December 21st, 2025

 It has been a heavy weekend on the Morning Chalkboard.

Saturday belonged to Nietzsche and Sunday belongs to Tolstoy. That wasn't accidental. When you put these two back to back, you are asking people to sit with discomfort instead of running away from it.

Tolstoy’s writings consistently challenged readers to look inward rather than outward, urging personal accountability before social transformation. Today’s quote distills that idea into one hard sentence... "everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change himself." It sounds simple until you realize how few people are willing to live it.

This past week has been relentless. Hanukkah is in full force and Christmas is barreling toward us. The calendar closing in on the end of 2025 with all the subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that time doesn’t negotiate. Add to that the background noise of stress, anxiety, and fatigue, and you have the perfect storm.

Then come the headlines.

Another school shooting, this one at Brown University. The massacre of Jews celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah in Australia. The murder of celebrity Rob Reiner and his wife.

It is this last one that I want to chalk about here..

All week long we watched old interviews, clips, and tributes. The one moment that stood out to me was an interview with James Woods. Woods is an actor we all know, but in recent years he has become well known for his far-right conservative views. Rob Reiner lived on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Reiner was far left, unapologetic and outspoken.

Here is the part that matters. They were close friends for over forty years.

They debated, they argued and they challenged each other. They didn’t hide their differences or soften their convictions. These were two of the loudest, most relentless voices on opposite sides of the political divide. Two of the biggest mealy mouths on Twitter, if we are being honest here. Neither one was shy about telling the world exactly what they thought.

Yet, when the noise stopped... they broke bread together, they showed up for milestones and they stayed friends. That isn't nostalgia from the Archie Bunker and George Jefferson days. That is a lost skill that we need to redevelop for the middle of this century.

Somewhere along the way, we have decided disagreement meant disqualification. That difference meant danger. That the goal was to defeat the person instead of understand them. We built our identities around being right instead of being decent.

History doesn’t reward that kind of bullshit.

The political leaders of the first half of the twenty-first century will one day lie beside Ozymandias. Shattered reputations scattered across forgotten sands. Power always fades and ego always collapses. Like I keep hammering into you Chalkheads, time eventually keeps a clean ledger.

This is the moment when we must look deep inside ourselves and ask what the fuck is going on. Not just with the world around us, but with us inside.

As these holidays draw to a close, it is time to winterize something deeper than our homes.

Winterize our hearts.

Rejuvenate our minds.

Patch the cracks in our souls.

Do the quiet work before demanding loud change from everyone else.

When we have done that, then we can start reaching out. Call the friend who slowly became a stranger. Read something you wouldn’t normally read. Walk a different route. Let unfamiliar ground teach you something. Find the part of yourself that needs to be reinvented, reinforced, or replaced.

Light your last candle tonight. Open your first present this week. Watch the clock turn toward a new year with intention instead of fear.

Today is the winter solstice. The world is tilted at 23.5 degrees. The shortest day is behind us. From here on out, the light returns slowly and steadily. Our days get longer, our shadows shorten.

Eat something decadent today and have a little gusto. Hug someone who loves you and enjoy that smile on the sun.

December 20th, 2025

 How about a Saturday morning with some Friedrich Nietzsche?

Nietzsche wasn’t attacking meaning. He was attacking delay. He saw hope, when applied to this life, as something dangerous, not noble or brave, but postponing. Hope whispers that relief is coming if you just wait long enough. That suffering has an expiration date. That the ledger will balance itself if you just stay patient. Nietzsche called that cowardice because it asks nothing of you except endurance without acceptance.

What he offered instead was harder and cleaner ... AMOR FATI, which is Latin for love your fate. You don't need to tolerate fate or negotiate with it. Love it, embrace it... all of it. Both the suffering and success welded together, inseparable.

Hope belongs to fantasy and not in reality.

The truth lands heavier the older that I get. Youth runs on hope because it hasn’t paid enough invoices yet. Life hasn’t collected. Over time, hope thins out and reality does what it always does. It shows up on schedule and charges interest. Loved ones die before we want them to. Marriages fail, cars break down, layoffs aren't just counted for CNBC, institutions rot, friendships end over spilled wine, kneecaps buckle and children suffer in ways we cannot fix.

Promises don’t age well. Somewhere along the line, I realized hope didn’t shield me from any of these things, it only made the waiting longer and the disappointment sharper.

That is where I am now. I have zero use for hope as a tool. I don’t trust it and I don’t lean on it. I don’t outsource my footing to daydreams. Let modern politicians mumble hope into microphones while offering nothing but recycled lies. Hope is cheap currency. It buys applause and delivers nothing.

Wasting time hoping doesn’t soften the blow, it sharpens it.

That isn’t bitterness.

That is clarity.

Don Shepley never taught hope. He taught me to position myself towards life's hurdles.

Square your shoulders.

Bow your neck.

Get low and push forward.

When the world fights back, you don’t ask it to be kind, you drive through it. That isn’t optimism, that is discipline. That is acceptance married to effort. That is amor fati in work boots.

Here is where people get it all wrong. Rejecting hope does not mean rejecting faith.

Hope wants outcomes, Faith doesn’t.

Hope demands guarantee, Faith asks for none.

Christ never said, “This will all work out.”

Not once did he waiver. In the garden, He didn’t hope His way out, He submitted.

“Not my will, but Yours.”

On the cross, He didn’t forecast relief, He entrusted Himself. That is my Faith stripped of illusion.

Faith isn’t wishful thinking.

Faith isn’t optimism with religious language.

Faith doesn’t bargain with reality.

Faith tells me that even if this does not improve, I will not abandon what is true. I will say my prayer and position myself to fight through and not sit there and daydream that the bullshit fades away.

Faith holds in good times without arrogance and in bad times without collapse. It doesn’t promise me a rescue plan. It promises meaning and meaning is enough for me.

You can lose hope and still have faith. In fact, sometimes hope must die for faith to mature. Hope wants the future to bend your way. Faith stands firm when it doesn’t. Faith lives in the present tense and always shows up. Faith shoulders weight and keeps moving without applause.

Hope decorates daydreams.

Faith carries load.

If hope ever returns, it won't get the steering wheel. It rides quietly in the backseat, where fantasies belong. The work up front is done by acceptance, integrity, discipline, and faith. Faith in ourselves, faith in showing up, and faith in the promise of eternal grace beyond this ledger.

Love life as it is.

Carry suffering without flinching.

Accept success without illusion.

The sun will rise this morning at 7:15 a.m. I won't hope it to rise. It shows up to shine on the good days and shine on the bad days.

Holy Crap.... I chalked a heavy Chalkboard for this Saturday before Christmas.

Have faith that today is astonishing.

December 19th, 2025

I’m getting a real kick out of celebrating Hanukkah this year.

Not because I’m trying to be trendy or make a point, but because it feels honest. I have only been lighting a menorah the last handful of years, but Jews have always been part of my life. In Chicago, that’s just how it was. You didn’t ask what someone believed first, you asked what neighborhood they were from. You asked them what parish they were in. Edgewater. Rogers Park. St. Edith’s. St. Basil’s. Parish before politics, street before slogans. It was common back in the day to hear a Jewish guy say that he was in Saint Gregory's or Saint Ita's.

When I was a kid in Catholic school, the Bible wasn’t divided by teams. The Old Testament was Judeo. The New Testament was Christian, Judeo-Christian. I honestly thought being Catholic meant you were Jewish too, just later in the story. My old man worked on the railroad with Jewish guys. They came to our house for Christmas parties and we went to their homes for special occasions. The food was unreal and the music sounded familiar. It felt a lot like the German side of my family, big tables, loud voices, history carried in recipes.

So yeah, I’m protective of Jews and supportive of Israel. Enough so that when Israel was attacked and I said so out loud, I lost friends. That told me more about them than me.

Here is the hard part, the part you don’t dodge if you are serious about faith. I carry hatred toward another religion. That is the hard truth and that truth scares me. Because I believe in heaven and I believe in purgatory.

I picture it clear as day... a chain-link fence between me in purgatory and my dad in heaven, and him saying, “Moose, I told you. You needed to get that hate out of your heart.”

That is my hypocrisy.

Loving one people while hating another and I know it.

I once told a priest in confession exactly that. His face froze, but confession isn’t for theater... it is for honesty. If you have a flaw, you name it and then you work on it.

So here I am lighting candles. Letting George say the prayers. On Sunday I will be finishing Hanukkah with neighbors, a menorah by the train station, and a box of sofganiyot from the Jewish bakery. A Riverside tradition that one of the Jewish neighbors has been doing since Covid.

Faith doesn’t accept defeat. It keeps working, it keeps wrestling. Keeps the heart open, even when it is uncomfortable.

The last weekend before Christmas. Last minute shopping and time spent with family and friends.

Believe and astonishment will follow.

December 18th, 2025

 Most stress and grief doesn’t come from failure.

They come from betrayal, not of others, but of yourself. Saying yes when your gut said no. Staying quiet when you should have spoken. Reaching for approval instead of standing on principle. Every one of those choices carries interest, and the bill always comes due.

Being faithful to yourself isn’t about ego or indulgence. It is about alignment. When what you believe, what you say, and what you do are pulling in the same direction, life gets quieter, not easier, but quieter. The noise drops. The second-guessing fades and you stop rehearsing conversations in your head at 2 a.m. because there’s nothing to defend.

People confuse self-faith with selfishness. That is wrong. Self-faith is how you become dependable. To your kids, to your work, to your word. If you won’t abandon yourself, you are far less likely to abandon anyone else.

Most people never get there. They live fractured with one face for work, one for home and one for survival. The ones who do learn it walk lighter and sleep better. They accept the consequences of their choices without resentment because those choices were honest. When you are faithful to yourself, life may still be tough, but it no longer confuses you.

Christmas Day is one week away...

December 17th, 2025

 Sooner than later, this chalkboard is going to come to an end.

When it does, I want it to end knowing I never held anything back. I didn’t stay quiet to make other people comfortable. I didn’t stop talking about the things that actually matter.

We hear plenty from parents whose kids are on the Dean’s List, headed to elite schools, starring on teams and collecting trophies. Those proud parents talk a lot and have every right. What we don’t hear about are the parents whose kids are struggling. The bad grades, the depression, the medication, the anxiety, the quiet pain. Those parents usually don’t talk and when they do, they are often judged for it.

I have been criticized for talking too much. For being too open. For saying things I probably “shouldn’t.” When it is all said and done, I want to be that guy. The one who pushed the pedal down, brought the hard subjects into the light, and made people stop and think.

I am not the parent with a child headed to the Ivy League. I am not raising a star athlete that everyone brags about. I am the parent of a child who is sad, who is struggling and who isn't doing well. This fall, my daughter went through her first and probably not her last round of rehab and psychological care for depression and anxiety. Some of that pain came from life. Some of it came from divorce. None of it came from failure to love her.

Parenthood is hard. Life is hard. It was hard when we were kids and it is harder now. These kids came of age through COVID, isolation, social media, and phones that never shut off. The world comes at them fast and without mercy. What used to be hidden now lives in their pockets.

Here is the truth we don’t say out loud enough.... If your family feels like a mess right now, you are not alone. If you are scared for your children, exhausted, unsure, ashamed, or just worn down... you are not alone.

We just want our children to grow up happy, healthy and secure in their independence.

If this chalkboard ever stands for anything, let it be that honesty matters and integrity matters. Parents going through a shit show need to know they are not the only ones.

We need each other.

We need prayer.

We need grace ...and sometimes, we just need someone brave enough to tell the truth.

Shakespeare had it right, it is a wise parent that knows their child and so do the parents who keep showing up every day, even when it hurts.

A week from today is Christmas Eve. Don't pout and don't cry.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you why......

December 16th, 2025

 I didn’t use a quote this morning for decoration.

It is a warning with a mirror attached… or a mirror with a warning attached. Either way, time doesn’t argue. It doesn’t posture and it sure as hell doesn’t care about excuses. It just keeps a ledger.

Every shortcut, every dodge, every line of bullshit and every quiet act of integrity. Time records it all and sooner than later, time taps you on the shoulder and says, I know exactly who you are.

That is where the Grabber section comes in for you Chalkheads this morning. It is like the counterweight. If you are going to take time, take time to observe more. Observation is how you stay ahead of time instead of getting exposed to it.

Watch who shows up when it is inconvenient. Watch what doesn’t need to be said anymore. Watch patterns instead of promises...

...and like I hammer into you with the times in the left-hand corner of this Chalkboard…

…always know where the sun is.

Every day, every hour, every minute. Know those angles, know where your shadow lands and know where it blends in with the grand scheme of things.

Time is going to show up on schedule today. Just after seven o’clock in the morning.

Observe more.

December 15th, 2025

 Some ties never change.

I never expected I would bury my parents so early in my life, but reality hit the first time I needed them and they were gone.

I believed hard work and integrity would guarantee security. They don’t.

I took those vows on the last Saturday in September of 2004

fully intending to love that girl forever.

My firstborn never recorded a quarterback sack,

but his autism made me a better man, and a better father.

Technology shut down my trading floor and canceled my morning newspaper delivery.

I still drive to a job with the remnants of the old floor,

and I might not have a newspaper, but I have a chalkboard.

Success isn’t determined until we are long gone. It will be the historians that determined if we met all expectations. Until then, we need to keep it real between the sunrise and sunset times in the Morning Chalkboard.

Life isn’t fair, but that should never stop us from doing the right thing.

December 14th, 2025

 I drove over to the laundromat early this morning to get a head start on the day. One degree outside and the wind was slicing right through me.

I was in the middle of my Our Father as I walked up to my car. I hit the button to open the hatchback, two bags of laundry hoisted over my shoulders, and as I’m tossing them in... WHACK ... I smashed my head on the tailgate.

That instant blood rushing to the skull pain had me dazed. The kind where your eyes water and your soul leaves your body for a half-second. Several swear words got inserted into the middle of my praying right around “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I didn't notice the tailgate didn’t fully open, it was one degree out and Chet Lemon was cold. Winter doesn’t give warnings twice.

That was when I realized today’s Steinbeck quote fits perfectly.

After hitting my head, I looked up to heaven and told Poppa God I was sorry for dropping a mother-f***ing, c**k sucker, f***ing dumb-ass during the Our Father and that was when I literally saw stars. They say you see stars when you get smacked in the head.

They’re right.

I saw stars and I also saw a bright Jupiter and a sharp crescent moon hanging there like a reminder.

...Something positive out of a negative.

Another positive came out of head meeting cold steel. The immediate pain to my skull made me completely forget that the wind chill was below zero.

Winter is in full force, Chalkheads.

Put on some Vivaldi and remember the joy of four seasons. We have a smile on the sun today, and in a week the days start getting longer. You will also notice the two-week run of 4:20 sunsets have finally ended.

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish brothers and sisters. May light fill your hearts, not just for these eight days, but every day of your journey.

Try not to hit your head today. Get out and get some fresh bitterly cold air. A couple of minutes of discomfort makes you stronger.

December 13th, 2025

 Last night belonged to the annual Wild Turkey Christmas Extravaganza at the James Joyce.

A table full of boys from the southwest corner of Oak Park. Brothers, neighbors, stragglers, and extended family. The kind of group where if you haven’t seen each other in a year, it feels like you were together the day before yesterday. No warm-up needed and no explanations required.

There were hugs that lasted a second longer than they used to. Laughter that came easier than it does most days. Gratitude, plain and unspoken, hanging over the table like incense. The median age is sixty now. That snuck up quickly. Growing older together has been a blessing, and with God’s grace, we’ve probably got twenty more extravaganzas left in us. That is a number worth protecting.

Today is Army vs. Navy. The purest football game left. No transfer portals, no NIL circus, no nonsense. Just discipline, tradition, and young men playing for something bigger than themselves. It is the way the game was meant to be played ... clean, cold, and honest.

Stay warm today. Watch the Christmas lights do what they have always done. Let the old traditions work on you quietly. Grace changes the scale, whether you notice it or not.

December 12th, 2025

 I won’t be around to find out whether I’m ever a legend or not.

Most of us won’t. That privilege is reserved for statues, headlines, and people who did something loud enough to get caught on camera, on stage or flashed up on a Jumbotron.

My legends once called me son, Moose, Pumpkinhead, John John. My legends prayed a shit ton. They knew how to build choo-choo trains. They directed large choirs for liturgies that the Cardinal presided over. One of them taught me how to wipe my own ass. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty solid foundation in life.

I like to think that someday I might be remembered from my Chicago Board of Trade days. One of the many players who populated the trading floor during the golden era. Not as a guy who made a million dollars a day, those stories fade fast, but as someone who did his job with decency, humor, and a promise that meant something.

The other day my son Fritz said something that stopped me cold. He told me a man dies twice. The first time is when he draws his last breath. The second time is when his name is spoken for the final time. That second death is worth wondering about. Who will be the last person that utters your name?

A man doesn’t get to decide his own legend. That gets handled by the people who loved him, who hated him, who trusted him, who scorned him. It is built quietly, out of integrity, consistency, and how you treated folks when nobody was keeping score.

I dropped my favorite Christmas movie into the Grabber section this morning, The Bishop’s Wife. It’s an old, good one. The kind that still believes kindness counts and grace shows up when you are not expecting it.

Arctic weather is rolling into the neighborhood this weekend. Keep your toes warm. But more importantly, keep working on the only thing that lasts, a legacy that doesn’t need a spotlight to survive.

December 11th, 2025

 No matter how hard we try, we are the villain in somebody’s story.

That’s just life.

Somewhere out there, a neighbor thinks you are the loud one, a classmate remembers you as the jerk, a colleague swears you are impossible, an ex has a running list on you, and the toughest one of all, a family member carries a bruise you never meant to leave.

That is the price of being human, we bump into each other. We speak too fast, assume too much, react too sharply. We make mistakes we don’t even notice until years later. Sometimes we never notice them at all and that is how they exist in another storyline.

Being the villain in someone else’s story doesn’t make you a bad person. It means you showed up and lived a life that touched other lives. You mattered enough to leave a mark, good or bad. The real measure isn’t how many stories cast you as the heavy; it’s whether you keep trying to be better in your own fable.

...And if today you were the villain? Fine.

Be the hero for somebody tomorrow.

In the Grabber section today, 68 days until Fat Tuesday. 164 days until the 110th running of the greatest spectacle in sports. 206 days and we celebrate the 250th birthday of this great country. I picked these three special days to remind you that the cold and dark of December will be gone in a flash.

December 10th, 2025

 Stevie Nicks doesn’t write lyrics: she lands them hard.

She has that rare gift of dropping a line that hits like a rake across the heart. No warning, no softness, just truth scratched into you before you even realize what happened. “And the days go by like a strand in the wind…” that is one of those lines.

December makes it feel even sharper. Short days, long nights, the whole world dimming early while the clock keeps moving whether you are keeping up or not.

In today’s grabber is the Latin, Magnus Frater, “big brother.” Titles that old don’t fade but thicken with time. You carry them whether you want to or not, and most of the time you are grateful you have someone out ahead of you swinging the machete through life’s brush.

So here is the birthday message carried on that wind down I-65:

Happy Birthday to my Big Brother, Bob McCutcheon, down in Indianapolis. Bob helped get me from Point A to Point B during my Exile in Indy. He guided me through the edge of seventeen.

Magnus Frater... today and always.

We are getting near the end of the two weeks of 4:20 sundown's in Chicagoland.

Soon the days will slowly get longer and bags of wrapping paper will be in the garbage can in the alley.

Stay warm and walk like a penguin, it might be slick out there today.

December 9th, 2025

 Dawn comes slow on December 9th, 2025.

The chalkboard says 38°, a smear of clouds, and a reminder that sometimes the wrong train takes you to the right station. I have lived that one. Most of us have.

You don’t learn it from textbooks. You learn it at places like an old Chicago diner where the coffee burns your tongue and the world makes a little more sense.

For me, that place was Gossage Grill, tucked on North Avenue just west of Harlem. A joint where the steam off a chipped white coffee mug curled up like the city taking its first breath in the morning. Neon buzzed in the window, painting the stainless counter in tired white and stubborn gray.

If you ever wanted to know who you were, or who you were becoming, you sat at the counter with your Oldman or stumbled in after a night of drinking with your buddies.

Jimmy was the overnight cook. More like a grill master. The spatula cracked against the griddle, sending up that holy trinity of bacon, butter, and burnt edges. Back then, we thought Jimmy was just “different.” We didn’t have the vocabulary or the wisdom. Years later, with life behind me and a son of my own, I can see it clear as day... Jimmy was autistic.

He took more grief from drunk kids than he ever deserved and he still fed us, every damn time, without complaint.

Cold air sneaked in with every swing of the door, mixing with the warmth of frying eggs and wet wool coats. The customer's sneakers screeched across cracked linoleum. The radiator clanked its usual complaint. The first sunbeam slid through the tired windows and turned a plate of hash browns into something like gold.

And Jimmy, steady as ever, kept the world humming low. Truckers, night-shifters, old-timers, lonely people, college kids... all trading pieces of themselves like loose change.

That diner taught me more about life than half the classrooms I ever sat in. It taught me that the wrong train doesn’t mean a ruined trip. Sometimes it just means you end up exactly where someone up there wanted you to be.

Hanukkah in five days.

Christmas in sixteen.

Sunrise at 7:07.

Sunset at 4:20.

Another day to get it right, or at least to sit down, warm your hands around a mug, and listen for the wisdom coming off a hot grill at dawn. Gossage has been closed for years, but there are still diners around town to pass experience and knowledge off at.

December 8th, 2025

 How about starting the week with a quote from Dickens.

Look back at how old you were on January 1st, 2000. I was exactly 33.5 years old when the calendar turned from the 1900’s into the 2000’s. Which means when I turn 67, I will have lived the exact amount of time in each century. That’s a fun little math game to play, but the equation that counts is the fact that we are all here at the same time. Give or take a couple years.

In that time, I have drunk a couple beers too many and played with myself more than the Catholic Church allows. I’m hoping I have some more gooder stuff than badder stuff. Most of the years I have suffered as a sports fan and most of those years I’ve voted for the same political party. Neither have the same vigor it once held.

And yet, through all that living... the wins, the losses, the bad habits, the loyalty, the decades-long sports misery...

...the only real through-line is this: Keep showing up.

Take the hits, laugh at yourself, and steady the people who lean on me. Even now, staring down what’s officially the snowiest start to winter since 1978, I keep putting one boot in front of the other.

Still, Dickens had it right. You are never useless if you lighten someone’s burden.

That is the kind of math that actually matters.

December 7th, 2025

   I was in eighth grade in February of 1980, deep in my Exile in Indy era.

I’d been suspended from Christ the King grade school, again. I was a little jagoff who couldn’t stay out of my own way. My mom couldn’t handle me, my Oldman was 177 miles north in Oak Park, and I was trying every stunt I could to get a one-way ticket back home to Cook County.

Most of that suspension week, I was locked in my bedroom with a small black-and-white Panasonic. I was in a world of trouble. My mom was beside herself, my Gramma was at church saying the rosary for my oversized soul, and my Oldman was licking his chops. I knew my next Amtrak ride back to Chicago was going to be about as gentle as a lumberyard.

But my timing ended up being perfect...

The 1980 Winter Olympics were happening, and instead of sitting in history and religion class, I watched every hockey game that led up to the Miracle on Ice. I watched the boys beat the Soviets and then finish the job against Finland for the gold. I watched Eric Heiden win five medals in speed skating, from the 500 meter to the 10,000. That was my math class... learning meters. The U.S. finished third in the medal count behind the Soviet Union and East Germany. There was my history class.

Fast-forward to last night and another miracle down in Indianapolis. The Indiana Hoosiers beat a team that has owned them for over a century. Nine out of ten times Ohio State handles them, but not last night. Not in that building. Last night's Big Ten Championship ranks right there with the 1980 victory over a favored bunch of commies.

I probably have your attention because of what is in the Grabber section of today’s Morning Chalkboard. That is why they call it the Grabber. Japps might have changed the name of their potato chips to Jays after that day of infamy, but I’m not changing my blackboard. I’m not sugarcoating history. Even my Gramma, who prayed the rosary every day of her life, used that word. When Hazel wakes up, she will probably call me a racist baby boomer, and I’ll correct her that I’m Gen X. She lives to push that button.

Look...slur words have been thrown at every group in history. At one point, all of us were on the other end of a slur word. We don’t use them today because we know better, but pretending they never existed? That isn't history.

That is fiction.

As I am writing this, the snow is coming down over the Divorced Dad District. That “dusting” they predicted looks more like four or five inches. Perfect weather for Bears–Packers football, and thank God I’m not watching it on a 12-inch black-and-white with rabbit ears.

Go make the world a better place today.

If you insist on using a slur word, pay the bartender and Uber home. Do your best to make the Yuletide gay. Because in 2026, all our troubles will be miles away...

December 6th, 2025

Today's quote was written by Billy Shakes, one my Oldman often used.

He used it when dealing with mealy mouths and fakers who don’t add up to the big equation of life. It also became readily available for every loudmouth who has never taken a real hit. Easy to laugh at pain when you have never bled.

My Oldman was usually plain and simple. Chicagonese rolled off his tongue whenever life’s assclowns pushed him to the brink, but when his anger started to boil and he needed to check himself, that was when Shakespeare came out.

“Look at this hurried jagoff changing lanes without using his GD directional! Someone tell him his horseshit life isn’t going anywhere. It will f’ing be there waiting no matter when he shows up!”

Or, when he wanted to cut straight to the bone:

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound!”

I don’t know how or when this line became part of Don Shepley’s arsenal, but when he pulled it out, it was napalm. He had another line too... one he took to the grave before I ever figured it out:

“This guy talks like a man with a paper asshole.”

To this day, I still don’t know what the hell that means.

Anyway… it is Saint Nicholas Day. Put your shoes by the door and wake up tomorrow to find treats in them. Saint Nick and William Shakespeare, strange pair, sure, but both teach the same thing: mercy usually comes from the wounded, not the untouched.

Find astonishment and gusto today. You will need to put a smile on the sun yourself.