Category: Uncategorized

“Someday they’re going to write a blues song just for fighters. It will be for a slow guitar, soft trumpet and a bell.” – Sonny Liston

I enjoyed my boxing class so much the other night. Except after watching the instructor help someone who, unlike me, seemed to at least know how to fight a little, it was clear even to me that the instructor knew what he was doing. I had to ask him, “Why are you here, teaching people like me?” He said he used to train real fighters, but boxing was just too corrupt and he preferred what he was doing now. I remembered hearing that, that boxing was corrupt. Apparently I’m the last to know.

I just finished reading The Shame of Boxing by Jack Newfield. Good fucking lord in Heaven, what a heart breaking state of affairs.

It was written five years ago. Can anyone tell me if anything at all has been done? Has anything improved? I can’t believe this goes on, everyone knows it, and it just continues?? I see that Senator John McCain has been making an effort to reform boxing. Where does it all stand?

I woke up dreaming some bizarre dream about Osama bin Laden, and helping the military catch him and then I saw the news about al-Zarqawi. The TV was on while I slept so the news must have penetrated my dreams. I wondered what kind of difference it would really make and my friend Jonathan rightly pointed out that it’s going to be a boost to the military’s morale, and it’s certainly good for the people in Iraq. Then someone else disturbingly pointed out that clearly al-Zarqawi has enemies within Al Qaeda so we have only done their bidding.

Please forgive the juxtaposition, but meanwhile, I was an absolute failure at picture taking last night. This is the only one I like. From left to right: Jim’s hand, Marianne, Rachel, and Ellen. The people you’re not seeing because the pictures came out badly and they’d thank me for not posting them if they saw them: Liz, Max, Ruby, Ellen T., Lianne and Luce. Everyone is prettier than I managed to capture.

You know what? Turns out, 50 doesn’t suck. I’ve been getting more smiles from men on the street in the past week. I think that’s because:

1. I’ve been in a good mood and all smiley myself.
2. The gym. My whole posture and carriage is different. Here is me in one of my new birthday shirts.

Tonight I’m going out to dinner with some friends, to celebrate my birthday and my friend Ruby’s birthday. I get to extend my birthday still one more day! Then I promise to stop talking about it and go on to other topics that might be of interest to people other than ME.

Like boxing. I took a boxing class, and I have to say I loved it. If anyone can recommend a good place where I can really learn to box, I’d be most grateful. It was the most exhausting workout I have ever had in my entire life. Good Lord, they make you work. But it was worth it to get to the boxing part.

I just remembered the 666 thing, due to a really bad review of The Omen, which called it unnecessary. That would kill me, if a reviewer called one of my books unnecessary.

Today is the last day of my extended birthday. What shall I do to start the 50’s off right? And honor this symbolic day? I could bite Finney, who has nipped at me 60 thousand billion times. Look at this evil little face!

[From the Parapsychology Foundation.]

SEATS FOR THE JUNE 6TH LECTURE GOING FAST . . .
Walter Meyer zu Erpen of the Survival Research Institute of Canada will deliver his talk entitled Do Tables Tilt, Turn and Float? Table Levitation Phenomena, 1850-2006 on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at the New York Academy of Science in New York City as part of the Parapsychology Foundation’s Perspectives Lecture Series. An historian and archivist by profession, Meyer zu Erpen has participated in a Spiritualist study group since 1998. The group has experienced strong psychokinetic phenomena in good light. Through video clips and still photographs, he will illustrate the history of physical phenomena in the seance room from the notorious 19th-century Italian medium Eusapia Palladino through the ingenious induction methods of Kenneth Batcheldor to the Hamilton Group and on to the group in which he sits, among others.

The New York Academy of Sciences is located at 2 East 63rd Street in New York City (just off Fifth). The lecture will start promptly at 7:00 p.m. The check-in desk at the back of the 4th Floor Meeting Room will open at 6:30 p.m. LAST MINUTE RESERVATIONS ARE BEING ACCEPTED. Call 212-628-1550 or e-mail to: office@parapsychology.org to reserve. Donation is $15 at the door ($13 for Psychic Explorers Club Members). For more information on both of these lectures, and how to get to the lecture hall, go to the following website address: http://www.parapsychology.org/dynamic/050200.html.