What are you doing here?

Monday 7/13/26

Had an uncomfortable night. Picked up a cold a couple days back and did as is my wont and carried on with stairs, etc., as if I hadn't. Was up to nearly two in the morning today as a result. May have made it worse by not taking it easier but if it goes away soon then it would have been worth it to have soldiered on especially as there could be heat issues this week though it looks like tomorrow is going to be the bad day and that the Monument could avoid any shutdowns but we'll see.

Lots of (non-productive) coughing and have had to sleep with wads of paper towel up each nostril. Have effected two scurvies-in-reverse, my proprietary fast-recovery cocktail of like eight 1000mg vitamin C tablets and lots of water. When I have a head cold I'll often drink several cups of this harvest blend tea that I keep around from Trader Joe's. They sell it in the autumn. It's very pungent. There's a fox on the box who seems pleased and relaxed having a cup. You have to drink it while it's hot, otherwise it's a tough swallow. Also put some honey in what is now my regular helping of chamomile tea to try and help with my throat and general head situation.

A lot of crowds in Boston down here by the water over the weekend on account of the tall ships. Large Americans--the super-sized version of people--in their jingoistic T-shirts. You can readily tell how most people vote by their T-shirts. The ships have gotten lumped in with it being the 250th anniversary of the country becoming one. Doesn't have much to do with it, though. The Constitution, sure, but she's always there. The rest are ships from South America and the like. And the Coast Guard ship that is also always there.

These super-sized Americans stand around like cattle. No awareness of the space they take up. Besides, they'd think all the space belongs to them by right anyway. The looks that people give you when they realize they need to move so you can pass because there's no other way for you to continue on say much about our entitlement. We don't look out for each other. We don't care about each other at all. That's the American way in 2026, but we shouldn't limit it to this country. It's the way of this world in 2026. So many of these Americans with their cans of soda in the morning.

On Saturday I was coming back from Trader Joe's in the Seaport. I had a grocery bag in each hand. A woman was leaving my building right as I was about to enter. She opened the door from the inside, saw me about to step foot on the stairs. And you know what she did? Rather than hold the door so that I could come in, she instead stepped through, let the door drop so that I'd have to put down a bag and get out my key to open it, and said "thank you" as she exited.

She did what most people would now do. Without a thought or care for anyone but herself. I want to be able to say, "Who does that?" but I also know that the answer is "the majority." Isn't it funny that ours is a society in which these same people then take to online spaces and lecture about morals and decency and say things like "be better" while wagging that digital forefinger, cosplaying a person who thinks about others when the only thing they're concerned with is themselves?

How would you explain that to a visiting alien you were hosting for the day and playing tour guide? How could you get the alien to understand? That'd be an incredulous alien, wouldn't it? The alien would say, "Let me see if I get this straight. These people, who are clearly awful, then go to this other place and pretend that they're the opposite? Or do they somehow not know? Walk me through it again...I don't get you people. None of this computes. What are you doing here?"

I believe that later in the day I held the door open for this same woman as she came in right after me. I didn't look that closely. It's just something I automatically do. I probably couldn't not do it. I didn't look really because I didn't want to confirm.

Yesterday marked 3647 days, or 521 weeks, without a drink.

New calendar came in the mail from the Brattle. Started going through and circling the things I want to go to. They're playing a number of good 1950s sci-fi/horror films which I'm also writing about or have written about for the horror film book. It Came from Outer Space, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, This Island Earth, Invaders from Mars, Forbidden Planet, The Quatermass Xperiment, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, The Thing from Another World, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Man from Planet X.

Watched some Westerns, horror films, noirs, documentaries, episodes of The Golden Girls, and quite a bit of baseball. Checked out the TV show Fargo as well. The bar is so low for something to be called great. There's so little this century that is great. Listened to a bunch of episodes of The Great Gildersleeve and various Grateful Dead tapes, jumping around from 6/24/70 to assorted rarities from 1966 to acoustic sets in 1970 to the 12/11/72 "Dark Star." A weekend here when compromised some because of aforementioned cold.

I used to be pretty into the home run contest at the All-Star Game as a kid when it had a ramshackle, backyard feel. Haven't cared much for a while, but I'll check it out tonight to see Willson Contreras, who seems really geared up for it. He strikes me as someone who either does something passionately or does something else instead, and I like people like that. He's been awesome for the Red Sox this year. A punch-in-the-arm player, which is what you need. [Edit: Home Run Derby is happening now. I can't watch it because it's on Netflix this year and I won't pay a cent for the likes of Netflix which has promulgated the Netflixization of art/media/culture/society. If I had to watch something for some reason that was only available on Netflix that wasn't a live event, I have...other means...of acquiring the content.]

Reading The Hornblower Companion. Speaking of tall ships. Tracked down a digital copy of a vinyl Beatles bootleg from the 1970s. These are almost for historical records. Not a pun. You had such oddball sets come out on bootleg at the time. The Wild West of bootlegs. Songs that had no real business being part of the same package, save that you couldn't get them elsewhere and that's what the bootlegger happened to possess at the time. I'm of course a completist in these matters. I have a version of this vinyl boot somewhere.

Checked out the line-up for Slugs' Saloon (jazz club in the East Village that operated from the mid-sixties to the early seventies) in early fall 1967. You had Larry Young, Albert Ayler, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Louis Hayes, Sonny Red, Bobbie Timmons, Tommy Turrentine, Sun Ra. I'd have been there every night. Can you imagine something like that now?