A friend of mine had been a teetotaler for a hundred years, until he became a politician and had to go to a reception or a spaghetti dinner every night. Went off the wagon. Needed a drink or two, he said, “To make other people interesting.”

The other night I met a really interesting and admirable guy for a beer. Barely drank a sip. Didn’t feel the need to put a buzz on. Interesting new people put a buzz on. I flew home on my motorcycle.

My young daughter falls similarly in love with every other person she meets. Always has. Hope that always happens for her. Not sure it will.

Anyway, I liked this paragraph from Charles Bukowski’s journals enough that I decided to retype it on the old Coronet (which needs a new ribbon, bad; had to hammer most of these strokes two or three times; which was still better than going to a gathering of people).

Let’s talk “death threats.”

Bill Maher has a feature called, “I don’t know it for a fact … I just know it’s true.”

That’s how I feel about most things I think I know about death threats. I don’t know it for a fact, I just know it’s true:

• That the top 1,000 people who have ever made a death threat are accountable for 75% of all death threats.

• That nine hundred and twenty-two of those top 1,000 death-threateners are operating out of man caves.

• That the vast majority of death threats aren’t “credible,” because people who threaten death are lazier than they are angry. Really? You’re mad enough that you want someone to die? But so lazy you won’t even get off your couch?

• That still, because a “credible” death threat is best defined as one made to you and your loved ones, death threats are terrifying to anyone who receives them. And public officials constantly terrified by death threats—or just the terrifying prospect of getting death threats—can’t accurately represent the sorts of courageous American citizens we need represented.

• That if we didn’t want a society led by terrified public officials, the FBI would get very serious and create a Branch of Death-Threat Investigation. The BDTI would hire some very smart young programmers to effortlessly trace the dumbfuck sources of death threats, and also retrain a small percentage of ICE officers to specialize in raiding man caves.

• And that if BTDI officials started giving “the worst of the worst” death-threateners a very public taste of their own terrifying medicine, there’d be many fewer death threats, all of a sudden. And maybe—just maybe—a lot more political courage.

• And unlike urban crime, government bloat, inflation and high healthcare costs, we could largely solve this death-threat problem in a matter of months.

I don’t know it for a fact. I just know it’s true.

Don’t you?