That I'll discuss with no one

Sunday 5/10/26

Was listening to episodes of Dark Fantasy this morning. Ran from November 1941 to June 1942 out of Oklahoma City. Very garrulous, sometimes comically so. The trick with radio drama, ironically, is not to be too gabby, but I have a soft spot for this program.

"Pennsylvania Turnpike" is one of my all-time favorite radio episodes on account of the scene at the roadside store/eatery with the traveler and the proprietor who serves him coffee and gives him the free ham sandwich he doesn't like. Hard not to laugh when the "old-timer" says, "That I'll discuss with no one."

The world was a better place when people used terms like "old-timer" and men called each other Mack. "Say, Mack, do you have the time?" You can use chief now, I guess.

Old-timer actually derives from veteran, as in combat veteran. One who has seen and done some stuff. There's a built-in respect with it, not some "You're gonna be dead soon" aspect. When people say it, it's like the person they're addressing or talking about isn't going anywhere. It underscores their fixture status. It's actually kind of nice.

People talk about food far more than they once did. Food used to be important in American lives because of the meals that people shared together. But now it's more a case of people having no interests, no thoughts, nothing to do but eat and look forward to when they can next eat, that kind of lowest level gratification. No wonder, too, so many are in poor shape.

Someone did this work on the sound quality of a rare Beatles tape. He flew in some bass from the BBC recordings. This other guy and myself asked him if he would make the tape without this addition available for the purists, but he declined.

I actually haven't heard this purported upgrade yet. It's probably very good--the guy does nice work--and the bass additions will be a niggling detail. After all, things like that do happen and no one minds and I typically don't care that much.

Live at Leeds, for instance, has added-on effect to "Magic Bus." Live albums get touched up throughout as well. KISS's Alive, Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous, and those are fairly extreme. Still, it's nice to have both if possible, even just as a reference copy and maybe not the one you usually play.

Some bass may be permissible. Something like vocals, for me, wouldn't be. For instance, someone who also does some nice work--and also makes frustrating choices elsewhere, like editing out the presenters' intros on BBC sessions--took Pink Floyd's 1967 Stockholm show, in which the vocals are barely audible at best and pretty much inaudible throughout and edited in vocals from BBC cuts.

Speaking of the Who's Live at Leeds: found another digital copy of the original LP the other day. Isn't that always the way? It's from a Japanese pressing.

Ran five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument each of the last three days and walked eleven miles. Didn't do so great with push-ups Friday and Saturday. Today marks 3584 days, or 512 weeks, without a drink.

Went to Trader Joe's and Haymarket.

Read Pepys.

Saw a red-tailed hawk perched on a fence at the Boston Common baseball field. You can get right up to a perched city hawk. They don't care about you.

Red Sox rained out, Flyers swept, Lakers blown out, Knicks looking strong, Avalanche tripped up, Cavs avoided going down 3-0 but I don't see that much mattering.

Sixers may have done the Celtics and their fans a favor. I didn't need to see the Knicks sweep the Celtics.

Tracy McGrady has a hard time shutting his mouth. Once someone starts getting attention, they try and get more and more. It's like a porn addiction. They keep going for it. With greater need than the time prior, and so forth.

The need for attention at all costs--meaning, not attention because you have anything intelligent to say, anything to offer, or because of the quality of what you've created and/or are doing--is a cancer that's metastasized throughout the whole of society.

More than a third of the Red Sox' wins this year are shutouts. Odd statistical quirk. Impressive in one way, but also says something obliquely, I think, about their struggling offense, like they need to shut out teams to win.

They had a ceremony the other night marking the first Red Sox home game in history, with the living players whose numbers have been retired throwing out first pitches. Yaz was there as well as Fisk.

It’s always strange to me in baseball history discussions when people say, “Yeah, but he played in such and such a ballpark!” I mean, it wasn’t his fault. And it was a ballpark on earth, not on the moon sans gravity. Finding a way to max out at your home park often speaks to a skill. Like Wade Boggs and Fenway—he peppered that wall. He could have rolled over and hit dribblers to second. And rarely are these guys slouches on the road.

Red Sox fans and Jason Varitek are a lot like women with daddy issues. Or is that women who look for their dad in other guys? People see this guy like he's their daddy figure and they want to snuggle with daddy. It's very creepy. And, of course, dim-witted. Tek! Tek! He's not your dad. How could they do daddy like that? Daddy, daddy, daddy!

As a player, he was okay. Like, C+. Nice 2003. Only had 1300 career hits. Wasn't some great defensive catcher. What makes you think he was so amazing? It's just a thing that people want to believe because of other things. Projection. Ignorance. The daddy thing. The associative.

Except when you have a father, you realize he's not perfect. At some point. But with these parasocial relationships? Hell, man, they're the only kind of relationship many people know or have now.

I'll post something of depth and expertise, written as only I could write it, and someone will respond with the most basic fact or a link to some remedial primary source. What are you doing? It's like that kid in class who raises his hand to say the answer that the teacher just said that everyone else knows isn't a question you raise your hand for but they want that...what? Credit? Attention? Also similar to kid in youth hockey fishing puck out of the net after a goal has been scored on a dazzling, end to end rush, and shooting it back in.

No one understands how apart and a part work. Maybe and may be is fast becoming like this as well.

Knowing that it's "an NBA player" and not "a NBA player" is now a mental skill level in this world just below that of having any idea why the rail inside the Bunker Hill Monument is on the side it's on. You can't realistically expect for someone to be able to know even the likes of this. It's beyond them. They're not smart enough. You could explain it to them, and a few more people might be able to do it, but it would still remain beyond most people. Think about that. People can't even be educated to the degree of knowing this thing that everyone should know without saying.

It's hard to believe how dumb we are. Doesn't seem scientifically possible. It'd be like if all squirrels couldn't figure out how to move about in trees anymore and now you just see them on the ground.

There's an idiot who replies to my posts about the Grateful Dead by saying he doesn't understand them. He's a retired a high school teacher. They're just words, brother. The words have meanings. Those words are used correctly. There's no mystery here. It's very clear. There's nothing to interpret.

It's like following directions. "Take a left here. Drive three blocks, then take your first right." Left means what it means. Blocks means what it means. Right means what it means. Words. Meanings. It's that simple. This guy annoys me. Maybe educate yourself, teacher. The irony. People have no shame, no qualms as to how stupid they are. They flaunt it. And of course they weaponize it.

The Dead excelled at being multiple things--including ostensibly dichotomous things--simultaneously.

See? Words. These words each have meanings. Simple. Which of the words don't you know? The meaning of which words were you unable to clean from context? Is "glean" another such word? How about "context"? Is that too hard for you? How stupid do you need to be? How unread? How uneducated? How lazy?

I always have the option to take someone apart and embarrass them, but normally I don't. It's like a flick of the finger, though, if that.

The truth? Many people--just using the above example--don't know the meaning of the words "excelled," "multiple," "ostensibly," and "simultaneously."

"Excelled" is a "vocab word" in our world now like, you know, "triune" used to be.

How do I know this? Because I live it. You can write, "I ate an orange this morning," and you'll get responses from people revealing that not only did none of those people understand that sentence, they all had a different understanding. "Oh, you wore an orange shirt?" Yeah.

Also: most people think it's "a orange." But no, definitely stare at more reels on screens and have AI do more stuff for you. Then everyone can just be enslaved in a techno-agrarian plantation society in which you're the beast of burden unable to do anything about it and no better at thinking than a mule pulling some heavy load day in, day out. Mule lives. Billions of mule lives. That's where it's headed. We're already deeper in the process than anyone realizes.

You know what's ironic? Doing things worse makes things worse and feels worse. But what's everyone do anyway? No matter what we're talking about. They do less and suck more. Trust me, it feels a lot better to try, do the right thing, and suck less. As a parent, a friend, a writer, an excerciser, you name it. You feel better about yourself. You aren't--contrary to what people think would happen--more tired. It's the opposite.

You want it in stair terms? You have more energy when you run twenty-five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument in a week than when you run no stairs.

That's how all things kind of work. Stair things, brain things, morality things.

I see these videos of the food people put out for birds, and I'm envious of everyone involved. I'm always somewhat envious of birds. And then these people with houses and nice lives and comfort and other people. I'd love to be creating a nice set-up for birds on a Sunday morning. Welcoming them to my yard. Having a yard. The fare also looks really good. All those different kinds of seeds and nuts, and sometimes with orange slices, too. I'd hardly know where to start if I was one of those birds.

I thought I'd finish "Boom the Ball" this morning but I've been working on "The Ghost and the Flame" instead. Overall it's gotten shorter, but new things have been added, too. This, for example, had been something quite different and now look at it:

The principal’s face wore the expression of a man in pain trying not to show it because it wasn’t proprietarily his own, but instead a secondary hurt born of the awareness of what the world so often is, including the world of children, and the feeling that it’s no less wrong to model another’s suffering than it is to steal their valor.

And people talk about AI like there's no way for anyone to know what is or what isn't. It's impossible not to know with me. Of course AI is indistinguishable from anyone else. All your "stars" of the incestuous publishing system.

But no non-human could ever do the likes of what I just did there. What I always do.