Don’t Stop

Midweek already? Time has no meaning to me anymore, really. It’s going to be October long before I’m ready for it. How crazy is that? I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around it being football season already. There are some good games this weekend (LSU is playing Louisiana Tech), like Alabama-Georgia and Oklahoma-Michigan and Ohio State-Texas, and isn’t it early in the season for marquee match-ups like that? I guess the SEC is going to decide this week whether to expel LSU or not; Greg Sankey has never liked having his power questioned. But one thing is for sure: the NCAA started all of this NIL/paying players thing without covering every base, and the most positive outcomes from this will be answering unresolved questions about eligibility. It’s really hard to argue against eligibility for people who signed professional contracts but never played or got paid when they can get paid in college. I thought the mentality behind this whole pay-the-players thing was to encourage playing college for four years…you can’t really tell someone “well, you signed a contract to get paid, which means you can no longer get paid at the collegiate level,” can you? Make it make sense. There needs to be a more clearly defined rule, is all–and if they didn’t think coaches would push their limits, they thought wrong. As a very biased LSU an, I try not to voice opinions about these things when they involve LSU because my instinct is always to defend my team–it feels like someone telling you your dog is ugly–but in removing emotion (or trying to) and only using logic tells me that it’s actually a problem that needs a definitive answer–which everyone seems to be hedging on by turning it into an “LSU problem” when the reality is that decisions should be in the best interests of, I don’t know, the actual players? Actual courts of law inevitably rule against the NCAA, which is why the system is so broken. If they kick LSU out, so be it–but don’t think our governor and attorney general will let that sit, and honestly? Every time Janky Jeff and the Lizard insert their sticky hands into anything, they make everything worse–and they aren’t very smart to begin with; they’re just stupid, lazy, and corrupt with no issues abusing their own petty power. I mean, they sell out their constituents every chance they get, and it really bothers me that they’ll never face any consequences for their abuses of power.

The week already seems off to me, because it’s again a short one. I have to see my doctor on Friday, and I have a meeting that morning. Maybe we’re going to Costco? I don’t know. But the good news is I started writing a short story yesterday for one of these anthology calls I’m interested in; whether I am able to finish it and turn it in on time for consideration is another story (which is why I have so many partial stories in the files; I’ll start writing one for an anthology but not finish it, and then years later I’ll find it, can’t remember why I started it, but will finish it and get it published–this is what happened with “The Sound of Snow Falling”, which is coming out in Unloaded 3 this fall. It’s very creepy, and there’s no corpse. (Well, creepy and disturbing if I make it work the way I want it to; we’ll just have to see, won’t we?

I see that Ben Shelton managed to beat Carlos Alcaraz last night after I went to bed. I’ve not really gotten into the US Open that much this year, but…I love watching good tennis, but I don’t feel connected to any players, other than Carlos, but seeing the rise of so many young Americans on both the men’s and women’s sides is kind of exciting. It’s been a while since we’ve had any Americans on the rise. (Although I do always enjoy watching Novax lose.)

I watched a short video the other day about the murder of Jesse Valencia in Columbia, Missouri (he was a student at the university), and there were so many twists and turns before the murderer was identified–and as always with a gay murder, repression and the closet played a major role in the case. There’s a novel there, but I have to wrap my mind around it to get the story and point of view I would want to use. I have often thought about how dangerous it is to be gay, and how many of us go home from clubs and bars and parties with someone we just met and know nothing about; it’s a wonder more of us aren’t murdered, to be honest. A serial killer, for example, could kill plenty of gay male hook-ups before anyone even noticed–and if he’s hot, they’d never think twice about leaving with him–which, of course, is something I’m exploring in a in-progress novel that may be finished some day.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. It’s even Pay the Bills Day, and I completely forgot until just now. Get your head together, Gregalicious! See you tomorrow!