The rain from Hurricane Melissa was pretty bad here in the city but I was stuck in a doctor’s office being told that the only option for my back was another shot before surgery.
As soon as I was done, rushed back – “rushed” being a loose term because the city was really moving at a snail’s pace – but oddly, the pad was bone dry.
It was really weird.
With the amount of water that came down here, the entire unit shoulda seen some serious water damage and yet…not.
Welp, not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth and take my wins where I find them.
Me: I’m still hungry. Her: You just ate like 40 pieces of sushi. How is that possible? Me: (shrugging) I have a big brain. Her: (laughing) The brain doesn’t use that much energy. Me: The average brain weighs 2% of the body’s mass but uses 20% of the body’s calories. (thinking) I gotta think I’m at least 21%.
Been on a diet again, but not for Scenic Fights, actually. Got a new little project I’ll tell you about once it’s closer to done.
But it’s been a struggle just because I can’t seem to get full for some reason worse than usual for some reason.
A buddy of mine suggested that I’m hungrier than my usual ridic level of hunger because I’ve been working out a bit more with my physical therapy.
But it seems such a tiny additional burden to me that it can’t possibly justify the amount of food I’m taking in.
In any case, my goals are super modest – like five pounds or so just to look better in a suit for something.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Me: OMG, look at those sammies! Her: Logan…we just ate. Me: I know, I know, I know…I have problems…
Location: all over NJ, Manhattan, and Queens today
Mood: pooped
Music: we all have a hunger (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
Me: I just realized something. Her: What? Me: The kid’s gonna be moving out in just seven more years. That seems so insanely quick. Her: (nodding) Yeah. We really don’t have them all that long. Me: OMG, I’m so bummed out suddenly…
Came across this article recently from the oldest practicing – 101 – doctor in America.
But, between my friend who just got discharged from the hospital, to me with my crap back, I feel that, at some point, it’s just fighting against the tides.
Everything is about maintenance, I’m not really growing anymore. I’m just trying to deteriorate at a slower rate than most people my age.
I’m just shocked that more people aren’t doing everything they can to stave off the inevitable.
Me: It just seems crazy to me – do people not think it’s gonna happen to them? Her: Getting older? I think they don’t really consider that working out or eating healthfully will really make all that much of a difference. Me: That’s crazy. Her: (shrugging) I honestly don’t think a lotta people realize it’s an option.
On that note, I look at the kid and realize that, unlike me, he’s improving every day.
He’s getting stronger and smarter and better each day, and I’m thrilled for him and for it. That’s how it should be.
I just wish he doesn’t have to deteriorate like all humans do.
Then again, that’s what it means to be human, I suppose.
Location: my kid’s bunkbed, looking for missing screws from all the construction around here that have vibrated them off
Mood: prickly
Music: Everything counts in large amounts (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
The thing that’s driving alla parents and teachers nuts these days is the kids randomly yelling out the numbers, 6-7! at the top of their lungs.
If you wanna know why, read this. But it is maddening.
Then again, I figure every generation has its weird saying that irritated adults – gotta figure, that’s at least a major reason why they do it in the first place.
For me, there was a buncha items of slang that I remember, most of which I put into the novel I wrote years ago.
In the 90s, someone who was “diesel” was someone that was strong; “cock diesel” was someone super strong.
I was reminded of this when I came across a story about a donkey named, Diesel that escaped from its ranch in 2019 out in California.
The reason was that he was frightened by a mountain lion and ran off.
His owners spent weeks looking for him but never found him and assumed that he ended up getting killed and eaten, most likely by mountain lions.
But Diesel’s story didn’t end there. It was only the start.
More pictures of not donkeys…
See, a donkey, matching Diesel’s description, was discovered living with a herd of wild elk in 2023.
The assumption was that he found a new home and family.
But it gets better.
Evidently, local wardens found a dead mountain lion that was kicked to death by a hoofed animal.
The next time the elk herd was found with Diesel, Diesel was – evidently – their leader.
Now this one isn’t even a real horse.
In other words, the thing that ended his old life – a mountain lion scaring him from his old home – was the thing that that started his new life – facing a mountain lion, killing it, and becoming the leader of a herd of animals, not his own.
His old owners, upon seeing videos of their donkey, said they were just going to leave him be because he looked happy.
Not just happy but happy and thriving…in a position of leadership to boot!
Knew I had to tell you about this story the moment I read about it because it fits so well into my idea that we cannot move forward unless we face up to our pasts.
So many people I know are doing exactly that, and I’m so proud of them for doing that, truly.
My kid’s friend: It wasn’t just any fruit. They ate an apple. Me: (shaking head) That’s not true, man. The bible doesn’t say what fruit it was. Him: It is true! It’s in the bible!
When I was around 12, I repeated something about someone that turned out to be completely false.
That woulda been fine except that it ended up hurting a girl that I had a crush on.
Despite my honestly thinking it was true, she never spoke to me again.
Don’t remember the girl’s name at all but I remember the situation and learned a valuable lesson that day:
Don’t repeat something unless really know what you’re talking about.
For example, have you ever heard someone say something like, “Eskimos have XX words for snow?”
That’s complete BS.
See every culture has hundreds of words for water.
Obviously, we have the general word water, just like German does (“wasser”).
But all of the following are also types of water:
lake, which is a body of water surrounded by land (“der See” in German)
pool, which is a small body of water surrounded by land (“die Lache” for a pool of liquid, which I think is what they would use)
river, which is a moving stream of water of a fairly large size (“der Fluess”)
stream, which is a smaller a current of water similar to a river (“der Bach”)
Of course, we could go on here, with brook, tributary, flow, etc.
We also geysers, waterfalls, etc.
In the air, we’ve got clouds, precipitation, snow, hail, rain, sleet, etc.
Underground, we have aquifers, groundwater, water tables, etc.
When it’s solid, we have ice, slush, glaciers, icebergs, etc.
These are all off the top of my head. There are so many more.
My point being is something I told you many times before, which is that there are alla these saying that have the air of truth to it, without a hint of actual truth to it.
No real reason for this entry.
Just a general observation.
Speakinga observations, I note that the government’s shut down.
Wonder what that’s all about.
Me: (amused) That’s because the Latin word for apple is “malum,” which is a homonym for their word for “evil.”
Him: Oh…
Me: Look, you can give advice to adults…but you should make sure you’re right first.
Took a knee to my eye and an elbow to my cheek the other day.
Fun times.
Her: You’re 52! Me: I am not unaware. Her: Are you sure about that, Logan!?
My SIL rang me up the other night because Alison’s mom was having a milestone birthday.
So, the next thing you know, the kid and I headed to her place to celebrate.
I spoke to her mom a while ago and she told me not to come for her birthday as it was too much trouble.
Me: You didn’t tell me it was [an important birthday]! Her: I didn’t want to make a big deal. Me: So, you wanna make me look like a jerk and not show up, lady?! Her: (laughing) Thanks for coming. Me: Of course!
My SIL brought some Italian cookies that I absolutely loved.
See, when I was a kid, my dad’s office was right next door to an Italian bakery.
Once in a blue moon, he’d bring home these exact cookies, and it was like the greatest day ever.
Man, I miss my dad.
Speaking of Italian things, we ended up just eating food from their local Italian joint.
I thought it was great but, evidently, I’m super easy because everyone else thought the food was only meh.
Me: I grew up super poor. This woulda been a feast for us. Her: Well, we’re not eating the rest of it, so you can bring that home. Me: Heck, yeah!
Speaking of when I was young, I read Machiavelli’s The Prince way back in 1996 when 2Pac released his like last album under that name (it was his only album I truly disliked).
I remembered the below quote from The Prince and was reminded of it recently what with everything going on in the news these days.
In general men are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, dissimulating, hungry for profit and quick to evade danger. As long as you succeed and do them good, they are devoted to you entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children… but only when danger is far distant; when danger approaches they turn against you.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. XVII
It’s funny how universal some things about humanity are and how they transcend both time and place.
I’m truly interested – and somewhat apprehensive – about what life will be like here in the US in a decade’s time.
Little wonder it was such a popular film, especially with the awkward and overweight Chinese-American crowd.
Well, one of them, at least.
Somehow, Sly managed to convince a major studio to not only buy his script but also let him be the main star in it.
But, along the way, there was a noticeable mess up that they had to fix.
See, in the final fight, Rocky wore a pair of white trunks with a red waistband and stripes down each leg.
Unfortunately, there’s a scene where Rocky sees a giant poster of himself hanging in the stadium, but he’s wearing red trunks with white stripes.
This was actually a mistake by the art department and they didn’t have the time (or money) to redo the poster. Yet this was an important bit of scenery that was needed.
What to do?
Well, all they did was to have Rocky stare at the poster and mention to the promoter, before the fight, Rocky says that the trunks are the wrong color, and the promoter says, “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Because Rocky was a loser and he literally just had to show up and get the stuffing beat outta him.
So, what was a pretty glaring mistake ended up pushing the point that Rocky was insignificant in every aspect.
Ok, the year is 1986 and I’m a very fat, nerdy, “just-turned-a” teenager.
An anthology series by Steven Speilberg called Amazing Stories, which was a bit like a (then) modern take on the Twilight Zone, is must-watch-tv.
Because this was in the time before cable and YouTube and you either watched what everyone else watched or you had to sit on the sidelines as the other kids talked about it.
Man, I loved that show as a kid.
One of the stories that really sticks out to me was Gather Ye Acorns, which starred Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hammill.
In it, Hamill’s a young man that meets a weird old dude – who’s actually a troll – that tells him to keep everything he’s ever loved, even if the world mocks or belittles him.
So, Hamill’s character does so and holds onto comic books, toys, and pop culture trinkets – for decades.
Just like me.
These are actually my buddies; I was more of an X-Men/Batman kinda kid.
Unfortunately, like the rest of the world, the young man turns into an old man, and a poor old man at that.
What’s worse is that, the whole time, people either think he’s silly – which is the best-case scenario – or a complete idiot.
His parents eventually disown him and toss him out.
He ends up alone and, eventually, homeless.
Now an old man, Hamill’s character is frustrated and angry, cursing the fact that he met the old troll and ruined his life.
A bitter old man, he ends up just waiting to die.
Yet he somehow finds himself at a collector’s auction where he’s mobbed because everyone wants his “junk” – alla which is now super valuable.
The story ends with Hamill’s character wealthy, vindicated, and – perhaps best of – finally seen by those around him.
I did exactly that – yes, sometimes with actual stuff, like comic books, old electronics and the like – but also with things in my head.
He laughed and said, “Well, one day, I’m gonna live on a sunny island like Jimmy Buffet and play the guitar on the beach.”
Guess what? We both did exactly what we said we’d do.
Because neither of us gave up on our “childish” dreams.
What a difference that makes, not giving up on the things you love.
That’s the thing that makes me different from other people, I think: Like Hamill’s character, I rarely gave up the things I loved, like peanut butter, Spam, kali, comics, short stories, etc.
That can be a disserve at times, but – by-and-large – it’s served me well.
When everyone else quit kali, I kept it up. For almost 20 years, I would go. Usually twice a week and then once a week when the classes got more sparse.
But I’d always practice by my lonesome at night.
This was 15 years ago. That was our old space.
Likewise, many of my very well-meaning friends – like the one way above and even my own father-in-law, caution me about continuing to wrassle with 20-somethings.
But I know that if I stop, that’s moment I’ll truly become become an old man.
See, I know that I’m mathematically 52 years old, but as long as I can keep doing the things I love, I don’t believe it.
There’s an old saying I like that goes, Moving water doesn’t freeze.
So, I gotta keep moving.
Her: Why don’t you run with me? Me: Sorry, I need to train. Her: So, lemme get this straight – you’d rather roll around with a buncha sweaty men, than jog with your amazing fiancé. Me: …yes? Her: (slowly nods) Ok then…
On that note, we just did a crazy cool thing on Scenic Fights.
I’ll tell you all about it when it finally happens.
Speaking of home, movies like the Warriors – which is based on a true story that happened almost 3,000 years ago – can be countlessly retold because the themes of longing, home, and survival are universal.
Hold that thought.
While I enjoy the modern takes on the Incredible Hulk – particularly the 2008 Ed Norton reboot – for someone that grew up with the 1978 television series, The Incredible Hulk, it’s very different.
Not just in terms of technology, production values, and the like, but the thrust of the show itself.
Essentially, the modern movies make stories about a god-like/monster-like hero, the television show was mainly about the other part of the Hulk, Dr. Banner.
There, Banner is shown as a drifter, and I thought that the show was the story of a man with a mindless monster inside of him.
As I got older, I got wiser and thought it was the story of a man searching for a home with a monster inside of him.
But this was wrong also, I realized.
It was the story of man that can never have a home, ever. He must always be on the run and can never relax or settle down.
Not my copyright, obvs.
Because the moment he finds someone to create a home with, that person will forever be in danger of the monster inside him.
So, he can’t have any relationships – no friends, no lovers, no children, no one.
Which is why the ending scene was always of Banner walking alone, to nowhere, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a duffle bag.
Banner can never go home because he can never have a home. He will never have a home.
So, there’s no home to find.
Because what is home if not the people that call it that along with you?
And he has no one to call it that with him.
It’s such a tragic story and can probably explain how a primetime television series about a big, green, comic book character in the 70s lasted five years.
In any case, just a random thought.
Think I’m finally starting to understand the world a bit.
We did binge Andor – which you should really do as well, honestly excellent writing – but we also saw Poop Cruise.
Now, if you were ever hesitant to go on a cruise, I would strongly recommend that you not watch it.
But it was pretty compelling, and we both found ourselves – probably because we were killing an entire bottle of wine between the two of us – randomly yelling out, Poop Cruise! for no real reason.
Me: Can I pay you a compliment? Her: Sure! Me: I always waaay overestimate how much time something will take when you help me out.
One of the reasons we could watch both was that we massively upgraded the home network.
One of the first things that Buckley did when he moved into the pad with me over a quarter-of-a-century ago was hardwire the whole pad for ethernet.
At the time, the fastest speed was gigabit, or 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps), which you could only get with Cat5e, the fastest commercially available ethernet cable at the time.
Regular Cat5 could do something called “Fast Ethernet,” which is about 100 Mbps.
We wired the pad with a combo of the two – with a couplea branches using Cat4 – never dreaming we’d ever need gigabit speeds or greater.
This is roughly what my room looked like 24 years ago – I saw 9/11 unfold sitting on that bed, watching that TV.
Then, during COVID, I decided to rip out all the Cat5 and Cat4 and just do Cat5e everywhere.
Well, we had a lightning strike here about a month ago that dropped us from roughly 500 Mbps to 80 Mbps, which was just awful (it’s less than 1/10th a gigabit)
So, this past weekend, the Firecracker and I both tore out every single centimeter of cable that Buckley and I laid out 25+ years ago and replaced it with 90% Cat8 cable, which has a theoretical maximum speed of 40,000 Mbps (!!!!).
AND because the Firecracker’s just so damn organized and focused, what we thought was gonna take the whole day, we were able to bang out in just four hours.
Afterwards, I tested everything and was pleasantly surprised at the results: While the cabling can handle up to 40,000 Mbps, with our current routers, we topped out at “only” 113 MB/s, which is just under a gigabit at 904 Mbps.
This is compared to the 80 Mbps that we were working with the past month.
Honestly, this was the best possible outcome since we were approaching theoretical limits on the current hardware we had.
This is roughly what it looked like 15 years ago when Alison was here and kept it tidy.
Because we finished so quickly, we also decided to clean out TWO closets, and managed to replace the hoses on the washer/dryer as well (you’re supposed to change your washer hoses every five years, so if you’ve not done that, you should).
In return for her help, I picked up some Xi’an Famous Food, from around the way – it just opened up less than a year ago and I’d been to the more famous one in Flushing and wanted to try it out.
The food was absolutely killer, and it was a great way to close out the day.
Me: Hey, thanks so much for all the help today. Her: For you? Anytime.
I pride myself on being able to say the occasional witty retort.
Like when I was arguing politics with someone…
Him: You know, you should just admit that he has some good points. Me: Well, then we’d both be wrong.
…or when I was dating this super clumsy girl who was essentially battering me every time we got together.
Her: When you are a klutz, you get hurt. When I’m a klutz, you get hurt. Me: Have you considered *not* assaulting me.
Her: No. Me: Well, at least you’re consistent.
But there are plenty of times where I think of the perfect thing to say waaaaaay after the fact.
The French call that L’esprit de l’escalier or staircase wit.
It was coined by an 18th-century French philosopher, who described the phenomenon as thinking of the perfect comeback or response only after the moment has passed, like when you’re walking away, down a staircase – hence the name.
Case-in-point, I recently, I had a conversation with the Firecracker.
Her: Can you put the cantaloupe away? Me: It has to ripen. Her: Put it in a cabinet. Me: You want me to put a cantaloupe into a cabinet? Her: (slowly nods)
What I shoulda said was: Well, I can’t…ya dope.
I would never call her a dope, but it sounded funny
Or when we were discussing heading to Boston.
Her: They have a really good transit system, we won’t need a car. Me: I thought you said it was really old? Her: It is, but it’s still reliable. Like you – old but reliable. Me: Blargh.
What I shoulda said was: Joke’s on you – I’m both old AND unreliable.
Or the time I made a comment about her dancing.
Me: Are you having a seizure? Her: Aw, just get a few drinks in you and you’ll think I’m doing a great job. Me: Tenuous.
What I shoulda said was: Define: “A few,” and “great.”
But I tease her because she is so great, so I have to take her down a peg or two from time-to-time.
Which brings me to my old friend Katsmw, and something a bit related to l’esprit de l’escalier.
Well, kinda.
I just forgot to mention two funny little things in my last entry that she pointed out after the fact.
See, Katsmw was at the last Memorial Day with us and noted that I forgot to mention that Cappy, Gar, and Duck taught her how to play the card game, 鋤大弟 (pronounced chor dai di).
Man, we used to play that game for hours; there was one time that I played it with Bobby and the fellas through the night until it was dawn.
In any case, the Firecracker won the first hand she ever played.
Then, she won the second one as well, something that amused Katsmw no end. Should also mention that she reminded me that she had this following conversation with my son.
Her: Are you sure you want to go back into the pool? It’s cold today! Him: It’s fine. I run hot.
The boy knows how to turn a phrase, that’s for sure.
Hopefully, he’ll keep his comedic timing as he gets older.
Location: a terrace in my building, watching the workmen do their thing
Mood: still sore (shoulder)
Music: Dur dur d’être bébé (Spotify) Subscribe! Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.
