2023

● Sunday, 1 January 2023:   Is human creativity infinite? Like our own (Big-Bang-produced) universe, it’s immense, but not infinite.

● When I got the handmade bridal-leather briefcase yesterday (it came yesterday), after determining that there were no flaws to speak of, I immediately bought another one (so that I’d have a pair of them—I use two at a time). Several hours later, I regretted buying the second one, but found that I was unable to cancel the order. This briefcase-buying spree has been my one small concession to extravagance. But it’s time it ends.

● Those comforter grips worked well. I still had to straighten out the bedclothes, but it took less than half the time it used to take.

● Today I increased my daily Abilify dose to a whole tablet (2 mg).

● Truncated Camarillo drive.

● Monday, 1-2-2023:   I bought yet another leather briefcase this morning! All told, if I stop buying them now, I’ll have spent, in this last spree, about $4,000 on them. Not that bad, considering that I made $100,000.00 in 2022.

● I can’t find my old leather box-briefcase.

● Thursday, 1-5-2023:   An idea for a new kind of restaurant, designed for the less advantaged: it would not sell food; but it would have tables and chairs and microwave ovens, which customers could use to heat up or cook food they bring with them. One could stay for up to two hours at a time, and admission (each time) would cost a nominal sum, like a dollar (not enough to be burdensome to customers, but enough to make money for the owners).

● I read an article about pathological lying that said, among other things: “Pathological lying can be a sign of a mental health issue.” It’s a sign also of something more serious: being a liar.

● Monday, 1-9-2023:   When a person dies, people say they pray for his friends and family. Why would they not pray also for the deceased himself? Would they not pray that he (the deceased) go to Heaven?

● Tuesday, 1-10-2023:   Today I increased my daily Abilify dose to 3 mg (1.5 tablets).

● Wednesday, 1-11-2023:   A parent’s love for his (biological) child is not “personal”; your parent loves you, not because you’re you, but merely because you’re his child; he’d love you, as his child, whoever you were. We don’t pick our (biological) parents or children. Your child is not your child because you love him; you love him because he’s your child. It’s the opposite with spouses: they don’t love each other because they’re spouses; they’re spouses because they love each other.

● Thursday, 1-12-2023:   Everything seems easy when you know how to do it.

● I’m not a particularly good editor—of other people’s writing. I lack the discipline to confine myself to editing, and I usually end up radically rewriting the work.

● Saturday, 1-14-2023:   Haircut (Brenda).

● Friday, 1-20-2023:   Here’s an excerpt from a recent deposition report of mine:

Synopsis

The defense attorney also argued (talking to me) that the diagnostic tests (imaging) have all been negative. I told her that that doesn’t mean that the supposedly injured worker is not injured. We often go to the doctor complaining of serious symptoms; and the doctor takes images that turn out negative. We still have the symptoms.

Synopsis of second deposition

In questioning the injured worker, defense attorney renewed her argument about negative imaging tests meaning that there’s no injury—otherwise, she said, why would the doctors do those tests? I replied that the purpose of those tests is, not to determine whether the claimed symptoms exist, but rather to diagnose them. That the tests are negative means, not that there are no symptoms, but merely that they haven’t yet been diagnosed.

● Saturday, 1-21-2023:   Let me supplement that last point. We may occasionally conclude that a supposedly injured worker is faking his injury. But this is rare, and we glean the conclusion from a great many pieces of evidence. Negative imaging tests alone are never sufficient evidence for that conclusion.

● Last week (or this week, Monday through Friday), my email was not working (I could send emails but not receive them). It was a handicap and a hardship.

● Sunday, 1-22-2023:   I just awoke from a colorful dream in which I was in a restaurant or dessert shop, and I ordered a pastry covered by red circular candies. One of the candies was, through a baking accident, yellow instead of red. The clerk who served me commented, in jest, I thought, that I should start eating the pastry at the yellow piece. I asked why, and she floundered for an explanation, but eventually said something like, “Well, that’s where it starts.” I quickly interjected . . . “and if you don’t start there, who knows where you’ll end up!” I then took the pastry and went out of the shop, and it seemed an enchanted landscape.

● Last week I bought the most expensive jacket I’ve ever had; it’s also the warmest, by far. Of course, it’s down-filled, but I’ve had many down jackets. I paid $560.00 for it. It’s the Triple F.A.T. Goose, Downing model.

● Friday, 1-27-2023:   “They lived happily ever after,” a conventional ending of many old stories, does not mean they lived forever; it means just that they were happy as long as they lived.

● Sunday, 1-29-2023:   Philosophy Club meeting today. I’m not going, because it’s in-person, and I think the risk is too high of getting sick. But I wrote a brief paragraph on the topic: “Human Dignity,” thus:

Some philosophers argue that all persons have innate dignity, and therefore should be treated with respect, simply because they’re human. The notion of innate human dignity is a fantasy. But I favor treating everyone with a minimum degree of respect—as if he had innate dignity. For that to happen, though, there must be rough equality of wealth. Since resources are scarce and wealth is correlative, the wealth of the rich makes many others (relatively) poor; and so it’s hard for the rich (in becoming or staying rich) to treat the poor with respect. Poverty is innately disrespectful (to the impoverished). But with rough equality of wealth, for everyone (in particular, the formerly rich) to have enough to live reasonably well, the population must be small enough, far smaller than it is now (a given amount of wealth divided among fewer people means more for each person). Perhaps this is a matter of (collectively) treating ourselves with dignity.

● A few months ago, a publisher, LearnDesk, solicited my posting my essays on their website; they offered an arrangement whereby readers would pay me to get access to the essays. I accepted their offer and posted ten of my essays there. It turned out to be a complete waste of time and money.

● Tuesday, 1-31-2023:   Today I increased my daily Abilify dose to 4 mg (2 tablets). And today I had a headache. I’m not sure those two events are causally connected, but I hadn’t had a headache in a month’s time.

● Saturday, 2-4-2023:   Concept is to conception as definition is to understanding.

● Sunday, 2-5-2023:   Brian Gould, the Los Angeles Philosophy Club facilitator, is hosting a supplemental meeting of the club today, by Zoom, for those who couldn’t meet in-person last week, on the same topic, Human Dignity. Here’s my comment on the Human Dignity entry, by philosophers Stephen Riley and Gerhard Bos, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

In the article, Riley and Bos put too fine a point on human dignity, talking about it more precisely than the subject logically permits, resulting in a piece that often sounds like gobbledygook. A more specific criticism, the authors talk about an “interstitial concept of human dignity,” permeating and interrelating ethics, law, and politics. The authors are trying to gerrymander the concept of human dignity to make it go under various areas of study. The difficulty therein is that, simply put, our decisions what to do, including what laws to make, and what policies to support, are ultimately ad hoc. We cannot specify in advance any certain conditions or elements in them.

● Religion is philosophical fantasy.

● It’s significant that the United States constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment, not “cruel or unusual” punishment. In other words, cruel punishment is OK. Unusual punishment is OK . . . as long as it’s not both.

● In the Philosophy Club meeting, Brian Gould quoted to the group the (original, less well written version of the) first two sentences of the paragraph on Human Dignity that I had emailed to him the previous week (the one posted here on 1-29-2023).

● Monday, 2-6-2023:   My insurance company found me to be completely at fault for that accident on January 18^th, because I backed up. I could appeal the decision, but I think I won’t; they may well be right.

● Wednesday, 2-8-2023:   This Winter has been unusually unpleasantly cold, probably because it’s the first Winter in which I haven’t used the central heat in the apartment. I now use only small space heaters.

● Thursday, 2-9-2023:   Another backache, though I haven’t had one in a long time.

● Friday, 2-10-2023:   I haven’t proved that life has no meaning, simply. Rather, I’ve proved merely that life has no inherent meaning. Any meaning it has—you must make, for yourself. So, I’ve enabled life’s meaning, because, if you think it has inherent meaning, you’ll stop looking for it, thinking—falsely—that you’ve found it (in inherent meaning), and perhaps never find what meaning there is: in that which you make yourself.

● Sometimes the line dividing philosophy and advice on living is a bit blurry. Perhaps we could say that philosophy is timeless (or omnitemporal) advice on living.

[Later note (5-18-2023): More precisely, here’s the distinction: advice on living is selfish, advising you how to improve your own life; whereas, (moral) philosophy takes a panoramic view, encompassing mankind; it speculates about a person’s duty to others, or, if it advises the individual to improve his own life, it does so with reference to the group.]

● Today my alertness and skillful maneuvering enabled me to avoid a collision on the westbound 101 freeway, just west of the 405 freeway.

● Saturday, 2-11-2023:   The backache persists. But it’s a mild one.

● Sunday, 2-12-2023:   I feel as if I’m in a period of intellectual stagnation.

● Wednesday, 2-15-2023:   I’ve resumed my long-suspended weekly shoulder exercises. My right forearm and wrist symptoms have finally disappeared, for now. I have to be very careful in using that part of my body, to avoid the symptoms.

[Later note (2-16-2023): And now those symptoms have returned!]

[Later note (9-16-2023): I’ve finally seen the pattern—doing the shoulder exercises brings on the right forearm/wrist symptoms. So I’ve stopped doing those exercises. The right forearm/wrist symptoms have pretty much stayed away. And the condition I did the shoulder exercises to prevent (frozen shoulder) has likewise not returned.]

[Later note (3-2-2024): Last week, a physician’s assistant in the orthopedic department at Kaiser examined me and found that my frozen shoulder syndrome is returning to my left shoulder, and he advised me to resume those shoulder exercises, for my left shoulder, not the right. I’ve resumed those preventive exercises, for the left shoulder.]

● Friday, 2-17-2023:   It may be easier to notice the side-effects of a drug when you stop taking it than when you start taking it, for several reasons. One, it’s easier to notice a sudden change than a gradual one, and the side-effects may go away faster when you stop taking the drug than they come on when you start taking it. Two, you may think subtle changes are natural, due to aging or circumstances. Or you may begin to forget how you were before you took the drug. When you discontinue the drug, and the side-effects diminish or disappear, the drug connection is confirmed (the greater the number of times you experience an event, the better you remember it—the clearer it becomes in your mind).

My sense is that a side-effect of the Abilify is that I have more lucid-dreams, and fewer dreams of the usual kind, the upshot being that my dreams and sleep are shallower.

● Whenever I imagine going back to a time in the recent past, anywhere from a few months to a few years, and reliving that part of my life (from then till now)—my feeling about it is always the same: I would hate to have to relive it; it (my life) has been tedious and unpleasant. I’m glad for my accomplishments, but not for my experience.

● Saturday, 2-18-2023:   I used to think that teetotaler refers to one who drinks nothing stronger than tea: who totes a teacup.

● I’m starting to get depressed. The cause, I think, is not inward, but outward: a lack of engaging, enjoyable, fulfilling activities. For example, I’m no longer actively working on my Journal.

● If there’s no such thing as race, which scientists tell us there isn’t, why do all the people in Asia look Asian? Answer: Well, if the people in Asia were on average taller than those elsewhere, would you conclude that they’re a different race (on account of being taller)?

● Many a person with a perfect driving record, has it, not necessarily because he never makes a driving mistake, but because, when he does make a mistake, circumstances have been sufficiently forgiving as not to result in a collision. For example, if you’re momentarily inattentive and you allow your car to drift into the adjacent lane of traffic, perhaps no other vehicle is there at the time.

● Is there such a thing as thinking like a lawyer, or legal reasoning? Two thoughts on that. First, there is, and it consists in reasoning geared to answering the relevant legal question. You might start with certain elements in a legal case, and soundly reason to an interesting, even a useful, conclusion, and yet it somehow doesn’t answer the legal question at hand. It took me some time to get the hang of legal reasoning, perhaps in part because I resented having to do legal reasoning instead of philosophical reasoning, and so I subconsciously resisted the transition, or the extension. Second, I suspect that, for many law students and lawyers, legal reasoning is merely deliberate, determined thinking, which they’ve never before had occasion to do in any form.

● I ate pizza at Barone’s Express Pizzeria in Woodland Hills this afternoon. I got the personal size plain pizza with extra cheese. It was good.

● Wednesday, 2-22-2023:   Today I increased my Abilify dose to 5 mg.

● Sunday, 2-26-2023:   Someone posted this comment on a website:

In GUN we trust.

We “lit Baghdad like a Christmas tree” (killing more than a million people by “mistake” and degrading a stable secular country to an ungoverned sectarian mess). All the evil media, right and left, cheered and drummed up the war. Now we condemn Putin for shoring up his own border seeing NATO coming to visit! Hypocrisy. . . .

My reply:

I agree in part and disagree in (another) part with John’s comments (above).

My agreement: The United States government is hypocritical: when Russia invades another country, the United States is outraged; but when the United States does it, they justify it.

My disagreement: Just because the United States invades another country, doesn’t entitle Russia to do it. Two wrongs don’t make a right. They’re both wrong. Moreover, to excuse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a reaction to NATO, strikes me as tantamount to saying that your breaking into your neighbor’s house, killing the owner, abducting his young child, and ransacking and vandalizing the property, is justified because another neighbor of yours bought a gun. You may legitimately oppose the other neighbor’s arming himself. But it doesn’t justify or excuse your action. Indeed, the other neighbor might cite your action as vindicating his need to be armed!

● Thursday, 3-2-2023:   I was attending a LearnDesk Zoom orientation just now (LearnDesk is an online platform for teachers, lecturers, and authors), and I suddenly felt very discouraged and depressed. My constant campaign to get recognition for my writing feels hopeless. Nothing I do works, in getting recognition. I’m just as unknown as I ever was. Realistically, I don’t see anything changing in this way for the rest of my life. Perhaps I’ll have better luck posthumously.

● Blood in urine, but no discomfort. I think I’ve been following insufficiently well the second of the catheterization rules I listed on 11-8-2021, above.

● Sunday, 3-5-2023:   Philosophy is word-mathematics.

● Today, I increased my Remeron dose to one whole tablet (15 mg), to try to deal with my increasing depression. The rule about Remeron is that lowering the dosage decreases the antidepressant effect, but increases the sedation (sleep aid), and vice versa. I’ve been taking it for sleep. Of course, insomnia can be a symptom of depression. So if I’m less depressed, I may sleep somewhat better for that reason. We’ll see what the net effect is on my sleep.

● Tuesday, 3-7-2023:   Well, Sunday night I felt the difference in the Remeron dose: I slept unusually shallowly, poorly. But last night (Monday), I slept a little better than usual. Perhaps I slept better simply because, with the bad sleep the night before, I was more tired than usual. It’s too soon to gauge the difference, if any, in my mood (the depression).

● Friday, 3-10-2023:   The bigger the wound, the longer the healing.

● Sunday, 3-12-2023:   Sometimes when you understand a subject better it seems more complicated than it seemed when you understood it less well. At first blush, that sounds contradictory. But here’s what I mean: A subject seems less complicated when you think you understand it. When you realize that you don’t fully understand it, it seems more complicated. One way of understanding a subject better is to realize that there are gaps in your understanding of it; so, in that sense, your better understanding of it makes it seem more complicated.

[Later note (10-17-2024): Or, more concisely and clearly: Sometimes when you understand a subject better, it seems more complicated. That’s because one way to misunderstand it is by thinking that it’s simpler than it is, and better understanding it disabuses you of that erroneous impression.]

● Friday, 3-17-2023:   I’ve reached a milestone. My magnum opus has finally been posted to the World Wide Web in an acceptable version. Some years ago, it was posted, but it was bastardized. This time, what’s posted is a photographic facsimile of my manuscript. So now I can share it with the world. The title of the piece is Ethics and Relevancies, and Supplemental Material. The address of the website is ethicsandrelevancies.com.

● Saturday, 3-18-2023:   Today, after a three- or four-year lapse, I renewed my Costco membership. They tried to get me to take a Costco credit card by telling me that, with it, I’d get bonus points or cash-back for buying certain quantities of things (or spending certain amounts of money) within certain times. I declined, saying, “I don’t want to be encouraged to shop.”

● Sunday, 3-19-2023:   A contradiction in Christianity: On one hand, the ultimate reward is offered of eternal bliss in the afterlife. On the other hand, the reward is offered for the improvement of this brief worldly existence. So, which is the primary desideratum, the true purpose, the point—Heaven, or Earth? If Earth, why not simply specify the enhancement of Earth as the reward? If Heaven, why condition the attainment of that exquisitely important thing on trivialities?

● Thursday, 3-23-2023:   Idea for an invention: a soap press, to squeeze leftover small pieces of bar soap together to form a larger piece of soap, to avoid wasting the leftover pieces.

● Saturday, 3-25-2023:   Two days ago, an interesting turn of events happened with my neighbor situation. As I returned from my exercise-walk, my upstairs neighbor, the man, came to the gate and said he saw my “book.” I asked him where he saw it, and he said “online.” I told him it was not a book, but essays. He said, “Maybe they’ll make it into a movie.” I said it’s not that kind of work—it’s not a novel. In the midst of this conversation, another neighbor, the adult male in number three, happened to come in the gate, and he heard the conversation. Since then, the people in number three have not attacked me (and until then their attacks were constant). I don’t know the exact mechanism, but I could speculate on some possibilities. Learning that I’d written a book shows him that, despite his attacks on me, I’m productive. So he learned that his attacks are ineffectual, a waste of time, not worth the effort. Or he envied me for my constructive efforts on my behalf, and felt an urge to get the same advantage for himself: so he changed his focus from trying to hurt me (which doesn’t work) to trying to help himself. We’ll see how long that effect will last. Not long, I suspect. [Sunday, 3-26-2023 . . . I was right—it didn’t last long!]

● I have many chronic aches and pains. But I’m fortunate in that none of them are constant; rather, they come just when I move in certain ways or maintain certain awkward bodily positions.

● Sunday, 3-26-2023:   Philosophy Club (by Zoom). Topic: “the trolley problem.” Moral decisions are not right or wrong. They’re subjective, ad hoc, and ultimately arbitrary. Trolley problems are a philosophical Rorschach test, reaching, not philosophical truth, but philosophers’ perceptions. And yet, to grapple with such hypothetical situations, to contemplate whether your responses are consistent, and, if apparently not, to have to revise some of them or explain to yourself how they are consistent—clarifies your thinking.

The simple version of the trolley problem poses this question: Imagine a trolley car loses its brakes and is headed for five people stuck on the track ahead. The only way to save those five is to divert the trolley onto another track, where, however, one person is stuck on the track. So, do you divert the trolley, causing the death of one person to save five? I answered “yes,” as would most people. Then a slightly different scenario is asked about: Say a transplant surgeon has five patients who could be saved by getting five different organs from an organ donor—and time is of the essence. A healthy young man comes into the hospital for a minor (not life-threatening) problem. The question is: Should the transplant surgeon kill the healthy young man to harvest his organs to save her five transplant patients, or not, which would be to let the other five die? I answered “no” (as, again, most people would), but my answer was considered in “tension,” if not inconsistent, with my first answer.

Nonetheless, according to Cass R. Sunstein, in his article “How Do We Know What’s Moral?,” the “no” answer to the second question is a function, not of a considered analysis of this hypothetical situation, but of a simple rule of action, whose being generally followed produces greater utility than if everyone made case-by-case judgments. Sunstein references John Stuart Mill’s idea that (quoting Sunstein) “from the utilitarian point of view, it might be best to adopt clear rules that would increase general ‘utility’ in the sense of overall well-being or social welfare, even if they would lead to reductions of utility in some individual cases.” And David Edmonds’s comment: “It would be unsettling to have to worry that any time you visited a sick relative in hospital, it might be you who ended up under the scalpel with surgeons cutting out your organs. So, we should adhere to the rough-and-ready rules.”

I agree with Sunstein. Here’s my own elaboration of his idea, pertaining to this hypothetical situation: Harvesting the young healthy man’s organs could not be considered as an isolated instance. Doing so would set a precedent, establish a policy. And a policy of killing healthy patients (who are not dying), even for a good purpose, would cause the great majority of patients (those who are not dying vastly outnumber those who need transplants) to feel anxious about going to doctors, so much so that many of them would stop going. This would do more harm to public health than the good achieved by saving a few transplant patients. Indeed, even just the increased anxiety thus engendered among the healthy would outweigh the increased hope and joy among transplant patients. (On the other hand, I suspect that my initial intuition about the transplant question is also partly a product of my being healthy!)

● Two points from the Philosophy Club’s discussion. First, someone said he wouldn’t pull the switch to send the car down the sidetrack to kill the person stuck there, because he’d feel guilty about killing that person. I replied, wouldn’t you feel guilty for not saving five people when you had the chance?

Second, a variation of the original trolley problem is the footbridge problem, in which you’re on a footbridge overlooking the trolley track with another person, a fat man. You could stop the trolley by pushing the fat man off the bridge into the trolley’s path, thus saving the five people stuck on the track. Would you push the fat man to his death to save the other five? Some persons who answered “no” here but who would pull the switch in the original scenario argued that pushing the man is somehow qualitatively different, more culpable, than turning the switch. I replied that there is no difference. To see that, vary the original thought experiment: imagine that no one is stuck on the track ahead of the trolley, but one person is stuck on the sidetrack. Knowing this, a malevolent person pulls the switch to send the car down the sidetrack, killing the person stuck there. Would we not find him guilty of murder?

● Wednesday, 3-29-2023:   Today I took my last dose of Abilify. It did no good.

● Friday, 3-31-2023:   I’m going to submit to Brian Gould (the Philosophy Club facilitator) this suggestion for a Club discussion topic: Intrinsic value and ethics. What’s the relationship between intrinsic value and ethics? Is intrinsic value essential to ethics? Is anything intrinsically valuable? If so, what? If we found that intrinsic value is essential to ethics, but that there’s no intrinsic value, where would that leave us regarding ethics? (Suggesting this topic would be an excuse to present my newly posted “Ethics and Relevancies.”)

I guess if I ask the question, I should answer it: Formally, intrinsic value is not essential to ethics. Ethics is subjective; an ethical obligation is the sense of obligation to pursue a certain act or series of acts. You could feel an obligation to pursue any act, for any reason, or for no reason. Informally, however, many people feel that intrinsic value is essential to ethics. I’m one of them. I would feel a strict ethical duty if and only if I thought that my act would increase the net intrinsic value, or good (or decrease the net intrinsic disvalue, or evil) in existence. I have come to two conclusions about intrinsic value: One, that, if anything were intrinsically valuable, it would be happiness (intrinsically disvaluable, unhappiness); and, two, that intrinsic value is impossible. Discovering that intrinsic value is impossible has caused a shift in my ethical outlook, both in my own sense of ethical agency and in my philosophical view. My own sense of agency has shifted from obligation to motivation, or from strict obligation to loose obligation. My philosophical view has changed in these ways. First, though I no longer believe that happiness and unhappiness matter intrinsically, I still think they’re a worthwhile goal, because they matter to us. I focus on a somewhat broader concept, well-being, which is made up of both happiness and whatever else a person might desire. Moreover, my social perspective has gone from the goal of the greatest total well-being to the greatest per-capita well-being. Since ethical obligation is subjective, and varies from person to person, I can speak, about how the discovery of intrinsic value’s impossibility affects our view of ethics, only for myself. (My arguments for these propositions are contained in three essays of mine, posted online at ethicsandrelevancies.com; OnMorality.com; and TheRepugnantConclusion.com.)

● Monday, 4-3-2023:   My Eisner’s Journal has finally been posted on the Web. It took my webmaster 7 months. I’ve just started going through it; there are many mistakes (some of them hers, others mine).

● I use a digital watch with a large seconds display at the kitchen sink to time one phase in cleaning my urinary catheters. For the last year or so, I’ve had trouble seeing those digits. I finally discovered a solution to the problem: move the watch to the other side of the sink, where it’s not in my shadow.

● Tuesday, 4-4-2023:   Often, after searching for something I’ve lost, if and when I finally find it, I momentarily feel numb or dazed, a certain sense of unreality.

● Thursday, 4-6-2023:   This morning, on my way to a deposition, driving on the freeway, I struck an empty bucket, which stuck under the front of my car. I drove to the side of the freeway, stopped, and backed up, which dislodged the bucket. Then I drove on. So far, there’s no apparent significant damage to my car.

● Friday, 4-7-2023:   I’m very angry. Several years ago, I got just over eleven thousand dollars in unemployment benefits, to compensate me for income lost in the pandemic, which the state gave me in the form of a debit card. I used just over four thousand dollars of it. Today, when I went to cash out the card, to help pay my huge income tax bill, the remaining money ($7,000) was gone—I was informed that the “account is closed.” The bank told me to contact the agency that issued the account (the Employment Development Department), but they’re unreachable. I feel as if I’ve been cheated, robbed.

● Sunday, 4-9-2023:   In the last few weeks, another health problem has developed in me: foot pain when I’m in bed, when my feet touch the mattress. It interferes with sleep.

[Later note (5-19-2023): Apparently, I can solve the problem by lying just on my right side.]

[Later note (11-21-2023): The problem has resolved; I can lie on either side.]

● Saturday, 4-22-2023:   An argument against capital punishment, or even life imprisonment, is to the effect that we should not judge a person solely by the worst moment of his life. And yet, we criminally punish people, not for the kind of people they are, but for their acts. If you want not to be punished for your worst act, don’t do it.

● Haircut (Brenda).

● Wednesday, 5-3-2023:   This morning, just before I woke up, I had what seemed to be a long, drawn-out dream. I was contemplating my basis for fame and comparing it with that of other men. There was some question about whether a statue of me would be erected after I died, and I insisted that the only monument I wanted was my work itself. I died, but I was still conscious, perhaps like a ghost. No statue of me was erected, and it seemed that no one noted my passing. And I started to cry, thinking, “I would have liked a statue.”

● Saturday, 5-6-2023:   Whether man will survive much longer may depend on whether his enlightened self-interest will prevail over his unenlightened self-interest.

● Sunday, 5-7-2023:   Philosophy Club. Topic: “Are citizens culpable for the decisions and actions of their elected leaders?”

● Reparations within a generally unjust system are inherently problematic. Whatever is given to whomever, via so-called reparations, you still have a grossly unjust world, with some billionaires and many paupers. On the other hand, any move toward greater equalization is good. Unfortunately, reparations are often paid, not by the wealthy, but by the public, which does not make for greater equalization. Conversely, if the world were just, with rough equality of wealth, there would be no need of reparations.

● Monday, 5-8-2023:   Today I took a large amount of cash to the bank to deposit it in my money-market account, in preparation for opening a CD (certificate of deposit). The bank’s count agreed with mine exactly. I was amazed at how quickly they counted it.

● Friday, 5-12-2023:   Somewhere in my Journal, I said that in an ideal world, wherein wealth was roughly evenly divided, the Right and the Left would switch places, the Left seeking to maintain the status quo, and the Right seeking to change it (to gain a greater share of wealth for themselves). Perhaps not. It’s natural that, in an unequal society, the wealthy would seek to maintain their wealth. But there’s no reason why, in an egalitarian society, some (let alone the same persons who were wealthy in another situation) would seek to alter the egalitarianism.

[Later note (2-7-2024): It would probably depend on the situation. If a person had once been rich, he’d be more likely to try to (again) become rich than he would if he grew up in egalitarianism.]

● Sunday, 5-14-2023:   I just finished reading the online version of my (recently posted) Journal. I read it both to further edit my writing and to note errors that occurred in the posting. I found many posting mistakes, but I made very few edits (of my writing). I’ll have my webmaster teach me how to edit the online work.

● I just awoke from a dream in which I had a law partnership with my old boss, Attorney Sef Krell. I had lit our office on fire and was (dramatically!) ending the partnership because I thought he (Sef) was interested in short-term profit, to the detriment of our long-term profit. In a wall safe, I kept my life’s work, my writings, and I was hurrying to take out the most important documents. The turning point came when I looked at some published material about Sef, which caused me to conclude that I’d misjudged him: he was indeed interested in our long-term profit. I then realized that my decision to end the partnership could be reversed, and I found that the business was still salvageable (the fire had not done widespread damage, and we still had the most important element of the business, my advertising property 1-800-SUE-THEM . . . and Sef was willing to continue). I was greatly relieved and was putting back the documents I’d removed from the safe. Here’s my interpretation: It’s a counting-my-blessings dream. Just before going to bed this evening, I finished the latest read-through of my Journal, after an eight- or nine-month hiatus in rereading it. I was gladdened to find that, after a marked drop in the quality of material at about two-thirds of the way through, the quality seems eventually to rebound. I still have my situation’s most important elements, including my ability to produce more of them. My creative production is still a going concern.

● Tuesday, 5-16-2023:   Yesterday, I had a day off, and I got new rear tires for my car. It was a miserable experience. It took them a long time. I was at the tire shop all day.

● Wednesday, 5-17-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive. It was refreshing. My car seemed to run especially well. Perhaps it was the two new tires.

● Friday, 5-19-2023:   Last year (2022) was a relatively happy time for me. I think I’ve been considerably less happy this year (2023). I don’t know what accounts for the difference.

● Sunday, 21 May 2023:   Happy Birthday, Richard!

● Wednesday, 5-24-2023:   Today I sent Brian Gould, the host of the Philosophy Club, three of my works on intrinsic value and ethics: “Ethics and Relevancies”; “Morality”; and “The Repugnant Conclusion” . . . in response to my suggesting the “intrinsic value and ethics” discussion topic.

● Sunday, 5-28-2023:   Philosophy Club. Topic: “human extinction.” I think it would be a shame if humanity soon went extinct, especially for the loss of our artifacts: literature, music, graphic art, mathematics; and, even more particularly, my own work.

It’s well and good to consider exotic possible catastrophic events or processes that might end mankind, and how we might deal with them, when they become immanent, or in advance. But we have our work cut out for us right now in dealing with present threats to our existence, like nuclear weapons and climate change. Solving those problems would not only save us from those catastrophes, but also put us in good stead to deal with other emergencies that might arise, as by strengthening global governance. Moreover, furthering justice and equity would not only improve our situation now, but would also make other great disasters less likely, by reducing the number of resentful people motivated to hasten our demise in the advent of technology enabling them to do so.

● Monday, 5-29-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive.

● Wednesday, 5-31-2023:   In a dream just now, this riddle was posed: Who has the shortest distance to go? And the answer was: The most nearly perfect man. . . . In the dream, it seemed to make sense.

● Saturday, 6-3-2023:   My challenge, during leisure, is how to occupy the time when what I really want to do is lie down and sleep—how to occupy it, that is, with something besides that.

● My challenge, during leisure, is how to occupy the time with something besides lying down and sleeping, when that’s all I really want to do.

● Today I took my Camarillo drive, the Pacific Coast Highway variation. I stopped at Point Mugu State Beach. The distance was about 85 miles, and it took a bit over three hours, including my stop at the beach.

● Monday, 6-5-2023:   Two noteworthy events this morning: one good, the other bad. The bad: toward the end of my first exercise-walk of the day, I shat myself. I tried to hold it, but couldn’t. I think that’s the first time in my life that that’s happened. I had to wash my clothes, and take a shower. I’m glad I was home at the time. The good event: my $7,000 debit-card account is finally reopened. I suppose that’s a net good (or so it feels). I discovered the account’s closure on 4-7-2023, just two months ago (see that date’s entry here). It seems much longer. . . . And then a third new event happened: I did a deposition read-back for Lance. That involves reviewing with a workers’ compensation client his deposition transcript, and noting any changes. I’m in a uniquely convenient position to do this, as I represented the clients at their depositions, and I have my deposition reports. The pay rate is considerably lower than for the deposition itself, and there’s no travel (for which I’m paid). It’s much less lucrative, but I feel obliged to do it, perhaps just to maintain the relationship with Lance, who hires me to handle the depositions (which are lucrative).

● Wednesday, 6-7-2023:   I took a rare desert ride today (195 miles, 7 hours). On the way, I ate breakfast (my usual patty melt) at Tom’s Restaurant #30, in Lancaster. The meal was less satisfying than usual. During the ride I was almost constantly troubled by the floaters in my left eye. But overall it was pleasant. Normally, it would be too late in the year to go to the desert (because the weather would be too hot), but this week has been unseasonably cold. I was prompted to take the ride by an abundance of leisure—I had only one deposition this week. I got back home in time to do my second deposition read-back for Lance.

● Saturday, 6-10-2023:   I took another desert ride today (210 miles, 8 hours). On the way, I ate breakfast at Tom’s Restaurant #27, in East Palmdale. I tried a different meal this time: the Signature omelet. It was pretty bad. I probably won’t go to the desert again until the Fall, when the weather cools. This ride was not quite as good as the one I took last Wednesday, but it was nonetheless refreshing. When I got back, home seemed different—like waking from a nap. It was worth doing just for that.

● Sunday, 6-18-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive. Refreshing.

● Monday, 6-19-2023:   On my exercise-walk in the neighborhood, I mentally mark two significant points: the halfway point, and, the other (about three-quarters of the way), what I call the “turn toward home.” That’s the point at which, from then on, the usual, planned route is also the shortest possible distance back home. Before then, if I wanted to get home as soon as possible, I’d have to shorten the route.

● The turn toward home point in a trip is the (earliest) point at which taking the shortest route home would not shorten the trip.

● Imagine an infinitely large field containing infinitely many nonliving creatures, evenly spaced. A continually moving spotlight illuminates ten of the creatures at a time. The spotlight moves in one direction and never lights the same place twice. When the spotlight shines on a creature, it comes alive; when the creature passes out of the spotlight, it dies. The spotlight is existence, life; the rest of the field is nonexistence, but possibility.

● Tuesday, 6-20-2023:   Often, what makes a task easy for some, which most others find hard, is not that they don’t have to work at it, but rather that they like the work, whereas others dislike it. (Of course, liking the work, they’ll do more of it, and so get better at it.)

● Sunday, 6-25-2023:   Philosophy Club. Topic: “virtue signaling.” . . . Sometimes I have nothing to say.

● Tuesday, 6-27-2023:   For over 24 hours, there was a big leak from the ceiling in my apartment. I had to stay home for the plumbers both yesterday and today. The plumbers finally came late yesterday, but they couldn’t fix the leak because the resident (Chris) in the apartment (number 9) above me wouldn’t let them cut into his wall. He changed his mind and said he’d let them do it, so they came back this morning, and now the leak is fixed. The leak caused no significant damage in my apartment. But I lost the travel time to two depositions yesterday (I had to do them by Zoom instead of in-person) and I lost this morning’s deposition (the client insisted that her attorney be with her physically). All in all, an ordeal, but I got through it relatively unscathed.

● Wednesday, 6-28-2023:   A story about a vegetable seller whose load of vegetables falls off his truck on a busy road, could be called . . . Where the rhubarb meets the road.

● Thursday, 6-29-2023:   Hot weather came late this year, but it’s finally arrived. This week has been the first time this year that I’ve had to open my front door (at night) to cool my apartment.

● Saturday, 7-1-2023:   It’s perhaps a sign of my life’s stagnation that, this year, I didn’t feel inclined to write a birthday edition of my annual (or semiannual) retrospective.

● Sunday, 7-2-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive.

● I’m starting another read-through of my Journal, mainly for lack of anything better to do. It’s easy and pleasant. I lack the mental energy and concentration to do harder work. I’m in the doldrums.

● I vote for Democrats, not because they’re so good, but because the alternative, the Republicans, are so bad.

● Tuesday, 7-4-2023:   Yesterday my desk lamp broke, and today I bought a replacement—the same kind of lamp but with a silver finish (instead of black, like the last one). I first bought a different lamp, a more expensive model. But the light wasn’t bright enough, so I exchanged it. I bought it at Lamps Plus.

● Sunday, 7-9-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive.

● Monday, 7-10-2023:   Reminder to myself: When someone from apartment 7 exits the building just as I’m entering, and greets me, as with “Good morning”—don’t reply. Remember, they’re attacking me.

● Wednesday, 7-12-2023:   The counterintuitive claim bears the burden of proof.

● Sunday, 7-16-2023:   Economic inflation is the increase of prices for given goods. Merchants can accomplish the same result in a sneaky way by keeping the price of a good the same but reducing the amount of product in the package. This variation has the further disadvantage of harming the environment, by effectively using more packaging material.

[Later note (7-3-2024): That criticism about hurting the environment with more packaging invariably applies to necessities, which people buy continually; it may not always apply to luxury goods, which people need not buy regularly.]

● I’ve reached a milestone: I’ve finally learned how to edit my online Journal; I spent all day today doing so. It was very satisfying.

● Monday, 7-17-2023:   I refrain from using the air conditioning in my apartment (to avoid the noise and the cost). I have a simple procedure to deal with hot weather: when the temperature outside it cooler than inside, I open my front door; when it’s hotter, I keep it closed.

● Friday, 7-21-2023:   Monday (7-17-2023) there was a gasoline smell coming from my car. Wednesday, it became a major gasoline leak, and I had to have my car towed to my mechanic’s shop for repair. The car is supposed to be ready today for me to pick up.

● Saturday, 7-22-2023:   I bought an air purifier for my bedroom, to try to counteract the occasional smell of cigarette smoke. These devices have advanced considerably since I last used them, in my late teens and early twenties (50 years ago).

● Haircut (Brenda). I may owe her $2.00 (she may have raised the price to $30.00). Next time, bring an extra $2.00 to give her for my deficit this time.

● Monday, 7-31-2023:   For a given organism: life is temporary, death is permanent.

● Tuesday, 8-8-2023:   I keep a list of my storage boxes and their contents. The notes indicate that three boxes contain, among other things, “rough drafts of writings.” Today I took those three boxes out of storage and brought them home. When I have a chance, I’ll go through them to see if I can find any salvageable writing there. . . . It just occurs to me that “rough drafts” is ambiguous. It could mean early drafts of existing finished works, or rough notes that were never developed. I’d assumed it was the latter, in which case the material might be useful. If it’s the former, it’s useless . . . and this terrible backache was for naught!

● Yesterday, I happened to discover, by accident, that an entry in my Journal was missing from the online version. (I thought about that entry, and thought that I didn’t remember reading it in my latest read-through of the online Journal. I looked it up, and found that it was indeed missing.) So I’m going through the online Journal systematically to check for any other missing entries. Thus far (less than halfway through), I’ve discovered an additional entry that was omitted (and I inserted those two).

● Wednesday, 8-9-2023:   Today was a trying day. I had to go to two depositions. My backache was so bad, I could hardly walk. I had great difficulty bending at the waist, even slightly. For depositions, I carry two briefcases, one in each hand. At the second deposition today, to pull the office door open, I’d have had to bend down to set one briefcase on the ground and then bend a second time to pick it up again. To avoid that bending, I stood there, holding the briefcases, and waited about five minutes for someone to come and open the door for me.

● The happening of a calamity in your life does not, ipso facto, reduce the chances of another one happening. But another one may be less likely because you learn from it . . ..

● It’s now 11:00 p.m. At about 3:30 p.m., when I got home, my (lower) back was starting to slightly improve. But then I did some of my stretching exercises, and that made it significantly worse. Lesson: Don’t do stretching exercises when the backache is acute.

● Saturday, 8-12-2023:   Tomorrow’s Philosophy Club discussion topic is “Will Scientific Progress Ever End?” No thoughts occur to me on it. I wonder whether that’s even a philosophical question. Perhaps Brian’s readings on the topic will stimulate my thinking. . . . One answer to the question is, “Science will end, because humanity will end.” So perhaps we should refine the question, like this: Will science end while humanity is still (otherwise) thriving?

● The backache is still severe. I went to the Kaiser Urgent Care yesterday; they gave me an injection in my butt of some non-narcotic medication, and prescribed Motrin and a topical analgesic, which I’m using. But this morning I resorted to taking half of a #3 codeine tablet, to get some relief from the pain. That was the first time in well over a year that I’ve used any narcotic medication. This has been the most significant backache I’ve ever had. I just hope I didn’t do any permanent damage.

● Sunday, 8-13-2023:   Sometimes when I hear the toddler in apartment 3 crying, I think it’s a consequence of their attacking me. The toddler feels that his family is neglecting him; he senses (rightly) that his family is more interested in me than they are in him—that they hate me more than they love him—that they value him less for his own sake than as a means to attack me. I find it gratifying; it’s another way in which their campaign against me is hurting them (and the toddler participates in their attacks on me).

● Friday, 8-18-2023:   They say that the worst pain is headache. No, the worst pain is whichever pain you’re having now.

● I’ve just finished the latest read-through of my Journal (this one took about a month and a half). This was the first read-through in which I made edits immediately, directly to the online version (as well as to the word-processing version). I interrupted the process by specifically checking the online version for missing entries, which took me about 8 days, during which time I found four missing entries, at least two of them significant, and many little formatting mistakes. This feels like a milestone.

● I’ll take a break before starting another Journal read-through by going through those (3) boxes containing “rough drafts.” . . . I’ve just gone through the rough drafts in one of the boxes. I found rough drafts of my piece on the big bang theory; rough drafts for some legal briefs; and miscellaneous notes. None of it seemed worth my time to pursue. . . . I’ve come a long way, accomplished a lot.

● Well, my Journal proofreading nightmare is not over. It just dawned on me that the posting of word-processing text in WordPress misses italics. So I’ll have to scrutinize every entry to make sure all the italics are there!

● Saturday, 8-19-2023:   That proofreading is going faster than I expected. Not every entry has italicized text. I read the word processing document until I come to italics, and then check the online version to see whether those italics are there. So far, they’re all there. I needn’t check for the opposite mistake: erroneously italicized text.

● I’ve now gone through the other two storage boxes and determined that the rough drafts they contain are, for the most part, earlier drafts of finished pieces. It’s not a fruitful source of ideas for new writing.

● Sunday, 8-20-2023:   Today my lower back is the best it’s been since I strained it almost two weeks ago. Yesterday, I did a half-regimen of my usual stretching exercises; today I did the full regimen. Now the stretching is helping.

● Monday, 8-21-2023:   I’ve noticed something about my writing in this Journal: Just as in the visual field your focus is sharp at the center but gets hazy beyond that; in many of my Journal entries, I speak strictly about my main subject, but I speak loosely about incidental points. Indeed, some of the loose comments are—strictly speaking—erroneous. I include them perhaps to complete the entry compositionally (or it was part of the original entry, and rewriting it to fix the flaw would take more time and effort than it’s worth). I may make their correction the subject of other entries—where I speak about it strictly.

[Later note (10-19-2024): I don’t doubt that I had that perception, or at least that thought, when I wrote the entry. But on rereading the Journal several times since then, I didn’t notice any entries that seemed to exemplify that fault. Curious.]

● Tuesday, 8-22-2023:   I suspended my exercise-walks for the last two weeks because of the great backache. This morning I resumed. I walked the whole distance (about 1.6 miles), but I’ll walk just once today (it’s usually twice—when I walk at all).

● Saturday, 8-26-2023:   Today, for the first time in over two weeks, I resumed my full exercise-walk regimen: two walks in one morning. My back is recovering nicely, it seems.

● I just sent this email to Uber, the transportation company. It’s self-explanatory:

I’m disputing your charge for my ride on 24 August 2023. On 7-19-2023, I took an Uber from my car mechanic’s shop to my home, a distance of just under 5 miles. The ride cost $11.66 (and I gave the driver a $5.00 cash tip). Two days later, on 7-21-2023, I took an Uber for the reverse trip, from my home to the mechanic’s shop. The ride cost $10.92 (and I gave the driver a $5.00 cash tip). Just a month later, two days ago, 8-24-2023, I took an Uber for the same trip, from my mechanic’s shop to my home (I gave the driver a $5.00 cash tip). I later saw that for this ride you charged me $34.39! I was shocked at the drastic difference in the price. I tried to think what could account for the difference: did the driver have to wait for me? No, I was out on the street waiting for him when he arrived. Was traffic heavy? No, traffic was light and the trip was fast. I can only conclude that there was some mistake in the bill. Or, if there was no mistake, I was victimized by a bait-and-switch!

The email address I sent the message to didn’t work. So I filed a dispute with my credit card company. It’s case number 230826204520931.

● Well, it looks as if the hostile neighbors in apartment 7 are moving, including that horrible cigarette-smoker. Hurrah! (That’s a cautious hurrah, because you don’t know—until they come—whether new residents there will be just as bad, or perhaps even worse.)

● Sunday, 8-27-2023:   Last night was the first one for a while in which I didn’t have the smell of cigarette smoke (or the sour aftertaste) in my bedroom; probably the people in number 7 have indeed left. . . . No, I just took out trash and, coming back, saw a television set on in that apartment. So I’m uncertain about that situation.

● Wednesday, 8-30-2023:   Yesterday, my land-line telephone and my Internet connection broke; AT&T can’t even begin working on it for almost two weeks! It’s a hardship, but I can work around it.

● If artificial intelligence is now so sophisticated and powerful, why are all the automated, computerized customer service programs that I encounter so incompetent and stupid?!

● I smelled the cigarette smoke again last night.

● Sunday, 9-3-2023:   Yooga hooga. Now I can say I accomplished something today: I added another entry to my Journal.

● Monday, 9-4-2023:   “The pearly gates” of Heaven . . . What do they need gates for in Heaven?—to keep trespassers out? Who are the trespassers? Perhaps Hell is nearby—so close that those in Hell can see Heaven, which adds to their torture.

● Wednesday, 9-6-2023:   Donald Trump’s continuing popularity, among working persons, for the United States presidency continues to mystify me. Here’s another possible explanation of it. Some persons, resentful about their situation in American society, are angry at the country, and would like to strike at it and injure it. They can’t do so directly, because it’s illegal. But they can legally vote. So they vote for someone (Trump) who they think, as President, would strike at the country and injure it.

● This morning, walking to my car just before 6:00, still dark out, I tripped on an uneven place in the sidewalk and fell to the ground. I avoided serious injury. It will take a few days to be able to gauge the extent of any minor injuries.

● Thursday, 9-7-2023:   . . . I was of course unlucky to have fallen. But, having fallen, I was lucky not to have broken any bones, like my hip—I landed most heavily on my right hip and right arm.

● Friday, 9-8-2023:   Last night I had a dream in which Mozart was referred to as “the philosopher of three.” And I wondered, Am I “the philosopher of two”?

● Saturday, 9-9-2023:   Yesterday a worker was here to patch the hole in the hallway ceiling made by the plumbers a month ago. The man was here all day yesterday. He tried to protect against dust from the work getting into the rest of the apartment, but today I can see that everything in the main room, where I sat at the computer the whole time, is covered in a (much thicker) layer of dust. It probably contains asbestos. I was wearing a facemask, but I may have breathed in some of the dust. I’m worried about the effect on my health.

● Monday, 9-11-2023:   The people in no. 7 are gone. Obviously, he was not the only smoker here, because last night (early this morning) was miserable, with the smell of cigarette smoke in my bedroom.

● Tuesday, 9-12-2023:   Today I suspended my exercise-walks because of left knee pain.

● Wednesday, 9-13-2023:   Today I resumed my exercise-walks.

● Thursday, 9-14-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive. Refreshing.

● Saturday, 9-16-2023:   I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal; this review (which took 30 days) included checking the online version for any missing italics (a few were missing, but I was surprised to see that almost all of them were there—my webmaster had to go through the entire Journal and add the italics [and underscoring] manually, a huge task! Now I understand why it took her 7 months). I’ll do the next read-through by simply reading the online version; I’ll be able to focus more directly on the writing itself, because my reading won’t be interrupted by switching back and forth between the word-processing version and the online version to check for italics . . . though I’ll read the online version to also check for any other posting mistakes. Before beginning, I’ll take a few days’ break.

● Sunday, 9-17-2023:   Satanism is no less rational than Christianity (. . . and, of course, no more rational).

● Truncated Camarillo drive. Refreshing.

● Monday, 9-18-2023:   It feels as if Fall has arrived. The weather is cool enough so that I don’t have to open my door at night. And sometimes I even wear a jacket in the house. This year, for me, Summer was mild and short.

● Thursday, 9-21-2023:   I’m beginning another read-through of my Journal.

● For your own protection, the most important person to wear a facemask is you. In other words, if you’re healthy but you’re in a room with someone who has an airborne contagious illness, and just one facemask is available, it’s better that you wear it than that the sick person wears it.

● Friday, 9-22-2023:   A toxicology expert recently wrote that a driver with a BAC (blood alcohol content) of .23 is fifty times more likely to have a crash than a driver with a BAC of .08. I replied: “So much for the public service announcement message, ‘Buzzed driving is drunk driving.’ . . .”

● Saturday, 9-23-2023:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was a new, or newly hired, composer. And I was trying to answer this question: If a composer works for an organization that has a certain musical group (like a church with a fifty-voice choir); if he wants to compose a piece for fewer than all the voices, can he do so, or must he still include all the voices, as by giving them innocuous, filler parts?

● Sunday, 9-24-2023:   In a dream I was deciding on a career, and was considering cleaning and polishing footwear. I was beginning to be a shoemaker’s apprentice. I imagined that I could get as much business as I wanted, and was contemplating a system for keeping track of a huge number of boots and shoes. My mentor told me something to say to new customers, like: “I can make these shoes look as good as they could look.”

● Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Objectivity and subjectivity.”

● Thursday, 9-28-2023:   In recent years, the (Republican) governor of Texas has sent many new immigrants (who crossed the border from Mexico into Texas) by bus to Los Angeles, California. Many other politicians (especially ones in Washington, D.C., and California) have criticized this as a “political stunt.” My first impulse was to join in the criticism. But, on second thought, I can’t help but think that, in a way, the Texas governor’s action makes sense. The federal government (on behalf of the country as a whole) sets the immigration policy, the number of immigrants allowed into the country. It seems unfair that, just because of geographical accident—its sharing a long border with Mexico—Texas should bear so disproportionate an amount of the influx. I think a better procedure would be to systematically allocate certain percentages of immigrants to every state of the United States, to share that burden fairly. The Texas governor’s action is less a stunt than a protest, or a cry for help (together with a suggestion of the appropriate solution).

● Saturday, 9-30-2023:   I wouldn’t be surprised if the present neighbors in no. 3 move soon. Their attacks on me, which continue, are pretty ineffectual; but my “retaliation” is devastatingly effective. I imagine they’re suffering.

● Wednesday, 10-4-2023:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was a student in a class. The school semester was ending, and I was planning to write an opera, as a sort of class project, to be performed at a school event to take place in about two weeks’ time. I hadn’t actually started writing my opera, but I was hurrying to gather various instruction books to guide me in the composition. I directed helpers to put the stacks of books in “my room,” perhaps a dormitory room. Toward the end of the dream, I was thinking that there simply wouldn’t be enough time to write the opera, by this deadline.

● Thursday, 10-5-2023:   I think I’ve discovered which resident in no. 3 is the chief aggressor: the woman.

[Later note (8-26-2024): If that was true then, it’s changed—it’s now the man.]

● Saturday, 10-7-2023:   I think I’m finally ready (I’ll start during the next read-through) to do some serious cutting of material in my Journal: there’s a section of about 130 pages, written in the late twenty-teens, that I find quite tedious to read. If I wish to convey that I’m going through an uncreative time, I can just say it—once, perhaps even twice. I don’t have to subject the reader to a hundred pages of tedious material to illustrate it. This is perhaps every writer’s challenge: to delete material he’s written. It may be easier for me psychologically now, now that I’ve resumed writing more interesting entries. When I cut material, I don’t simply delete it. I transfer it to another computer document where I collect the deleted material: “Eisners.Journal.Deletions”. I’m hoping that that document will soon greatly expand!

● Sunday, 10-8-2023:   Pedicure, at The Best Nails, in Northridge: $23 and an $8 tip.

● Monday, 10-9-2023:   Today is a holiday: Columbus Day (or, better, Indigenous People’s Day). The neighbors in no. 3 seem to be away. So it really is a holiday for me! It’s quiet and peaceful, a real vacation for me here at home. I have only two depositions this week, Thursday and Friday. I may take the desert drive tomorrow, which would be exactly four months since the last time. The weather is finally cool enough to be able to do it. This would be good timing: home today, when the neighbors are out; out tomorrow, when the neighbors are in. . . . Well, the “vacation” is ruined. The fly in the ointment: the neighbor above me.

. . . I was very tired today; even the tea didn’t help much. Last night I slept especially badly; at one point the neighbors in no. 3 woke me up with loud noise.

● Tuesday, 10-10-2023:   Desert ride. (195 miles; 6:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., including an hour’s nap in my car in Lancaster.) I stopped (for breakfast) at Tom’s #30 Restaurant. I got the patty melt, to go. I waited for it inside the restaurant, sitting on a bench provided for people to wait. After what seemed like a long time, I finally got up and approached the counter. The attendant immediately handed me the bag with my patty melt. I asked her, “Was it ready only just now, or has it been sitting there for a while?!” She mumbled something that I didn’t understand, but I simply took the bag and went to my car to consume the food. It was disappointing. Aside from not being hot enough (no doubt, it had been sitting in the bag for some time before they gave it to me), the bread was rather burnt. Nonetheless, the ride, overall, was pleasant, if not joyous. It was refreshing, not because I enjoyed it (it was not particularly enjoyable), but just because it provided a break in my routine: being in the apartment day after day, constantly attacked by hostile neighbors. Driving in my car is the only time when I have any real privacy.

Sometimes I write about an experience, not because I think it’s a worthwhile piece of writing, but merely because I want to remember it—I’ll remember it because I keep rereading the account when I reread my Journal, for editing. And I figure that, if I don’t write it down, I probably won’t remember it. In this case, I wanted to remember what happened inside the restaurant, so that it won’t happen again—I’ll be more vigilant in checking when my food is ready.

● Thursday, 10-12-2023:   I feeleth mucho good.

● Friday, 10-13-2023:   An online discussion group was debating about the Israel – Gaza situation in the aftermath of Hamas’ 10-7-2023 attack on Israel. I didn’t comment, but I considered saying this:

Few would dispute the proposition that a country has a right to “defend itself” or that Hamas’ 10-7-2023 attack on Israel was a crime. The issue is the reasonableness of Israel’s actions in response to the attack.

● Saturday, 10-14-2023:   I do more editing of later material in my Journal than of earlier material, probably because, the later it is, the fewer times I’ve reviewed it.

● Monday, 10-16-2023:   I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal. It took just less than a month. After a short break, I’ll start another one, in which, finally, I’ll take another stab at deleting (boring) material.

● Thursday, 10-19-2023:   For as long as I can remember (or at least for many decades), the skin of my hands got dry and cracked in the winter and I had to apply hand lotion at least several days a week. But for the last few years, I’ve stopped washing my hands with soap and water and I clean them instead with isopropyl alcohol (70 percent solution)—except when I take a shower (about twice a week). As a result, the skin of my hands doesn’t get excessively dry, and I’ve not had to use the hand lotion.

● Another (lower) backache.

● Friday, 10-20-2023:   Exercise-walk suspended because of backache.

● I’m going to start the next read-through of my Journal today. If I were religious, I’d say a little prayer asking God to give me the strength to delete material. But since I’m not, I won’t. There should be some rough secular equivalent, though. Perhaps, I hope I’ll find that strength . . .? No, it doesn’t have quite the same punch. . . . I just looked up pray in the dictionary, and it could mean simply an earnest request, even to another person. Could I pray to myself? No; that would be illogical. But I suppose I could just say, “I pray that I’ll find that strength.” I’ll leave it there.

● Saturday, 10-21-2023:   Haircut (Brenda). I gave her the $2.00 that I underpaid her last time. She noted that the hair on the top of my head is not growing—or at least not as fast as that on the sides.

● I’m amazed at how much editing I’m—still—doing in my Journal, even well before the stretch of material that I think needs culling.

● Sunday, 10-22-2023:   I’m the wagon dude.

• We’re going to do it.
• We gonna do it.
• We gon’ do’t
• Wa gon do’t.
• Wagon do’t.
• Wagon doot
• Wagon dude.

● Monday, 10-23-2023:   Today I had an ultrasound of my kidneys and urinary bladder, ordered by my urologist Dr. Finley.

● Tuesday, 10-24-2023:   I suspended my stretching exercises and my daily walks for several days because of this latest backache. Yesterday I resumed the stretching. I think it was premature (it seemed to hurt my back).

● Wednesday, 10-25-2023:   Today, my old down jacket was missing. It wasn’t in my car, where I usually leave it (until the cold weather comes, when I take it into the house after I return home, because I need to wear it in the mornings to go from the house to the car). What happened to it is a mystery. Did I leave it somewhere, or was it stolen out of my car? I replaced it with a new, very expensive ($800) down jacket I bought a few weeks ago (Tripple F.A.T. Goose brand, Staden model, XL size). The other one was old and worn out, but it’s a loss, because I wear jackets, even very old ones, at the rag stage, around the house until they absolutely fall apart. In fact, I have an even older jacket, which is in even worse condition than that one was, and I was counting on this one to replace it when it deteriorated even further. Now I suppose I’ll have to buy a new jacket to replace it. (I mean I’ll have to buy another new jacket. That $800 jacket won’t replace it, because it’s too good to wear around the house.)

I should further explain that the new down jacket that I mentioned in one of the 1-22-2023 entries, above, was the wrong size—it was size “L”; the sleeves were too short—so I returned it after a week or so.

● Friday, 10-27-2023:   I’m having a toothache, on the left side of my lower jaw, toward the front. The front inside of my lower lip is involved as well. Last night, it seemed to be caused by the silicone mold I wear at night for my upper teeth (to prevent teeth grinding), and I took it out. This evening it was precipitated by flossing my teeth in that part of my mouth. As uncomfortable as it is, I’m avoiding using pain medication; I’m trying simply to ride it out. If it persists, I will have to resort to pain medication, and even (next week) to seeing the dentist for it.

● Saturday, 10-28-2023:   After an uncomfortable night, the toothache has largely resolved. Another bullet dodged? . . . But the backache lingers.

● Sunday, 10-29-2023:   Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “What is a good person?, a good citizen?” (Or, simpler, “Citizenship.”)

● Last night the toothache was still gone. But this afternoon, when I flossed my teeth, it returned. Lying in bed, it persisted and in fact became severe; so I had to resort to medication for the pain: I took half of a #3 codeine tablet (15 mg of codeine). I took it at 8:40 p.m. It’s now 9:05 p.m., and the pain is subsiding. I have a theory about the cause: it’s the dental floss. I started using a different kind of floss about 9 months ago, according to my dental hygienist’s recommendation; the new floss is thinner, so (my theory is) it cuts into my gums, and injures them. Tomorrow night I’ll switch back to the old floss. If the pain doesn’t recur, my theory is right.

● I still had pain, but less. A few hours later, just before midnight, I took the other half tablet, which finally did the trick (no pain).

● Monday, 10-30-2023:   I’ve just gotten up for the day (about 4:30 a.m.). I have no pain. I don’t know whether the toothache finally resolved, or it’s the codeine working, or perhaps a little of both.

● For the first time (in the latter half of) this year, it’s cold enough that I have to wear a jacket when I go to my car in the early morning (between 5 and 6 o’clock). And I just recently started turning the electric blanket on.

● It’s now 3:00 p.m. and the toothache never came back. So the pain had resolved; it was not just being suppressed by residual codeine in my system. The real test will be in a few hours’ time, when I floss my teeth using the old floss. I’ll do it gently, as my gums may still be in a delicate condition. . . . Well, I just flossed my teeth, with the old floss, gently. Not even a trace of discomfort. My theory seems proven. Another bullet dodged.

● Last night, probably influenced by the codeine, I had a most magical dream. In it, I was reading my writing, and it sounded like Mozart’s music; it didn’t literally sound like music, but like words. It seemed like great music by some sort of analogy. I felt exceedingly proud of the work, and I imagined how much I’d enjoy contemplating other people’s reaction to it. It was one of the most sublime dream sensations I’ve ever had.

● Tuesday, 10-31-2023:   For a week and a half I’ve suspended my daily stretching exercises and walks because of back pain. Today I resumed them, but I did just half: one stretching regimen instead of two, and one walk instead of two.

● Wednesday, 11-1-2023:   Yesterday’s exercise hurt my back, so I have to skip exercise again today.

● World War II was England’s finest hour, Germany’s worst hour.

● In last Sunday’s Philosophy Club discussion of citizenship, we discussed the idea (among others) that a person must vote in order to be a good citizen. I said that this assertion was deficient in omitting two elements: one, informed voting, and, two, the content of voting (what one votes for). Consider an election in 1930s Germany. Is a German who votes for Hitler as Chancellor (assuming he knows Hitler’s intentions) a better (German) citizen than one who doesn’t vote?

● This was a good day. I felt less need than usual to take a nap in the morning, and I successfully (and easily) resisted it. I worked through the whole day, mostly reviewing my Journal (I made some good edits), and I reread the main Philosophy Club reading on Citizenship (this was my third reading of it). Today was pleasant and productive. Now it’s bedtime.

● At 10:45 p.m., I’ve just woken up with another toothache. I think I flossed a little too vigorously tonight. Unlike the last toothache, this one didn’t start right away (when I flossed), and the pain is much less intense. I’ll skip medication, unless it gets worse.

● Friday, 11-3-2023:   Well, my conflict about napping at my desk at home is resolved. I can’t do it anymore. Last Saturday (10-28-2023), the neighbor in no. 1 detected my doing so. And he made continual very loud noise, slamming doors and banging, to try to wake me up. From now on, if I must nap in the daytime, I’ll have to drive my car to a nearby street, park, recline the seat, and lie back. I’ve already done that once. When a neighbor attacks me, I think to myself, “That’s good. It reminds me why I hate you.”

● I heard this quote from an economist: “The world runs on self-interest.” My response: Probably true—hopefully, enlightened self-interest.

● Wednesday, 11-8-2023:   I heard a Biblical quotation, to this effect: “You can get into Heaven only by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, or otherwise helping the poor.” My response: And if you don’t get into Heaven, at least you’ll thereby have done some good: in feeding the hungry, healing the sick, or otherwise helping the poor.

● Thursday, 11-9-2023:   I got another COVID-19 booster vaccination today.

● Friday, 11-10-2023:   This was a rough day, feeling the effects of the COVID-19 booster: more pronounced backache, and a headache for the first time in over a month and a half.

● Saturday, 11-11-2023:   I just bought two additional fancy leather briefcases—to use in the rain.

● I just awoke from a dream in which I was in a graphic-artists’ colony or village. I was getting ready to make someone’s portrait. Accomplished artists were working in many media, and I longed to do so as well. But because I had not learned the trade, I could only use a pencil. It was agonizing. I think the dream reflects my frustration yesterday at being unable to cut material from my Journal in the section where I thought it needed cutting.

● Since that terrible backache last August, I think my lower back injury has been worse. It limits my exercise-walking.

● Tuesday, 11-14-2023:   For the last four days, I’ve done my full usual stretching and walking regimen, and yesterday and today I’ve had no significant back discomfort. I hope the increased back symptoms were just a temporary flare-up, that I’ve thus dodged another bullet.

● Saturday, 11-18-2023:   I suspended my exercise-walks today because of a backache.

● Sunday, 11-19-2023:   The backache continues. I suspended my exercise-walks again today, but I did my stretching exercises, which (the stretching) I think worsened the backache.

● Monday, 11-20-2023:   I just awoke from a dream in which I was a lawyer. My boss was a pornographer, and I wanted to work for him also as a pornographic actor. I made an initial effort to do so, but I was uneasy, ambivalent, about it. I worried that I hadn’t performed well, that perhaps I was too old for it. In one scene, I was with a group of coworkers, and the boss was giving me some advice over the telephone, or the radio, but the transmission was garbled, and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then someone asked me about my schedule for the following week, and I checked my calendar; I was explaining the legal cases in which I was scheduled for court appearances that week. I said the judge would not require trials to begin in all those cases, because the lawyers had had insufficient time to prepare. The dream perhaps reflects my concern over having not been paid for any of my deposition readbacks that I’ve done for the same law firm for almost half a year now.

● Tuesday, 11-22-2023:   I just awoke from a dream in which I had stolen a Volkswagen car from a German named Werner. The car at times seemed instead to be a piano. I alternated between admiring its automotive properties and its pianistic properties, though a friend of mine played it (when it seemed to be a piano) and he said it had a bad sound. Toward the end of the dream, thinking that it was the best strategy for not getting caught for the theft, or for mitigating my punishment if I did get caught, I told people, who seemed to know that it was Werner’s car, “Oh, I know Werner. He lent me the car. I’ll give it back to him soon.” But I hoped I’d be able to keep it.

● I just finished the latest read-through of my Journal. It was very productive—but not in the way I expected. I expected to delete a lot of less-worthwhile material in the wasteland section, roughly 2014 – 2020. I made many edits, but very few deletions. I expected to find many entries in that barren stretch below a certain level of quality or importance, which entries I’d simply delete. What I found instead is that the less important entries there are as good as the less important entries elsewhere—it’s just that in this section there’s a higher proportion of them. Here’s my predicament: If I delete some of them, then, to be consistent, I should delete all of them. But deleting everything but the gems would radically change the character of the work. For one thing, it would be a lot shorter! I don’t feel up to doing such major surgery. And even for a less drastic revision, I don’t feel up to doing that selecting. For now, I can find no solution.

The Internet program (WordPress) that runs the Web version of my Journal suggests proofreading corrections. Many of the suggestions are sound, and helpful. In my next read-through I’ll focus on those recommendations. I’ll start that after a short break.

● Well, this was a very short break: just an hour or so. I found that I don’t need a break, because I’m not reading the Journal—I can look just at the recommendations for changes.

● This latest backache is finally resolving.

● Thursday, 11-23-2023 (Thanksgiving Day):   I’ve been failing to follow one of my own rules for dealing with neighbors: don’t show my feelings. Specifically, I laugh when I read (something that strikes me as funny in) my Journal; I laugh quietly and under my breath, but audibly. I must stop doing that now. From now on, the laughter must be inward only. Yesterday, the woman in no. 3 began attacking me for it: when I’d laugh, she’d make some percussive sound. I think she got the idea from the neighbor in no. 1, when, yesterday, he slammed his kitchen door when I spoke on the telephone.

[Later note (12-1-2024): It was probably the man.]

● Friday, 11-24-2023:   I had planned to take my desert ride today. But when I got up in the morning, I just didn’t feel like it. Or at least I felt more like staying home and continuing to work on my Journal.

● Saturday, 11-25-2023:   A footnote to the discussion of nothingness: For a living organism, there is a definite nothingness, which is lack of consciousness, or death. And, in this sense, there could be nothing—all conscious beings could die.

● I finally got paid for the deposition readbacks.

● Today, for the first time in a week and a half, my back felt good enough to do my stretching and walking exercises. But as a precaution, I did just half the stretching, and less than half the walking.

● Sunday, 11-26-2023:   I just finished (it took five-days’ time) going through my Journal to check the suggested corrections. Many were good (and I made the recommended edits); some others were just wrong; still others were arguable, but I left the text as-is, (perhaps perversely) preferring my own quirky version. Among other things, it was a shortcut to finding the typographical errors (I say “the” because I assume that, within the existing material, they’re a determinate set).

● Monday, 11-27-2023:   I’ll aim for the desert ride on Wednesday (11-29-2023)—I have no depositions Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday this week. I won’t be sidetracked by my Journal then, because now I will take a break from it.

● Tuesday, 11-28-2023:   I don’t know why I make entries (like this one, perhaps) in my Diary, even when I have nothing significant to say. Perhaps because it gives me the illusion of accomplishment. Or perhaps it’s because I enjoy the act of writing, and so I do it, even when I have nothing really to write about. Or perhaps it’s a means of procrastinating doing productive but unpleasant activities.

● Wednesday, 11-29-2023:   I went for my desert ride today (195 miles, 7 hours). It was pleasant, even at times pleasurable. I ate breakfast (a patty melt) at Tom’s #25 in West Palmdale. Though it was fresh and hot—I learned from the experience a month and a half ago to be vigilant in checking to see when it’s ready—it was not as satisfying as it used to be. I’m not sure why; perhaps because lately, at home, I’ve been eating better food for breakfast than I did several years ago. In Rosamond, I bought Tea-Tree shampoo at Cost Cutters.

● Yesterday I got an email from David Park, whom I hadn’t seen, or heard from, in almost ten years.

● Friday, 12-1-2023:   By interesting coincidence, today I heard from another person from my past: Attorney Sef Krell. He called me asking me to make a certain court appearance for him today. I had to stand by; in fact, I canceled a deposition readback for it. Eventually, he (Sef) hit a snag in preparing the paperwork for the appearance and it was aborted. So, I was able to keep my scheduled eye examination this afternoon:

● The optometrist was Dr. Joanne Parungao, OD. I learned two things about the visual problem in my left eye: (1) it wasn’t my fault (I didn’t do anything to cause it); and (2) it’s correctable with glasses. Which is good news, on both counts. But I’m not going to have the glasses made. My uncorrected vision is not yet bad enough to warrant the expense and inconvenience of glasses.

[Later note (8-12-2024): Oh, yes it is! After that last eye exam, the optometry department (at Kaiser) proposed making three sets of prescription glasses for me: ones for reading; another pair for computer work; and a third for distance. The cheap pre-made magnifying glasses that you can get over-the-counter in drugstores are good enough for reading and computer work. But the visual defect in my left eye causes me considerable suffering when I drive, especially on pleasure drives, when I’m trying to enjoy scenic views. I had believed that glasses would not correct that problem because it’s caused by cataracts. Perhaps I was wrong. I’ll ask the optometrist about that during my next eye exam, in December. If glasses would correct that defect, at least for a time, they’d be well worth the expense and inconvenience.]

● Saturday, 12-2-2023:   I’ve expressed disdain for people’s not voting. But perhaps that judgment has been too harsh, in underestimating many people’s difficulty in doing so. Perhaps many people don’t vote, not merely because they don’t want to take the time to go to the polls on election day, but because they feel that they don’t know enough about the candidates and issues, and they sense that it would take too much time to adequately educate themselves in that regard. (Which thought is not unreasonable. When I come to a choice on the ballot that I’m ignorant about, I don’t flip a coin and vote; I skip it . . ..) This is another way in which the wealthy maintain their political power and economic advantage. They keep the wages of working people so low that, to survive, they (the working people) must spend so much of their time and energy doing their menial jobs that they have little time and energy left over to think and study, so fewer of them vote. Whereas, the wealthy always vote, and they vote in their economic interest—to keep themselves rich, and the rest poor.

● Sunday, 12-3-2023:   Truncated Camarillo drive.

● I had a miserable day. In the morning, I felt very de-energized. Even the drive was unsatisfying. That’s unusual. I generally find it at least refreshing. Not this time. But, in a way, I nonetheless accomplished something: There will be a certain number of bad days. This was one of them; and I got through it.

● It’s been eleven days since I finished the last read-through of my Journal. That’s a longer break than usual. Starting another read-through will help me feel better.

● Monday, 12-4-2023:   I just had my annual hearing test; the audiologist said that my hearing had not changed significantly since the last test (a year ago). That’s the best possible news, because hearing doesn’t get better, only worse.

● Tuesday, 12-5-2023:   Israel has a right to defend herself—within limits. She has far exceeded those limits, and has committed war crimes, perhaps crimes against humanity, even greater than those involved in the attack on her to which she’s responding.

● Thursday, 12-7-2023:   Well, today I’ll start another read-through of my Journal. This was a longer-than-usual break (15 days). Reading my Journal is my analgesic, or anesthetic. . . . I’ve now gone through the first year’s entries (1993), and have made significantly many (new) edits, for which I credit Robert Graves’s book The Reader Over Your Shoulder.

● Today, I walked more (for exercise) than I’d done is several weeks. I’ve been taking just one exercise walk, instead of my usual two. Today I extended it to one and two-thirds (that is, one walk, and then two-thirds of a walk).

● Saturday, 12-9-2023:   Walking more last Thursday aggravated my back. I’ve had to again limit myself to just one exercise-walk a day.

● Sunday, 12-10-2023:   I’m trying to eat less. These days (when I eat at home in the morning), my breakfast consists of a vegetarian burrito, followed by peanuts, cashews, and dates. For dinner (which is always at home), I eat a salad, followed by peanuts, cashews, and dates. The burrito and the salad are pre-made, so those amounts are fixed. Likewise, the amount of the dates is fixed: I eat six of them. So eating more, or eating less, is a function of the amount of the nuts. To make my portion of nuts at a meal, I pour out a quantity of them from the canisters they come in. In trying to eat less, I recently made this change: I noticed that, when I sat down to eat the nuts, the quantity seemed greater than it did when I poured them out. And it dawned on me that the reason for the difference was that I was pouring them out standing up. The quantity at that time seemed smaller because they were farther from my eyes than when I sat down at the table to eat them: the piles of nuts looked smaller because they were farther away. So, now I pour them out sitting down. . . . And those portions have gotten smaller.

● Sunday, 12-17-2023:   Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “What do we owe our parents?” I have no opinion on this topic. But I have this thought about it: The larger society should support everyone, so that no one need depend on charity from individuals.

. . . In reading the material on the topic, this thought occurred to me: Whether or not we can formulate a moral theory of filial obligation, there’s an evolutionary explanation for it. One motivation for bearing children is to provide the parent support in his old age (from his children). If children did not generally help their aged parents, fewer people would be motivated to have children . . ..

. . . In the discussion, someone said that a person owes his parent an obligation, even if his parent did not raise him, but only birthed him, because the parent gave him “the gift of life.” I replied that the parent did not “give the child the gift of life—he gave himself the gift of pleasure, by having sex . . . and, for one reason or another, neglected to get an abortion.”

● Monday, 12-18-2023:   I’m the Yabisher! (Yabisher.)

● I just had my annual routine physical exam, by Dr. Bhat. Good news. I’m (still) very healthy. My weight was down to 128 pounds. I guess my smaller portions of nuts is having the intended effect.

● Tuesday, 12-19-2023:   Today I washed the bedclothes and rotated the mattress topper (which I hadn’t done in nine years!). It was a bit of an ordeal, but not as bad as I’d feared.

● I’m probably not a sophomaniac. If I were, I probably wouldn’t so assiduously criticize and edit my writing. I’d be blind to its flaws, and imagine that it was above criticism.

● Wednesday, 12-20-2023:   The best way to deal with a newly developed bodily symptom is, not to see a physician about it, or to get therapy for it, but to discover what you’re doing that caused it, and to stop doing it, or to start doing it in a way that doesn’t cause or aggravate the symptom. Of course, if you can’t figure out what caused it, or you can’t conveniently stop doing it, or if the symptom persists, then you should perhaps consult with a physician, and perhaps get therapy.

● Saturday, 12-23-2023:   I just got back from my desert ride. I ate breakfast again at Tom’s #25 Restaurant. I got something new this time: the bean and cheese burrito. The burrito was good. The ride was pleasant.

● Saturday, 12-24-2023:   According to both Nietzsche and the doctrine of ethical egoism, people should do just what they want to do. I’ve criticized that principle on the grounds that (for example) murderers follow it, but they shouldn’t. And yet I’ve also said that people generally do follow it, which is probably good, because it conduces to the weal. So what principle would I propose here? Well, perhaps something like this: Do what you want to do, unless the benefit to yourself would be significantly outweighed by harm to others (then don’t’ do it).

That’s the rule for the average person. For the person of extraordinary (and socially constructive) ability, the rule should be: develop and use your extraordinary ability.

● Sunday, 12-31-2023:   I’ve lately developed a plan to (try to) get attention for my Journal: advertising. I’m thinking of advertising it on a local public radio station (LAist.com, formerly KPCC). I’m talking to them about it. I had planned to start the ads as soon as I finished the current read-through (I’m just past halfway through it). But this editing session is so productive that I’ll probably further postpone the start of the advertising—until I’ve read the work through without making so many edits.

● Flare-up of right forearm symptoms.

● 2023 has been the year of:
○ The posting on the Web of my Journal, and my learning to edit the online version.
○ The worsening of my lower back injury.

2024 >>