Saturday morning and I slept late; Sparky didn’t seem to mind and let me stay in bed until hunger overtook him and he became insistent that I get up and feed him. I slept deeply and well, and today of course we are going to have really bad weather from about noon till six pm, with potential tornados, and we are also going to have high winds all day. I need to run get some things I forgot at the grocery store yesterday–so I will clearly need to get that done before noon, methinks. Yesterday was pleasant, I did my remote work, ran some errands, and did some chores around the house. I started reading Moonraker again (hesitant to call it a reread since I remember absolutely nothing about the book), and have some thoughts already about it (definitely written and published in the mid-1950s originally). We caught up on our shows, watched LSU Gymnastics, and watched the new Kate Hudson show on Netflix, Running Point, which we are really enjoying. It’s very well-cast and a lot more interesting than I expected it to be; I’m not interested in basketball, but I found myself enjoying it and even laughing out loud. I got my chores done yesterday, too. Woo-hoo!
I also spent most of yesterday in a rage about the latest Democratic betrayal of their voting base, led by Chuck Schumer (who needs to step aside for someone younger and more in touch) and nine other Democratic quislings who ended their careers yesterday by agreeing to let DOGE gut everything to keep the government open to “not cause pain”–although the fucking bill they signed off will most definitely cause pain to people who are never in a million years going to vote for this iteration of the Democratic Party. I actually went on-line after Schumer and The Asinine Nine pissed in all of our faces to change my voter registration from Democratic to independent. Not another dime to the Party, any of its election committees for the House or the Senate, or to anything other than an individual candidate1. I am sick to death of these “norms and institutional preservationists” who are not only not meeting the moment but actively working to make things so much worse for everyone and hoping we’ll forget this abject betrayal. And with all due respect, I would have never thought there would be a Senate leader of the party who’d make Harry Reid look like a fighter. Well done, Chuck Schumer, and fuck you from now to eternity. I will donate to your primary opponent, just as I will for the other nine Judases who betrayed their base but want our money and loyalty.
You can die in a fucking fire, Democratic Party, and congratulations about making this deeply unpopular bill your fucking mess. You bought it, you own it, fucking trash, and as long as I live I will never let you forget it.
And we’re here because the Chicks had more courage than you in 2003 to begin with.
But I also was thinking that maybe I shouldn’t talk about politics and our continued slide into full-bore authoritarianism (thanks again, Chuck! You’re as shitty as your wretched cousin Amy) because why contribute to the growing sense of dread and fear as the world burns? I have this bad habit of thinking I have nothing to add to any kind of discourse, and this is a holdover from my horrific college experiences–everything witty and wise has already been said before, and what do I know? I know enough to know I don’t know enough, but why does that make my opinions any less valid than someone else’s? Sure, I’ve not read all of the academic papers on crime fiction, politics, history, or queer literature. I also worry that my conclusions or discoveries about things I’m interested in aren’t terribly original and have already been stated many times before (and better) with someone more grounded in art and science and history. But that doesn’t mean what I think and feel and conclude isn’t valid. I’m always going to think I am under-read on any given subject, you know? And I also don’t read as quickly as I used to, either. But again, I need to stop NOT taking myself so lightly. And if I post something and someone has a different opinion, that doesn’t make mine invalid, either–and this is a growth experience, something I can use to expand my knowledge.
I also managed to finally make it past a particular level in my Duolingo German lessons. That particular challenge took me a week to finally complete, and I still got some things wrong. It was mostly typos and article gender agreement2 which was frustrating, but I finally defeated that level yesterday and conquered the next this morning, so maybe my German will get back on track.
And on that note, I am going to run to the store and pick up the things I need before the storms begin. Have a great Saturday and I will check back with you again later, okay?
But those individuals I’ve donated to–Fetterman, Synema, etc–turned around nd stabbed us all in the back as well. So maybe no more donations, period. ↩︎
Every noun in German is gendered, and there’s a version of “the” for every noun’s gender; male, female, it. ↩︎
Remote Friday, which used to be Work-from-Home Friday–they call them “remote days” at the office now, so I had to rename the blog entry to be correct, because I am nothing if not a stickler (as if). I was correct in assuming I would be brain frazzled when I got home from work (it was a good day, if busy, and I got a lot done. Even wilder, there wasn’t much back-up of traffic on the highway), so I recharged for a bit in my easy chair with Sparky, and reacquainted myself with what happened in the advancing collapse of the Weimar Republic while I turned my attention away, and wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the most recent Neville Chamberlain-like statesmanship from Democratic leadership. The party just needs to die at this point before it gets too ugly…for them. I believe when MAGA turns on the people they voted for it will be incredibly violent and deadly–which is going to be a true Reign of Terror, since the betrayal runs so deep. The failure, and potential death of the Democratic Party–thanks, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, for your utter failure of leadership–will be less ugly, but ugly just the same. It’ll save me some money, since I will no longer be donating to any politician or party going forward…and I certainly will not be doing any campaign work of any kind ever again, either. Right now, the list of donations for 2026 is looking like it will be entirely to primary opponents. Why on earth would I ever support people who aren’t going to fight for the country and the Constitution?
I managed to get chores done last night, as I wasn’t physically tired at all, but had no bandwidth for reading or writing–but instead of sitting in my chair all night, I got my ass up and started doing chores. I did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and washed everything in the sink and reloaded and ran it again. I picked stuff up and worked on the kitchen, too. I hate that my mind is so fried by Thursday, but this was also a busy-ass week and I was in clinic every day. I also slept very well last night, and Sparky wasn’t as insistent that I get up at six as he usually is. I also managed to pay my car registration on line, got the bills all paid, and now get to do some work-at-home duties before running some errands before settling in to read and write for the rest of the afternoon. LSU’s final gymnastics meet is tonight, at Auburn, so we’ll be watching that tonight, and we need to find something new to stream–but we also have this week’s Reacher and Abbott Elementary to watch, too. That’s tonight sorted, any way.
Tomorrow the weather is going to be ugly with some sort of super storm cell capable of producing powerful tornados. We don’t really have basements or interior rooms here, and the houses all have enormous windows, so yeah, tornados here are quite unpleasant. Yet another reason for me to get everything done outside of the house that needs to be done today, you know? I just need to get the mail and some groceries, nothing too terrible and relatively easy to get taken care of, which will be very nice. It also appears that the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade is cancelled, possibly postponed.
By checking the news for the weather, I also saw that today is the anniversary of one of the city’s darkest days in history–the lynching of eleven Italian-American immigrants in the city jail. The police chief had been murdered, and the (bigoted) view of New Orleanians that it was a Mafia or a local Italian crime gang, so when some of them were acquitted…the good white men of New Orleans (sarcasm) stormed the jail and lynched the prisoners. It created an international incident and almost led to war with Italy; to appease the Italian government, one of the things the US did (besides paying an enormous indemnity) was create Columbus Day–which is how that happened….funny that a holiday created to honor a genocidal maniac came about because of bigotry, racism, and murder. I wonder…is this the time period racists mean when they talk about how New Orleans “used to be safer”? Because that doesn’t sound too safe to me…maybe it was when Storyville was open? When the Axeman was killing people? I do want to write about the lynchings some time, but I don’t know how to turn that into a story or a book. Perhaps someday….
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back either later or not till tomorrow morning. I will see you then!
Here we are on a Thursday morning. Everyone is arriving in Denver for Left Coast Crime, but I don’t have any FOMO. Sure, there are people I would love to see and spend time with, and I always have fun at conferences, but…there are also other people there. I thought I would really miss not going to Bouchercon in Nashville last year, but…I didn’t. I’ve always been a FOMO person, scared that I was missing out on a good time, but I didn’t the entire time it was going on, or even after. And the local ones are next weekend, anyway.
I just saw that we are in the path of some massive storm system this weekend that’s going to throw up potential tornadoes in New Orleans, which means we may lose power, which will be incredibly annoying if it happens, but also means I can just light some candles and read in my easy chair. I do want to make some more reading progress this weekend in addition to everything else on the to-do list. We just can’t seem to catch a break down here this year, can we? Terrorism, blizzards, high winds, the Super Bowl, Carnival…sheesh. It’s like we can’t ever just breathe…and we are heading into stinging caterpillar season, with swarming termites not far behind.
We were busy at work yesterday again, with the end result that I was, as I suspected, exhausted when I got home from my post-work errands last night. I collapsed into my easy chair with a purring kitty and was down for the rest of the night. I caught up on my reality show, caught up on the latest news of the great American collapse (or whatever future historians will call the end of the Great American Experiment in Self-Rule), and then went to bed at a fairly early hour. I did run the dishwasher, as planned, but not the washing machine as planned. I am a bit fatigued today–synapses aren’t quite firing the way they should be–so I may not be able to write or read when I get home tonight. I guess we shall see. We’re also busy today, too. Sigh. It’s been a week at the office, has it not? But at least I only need to log four hours of remote work and then the day is mine.
Woo-hoo!
I was, naturally, saddened by the loss of a long-time friend this week, Felice Picano. It’s very strange to think I won’t ever see him again, or get that mischievous kid look on his face when he was about to say something absolutely terrible about someone to me. Felice was the first published writer I ever met. I went to a signing he did for the paperback release of Like People in History at the Borders in Minneapolis that used to be on the corner of Lake and Hennepin. Paul had bought me a hardcover copy as a gift the year before, and I’d loved the book. I was too shy and awestruck to do anything but put my book down for a signature…but when Paul went to work for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, they wanted to put together a queer panel and I suggested Felice for it, and I got to pick him up at the airport. That ride in from the airport was my first actual conversation with him, and the start of a friendship that lasted almost thirty years. We always tried to have coffee or lunch or something when he was in town for Saints & Sinners after that, I stayed in his house in the Hollywood Hills several times, and there was one amazing weekend when he gave me a lift to Palm Springs from LA, and oh, how hard we laughed in the car on the way there. I didn’t see or interact with him as much as I used to, but every time I saw him, it was like we’d just seen each other the day before. He meant a lot to me, and the fact that he always treated me as a peer from that first meeting at the airport on meant the world to me.
I just can’t believe I’ll never see him again. The worst thing about getting older is losing people.
And on that somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday Eve, everyone, and I’ll be back eventually.
Ballerinos have the most amazing bodies–and even more amazing is what they can DO with those bodies.
Wednesday pay-the-bills day has rolled around again (huzzah?). But we’re also halfway through the week and I am not exhausted yet, so that’s a plus? I slept very well last night, and the bed felt very comfortable this morning when Sparky and my alarm started trying to get me out from under my heavy blankets. Yesterday was a fairly good day. I finished the short story and sent it in, and now tonight hopefully I will be able to get back into writing the book again. St. Patrick’s Day is also this weekend, so I’ll be trapped at home because of the Irish Channel parade–traffic will be horrible, so I need to check the time and what day and the route and all that and plan my weekend around it.
There’s nothing more New Orleanian than planning around a parade, is there? Ah, the Crescent City life, right?
Paul got home late again last night, so after I worked on my story and did a few chores, I settled into my easy chair with Sparky for some bonding and to watch the news…which becomes more and more dystopian and insane every goddamned day. Now the government is illegally detaining and disappearing legal residents under the guise of “preventing anti-Semitism.” This is terrifying. This is one of the biggest violations of the First Amendment I’ve seen. If we have to listen to bigotry and prejudice and hatred all under the umbrella of ‘free speech,’ then everyone has to suck it up and hear speech they don’t like. It isn’t “free speech for me, but never for thee.” Everyone in this country, whether they are here legally or not, is entitled to the protections of our Constitution–which include due process. It always amazes me that people miss that part. (It’s the same kind of elitist “us v. them” that Christianity teaches them.)
And now we have someone using the highest office in the land to make car commercials in front of the White House. Talk about cheapening the dignity of the office! But the office was cheapened when he returned to it, wasn’t it? I will give him credit, as he’s accomplished several things no one thought possible in uniting Canada and Europe against us. What a lovely way to repay our allies, right? We’re going back to that horrible period between the world wars, where our economy crashes and the United States are isolated from the rest of the world….and how did that turn out for the world? SPOILER: Not well.
Sigh. I suppose we should be glad it wasn’t a McDonalds or KFC commercial.
I am so tired of living in this, the dumbest timeline of all. It’s been really amazing seeing how fragile our systems and institutions are, and how much people love to cosplay “patriotism” without understanding even the barest minimum of how to be a good citizen in this country. I’m tired of people complaining about paying their taxes but also bitching about how shitty the government is. Why are we so uneducated? Because the Right has always hated free public education and has been doing their damnedest to undermine and underfund it since its inception. The reason why societies always fail under conservatives/libertarians. Libertarians are all about the theory, but subscribing to a theory that is a fallacy will always end up with terrible outcomes. The fact that so many people don’t know how fucking tariffs work (and neither do the current administration) is a stinging indictment of public education–not to mention no longer requiring either a civics or government course. (My US Government course has proven so valuable to me over the years…like 2000, when I was one of the few people aware of what the Electoral College was and its role in elections.) But…an educated populace who knows how the government works and is capable of critical thinking would never vote conservative, so here we are. No Christian should ever vote conservative and show their face in church the following Sunday, but…
Sigh. A lot of people in our society love to cosplay at things they don’t understand.
I still haven’t started reading my next book, and I may try to dive into Moonraker tonight after I get home from my errands (Sparky needs treats!). We shall see.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later!
Yeah, Tom Cruise was most definitely NOT the embodiment of Reacher
I am sure the pathetic POS who cosplays the Village People now would say it’s a song about the joys of patriotic service to your country, when every gay of a certain age knows damned well the Navy a hotbed of, um, shall we say male camaraderie?1I mean, the first two lines of the song are:
Where can you find pleasure? Search the world for treasure?
Pleasure and treasure? Oh yes, totally about nothing but heterosexual manly man!
I don’t know why that shit pisses me off so much–oh, wait, yes I do; no matter what that piece of cosplaying trash says, there were gays in the Village People, they were named after Greenwich Village (a gayborhood in New York) and most of their songs were slyly told young gay men what joys awaited them if they knew the right places to be–and some of the song titles told them exactly where to go be free, gay and happy.
So, yeah, fuck off with your Trump worship, douchebag, and keep flogging forty year old songs for current relevance. Just remember everything he touches dies, okay?
Friday remote day for me, with a trip to Costco on the horizon after I complete my work chores this morning. I was a bit on the tired side when I got home from work yesterday, so I decided to take the evening off and relax, knowing the weekend was coming and I was feeling a lot better about writing and everything, so I know I am going to get back into that groove over the next three days. Huzzah! I do have some things that need to get done this weekend (including my taxes), and I am hoping that it’s going to be a very good weekend. I’d also like to try to make it to the gym a couple of times, but we’ll see how that goes. The weather should be a bit on the chilly side, but no rain or high winds or any of that apocalyptic kind of shit we’ve been having this year so far. What a trippy year down here–the terrorist attack, the blizzard, the Super Bowl, and then Carnival. We’ve barely had a chance to breathe, and I’ve been up to Alabama and back, and had jury duty, and was sick. Whew. It’s already been a year, hasn’t it? But once the Festivals have passed and my deadlines met, I can breathe a little easier. I don’t have to travel again until May, which is nice.
And I have some things to do around the house, as always. There’s a load of clothes in the dryer that need fluffing again and then folding, as well as a load of dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away, and of course, there’s always things to pick up and put away and organize. It really never ends, does it? I used to always think if I didn’t keep my apartment the way my mother used to keep her house, I was slovenly and should be thoroughly ashamed of myself (my mom would totally judge people by their housekeeping skills). I also need to accept, when I am thinking about things like that, that the house was Mom’s job for the last fifty years or so of her life. The house was always tidy when she worked at Western Electric in the city, but after we moved to Kansas when she was 33, she never had to leave the house to go to a job again. Mom also was very driven to be the best at whatever she did, so she kept her house immaculate at all times and taught herself to cook…and no one could cook like Mom (I know everyone thinks that about their mother, but mine really was. Kids in high school in Kansas loved coming to my house for dinner because Mom went to town. Everyone in the immediate family always deferred to her as the best cook in the family, and neither my sister nor I are pretty good in the kitchen). She also always made everything from scratch, too–pancakes, waffles…anything worth making was worth making from scratch for her. But keeping house isn’t my job, and looking at my apartment and hearing Mom’s voice in my head criticizing how bad at it I am is very self-defeating. If and when I am able to retire, yeah, you’ll be able to eat off the floors once I don’t have to go to work every day. I also have to write and edit and promote my books around my day job and cleaning house.
Be kinder to yourself, Gregalicious.
We watched another episode of The Madness last night, and it’s really exceptional. Colman Domingo is phenomenal in the lead role (I’ve not seen either of his Oscar nominated performances, but I’m perfectly happy with him winning an Emmy for this), and the way it keeps twisting and turning is really something. I don’t have any idea of how this is going to end, or where it’s going to go from here, but…we’re down to the last two episodes this weekend, and so we’ll be finishing it tonight or tomorrow. I do highly recommend it, if you’re interested. The base point of the story, where it all starts, is with Domingo’s character, a CNN reporter about to be given his own show, rents a cabin in the Poconos for a couple of weeks to work on a book he’s writing (and how lovely does that sound? Two weeks in the peace and quiet of the woods to just write? Sigh), only when he goes to ask a neighbor for help, he stumbles over two masked men who’ve murdered his neighbor and dismembered him…and are now after him, and he’s being framed for the murder. And oh, the neighbor was a notorious white supremacist…and that’s just how it starts.
And on that note, I am going to head to the spice mines for the day and get my work done. Have a great and happy Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later.
Thursday and my second–and last–day in the office this week. It always feels like the entire city is hungover after Mardi Gras ends, and we’re all just kind of going through the motions the entire week until it’s the weekend again, and we go back to what passes for normal down here–which is not the same as it is anywhere else. Don’t be a hater, dear, it’s what makes New Orleans special and why we all love it here so much. It was so different yesterday, you know? Hardly any traffic on the way to work, no traffic on the way home, there was lots of parking so I could park in front of the house, the slalom course on St. Charles was taken down…and reality again is intruding on New Orleans. I had a good day at the office, overall; got caught up on a lot of things, and kind of seamlessly slid back into the day job and reality.
I was pretty tired when I got home from work, but…I finished the draft of my story yesterday! Huzzah! I wrote almost three thousand new words! It’s been a hot minute since I was able to do that in one sitting, let alone when I was physically and mentally fatigued, but I did it, I pushed through and did it. I am going to let it rest for a day or two before I go over it one more time, make corrections and necessary edits, so I can get it delivered this weekend and cross that off my to-do list. The words were painful, like extracting a wisdom tooth without gas or painkillers, but I got them done and what I said yesterday was correct: when I finish writing, no matter how long what I’ve done is, always makes me feel fantastic and like I can conquer the world and do anything. I do love that feeling, and I don’t know why I don’t remember that and push myself to get that high every day.
Because you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are, and you have a bad habit of self-sabotage. You do this to yourselfALL THE TIME.
And you never learn, do you?
I really don’t. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing something over and over while hoping for a different result each time? And yet…here we are. But I slept really well last night, and had no problem getting up this morning. I feel good, you know? Rested and emotionally even, not dreading the day or anything. I have some things I need to get done today–some bills to pay, some plans to make, pick up the mail uptown after I get off work–and then tonight I am hoping to get back to work on my book. I’ve also been asked to to some writing about Scotty and queer sex workers in crime fiction; I know there have been some (I’ve certainly written some over the years) but in all honesty, I’d never really thought of Scotty himself as being a sex worker (or a former one), but…go-go boys might not actually be having sex with people for money, but they are definitely displaying their bodies for erotic effect to make money, so…yes, he is a sex worker. After I finished working on my story last night, I was thinking about this new way of actually looking at Scotty and it didn’t bother me in the least. I’ve never really been good about recognizing my own work as anything other than my own work that I am proud of, but Scotty…there’s really no other character like him in crime fiction, is there? Are there any other male protagonists of a mystery series with that kind of history? I’m not even aware of any other crime novels whose main character is a sex worker of any kind. So, maybe my little Scotty humorous series actually is unique and groundbreaking after all. Something to ponder, at any rate.
And if you’d like a really good belly laugh, some cybertrucks rolled in the Orpheus parade Monday night. Needless to say, it did not go well for them in a city that gave 82% of its vote to Kamala Harris. But then MAGA asswipes are nothing if they are not completely delusional.
And on that note, it’s time for me to get going on my day. Have a lovely Thursday, all, and let’s remain focused on our own joy and how to resist fascism, shall we?
Let’s shall.
Nathan York Nebraska Men’s Gymnastics vs Penn State
Orpheus Monday and we’re in that weird final gasp of parade season. Yesterday I had to think, several times, about what day it was. Carnival parade season is always a disruption to the time/space continuum, at least for me. I didn’t go to any parades yesterday, deciding not to really push my luck and energy reserves. I do miss being younger during Carnival, I have to admit. I took today off because I knew I’d need to run errands this morning, after being trapped at home all weekend since Friday afternoon. I have a lot of things to do this morning before I get on with the day–I’ve been pushing off unpleasant chores and tasks all weekend, and I really need to stop doing that. I hate when I get that way; avoidance never makes anything better, and thus the bandage needs to be torn off quickly and easily rather than pushing off another day. And it’s also very easy on Fat Tuesday to pull the celebratory feel out of the air and not do anything all day. I have to work on Wednesday and Thursday at the office, but then have my remote day and the weekend. March is going to be over before I know it and I have a lot I need to get done this month.
Politics and the state of the world aren’t helping much, to be honest with you. And the news that Homeland Security can now track queer people isn’t reassuring. It also hasn’t helped being sick most of last week–I still feel a little of it ongoing–and that hasn’t exactly had me leaping to get things done this past week, either. Yesterday I decided that it was better for me to rest rather than try to push to get things done, and this morning I do feel like that was a pretty wise decision, deadlines to the contrary. I definitely need to get into my email inbox today and trim that down, and I also have bills to pay and you know, all the usual horrible things that we all have to deal with on a daily basis in our lives, the little trivialities and minutiae that would be so lovely to pass off to an assistant if I had one, you know? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about–and I’ve started doing so many things that I haven’t finished that it’s actually kind of embarrassing to admit. I have a load of dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away, there’s a load of laundry in the dryer that needs to be folded and put away, I need to change the HVAC filter, etc etc etc. And that’s not even taking into consideration how messy and dirty my house is. Heavy heaving sigh.
And apparently the Carolinas are on fire? Were they not raking their forests? Or was it Jewish space lasers again? I am so sick (already) of living in the stupidest country on the planet. Wasn’t that disastrous White House “meeting” on Friday, in which our country abdicated its leadership of the world, enough to make everyone see what this insanity, this voting to punish people, leading with hatred and contempt for anyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male? And this administration is clearly showing why these people are so vested in white supremacy: they are proving once again how mediocre so many cishet white men are. JD Vance is a couch-fucking piece of shit who should not be a heart beat away from the presidency, and Mike Johnson is an apostate blasphemer who sees religion as a means of control–after all, all churches teach are obedience, not love and kindness and morality. If you need to go to church because you’re a shitty person the other six days of the week–well, maybe stop going to church and stop being a shitty person the rest of the week, since going to church isn’t working? I always love, too, how the “faithful” always demand obedience rather than morality, and how they are very quick to wonder how atheists can be moral without religion. Well, I wonder how you can be religious without being moral. See how that works? If you go to church twice on Sunday and once during the week for Bible study, and are still immoral…well, your religion isn’t working and you don’t really believe. Religion is about power and control to you.
How… Christ-like.
I do feel good this morning, and am not entirely sure how long that is going to last for me. It seems every morning feels like a good morning lately, and yet I still run out of steam at some point in the late morning/early afternoon. I guess it’s better than waking up feeling like something the cat dragged in before getting acclimated to my day and still being alive. But I definitely need to get back to work on cleaning out my email inbox, and I definitely need to be writing more than I currently am. I know how to finish my short story, but I need to get back to revising/editing/writing it again. My goal for today is to finish the first draft so I can work on it cleaning it all up by the end of the week.
I hate being behind.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Lundi Gras, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back again later or tomorrow.
Iris Saturday! And it looks like a beautiful day out there outside my windows. I also don’t feel sick this morning, which is also wonderful. After working yesterday I felt very sick and very tired, so I just decided to shut my brain off and just mindlessly drift through news clips on Youtube, as well as whatever my brain decided for me to look for (the temple destruction scene at the end of Samson and Delilah, for one example) as I finished laundering the sheets and went to bed. I slept great last night, too, and feel pretty good this morning. That’s awesome because it is, after all, IRIS SATURDAY! I probably won’t stay out for Tucks after Iris, but I am not missing my ladies! I also feel like I can get some things done around here today, too. I’ve been slacking on the house (and on, well, everything) for a while now–being sick didn’t help matters much–and so I should be getting it all under control today. I want to get some reading done, catch some beads, do some cleaning and some writing, while I’m at it.
I also watched a couple of 1970s movies last night while Paul worked (I got tired of the news; I can only watch American elected officials embarrass the country in front of the world so many times. What a fucking disgrace) and watched a Gene Hackman hard-boiled private eye movie (Night Moves) and a classic I’ve never seen (that no one ever talks about anymore either–The China Syndrome) and I enjoyed both. There’s really something different about the movies of the late 1960s and 1970s, a kind of gritty realism that showed the world as it was–dirty, graffitied, muted colors–that went away with movies in the 1980s, where everything was prettied up for the movies and departed from realism. It put me in mind of my Cynical 70s Film Festival that I did during the shutdown, and how so many movies were about paranoia and not trusting the government; which, after Vietnam, civil rights, and Watergate was very much a leftist thing. (Weird how that’s shifted–it’s the right that doesn’t trust the government anymore; that would be an interesting study, wouldn’t it? How that changed and shifted over the years? Another thing I hate about the right is that they’ve made the left defend the government rather than critiquing it.) Night Moves was okay–the mystery itself wasn’t terribly interesting but the thing that was interesting was Gene Hackman’s performance. The film was an excellent character study, even though we never really learned much about him. My primary takeaway from the film was that Gene Hackman would have made a great Travis McGee. Talk about missed opportunities. (Although it would also be a great role for Alan Ritchson…)
The China Syndrome was born out of the 1970’s paranoia about using nuclear reactors to create energy. After all the lies before, during and after Vietnam–not to mention Watergate–people weren’t really into trusting government reassurances, and weird things were happening with the nuclear power plants anyway (Karen Silkwood’s story would also be filmed, Silkwood, which was another one of those “paranoia/can’t trust the government or corporations” movies); they were building one fairly close to where we lived in Kansas–Wolf Creek, I think was the name–and there were protests about it (Kansas folks just saw as it as a place to work and no more thought into it than that) and I also remember in the classifieds in the Emporia Gazette some group always ran a little ad that said “NEVER FORGET KAREN SILKWOOD” so I already knew that story before the movie was made. Michael Douglas produced the movie, and of course Jane Fonda was in it–they were both very anti-nuclear energy; so of course it was seen as a “Hollywood liberals trying to scare people” film. But shortly after it was released, Three Mile Island (our almost Chernobyl) happened–and the movie became a huge hit. The movie ended positively–the news about the accidents at the plant in question gets out finally at the end1–which goes to show how hopeful these kinds of movies sometimes ended; when we all know the reporter and her cameraman, as well as the nuclear engineer played by Jack Lemmon, would have all either disappeared or been found dead under mysterious circumstances.
I really should watch an old movie when I’m too tired to write or read, rather than doomscrolling news clips on Youtube.
I’ve also been terribly remiss on my newsletter; I’ve started several that are in progress that I really should finish and share with the world–and should send out one before it’s time to do my review of The Bell in the Fog (Lev AC Rosen). I am trying not to overdo it–I mean, I pretty much write this every day so I don’t need to be sending out newsletters more than once a week; there’s only so much Greg people can take, after all. And I also expect you all to read my books and short stories, too. What can I say? I really enjoy writing.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and get to work around here. Have a lovely Iris Saturday, Constant Reader, and who knows? I may be back later.
Sorry-not sorry for not putting up a spoiler warning for a forty-six year old movie. ↩︎
Tuesday of Jury Duty and parades; Sunday’s parades are rolling tonight, which should make getting home tonight a lot of fun. Jury duty was painless, other than I sat there without being called up to the pool until all juries were seated and they let us go in the early afternoon. I then had to go to work because the slip they gave me was for only five hours, and I wasn’t up for using my paid time off to get to eight for the day, so…there I went. I mostly scrolled through my phone while reading Lev AC Rosen’s marvelous The Bell in the Fog, which I am really enjoying. I do have to report again today, and I hope that’s it for the week. They did say that the city was shutting down at 5 tonight until Ash Wednesday (yes, we do pretty much close the city down for the last week of parades, don’t you wish you lived here, too?), so I don’t think I’ll have to go back after today. But that’s fine. I’ll either go up for voir dire or be let go after the morning, so hopefully I’ll be able to spend time reading my book while waiting to be called or released and that will be the end of it. Sunday’s rained out parades are tonight, so I am going to want to be home well before four. (I did slalom by driving on St. Charles Avenue; they have barricades so no car can get up enough speed to really do a repeat of the New Year’s terrorist attack on Bourbon Street…and it’s kind of fun. Traffic will continue to be a nightmare until after it’s all over. I just need to make it through this week until Friday…
I managed to work on my story last night. I deleted the extra, unusable 900 words, which dropped it down to about a thousand, and am now at a little less than three. Good progress, and I should be able to get it finished tonight. I doubt I’ll go out to the parades tonight–getting up at six every morning certainly puts a damper on that–but I do want to get home before the true madness starts. I’ve been very lucky with parking so far–praise be to the Carnival gods–and I know that’s not going to last through the entire season before the car is permanently parked for about five days Friday morning. I am debating whether to take all of Lundi Gras off, or going in for a few hours and leaving early. The latter makes the most sense, after all; save that time jealously! I don’t want to run out again, and I am actually at the point where I’ve got a nice amount of both (sick and vacation) in my bank now. Woo-hoo! At least I don’t have to worry about the time off I need to use for parade season. That’s a lovely release.
The country continues to swirl around the toilet bowl more with each passing day. Yesterday we betrayed NATO and Ukraine at the United Nations, joining with the true axis of evil on this planet–Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.–and continue to lose whatever moral leadership and authority we ever had (not that we ever had much of anything on that score to begin with); we are becoming isolated, the way we were before and between the world wars…which turned out so well for the world in the end, didn’t it? What happened in Coeur de Lion, Idaho the other day was appalling and recorded for the entire world to see (another black eye for the country); the violent abuse of a woman simply because she was calling out the bullshit she was hearing, while white people (men and women) cheered and applauded and the moderator of the event taunted her from the stage on his microphone, making jokes? That is some seriously small-dick energy, really. It also resulted in the usual social media nonsense, with people on-line responding (especially white women) with the usual lack of self-awareness: “I would never allow that to happen in front of me without saying or doing something!” Newsflash: white people–both men and women– always turn their heads and look away, “not my problem” or “I am not putting myself at risk to intervene” and so on…until it actually affects them. Where was all this energy on November 5th? Where was it for George Floyd or Breonna Taylor? Where is it for trans people, being stripped of their rights every day? Where it it for queer people, ever? Where, after all, were all the Southern white people who were opposed to racism, Jim Crow, and lynchings that I always hear about now, but actually did nothing while it was actually happening?
Not my problem is always the response, but everyone marginalized (you know, the people so many straight white women like to lord it over) is supposed to immediately DO SOMETHING when it’s a straight white woman–and if you point out their blatant hypocrisy…you’re a misogynist. Straight white women LOVE to pull out their “oppression” card whenever a discussion isn’t going their way and they have no defense for the appalling things they say other than “you have male privilege.” Really? My sex life was a crime until 2003. Was yours for the first forty-two years of your life, ma’am? I couldn’t marry my partner until 2014. Did you have to wait until you were fifty-three before you could legally marry the love of your life? I watched all my friends die (twice over!) in the 1980s while most straight white women smiled dismissively and said “not my problem.” Some of the biggest public homophobes of my adult life were straight white women. I know as a cisgender male I do have privilege; I certainly have more than lesbians and trans people, for example. But I have always lived under the threat of violence as a gay man; and before I owned my identity I did not pass as straight.
And yes, gay men also get sexually assaulted–and usually with objects. Gay men also get beaten and attacked, even killed, by straight white men. Sometimes with straight white women cheering them on. You just don’t hear about it up there in your precious lily-white privilege tower because you don’t care. Often assaults on gay white men–just like assaults of straight white women–don’t get reported because the cops don’t care and blame the victims. You don’t care unless it’s a white woman…when white women made sure the ERA didn’t pass; white women got Black and brown men killed all the time; and the Daughters of the Confederacy weren’t exactly gay white men, were they? A Republican controlled US government laughed about AIDS killing gay men.
But do go on with your homophobia, dear.
We all need to do better. It’s very easy to see something appalling in an online video and be very upset at the failures of witnesses to act, and to say “I would never.” But ask yourself this, white people: have you ever seen a white someone being racist to a Black person and said nothing? Have you watched as homophobes come for queer people, in real life or on-line, and did nothing? Do you challenge racism, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia when you see it, or do you leave it alone? I know what the answer to that question is, by the way, and keyboard warriors who do nothing but talk big on-line sicken me to my core.
And for the record, I will always go on the offensive when some ignorant bitch of a white woman tells me I’m a misogynist when I am agreeing with her–especially when she tells me she’s done more for queer rights than me, using the condescending straight people “honey.” Literally, go fuck yourself with barbed wire, you homophobic bitch. Misogynist enough for you? (She also trotted out the “gay friends” defense–and when I pointed that out she then claimed “I never said they were friends”–oh, so you don’t have any friends but you’ve been to Pride a few times and even marched in a parade once! My God, let’s put up a statue of you in front of Stonewall! WHERE WOULD QUEER PEOPLE BE WITHOUT THE SACRIFICES OF STRAIGHT WHITE WOMEN? I guess I should be glad you didn’t go with the old pedophile/groomer shit, Miss Zero Followers. I screen capped the entire thing before blocking her flat bony unwashed ass.)
Coeur de Lion is now in the “find out” phase, and if we actually had a real government this would be investigated as a civil rights violation by the Department of Justice…but we don’t have a real government anymore. I always wondered what it felt like to be an abolitionist in the 1950s, when the government was geared to protect slavery in the land of the “free.” The company that employed the thugs that assaulted the woman has lost its business license, and it also looks like the grinning douchebag sheriff has been defrauding the LAPD pension fund–working another LE job while drawing a disability pension from another one–so I hope California throws the book at him.
This is what we are. This is what we have allowed our country to become. Even those of us who voted against this didn’t do enough to stop this—and it should have been stopped when it was the Tea Party. Remember those racists? The ones who didn’t want healthcare and the media dutifully reported on everything they said and pushed it breathlessly without ever calling out ONCE the clear and obvious racism? FOTUS climbed aboard the Tea Party train, remember? He started the birther bullshit and promoted it on every network who would let him because he was a “celebrity.”
But no, white people who patted themselves on the back for voting for Obama were very quick to stay home in the 2010 midterms because cleaning up the Bush mess was taking longer than everyone thought it should.
And God forbid everyone get health insurance. The HORROR!
We all own this, you know. Every last one of us white people. And we’re the ones who need to clean it all up–even though we know the fucking assholes we’re saving will knife us in the back again at the very first opportunity. They might regret their votes now–but they would do it again in a heartbeat. They prefer this to having a biracial woman in charge.
This is exactly what they wanted. And we should never let them forget. Letting them getting away with it was a mistake in 1865.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, and remember to do your part–even if it’s something you think small or inconsequential. Water wears away stone and the effects may not be immediate.
I also love to boogie–especially in the disco round, oh yeah, baby.
Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment after kind of a nice, slow and easy day around here. Paul stayed up late working so pretty much slept the entire day away again, and I myself got up late yesterday, too. I didn’t mind, even though I was a little perturbed that I got up so late. But I had a nice morning. I did some things I needed to do and cleaned and organized some more, and I got up pretty early this morning, too. I don’t know how motivated I feel today, but I am hopefully going to get some good writing work done this morning so I can spend the afternoon reading. Sounds like a winner to me. We did finish catching up with Reacher, Abbott Elementary, and Prime Target last night, too. Tomorrow I get to report to Criminal Court for jury duty in Mid-city, so I will be finding out what’s going on with that. I’m hoping to be dismissed before parade days start; I’d rather go to the office and leave early than try to get home at five from Criminal Court in Midcity, which would probably require taking I-10/90, getting off at Tchoupitoulas, and doubling back from there with no place to park. Ah, well, this too shall pass, and as a crime writer, it’s always interesting to see how criminal court–or courts in general–operate up close and personal.
It’s gray outside, and rain is expected, which should put a damper on any and all parades today. There are no night parades, so technically I could make a grocery run after King Arthur ends, but I doubt I’ll want to be out and about at that time anyway. I do have all kinds of things to do today–I want to spend the morning writing and the afternoon reading, if at all possible. It’s always so nice to curl up in my chair with a blanket and read while it’s raining, you know? I like feeling snug and cozy; which is why I am so particular about sleep arrangements. Want to know something weird about me? I sleep with four blankets, because that’s enough weight to make me feel snug and comfortable. I have a soft wool one on the bottom and one really velvety soft one on the top. I need two pillows, always, and also need the ceiling fan on and a little personal fan on my nightstand going. Weird? Just a little bit. But I think we all have things that we do, little rituals, that bring us comfort and joy. Just me? Probably. I always default to me not being normal, I suppose; the product of my youth. Thanks, bully trash!
I did work on an essay yesterday a bit, one called “Try That in a Small Town.” I started writing it when the Jason Aldean nonsense happened last summer, because that “real America” bullshit has always, always pissed me off; and essentially has always been used to demonize cities–you know, the economic engines that fucking drive the country–and reassure provincial types who stay in rural areas that they are more important than the city dwellers. This of course goes back to the lies that were always told to encourage immigration when white people felt the need to “fill the continent” with white people while exterminating the natives. You can be free, you can own land and property, you can prosper because the government will leave you alone to do as you please and not restrict your freedoms. No, the rich people needed more consumers, and they also needed population in the “empty” territories to produce and buy. The United States has always been expansionist; even the Founding Fathers assumed more states would be formed out of native land, after they were pushed out. Anyway, I actually lived in a very small town in a very rural county in an underpopulated state for five horrible years–and I will dispute to my dying breath this notion that small towns are the “real America” (fuck you again and again with razor wire, Sarah Palin)…because everyone acts like they’re like Mayberry when they are really Peyton Place–horribly judgmental with lots of cruel gossip and backstabbing, and the sexual perversions of these “good meat-and-potatoes Americans” not even Grace Metalious could have dreamed up–and Peyton Place was nothing more than a novelization of things she witnessed and experienced in a small town. It always infuriates me, you know, to hear this “real America” shit. Try to make it without Chicago, New York, LA, Boston, and San Francisco. The fucking economy would crater in about two seconds. But…cities are usually Democratic strongholds, so they must be demonized, always.
And there’s the rain! I knew it was coming. It’s just a drizzle but it’s enough for the gutter to drip water on the cat enclosure just outside my laundry room–and it’s only raining on that side of the house. This happens here a lot–it can be raining on one block but not the next; one part of the city can be getting a flooding rain while it’s sunny and bright in another–but I don’t remember the last time it only rained on the other side of the house. New Orleans, always so bizarre.
It also seems that the American people are getting fed up with what’s going on in Washington, and they are starting to push back. I’ve progressed beyond FAFO, to be honest1; the danger to the country’s future is that strong that the mocking and pointing fingers and laughing and atonement can come after the threat has been overcome. I think this is the kind of lesson we needed to learn; we’ve always taken our system for granted and always assumed the government was stable and would hold–forever smug about governments toppling and falling in other countries while we remained stable. The problem is that stability was only achieved through horrific compromises…and human rights should never, ever, under any circumstance, be left to public or government whim. The seeds of self-destruction were planted in the Constitution with the compromise on enslavement. Senators used to be appointed by state legislatures, not the people. BUT it was also designed to be a living document, changed and amended over time to clear up inconsistencies and always, always, intended to protect the people from government overreach. I also agree with something I saw on social media yesterday–every elected official should be required to have regular town halls to meet with their constituents, and they also need to remember they were voted in to work for their district, not the president. Separate but equal branches of government means nothing when elected officials in Congress abdicate their roles for whatever reason.
And really, what is MAGA but the modern Confederacy? Yes, they are also Nazis…but remember–the Germans learned about how to deal with undesirable sub-populations by studying enslavement and Jim Crow. There’s your heritage, rednecks. You were Hitler’s blueprint. And weren’t plantations simply concentration/work camps with a nicer name?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning (or night).
I’ve not, and never will, forgive MAGA voters, to be sure–just like I’ll never stop mentally dancing and pissing on Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s graves. But I can put that aside for now to overcome this threat. But there needs to be a reckoning–unlike after the Civil War and 1/6/20. ↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 