Sunday 12/15/24
The two insipid women who live across the hall had a party on Friday night, or a gathering, anyway. These are the women who slam the door a solid two dozen times every day, shaking the walls, which is also something they do when they come home drunk at three in the morning, and only don't do when it's nine in the morning and one of them is leaving and doesn't wish to wake the other because they're both aware of how loud their door is unless it is pulled shut and especially if you slam it. These women suck. So inconsiderate, so thoughtless, so lazy. There is, for instance, a Mexican place around the corner. It's around the actual corner. It's not 100 yards away. They have them deliver. You can't walk around the corner? And that, to me, kind of sums them up. Well, before getting into the imbecility.
I listen to their inane conversations in the hall because they're so loud, and it astounds me that such simple, trivial things could be the "big" things of a life. What sounded like a dozen more women just like these women gathered in the hallway on Friday night, where their voices all went up a register and it was as if they were having the most irritating contest ever to see who could say the word "literally" the most. I felt like opening the door, clad though I was in boxers and ripped T-shirt, and saying, "Shut up you ridiculous, clucking hens!" but instead I just sat there and fumed, "Can't a man simply watch Frosty in peace?"
One of these women may have been the person who swiped my copy of M.R. James's Collected Ghost Stories, though this was eventually returned, with a note inside from a woman--but I don't think it was either of these two--saying they had borrowed--maybe ask?--my book and thought my marginalia was at first random doodles--which I guess says something about my handwriting--but that they read said notes in the margin and enjoyed them. I could be arrested for my marginalia. Some of it, at least.
The Army-Navy game is awesome. I just think it's so cool. How can you not have respect for those programs? It's an untainted game, too. No one is transferring, no payouts. Just football by people who have made a commitment of service, and a game that people who went to one of those academies really care about. There are no alums of any school who care about a rivalry more than the alums of Army and Navy care about that game.
Today I saw a post from a woman that read, "It sucks to be the single friend." I'll click on the bio after reading such a thing, which always makes for a very easy exercise in dot connecting. Sure enough, her bio read, "Doggo mom"--nothing else--and her profile photo was her giving the camera the middle finger. And you don't see any connection, maybe, eh lady? Can't come up with any idea as to why things might be what they are? There's hardly ever any mystery.
Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas is the Ella Fitzgerald Christmas album that gets the most attention (pretty much all of it) and which I've written about before, but Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas, an album of sacred numbers, is also strong. I've written about the former and pitched the latter, but it wasn't assigned.
The other day I read a post from a woman that said, "We all deserve better." Do we? Who does? Because most people are see are self-obsessed, lazy, selfish, boring, unkind, and care about no one save themselves, learn nothing, never grow, never try to learn anything, never try to grow, offer nothing, and do nothing for anyone.
They deserve better? Why? They deserve less. Society carries them, because this is how most people are, and to use the analogy of the team and the coach, you can't fire the team. Society has to devolve so that the members of society--the vast majority--can get by. They can have jobs and houses and procreate and then die off and be replaced by people the same or even worse. You don't automatically deserve anything. Or very little. What about earning things? But no, most people don't deserve better. If what people got was commensurate with what they do and what they offer and the effort they put forth, you'd see something so shocking that you'd have to look away. Most people suck, and as people who suck and never learn and grow and help, they're already making out like bandits.
Yesterday I walked three miles, did 100 push-ups, and ran 5000 stairs at City Hall. I have--save for a quick check-in the other day--not been in the Bunker Hill Monument in two weeks. I need to remedy this. I've been running the City Hall stairs. Why? Mostly because the Monument doesn't open until one, which makes no sense. Why open so late in the day? If I start work at three, I've put in what would be a full day for other people when it's still morning, and I have not felt like waiting until half past twelve to go to Charlestown when I could run my stairs and be done with them.
But I must do a better job getting over there, because there are no stairs like Monument stairs. Yesterday I was going to do both, but you have to change your clothes because of all the sweat, otherwise you're walking in your cold, wet clothes, and it's twenty-eight degrees and the wind is blowing. This is doable, obviously, but I didn't do it. The 5000 stairs is decent. It takes longer than my normal set of Monument stairs and I take them two at a time going up, but it's not nearly so challenging from a cardio standpoint, and that's very important. Today marks 3080 days, or 440 weeks, without a drink. Yesterday someone said to me that they weren't surprised I hadn't had any alcohol in so long but that they were surprised I hadn't given in and had a hot chocolate since that day back in March when I said, "Enough! I shall no longer eat pizza, bread, red meat, chips, nor drink hot chocolate, not even the skim, no-whip variety from Starbucks!" Who does that, of a day? I did. The remark was prompted by this being the holiday season, which is ideal for hot chocolate with all of the decorations and the Christmas music and the cold and the shorter days.
Silent Night, Bloody Night and Silent Night, Deadly Night: very easy to confuse. I may have pitched a piece on one and meant the other, but I could do either. I need to check.
You can tell people don't have a clue about John Coltrane and are posturing in attempt to say, "Look what I listen to, aren't I impressive?" when what they say about Coltrane pertains to his soprano playing, which usually--for these people--means "My Favorite Things." You want Coltrane playing his natural instrument. It's like, okay, you're doing the soprano thing, but the rest of the band is still doing its thing and maybe Dolphy is there, but to the discerning listener there's a sense of, "Ah, that's better," when Trane returns to the tenor sax.
Downloaded half a dozen Albert Ayler albums this morning. Have been looking for a digital copy of the Holy Ghost box set, but no luck. Yesterday I found a download of that complete set of Robert Johnson's material in better sound than what had been out there and with the extra alternate version that was discovered whenever it was. When I wrote my thesis in college, it was supposed to be about Vorticism and rock and roll. Egads. It ended up being largely about Robert Johnson and Vorticism never entered into it. The Vorticism thing wasn't a bad idea actually. I can see why I was thinking it.
A further note regarding Klecko and Gastineau: In 1981, Klecko had 20.5 sacks and Gastineau had 20. An incredible double-headed stat.
I didn't used think much about one's attitude as this big thing. That was the stuff of gym teachers and hockey coaches. I've learned, though, that attitude is paramount. It sets a tone, but it also fosters accountability. I see so many people with deplorable attitudes for everything in life. I look at how limited they are, and it's of their own making. You'll see, for instance, someone say, "You know you're forty-two when everything hurts in the morning." Shut the fuck up and get off your lazy ass. Stop rolling into the grave. People's poor attitudes make them into these inconsequential, incapable beings that they are. They become their attitude.
The other day someone is going on and on to me about how hard something is, or will be. They do this with everything. All while knowing the massive, innumerable forces I'm up against.
Finally I said, "You know, I am so sick of this shit. People overcomplicate everything. They make every fucking thing they do sound like it's going to be this trip up Mount Kilimanjaro. And I have experience with a lot of those things, and they're not a big fucking deal, and they're not a big fucking deal in the grand scheme things, and it makes me feel like I should think I'm beaten before I start so I shouldn't start. This is why I distance myself from this shit and shit like this from you, no offense. Because I don't want it rubbing off on me. It's different, but no wonder all of these douchebags from MFA programs and within MFA program culture all write the same douchebag shit because they're all in the same environment and mindset rubbing off on each other. Everyone infects everyone else and then they become these things, these helpless, limited beings, that they didn't have to be. People are their environment, with few exceptions. I see a problem to be fucking solved. That's it. Surely it can be fucking solved. And I just let it be that. I think about the things I do--what I consider the basic things--and I barely mention them, but I know someone else would make them the main subject matter of their life and post about them thousands of times and get sympathy and attention and build a brand off them courtesy of other simple morons who also want to be fed excuses and doom and gloom. Fuck that. Your bedside manner is horrible. Negative this, negative that. Have some perspective and let's just get shit done and stop trying to pull me down with this weak ass, overdramatic bullshit."
Then they're like, "You should be my life coach" and I'm thinking, fuck off, you're just always going to do the same shit because that's who you are and you'll never grow or get better, but yeah, whatever, say this life coach thing and waste more time and energy before you carry on doing the same old same old which will be done until the very moment of death.
I hate that shit.
You know how much mileage someone else would have gotten out of the situation with IRS and the Department of Revenue that the idiots and bigots at The Wall Street Journal created for me? They would have needed outside help, someone to intercede. I handled it. While doing everything else. And I never looked at it as something complicated. It was a problem to be solved. A problem not of my own making, like virtually none of my problems are.
But if I was someone else, I would have talked about that problem in such a way as to freak out other people were they imagining if something like that had ever befallen them. That's what people do. Everything becomes this gargantuan task that is beyond difficult and borders on the impossible to do. And that's just bullshit. Have some standards. I find that so much comes back to that: Standards and perspective. Attitude matters. Do you know how much I hate a defeatist attitude?
But sure, you can pay me to be your life coach. (I can be your writing coach, too; wouldn't that be fun?) I'll even give the first lesson for free:
Just because you're not a Zulu warrior doesn't mean you have to be a mega fucking bitch.
Good. There's class started. I'm like King Wenceslas here. Follow in those footsteps.
More cheerily: Yesterday, Instagram showed me a bunch of photos and said, "Name these people," so I did. Here's a great assembly of photos of my best pal Lilah--she's holding a copy of "What the Mouse Knew" in that first one--and my buddy Amelia! Yea! Two of my favorite girls! (Every Lilah photo makes me smile; every Amelia photo makes me laugh.)
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