Just where the hell do you want it?

Tuesday 2/24/26

The people who adopt/almost always default to the "You should get the fuck out of this country because of the objection you voiced" are, ironically, the people who have the least amount of a clue about the democratic tenets on which the country of the United States were built.

And as simple as I once would have thought a sentence like the above is, I doubt that any of them could understand that either. But this is as fundamental as it gets. Square one.

New snowstorm yesterday. I went out twice. Once just to take out the trash. Didn't go far the other time. Attempted to go to the cafe as well and read, but it was closed.

Storms are conducive to reading, listening, screening, thinking. The world outside does one thing, while a world inside of us does another that's separate, but relational. One of my favorite books is perfect for a snowstorm, featuring as it does a doozy of one itself, and a kind of ghostly storm at that: J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White (1938). It's set at Christmas, but by no means limited to the holiday. Farjeon's writings don't date; they possess a perpetual freshness.

I'll see people brag about how it's rare that they encounter a word they don't know because they read all the time. Huge reader! Then they say they learned a new one from you and the word was something like "jingoism," which is like a sixth grade level "vocab" word. They read piffle and mindlessness--all within the same narrow vein, too--and think something about themselves that's lofty when they don't even have a clue what they don't know, nor are they likely ever to on account of the brand of institutional arrogance--the person being the institution--that marks almost all lives now and the realities of their environment, specifically all the people around them and everyone they know, who is as stupider or stupider, and far less literate if anything, because they don't read at all and likely couldn't comprehend anything if they wanted to read unless it was written for fourth graders and no one beyond that.

You'll see advice circulate that you should talk to a very drunk person who is being problematic as if they were a child, but in reality you need to talk to almost every adult as if they were a child. An incurious child. Space the words apart, slow them down.

Sometimes when you write a beautiful song like "If You Don't Want It in the Ass (Just Where the Hell Do You Want It?)" you have to realize that it won't be for everyone. Socially relevant as it is.

That was levity. We must have levity.

I saw a man bitching on social media with that annoying "Dear such and such" construction that people think is clever, but is really just something all of these witless people use again and again and again. What? Someone's going to think up their own thing? Pish. In this case, the man was addressing Massachusetts, asking for it to stop snowing here because he wanted to do things.

What does the snow stop you from doing? Presumably outdoor activities, right? What would those be? Skiing? No, not that. Hiking I guess. This didn't seem like a hiker. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to be running stairs and the snow wouldn't stop you from doing that for more than a day or two. Long walks in the city? No. We're talking going somewhere else indoors. Like to the movies. Which you can do when it snows or doesn't. People just want to complain. They can't think of anything else and yet they desperately want to make noise--their personal noise--to add to the collective din.

Post:

Please remember that the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jay's in the World Series in 2025. Beating Canada in gold medal hockey match is the icing on the cake. Sorry we are not sorry. Yee Haw!

Note the apostrophe. Many Americans have no idea how to pluralize the word "apple." Often it will be rendered as "apple's." The majority? We're getting there.

"IF YOU DONT LIKE IT GET THE FUCK OUT!!!!! IM FUCKING DUMB AND IT RULLLLLEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!! USA USA USA USA!!!!!"

What do you think the chances are that the man who posted the above doesn't look like a crusty, nail fungus-y, stubby thumb? Gonna be pretty low, right?

It's like the faces of many American white males were made for the specific purpose of being dipped in ink and making a print on a piece of paper to go into some searchable repository. Indication of a higher design? A proof of God's existence? Everyone needs an organizational system that works for them.

The odds of someone who writes or says "I have my moments" not being a smug fuck is nil, as are the odds of them remarking or contributing anything notable, incisive, witty, etc.

I'm going to do more of this...I'm going to do less of that...how often does it ever actually happen with people, though?

J.D. Vance has an impressively wide face, especially for a man in his thirties. A girth-y face. Broad, like a large bottom.

I find it harder and harder to partake of things I have long partaken of because of how morally repugnant the people involved are. You have to expend energy on keeping things separate. Whereas someone like John Lennon who was on balance a bad, toxic, hurtful person also created work that has value to a life that is well lived, it's not as easy to say that about something like hockey or football, which are just games. I've always been deeply interested in sports history, and an expert on--hell, "the" expert on; why pretend otherwise?--for a long time, and it feels better being interested in that, understanding it, assessing, parsing, almost in a scholarly sense, but without the exclusionary practices and attitudes of academia, than rooting for typically terrible men wearing who just happen to wear the livery of a given team owned by an evil billionaire.

Someone posted something about Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat, which prompted me to say this:

I read every Curious George book as a kid, and was particularly enamored with the Man in the Yellow Hat. He struck early me as someone who did life right and was pretty curious himself, though without receiving billing for this.

They asked if that was why Curious George really liked him or was it because he looked like a giant banana?

My response:

Well, I had my reasons and CG had his, though I suspect there was overlap. In my mind, we both admired his steadfast devotion and faith in a look that he believed worked for him. And then we all need someone in this life who helps us grow our capacity for wonder. And I think CG intuited that true friends are rare. Or that was my take on it, anyway.

This person said that it also probably didn't hurt that he looked like a banana, and I concluded, "It never does. Though we must keep in mind that the greener a banana is, the better it is for us nutritionally. But that's on the physical side of things, whereas the rest of this is more on the metaphysical."

I did really like those books. I still do. I can clearly recall selecting a volume from downstairs at the local library, in the far corner--moving diagonally--from where there were some books on horror films and sports history. I'd read about Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat, and Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams.