Category: books i’ve read

The Boss

Work at home Friday! I didn’t have to go into the office today after all; the person I was covering for didn’t need me to cover for them after all, so I get to drink my own coffee and do some of my work-at-home chores in my pajamas–including my team meeting. Yay! Yesterday was a gray, rainy day, the kind that is also cold so you get that lovely cold dampness that goes right through you to the bone. I ran my errands on the way home, and I don’t have to leave the house at all today unless I so choose–and I am rather leaning towards choosing no definitively already. I woke up the remnants of a thunderstorm; everything outside my windows is wet and dripping. Yeah, definitely not leaving the house today if I don’t absolutely have to–I can run errands and make groceries tomorrow. I am going to do some chores this morning when I need a break from the computer–dishes, laundry, picking up, etc.–but thanks to the midweek weekend we enjoyed because of the holiday, I am not as far behind on housework as I usually am. Sparky let me sleep late this morning, and was a little cuddlebug before I did get up. It’s not even about getting more sleep anymore, it’s more along the lines of way too comfortable for me to get up. Paul was at the gym when I got home from doing some minor errands after work last night, and then after he came home he went upstairs to work for the evening, leaving me and Sparky to entertain ourselves downstairs, which is why I did some picking up and cleaning last night. Looking around this morning, I can honestly wonder why I didn’t do more last night. Hmmm.

I worked a bit on a Substack essay last night, too; the one I worked the most on is about outing and speculating about celebrity sexuality. Many of the essay drafts I have saved on Substack were triggered initially by something that happened in the world; this one “”Johnny Are You Queer?” was inspired by Shawn Mendes having to address all the rumors and speculation about his sexuality, and how that made me feel. It was the second time a celebrity had to do this recently, the other being Kit Conner from Heartstopper. Both instances made me look at the subject in an entirely new (and more empathetic) light, which was frighteningly staggering; I thought how could I ever speculate about a celebrity’s sexuality, when I personally know what it feels like to have people speculate about you that way–and I was never a good-looking hot young celebrity, either, which would be exponentially worse. This led me to how “outing” originally started; it was a political act of protest from a community that was dying and no one cared, and a way to strike at closet cases who were actively harming the queer community (remember anti-gay Aaron Schock and his Downtown Abbey congressional office? He’s now an A-Gay living on the party circuit, and much happier than when he was a closeted anti-gay politician. I’d say that worked out pretty well for him in the long run, wouldn’t you?). Outing eventually got out of control and more of a tabloid monster, far from its original intent, but I’m also thinking about privacy rights now a lot more than I ever did when I was younger–which I am trying to explore in more detail in the essay. I am also writing one about organized Christianity, but it keeps getting longer with more examples because cosplay Christians are always going to cosplay with their full chests while denying Christ with every breath they take.

I generally don’t pay too much attention to celebrity drama, mainly because I don’t care that much about celebrities; as I’ve gotten older, I care less about entertainment news and the celebrity gossip machine. I remember the Blake Lively thing from last summer when that movie was released, and how she was getting a lot of press for being, well, a difficult bitch on set. I did think it was strange–I generally can’t avoid celebrity gossip, despite trying very hard because it’s fucking everywhere–that if she was that awful, why were all her co-stars and everyone else involved with the movie backing her? Now, I’ve thought Justin Baldoni was hot since his days on Jane the Virgin, and I even bought his book about being a male feminist; because I’ve really been thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man, which is what the book is about. I’ve not read the book–I still might, just to see what it says; even if he’s a hypocrite, that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have a point about some things–but of course the story exploded everywhere again on Christmas Eve when Lively sued Baldoni, claiming he hired a PR team to destroy Lively’s reputation so her concerns about inappropriate behavior on set by Baldoni wouldn’t be taken seriously–and she has receipts. Celebrity fan culture in this country really is something, and it really is out of control; I don’t know why so many people think being a fan of an artist entitles them to know everything about that artist (see above paragraph about speculating about celebrity sexuality), not to mention the horrors of being a celebrity on social media. Yikes, indeed. All I will say is that Hollywood has always had fixers; the only difference is that now they are guns for hire rather than salaried studio employees. Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows explores the horrible world of Hollywood PR and what they cover up, and how they spin damage away from their client to someone else, even if that someone else’s life or career is destroyed by the spin. (Read Jordan’s book, seriously.) There’s a decent show on Prime starring Anna Paquin in which she plays a spin-doctor-for-hire, Flacks.

It’s also why no one can ever completely trust celebrity news; it’s literally the prime example of fake news.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader. I may be back later, one never knows. If not, though, I will definitely be back in the morning tomorrow.

Yea, he’s handsome and has an exceptional build, but Zac Efron is more talented than he gets credit for.

Dancin’ Shoes

Christmas Eve Eve, only day in the office for the week. It’s in the forties here in New Orleans this morning, and it feels every degree of it here in my office nook this morning. I think we’re going to be fairly slow today–although I’ve been wrong about these things before. Cold makes me ache a bit and not want to get up from the bed, but here I am. I can sleep late in my warm bed the next two mornings, after all. Yesterday was nice. I got up and ran my errand, thus remaining ensconced inside for the rest of the day. I worked some, got some chores accomplished, and we watched Alien Romulus (which I enjoyed, but felt derivative) and then went back to The Day of the Jackal, which we’d started the night before. It’s a fun watch, with a little too much extraneous filler (I really do not care about the Jackal’s private life, or that of the MI6 operative trying to catch him), but Eddie Redmayne is pretty good as the Jackal.

Of course, The Day of the Jackal takes me back to the 1970’s, and the search for Carlos, both terrorist and assassin. He got a lot of press back then. Frederick Forsyth wrote the novel The Day of the Jackal, and it was originally made into a film back then. When “Carlos” first emerged, people started calling the assassin/terrorist “the Jackal” because he was similar to the character in the Forsyth novel–already a bestseller, the branding of a real life person as the fictional character drove even more sales of the book. Everyone in the 1970s, it seemed, knew about Carlos; we even did a week on him in my Current Events class in high school. I know I read the book but didn’t see the film; and I’ve essentially forgotten most of it since then. Terrorism was seen as a major issue for the world at the time; and Americans were very smug because there had been no terror attacks inside the United States at the time, so we saw terrorism primarily as a “foreign” problem (until 9/11). Carlos was so known and prevalent that Robert Ludlum created Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity to fight and either catch/kill Carlos. The 1970s were such a different time, or at least it was for me. I was old enough to be aware of the news and the world, but I wasn’t educated enough to understand what it all meant, what the root causes of international problems actually were, and I was in the midst of my indoctrination into the mythology of American exceptionalism and its equally awful twin, White Supremacy. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration that I began to unlearn everything I was raised to believe and began seeing the reality beneath the propaganda.

Alien Romulus, on the other hand, was quite fun but seemed to me, at least, to be a bit derivative; with scenes that were direct callbacks to the first two movies, with lots of dramatic tension and suspense and more than a few excellent jump scares (although at one point I said aloud, “There’s always at least one more, people”–only to have one appear within seconds. The idea of a soulless corporation looking to use and exploit the incredibly dangerous creature(s) at the cost of any number of human lives certainly resonated, since that’s where we’re at in this country at the moment. I recommend it–I think in the chronology of the movies this one comes after the original–but you don’t really need to have seen any of the earlier films to enjoy this one. They are all linked, of course, but each movie (at least the ones I’ve seen) can stand alone on their own individuality.

I also blame George Lucas for the entire concept of prequels and filming series out of order.

I’m looking forward to the holidays this week primarily because of two days off from work, more than the holiday itself. I don’t feel very Christmas-sy this year, frankly, and I certainly didn’t last year with my arm in a brace and all the irritation that entailed. I’m going to get us a deep dish Chicago-style pizza pie from That’s Amore tomorrow, and on Christmas day we’re planning on seeing Babygirl, which will be our first trip to a movie theater since before the pandemic. I think I have to come into the office on Friday this week–not a big deal, since I have two extra days off this week–to cover for someone for the holidays. I work one day, then am off for two, come in for two more, am out for another two, in for another two and then out for another. Yes, these next two weeks are going to be completely disruptive.

SIgh.

I did start getting back into the Scotty book yesterday, rereading and editing as I go on what is already done on the book and plan out the rest of it. I also have some short stories due that I need to write, too. Yikes, indeed. I have a lot to do, don’t I, and I really need to stop blowing off my free time and getting back to serious work on my writing. This Scotty book is going to be a lot of fun; wild and crazy and endlessly silly and full of “really, Greg?” moments. I love when my mind finally snaps back into Scotty mode; it seems like every time I write one I go into it with an overly serious mindset that needs to be snapped out of somehow. I also worked on one of my essays yesterday, about racism in the original texts of a Hardy Boys mystery (The Mark on the Door) that I am hoping to finish and post this week, as well as a meandering essay about Christmas and the holidays and how easy it is to offend the very weak faith of most Christians. (Or I could finish my lengthy diatribe about being groomed as a Christian–and fuck you in advance if you @ me about this; I don’t want to hear your dismissal of my very real experiences, thank you very much.) Although I do suppose setting a goal of writing a Substack essay every week might be a bit much. I write one of these posts every day, not to mention emails and so forth…so yes, I do already write quite a bit, at least 500-1000 words per day on here (closer to the 500 count, and averaging probably less than that, more like). It is a conceit of mine that I do not consider writing this post every morning as words written for the day; I never have. Perhaps I should start?

And on that note, I am getting cleaned up and putting on some warm clothes to face the day. Have a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point, I am sure.

Sail On

And another Sunday fun day has rolled around. It was cold in New Orleans yesterday, but I did drop books off at the library sale, picked up the mail, and made groceries. Irony of ironies, when I got home I realized I didn’t have one of my bags–containing the things I went to the store for in the first place. Sigh. So I will have to go out in the cold this morning to rectify that error, but that’s all right. I got some things done yesterday around here, and worked a bit on my editing of my own stuff (which is going slowly because it’s horribly depressing to see how shitty the writing is, despite reminding myself first drafts are always shitty first drafts are always shitty– it still wears me down).

Okay, I bit the bullet and went to the store to get the things I paid for yet didn’t have when I got home from the store yesterday It was actually pleasant; mayhap in the future I should go early in the morning to make groceries. It’s only forty degrees but sunny here this morning, that always odd combination where it looks like it’s hot and steamy outside but it’s not! Now that I have that out of the way–which is also part of it, the putting it off and putting it off until such time as my day is interrupted and never quite recovers. Now I have that out of the way and don’t have to worry about it, and because it wasn’t a crowded shitshow the grocery usually is right before a holiday, I feel neither tired or burned out from the experience. I know it sounds weird, but a crowded grocery store overstimulates me and wears me out.

I did sleep a little later than usual this morning, and the bed was warm and comfortable and inviting and I didn’t really want to get out from underneath the blankets. But Sparky was hungry and would not rest until I was up, which is just as well. He’s fed and if I’d lounged in bed even longer this morning I would have not gone to make groceries, so everything was a “win-win”. I did have the games on yesterday, for what it was worth. Talk about snooze-fests. Is this what we have to look forward to with this new system? Blowouts in the first round? I also don’t like the home field advantage half the teams get in the first round. It makes a difference. I was at least hoping, despite my antipathy toward everyone playing this weekend, for some good, fun games to watch.

It was a good thought.

Was anyone surprised that disgusting grifting POS Krysten Sinema is going out the way she has chosen to? What a despicably corrupt narcissistic bitch. May we never hear her name again except for her obituary and the outpouring of contempt sure to follow. She betrayed her constituency, she betrayed queer people, and she betrayed her party to cozy up to Fascists and block progressive legislation while taking bribes and enriching herself. One of the problems with our current situation is that anyone can run against a horrible MAGA candidate and look good, rally votes and win an election as a viable alternative to something worse–but there’s nothing stopping said person from selling out for personal enrichment once they are serving. I’d like to see an IRS investigation as well as a DOJ one to find out who’s been paying her to be Mitch McConnell’s little beta bitch since she took office. She was so hated in Arizona that Kari Lake would have beaten her in the general1. I hope she spends the rest of her life getting drinks thrown on her and pies in her fucking face, like the clown she actually is. Good riddance to some serious raw sewage.

I was thinking yesterday (fleeting thoughts I’ve had a lot over the last few months) about James A. Michener and how no one today would read any book as long as his were, back in the day. I enjoyed Michener–Hawaii was a bit much–but I’ve been thinking how amazing it would have been for books in that style to have been written about Kansas, Louisiana, or Alabama. I certainly would never write such a thing–I don’t have the patience to do that much research, let alone turning it into a million words or so of a novel. (Although Michener would have written about three hundred pages about the forming of the Mississippi River delta, let alone the lakes and the swamps.) I was revisiting one of my favorite New Orleans histories, Frenchmen Desire Goodchildren, and I was also remembering that Gallatin Street, one of the worst sections of the old French Quarter, no longer exists. It was a vile place of bordellos and sleazy, dangerous bars; murders and rapes and muggings happened there with a stark regularity until it was demolished to extend the French Market. I’ve been wanting to write another Sherlock story in the 1910’s Quarter, and having either him or Watson visit a nasty dangerous gay bar on Gallatin would be a fun scene to write…if Gallatin was still around by that time; I think it’s badness was over by the time Storyville was set up, but who knows? I’ve resisted writing about Storyville, because it’s already been done so many times…but I also think it would be fun to write about New Orleans during Prohibition, too, when New Orleans became known as the Liquor Capital of the United States. That…could be a lot of fun. Maybe even an ATF agent coming to the city to root out liquor sales, only to hang their head in utter and complete defeat?

Thinking of Michener also reminded me of how much I used to read when I was a kid. Granted, the distractions of a gazillion streaming services didn’t exist back then; there were only three real channels, and we didn’t spend most of our times looking at our phones because there were no images on it. It also has made me think about how my primarily formative years–the 1970s–were awash in cynicism and mistrust of everything and how huge conspiracy theories, or all kinds of other “unexplained phenomena” struck people’s fancies. There was, of course, the JFK assassination conspiracy theories–but there were so many others. The Amityville Horror (on which I called bullshit at the time and still do), the Bermuda Triangle, UFO’s…you name it, people were interesting in it. I read Erich von Däniken’s books about “ancient aliens”, and of course there was all kinds of deconstruction of religion and the Bible, which was also interesting–The Late Great Planet Earth was a huge bestseller, detailing how the prophecies of Revelations and the end times were coming true right before our very unseeing eyes! End times Christian theology took hold–and never really let go, either. The X-Files could have been made in the 1970s (although it would have never been greenlit) but there was a lot of media, especially film, that tried to cash in on all of this. During the shutdown I did my “Cynical 70s Film Festival”, and it’s really amazing how a thread of paranoia runs through so many films of that decade. It was a strange decade, that saw the further inward collapse of the social engineering that took place after the second world war–that excluded everyone outside of the straight white cisgender male. The center wasn’t holding, and now? We’re living in the midst of the backlash towards social progressivism in this country.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the morning spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–one never truly knows, does one?

  1. That’s pretty fucking hated. ↩︎

I Do Love You

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and feeling good and rested. I slept in this morning, and Sparky let me! I lounged in bed until almost nine. Sparky did try to get my up around the usual time, but he graciously gave up and slept on my pillow just above my head so he could start pestering me again the moment my eyes opened and I got up. I wound up turning the heat on last night, intending to turn it off before I went to bed, but was very tired and forgot. This morning it’s comfortable, so I am not sorry I forgot.

Yesterday was a pretty good day, all things considered. I drank an awful lot of coffee yesterday morning, to the point that by the time it was ten thirty I was feeling like yeah that’s enough, switch to something else. I got my work at home duties done, picked up the mail and made a little groceries, after which I came back home and worked on cleaning up the house. We also finished season one of The Diplomat (one hell of a season finale, whew), and I picked up some and did laundry and the dishes and puttered around. I read for a little while1, which was nice. It was lovely having a relaxing and productive day. Today I have to run a couple of errands, and I’m going to try to get some writing done while cleaning some more around here. I want to drop off another box of books to the library sale–the laundry room shelves are almost completely denuded of books–and there’s still some straightening up and organizing to do around here, like always. It never ends, and I am finally truly appreciating my mother’s McDonalds2 “clean as you go” mentality; she never left a mess for later and always cleaned it, and was never able to relax as long as there was a mess somewhere in the house that needed attention. (I told my dad once, when he was talking about how hard she worked on the house all of the time, “Well, she liked to be the best at anything she did, and she saw the house as her job.”) Neither my sister nor I have completely inherited Mom’s obsessive to the point of OCD cleanliness; but I do think if I didn’t have to go into the office every day my apartment would be a lot more pristine; it certainly was when I worked at home all the time. I want to keep my house the way my mother kept hers, but I just don’t have the time and am always playing catch-up.

I had the Indiana-Notre Dame game on briefly for background noise while I sat in my chair and read; eventually turning it off. There are three games today (Ohio State-Tennessee, SMU-Penn State, and Texas-Clemson) which I will again probably have on while I do other things. I turned the game off last night because it wasn’t even remotely interesting enough to serve as background noise; my utter hatred for Notre Dame, and hating seeing them win a game, any game, had a lot to do with it. I don’t much care about any of the games today, as every team playing today I either dislike intensely or don’t care about in the least (if I was forced to pick teams to root for, it would be Tennessee, SMU, and Texas–and only if forced as I despise the two UT’s and don’t have a feeling for SMU at all), so not paying much attention will actually work. We’ll have to find a new show to watch–several shows we like have come back with new seasons, and there are new ones that look interesting to me. There are also some movies I’d like to see (Alien Romulus comes to mind), too. We’re still planning on seeing Babygirl on Christmas; it’s showing at Canal Place, which makes it a bit easier to get to–but driving out to Metairie is hardly the end of the world, either. I was thinking about rewatching something last night, something Hitchcockian; Psycho or Rebecca or even Notorious, but didn’t feel strongly enough about any of them to start them up, alas. My mind was kind of floaty last night by the time it was time to put something on and watch it.

I do feel, though, like this is going to be a good, productive, relaxing weekend. I don’t know what Paul’s plans for today are, but I want to read some more, possibly finishing the book I am reading (Winter Counts) before moving onto my next read, which will require some thinking about. So many amazing books I have in my TBR pile, and getting further and further behind as the books continue to pile up. But…that’a always going to be the case, isn’t it? There are always going to be too many books to catch up on over the years, aren’t there? And I would certainly hate to ever get to the point where I have finished my TBR stack and had nothing else to read. That would be my idea of hell–although I could and would always reread something. I used to reread books all the time when I was younger, but now? I barely have time to read, let alone reread something. I’ve not even done my annual rereads of Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House in years. I’ve not even looked over Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, which are so chilling and creepy, in years. Bad Greg, bad Greg!

But on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines; make a list of what to get at the store, what to do today, and get doing some chores. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One can never be certain.

  1. I was horrified to pick up a copy of an original text of a Hardy Boys book, The Mark on the Door, and was horrified to see how horrifically racist it was. I’d never read the original text version–I’ve not read all the original texts, but I have read all of the revised texts, and the later new ones in the original canon. I’m definitely going to address this particular instance. The book was published in 1934, less than twenty years after Pancho Villa and his raids were splashed all over the newspapers…let’s just say that’s probably what most white US citizens in 1934 thought on those rare occasions they thought of Mexico. It was also the time of movies about the Cisco Kid and…remind me why those were the good old days again? ↩︎
  2. For the record, she never actually worked at McDonalds; but she had the same mentality about cleanliness. ↩︎

Wrong Ideas

Well, hello there, Constant Reader! It’s another Friday work-at-home morning, and it’s very chilly in the Lost Apartment this morning. It’s only fifty here this morning currently; the temperature dropped significantly over night here in New Orleans. I don’t have any meetings this morning, which is also lovely.. I do have some trainings to get done and some data entry to do as well as some quality assurance, which is one of those things you can do with the television on while sort of watching something. The weekend is looming large before me, and I would like to get to the gym twice–tonight, and possibly Sunday morning. Yesterday’s Secret Santa at the office was nice; I got a lot of candy and one of those single-serving portable blenders, which is super nice–and will come in very handy for my post-workout protein shakes. I also want to get a lot of reading and writing done over the course of this weekend, and I want to get some rest, too. I have some errands to run for sure, and…and…and…all this stuff to do (I also made a to-do list yesterday) but it’s not overwhelming to me the way it was recently (which is why I think I was avoiding making said list for so long); now I look at it and think get to work, bitch.

I really need to stop swearing at myself. I should add that to the list.

But I had a nice evening at home last night. I worked on the book (MY book!) a little bit, made groceries on the way home after work AND picked up the mail, and did my reading last night. It was for the Publishing Triangle, and was quite lovely. I read my story “Moist Money,” completely forgetting that maybe something seasonal might have been more appropriate than a dark tale of gay rage, but ah, well. Things happen. But the response to it was quite nice, and it’s always nice to do a reading, you know? It’s also nice to do them without anxiety or stress, which was super-lovely. Before the change in my medications last year, I would have spent the entire day with the reading hanging over my head, nerves and pressure from the anxiety building all day until I was a sweaty-palmed, butterflied stomach, trembling mess–so it was lovely to know that public appearances no longer will do this to me. I wish I’d been on the right medications all along. Ah, well–live and learn, as they say.

I slept about an hour later than usual this morning, but I feel pretty good and rested. The kitchen is cleaned up already–still need to do the floors–so I’m starting out ahead of the curve for this weekend. I guess there is college football this weekend, the first round of the play-offs, but I don’t really care about watching when I can just check scores and highlights Sunday morning. Christmas is in a few days–I have to go into the office on Monday and then am free again until Thursday. These next few weeks are going to be disorienting, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to do an end-of-the-year review of highlights and lowlights because I can’t fucking remember anything anymore. That’s fine, although I wish I could remember all the amazing books I read this past year. I know I read two Scott Carson novels that were fantastic, Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory was one of the best things I’ve ever read…but beyond that I don’t remember much of anything I read, which is more about my brain than anything else. I’ve also forgotten television shows and movies we’ve watched, too, so I can’t do a round-up of that, either–but I am leaning toward picking Agatha All Along as my favorite television show of the year. (The cast alone was fantastic.) I’ve also fallen down on the job as far as writing a Substack essay every week, too–does the twenty-two different essay drafts count?

Yeah, I didn’t think so, but it didn’t hurt to ask, did it?

I saw the insane pictures of the security escort Luigi Mangione1 had for moving jurisdictions yesterday and cannot believe the insanity of this political theater we’re seeing. Granted, he planned and committed a brutal crime, but how is he any more dangerous than say, I don’t know, a mass shooter like Dylan Roof? Why was he charged with terrorism, as opposed to someone like Dylan Roof or the Oklahoma City bomber, or even the Unibomber? School shooters? He can be escorted from place to place by basically a military unit, but the cops won’t enter an active shooter situation while children are being slaughtered. It’s nice to know that the “children” the Right and their cosplay Christianity are always so concerned about–always less important than gun rights–are even less important than CEO’s.

But sure, yes, by all means, Reich-wingers, call me a child-killer for supporting women’s right to healthcare.

Even the Democratic governor of New York is offering CEOs state police fucking protection.

So the taxpayers are paying for security for corporate CEO’s who make a shit ton of money and whose heartless, soulless companies are rolling in cash.

Priorities, right? And Congress is already melting down and the new “administration” hasn’t even been sworn in yet. They are already eating each other’s faces, which means the next four years are going to be even more horrific as I’d assumed this Hogan’s Heroes American version of fascism would be in fact…although it is going to be interesting to see one narcissistic sociopath being a beta soy boy to an unelected billionaire. Tell me the Republican Party in this country isn’t bought and paid for by foreign interests.

And on that note, I have an on-line training to do. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!

  1. And to me it looks like the Right has decided Italians aren’t white anymore. The leopards are already eating their faces. GOOD. ↩︎

When the Morning Comes

Hello, Monday. Another week of getting up early and going into the office. Yay. It was a good weekend of work and getting things done and relaxing. I’m not fully conscious yet–hopefully my coffee will start working its magic soon enough. The bed was again extremely comfortable this morning. It’s going to be a lovely day today–it’s in the sixties now, and will reach a high of seventy-two–and it’s my Admin day, which means I should be able to get caught up on my in-the-office work today. Yay! Now I just need to get caught up on everything else and I will be just fine.

And I have a bridge across the Mississippi River to sell you–I’m never just fine, you know.

Sparky did let me sleep in a little later before his breakfast hunger pushed him to annoy me enough to get up yesterday, and it was still early enough–and I was rested enough–to buckle down and get some things done. That felt good, and then I was able to read for a while on Winter Counts, which I am enjoying. Paul worked for most of the day, then came down so we could finish watching Black Doves and start watching The Diplomat, which is also excellent–it always trips me out that it’s Keri Russell, aka Felicity, in the lead–before we went to bed. It also finally hit Paul and me both yesterday how lucky he was Saturday night to have managed to not even notice the partial collapse of his building, which kind of shook us up a lot more once that reality sank in. He easily could have been killed, and his experience with the fire department and the police when he was leaving Saturday night isn’t exactly confidence building–they didn’t know it was an office building, not an apartment building, and they didn’t really check for people inside very intently–and it was yet another one of our many close calls; our alarmingly regular proximity to death and destruction but escaping with minimal problems.

Hard as it is to believe sometimes, we do live a rather charmed existence. Although–the next four nightmarish years are going to put that to the test, won’t they? Sigh. I am still living in denial that January 20th is going to happen. Louisiana continues to circle the drain under our horrific white supremacy governor, who is about to get rid of income tax but increase sales tax–who precisely is that going to benefit, Governor Asshole? New Orleans will get nothing but grief from this asshole’s administration, which is perfectly fine with Louisiana’s racist majority. They never really understand how vital New Orleans is to the economy of the entire state; and to the country overall. (That should have been the takeaway from Hurricane Katrina, but of course it wasn’t.) They just see New Orleans as a majority Black city, which therefore means it’s poor, crumbling, and crime-ridden; not safe for white people. It’s also a Catholic city of sin, which the Bible-thumpers really hate, even as they pass protections for the Catholic Church’s child-molesting priests while screaming about drag queen story hour. New Orleans really should be it’s own city-state; Senators Kennedy and Cassidy don’t give two shits about New Orleans; they only care about their greed and their bribes and their steady income from foreign enemies. Has either accomplished anything in Washington other than embarrassing their constituents who will just keep voting for them because they’re racists?

For the record, immigrants rebuilt New Orleans. Not Louisiana, not white people, not natives. In fact, New Orleans has always been an immigrant city (like every other major port city); hence the incredibly diverse mix of ethnicities here–from the Isleños to the Filipinos to the Greeks to the Italians and Irish and the French and the Spanish and the Americans–and the biggest influence on the city’s culture and heritage–Black people. Everything everyone loves about New Orleans comes from its Black people and their history, so yeah, racists, if not for the “crime1” here there would be nothing unique or special or beloved about this city. Funny how that works. And the state of Louisiana certainly has no issue with spending the city’s revenues.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have the best Monday you can, Constant Reader–I know I am going to try to!

  1. When the racists decry New Orleans’ “crime”, what they really are saying is “we left New Orleans when they desegregated the schools and everything else and Black people no longer had to sit in the back of the streetcars”–make no mistake about that. ↩︎

I’ll Think of Something

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, and a very nice day was had here in the Lost Apartment. I worked and ran my errands and cleaned and had a rather nice, productive day. It was also a pretty day to run errands, despite the hordes of tourists on foot in the Garden District who somehow think it’s a pedestrian mall and will literally step out into the street without looking.1 Heavy heaving sigh. I will also never understand tour buses that want to make the left turn off Prytania onto Washington (by the cemetery); Washington is a very narrow two-lane street with cars parked on both sides. Probably heading to Commander’s Palace, but a bus will block the entire street. Ah, the trials and tribulations of driving in uptown New Orleans!

But I got up at a pretty decent hour (this morning as well) yesterday so I could get things done in the morning before I had to venture out into the errands. I was most pleased with what I was able to get done in the morning–the apartment still needs to have the floors cleaned, but at least it’s not nearly as horrifying around here as it was on Thursday night when I got home from work. This morning I am going to do the floors and the weekend’s dishes, so I can head into the work week with a sparking and shining home. I made major progress on a project, and hope to get it finished today. I also did some mental writing of my own on the Scotty book–I am not sure why I always struggle and then remember oh yeah, the plots are supposed to be over-the-top and ridiculous, the more ridiculous the better. So I would really like to get back to work on it, so I need to get this other project finished. When I get this finished I am going to read for a bit before I get cleaned up and get back to work.

I read manage to read some more of Winter Counts, and it’s really exceptionally well written. I am having a good time reading it, and seeing how the standard hard-boiled noir style can be interpreted and developed in an entirely new way and perspective is pretty awesome, too. (Seriously, people: broaden your minds and read diverse books.) I also spent some time with White Too Long, which thus far isn’t really telling me anything new–it opens with an explanation of how the Southern Baptists came into being in the first place, and how it has evolved from those racist roots (without losing the white supremacy) ever since. That may help me with the essay I am writing about religion and why I am so antipathetic to it; unpacking my miseducation on both it and American exceptionalism has been very revelatory–and it also makes me more than a little angry. This is what happens when you confront the truth about this country’s actual history, rather than the American mythology my childhood education groomed me into believing–which is why I guess people are so afraid of the truth and what their children might think of them? You cannot be both a good person and a racist at the same time; because if you harbor bigotry and racism inside of your personality it will spill over into other aspects of your life, and color your decisions and your votes and how you conduct yourself as you navigate through the world.

Paul was at the office for most of the day, and he got home rather late. I bought one of those Costco ready for the oven fresh pizzas Friday, and made it for dinner last night. It was quite good–what isn’t good from Costco, really–but when he got home, he had a tale to tell. As he was leaving his office from the rear of the building he was stopped by firemen (they were hot and young) and he eventually spoke to both the fire chief and the chief of police. Apparently, his building started to collapse while he was at his office. He didn’t even know anything had happened! Ah, New Orleans is always going to New Orleans. Never a dull moment in this city, is there? We’re almost to the anniversary of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse, too.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and read for a while before I get to work for the day. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later on, if Sparky will allow it.

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  1. In fact, this made me think about Chanse’s computer guy, Jephtha, and his video game, “Tourist Season.” ↩︎

Love Song

Sparky let me sleep later this morning, which was greatly appreciated. I have work to do today, some errands to run, and I am just going to push through it all today. There’s no football on television today (or if there is, I don’t care about it) to distract me from working and reading a bit. I want to drop another box of books off at the library sale, and I’m planning on going to the gym later on and getting back into that habit. Yesterday was nice and relaxing, too. I got all my work-at-home duties done and we went to Costco, which is always a joy. I don’t know why I love going to Costco (probably because Paul always pays), but I do. We watched some more of Black Doves last night, which we are really enjoying, and finally went to bed a little later than I would have liked. I slept well and woke up to a sunny day in New Orleans; it’s going to be in the low seventies high sixties today–which means I should think about washing the car, too, or at least cleaning it out. I do have a hand vacuum, so I can just do that. Excellent plan, Gregalicious!

I also picked up and cleaned up around here both Thursday night and around work-at-home duties yesterday, so the Lost Apartment is actually in pretty good shape this morning. There are some dishes that need to be done, but the laundry is finished for sure and all that is left is the floors. Yay, me! I even did the filing yesterday, too, which is all kinds of awesome. I hate it when my desk is a mess and my inboxes are loaded down with paper and other shit. I also decided on the opening of the new Scotty; this time I am going to parody the opening of The Lords of Discipline, and it came to me yesterday how to make that work and be funny. So I even managed to get some “writing” done. No wonder I woke up in such a good mood; yesterday was truly a good day for me. Paul’s going to his office today, so I’ll be home by myself this afternoon, and so there’s no reason for me to not get everything done today that I want to get done. I also want to read some more today; that’s what I’ll most likely do this morning before I run the errands; probably do some picking up and book-pruning, too.

I’ve been doing that “twenty books that influenced or stayed with you” thing on one of the social media channels (I am on Bluesky and Threads; not sure how long I’ll stay on Threads, since Zuckerberg is a fascist collaborator) but I can never remember where I post things or reply to people since I left Twitter (whenever I do these things, the list is often different; some books make the list every time). Most of the people I enjoyed engaging with on Twitter (I will never fucking call it X; fuck you now and forever, Elmo Mush) have migrated over to one or the other, so people I was initially missing in the beginning have gradually turned up on one or the other. I have also taken the Bluesky/Threads methodology of just preemptively blocking annoying people to Facebook now–I told a friend I call it “reclaiming my time”–and thus far, it’s enormously freeing. I block early and I block often, and I wish I would have just done that everywhere from the beginning. Likewise, I’ve always required that anyone commenting here has to be approved by me before anyone else sees it–so there are any number of trolling commentary I’ve spared you all from. It’s the least I can do. Sometimes it’s a homophobic piece of garbage, or a MAGA troll, and I don’t owe you a fucking thing, let alone a forum for your ignorance and hate. However, I also keep those comments saved as unapproved, so I may eventually use them on here. Hey, you wanted it in a public forum; but I am not required to give that to you in the way you wanted. Instead, I can call you out on here while you gnash your teeth in impotent anger at my restricting your so-called freedom of speech (hey, it’s not my fault you don’t understand how the government or the Constitution works; you should have paid more attention at your free public education and taking advantage of the opportunity to be smarter and more intelligent–it was a free gift from the taxpayers. I already paid for your education once; I am not a teacher and therefore it is not my job to educate your stupid ass). Sucks to be you, doesn’t it? Better you than me.

The Luigi Mangione case continues to dominate social media and the news, as the news–ever in thrall to their corporate masters–tries to convince us we’re terrible people for being on Luigi’s side. The legacy media, of course, always do the bidding of the corporate masters (which is partly why we are in the situation we are in; they’ve been betraying the country for decades and doing the bidding of the right–we should have never forgiven them for helping perpetrate the lies that led to the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, or for patriot-washing Bush/Cheney for eight years), and the scolding from people who think “How can you support a murderer” isn’t landing the way they think it should–in fact, it actually makes me question your morality. Do I think killing CEO’s or executives who’ve made and implemented policies that put profit over people’s health care when they aren’t really medical professionals? Of course not, but I don’t have any sympathy for the dead man or his family or his evil company which isn’t going to change the way they operate.

That’s always the thing that has gotten me about health insurance; they operate under the assumption they know more about a person and their health and their needs than their actual doctors. Since the introduction of capitalism into medicine and health care–the profit motive–the quality of care and the quality of life for most Americans has declined. I have any number of my own horror stories with health insurance (no, he doesn’t need to have that precancerous lesion removed! It might be benign now, even if that might change, but we need to wait to be sure!) and the horror stories of my clients in the clinic that I have to listen to every day. I would shed no tears for any health insurance CEO, frankly; and I remember what it was like before the Affordable Care Act1, when my pre-existing conditions required me to be raped repeatedly by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I was so happy when the ACA took effect and I was able to change to my job’s coverage. (Now, alas, we are back with BC/BS–and there’s a reason the acronym includes “bs.”) If my lack of sympathy for the health insurance CEO’s and their cronies makes me a bad person, well, I don’t care. I save my sympathy for the people denied care and their families.

And it’s very privileged to react so moralistically about people not being on Luigi’s side. It doesn’t hurt that he has pretty privilege, and the general reaction to a pretty young man shooting a health insurance CEO because of his shitty corporate policies (how can corporations have all the rights of an individual but no accountability for criminal behavior? If a corporation can’t go to jail, then it’s not a person.) is bound to get support from all the people who’ve had a shitty experience with health insurance coverage. It took me seven months of doing without before I could finally get BC/BS to pay for a necessary medication for me. Seven. Months. When I had BC/BS before, they declined to cover a medication to help me quit smoking; I paid out of pocket because I wanted to quit smoking, but it was infuriating. They would have rather I kept smoking and hoped I’d die before they had to pay too much for cancer care. Think about that–a health insurance company refusing to cover something that would make a customer healthier. The three months of the drug cost me $300 in total. They refused to pay $300 to save money in the long run.

Insurance is, and always has been, one of the greatest scams perpetrated on the American people. Don’t even get me started on auto insurance, which is even worse than health insurance. I will never be shamed into feeling sympathy for health insurance employees–and when people say “but it was his job!” do you have the same energy for the camp guards and workers in Auschwitz? They, too, were just doing their jobs. How many people suffered and died from policies set and approved by that CEO? How can someone who has the power of life or death who chooses death for higher profits be worthy of sympathy? How is denying life-saving treatment and care for people not calculated, premeditated murder? And that doesn’t even take into consideration how much we fucking have to pay for them to deny us care.

And if you’re okay with THAT, yeah, you don’t actually have any moral high ground to stand on. But congratulations on judging mine!

And on that note, I am going to go to my easy chair to read before I run my errands. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. Stranger things have happened!

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  1. Yet another example of the lack of memory in Americans: people can complain about the ACA all they want to (and yes, it’s the same thing as Obamacare, trash) but health insurance before the ACA was so much fucking worse, and the insured were completely at the mercy of the corporate bean counters and the CEO’s pushing them for more profits for the shareholders–and the shareholders who profit from these policies are just as evil as those working for the corporation. ↩︎

Sweet Magnolia Blossom

Work at home Friday and was Mercury in retrograde yesterday? Is it still? My work laptop died yesterday morning when I tried signing into it after I got to work and it took most of the morning for me to get a new replacement one. So, I spent the morning without a computer–which meant outside of seeing my clients, I didn’t really have the ability to do much of anything. I finally got the new one around lunch time, but my day was already off and so was my energy, and since my routine had been disrupted, I had trouble getting back on track. Finally, I just made a list while I was eating lunch and that seemed to work, even though I still felt off all day. The replacement laptop (which is just temporary until they fix the old one) also had some issues with staying connected to my scanner, which was incredibly frustrating and resulted in my admin work taking far longer than it usually does, and I had a lot of documents to scan into patient files. The frustration was real, and I was exhausted when I got home. My brain was basically non-functional by the time I got home, and I actually fell sound asleep in my easy chair around nine-thirty. I didn’t get anything done once I was home–worn out from the endless frustration of the day–and didn’t even remember to charge my phone when I went to bed. I did manage to watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (which is lit this season and definitely my favorite of these shows at the moment), though, since that required little to no energy on my part. I hope to get a lot done today, both day job and Gregalicious wise; and we’re going to Costco later after I am done with work duties. (Need to make a list!)

But I slept very well last night, and woke up feeling pretty rested this morning, which is a good thing. The entire place is a disaster area, and I never managed to do anything about the dishes accumulating in the sink and now it’s of course out of control. Heavy heaving sigh. Even my desk is piled high with things that need to be put away. It feels chilly, and per the weather the high will only reach sixty degrees here today. I think I am going to walk to the gym tomorrow morning and get started back up with that again, and hopefully today will be a great clean and organize day for the house. Christmas is coming, and I am really not feeling it very much this year, to be honest, and haven’t for a few years. Paul and I decided to not do gifts again this year–we are divorcing ourselves from the capitalist holiday by refusing to spend much money observing it (we’re going to go see Babygirl in the theater on Christmas day), and I have to say I am gradually growing more radical and anti-capitalist by the day (so much for that you get conservative as you get older bullshit; I grew up as a conservative and my adult hood has been mostly about shedding that foul and utterly inhuman methodology. Profits over people, corporations are people but living breathing humans are not–I could go on and on talking about the class war in this country. I am a radicalized Paw Paw, I guess? I did have a client this week whose birth year was 2006–which was highly traumatizing, and would have been worse if I cared about being old. It was more of a shock to me that kids born after Katrina are eighteen (and older) now. Kids born the year of Katrina will be twenty next year. Twenty years, a third of my life, has passed since that time.

I am also looking forward to some good reading time. Both of my current reads (Winter Counts and White Too Long) are fascinating and well-written, and it’s quite easy to get caught up in the narrative. I’d love to finish both this weekend so I can move on to my next reads (leaning towards Alter Ego by Alex Segura or Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett and The Exvangelicals for my non-fiction). I do want to get caught up on Donna Andrews’ two latest over the holidays, which are rapidly approaching. Soon it will be 2025 and even more insane chaos once the new “administration” is sworn in. The next four years are going to be bad, I think–signs point to yes–but I also survived the 80s and the 90s, so maybe I am a Cher/cockroach.

We started watching Black Doves the other night, and I really enjoyed the first episode. I love Ben Whishaw, and Sara Lancashire is a treasure. I am hoping we’ll be able to spend some more time with it over the course of the weekend. We also should go back to Slow Horses, which we never went back to for some reason; I think we got interrupted by something (a surgery? A funeral? Who knows?) and just never went back to it. I do also want to read the books by Mick Herron (got to love that last name), too. Ah yes, so many books to read. Heavy sigh. I have so many treasures in my TBR pile, as well as treasures from the distant past (I would love to read Anatomy of a Murder and A Summer Place and Summer of ’42 again, plus more of Margaret Millar, Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Armstrong, and Dorothy B. Hughes) that I will probably never get through them all.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I hope that I have a really productive one. I’ll be back either in the morning or later today, it’s a mystery!

Gorgeous retired Olympic and world champion ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who also is a model.

Bonaparte’s Retreat

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday–mid-week fatigue, most likely–but I slept super well and feel pretty good this morning. The temperature started dropping again last night–I checked and it was only 62 degrees inside last night–so I turned the heat on downstairs before heading to bed, and it’s nice and warm down here this morning. I don’t know how tired I am going to be later on, of course, but we’ve an easy clinical schedule today and I should be able to get caught up on all my Admin stuff today before I leave the office and come home. I am almost finished with a project, hopefully by Saturday it will be done and I can get back to my book work. No football for sure this weekend, so I have no excuse not to clean and write and go to the gym as we move into the New Orleans Holiday Season–which doesn’t end until after Carnival. Woo-hoo!

The last time I was visiting my father (or maybe the time before) he told me about a movie (it probably was the time before last, when I watched westerns with him) starring John Wayne that was set in Alabama and was about Bonapartists exiled from France who wound up settling in the western part of the state, which is how the small city (or town) of DEMOPOLIS was founded. (The movie was The Fighting Kentuckian.) Honestly, Alabama’s history is so rich and varied! I could write a million books set in Alabama–and that’s not even talking about places like Moundville, near Tuscaloosa. But there has to be some way I can tie Scotty and New Orleans into the Bama Bonapartists, you know? One of Napoleon’s nephews, Prince Achille Murat, lived at Magnolia Mound near Baton Rouge (I think the location is either on the LSU campus, or very close to it) for awhile in the early nineteenth century. Lots of Bonaparte connections down here, and after all, the Napoleon House is called that because after Waterloo, it was offered to Napoleon for his next exile–needless to say, the British weren’t having that. (There are Baltimore Bonapartes, too.) I came across a mention of the Murats of Magnolia Mound yesterday, and that made me remember about the movie and the Bama Bonapartists.

I also started reading White Too Long, and I am glad I have it. It’s essentially the story of how white supremacy and Christianity became linked through racism before the Civil War, and how those “southern” versions of particular Christian brands worked hand-in-hand with the Klan and other racists ever since. I think the Southern Baptists are the only ones left that didn’t merge back in with their Northern counterparts after the war, and the Southern Baptists have been responsible for a lot of bigotry and unconstitutional prejudiced laws and so forth ever since. The Southern Baptists were the queer community’s biggest enemy for decades, and have poisoned southern culture for generations. (They were also the very first organization to target Disney for being slightly more gay-friendly than anywhere else and announced the first boycott over it; it failed miserably.) It’s going to be an interesting read; I always find religion fascinating–especially how a benign message of caring for others and helping the poor and sick can get twisted so easily into a method of mind control for nefarious reasons. I still want to explore that more in a book, too, and I am going to finish that goddamned essay about my own personal experiences with religion and the Christian god.

Maybe try finishing the writing you’re already doing, Greg, before starting anything new–and yes, that absolutely includes doing research. Make notes of where to find said research and do not go ahead and start doing it–save it for when you’re ready to write it.

And if you never have the time to write it, then was there any need to waste any time researching it? Alas, I do have a curious mind, which can also be very one track at times.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One never knows.