Friday 6/4/21
An intense morning. I will take to these pages to regather. I came up with a story idea. I put it aside for later. I have already written four this week. Then I came up with another. That one I wrote. Right now it stands at 1600 words and it is devastating. I need to fix it, see where it is at. It's called "Seedless Cherries." There is no such thing as a seedless cherry in nature. They have to be man-made.
Okay. That's enough regathering. Time to finish this horror film essay and get ready to try and sell it. Get this done, write an op-ed on The Office pegged to the twentieth anniversary of the original British and just how awful the American version is, and start, at least, this other essay.
I already know that the story from moments ago needs to be longer. I'll hang more on it. But probably tomorrow.
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Done with the horror film essay. It's 2700 words long. Have to fix it. Started the op-ed on The Office.
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Had a few things to touch up in "The Summer Friend." Then sent it to The New Yorker. Wrote Rolling Stone about Meatheads, and also sent them a pdf copy of the Sam Cooke book.
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I need to finally unload Cheer Pack, find someone who wants to do Meatheads Part II, find a place for Longer on the Inside, and find someone for Become Your Own (Super) Hero: Modern Fiction in Twenty Easy Steps (Stories). This is like a clogged artery here. More books need to start going faster and coming out.
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What one learns on a dating app is that a demo really, really, really into God--so much so that the word God will represent at least 33% of the words in the profile--is the thirty-nine-year-old grandmother demographic. God, God, God, God, God. God this, God that. God.
Not as small a demo as you might think.
It is only between Twitter and a dating app, I feel, and spending a lot of time subjecting one's self to what is to be found on both, with absolutely no variation, that one can truly understand what an illiterate society we are. We cannot read, we cannot write. We're not funny, we're not witty, we're not genuine, we're not clever, we're not amusing. We are simple. We are rudimentary. And we're all virtually the same.
Maybe there should be, I don't know, some focus on how stupid we are now and fixing it? Maybe that should be a cause? Maybe someone should white knight for that? Seems like a big deal, no? Maybe if we were less stupid that would take care of a bunch of other things? Perhaps we'd be better at thinking? And understanding things? Seems like everything, no matter how inane or illegitimate, is a cause, so what about working in a real one with huge implications?
I play a game with myself on a dating app. I try to see how many words I can go in a profile before the grammar falls apart. If I can stretch my reading streak in these matters to thirty, forty, fifty, which is not hard to do. You will rarely get past three words. Usually, one is enough. "Trust worthy..." See? One word. "Out going..." Right? One word. Unless that second person was announcing that they were leaving, which, of course, they were not.
Married people who stay off of social media and interact with a small group of people and have some influence over a few of them--i.e., their kids--do not, I feel, understand how dumb the world is. I am not sure very many of them have the inkling of a clue. You have to be down in these ugly ass trenches experiencing many humans at the level of how they express themselves, where you can see how they think, what they can pick up on and what they can't.
That was kind of negative. My bad. But it's all true. I know, I know--we're supposed to pretend that things that are not true at all are true and that true things are not true or else you make the Big Bad Wolf look like a hospice nurse who's just come from the soup kitchen. Cardinal law of society. I get it.
I need to get money coming in. I have put off making this dental appointment. I want to go the Starbucks right now because I've been working my ass off at this desk all week and barely even gone outside but I don't know if I should.
You just cannot do this much every single fucking day. I mean, I can, but it's killing me. You're writing more in a week than these frauds will in their entire fucking lives. Every single week. Every week of every year, year after year after year. And then they just hook each other up. Pay each other, hire each other, award each other, fluff each other, suck each other, stroke each other, anthologize each other, praise each other. For doing so little, and all of it just shit. And knowing so little and being so under-qualified for the cushy positions and gigs that are just thrown at them.
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Sent the Three Investigators piece to someone else at The Atlantic. I document this in part because when I do what I think I'm going to have to do, and that will include putting up emails on here, I want the public to know I tried everything with these people and took so much, and was fucked over so much and continued to take it before, finally, long, long, long after someone else in this situation would have, I did something about it.
Sent a couple things to Kimball as I figure out what to maybe talk about next.
Won't surprise anyone, but I thought the hit in the Canadiens-Jets game was perfectly fine. Hits are not being policed so much as the result of the hit. McAvoy cracks people the same way every game, with the same intent--to hit the opposition as hard as possible. Sorry to see the Canadiens player get hurt. Actually rooting for the Canadiens. Think it'd be good for hockey to have the Canadiens go far. There could be a Bruins-Canadiens Final. I am rooting for that.
I didn't see the end of the Bruins game. What I did see was that Taylor Hall was flying.
I haven't gone out. No Starbucks. I can't write anything else today. My eyeballs feel like they could fall out of my face. There has to be a lot of work done this weekend. Do that Office op-ed, fix the horror film essay, fix "Seedless Cherries," get going on the Coltrane feature and the Beatles essay. Among other things. Have to get in some epic workouts, too. I cannot be having a heart attack or another stroke.
Listened to Workingman's Dead: The Angel's Share. That's a lot of "Easy Wind." Watched the 1951 film, His Kind of Woman. Mitchum and Vincent Price in the same movie. Can't go wrong with that. But one can go wrong by lazily classifying Price as a hammy actor. He really wasn't.
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