridiculous word in this context. They are with that person for other reasons. It isn't love. It's not connection. It's expectation, it's "What else am I going to do?", it's not wanting to be alone.

What could you possibly be looking at on your phone on a Sunday morning next to your wife who is also looking at her phone? Instagram? Probably, right? You'd rather scroll through Instagram while you're out than talk to the person next to you. Or just "be" in the world. Observe. Be present. I see so much everywhere I go, and everything there is to be seen in each of these instances, places, moments in time, are lost on everyone else there save myself. I see so deeply into these things as well. The lives. The world.

How can you want to be with someone who has nothing to say to you? Then again, in these cases, it's not like either party has anything to say to the other. I can't conceive of sitting next to someone on a beautiful late summer/early fall morning and being fine and contented with them preferring to look at their Instagram. What are you doing together? You're not really together. You're just boyfriend and girlfriend or married. But it's not being with someone. Not really.

Got the first sunflowers of September. Meanwhile: Hallway Hermey is back on the mulled cider. He's starting to ramp up.