Some thoughts from last night’s Jays game, at the neglected Sports And The City. 

On child psychopaths, from The New York Times Magazine: 

By the time he turned 5, Michael had developed an uncanny ability to switch from full-blown anger to moments of pure rationality or calculated charm — a facility that Anne describes as deeply unsettling. “You never know when you’re going to see a proper emotion,” she said. She recalled one argument, over a homework assignment, when Michael shrieked and wept as she tried to reason with him. “I said: ‘Michael, remember the brainstorming we did yesterday? All you have to do is take your thoughts from that and turn them into sentences, and you’re done!’ He’s still screaming bloody murder, so I say, ‘Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.’ He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, ‘Well, you didn’t think that through very clearly then, did you?’ ”

It’s May. Which means I’m quitting drinking. Again. For at least the, I don’t know, umpteenth time. (“Umpteenth” is a stupid word. Fuck umpires.)

The way I see it, I’ve been drinking regularly since I turned 19. And, if we’re being honest, no good has come of it. (Yeah, I was one of those fools who waited until he was of legal age to really start drinking. I’ve been making up for lost time since.) I’ll be 30 in September. In five months. Thirty. Fucking 30. I say it, the number, in my head at least three or four times a day: “Thirty.” It’s depressing. Thirty, and I’ve done nothing with my life.

What was I expecting to have done with my life at this point? I’m not sure. But I haven’t done it. And by no means — by absolutely no means at all — am I doing it.

Look, my point is: I’m quitting drinking. For, at least, like, a month. Thirty-one days. It can’t be that hard. Can it? I made it 17 days the last time. 

I can’t wait until June.