Stairs, Christmas, coming, with cameos from some of our very worst kinds of humans in Joshua Boger, Marc Peyser, and Joel Whitney

Monday 12/29/25

I still haven't sent some of the few people I know the story for Christmas 2025. I must see where it's at. It's still the season anyway.

I don't think I mentioned this--maybe I did--but my sister's family got a puppy shortly before the holiday. His name is Cody. Amelia insists that she is the dog's favorite despite the opposite probably being true. For now. She picks him up and he's getting bigger at a faster rate than she is and so he's jerked around maybe a little brusquely.

But she's adamant about her number one ranking. The other two kids are very kind, and Amelia, who turns six next months, perhaps isn't super kind yet. I do hope that changes. She's...a little strange, which I find endearing, but it's important to be kind.

My nephew Charlie has been taking good care of the dog, I understand. He does what he's asked to do without any problem or hesitation. Takes the dog on walks. Is the first to go over to the dog when they return from somewhere.

The dog has, I believe, only been on his own once. Very briefly, when one of the kids had a holiday musical performance or play. They went into Chicago on Saturday to go to a show and some BBQ place, so my mom came over and dog-sat.

Felt guilty yesterday because I didn't go to Charlestown to run stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. It was kind of a lost day overall, which I can ill afford, for many reasons.

I did come up with about a dozen new ideas for op-eds next year, but that's the business of five minutes when you are me. Also tended to some notes about the people and places in publishing who will be going up on here and exposed for all to see.

Wait until you see what those wonderful folks like Joshua Boger at the Celebrity Series of Boston who really seem to hate disabled people like are up to now. Evil, entitled, discriminatory, hateful idiots.

There was a woman on that board last year who in particular was very worried about going up on here, which I happen to know. (How do I know that, you ask? You think I don't have means? Of course I do. Which doesn't mean I'm going to get into the "how" of those means here.)

She probably thought she got away with what they did, and so was emboldened to do it again. Like I had forgotten. I never forget. I eventually get to you. I have a lot to do. And when I get to you, I make sure I do it right. Exactingly. Such that no rebuttal, no defense is possible.

Which is why you haven't seen a single one to date. And also because these people know what I say is true and that they are guilty of what has been laid out in the clearest of terms and examples.

But I don't forget.

Remember the thief that is Marc Peyser of Newsweek?

How about the worm that is Joel Whitney?

Worm may be too generous. Maggot? Look at that entry. If that's not a human worm--or probably closer in truth to a human maggot--then who--or what--is? Look how many years those things went back. I got to them.

One day you wake up, and you're just here, and this guy has things that you yourself forgot about in the midst of your day in, day out routine of being a terrible person doing terrible person things.

Take a moment and look at that Joshua Boger post, which needs to be seen to be believed. Look at that guy in all of his rage, prejudice, and imbecility. What a disgrace of a human. Sub-human.

What else would you call someone who defends David Sedaris' stance that the disabled are less worthy of decency and respect than the non-disabled? Is there really any rhetorical wiggle room there? Any moral wiggle room? Would you care to say that there is publicly with your name attached to it?

An avalanche of this kind of thing will be coming soon. I know I've said that. I've also said I'm being systematic and doing what I need to do in the order I have determined best to do it. Once the floodgates are opened, they won't be shut for a while. And then only temporarily to get up some other things.

A number of days ago, the plan was to finish this year strong, stair-wise, by doing ten circuits each of the last five days the Monument was open, which would take me to 170 circuits since November 15 when it reopened. I'm at 155 right now. I did five circuits on Saturday after the twenty circuits on Friday.

Whereas on Friday I felt light-footed, it was as if I had some lead in my legs on Saturday. I did okay--it's not as though I embarrassed myself--by completing the five circuits somewhere between thirty-one and thirty-two minutes (Wasn't exactly sure when they opened the door--sometimes it's a minute or two early or late.)

If you're doing five circuits in thirty minutes, that's pretty good. The best I've done, so far as I know, is in just under twenty-five minutes. I don't have the stop watch on myself most days, though, and just glance at the clock when I'm done. The point each day isn't to race against time, but to do a good, thorough, honest job. Keep a steady pace. No slackening. And definitely no stopping.

This, too, is a metaphor to be extrapolated for how I should be working, how I should be living, with the situation I am in, the people I am at war against, what I want to do in and for this world, and all I wish to create. A much better job and a much better effort is needed in those other, more important areas.

After completing the five circuits, a ranger asked me how many times I had gone up and down the day previously. I told him and he said he thought I was in there longer than usual. I must do at least ten circuits on Wednesday/New Year's Eve.

After sitting in the cafe and making some of my notes for what I need/want to get finished and for what I plan to write, I figured I'd watch the Patriots game. By the time I turned it on, the score was 28-3, and then about a minute later it was 35-3. This was still in the first half.

The Jets, of course, are terrible. Year in, year out, and arguably the worst franchise in professional American sports. But it was plain yesterday that they had already quit on this season before that game began. That's not a team playing for their coach, each other, their fans. That's a team that might as well have been at home, because they didn't bother to show up for work.

But I didn't mind. I watched some of the World Juniors as well, which is the best sporting event going this time of year.

For the first time since 2011, when I was in Rockport with Molly, shortly before she put her plan in motion and did what she did, I spoke to someone on Christmas. I'd never even so much as had a conversation in the years since.

Why the change?

As I wrote earlier in here, I awoke shortly after midnight and began work again on "Love, Your Mouse." After however many hours of that, I attempted to take care of some business from the desk. Digital errand-y type of stuff.

None of that went smoothingly. It was one problem after another. The day to that juncture had a herky-jerky rhythm. I had the sense that problems would only compound and progress would be minimal, even so far as just a single day goes. I'd done what I needed to do on "Mouse" and required a step back from it at that point as well before I could evaluate again.

Then, there was someone who betrayed me worse than Molly did, which is just something happen to you after she happened to me in the manner in which she did, and expect to be able to withstand that and keep going. And I'm just talking in terms of those two things, and not including everything else of a life at present, and for a long time now, is worse than actually being in hell.

Again, I don't slap those words down capriciously. Were you to design hell for me to match what would be most painful for me, I don't believe one could come close to hitting upon what all of this is for me. It's worse than hell. The latter would be easier, more tolerable, less painful. I could do hell better than I can keep going in what this is.

I knew that this person--who told me they'd always be there for me and that I could trust them--wouldn't so much as even send a text, and he did not. Because it was just someone who always lied to me and who never cared. I was alone--I am alone--and didn't have anyone else. You can't have no one at all. Your life won't make it to what would have been its natural end point.

I had a place to go. As a kind of Christmas orphan. Not because I have a family or a group. I don't have "my thing," and you know what I mean by that. My unit. Or person. I have myself. When you just have yourself, you are at best an add-on to someone else's thing. For a day or a few hours. But it's not your thing.

I knew that this would probably be a hard time. Remarks would be made that bothered me. Despite this being true, I feared that I would be a danger to myself in terms of either ending my life or drinking again, which would likely start the process of the former.

So for safety's sake I went and had what was just a bad time instead. A time when I also see how little I have in common--and how I have nothing in common in terms of my mind and what it is--with others. It's like being an alien and I'm the only member of a species.

That was the decision I made, because I still have things to finish, to create, and that I'm still here and still thinking about those things I guess means I still haven't given up, even if there is no point and no hope. I don't believe that me not having given up yet means there must be some chance things could ever change, or else why would I still be trying?

The horrible thing is, I think I'd still be trying, at least to date, anyway. So I don't even have that comfort. A miniscule, percentage point of comfort. The kind with a thousand zeroes on the right side of the decimal before you see that number 1.

But I was back early at least. The people at this gathering were watching Die Hard, while I sat off to the back reading Christmas ghost stories written by Victorian women on my phone.

Yesterday marked 3451 days, or 493 weeks, without a drink. Below is a photo from the "lodge" at the base of the Monument from Friday after the twenty circuits. I sat down for a minute before heading home. Despite getting my head nearly completely shaved back in whenever it was--November?--my hair has grown in quite a bit. I guess that's good--an absence of hair-loss issues.

Four things were published on Christmas as well. I did something no one has ever done in the history of publishing in this country, too. Or any country, for that matter, which I don't want to talk about right now, because I have things to do and what does it mean, ultimately, anyway? What good does it do me?

That's factual, though. A historical fact. I don't get into what I publish much in this record. I have this intention to get into that if not thoroughly then at least properly, but there's so much to tend to and address. I end up just putting the links in the News section of the site, which I haven't even done for a while.

They should be in the relevant other sections, too, but I'm so behind with having the site up to date (which was part of that frustrating, unproductive business of Christmas morning). Nonetheless, I'll say right now that I'll get to that later, and hopefully I will. It's a matter of priorities and rhythm.

But the history, the achievement, the matchless quality of the work...it doesn't mean anything. Doesn't get anything. Well, it creates more envy and resentment. I mean it doesn't bring me anything positive. It's not about the the work. It's not about having the best work ever. Everything is entirely about other things, the likes of which we have discussed and will keep exploring in these pages. I have the best work ever. In all its forms.

But I have none of the other things. And as Thoreau noted, the public demands an average man. I am as far from that as one can get.

That's the problem that needs solving, but one sees what I said above regarding the zeroes after the decimal point, and the idea of that number one way off to the right not even existing.

I am still here and trying, though.