Saturday 12/21/24
I am handicapped by the computer which I must restart from the power strip at least six times a day. I lose hours each day. It takes an hour for Word to load. I can rarely use Word and the internet simultaneously. It takes usually less than an hour before the rainbow pinwheel thing happens and I have to shut it off at the strip again. The plan is to replace this very old machine in January and hopefully get everything ported over with a particular person's help. I will be able to go much faster then.
I had yesterday what is a typical morning here in terms of activity. I don't often say things about these mornings because they are so typical but I will document this one. I wrote two op-eds--both pertained to television programs. I ran 3000 stairs and did 100 push-ups. I wrote and sent five letters. I met with the plumber again. And I got myself to the Apple store on Boylston for a 10:25 appointment concerning the phone issue, which is now mostly fixed. My sister helped me out.
It was snowing by the time I had headed out to Boylston and it kept snowing throughout the day.
Who are these people talking to/addressing on social media? They write these diaristic type of comments--but which are always devoid of substance--that they mean for themselves, like they're trying to convince themselves of these things, but they want others to see them? Why? And these others are strangers. They're not exploring ideas, emotions, and truths--and working towards truths--so that their words can offer something to fellow humans; guidance, inspiration, a worthwhile reading experience.
So what is going on here? They want that feeling that someone saw their trite comment? That they were "heard"? But it's not being heard. And normally when someone does see these comments, it's because they're from a woman who is attractive, which is not a hard thing to do or be. And that's the only reason someone is looking at that person's feed, because that same person has a photo of themselves working out with their ass up close to the camera or some such.
That helps or heals that person? Do they really not know the only reason anyone is paying them any attention?
Guys will do or say anything to fuck someone. There are no limitations. Anything they have to say, they will say. Everyone is playing a stupid game. An empty game. So very little is real. I mean, reality is real. But what people are doing, who they are portraying themselves as, is never on the level, is never honest. All is adopted. Persona, attitudes. And for guys, it's usually to fuck. At the same time, hardly anyone offers anything at all. They're not smart, they're not decent. If they have anything they offer, it's their body. There's not this, there's not this, there's not this, but there's this other thing and that's it. So that's what the real focus is on, and what the lies are an attempt to get to and partake of. Because there's nothing else there.
You see some guy write the same stupid thing that a woman writes, but she's going to get much more interaction--and the likes and the false positivity and all that--because of guys who want to fuck her and lonely women doing a girl power "you go girl" thing. Does this woman not realize that's all it is? Or does she think this mindless commentary of hers is fascinating? I think she does. Otherwise, if you knew that's what was really happening--and of course it is--then why would you play that game if you had any self-respect or any intelligence?
So much comes down to this. How a person looks. And that's not a skill or something you offer. Not really. I mean, most people are obese--at least in America--so if you're fit, I guess you stand out somewhat, but there are millions and millions and millions of people who are the same. It's nothing special. But it's often all that one is left with. Bodies. Well, at least you have a nice body. And then you just have all of these cretinous men. These pathetic loads who just want holes. And/or these guys who will debase themselves for the chance at some holes they'll never get to experience. They will say anything in prostrating themselves. No shame, no dignity. Nearly everyone is simply trying to manipulate everyone and anyone else.
And the woman eats that up. Got those likes. So then she goes for more of them. She does nothing else. She'll post how she's lonely, though really just to get more attention to nurse herself through another evening. If someone wrote her something sincere and that person had all of these things going for them, she'd only look at it in passing, basically with eyes closed, as another bit of encomia. Another coin in the pail. She just wants to hear it bounce off the sides and know it's there. And thus will she pass her life. And the guys will do what they do, passing theirs. And all of these people could just suck less, be less terrible at being a person, at being alive, and they'd be so much happier and more fulfilled. But that's not how it works or what is going to happen. And as time goes along, there are fewer and fewer people who are not some version of what I'm describing here. Then you just have an empty, soulless, dead ass, fake ass world, with so little of any value in it, human-wise. And no matter how obvious something should be, virtually no one is capable of seeing it for what it is, and that simply becomes more so until no one can tell anything about anything.
I think that was an important point the other day: false positivity is more toxic than false negativity, the latter being what we commonly think of as trolling. But trolling can also pertain to that false positivity. It's more damaging. It's like heroin. Emotional and psychological heroin. The person dispensing the false positivity is an emotional and psychological heroin dealer. It goes into the veins of that other person and they're opiated; a zombie. They'll do nothing about that which they should be doing things about. They'll address nothing. They won't question, they won't think.
I know this person who licks everybody, no matter how bad they are at what they do. They just lie to them. Says they're the best, etc. Whether they sing, write, dance on the side of the street next to a trash can, declaim some godawful poem. This particular person is this kind of heroin dealer. But that's a lot of people. This is just someone I know. It's like they live to lick. I wonder they think they're helping any of these people that they lie to. There isn't anyone they won't lie to in this manner.
What's funny is that with this person, because I'm legit, they couldn't say anything, no matter what they saw and what they thought and what they knew. They needed to lie. They could only lie. And if they couldn't lie, couldn't be insincere, they couldn't be anything. So they couldn't say so much as say the simple lies to me of insincere praise--"wow, that's so amazing"--that they said to everyone else. (This is typical on the societal whole; what people think is amazing is what they'll say less about, because that requires sincerity and a certain amount of vulnerability and "being real"; they're speaking from the heart, and that's harder for people who are so performative, who lack for confidence, and who are so used to saying whatever is the easiest thing, no matter if it's not remotely sincere.) That they say up and down social media. Because they can't tell the truth, or at least very rarely. The lie is their go-to. Their setting. It's automatic. What has to come out. What they're comfortable saying.
That's terrible. That's total life failure if you're like that. You failed at the thing. You didn't do it right at all.
Never foster or encourage someone else's stagnation. You're not helping them. You're doing the opposite. We don't always have to state the truth. But we shouldn't lie.
I suppose that wasn't very Christmas-y. My bad. I do want to get some Christmas-related material up on here before Wednesday. I am writing so much. And there is so much more I need to be doing. I will say for now that I sent a very special Christmas gift to my my nephew and my two nieces and my sister and my mom.
What on earth would possess all of the people who say they're a life coach to think they could coach anyone in or about life? Do they think they have this great insight? These basic, basic, basic people. With their fortune cookie-lite banalities. How self-deluding are most people? Then you have millions of people doing this who are equally dumb and equally simple. Can none of them see that? Do they think, "No, but I'm different" and "This thing I'm saying in the exact same language as all of these other insipid people is actually different though it's the same words." What difference do they see between themselves and millions of other people claiming to be this life and living expert?
When I see what people don't know, I think that it's almost impossible for anyone to know anything, if they don't know these things. Because if you can't see that--if you can't tell--what can you possibly see? What is simple enough for you to be able to see for what it is?
Shaved for the first time in like five days. That's better. Today is the start of a new week for me. Clean up and get after it.
I think I'm going to do something special work-wise for Christmas. Obviously I will be alone for the thirteenth year in a row. But something people will look at later and will also know from these pages--hopefully while I'ms still alive--that this guy actually sat there alone on another very hard Christmas and worked on that of all things.
I saw none of the Notre Dame-Indiana game last night, which the Irish predictably won. I haven't seen anyone else say this, but a big problem with the college football playoff is you don't have anywhere close to twelve teams good enough to be in it. You're going to have many games that are duds. I don't think you'll see much in the way of upsets and certainly not Cinderella runs. I do think it's cool that some of these games are at a given school's stadium. And you may have weather as a factor. I would have been fairly surprised, though, if Indiana had really given Notre Dame a game.
The Celtics lose too many games at home. You are likely to say--if you follow basketball, that is, meaning, you're not one of the publishing people who come here primarily to see if they or someone they know is being lit up, given that most publishing people hate sports given that they involve ability, competition, effort, and a level playing field--that this is no cause for concern, the Celtics are so talented, etc. I'd keep an eye on it, though. I have been.
I'd keep an eye on Jaylen Brown's shooting as well, because it hasn't been good all season, and when you've not been good by this point in a season in a sport like basketball--and also hockey--you're unlikely to turn something around. In baseball, players do. But how you are when we get to the holidays--and we're deep in them now--in the NBA and the NHL tends to be how you're going to be for that season's duration. Both team-wise and player-wise.
The Celtics shoot way too many threes. They have nights when they win despite how many threes they take. And they make themselves too dependent on that shot. They box themselves in. If it's one of those clang-clang-clang nights, they lose, because they just keep clanging, they don't alter their game. Can they? And if so, how much? How readily?
Minus a three-point arc, basketball is a more athletic game. I'm not saying I'd prefer it to be abandoned. I'm just saying you'd have more movement and it'd be harder and harder fought.
A cousin of mine sent me a photo of her and her daughter at The Nutcracker yesterday. My cousin has MS, and she told me before she left she was having a bad day on that score and was wearing heels and where should she park, so I made a suggestion--the lot under the Common--and offered to come out and help them get to the venue--and so that she wouldn't fall, given the heels and the aforementioned snow and that it was quite slippery yesterday in Boston--but she just sent me one of those smiley faces that people like to use and I assume it all went well.
The Bruins kept the wrong goalie. Not that I'd really want the one they let go either.
Read an interesting article on Charles Ives and the Grateful Dead.
I knew I'd be at the Apple store waiting for a while yesterday so I took a book with me--Farjeon's Mystery in White. It was cool to sit there and read looking out through the glass facade at Boylston Street decked out with Christmas decorations as the snow came down.
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