Category: errands

I Do Love You

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wrong Ideas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’d Be a Legend in My Time

Thursday morning. I had a great day at the office yesterday, but running errands became challenging. It had to do with passwords, my debit card’s PIN code not working, and so I was only able to run one of my errands because getting it taken care of required ridiculous amounts of Kafka-esque insanity, that began because of one of my email accounts passwords stopping working yesterday afternoon, which started a snowball effect that started dominoes falling. But it finally worked out, I came home exhausted from frustration, but managed to get a lot of work done last night before a lovely night’s sleep. we also watched another episode of The Diplomat (adding Allison Janney to the cast? BRILLIANT). I got the best night’s sleep too–probably the exhaustion from the stress of dealing with this insanity of passwords and PIN code trauma last night. But today should be a good day. I have to do a reading for the Publishing Triangle tonight at six my time, and then I get to slide into the work-at-home day before the weekend, which will be spent focusing primarily on Scotty. I’ve also committed stories to two anthologies I have to get written at some point.

I can’t pretend that I’m not concerned about the future of my writing career, given the coming takeover of the country by the oligarchs. I’ve already been hatefully banned and gone after by the right many many years ago (over twenty, at this point), so what does the future hold for queer writers? At the very least, they are going to label any book with any queer content as pornography (like they did to me twenty-one years ago), and shadow ban them on bookseller sites, bookstores, and public libraries–if not outright banning. I think that’s the next big battle I’m going to have to dedicate my energy to; rather than being overwhelmed by the horror of what’s to come I am going to need to pick and choose which battles I can expend energy on.

And yes, I am making Paul and I my primary concern.

My boycotting of the legacy media continues, and as far as I am concerned, I will never go back to any of them. The way the legacy media–and the CEO’s–are bending the knee and groveling before their new, foul Lord and Master has been thoroughly disgusting. I don’t believe that our “checks and balances”–already turned into a joke the first time around–are going to hold. Now they’re admitting a recession is going to come because of their economic plans for the future–imagine being voted in because prices are too high and implementing policies that will make everything harder for the common folk.

Given this, I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised that The Advocate1 published a “think piece” by some poseur towing the corporate company line about the publicrtefm reaction to Luigi Mangione and the murder he allegedly committed a few weeks ago. It was so rote, so written-by-the-numbers, and therefore so predictable I would think the person who wrote it (whose name I won’t dignify by repeating) would have been embarrassed to put his name on it. If I’d been asked by my corporate oligarchs to write a piece misreading the room so thoroughly and completely, I would have complied, but would have demanded my name not be on it. What made it even more pathetic was its scolding tone, chiding his audience (theoretically, queer people) and shaming people for thinking Luigi is a hunk (or whatever the lame euphemism he used was), implying that the only reason anyone was supporting him (or whatever they are doing) is because he has pretty privilege. Does anyone else see the flaw in this argument? First of all, I don’t appreciatexz some corporate bootlicking piece of shit (hey, you’re going to sit in judgment on people, prepare to be fucking judged yourself) implying that all gay men think with their dicks. Sure, many do, and I am sure there are any number of gay men (and straight women) who would be more than happy to let him have their way with them (sadly, it wouldn’t be much fun for him, giving his spine situation), and maybe that has colored their reaction in some ways…but I was on #teamshooter before we knew what he looked like, and most people were. He got a lot more attention because of his looks…but this whole thing has not been about his looks, and never has been. In other words, The Advocate, congratulations on continuing to be the absolute worst.

That may very well be a subject for an essay over at Substack, and yes, I am well aware that I am very overdue for one. And on that note, I am heading into the office. Have a great Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again later.

  1. I’ve hated that joke of a publication for well over twenty years, and rather than abating, my contempt over the years has only deepened and grown as they get progressively worse. ↩︎

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.” ↩︎

Love Song

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet Magnolia Blossom

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bonaparte’s Retreat

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

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

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

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

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

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