Stairs intelligence test

Monday 4/14/25

People wanting to show they're smart by referencing Edgar Allan Poe and they can't even spell his name right. People wanting to show they're smart by sharing a clip about Buster Keaton from The General and saying, "He really did this stunt" and the clip is in color and it's not like they know that's not how it was and definitely not how it should be. Almost everyone is a stupid person who just takes the things from other stupid people who took it from other stupid people and so on anyway.

What a world this is. And you can actually--if you're observant--watch it get worse by the week. And as bad as things are in this country politically, that's not the reason why. Abraham Lincoln could be president and we'd be like this.

I have written so much--all nonfiction, save for some fiction head work (which may be significant; it pertained to "Finder" and was largely done while putting coffee in a filter at night for the morning)--in the past I don't even know how many days. Four, five at the most. Probably four. I'm not going to try to recount it right now.

Today I got up late for me--it was after five--and was then at the desk until 3 PM straight. I barely stood up.

Someone who has owed me money for years is apparently committed to just robbing me, in essence. They don't respond. You can do that here. Or people think they can.

You know what happens next? What do you think? I handle it. Things go public. They are exposed.

And you know what happens then? That person--or, in this case, these two people--blame me. They don't fault themselves. I'm unsure if anyone alive is capable of finding fault with themselves in this mad world.

It's bad enough that such people get the masterpieces and don't even respond. Not a word. As they publish shit. I take it. For years, sometimes decades.

Do you know how easy it is--of course you do, if you read these pages--for me to take anything I've written and put it next to something that any place published and for anyone who sees that side by side comparison to know that there is no comparison whatsoever between those two writers and those two examples of writing?

I always have that in my back pocket. And I did nothing to you. I do nothing to anyone except write better, be smarter, work harder. All I do in my life is work/write and run stairs. I go to no functions, I date nobody, I basically know no one. I write. That's what I do. I don't drink, I don't fuck around, I don't hurt anyone. I don't lie, steal, rape--you know, the basics for many of these publishing people.

And you're going to do me like you do? And not give me the pittance that you owe me on top of that?

It's endless this shit. If you try to deal with one of these people, chances are slim that this isn't how it goes. Insane, evil, broken, sick, sick, sick people.

And then it comes out. I've been owed this money for years. The better part of a decade. It's $150. Pay me my money.

They likely won't, and they'll go up on here, and curse and blame me.

Because, again: Insane, evil, incompetent, twisted people.

Fitness has been a disaster. I did a little better yesterday--walked eleven miles and ran five circuits of stairs in the Monument and did 200 push-ups, but that was the lone day. This has to improve.

What else? Bit of drama yesterday at the Monument before it opened. They sent everyone back down the hill. There was a box outside of the door and concern that it was a bomb. The police were called. It was not a bomb. Rather, an Amazon box addressed to one of the residences down the hill.

Then the ranger let me in early, which I always appreciate, because people are out of shape and rude, they take up the space, bitch when you politely ask them to move, and are sufficiently stupid that basically none of them can figure out what side of the stairs they're supposed to be on.

You could make that an intelligence test: Show people a diagram of the stairs, and ask them why the railing is on the side it's on. And I'd bet you that ninety-five percent of Americans wouldn't even get one of the reasons right. I don't think they'd be smart enough.

Here's how it works: The railing, when you're going up, is on the left. The stairs are tapered. They're wider on the left--again, going up--and narrower on the right. They almost come to a point on the right when you're going up.

If you fall going up, it really doesn't matter that much, does it? So you don't need the railing to guard against falling on the way up. But, if you fall going down, that can be an issue, right? As in, "Oh damn, now I've broken my neck."

And remember: The stairs are narrower on the left-hand side coming down. So if some human wildebeest has the railing coming up and won't move, that means you're not only on the side that's narrower, but you have nothing to grab hold of if you fall, or to be running your hand along already so that you don't fall.

Further, people, as I've said, are often large. They take up the space. They're not athletic. They're clumsy. And they are not looking out for you. They don't care about you, because no one cares about anyone but themselves. So if they shoot out a foot, or a portion of their copious ass, you can wreck and, again, break your neck.

I am reasonably sure that no one--and it really might be no one--in this country could correctly provide the two reasons for why the railing is on the side it's on. And, oh yeah--you drive on the right, walk on the right, go up stairs on the right, and as a rule stay to the right. That's how it works. So there's that, too.

You will get people in pairs, and one will stay to the right, and the other to the left, and you have to weave between these idiots. When I stand there and wait for the person who is inevitably on the wrong side to move, they will look up at me with an expression of total confusion on their face. I can practically see their two brain cells peaking out through their eyes, one in each. They have the look of a drugged cow. Glassy-eyed and vacant. Might as well be chewing some cud.

It's like there's nothing a person is capable of knowing, not even this. Yesterday, I was moving at a decent clip, but my time wasn't as good as it should have been because of the weaving, and the waiting, and the forty times I had to say "Excuse me" until that person cleared out of the way.

I'm astounded by how unbothered people are by anything about them. If I was a bulbous pear of a person, and I knew someone was less than a step behind me going up a big obelisk, and they were fit, and obviously rarin' to go, I'd feel like a colossal jackass--I'd be mortified, embarrassed, panged with guilt, and so self-conscious--if I just kept plonking along and didn't step clear so they could get by.

Do you want me to ride your ass all the way to the top as we move at the pace of an uninspired glacier? Have you no fucking shame?

But people don't.

And when I ask--and I sound polite, mind you--if I may squeeze by, you'd think, given the attitude I catch, the body language, the look, the muttering, that I'd just inquired if I might deflower their teenage daughter and could they run out and get me a pizza while I did it.

It's like, what do you expect to happen here? I could crawl faster. Should I try and do a slow crawl behind you until we finally both get to the top?

There will be people who put one hand on the wall with the railing and the other hand on the wall without. And that's how they'll try to go up and down.

The only time I escape the stupidity of this world is when it's like three in the morning and I'm writing and there's nothing else. It's just what's in front of me on the page, and what that is is of a power beyond anything that ought to be possible. And I think, "What am I going to do with this? What place does it have in this world?" I do it for the betterment of this world, and yet, here we are, and here I am alone with it.

There was a man outside today. I heard him, while sitting there at the desk, after he'd walked many blocks away. He was near the water and I could still hear him. He was screaming into his phone about how he was going to murder the person he was talking to. At one point, he screamed that he hoped their will was up to date, which was a new one--hadn't heard that before.

There's a lot to get to. I don't feel like trying to right now. I did find a downloadable copy of the expanded version of the Seeds' A Web of Sound over the weekend, so that was good.