My latest painting:

I wanted a photo of me punching that Mystery Box, and I couldn't take it myself, so I enlisted Mom's help. She has never played Super Mario Bros., and she didn't quite understand what I was after or, apparently, that you can keep pressing the shutter button on my phone to capture a whole bunch of images (because, you know, there's not actually a roll of film inside the phone). And that is how you get an expression like that on my face.

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Over the weekend, a friend asked what I would do if I suddenly came into ten million dollars, no strings attached. My glib answer at the time was to refuse it. "What am I going to spend it on, art supplies?"

In hindsight I realize that when he asked the question, he knew something I didn't: a mutual friend had just received about the worst diagnosis a doctor can give. If there's anything money definitely can't buy, it's enough time.

As a wise general once said: "a death mark's not an easy thing to live with." But really, that's what we do every day. Life, by definition, is "the brief and futile struggle against inevitability." Not thinking about that truism is a psychological defense mechanism, a survival tactic. Skiing provides a good metaphor: look at the trees and you'll hit them, so we focus on the space in between instead. That's how we get by.

Being forced to look at the trees (memento mori as those pesky Romans say) is a good prompt to re-evaluate my current life choices. If I knew the end was near, would I be doing something differently? Are there experiences I'm missing? I have to say that even after some introspection, I can't really think of anything meaningful to me that I'm not already doing, that I've postponed, that I've sacrificed. I'm really lucky in that way, and I know it.

On the other other hand though, it's possible I'm wrong about why my friend was asking about the money. If he was actually thinking about giving me $10,000,000? Yes, please. I'll think of something to do with it. I'd hate for my obituary to say I passed up a fortune just because I aspire to nothing more than sitting with my dogs and playing video games.

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Mom shares her New York Times digital subscription with me, so I assumed that was why the algorithm thought I could use an ad linking me to this:

While my appreciation for spandex is well documented, what struck me about this particular advertisement was the obvious modesty-preserving panty liner the model was using. That crotch bulge seems so familiar....

Oh, right. It's how Dan Jurgens draws male superhero crotches.

Superman #123 limited edition "Glow-in-the-Dark" variant, May 1997

Maybe that ad was targeting me after all.

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The human brain is a strange thing. I was trying to take a shower, but I couldn't stop thinking about the handful of people in my life I know I treated very badly, by which I mean specifically the people I treated badly who didn't deserve it.

I know I'm a selfish asshole, always have been, and, frankly, I'm generally okay with that. Other people, even people I know quite well, often make me uncomfortable, and I self-defensively want to keep them at arms length. As any good dog will tell you, the best way to do that is to growl and bark at anyone on the other side of the fence. But in the past half century, there have been a few people, about five I can name easily, who did not earn the behavior I showed them.

I'm bothered by the lingering concern that that my actions likely caused them discomfort and lasting emotional damage. That sounds narcissistic, doesn't it? That I could have the power to so strongly influence their lives for the worse? I hope not. Obviously they should never have given me such power, but more importantly, if they did, I shouldn't have taken advantage of it. Shame on me. I wish I had the skill and emotional stability to have communicated better.

In the movie Billy Madison, an older, wiser Billy (played by Adam Sandler) calls his former bullying victim (played by Steve Buscemi) and apologizes for past actions. I'm not going to do that. While I regret my past behavior and those I have wronged probably deserve an apology, I don't think any good can come from my investigating old wounds. I'm not in any twelve-step program. (I know how those apologies typically go.) And, more importantly, I still don't have the skill and emotional stability to communicate better. If Steve Buscemi is going to shoot anyone, it might as well be me.

There. I feel better for having typed that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a shower to finish.

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In an apt metaphor for America in 2025,¹ I'm ending the year trying to find a bandage that will stick and cover the self-inflicted wound to my scrotum.²

¹ You know what I mean. I have actively tried to avoid posting about current events this year because I've been trying to keep my attention on things that don't make me miserable. The results have been mixed. I've been through four 1.75 liter bottles of Kaluha.

² It's not what you think, unless you think I intentionally stabbed myself with a pointy object. I nicked a tiny skin tag with scissors. Maybe I *should* shave; band-aids would adhere better.

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I think between all the cinnamon rolls, donuts, candy, hot chocolate, ham, mashed potatoes, and pie, I gave myself the gift of an extra 10 pounds for Christmas.

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This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm frequently irritated by the things I say and do. A little voice inside my head judges and tells me that it was pretentious or dull or cruel or any number of other words it looked up in a thesaurus under "wrong." I've been told that I shouldn't pay too much attention to that little voice, that I should be kinder to myself, but some days it's harder than others, and right now that voice is making it very hard to post anything that doesn't make me want to slap myself.

So instead, here's a picture I took this afternoon while the poodles were playing in Dad's backyard.

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My dreams lately have been full of shootings, stabbings, and death, but I wouldn't say I was having nightmares. Any outright horror in them has been subdued, like in a classic Hollywood crime story. I generally feel tense, not afraid. Using the language of movie genres, maybe I should call them suspense-mares.

One thing they seem to have in common is that many are set or begin in Victorian houses chock-full of bedrooms with dark-stained wood wall paneling, well-worn hardwood floors, cast-iron beds, chamber pots, and ornately carved fireplaces with roaring fires. And when I say houses full of bedrooms, I mean exactly that: the only rooms in these houses are bedrooms. Even the hallways, stairwells, and closets seem to have been adapted to bedrooms.

To be clear: these houses are not scary to me. I'm not trapped; I can leave the building any time I want. And I almost always approve of the tasteful layout, furnishings, decor. I'd willingly live in any of them. (Though, as my family will attest, I have unusual taste in residential architecture. Mom has long called eclectic houses with outdated designs "Walter Houses." Finances aside, I've never been able to understand why anyone would want to live in a house that looked like anyone else's.)

According to a quick Googling of the dream symbology of bedrooms, "a bedroom in a dream symbolizes your private inner self." Okay, if you say so. But what if it's all bedrooms all the way down? Am I just an especially deep person? Or so narcissistic that I'm just a Droste effect of navel gazing to infinity?

If my brain is trying to tell me something, I wish it'd just come out and say it.

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Since I usually post about Georgia home football games, I suppose I should mention that the final tickets in my annual season package were for today's home finale against the 1-9 Charlotte 49ers. I did not go. I gave the tickets to the daughter of a high-school friend who went to Georgia Tech (ha-ha!), which means I watched from the comfort of my couch as freshman running back Bo Walker's two-touchdown debut paved the way to a 35-3 route. Good for Bo. I hope he makes a lot of other people's money playing ball.

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I just read that famous performance artist Yoko Ono, who everyone knows only because of her famous performance art and for no other reason, once published a "book of instructions" (Grapefruit) containing a conceptual think piece ("Number Piece 1") in which she instructed readers to "Count all the words in the book instead of reading them." My knee-jerk response to that knowledge was, "damn, that's stupid." That's the same as telling someone to go a museum and focus on measuring the size of all the frames. And then, as I was feeling very superior in my judgment, it dawned on me that counting the number of words in a book is exactly the sort of thing I might do without being prompted. (122 so far. Now 126. Is this art?)

I do not understood what this says about me, but I do have the sudden urge to go find a band to break up.

154.

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