Num num nummy

Sunday 3/1/26

March is here. Being the first of the month, today is as good a day as any to make sure that everything I do contributes to what I am trying to do. No wasted movement, wasted time, wasted energy. If it doesn't help the cause, it shall not be done. A download can help the cause, a swallow of milk for the blood pressure, in addition to the completed story, the written words, the work on the book. Only things that can contribute, nothing else. That's the plan. An entry in this record falls into that category. Let's go, then.

I had a ripped pair of boxers I threw away. I mean really ripped. Otherwise I'd have retained them for as long a possible. But these were split the whole length of the ass portion from stem to stern. Someone pulled apart the bag of trash I had left outside for collection that contained these boxers. Most of the contents of the bag were eventually taken away, but the boxers remain. Not only are they still outside, they have come to rest at the top of a large bank of snow, and have taken on the appearance of a plaid flag atop a mountain. They've been there for days. I salute this flag each time that I walk past. America! A very attractive woman was passing right as I was in mid-salute. She looked at me, then the boxers, then back to me, and I said, "Those were recently on me." We have a coffee date later today.

Everything in the above paragraph was true up until the bit about the woman walking past.

Why did my boxers rip the whole length of the ass portion? I don't know. They weren't that old.

Have a salad. Go for a walk.

By salad I mean some kale. Salads laden with accoutrements miss the point. Then you're just trying to find a way around salads while still having one and it doesn't work like that. Similar approach to the coffee people who put so much stuff into their coffee that they turn it into something else.

People's attitude are deplorable. They have so little fight in them. They're committed to having so little fight. They go in having already given up. Each game is lost before it is begun.

People express vast quantities of doom, and in relatively easy lives, too. They have no idea what hard is.

Never mind what this is.

Attitudes will stop everything from ever happening before anything is given a chance to start.

Someone I've known since the 1990s who used to smoke--as I once did--was outside a facility the other day where people were gathered smoking and said to me that they were surprised to see people still smoking. I asked them why they would find this surprising and they said it's not something they ever see.

I see people smoking regularly. That very morning, despite it being before seven and few people out and about, someone blew their smoke on me when I was running stairs at City Hall.

I smoked for five years, incidentally, which I've likely mentioned here. The last day I smoked was the day my father died. Which means it's been twenty-five years. I always knew when I was smoking that eventually I would stop. This sounds less creditable, but I believed the same thing about my drinking, though that went on for twenty years.

When you quit a thing that you've been doing, or you try to break an addiction, or whatever the case may be, you will almost certainly have to keep doing what you did because it won't be a matter of "That's me finished" and then that sticks. There will be relapses, backslides.

I understand that my method with drinking is not a viable one for others. For twenty years I drank heavily, then the next day I stopped entirely and that's how it's been ever since. There were no meetings, no sponsor, no relapses, no backsliding.

There was no love or support either. Life, which was already unlivable, continued to get worse, and does every day now. The better I became in all ways, the worse life got. People, like publishing people, even resented me for this prodigious display of strength and character. My improved appearance was also a problem. And my fitness.

Yesterday felt like spring in Boston. The temperature eventually got into the forties. I was overheated in the morning running stairs at City Hall when it was thirty-four degrees. Sometimes I sweat so much that the portion of my sweatpants covering my right thigh becomes soaked from all of the sweat dripping off of my head. This was one of those days. There were puddles everywhere because of the melting snow.

And yet, the Bunker Hill Monument remained closed, but I've looked at the temperatures for the next week and it should be open soon and then I think I'll just start over back at zero circuits for my 1000-circuits-in-a-year thing. I am going to hit my numbers regardless, but I'd like a nice clean, unbroken start. Maybe see how fast I can get the 1000 done.

All of the self-obsessed, vapid women with a crown emoji in their social media bio. And the vapid women who refer to each other as queen.

People are mortifying to me. There's no liking hardly any of them. Having any respect for hardly any of them.

Thanks for that fascinating, much-needed update--well, the latest update--on your hair color on your "socials" and whether you have bangs or not. The world was waiting to know. You self-obsessed, completely uninteresting, barely-alive, post-human dust bunny.

When everyone sees nothing but everyone talking the same way, everyone is going to talk the same way. We use fewer words than ever before. I don't mean we're masters of concision. I mean our language palette is made up of fewer words. It's like we only have a couple hundred that we all draw on.

I just saw this post from a mother saying she's going to be spending time with her fifteen-year-old son in Halifax, what is there to do, and oh yeah, he's more nerdy than sporty.

I hate this. Fucking idiots. This is the breakdown. You like sports, or you're a "nerd." You're supposed to not be a fucking idiot. It's called not being a fucking idiot, not being a nerd. You're supposed to know things, learn things, think, and deal in ideas, art. It's not being a complete waste-of-life fuck bag.

People are so anti-intellectual and society is so anti-intellectual that people will automatically put themselves down--or their kid, in this instance--for having an interest in anything that has a bit more substance to it.

Gee, do you think that's part of the problem? Our attitude about not being a dumbass and thinking we should apologize for being so much as a tiny bit more than that?

Who knows more about anything than I do about everything I know about when we're just going subject by subject? Would you ever, in a trillion years, call me a nerd? Exactly. Unthinkable. Impossible.

Part of the reason why--though it's a small part comparatively--is that I don't play into any of that bullshit. I don't come on bent fucking knee with this attitude of "forgive me for not being a much of a moron as most, oh please, oh please, here, I'll put myself down."

Again, attitude. Don't be such a weak ass loser bitch. Know stuff, learn stuff, be intelligent. People can choose to be smarter than they are, pretty much no matter how dumb they are.

People who point are irritating. Put your damn arm down. I walk right through those arms.

Alas, I may be a menace at the Trader Joe's, but I don't feel bad about this. I was there yesterday. You have all of these people who just eat the goddamn space. They position themselves in the optimal spot to take up the most room. You can't select something from the shelf because even though they're focused on one type of item, they manage to wall off four feet on each side of them, and you can barely get past them as well. And they move at the pace suggestive of an elderly couple out on what was once called a Sunday drive. "Ethel, care for a pleasure cruise by the lake in the Model T..." Get out of the way, you entitled jackass. There are actually other people in this world besides you.

Matters are made worse by the fetishization of food, food being all that many people have to live for because they seek nothing else, have no aspirations, won't fight, battle, quest. If they're at the store with someone else, they have what I call these num num nummy conversations. "Oh, this is so num num nummy!"

Why don't you just open that bag of popcorn glazed with whatever it's glazed and start humping it? Go ahead, get in there. Bring those genitals to bear on that bag of popcorn. Make it happen, because you know you want to.

I'm like a comet in Trader Joe's. I'm in and out in less than ten minutes. Then again, I'm no foodie, as we can all see. You wouldn't wish to see photos of what I eat. "Oh, look, he's had another pepper." I got fourteen peppers at Haymarket the other day, actually, the majority being red peppers. That's the best pepper in my view. You will find that yellow and orange peppers lose their freshness faster. Their surfaces become waxy. And though I'm sure it's not correct, a red pepper just feels like it has more nutrients than its yellow, orange, and green pepper brethren.

People will stair at a shelf at the Trader Joe's longer than anyone looks at a painting in a museum. Take it from someone who is regularly in Trader Joe's and in assorted museums.

I realize that my attitudes regarding food are befitting one who is likelier to take a photo of his boxers as a kind of flag atop a snow bank than a (paper) plate of something they're about to eat.

My mother's doctor told her to have water, then a piece of fruit, and then coffee in that order when she gets up. My mother hasn't been doing this.

She babysat the children last night. I will find out how it went later. The other night, on the anniversary of my father's passing, she went to my nephew's band concert. I was sent a couple of videos by my sister, as well as a couple of Amelia at her school concert from a week prior. I watch all of these in full and would feel guilty if I didn't. Then I comment with roughly the same amount of words for each child because I try to keep everything equal but tailored.

I give the lad credit. His friends are all the "sports kids." He plays sports. Always has a game or practice that he's being taken to. But there he was playing percussion at this concert and taking it seriously. He didn't think they had practiced enough. And he got that part in his school's upcoming musical. His friends don't join him in these activities, but he does them anyway.

I told my sister that he could have different groups of friends and that that's the way to go. I would like to have groups of friends, but I have zero friends, never mind different groups of friends, and who would I be friends with anyway? Me being what I am. And as people continue to devolve in all the ways. And that's if people were "meetable," and they really aren't. They aren't looking to meet, either, regardless of how lonely they may be.

The Bruins allowed only sixteen shots against yesterday to the Flyers, and still managed to lose, thanks to Sieve Swayman. Thanks, Sieve! What a fucking star and great guy you are, man. From basking in the glow of Donald Trump to another subpar performance in net as a guy who will only ever be mediocre at best. But hey, at least he didn't let in a goal on a dump-in from the red line. Marked improvement, that is.

You know how in the good version of The Office when Gareth talks about getting what he calls knob rot from a promiscuous woman? I always think of Swayman as the goalie version of knob rot. Which I wouldn't say if I didn't think he was an asshole as well. Any roster that removes Swayman from it becomes better. I don't even care how he's playing. He's just one of those guys who sucks the whole thing down with his attitude.

Hopefully today I will run stairs, go to the Harvard Art Museums, and the Brattle.

No shoppers or pointers were hurt in the making of this entry. I felt like I should add that.