walkin' in memphis (brighton)

The sensation of walking up to a 7 Eleven in Brighton in the evening. It is a shining city on a hill. The glow of the lights out onto the sidewalk. The lights are sterile halogen. Very easy to pretend you're in an indie movie with some garbled theme about alienation in modern society, where you'd be a character who goes to the 7 Eleven, stares glassy-eyed at things in the freezer section, shyly avoids conversation with checkout girl, walks home alone silently to silent alone apartment where you do something comedic, but also indicative of your loneliness and alienation. The light, the light!

Stop up the access and passage to remorse

I foresee a future state of the National Football League that is centered around injuries. The games take twice as long because there are multiple serious injuries on every play. The rosters are twice as large because of the need for replacements due to in-game attrition. There are several deaths due to injuries sustained in games every year, which, while bemoaned as tragic, are tolerated. The year? 2025.

It's not too far away from today's game. There is an upper limit on how big and fast football players can get before very serious injuries become more and more frequent, eventually leading to the first in-game death. It will happen, someday, and don't be surprised when it does.

Mark my words.

musing

Hear cars swooping by on Harvard Ave. Feel tennis soreness in the right tricep from hitting wicked forehand winners yesterday. Perceive cool breeze of a Boston September night. Decompress and rest feet from standing all day.


Let it go.

extreme abstraction

I'm all about new beginnings. I have a harder time finishing things. But I think this move will work out for the best.

Time to get a new shower curtain.

While the sun and moon endure luck's a chance, but trouble's sure

Here's all the evidence you need that Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a great book.

-I carred it around urban metro Boston for a few days, and got no less than three comments from complete strangers about how much they liked it, including from the conductor on the Commuter Rail.

-I was walking in front of North Station and a woman passing by on a bike, who was presumably homeless, said "Great book. Great man. Too bad he offed himself." You can't say it much better than that, and that's really all you need to know about the book.


-I am still almost completely unable to describe the book to people who ask me about it.


I strongly urge everyone to read it.

missed the saturday dance

The world is a big place. There must be room in it for me. I pray for the serenity and the forethought to realize that anything good or bad that happens to me is small potatoes simply because of the grand scale of life and the world.

There are pluses and minuses ahead, but the most important point is that there is an ahead.

As the time that we can share never is enough it seems to me

There's really nothing like the nihilistic pleasure of knowing that you'll be dead before climate change really gets started on ravaging the earth in life-altering ways. The temptation is great to just say "I won't be here, so good luck with all that."

For now, I'm ready to indulge that temptation. Am I wrong? Probably. But I'm also an American. I'm free to think whatever I want. And right now, I think that I'll be long gone by the time the German tourists are learning to swim in Arizona Bay.

So as the sea level rises, I urge you to not worry about it too much because, frankly, it's not your problem. We're probably talking about at least three generations before things get really drastically wicked bad. And someone else will think of a cheap, easy, nearly effortless way to stop global warming by then, right?

Right?

don't worry if I write rhymes, I write checks

I'm ready for whatever comes next.

And I'm excited. Something's gotta give here, right? And really, I am a pretty employable person.

This summer has been fun in spite of the rain, but it doesn't last forever. It gets colder at some point and this old Allan has to move on. Bob Vila, anyone?

I have almost no idea what the future will bring, but I'm ready to check it on out. Bring it on, future, I'll take it.

je blog donc je suis? (not an original idea)

I'm disillusioned about blogging. It seems like everyone has a blog these days. It also seems, however, that no one reads anyone's blog. How many blogs have you seen with entries going back for months, with nary a comment to be seen, nary a speck of evidence that anyone but the writer has ever seen any of the words committed to the (web) page? And yet you probably know the feeling, because you probably have your own blog that nobody reads.

This blog is not an exception, by the way, I'm sure there are maybe 7 people who have ever read this blog. And really, why should they bother? I'm bringing very little to the table. I might be saying things that no one has ever said before, but does that really matter, considering who I am? I'm not anyone in particular. I don't have a reputation, I don't have power or influence. I'm nobody, for the purpose of this debate that I am having with no one on my blog that is not read.

And how many times can I write the somewhat ugly neologism 'blog' in this blog post? Are you counting, non-existent reader? You don't even exist, but I'm asking you what you think of this blog, which to me seems to be mostly just taking up valuable bandwidth. I think this is the problem with blogs. There are so many words being written, then immediately published. Snap your fingers and you're a writer. It's way too easy to get a blog, to have a blog, to suddenly feel at least a little bit self-important because you can publish your words at will, theoretically to a worldwide audience. But it's all for naught if no one reads it. The meaning of these very words that I write at this moment varies directly with the amount of appreciation that they garner. Have you considered this?

Insubstantial reader, are you considering your place, and mine, in the "blogosphere" (one of the uglier neologisms, right up there with "tweet", and thank goodness blogosphere is still not acknowledged by spell-check)? Do you wonder if you are anything but an grain of sand in the unfathomable blogiverse? Do you feel comforted by my asking questions of no one, questions that won't, and possibly can't, be answered?

I hate rhetorical questions.