Author: gregh121

I am a writer and editor who lives in New Orleans.

Sharing the Night Together

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is sort of well. I slept extremely well last night, and was awakened by a very hungry and needy Sparky this morning. I didn’t mind getting up–the bed is so comfortable on Saturday mornings–but here I am, having quickly scanned through my email inbox and having finished my first cup of coffee this morning already. I feel good, actually. Yesterday was a nice day. I got my work duties completed and we went to Costco, as well as ran another errand on the way (Paul had to stop by his office, which wasn’t easy since O’Keefe is still only partially open most of the time and yesterday it wasn’t open at all. But it was no big deal, and Costco actually had several things they’ve not had in a while that I like (like a half-case of Clearly Canadian1 bottles, which is my FAVORITE sparkling water of all time; I just wish they’d bring back green apple, which was my favorite. However, during Paul’s time at the office I picked up a few things at Cadillac Rouse’s and they now carry it by the bottle as well–and had STRAWBERRY! That’s a new flavor I’ve never seen before), which is always a lovely thing. We came home, put things away (I still need to reorganize things to be more efficient) and I did some chores before it was time for the LSU-Georgia Gymnastics meet, which was very fun to watch. They had a great meet, the Tigers broke their own record for highest score ever (and I still think they were underscored), and looked incredibly impressive. They beat Georgia by almost a full point and a half, and Georgia had a pretty good score. We watched another episode of The Madness, which is still really good, and I went to bed early–probably why getting up this morning wasn’t such a chore. I also worked on some editing and paid some bills–need to do some more of that this morning, in fact.

My neck has oddly been sore the last two mornings. Maybe I’m sleeping at a bad angle, I don’t know, but it’s annoying.

Today I need to take care of some things, and I am going to spend some time trying to finish reading my book before I head into the spice mines and do some writing. I want to get both of those short stories revised this weekend, as well as get some good work done on the book as well. I need to clean out my inbox, and there’s some filing that needs doing–and as I mentioned before, I need to really organize the cabinets, the pantry, and the refrigerator to accommodate everything we got yesterday. You know, I’ve been going to Costco since at least 2016 (or whenever it opened here), and we’ve spent an insane amount of money there. I didn’t really have much of a problem cutting Target out of my shopping life when they spat in the queer community’s face last year, and I can honestly say I don’t miss shopping there in the least. When it was a viable alternative for gadgets and kitchenware and so forth to Wal-Mart, I didn’t mind spending the extra money it cost shopping there because they supported my community. Now they don’t–they seem to only want to pander to MAGA trash, who will never shop there–so they are welcome to market to and develop that market as much as they can. Good luck to you with that, by the way.

The first thing I learned in my first business course in college was “never piss off your customer base.” That’s rule number one. You aggressively use “ally-ship energy” to bring traffic into your stores, make marginalized communities your primary customer base, and then you decide to piss all over them to appease a minority that doesn’t even patronize your company? Well, keep finding out, Target. The great thing is that if you do collapse into bankruptcy, another chain will rise to take your place until you’re as forgotten as K-Mart.

And good fucking riddance.

Heavy sigh.

I took a little break before finishing this to have breakfast and read some more of The Bell in the Fog, and got so caught up in the story that I just went ahead and finished it–and I have thoughts (more on this later). I did really enjoy it, and I have to say again how exciting it is to be a queer crime writer/reader now…because there are so many amazing queer crime writers publishing today. Y’all need to check out Lev AC Rosen if you haven’t already–stop everything and get the books, okay? You can thank me later. I also think my next read is going to actually be a reread; I may also read something new concurrently. I want to revisit an original Ian Fleming James Bond novel; it’s been a very long time since I read one of the Ian Flemings, and that revisit (Live and Let Die, to be exact) reminded me that the books were written in a horrifically bigoted era. I read the Ian Flemings all when I was a teenager, and I did enjoy them–even as I saw they were very different from the films; I was able to read them as a different thing from the films rather than “the movies are better” or “the films ruined the books” or any of that sort of thing. I mean, it’s right there in the name: adaptations.

But I am going to bring this to a close. We just had a downpour, and the sun is out again. I am going to go get cleaned up, read a little bit more, and then get back on the writing horse. So as I prepare to go into the spice mines for the rest of the day, I hope that you have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

I don’t know why precisely (it could be the utilitarianism of the room) but this picture always makes me think “bath house.”
  1. I used to drink Clearly Canadian in the early 1990s. It’s the only sparkling water I’ve ever actually liked, and then I couldn’t find it anymore. I started finding it again a few years ago in stores…but the gold mine is when they have the half-cases at Costco. Three bottles of four flavors–and while there’s one I don’t like (cherry), it’s bearable. ↩︎

In the Navy

…you can sail the seven seas, in the navy...

I am sure the pathetic POS who cosplays the Village People now would say it’s a song about the joys of patriotic service to your country, when every gay of a certain age knows damned well the Navy a hotbed of, um, shall we say male camaraderie?1 I mean, the first two lines of the song are:

Where can you find pleasure?
Search the world for treasure?

Pleasure and treasure? Oh yes, totally about nothing but heterosexual manly man!

I don’t know why that shit pisses me off so much–oh, wait, yes I do; no matter what that piece of cosplaying trash says, there were gays in the Village People, they were named after Greenwich Village (a gayborhood in New York) and most of their songs were slyly told young gay men what joys awaited them if they knew the right places to be–and some of the song titles told them exactly where to go be free, gay and happy.

So, yeah, fuck off with your Trump worship, douchebag, and keep flogging forty year old songs for current relevance. Just remember everything he touches dies, okay?

Friday remote day for me, with a trip to Costco on the horizon after I complete my work chores this morning. I was a bit on the tired side when I got home from work yesterday, so I decided to take the evening off and relax, knowing the weekend was coming and I was feeling a lot better about writing and everything, so I know I am going to get back into that groove over the next three days. Huzzah! I do have some things that need to get done this weekend (including my taxes), and I am hoping that it’s going to be a very good weekend. I’d also like to try to make it to the gym a couple of times, but we’ll see how that goes. The weather should be a bit on the chilly side, but no rain or high winds or any of that apocalyptic kind of shit we’ve been having this year so far. What a trippy year down here–the terrorist attack, the blizzard, the Super Bowl, and then Carnival. We’ve barely had a chance to breathe, and I’ve been up to Alabama and back, and had jury duty, and was sick. Whew. It’s already been a year, hasn’t it? But once the Festivals have passed and my deadlines met, I can breathe a little easier. I don’t have to travel again until May, which is nice.

And I have some things to do around the house, as always. There’s a load of clothes in the dryer that need fluffing again and then folding, as well as a load of dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away, and of course, there’s always things to pick up and put away and organize. It really never ends, does it? I used to always think if I didn’t keep my apartment the way my mother used to keep her house, I was slovenly and should be thoroughly ashamed of myself (my mom would totally judge people by their housekeeping skills). I also need to accept, when I am thinking about things like that, that the house was Mom’s job for the last fifty years or so of her life. The house was always tidy when she worked at Western Electric in the city, but after we moved to Kansas when she was 33, she never had to leave the house to go to a job again. Mom also was very driven to be the best at whatever she did, so she kept her house immaculate at all times and taught herself to cook…and no one could cook like Mom (I know everyone thinks that about their mother, but mine really was. Kids in high school in Kansas loved coming to my house for dinner because Mom went to town. Everyone in the immediate family always deferred to her as the best cook in the family, and neither my sister nor I are pretty good in the kitchen). She also always made everything from scratch, too–pancakes, waffles…anything worth making was worth making from scratch for her. But keeping house isn’t my job, and looking at my apartment and hearing Mom’s voice in my head criticizing how bad at it I am is very self-defeating. If and when I am able to retire, yeah, you’ll be able to eat off the floors once I don’t have to go to work every day. I also have to write and edit and promote my books around my day job and cleaning house.

Be kinder to yourself, Gregalicious.

We watched another episode of The Madness last night, and it’s really exceptional. Colman Domingo is phenomenal in the lead role (I’ve not seen either of his Oscar nominated performances, but I’m perfectly happy with him winning an Emmy for this), and the way it keeps twisting and turning is really something. I don’t have any idea of how this is going to end, or where it’s going to go from here, but…we’re down to the last two episodes this weekend, and so we’ll be finishing it tonight or tomorrow. I do highly recommend it, if you’re interested. The base point of the story, where it all starts, is with Domingo’s character, a CNN reporter about to be given his own show, rents a cabin in the Poconos for a couple of weeks to work on a book he’s writing (and how lovely does that sound? Two weeks in the peace and quiet of the woods to just write? Sigh), only when he goes to ask a neighbor for help, he stumbles over two masked men who’ve murdered his neighbor and dismembered him…and are now after him, and he’s being framed for the murder. And oh, the neighbor was a notorious white supremacist…and that’s just how it starts.

And on that note, I am going to head to the spice mines for the day and get my work done. Have a great and happy Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later.

He’s the Greatest Dancer

Thursday and my second–and last–day in the office this week. It always feels like the entire city is hungover after Mardi Gras ends, and we’re all just kind of going through the motions the entire week until it’s the weekend again, and we go back to what passes for normal down here–which is not the same as it is anywhere else. Don’t be a hater, dear, it’s what makes New Orleans special and why we all love it here so much. It was so different yesterday, you know? Hardly any traffic on the way to work, no traffic on the way home, there was lots of parking so I could park in front of the house, the slalom course on St. Charles was taken down…and reality again is intruding on New Orleans. I had a good day at the office, overall; got caught up on a lot of things, and kind of seamlessly slid back into the day job and reality.

I was pretty tired when I got home from work, but…I finished the draft of my story yesterday! Huzzah! I wrote almost three thousand new words! It’s been a hot minute since I was able to do that in one sitting, let alone when I was physically and mentally fatigued, but I did it, I pushed through and did it. I am going to let it rest for a day or two before I go over it one more time, make corrections and necessary edits, so I can get it delivered this weekend and cross that off my to-do list. The words were painful, like extracting a wisdom tooth without gas or painkillers, but I got them done and what I said yesterday was correct: when I finish writing, no matter how long what I’ve done is, always makes me feel fantastic and like I can conquer the world and do anything. I do love that feeling, and I don’t know why I don’t remember that and push myself to get that high every day.

Because you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are, and you have a bad habit of self-sabotage. You do this to yourself ALL THE TIME.

And you never learn, do you?

I really don’t. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing something over and over while hoping for a different result each time? And yet…here we are. But I slept really well last night, and had no problem getting up this morning. I feel good, you know? Rested and emotionally even, not dreading the day or anything. I have some things I need to get done today–some bills to pay, some plans to make, pick up the mail uptown after I get off work–and then tonight I am hoping to get back to work on my book. I’ve also been asked to to some writing about Scotty and queer sex workers in crime fiction; I know there have been some (I’ve certainly written some over the years) but in all honesty, I’d never really thought of Scotty himself as being a sex worker (or a former one), but…go-go boys might not actually be having sex with people for money, but they are definitely displaying their bodies for erotic effect to make money, so…yes, he is a sex worker. After I finished working on my story last night, I was thinking about this new way of actually looking at Scotty and it didn’t bother me in the least. I’ve never really been good about recognizing my own work as anything other than my own work that I am proud of, but Scotty…there’s really no other character like him in crime fiction, is there? Are there any other male protagonists of a mystery series with that kind of history? I’m not even aware of any other crime novels whose main character is a sex worker of any kind. So, maybe my little Scotty humorous series actually is unique and groundbreaking after all. Something to ponder, at any rate.

And if you’d like a really good belly laugh, some cybertrucks rolled in the Orpheus parade Monday night. Needless to say, it did not go well for them in a city that gave 82% of its vote to Kamala Harris. But then MAGA asswipes are nothing if they are not completely delusional.

And on that note, it’s time for me to get going on my day. Have a lovely Thursday, all, and let’s remain focused on our own joy and how to resist fascism, shall we?

Let’s shall.

Nathan York Nebraska Men’s Gymnastics vs Penn State

Hold the Line

Ash Wednesday and the city is somber. We did have that horrible weather that was predicted, that messed with the parade schedule, but we stayed inside and rested and relaxed. I mean, that was a hell of a storm last night, and the wind was wild too. We even had a tornado warning! But we made it through it all, all that rain and wind made for a good night of sleep (and super-easy to fall asleep, too), and I feel pretty good this morning. I don’t feel like I am still sick, but I am also barely awake and my body hasn’t completely clocked in yet, either. Will there be a ticklish throat and a post-nasal drip this morning, or is that finally a thing of the past? Ah, there it is. I knew it was just a matter of time. Back to the DayQuil bottle. Sigh. Not feeling well over the past week or so certainly hasn’t helped matters much, has it? But we must endure and persevere, mustn’t we? And we can’t let the outside world burning to the ground interrupt our lives, no matter how pointless it all can seem from time to time. Staying positive isn’t easy when the forces of evil and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Trump, Musk, RFK Jr, and Putin) burn the world to the ground around us. But positivity in the face of evil is important. It is far too easy to give into despair in times like these.

It’s incredibly hard to get motivated to do anything, really, when reality becomes the latest uncertainty and you never know what you are going to wake up to. I’ve given into it a lot more than I should–the greatest trick about depression is it fools you into not realizing that’s what’s going on until it’s over. I fucking hate that, and it happens to me a lot more than I am even aware of, which is frightening. (My biggest self-delusion is that I am intensely self-aware; when the reality is I am intensely self-critical. They are NOT the same thing.) Depression always goes hand-in-glove with not writing for me; that’s why I never say I have writer’s block–because it’s actually depression. (I do not speak for all writers on this; this is how it works on/for me. But it’s also easier to say “writer’s block” than admit to “depression”–which turns it into a creative issue non-writers don’t understand or can experience, rather than a mental one everyone can relate to. Stigma about depression, I guess.) Not writing also makes me depressed, so it’s a very vicious cycle. It’s either “I can’t write so I get depressed so I get even more depressed” or “I’m too depressed to write which will make me more depressed” and I’m never aware of the cycle until it’s over or almost over–and why I always tell myself to write some fiction every day, even if it’s very little or even if it’s garbage; garbage can always be fixed, and even writing a few hundred words is an accomplishment, not matter how small it seems to my fevered, depressed mind.

I do sometimes wonder why people like me want to be writers, since we often create our own hells.

But I did work on my short story yesterday and it’s really taking shape. I started revising the words I already had written, so there was a lot of deletion, so I cannot even tell you how many words I actually did write yesterday, but the opening of the story is now shorter and also better, more involving, and works better. I am looking forward to working on it some more tonight. The mood and voice are coming together, and so is the setting–and my main character. I am excited, and want to get back to work on it again tonight when i get home from work. I also want to do some work on the book, which is falling behind again. I also have some emails to answer, bills to pay, finances to get under control, and numerous other things that I need to do–so yes, I am making a to-do list once I finish this and post it–and separate ones for personal and day job.

I also read some more of The Bell in the Fog, which I am loving, and we started watching The Madness on Netflix–more on both to come relatively soon.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Ash Wednesday, everyone, and I will talk to you relatively soon, I am sure.

Music Box Dancer

Everywhere else it’s just Tuesday! Happy Mardi Gras, everyone!

We’re supposed to have bad weather later on today–rain and high winds, with gusts of up to 40 mph–so the parade schedule was altered a bit. Zulu started earlier, isn’t rolling on its entire route, and no marching bands. Rex also has no bands and a truncated route. The lack of bands is why I don’t hear anything from the corner the way I usually do when parades are passing. I actually feel good this morning–and felt good from the moment I woke up. Yesterday I kind of relapsed with whatever this is that I have–whether it’s a head cold or a mild flu or whatever the fuck this is–so thought it was advisable to skip Orpheus last night. I hate that I only went to one parade this year, but…being sick doesn’t help matters much, and Iris did wear me out on Saturday. I got absolutely nothing done yesterday because I was so listless and not well; we binged a bunch of Arrested Development last night, which was quite entertaining. Tomorrow I have to go back to the office and work for two days before I have my remote day, and I hope I am finally past whatever this crud was. I hate being sick–yet another reason I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t vaccinate their children….which was the subject of my latest newsletter, which you can read here, if you so choose.

It’s always funny to me that most bigotry and oppression manifests itself from the right with cries of “but the children!”–the ones they are willing to exploit and/or let die from preventable diseases. It’s not the blue states, after all, that are lowering the ages of consent and marriage, or allowing kids to work and have jobs with zero protections. That fine Christian leader Sarah Huckabee Sanders has certainly led the charge on that, and what a lovely job she’s done as governor of Arkansas. She’s been keeping a low profile lately; I wonder whatever happened with her corruption and embezzlement case, defrauding the Arkansas taxpayers and rewarding her friends with taxpayer money? But she hates queer people, so her passing laws legalizing child abuse is a-okay with her aptly named base.

Can’t imagine why people are leaving organized religion in droves. Way to spread the word of Jesus Christ, Madam Governor; such testimony of Christian love is sure to get you a prime spot…in the lake of eternal fire in Hell.

I don’t make the rules, your God did–and per his commands in your Holy book, he doesn’t like you very much. You’re not a crusader for Christ; you are a demon who drives people away from his embrace–and if that’s not some go-straight-to-hell shit, I don’t know what is.

I’m trying not to make plans for today, which is what I’ve done every day since being at home since Thursday. I’ve not been able to get anything much done, other than some light cleaning and organizing, since really getting sick last week. I’ve not been able to do much reading or focusing on anything, really. I hate that for me, but I generally try to look at these things as my body and health telling me I need to slow down, or at least take it easy and get some rest, so while it’s not a good thing overall because it makes me fall further behind on things, the rest is needed and hopefully means I can get back to work and get some shit done. The house is a mess again, and there’s so much to get done. But…I need to shake off the malaise from being sick and get back on it, you know? I’m also going to spend some time today reading my book, which I am enjoying. I wish I was better with my time management–but I am also realizing how much easier it is to manage your time the more you have to do; the more free time you have…well, it’s easier to think oh I’ll do that later and then never somehow get to it and suddenly it’s time for bed and you’ve gotten nothing done all day.

Just me? Ah, well.

The Thriller Award nominations came out yesterday, and as always, I have a lot of friends nominated, which is always fun and delightful. I’m not going to try to name them all, because I’ll inevitably forgot someone, but congratulations to everyone on the list, and I’m happy for all of you! Go on with your bad selves!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and start getting this place cleaned up and better organized. Have a great Fat Tuesday, everyone, and I may be back later–but if not, tomorrow for sure.

Heaven Must Have Sent You

Orpheus Monday and we’re in that weird final gasp of parade season. Yesterday I had to think, several times, about what day it was. Carnival parade season is always a disruption to the time/space continuum, at least for me. I didn’t go to any parades yesterday, deciding not to really push my luck and energy reserves. I do miss being younger during Carnival, I have to admit. I took today off because I knew I’d need to run errands this morning, after being trapped at home all weekend since Friday afternoon. I have a lot of things to do this morning before I get on with the day–I’ve been pushing off unpleasant chores and tasks all weekend, and I really need to stop doing that. I hate when I get that way; avoidance never makes anything better, and thus the bandage needs to be torn off quickly and easily rather than pushing off another day. And it’s also very easy on Fat Tuesday to pull the celebratory feel out of the air and not do anything all day. I have to work on Wednesday and Thursday at the office, but then have my remote day and the weekend. March is going to be over before I know it and I have a lot I need to get done this month.

Politics and the state of the world aren’t helping much, to be honest with you. And the news that Homeland Security can now track queer people isn’t reassuring. It also hasn’t helped being sick most of last week–I still feel a little of it ongoing–and that hasn’t exactly had me leaping to get things done this past week, either. Yesterday I decided that it was better for me to rest rather than try to push to get things done, and this morning I do feel like that was a pretty wise decision, deadlines to the contrary. I definitely need to get into my email inbox today and trim that down, and I also have bills to pay and you know, all the usual horrible things that we all have to deal with on a daily basis in our lives, the little trivialities and minutiae that would be so lovely to pass off to an assistant if I had one, you know? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about–and I’ve started doing so many things that I haven’t finished that it’s actually kind of embarrassing to admit. I have a load of dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away, there’s a load of laundry in the dryer that needs to be folded and put away, I need to change the HVAC filter, etc etc etc. And that’s not even taking into consideration how messy and dirty my house is. Heavy heaving sigh.

And apparently the Carolinas are on fire? Were they not raking their forests? Or was it Jewish space lasers again? I am so sick (already) of living in the stupidest country on the planet. Wasn’t that disastrous White House “meeting” on Friday, in which our country abdicated its leadership of the world, enough to make everyone see what this insanity, this voting to punish people, leading with hatred and contempt for anyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male? And this administration is clearly showing why these people are so vested in white supremacy: they are proving once again how mediocre so many cishet white men are. JD Vance is a couch-fucking piece of shit who should not be a heart beat away from the presidency, and Mike Johnson is an apostate blasphemer who sees religion as a means of control–after all, all churches teach are obedience, not love and kindness and morality. If you need to go to church because you’re a shitty person the other six days of the week–well, maybe stop going to church and stop being a shitty person the rest of the week, since going to church isn’t working? I always love, too, how the “faithful” always demand obedience rather than morality, and how they are very quick to wonder how atheists can be moral without religion. Well, I wonder how you can be religious without being moral. See how that works? If you go to church twice on Sunday and once during the week for Bible study, and are still immoral…well, your religion isn’t working and you don’t really believe. Religion is about power and control to you.

How… Christ-like.

I do feel good this morning, and am not entirely sure how long that is going to last for me. It seems every morning feels like a good morning lately, and yet I still run out of steam at some point in the late morning/early afternoon. I guess it’s better than waking up feeling like something the cat dragged in before getting acclimated to my day and still being alive. But I definitely need to get back to work on cleaning out my email inbox, and I definitely need to be writing more than I currently am. I know how to finish my short story, but I need to get back to revising/editing/writing it again. My goal for today is to finish the first draft so I can work on it cleaning it all up by the end of the week.

I hate being behind.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Lundi Gras, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back again later or tomorrow.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

God, how I hate that fucking song. Maybe it was okay the first two or three hundred times I heard it, but now? It sets my teeth on edge and I kind of root for the devil now.

Sparky got me up early this morning, which is fine. I feel a little tired and sore from standing out on the parade route for a couple of hours yesterday (three or so, to be exact) for the Iris parade. Iris is my favorite of all the parades, and always has been. I fell in love with the ladies of Iris that first time I came here for Carnival back in 1995, and that has never changed. It was a beautiful day for parades, too. It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature hovering the mid 70s. I also forget how much fun the parades are from year to year. It is fun out there. Everyone is in a good, festive mood; everyone is friendly; and you meet lots of people out there on the route. The parades always create this incredible feeling of community that’s kind of hard to describe. No one is completely wasted, everyone is just buzzed and vibing and having fun. We got buried in beads like we always do at Iris, and then we came inside and skipped Tucks. My legs feel fatigued this morning, so I don’t know if I’ll be going out today (there are four: Okeanos, Mid-city, Thoth, and Bacchus. Bacchus and Thoth are extremely popular, so it will be madness down at the corner too. I may wander out there, I may not, it depends on how I feel. I took tomorrow off so as not to have to deal with traffic and parking (I’d have to leave the office at two anyway, at the very least), and we’ll be going out for Orpheus tomorrow night. Today I really need to be more active–I need to clean and I need to write and I need to get my act together.

A running theme on this blog, methinks. Some things never change.

I did get a chance to speak to my sister yesterday as well, and found out that I was correct–we had both had the measles when we were kids (“freedom freckles,” as someone said on Threads yesterday), which confers immunity so I don’t need to get a booster. I thought we had, but wasn’t sure. (She currently has shingles, despite the vaccine, but it’s a much milder case than had she not.) We had the mumps and the measles at the same time (and I just realized how terrified our parents must have been back then, since measles could kill or do even worse damage; I can’t even fathom 1/10th of how much worry they had when we were small kids), and chicken pox by itself at a later date (hence immunity from all poxes). I also remember getting the polio vaccine and rubella; I remember lining up in second grade to get them. So, fuck you, anti-vaxxers, your kids aren’t going to give me anything that could potentially kill me. Can’t say the same for your kids, though. The recent rubella outbreak in Texas? Hey anti-vaxxer trash: why don’t you go ahead and google what happens when a pregnant woman gets rubella, you fucking self-absorbed bitches? Isn’t it bad enough that you’re entire thesis is “I’d rather have a dead child than an autistic one”? All those tombstones for children in those old Alabama cemeteries…interesting how few recent graves there are for children. So, just go ahead and miss me with your Dr. Google research on vaccines, trash. If you want your kids to die, have at it. But why should other people’s children have to die to satisfy your egocentric narcissism?

And miss me with your “pro-life” stance and your Christianity. Suffer the little children wasn’t a directive.

Honestly.

We got caught up on our shows last night, and started watching this new Robert De Niro show on Netflix called Zero Day. It was entertaining enough and has an incredible cast–Joan Allen, Angela Bassett, Connie Britton, De Niro himself–and the writing seems pretty top notch. It’s a political thriller about the aftermath of a massive cyber attack on the United States, and De Niro is a retired president (Bassett is the current), asked to head up a new agency to find out who did it and how to stop them from doing it again. It’s not an action show–De Niro isn’t getting into fistfights and gun battles with bad guys–but more cerebral with twists and turns. (Seriously, the fistfights and gun battles all start to seem the same after awhile, and some of the shows–The Recruit, The Night Agent, Prime Target–also start running together, too. Reacher remains fantastic, though.) Political thrillers are kind of hard to watch now for me–the insanity running the country currently kind of makes them quaint in a way–but here we are, you know? I also saw that Fletcher Knebel’s old thriller about an insane president–Night of Camp David–is making the rounds again (I read it the first time around with this bullshit), but not even Knebel, who wrote a lot of political thrillers, could have imagined a United States where a political party would rally around a sociopathic narcissist, with the media working hand in glove with them to present this as normal and sane. Not even John LeCarré or Robert Ludlum could have come up with this kind of story. (Stephen King foresaw it also with The Dead Zone–a book that I don’t think gets enough appreciation for its brilliance– but even he couldn’t see it winning in the end.)

We’ve taken our country for granted for so long that none of us could ever believe it could come to an end…kind of like the Trojans and the Carthaginians and Rome itself. Everything ends. I had hoped it would last until I no longer had to worry about it, but I guess I lived longer than I should have.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you later.

I Want Your Love

Iris Saturday! And it looks like a beautiful day out there outside my windows. I also don’t feel sick this morning, which is also wonderful. After working yesterday I felt very sick and very tired, so I just decided to shut my brain off and just mindlessly drift through news clips on Youtube, as well as whatever my brain decided for me to look for (the temple destruction scene at the end of Samson and Delilah, for one example) as I finished laundering the sheets and went to bed. I slept great last night, too, and feel pretty good this morning. That’s awesome because it is, after all, IRIS SATURDAY! I probably won’t stay out for Tucks after Iris, but I am not missing my ladies! I also feel like I can get some things done around here today, too. I’ve been slacking on the house (and on, well, everything) for a while now–being sick didn’t help matters much–and so I should be getting it all under control today. I want to get some reading done, catch some beads, do some cleaning and some writing, while I’m at it.

I also watched a couple of 1970s movies last night while Paul worked (I got tired of the news; I can only watch American elected officials embarrass the country in front of the world so many times. What a fucking disgrace) and watched a Gene Hackman hard-boiled private eye movie (Night Moves) and a classic I’ve never seen (that no one ever talks about anymore either–The China Syndrome) and I enjoyed both. There’s really something different about the movies of the late 1960s and 1970s, a kind of gritty realism that showed the world as it was–dirty, graffitied, muted colors–that went away with movies in the 1980s, where everything was prettied up for the movies and departed from realism. It put me in mind of my Cynical 70s Film Festival that I did during the shutdown, and how so many movies were about paranoia and not trusting the government; which, after Vietnam, civil rights, and Watergate was very much a leftist thing. (Weird how that’s shifted–it’s the right that doesn’t trust the government anymore; that would be an interesting study, wouldn’t it? How that changed and shifted over the years? Another thing I hate about the right is that they’ve made the left defend the government rather than critiquing it.) Night Moves was okay–the mystery itself wasn’t terribly interesting but the thing that was interesting was Gene Hackman’s performance. The film was an excellent character study, even though we never really learned much about him. My primary takeaway from the film was that Gene Hackman would have made a great Travis McGee. Talk about missed opportunities. (Although it would also be a great role for Alan Ritchson…)

The China Syndrome was born out of the 1970’s paranoia about using nuclear reactors to create energy. After all the lies before, during and after Vietnam–not to mention Watergate–people weren’t really into trusting government reassurances, and weird things were happening with the nuclear power plants anyway (Karen Silkwood’s story would also be filmed, Silkwood, which was another one of those “paranoia/can’t trust the government or corporations” movies); they were building one fairly close to where we lived in Kansas–Wolf Creek, I think was the name–and there were protests about it (Kansas folks just saw as it as a place to work and no more thought into it than that) and I also remember in the classifieds in the Emporia Gazette some group always ran a little ad that said “NEVER FORGET KAREN SILKWOOD” so I already knew that story before the movie was made. Michael Douglas produced the movie, and of course Jane Fonda was in it–they were both very anti-nuclear energy; so of course it was seen as a “Hollywood liberals trying to scare people” film. But shortly after it was released, Three Mile Island (our almost Chernobyl) happened–and the movie became a huge hit. The movie ended positively–the news about the accidents at the plant in question gets out finally at the end1–which goes to show how hopeful these kinds of movies sometimes ended; when we all know the reporter and her cameraman, as well as the nuclear engineer played by Jack Lemmon, would have all either disappeared or been found dead under mysterious circumstances.

I really should watch an old movie when I’m too tired to write or read, rather than doomscrolling news clips on Youtube.

I’ve also been terribly remiss on my newsletter; I’ve started several that are in progress that I really should finish and share with the world–and should send out one before it’s time to do my review of The Bell in the Fog (Lev AC Rosen). I am trying not to overdo it–I mean, I pretty much write this every day so I don’t need to be sending out newsletters more than once a week; there’s only so much Greg people can take, after all. And I also expect you all to read my books and short stories, too. What can I say? I really enjoy writing.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and get to work around here. Have a lovely Iris Saturday, Constant Reader, and who knows? I may be back later.

  1. Sorry-not sorry for not putting up a spoiler warning for a forty-six year old movie. ↩︎

Lonesome Loser

Thursday morning and I still don’t feel great. I do not feel as awful as I did yesterday, but I am not at 100% yet. I am going to go in today, primarily because I need to get my computer because tomorrow is my at-home day, and if I start feeling bad, I am going to leave early. I have to leave early anyway because Muses is tonight, and traffic has been horrible this entire Carnival season. The slalom course on St. Charles–and the complete closure of St. Charles around Harmony Circle–has resulted in nightmare traffic. Getting home tonight and Monday before Orpheus will be a nightmare, too. It took me an hour to get home from work on Tuesday, which was horrible, and oh my God, the roundabout way I had to go! I had no idea that Harmony Circle was closed, so I had to turn back into the CBD on Carondelet, and then every street heading uptown was backed all the way up. I finally managed to get to Peters and take the split up Annunciation, but by the time I got to Race I could see Camp was backed up all the way from the highway, so I just parked between Camp and Magazine and walked the rest of the way. By the time I got home I was rattled and exhausted and not feeling well.

Tonight is Babylon, Chaos, and Muses for those of you keeping track. I may go out there tonight; it depends on how I feel and how tired I am. My throat is still scratchy and I cough still, but I will definitely mask up so as not to get anyone else sick–and at least I am not client-facing today.

But I somehow made it to Thursday in this topsy-turvy week. My brain has been in a bit of medicine fog since yesterday and I keep hoping that I’ll finally wake up and it all will be over. I need to get back to writing work and be able to focus on it for a change. I am going to take Monday off so I don’t have to deal with trying to get home before Orpheus (parade traffic just gets worse until Tuesday, when driving anywhere until the late evening is nigh impossible from my neighborhood. Huzzah! And I have plenty of things to do for my remote day tomorrow, too! Huzzah even more!

And look at that, I never finished nor posted this yesterday morning. Yesterday kind of turned into a day, you know? I wound up being client-facing yesterday after all (I wore a mask) and wound up being super busy at work instead of having an easy down day where I caught up on my Admin work. I was pretty tired when I came home, and spent the rest of the day picking up around here and trying to get chores finished. I also started feeling not as great in the afternoon after I got home as well, so just kind of crashed out. I fell asleep in my easy chair shortly after Paul went out to see Muses last night, and I woke up before midnight and schlepped upstairs to the bed. I don’t know if Paul got a shoe this year or not–but even last night we were saying “the streak has to end sometime; sixteen years in a row is pretty good for anyone, really”–although if there isn’t one, it will be kind of sad. I’m not feeling all that great this morning, either, to be honest; I felt worse getting up this morning than I did yesterday. I pretty much stayed in last night because I didn’t want to get sicker, which is very sad but nonetheless true. I have taken some cold medication, and have spent most of the time since getting up blowing lots of snot out of my damned nose. Yay. I fucking hate being sick.

But I am going to Iris tomorrow if it kills me, and Orpheus on Monday night.

The weather was beautiful yesterday, and it looks to be that way today and through the weekend. It might rain on Monday night, which is always a fun thing for Orpheus; lessens the crowds even earlier than usual. I also have to run an errand today–everything else can wait till Monday morning, really, and why not not spend money today? We’re supposed to be boycotting big business today and having an economic blackout (how does that work in New Orleans during parade season? My only windows for getting anything before Wednesday are today during the day or Monday during the day), but as I said in the parenthetical, that makes it rough for us who live inside the parade route. But I am only going to get two things I absolutely need, and nothing more; everything else can wait until Monday, and for a stopgap I can walk to Walgreens over the weekend if need be.

I just hate that I’ve not really been able to participate in Carnival almost this entire decade for one reason or another. I used to always be able to say “there’ll be another one next year” but now…now I am not so sure. There’s no telling how bad things will get in this country between now and then, and I don’t have a lot of confidence in either the current administration or its ability to listen to the people. It would also require MAGA to wake up and realize they’ve been fooled, lied to, conned, and flim-flammed; and they’ve pretty much made that their entire personalities. MAGA made them feel like they were smart and had common-sense, as opposed to those crybaby whiny “libtards.” Having to admit they not only were wrong about everything but conned? Yeah, good luck with that. 160 years later idiots still believe that “Confederacy/states’ rights/legacy/heritage” bullshit, too, despite getting their asses so thoroughly kicked in the Civil War.

I don’t have a lot of hope for the future. Whiny white people are sitting around waiting for someone else to do something, the way they always do: “someone will save us from ourselves!” Well, I don’t see Black women willing to do it this time, and we queers need to be focusing on our own battle for rights and survival to do much for our “name-only-so-you-can-do-all-the-work” straight white allies, right? They didn’t care about our rights when they voted against their own, and why would any of us non-straight people ever trust them when they’ll throw us under the bus again and again for their own gain?

We’ve done this dance before. How many decades has the queer community given the majority of its vote to the Democratic Party only to be told after the election, “this isn’t the right time?” Yeah, fight for your own rights for a change, straight people.

And for the record, it wasn’t queers who brought measles back, either.

I came up with a question I’d like to ask anti-vaxxer moms: “since you’re so against vaccinating children, are you willing to be exposed to a child with rubella when you’re pregnant?”

After all, your entire mantra is better dead than autistic, right?

Some serious parent of the year candidates there.

And on that note, I will bring this to a close so I can do my German lesson and start working. Have a lovely Friday before Fat Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back at some point.

Sultans of Swing

No jury duty today! And I think I am finished with it all this time around. Trials, according to what the judge told us on Monday, rarely start this close to the weekend of the last push of Carnival, so if I don’t have to report today I shouldn’t have to report anymore. I was only there for an hour or so yesterday before we were released, which was great. I came to work–my testing in the clinic shifts were covered–and got some odds and ends and other things taken care of. I wasn’t feeling too hot by the end of the day–and getting home from work was a nightmare–but by the time I went to bed I was feeling terrible. I woke up to a fever this morning, a sore throat and some major coughing. I decided that it was wiser to use sick time rather than risk getting everyone at the office sick–which would thus spread exponentially, call me Typhoid Greg–and so called out. I can’t remember the last time I missed work because I was sick; probably when I had COVID? I should probably take a test today myself, shouldn’t I? Heavy heaving sigh. I’ll do that before I go lie down with my book.

As far as jury duty goes, this wasn’t too terrible, really. And I don’t mind doing it, either. I always serve whenever I am called; the only time I’ve tried getting out of it was when I was supposed to serve the week after the shoulder/arm surgery, which wasn’t possible. I find it interesting and a solemn responsibility; it’s part of our civic duty as citizens after all, and weighing the evidence and deciding someone’s fate is kind of a big deal. Plus I like seeing how the courts actually work in real life, as opposed to books and movies. (The judge also said on Monday that court isn’t like Law and Order, there’s a lot more they don’t show. It’s really funny the cultural impact those shows have had on the country; someone should do a study on that. I have some thoughts myself about it and other “copaganda” shows, as well as the books about cops/lawyers.)

The not feeling well definitely sucks, though. All of my joints ache, and my legs feel exhausted. I did have to park fairly far from the house, on Race between Camp and Magazine. I’ll try to get the car moved today, so it’s closer to the house. I am hoping this doesn’t last another day–I don’t want to take another sick day and if I do, I still need to go by the office and get my computer so I can work at home on Friday–and the COVID test is negative. If the COVID test isn’t negative, it won’t matter because I won’t be allowed back into the building until next week anyway. I don’t want to use all my sick time, but if I have COVID, there’s no choice.

Good news! The COVID test was negative. I am feeling a bit better, but still running a fever. I also have a tickle in my throat and it’s sore. It also looks like a beautiful day outside, and the weather should be lovely for the parades this weekend, if I am feeling up to it. I definitely want to do Iris and Muses, if I can, and maybe some Thoth on Sunday. Bacchus is too much of a madhouse, but I love Orpheus on Monday because the crowd starts clearing out early because people need to go home and get ready for Fat Tuesday. I just hope I’m feeling better by tomorrow so I can go in to work. I do not like being sick.

The good news is that I signed a short story contract yesterday. It’s been a hot minute, so I am very well pleased. (This is for a submission to an anthology call; the other one I signed was one I was asked to write, so it’s a bit different.) I’m not sure if I can talk about this anthology or talk about my story–which I am dying to tell you about–but I’ll have to be annoying and not say anything for now. One I can talk about is called “The Rhinestone,” since the contract is already signed and the book has been announced. I have to revise and edit the story with notes, but it’s kind of a done deal. “The Rhinestone” is a book excerpt, and what’s really funny about this particular book excerpt (besides the fact that the book itself isn’t finished; this is from Never Kiss a Stranger) is that it was the actual kernel the entire book idea grew from, too. Funny how that works sometimes, isn’t it? I’ve often had ideas that I thought were interesting, but didn’t know if it was a short story or a novel until I tried writing it one way or the other. I used to always be expanding short stories into novels (because I overwrite and always have more to say); it was around 2012 that I began thinking in terms of maybe your novel ideas can actually be written as short stories instead), but shortly after we moved here, Paul and I had lunch at a place called the Quarter Scene, which was either queer-owned or just extremely queer friendly. It was our first time eating there, and I don’t remember why we did in the first place or why we were in the Quarter. Regardless, the table we were seated at–in the big picture window–had a little plaque on the wall reading TENNESSEE’S TABLE with the note that whenever he was in town, Tennessee Williams always sat at that table for lunch. We both thought that was kind of cool, and I thought “Tennessee’s Table” was a great title for a short story. The original story in and of itself wasn’t anything–just two gay friends meeting for lunch and sharing stories. It was a melancholy little story, really, not much to it. But when I started working on Never Kiss a Stranger–I originally wrote it as a long novella, about 30k words–I decided to reuse that setting and write a scene between two of the main characters. When I was asked to write for this anthology–the theme was the story had to be inspired by a queer icon–Tennessee Williams, who has had an enormous impact on both Paul’s and my life, was a no brainer. And then I thought, hey, that scene is set at Tennessee’s Table, why not adapt that back into a short story? So I pulled the chapter and reworked it a bit. I also have notes to make it stronger as a short story, so looking forward to revising that.

As for the country and the world, well, it kind of speaks for itself with no need for comment from me, does it?

And on THAT sad note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.