Gonna get hot

Tuesday 6/24/25

Did five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument Sunday. Ten would have been better, but the air was thick and I decided to call it and move on to doing a good job this week when the Monument opens again. Forty circuits last week, though, which is solid. Twenty-five circuits in a week is commendable. But in trying to do 400 circuits in three months, I have to do better than that with a number of these weeks. Up to 815 now since August 15. That's 215 circuits since May 15.

Because I did less than I wanted to Sunday, I didn't let myself cool down after beneath the mist-dispensing nozzles outside. What is wrong with this guy? He's so intense. I know. What can I say? I'm not like other people and I don't run this ship like other people run their ship. But I still probably should have cooled down in the mist. Also did 100 push-ups and walked five miles.

The heat was starting to get brutal. People say, "This is the best time of the year!" It's the worst. You know the kind of person I think you need to be to think that this time of the year--with the heat jacked up--is the best time of the year? A sedentary person. You like to sit. I don't mean sit to write or listen to Art of Fugue. I mean sit on your ass. By things. A pool, a beach. But sit. Spend your timing just sitting there.

Because if you're out and about, moving around, you sweat. You drip. I walked from here to Trader Joe's after I had come home and showered following the Monument, and not that far into that walk it was obvious I'd need to shower again. People like that? I believe the people who do are riding in cars, don't walk much, and think sitting there is a gay time. But maybe I'm wrong.

It was warm yesterday afternoon. But today is the day that sounds like it's going to be one of those days. It's 87 degrees here at quarter past one in the AM.

Back to the dentist in West Medford yesterday morning. I'll be out there again next week for the temporary crown. Then another visit after that for the permanent one. He showed me the before and after X-rays from last Monday and today. I thanked him at length for his help. As my mom said to me, "I can't imagine too many people getting a ride somewhere from their dentist."

Adding fifteen hashtags to a social media post is a form of whoring. Maybe a work or product post, but just something about you? Whoring.

Watched 1964's The Strangler again--one of the better horror films of the 1960s. Lately I've been rewatching many of the horror films I'm writing about as I work on the horror film book.

Read Dorothy L. Sayers' "The Poisoned Dow" on my short trip to West Medford. A few okay lines, but confusing in parts, and not sure what the ending was supposed to mean. Felt dashed off and like she didn't work very hard on it.

Watched the Red Sox gag away their rubber match against the Giants Sunday. The sorriest fielding team in the big leagues. Error by Duran on a lazy fly. Soft liner to second that was somehow not caught. That was the game right there. If the Red Sox had played competently, they would have won the game and the series. They make errors on some of the most routine plays. I don't even mean grounders. That happens. But routine balls in the air.

Pacers lost. As expected, but still--when people say, "They had a great run," that's what they mean. The Pacers had a great run. They're not a great team (then again, neither is OKC, as I think we learned), and the Eastern Conference is weak, but they had a run that made their fans happy and they're a team that will be remembered by those fans. It's a shame about Haliburton rupturing his Achilles. You see this when a player has an injury like he already had and plays on it. I don't blame him in the least. You have to play that game. A competitor is going to play in that game unless it's physically impossible for him to do so. They couldn't win without him. Someone stupid will say something stupid--for clicks and attention--about shortening the NBA playoffs. Watch.

Kevin Durant was traded to the Rockets. When will people wise up about this guy? He's a chronic loser. A coach killer and team wrecker. A passenger and coattail rider. Losing is in his DNA. It's who he is.

Celtics traded Jrue Holiday. People will say they have no shot next year. They have a better chance of winning the title next season than they did this season. Stop playing like assholes, play the right way--or a less stupid way--rather than heaving threes all night no matter what, get that under control, get Tatum back in the spring, make a run out of a not-very-good Eastern Conference. The Celtics were not a great team the year they won the championship. People like Michael Holley saying, "They're so good, if they're healthy they'll win it again," had no idea what they were talking about. There are no great teams in the league now and there hasn't been for a while. The Celtics were no different than the Bucks, the Nuggets, and now this OKC team. They had a favorable path, they won. Shit lined up and worked out. As I said around this time last year, they are likely not to win again with Tatum and Brown. But the Boston media has this strange institutional arrogance and delusion with the Celtics, where it's like the institutional arrogance of the Celtics from back in the Red Auerbach years somehow still exists and has rubbed off on them. It's bizarre, but Celtics fans and Boston sports media people (and their current broadcast team/group of studio analysts) always think the Celtics are much better than they are.

Tarik Skubal sounds to me like a guy who is not re-signing with the Detroit Tigers. Connor McDavid sounds to me like a guy who may very well be re-signing with the Edmonton Oilers.

Some nice work on "Still Good." Getting there. Focus this morning was on the first page and a half. So much math and music coming at you. Math and music blitz. Words, in a way, are the least of what writing is about. The math and the music stem from the words. Think of the words as the building unit. The medium. The nails, the paint, the keys. For most writers--and every other writer now--they remain nails, paint, and keys. No more. Great writing isn't like that. The nails, paint, and keys are transmogrified. Then we're talking about other things. AI could never replicate this. Never produce anything for which this is true. I am confident--it's not even that; I'm certain; utterly certain, as certain as I can be of anything--that I am the only writer who cannot be replaced or replicated by AI. I am fast becoming the only human, too, of which this is true, or what was previously understood as what a human is. There is little I have going for me. There is almost everything against me. But that I am the lone writer or artist who cannot be replaced may be one significant thing in my favor. Or it may mean nothing in the end. And long before the end.