I can’t be chastised for the awful things I think.

Sitting down at this late hour in the work day (just under 27 minutes before I go home) I’m trying to think of what I want to write about. This isn’t one of those journalistic clichés where the writer then muses on some ordinary event and suddenly, triumphantly, pulls out some meditation on life that you obviously expect and enjoy otherwise why would anyone print that garbage? Anyway, I’m not trying to muse on anything; I’m just applying the filter so I don’t inadvertently spill any of the truly good details out here. Muse on that.

In non-chronological ordering, then. Yesterday I spent one of the hottest days on earth skulking around the North End of Boston. It was apparently the Feast of the Madonna (and not, as I had hoped might be the case, a cause for some Gay Italian group to pose a counter-festival like the Feats of Madonna), but this was quickly and obviously subsumed by the Feast of World Cup Football Playoffs or whatever they were by Italy and France. The Italian fans outnumbered the French fans at City Hall Plaza by about 5,500 to one. I haven’t seen that much meat since the last time I checked out the dry cure room at Whole Foods. Ba-da-bing!

On with that festive note (I can only sing in a rather limited register), I haven’t been that hot all summer. Something about the mixture of concrete and brick at the plaza seems to create a breeze vortex, and where it was mildly unbearable just a few feet away, suddenly you’re walking across the surface of the sun while trying to avoid the noxious smell of unwashed armpits and beer bellies hungry for more beer, sausage, and goals. Goals! I don’t know how many there were. I didn’t care. I wasn’t there for the majesty of football, I didn’t show up for the mist tent, and I certainly don’t care to be surrounded by so many Italians! What was my point? I’m just in it for the put-downs. I’m not really interested in providing any content.

Well, I don’t have a sophisticated philosophy upon which to draw platitudes and observations that would make women with appliqué sweaters swoon, so I’ll just end it here. If one of these women happens to read some of these neatly typed lines and would like to issue some sort of reprimand to me for dragging them into this nonexistent fray, well, you just go ahead, dear, it won’t make a bit of difference, but I will sure love reading some of your homespun ridicule.