Thursday 4/22/21
* I am not sure what to make of this, but quite often when I read something stupid--as I just did about Tom Brady being too old to learn jersey numbers--and I click on the profile, the site, or the photo of the person who wrote the stupid remark, that person looks exactly like I would have expected them to look. Clearly this is not science, and one would think there's no basis in reality or reason, but my anecdotal experience in these matters can at least cause me to wonder if there's some correlation. It gets quite uncanny. This was some bro type at The Ringer. He indeed looked like that drunken cousin you'd be embarrassed about. Straight out of drunken cousin casting. And fifty thousands followers. Again, the ass voice.
* From Thoreau's journals for Earth Day: “I love to hear the wind howl. I have a fancy for sitting with my book or paper in some mean and apparently unfavorable place, in the kitchen, for instance, where the work is going on, rather a little cold than comfortable.” Clearly not the ass voice.
* Today I've nursed my own version of that cold as the wind howls. I have worked while somewhat uncomfortable, and composed a major story called "Fetch and Ferry." It's 1700 words long, and thus not for Longer on the Inside. I believe this is what I'm moving towards right now--less of the very short works. Though I have, of course, been doing the long works all along. But as I said to someone recently, I am an artist who can make a lot of hay in the ballpark of the 2000s.
* I just did the photo test again. There was a fine fellow who also posted about Tom Brady. He, too, has many thousands of followers. No affiliation with a magazine or anything. Not a writer. Just a fine fellow. And he posted something that he called his daily reminder, and then intricately fashioned a big F out of dashes--so it gave the illusion of being three-dimensional--and added the letters u-c-k after it, and then "Tom Brady." I like to be fair, so I looked at a second tweet. Now, in this one, he went the Gif route. Or is it a meme? I don't know because I'm an adult who uses adult words. But back to our man. The image was of an X-ray of this blue-ish being with a bent back and a curved spine. You will enjoy the text provided by this charming flaneur: 'How my back feels after carrying my enormous dick all day." Pretty good, right? Wouldn't you like to follow such a fellow? Clicked on his picture. Had that chin strap beard thingy. And sunglasses on. Which is...well, it's what you'd expect, right?
* I have really hit upon something with the ass voice. It's so dead-on true. You have to have the ass voice. Until that changes. Hopefully I will change it. But right now, it's ass voice or bust.
* Was sufficiently cold that I made some very hot dandelion tea. That's a nice tea. Grassy notes.
* Random baseball stat I'm not sure I've mentioned here before. Wade Boggs led the AL in OPS in both 1987 and 1988. He had power numbers in 1987, so that's not shocking. But 1988 is, because Boggs had 5 home runs and 58 RBI. So far as I know, there is nothing remotely like that in the modern era. You have to go back to Dead Ball times when you could lead the league with 5 home runs.
* Listened to the first Talking Heads album and some Vaccines demos from their debut.
* Kimball is pretty good at predicting sports things. I've noticed this about him over the years. He had a good take on a Patriots-Jaguars playoff game before it happened. He's been right on the money about the Red Sox this year, including with Eduardo Rodriguez. I am quite surprised by how well Rodriguez has fared.
* I don't watch videos of shootings, stabbings, people being set on fire, run over, anything like that. I don't think it's good for a person. I'm both surprised and not surprised that so many others do. I did see a still from that episode in Columbus, of a man stopping on a woman's skull. This is all going on after the cops have been called. If you were someone with a penchant for trying to cave in skulls with your boots, wouldn't you leave that for another time once the police were there? Wouldn't that deter you? I don't understand this mindset. Even from the selfish standpoint. Something is going to happen to you. Best case scenario is that's "only" being arrested. Doesn't being arrested make almost any day, no matter how bad it might already be, worse? Is the stomp that precious to such a person? That integral to what they're trying to achieve that afternoon? I'm not sure I can understand that level of brazenness. Or being that dead through and through that you don't even pause. Nary a beat was skipped. I don't understand, too--though I also kind of do--why this behavior is not called out as the actual problem. Or, if not the actual, "only" problem, as big a problem as there is? From news reports, you'd think people were just fine and upstanding and they're going about the living of their lives in reasonable ways. What way is this? If the police never show up. They're not called. And someone just filmed all of this. What manner of savagery do we have? What justification is there for any of it? How is there no assigning of responsibility? I think it's disturbing when people talk about other people as if they're incapable of not being a savage. Like they have no utility to even be this thread, this tiny little strand, of a non-savage human. It's just how it is. They have no say. Are they helpless? Is it everything else's fault? Everyone else's? I only have bad days. I only have a bad life. I have poverty. I have discrimination. I have many people who hate me. Who hate what I represent and what they think I represent. I am hated by so many people who don't know me, or, perhaps worse yet, hated by so many people who know me for a good person, a unique talent, a ceaseless worker. You're not supposed to be hated for these things. You're supposed rewarded for them. But I don't curb stomp anyone. And if I did curb stomp someone, I'd be insulted--a weird thing to say here, I know--if someone thought I was just helpless and had no say in my own behavior. I get having a bad day. A rough time of things. A horrible patch of life. Losing yourself. Saying what you shouldn't. I've largely ironed all of that out of my existence, because I am this Zen-type figure, ironically, who walks around all by himself 3000 miles a year in deep contact and dialogue with the very depths of the self. But there are not people who have worse lives, lonelier lives, or more reasons to be angry than I do right now. I have thousands of people against me because I do the right thing. And because I keep getting better. Imagine what that is like? When you are also automatically turned aside by someone who has done nothing, because you did something that for anyone else would make their career, only you've done it thousands of times. What opens the doors for another, makes someone get off on being able to close theirs in your face. Because it was you. And you came along with something. Imagine the anger that can produce? I don't have the luxury of anger. Think about that. There'd be too much of it. There would be so much of it that I wouldn't be able to fight. To focus. To create. To keep trying. Which, as these pages make abundantly plain, makes everything worse.
* I need to do a much better job with various things. I'm not finishing what I should be finishing, and I'm not dealing with what I should be dealing with. I'm not being brave enough.
