Category: cats

Strange Way

Well, Christmas itself has passed and now we are in the slide to New Year’s and Twelfth Night…which means it’ll be Carnival season again soon. I don’t think I’m ready for Carnival this coming year, but is anyone, ever? I am back up before dawn to go into the office today; I don’t think we’re going to be very busy in the clinic today–I checked the schedule and we will definitely be busy on January 2–because we’re in that weird in-between-holidays time. I hope everyone’s Christmas was pleasant; mine was. I slept in yesterday and did nothing around the house other than some of the dishes. It also rained, and we drove out to Elmwood via Airline Highway, which was fun. Airline isn’t a highway I use very often (like the Earhardt), and it’s actually a great back way to Jefferson Parish and that part of the metropolitan area. I don’t know that part of town very well, so it’s always interesting to go out there. (Elmwood is out by the Huey P. Long bridge across the river.) We did see Babygirl (more on that later), and gorged on popcorn and soda. It was kind of nice just kicking back and not stressing about getting work done or cleaning the house (although I probably should stress myself out about the housework more often, or at least more regularly); I think from now on I am going to treat myself to a literal day off/holiday whenever one rolls around again. I’m also in that contemplative state that usually comes around between Christmas and New Year’s. What kind of year was it, did I have, and what do I want to accomplish in the coming year? That’s the thing about a year’s turning, you can’t help but get dragged into a contemplative reflective state whether you want to or not. I think it was a good year for me for the most part personally; it was mostly a recovery year for the horror that was 2023, to be honest. Ordinarily I would be thinking I am an utter failure for not accomplishing much of anything in a year–but I am being kinder to myself. The change in medications really kicked in this year (it began in December 2023), and there are still things I can get anxious about, but there’s not a physical reaction to anxiety and stress anymore and I really appreciate that more than anything else with the medication change; it was always the physical reaction (increased heart rate, nausea, sweating, trembling) which was the worst for me, which was why public speaking was always torture for me. (The reading the other night was a piece of cake, which was a lovely experience.)

I keep thinking today is Monday, which is more than a little annoying, honestly. My week is very screwed up. But it’s okay. I have to run errands after work tonight–grocery store and mail service–and I don’t have to come in tomorrow; I was going to cover for someone if they needed me to, but it turns out they don’t so I can work remotely.

I did not get to watch my two favorite Christmas movies this year (Auntie Mame and The Lion in Winter) because I would have had to pay to stream them; I do find it very interesting that films of a certain age aren’t streaming free anywhere. Why are old movies pay-to-play but many newer releases–even brand spanking new ones–are free to stream in numerous places? I guess I will never understand the economics of show business. We tried watching a gay horror movie last night (Ganymede, it’s terrible; we were an hour in and I wasn’t sure if the movie was pro-gay or anti-gay, and when you’re still not sure when there’s only a half an hour left? No need for us to watch that final half hour. The writing was bad, the acting overwrought, and I wasn’t really quite sure of the point of the film….so we gave up on it.

Babygirl was interesting, and made me quite uncomfortable more than a few times. Nicole Kidman is fantastic in it, but…this is one of those movies that I don’t think I can completely appreciate because I’m not a woman, if that makes any sense? Kidman plays an incredibly bright, driven and successful CEO of a major corporation…but is sexually dissatisfied in her marriage and her perfect appearing life. She literally has it all, but something is still missing in her life, and her desire to maintain her outward perfection while dealing with a weird sense of longing for something missing is portrayed quite compellingly. She feels drawn to an intern at the company, and he is drawn to her as well; that is never truly explored (what does he want?) but the movie is hers, and we see everything from her point of view. So, is she an untrustworthy narrator? We’re only seeing how she continues with her facade of perfection even in light of her torrid affair, that’s fulfilling some need in her–to be controlled, to be trained, and the sex and loss of control is exactly what she is needing, even though she is risking everything–career, marriage, family, wealth–here. Like I said, it was interesting; the story is the character study and evaluation of her life and her present. Is the ending happy? I’m not entirely sure, but in the final scene, and her delivery of the last line? That’s the character we’re never really shown, and that final scene is so brilliant that it changes the entire film from what you think you were watching.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Boxing Day, or day after Christmas if you’re not in a commonwealth of the Empire.

Silver Bells

So this is Christmas.

It’s very still and quiet this morning. Paul is asleep, Sparky has been fed and has curled up to sleep again somewhere, and I am finishing my first cup of coffee. It’s hitting the spot, too, I might add. My coffee addiction really is something, isn’t it? I had thought about getting out the Espresso machine and making myself cappuccinos this morning, but went to bed last night without thinking about anything and thus didn’t. The kitchen is also kind of a mess this morning. Maybe I’ll do something about it, maybe I won’t. It’s Christmas, after all. We had a lovely day yesterday; I spent the morning rereading some old Scotty books with the intent of rereading/editing that I have done on Hurricane Season Hustle, but after I ordered the pizza and drove out to Metairie to get it–it was fucking fantastic, too, I might add, with leftovers for today–I just kind of zoned out for the day. We watched La Palma, a truly terrible disaster mini-series, on Netflix (cheesily enjoyable in that over-the-top and rather dumb disaster move way), and then watched Kings of Tupelo, which was insane…but again, Jake, it’s Tupelo. I went to bed late and slept late, and feel good today, if weird that I have to go back to work again tomorrow. We’re driving out to Elmwood to see the afternoon show of Babygirl today, and that’s really about all I care about for today. Maybe we’ll stream some movies tonight, or start a new show to watch or something. It was also sunny and warm yesterday–today looks gray, maybe rain–and once I finish this, I will probably do some straightening up in here before repairing to my easy chair to read for a bit.

What do I want for Christmas? World peace would be nice–hell, single-payer health insurance would be terrific, too–but neither of those are possible as long as this country remains enthralled to billionaires and corporations. That’s been the case for most of my adult life, and as far back as the 1990’s I was noticing how the direction we were heading into as a country economically, both at home and abroad, was firmly setting us on the same paths that led to the French and Russian revolutions and the Great Depression. I wrote about this a lot in my journals from back then; I’d even thought about writing a novel based on those observations, but after the fall/collapse. Do I have any answers? No, not really. People will always vote against their own self-interests because they have been convinced by the mythology of the American Dream that they, too, will someday be rich if they work hard (or smart) enough. I was told repeatedly as a child that if I worked hard, I too could become wealthy. Stories of people who went from rags-to-riches proliferated in the fiction stacks (and movies, too, for that matter); almost every “epic saga” was the story of some impoverished immigrant who seized opportunities–sometimes lied, cheated and stealing–that would make them rich. We’re essentially groomed by our art and culture to aspire to wealth and that the richer you are the better of a person you clearly must be, because you accumulated wealth. The great irony of that, of course, is that Christmas (and Christianity, too, for that matter) teaches us to take care of the sick and the elderly and the poor, and to always be empathetic to those less fortunate. Christianity and Capitalism are antithetical to each other, and the influence of capitalism on Christianity has not been a good thing. The prosperity gospel is a heresy, and the worst kind of heresy because it goes against everything Jesus taught in the pages of the New Testament. Everyone celebrating Christmas today–and the “birth” of Jesus–by spending a lot of money and a lot of excess?

Hardly “the reason for the season.” Put Christ back into Christianity, for your own sakes.

I’ve always loved the messaging of Christmas above what it actually is in reality, to be honest. I can remember watching A Charlie Brown Christmas as a kid and seeing that I was looking past what Christmas was supposedly about and approaching it from a greed perspective. (It’s still my favorite Christmas story.) That was filmed in the 1960s, and was about how the season was being exploited by an orgy of spending and excess, which was never the point of the holiday. I am as sentimental about Christmas and what it stands for as a child; Christmas decorations and trees make me smile and feel warm inside. I even like most Christmas music, even if I am heartily sick of some of them (looking at you, Wham!). I love driving down St. Charles Avenue or Prytania Street at night to see all the houses decorated and lit up. I love seeing how much kids enjoy it all. I even watched a couple of Christmas-themed rom-coms this season. I tend to not write about Christmas, because it is so easy to fall into the cheesy Christmas-miracle and all’s right with the world clichéd trope so many stories of that type inevitably fall into. I did have fun with Royal Street Reveillon, which was simply set during Christmas season but that was all–and even then I found myself trying to take the story in that direction a few times.

Sigh.

And on that note, I’m going to get some more coffee and go sit in my easy chair and see what’s going on in the world while doing some reading. Have a merry Christmas today, everyone, even if you do not celebrate; at least enjoy your day off at any rate.

We’ve Got Tonight

Who needs tomorrow? Well, it’s Christmas tomorrow, Mr. Seger, so I’d say we could all use a little Christmas this year, couldn’t we?

So it’s Christmas Eve in the Lost Apartment, and Sparky and I are the only things stirring. Paul is sound asleep, and I am going to let him sleep as long as he wants. I am going to order our pizza around twelve, I think, and I am going to go to the gym in a little bit first, methinks. I am going to take today and tomorrow off from anything other than light chores (unless I get a wild hair) and just read and relax and watch things on television and cuddle with Sparky. I can’t think of a better way to spend this holiday, can you? Sparky seems to have that same secret superpower of inducing sleep in us by simply cuddling up and going to sleep on or near either of us that Scooter had. I took two short naps this past weekend, and I blame that entirely on having Sparky sleeping on me–I never take naps! When I got home from work, he’d been cuddling with Paul off and on all day, and he spent the evening going back and forth between us. We finished The Day of the Jackal yesterday night, which was really fun

I was correct about yesterday being an easy day at the office. We were on a skeleton crew, most of the managers and supervisors were out, and thus I was able to focus and get a lot of my work done. It was marvelous. I was able to leave early, and when I got home I even figured out what short story to write for this queer anthology I’ve been invited to participate in, and I’m working on this other one for another anthology I’ve agreed to write for. I am going to take some characters from another project and write a short story about them…I think it’ll work, and then I can just plug the short story into the longer manuscript, which seems rather genius to me. I mean, why not make your work work for you? I’m a firm believer in that–even if I always worry about recycling plots. This morning I am going to clean the kitchen, drink my coffee, and read for a bit. I am intending to have a very relaxing two days off. Maybe I’ll do some work, maybe I won’t. I did finish my Substack essay on the blatant and horrific racism in the original edition of The Hardy Boys adventure The Mark on the Door, too.

The public theater of the Luigi Mangione trial–which is going to be reported on breathlessly by a media completely out of touch with their audience and will probably last throughout 2025, serving as a distraction for the people who cannot with the news from Washington anymore; Romans had their circuses to entertain the populace and keep them from rising; we have our modern media. What’s even odder to me is the disconnect between Luigi’s followers and the vastly smaller amount of law-and-order proponents (mostly in the media, for the record) castigating and moralizing about “condoning murder.” I have never been a fan of scolds or people who primly climb into their saddle atop their moral high horse and lecture everyone else about their moral failings. For the record, I do not respond to being lectured or scolded or condescended to very well–especially by people I do not know on the Internet. I don’t owe you space, I don’t owe you a platform, and you do not know me well enough to talk to me like you’re my mother. She’s dead, for one thing, and I didn’t even let her talk to me like that. You think you matter more to me than my mother? Arrogant much? Maybe have all the seats before coming at me as a fucking straight white woman of a certain age? I blocked two people on Facebook yesterday–one a priggish morally superior straight white woman who came onto my page determined to make the stupid faggot aware of her moral superiority; the other a gay man I’ve never met who did the same. I do my usual test of moral superiority with other strangers that I always do: hmm, what do I think you were doing during the HIV/AIDS crisis when gay men were dying by the thousands? And is you’re so law-and-order, that means you were probably being horrible about ACT UP and all the other in-your-face activism that needed to be done back then, some of which broke laws, which means you folded your arms and scolded rather than actually doing anything while people are dying.

Kind of like you are defending health insurance companies. You cannot be morally superior if you are defending the death panels. To me, that means you’d be a German who turned away during the holocaust and pretended it wasn’t happening, even though you lived in a village near a death camp and could smell it.

Also, slavery was legal in this country until 1865. So you would have supported that? Jim Crow was also the law, Ms. Black-and-White-Binary, and so were the eradication of the natives of this land and the Japanese internment camps in the 1940s and I could go on and on and on. Your lack of nuance is very telling.

And for the record, I never said I condoned or condemned the murder; all I’ve ever said is that I understood the mentality behind it because I have been there myself. I don’t share my own horror stories about health insurance–because all these people do is fold their arms and wrinkle their brows (think Susan Collins) and scold anyway. It’s also amazing to me that people will barge into one of your posts when they do not know you, do not know your situation, do not know your history, to smugly inform you how morally superior they are to you. With that fucking profile picture, bitch? Right before Christmas? Literally, go fuck yourself with barbed wire, skanky bitch, and take the morally superior gay man with you. It’s very easy to judge people (I’m doing it right now) without knowing the full story, but I also shouldn’t have to explain why I feel the way I do in order for other people to consider my opinions valid–that’s dehumanizing, and if you came running up to me at a conference or in a public space and started screaming at me (which is basically what you are doing, dear Ms. Morality), I wouldn’t stand for it, and I will not stand for it on-fucking-line. 1

For me, this case fascinates me, and what is even more fascinating is how this is being reported. There’s definitely been a slant to the coverage of the case, and there has been since it first happened. It was very shocking–a CEO being mowed down like a dog in the street on his way to an investors’ meeting–and very daring, very well-planned. It was, very much, intended as a political assassination; a protest against our incredibly broken health insurance industry. The fact that it was the CEO of United Healthcare immediately raised my eyebrows; they aren’t my insurer, but I work in a clinic for the under or uninsured and believe me, I have never heard a single person with United Healthcare who actually liked their insurance carrier. It’s always horror stories, and believe me, I’ve witnessed some myself. United Healthcare is garbage, it’s expensive, it has high deductibles, and they refuse coverage over 30% of the time.2 Their clients have no recourse, either; none of us do when our health insurance companies deny coverage (a favorite of mine is the bait-and-switch; “we’ll cover all of this, no worries” only to find out later that “oh, no, you owe for this and this and this and this.” (That was my experience with my shoulder surgery last year.) I had a surgery that was, over all, about 95% completely covered by my insurance–but that 5% almost bankrupted me. So, miss me with your “sanctity of life” bullshit. Brian Thompson had no concerns about the sanctity of life of his clients, to the tune of billions of dollars of profit last year. I didn’t cry or feel bad when Reagan or Kissinger or Limbaugh died; I won’t feel bad when Anita Bryant or Maggie Gallagher or Donald Wildmon dies. The media also tried to paint Thompson as a “family man”–not that he was estranged from his wife and kids–and couldn’t find any on-line pictures of the family, which is kind of telling. Who doesn’t have at least one family picture on-line?

No one deserves to be murdered in cold blood, but our system is so corrupted and rotten to the core that most people feel helpless in the face of it–that’s the real story no one is reporting in this case, which is also very telling about the news media, how they report stories, and the narratives they try to shape–and feel like they need to step up for the good of everyone. (They were the ones who convicted the Menendez Brothers, after all.) Rather than think pieces and editorials about how “horrible it is that people are cheering for a murderer”–why isn’t anyone exploring or reporting or even considering why people are cheering for a murderer? Everyone was rooting for him before anyone knew what he looked like, and the fact that he turned out to be attractive? Made it a much harder sell for the media, so of course they ran with that–people only support him because he’s attractive, which again, is one-dimensional and offensive to the core. Ever since I walked away from legacy media last July, it’s so much easier to see the narratives and the spins they go for–both sides, really. MSNBC’s breathless reporting, along with their butt-buddy CNN, on the narrative from Fix and OANN and Trump that Biden was senile and dying ensured a Trump election, and I said it at the time and that’s why I walked away from it. The great irony that I agree with the right that it’s all “fake news” has not escaped me. They were right, but only half-right; they think Fox is honest, and they aren’t. The copaganda perp walk? How much money and how many resources did the NYPD waste on their “manhunt,” which accomplished nothing because he was caught by a tip called in? So, that was absolutely copaganda: see how seriously we are taking this, oligarchs? Keep approving our massive budgets which are a waste of money and time. Um, you didn’t fucking catch him, and it’s interesting that the NYPD will mobilize for a rich man’s murder and divert everything to catching the killer, while crimes go unsolved and uncared about on the daily in New York City.

We should be talking about about the health care insurance scandal in this country, and talking about how to fill loopholes and make insurers pay claims, rather than “you only support him because he’s hot.” I’m fucking sixty-three years old. Just because someone is hot doesn’t mean I either like them, support them, or want to fuck them (Zachary Levi? Mark Wahlberg? Nick Bosa?). So stop fucking condescending to me.

And don’t come on my social media scolding me. It won’t end well for you.

And on that note, I am going to get into the holiday spirit by going to my easy chair with Sparky and watching Auntie Mame, my favorite Christmas movie.

  1. The difference between me and so many people is I am exactly who I am on line. It’s not a persona. I don’t reveal everything because I only choose to share certain aspects of my life and who I am, and I don’t have to, either. I am not braver on line than I am in person; if anything, I tolerate more bullshit on line than I ever would in person. ↩︎
  2. How awful for me to empathize with all the people going bankrupt paying for health insurance coverage that doesn’t cover anything! How fucking dare me! That man’s life was sacred. ↩︎

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. ↩︎

Help Me

Wednesday Pay-the-Bills day, and feel good this morning as I swill my first cup of coffee. I have to run errands again tonight when I get off work; so even if I can’t come straight home, I’ll still get home early enough to hopefully finish Priority Project One tonight and get some good rest. The weekend looms large as it draws ever nearer, and I’m kind of looking forward to getting back to work on writing fiction this weekend. I have another box of books to take to the library sale, and I may even start working on the storage attic. I had a goal this year of cleaning that out completely, and I never even got started on it. But the year isn’t quite over yet, either, is it? There’s still time!

I wasn’t sure how yesterday was going to go when I was writing my post yesterday morning, but Tuesday actually turned out to be not just an okay day, but actually a very good day. I got all my work caught up at the office, and had a pretty good day there (I’m so lucky I enjoy my job!). I wasn’t tired when I left, So I drove uptown and picked up the mail, and worked quite a bit when I got home. I made a lot of progress on Priority Project One, and I should be able to finish that tonight. I even cleaned the house. I know, right? Who am I and WHAT have I done with Gregalicious? I don’t know, to be honest. But last night I felt marvelous, and I really felt great when I went to bed, sleepy, around ten. And I slept well, too, and so this morning I feel a bit groggy but good; nothing my coffee won’t take care of, at any rate.

Christmas is a week from today, too. Yikes! I’m not going to say this year has flown by–January 2024 seems like it happened during the Pleistocene Era–but I kind of feel like I didn’t really accomplish a lot of anything this year other than survival, you know? I don’t think I even completed a short story in 2024. I did start working on another Scotty book, which is something. But it was a fallow year for me, writing and publishing wise, and I need to do something about that in 2025 (if we don’t slide into a dystopian nightmare after January 20). I am pretty much healed from everything physical, and the personal blows of the last few years, well, it’s getting easier to live with those losses. Depression/malaise isn’t a constant anymore; it comes and goes now, and so I don’t think I am completely better yet–I know there are going to still be spells–but conserving my mental and creative energy by not letting either be stolen anymore.

If ABC’s capitulation wasn’t bad enough already, Disney capitulated to tyranny yesterday as well, removing a trans character from a kid’s show, and yeah–I’m done with Disney. Much as I want to see season two of Andor and other Star Wars content, I’ll be looking at dumping Disney and its affiliated brands going into the new year. I finally was able to find the list of all streaming services I was paying for, and found that there were quite a few I was paying for that I never use. I canceled all the extras (to the tune of about eighty dollars per month), so next year I am beginning fresh. The only thing I’m still hanging onto is ESPN, and that’s mostly for LSU sports. Hulu and Disney, on the other hand, can go fuck themselves with a razor-blade studded dildo. I’m really delighted to see how much of the country is going to drain into the sewer over the next four years. I am mostly concerned with mine and Paul’s survival ahead of anything else, quite frankly. I wish I could stockpile my medications before the Affordable Care Act is repealed, and of course the gutting of social security and Medicare will end any hopes I ever might have harbored of ever retiring. Yay!

And on that rather somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–stranger things and all that.

I’ll Try A Little Bit Harder

Well, it’s Tuesday and we survived Monday, did we not? I finally got all my work computer issues worked out yesterday (thank you, baby Jesus) so hurray for that and huzzah and thank heavens things are back to normal around the office and I could get my Admin work done–which was marvelous. I always feel so unsettled when I can’t function the way I usually do, and it felt weird yesterday morning to be using the borrower laptop again. Was Mercury in retrograde, or has it been? My work computer blew up on Thursday, Paul’s office building partially collapsed, and there’ve been other issues around over the course of the end of last week and the weekend. Heavy heaving sigh. Most were just annoying–like the work computer situation–and just had to be gotten through.

I was very tired when I got home last night but hung out with Sparky a bit and just had a bit of a relaxing evening. We watched more of The Diplomat, which is fantastic on every level–writing, acting, casting–and I went to bed a bit early. I did have some trouble falling asleep, though, and had one of those toss-and-turn nights. Getting through today is going to be a bit of a struggle for me, methinks; I am feeling a bit zoned-out this morning. I even worked on the Scotty a little bit yesterday, too, which felt like progress of a sort. I’m still a bit worried about my lack of desire to write anything, which isn’t a very good thing. I’m still getting ideas and thinking about writing all the time, scribbling notes in my journal and so forth, but when you’re not actually putting words down to make progress on fiction–any kind, really–always makes me feel like I’m not really writing. I was also realizing that 2024 was one of the few years since 2000 that I didn’t publish anything; not even a short story anywhere, nor did I write much of anything. On that scale, 2024 was an utter failure of a year, but I don’t want to be terribly hard on myself, either. 2023 was a very rough year, and 2024 was rough in dealing with all of the fallout from 2023’s happenings.

And it’s not like I’m not old. (No need to rush to assure me that “no, Gregalicious, you’re not old! You’re only as old as you feel!” Well, there are days when I feel like I’m a hundred, okay? Sixty-three is fairly old; only two years left to go before what used to be retirement age, until the Republicans decided that was too young to not work anymore.) My body creaks and groans, it’s harder to get out of bed in the morning (although it was never easy for me, ever), and I tire a lot easier than I used to. And every time I look in the mirror, I see an old man–and yes, I am aware that my own issues with myself probably make me see myself in said mirror as a lot older than I think I am; I forget that I’m in my sixties until the morning mirror reminds me. It is a grim way to start the day every morning.

Ah, there’s the morning kick from the caffeine and sugar from my morning coffee cake slice (one of the few sweet treats I allow myself). Hopefully it will be enough to see me through this entire day. I don’t think we’re going to be busy in the clinic today, so I can get caught up on paperwork that I couldn’t get to yesterday due to the work laptop kerfuffle, and I had some trouble getting it to work on some of my paperwork duties, so I am going to have to see if I can get that worked out for this morning. Yay!

The rest of the week stretches endless before me, but tomorrow is pay day, next week is Christmas (Jesus H. Christ!), and I have a lot of things I need to be getting done. But it will be nice to have two days off in the middle of the week next week. We’re going to go see Babygirl on Christmas, which will be nice. I’m thinking about getting us a pizza from That’s Amore out in Metairie for the holiday (and so I won’t have to cook anything and make any mess in the kitchen); Paul mentioned last night that he was sorry the one on St. Charles closed during the shutdown…which got a “um, it’s not that long of a drive out to Clearview Parkway” from me and I tucked that little nugget of information away. I can get up on the morning of Christmas Eve, order the pizza, and then drive out there to pick it up before Paul even wakes up.

That would be a nice Christmas surprise, wouldn’t it?

And on that note I have to get my day going. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

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.

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