I wasn’t sure I was going to write here today when I first got up; I overslept, for one, and then was thinking more along the lines of just getting under my blanket in my easy chair and spending the entire day reading and ignoring everything going on in the world outside my bubble–where I suspect I’ll be spending an awful lot of time either for the next four years…or for the rest of my life. It’s thirty degrees here at the moment, and now we’re apparently expecting anywhere from three to six inches of snow (!!!!!) over the next few days, including sleet. It could get really bad here with the snow and ice and cold, and now they are saying we might have to stay home for two to three days! There’s been no word from work, of course–so I will have to get up at six tomorrow morning anyway to find out if they’ve closed the office or not. I love my job I love my job I love my job.1
Yesterday was pretty unremarkable, really. I ran out to make groceries and while it was sunny and nice, whenever the wind blew it felt miserably cold, the kind that goes right through you to the bone. That’s the kind of cold we get here, a wet cold, and that’s why I hate the cold weather here so much (when I can’t just stay cozy and warm at home and underneath blankets); it feels so much colder than it actually gets here. I really do have to write a snow-day Scotty book, don’t I? We watched a terrible thriller called Project Power, primarily because it starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I love, and it was both set and filmed here. It was entertaining enough (as with anything filmed in New Orleans, the geography was hysterically funny–how does one ride a bike from the West Bank to uptown and then to Jazzland in New Orleans East?), but then we moved on to The Jetty, a crime drama about a cold case and a connection to a current one starring Jenna Coleman that is actually quite excellent, and examines age of consent v. maturity, which is stunningly well done. Highly recommended; we have one episode left which we will probably get to later on today and then we’ll start another.
I’ve pretty much blown off everything this weekend for the most part, and have little productivity to show for it, which means that today I need to try to get as caught up as possible before Paul gets up and comes down to join me in the living room this afternoon. I still need to write up my thoughts on Ode to Billy Joe, I have several things I need to be writing, and need to be done, so I think I won’t be turning on the television this morning or this afternoon and instead parking in either my chair to read or at my desk to be writing. When I finish this I am going to go read, and then most likely to shower and get back to work here at my desk,
I was very pleased to see that Jayden Daniels and the Commanders (sounds like a 60’s vocal band, doesn’t it?) won their playoff game (my condolences, Detroit Lions fans) and what a mark he’s making in the NFL! I told Paul yesterday, “ten years ago if someone would have told us that two of the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time would be LSU graduates and Heisman Trophy winners, we would have laughed in their face.” It’s true. During the Les Miles era the LSU offense often sputtered and misfired, with talent being wasted on both sides of the ball; the defense was great but the offense could never be depended upon. Since Joe Burrow arrived in 2018, that has changed completely and flip-flopped; now we have a defense we can’t count on, but an impressive offense. I think LSU is going to be very good next year, and might be one of the few bright spots of the year in this household, for sure.
I am really enjoying Farrah Rochon’s Bemused, which will be fun to write about when I finish reading. I think Hercules is one of the more underrated Disney animated films, and my favorite part of the movie was the muses (and I live in the neighborhood of the muses, too)–so this book is absolutely perfect for me. I always loved ancient Greece when I was a child, and was an even bigger fan of the mythology. (Funny how it’s always Greek myths rather than the Roman versions, even as we call him Hercules–which is the Latin; in the Greek it’s Heracles.) I’ve also always wanted to write about a Greek myth, revised and updated and modernized, or even not; I’ve always wanted to tell the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Cassandra on the walls of Troy as her city burned. I love Madeline Miller’s reinterpretation of myth in The Song of Achilles and Circe, but she does it so well I can’t imagine being anything other than a very pale carbon imitation. (Does anyone remember carbon paper? Is it even used or made anymore?)
But if I don’t buckle down and start writing, I don’t know that I can actually go ahead and call myself a writer anymore.
And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the living room with Bemused. Have a lovely Martin Luther King Jr holiday, everyone, and I’ll give a snow report update tomorrow morning, either from here on a remote day or from the office.
Okay, to be fair, I just checked my email and they will decide this afternoon whether we’ll be working “remotely” or not tomorrow. My apologies to upper management. ↩︎
Here we are on a cold Sunday morning and I hope everyone is doing as well as they can this morning. I went to bed early and slept well–I really do think adding another to the pile of blankets, and its additional weight, is making a difference. Today I have to do some reading and some writing, go to the gym and make groceries. I feel rested and awake this morning, so as I slurp down my coffee and wake up while Sparky wants my lap in the easy chair I have to admit I feel pretty good this morning. Maybe I shouldn’t let myself sleep so late on Saturdays? I don’t know, but the coffee is hitting the spot and I do feel more rested than I did yesterday, so your guess is as good as mine. It’s kind of gray outside this morning, and it’s forty degrees–yikes–but it’ll get warmer later once the sun is higher in the sky.
We watched LSU Gymnastics compete against three of the best teams in the country yesterday, and with half of their usual competitors out with an injury, they only came in second by three tenths of a point; and Haleigh Bryant can make that difference up all by herself, not to mention the other two powerhouses who sat this meet out–which bodes well for the rest of the season. It’s so cool knowing they are the defending national champions! We also watched some of the Australian Open last night, and I went to bed early. I also managed to get some chores done around here, and overall, it was a pretty good day. I don’t think I even went outside yesterday, to be honest–which is always a good day for me.
I spent some time yesterday morning with Ode to Billy Joe, and while Raucher is a very good writer, he doesn’t really know how to write for teenagers, I think. Just because the story is set in the early 1950s and people were more innocent (?) back then in theory, it’s almost like reading something from a past civilization, and in some ways it kind of is. Raucher tries very hard not to condescend to rural Southerners, but there is a touch of that “zoo animal” thing to the story, if that makes any sense? It doesn’t quite seem real, and Bobbie Lee, the female lead, seems so child-like it’s hard to believe she’s supposed to be fourteen, and “receiving callers”–did Southern girls still say that in the 1950’s? It’s like something from The Glass Menagerie, and I don’t know if that archaic social phrase was in use, if at all. But there’s definitely more depth to the book than there was to the movie, and I think I’m going to end up enjoying the book more than I did the movie–despite the beautiful presence of Robby Benson and his amazing blue eyes and surprisingly deep voice.
Thinking of Ode to Billy Joe being a historical now made me realize that my own 70s book is kind of an artifact of another time, too. Researching and remembering things from that time of my life is always a bit of a surprise; things that had been locked away in a corner of my brain coming back to the front of the memory banks. Television shows and commercials, the looming Bicentennial (which was, at the time, shockingly commercialized; although the Tricentennial–which I won’t make it to, but hopefully the country will–will be even worse), the gas shortages and economic fears, the ever-present threat of nuclear war and annihilation, the never-ending conflicts in the Middle East, and the massive clean-up of the country’s air, water and litter. Top Forty radio was a weird mishmash of all kinds of music, from the bubblegum of the Osmonds to the Rolling Stones, Queen, and the Who to horrible novelty songs that were incredibly popular and were overplayed to death to the point I never want to hear any of them ever again, and everyone watched American Bandstand on Saturdays to hear music and see the latest dance moves. I am really looking forward to writing it. I also have two short stories to complete sooner rather than later, and of course as always I have too much to do in too little time–but I can make it work.
I’ve also, since the election, been thinking about how to resist the new regime and the inherent hatreds, cruelties, and horrors that are coming with them. Our only hope as a country depends on the Republican-controlled Senate (well, Republicans plus the bootlicking traitor John Fetterman) actually standing up for the Constitution, and looking for a spine on the Right is as fruitless as a snipe hunt. I am not getting involved with the Democratic Party, because it feels like I’ve been throwing my time, money and energy on them while they just roll over and play dead since the 1990s; and nowadays seems to be no different. Here’s the thing about our system; the only difference between the two parties since World War II has primarily been on domestic and interior policy; the foreign policy has always been the same, and a lot of bad things have been done by our government in the name of “national security” and our endless thirst for oil. This changed a bit under the MAGA monarchy the last time around–turning our backs on traditional allies while cozying up to Russia, North Korea, and China (Ivanka needs her trademarks!). I also love how the MAGAts are so quick to whine and complain against the forever wars they fully supported, and does anyone else remember their toxic patriotism on the eves of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? How questioning the invasion decisions was basically treason and not supporting the military and pissing on the graves of the 9/11 dead? Because I sure the fuck do, and I also remember how the Right created cancel culture for the Dixie Chicks, as country music began to swing from being about the working class and resisting the rich? It’s also amusing to me that they complain about “forever wars” without remembering that the same people they are supporting today are the exact same people who lied to them and whipped them up into a disgusting “patriotic” frenzy?
I spent some time this weekend thinking about writing as activism, and that it used to be just that; my very existence and my career are made political by evangelicals and others of their ilk, and I had no say in that at all. Would I prefer to be left alone to live my life and make my own decisions without government interference? Absolutely. Is that ever going to happen? Not as long as trash and liars and false prophets continue to abuse the faith and the faithful for money, power, and control. How can anyone actually be a Christian and believe that the Prosperity Gospel of wolves in sheep’s clothing like Joel Osteen and other con artists of his ilk? Sinclair Lewis exposed all of this horror with Elmer Gantry, which is still as current as it was when first published in the early 20th century. Maybe Elmer Gantry, along with All the King’s Men, should be required reading in high school–but high schoolers won’t care anymore now than they did when I was one. (Also, back to the 1970s–there wasn’t an expectation that everyone would go to college, either. Only five kids from my graduating class went to college, I think, I could be off by one or two, out of forty-eight.) I’ve not thought of my writing as a way to make political statements–or at least I haven’t in a long time, at any rate, but someone pointed out to me several years ago (or longer, who knows anymore?) that my work was a lot more important than I’ve ever thought or believed; I did document what gay life was like in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina changed everything. I also documented life in New Orleans in general, before , during and after a hurricane. I’ve written about gay con artists and corrupt hateful politicians and the far right and evangelicals and race and homophobia and misogyny. I often explore something that I find interesting in my books so I can learn more about the topic I am writing about as well as process my own complicated feelings about sensitive subjects. I even wrote a throuple into the Scotty series long before that ever became a subject for conversation in the community. It’s weird to think that my first two novels were released before Lawrence overturned sodomy laws nationally. My sex-life was against the law until I was forty-two. Forty fucking two.
I was filling out the pre-production form for Hurricane Season Hustle Friday, and I went to Amazon to look at the page for Mississippi River Mischief to see if information I needed was there–it wasn’t–but I also noticed I have forty-seven reviews and an average ranking of four and a half stars, which was kind of a surprise, albeit a pleasant one. That meant that overall there had to be more five star reviews than any other kind, else the average wouldn’t be over four, you know? This was a very pleasant surprise, in all honesty; I never look at Amazon pages for my books and especially never at the reviews; likewise, I will never go wading in the fetid swamp that is Goodreads. Who needs that aggravation? But as I said, it was a pleasant surprise, one that almost tempted me to look at the others, but I resisted the urge. I am more emotionally stable now than I’ve ever been in my life before, but why borrow trouble? And sure, it could be another ego boost but it could also be a blow.
And the last thing I need right now is something to rock my already shaky foundations.
California continues to burn, and people continue to expose how dark and twisted their souls and psyches are. It’s beginning to sound like most of these fires were started as arson–which would definitely count as a terrorist attack on Los Angeles, in my opinion; if Luigi shooting that fucking piece of shit counts as terrorism, burning down billions of dollars of property and destroying people’s lives as well as killing some of them definitely is an act if terror. Please don’t be a dick about the fires on-line, people. I’ve lived through a different kind of “act of God” that basically destroyed my city and generational wealth with it. Angelenos are still in shock and are going to be for a long time. This is a serious trauma, and believe me when I say a lot of Angelenos are going to be medicated for years to come. I’m still not entirely sure I’ve gotten over Katrina, in all honesty. So, for God’s sake, show some empathy and compassion for their suffering. Playing the blame game or bringing politics into this is fucking bullshit, so can you not do that? There’s no place in this country that is safe from an unexpected natural disaster.
And trust me, when it happens to you–you will hate those people. I’ve never forgiven any of them, including Chicago Bears fans. I had hoped that disgusting child rapist Dennis Hastert would die in prison, but he remains proof that only the good die young. Henry Kissinger and Anita Bryant is more evidence of that as well.
So, think before you post or comment. I hate Florida and Texas and their politics, but I also worry about them and try to do what I can whenever a hurricane devastates them.
And if you’re feeling smug and judgy–I’m looking at you in particular, Louisiana MAGA racists, remember that when a hurricane comes crashing through your home town.
And on that note, I am going to my chair to read my book for a bit before I get to work. I worked on the book yesterday and it went very well; I am feeling good about writing again and think I am going to be able to hit my stride again sometime soon. Huzzah! Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again later at some point.
Let’s get to it, strike a pose there’s nothing to it VOGUE vogue vogue…
Sorry, couldn’t help myself there! Hard to believe how old that song is now, isn’t it? Still a bop, too.
It’s forty degrees outside this morning and it’s a biting cold today. I overslept this morning, not stirring out from underneath my comfortably warm pile of blankets; I also laundered the linens yesterday so they were clean so it was that marvelous snug, clean feeling beneath the blankets, and maybe, just maybe, it’s the weight that makes me sleep better, like how a weighted jacket will help keep a dog calm. Who knows? I have some things to do today, but this morning I am just going to drink my coffee and read for a bit before I get to work on chores and writing and some other things I need to get done. The kitchen/office isn’t nearly as messy as it can be, so won’t need much effort to get it together. There’s also LSU Gymnastics to watch today–some kind of quad meet with some of the top teams in the country–so that could be fun to watch, and I can also read during it, too. I read more into my new read, Herman Raucher’s Ode to Billy Joe, which reads well but sometimes seems inauthentic, but more on that later. We also started watching Disclaimer, which is exceptionally good, and what incredible performances from the cast! I am really curious to see how this all turns out, to be honest–and I may even want to read the book on which the show is based–because yes, I need more books on hand to read, but I’ve been good about buying books for the last two years and so splurging on another isn’t a terrible idea. (I’ve been trying to only buy non-fiction, if I buy anything. Caveat: I am still buying the books by writers I love to read when they release a new one–or an impressive debut or something. But I also don’t bulk buy anymore, either. My book budget has dramatically declined over the last two years while I try to get my spending and my overall finances back in order.)
I’m still doing my German lessons on Duolingo, and I am kind of pleased with not only how much is coming back to me (and it’s been decades), and how much I am retaining that’s new. I am hoping that doing a German lesson or two every day will also help me with my short term memory loss.
I had a lovely time dancing on Anita Bryant’s grave yesterday, how about you? I also blocked some people who dared to tell me I was a terrible person for celebrating her death; I don’t need your permission to feel, nor do I need your sanctimonious self-righteous judgment,1 nor do I need to either explain myself to you, nor do I give two fucks about what you think–so, yeah, bye bye bitch, it’ll be my great pleasure to never under any circumstances ever deal with or talk to you again. I’m too old for your nonsense, nor am I going to waste any of my time educating your stupid ass. Some gay on Threads posted about not understanding the vitriol toward Anita Bryant–who made “life difficult for a few people in the 1970’s.”2 How can anyone be so fucking stupid as to not draw the connecting line from Anita Bryant and her principle backer, Jerry Falwell, to his involvement with Ronald Reagan to the callous Republican response to HIV/AIDS. So, she is indirectly responsible for the deaths of everyone in this country from AIDS, not to mention all the kids who committed suicide because of her “christian love.” Yes, I am officially embracing my ‘grumpy old gay” persona, so watch yourselves. I am reclaiming my time, and if you ever say something stupid or ignorant or bigoted–whoooooosh, that’s the sound of you exiting through an airlock. Have fun trying to breathe in airless space, okay? (Just kidding, enjoy suffocating.)
Get back to me when you’ve acquired a soul.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday doing whatever you so choose, okay, Constant Reader? I may be back later, one never knows.
Tom Holland in Men’s Fitness.
I laughed really hard at one older gay writer who pulled out the old “I’ve forgiven Anita Bryant, and how you react to her death tells me more about you than it does about her.’ How he can breathe up there on his high horse of moral superiority, but then again I didn’t become famous for writing the stupidest episode of a popular television series, so CLEARLY he’s a better person than the rest of us! However will I go on, being judged by such an enormous talent? For the record, I turned on Stephen King after aftr decades of fandom, beginning with Carrie, for lauding The Chatelaine of Castle TERF and asking about her next book under a man’s name about a man when her most recent work was a transphobic hate crime. Donated all my copies of his books–including unread ones, stopped following him everywhere, and haven’t bought anything new of his in several years. I stopped reading STEPHEN KING; you think you mattered more to me than my favorite writer for forty fucking years? ↩︎
I am still shaking my head at the stupid ass (whose profile picture was of him flexing his muscles shirtless). Maybe fucking crack a book before opening your stupid mouth and making an ass of yourself publicly? ↩︎
Friday morning in the Lost Apartment. It’s going to rain all day today–including torrential flooding-type rains later on and that’s fine. It’s not as cold in the house this morning as I was expecting it to be (thank you, H-VAC system), but I also didn’t get up ridiculously early this morning, either. Sparky let me sleep late, bless his little heart, and I feel very rested and relaxed this morning. Ah, it’s sixty outside right now; that explains the lack of chill in the air. I’d thought it was going to stay cold, but the rain is giving us some respite and it will drop into the forties later–after the rain stops. I have some errands to run today–including the gym later–and I don’t have to work at home for terribly long today. Yay! I am hoping for a productive day. I wasn’t as tired as I thought I might be when I got off work yesterday, and despite the cold was able to come home and get some good work done on the book. Huzzah! I am starting to feel better about my abilities again–the writing I’ve been doing lately has been rather satisfying, and I don’t hate what I am writing. Progress?
Someone posted on-line yesterday–I wish I could remember who it was–that President Carter’s funeral was very hard to watch because “it also felt like a funeral for the United States1“, which was very aptly put. President Carter–a truly good and decent and caring human being, the acme of a true Christian with a very real faith–being laid to rest does seem to end the time of decency and kindness, and all we have to look forward to is the dismantling of our rights, the end of the rule of law, and the looting of the entire country to make billionaires even richer as the world burns as a result of their bottomless greed; the world is on fire already, thanks to those monsters. I keep hoping for a French-style Revolution, complete with tumbrils and guillotines, but it’s probably already too late for the world. I’m probably not the only person who is feeling a bit of existential dread about 1/20 this month? But I continue to monitor my news intake, and ignoring the legacy media has been marvelous. I am not willing to give up my own sanity to give them clicks and ratings this time around, and I need to save my energy and my mental capacity to fight the stuff that really matters. Everyone always forgets he likes to say insanely stupid things for the sake of outrage and attention, while diverting everyone’s attention from what his foul party is actually doing. Of course, knowing the Supreme Court has given him the authority to do anything he pleases, even violate the Constitution at will, is terrifying. How bad are things going to get here? I no longer have faith in the basic overall decency of other Americans; these are the same types of people who cheered the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of a dictator/emperor.
Freedom is often too much responsibility for people, seriously. Most prefer to be told what to do, rather than think and reason things out for themselves. I grew up in a country that valued education and science; the war on poverty declared by LBJ in the 1960s pushed for adult literacy and for everyone to get their high school diploma, which was sold as the key to a prosperous life. We also lined up as a nation to get every new vaccination that came along in an effort to end deadly disease outbreaks. There was more of a “we’re in this together so let’s work together” mentality, that started going away under the twisted, paranoid and criminal mind of Richard Nixon. (The unconstitutional tend toward fascism has always been there in that party–Red or Lavender Scare, anyone?) I still cling to that childhood memory of a nation that was trying to do better by its citizens for the betterment of all, but it’s one of the many myths I was raised to believe in as a child. It probably wasn’t as true then as I think it was; the 60s were a very turbulent and violent time. My childish brain wasn’t developed enough to cope with a lot of the cognitive dissonance my early miseducation into American mythology created, but as I got older I began to understand “if this is true, then this must be true, and if that is true than this is very wrong.” The only thing I am intolerant of is intolerance, which was also troubling until I read about the paradox of tolerance.
Well I have high hopes for this weekend, and I hope everyone has a lovely weekend too–in whatever way you want. The horror in Los Angeles continues unabated, as does the horror of the heartless smug trash who hate California. I do not hate California, for the record. I lived there for eight years, and while that might not have been the best years of my life by a long shot, that wasn’t California’s fault. California is majestic and beautiful; there’s no more scenic highway than Highway One up the coast from LA through Big Sur to San Francisco. The natural parks and the mountains are gorgeous. The major cities are all so vastly different from each other they might as well be in different states. The last time I was in California was for San Diego Bouchercon, and I had a lovely time. I used to do events in West Hollywood and San Francisco when A Different Light bookstores were still open. I wouldn’t mind living in California, if I could afford it; I’d certainly feel a lot safer there than I would in most of the country.
Anita Bryant is dead, and here’s hoping it was slow and excruciatingly painful. There will be a newsletter about her death, what she did, and why I will not shed a tear for her or her loved ones. There’s nothing like seeing a celebrity on television when you’re a teenager telling you you’re a pervert and a pedophile and a deviant. Back at you, bitch, tenfold. Hope you’re enjoying your backstroke in the lake of eternal fire in hell for all eternity. There will never be forgiveness in my heart for you.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I hope to be back at some point with something else later on today, whether it’s an essay for my newsletter or another post here; we’ll just have to see.
They actually said “america”, but we are NOT America; America is the entire continent, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and this default is an insult to every other other person born and raised on this giant land mass. Chileans and Canadians and Ecuadorians are just as much America as we are. We need to stop doing this. ↩︎
Woke up to a new year! How exciting….although it doesn’t feel any different than yesterday, other than I don’t have to go into the office today, which is awesome. And of course, as soon as I signed into social media, I saw DM’s and posts asking me if Paul and I were “okay”, which was puzzling, so I went to NOLA.com and I guess there was a terrorist that attacked Bourbon Street last night, driving his truck into the crowd and shooting at police officers? I just saw where the attack occurred–Bourbon and Canal intersection–because I was wondering how that was possible since all the blocks are blocked off to traffic all night, so I knew it had to be an intersection on Bourbon Street, as those are only places on Bourbon you can have a car, or drive. How terrible–and I bet they lock the whole city down for the Super Bowl; shades of the 2002 Super Bowl here after 9/11–when I was coming home from training a client and was stopped at Poydras Street so the military (complete with tanks) could parade from the river to the Superdome in an act of theater designed, no doubt, to make us feel safer; it had the opposite effect on me. It just made me think about how I missed the days where we couldn’t imagine something like that happening.
Yeesh, indeed.
My New Year’s entries are generally about my goals for the new year, and I always explain why I have goals instead of resolutions–everyone inevitably breaks their resolutions, so I’ve never felt they were as important as setting goals for the new year. I don’t always achieve those goals, but they have been enormously helpful in the past and it really feels like I’ve done something when I accomplish one of the goals, or the goal makes positive change in my life, which is always very pleasant. One goal is to continue not participating in the legacy media, by never clicking or putting eyes on their broadcasts or articles. I will never subscribe to the Times or the Post ever again, and I do feel this goal is one that can be set and is completely attainable.
Another goal is to not do any emotional labor for anyone or anything that isn’t Paul, Sparky, my dad, or myself. I’ve been pretty good about that throughout 2024, and it is definitely one of the better things I did this past year was close myself off to other people’s problems. I am going to continue to not attend mystery conferences and conventions this year, and one of those important goals is to not financially support places that allow rampant homophobia and then do nothing when things are reported to them. I’m certainly not taking shit from anyone ever again in this community, so my decision to stay away and not participate in the community anymore is probably for the best for all y’all, because I’m calling this shit out now whenever it happens and since most straight people prefer no conflict, my calling shit out and calling out people for trying to gloss over outright homophobia from now on isn’t going to be fun for people anyway. Heaven forbid the racists and sexists and homophobes be made to feel uncomfortable, but it’s okay for us to feel unwelcome, uncomfortable and unwanted. Maybe we can start calling them convocations instead of conferences and conventions, since keeping Klan attendees is more important than keeping the people they target. FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF. And racist Bouchercon attendees? Feel free to go be racist on Bourbon Street at one in the morning and see how that ends for your skank ass. And for the record, hate is what leads to things like the attack on Bourbon Street last night, so by all means let’s keep encouraging that kind of behavior by glossing it over and acting like it’s not a big deal and it’s just “free speech” until someone is killed. American hatred, I swear, is like kudzu.
The most important goal for the year is to focus more on my writing career and give it the energy and the oxygen it’s always deserved but never got from me. I’ve always felt like I’ve always made my writing the lowest thing on my priority list, and that juggling between day job responsibilities, life responsibilities and the writing itself (let alone the promotion side of things) has always ended with me feeling like my writing isn’t a priority; part of the problem I have always had with saying no to people and to doing things is that fear and anxiety so controlled me and my actions for so long that I’d always end up making it the lowest priority–and “friends” who’d blithely dismiss my “well, I have a book due” with “you always get it done” aren’t really friends; any friends who’d want you to put aside one of the most important things in your life to do something for them aren’t really friends. Writing is what makes me happiest, and not writing always makes me miserable. Part of the depression of the last year or so was enhanced because I wasn’t writing–and whenever I tried, it was hard to get words down and they were terrible; I did some pretty terrible writing this year (as I am finding as I edit these first six chapters of the next Scotty; I did some work on that yesterday after work which was cool) and plan to do some more today, too. I need to get the ebook of Jackson Square Jazz edited and sent to the formatter–BIG priority, especially since it’s the twentieth anniversary of the trade paperback and its Lambda nomination (the hardcover came out the year before). I need to get my website finished, and I need to learn how to do promotion in the digital age, don’t I? Kind of sad that I’ve been doing this for twenty three years this January 20th, and still don’t know what I am doing. I also want to push myself more with my writing going forward, too. This Scotty is a tricky one, since I want the entire thing to take place between the arrival of a hurricane’s first bands and have the story finished before the final band passes and the storm is completely over.
I also need to be better organized going forward, and need to stay on top of things better. I need to file as I go and clean as I go–thanks again, McDonalds, for burning that into my head–and that includes cleaning out the attic and the storage space so I can stop paying for it. My memory is pretty much gone these days, so I need to be better about making lists and consulting them (they don’t do any good if you never look at them), as well as doing things when I get home and I am still in work-mode from being at the office. It doesn’t hurt to feed Sparky, file stuff, do dishes and so forth before writing or reading. I also need to be better about reading; if I read for an hour or so every day I’ll gradually get through that TBR pile for sure. I also need to be better about keeping house.
I know I say this every year but I am going to be healthier this year, and by that I mean taking better care of myself. After Mom died, I intended to be better about all this stuff, but I’d also injured myself so I couldn’t go to the gym either. And I did get some of it taken care of–I got hearing aids so I can hear better and finally spent the money to get my teeth fixed–and of course I needed about a full year to completely recover physically from the surgery. But if I stretch every morning when I get up, and if I go to the gym two or three times per week, and take walks on the days I don’t go to the gym–I’ll get healthier. Sounds easy, doesn’t it, but the reality is much harder to stay on track. I’ve also noticed in the last few weeks that I am not as groggy and tired as I was getting up so early for such a long time; I think I am finally adjusting to it, and I am not always tired when I get home from work, either.
All attainable and doable, I am pretty certain. So on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and get some things done around here so I can head over to the gym. I am going to read until it’s time to go to the gym. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again at some point.
Well, 2024 was a shit show of a year, wasn’t it? Then again, haven’t they all been pretty bad since 2015 and the golden escalator? It was, however, also a year with a lot of clarity for one Gregalicious; when I woke up to certain realities about life in general and started centering my own self in my life. So, for personal growth I’d say it was a good year; as for everything else in the world, maybe not so much. I didn’t publish anything in 2024; one of the few years since I started writing professionally where I actually had nothing–not even a short story–on my publications list. I did no volunteer work anywhere for anyone, and I just focused on my own recovery, my own self-discovery, and my own investigation into who I am and why I am who I am. It was a year in which I continued looking back, something that began in 2023 when Mom died, and came to a lot of realizations about myself and my history–and made peace with a lot of things that used to make me angry to remember and think about. I can reflect on some of those things now and not get angry. This was also my first full year on my anti-anxiety medication and the loss of anxiety from my life (and everything that branched out from the anxiety) has made such an amazing difference. It’s nice not having my anxiety controlling everything I do, and it’s also very interesting to see how many automatic coping mechanisms I had put into place to manage the anxiety, or at least keep it sort of controlled–especially when it comes to driving.
This was the year I turned against the legacy media, and frankly, I’ve not missed it in the least. I was worried about the election, not going to lie about that, but I also thought it was incredibly shitty they all decided to go with the “Biden is too old” narrative Trump and Fox were pushing on everyone, reporting it breathlessly like it was actually news while completely ignoring the fact that his opponent was a sun-downing narcissistic piece of shit. There have been two different sets of reporting on politics since the 1990s: the lies and demagoguery of Fox News, followed by the legacy media’s reporting on the lies Fox told like they were absolute facts. The positive glee with which the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC reported, rubbing their hands with excitement as they basically committed election interference for the Right yet again, shivving President Biden in the process; has anyone done a wellness check on that shit stain George Clooney yet? He’s managed to keep a low profile since he did Trump’s bidding for him. I do not miss legacy media, and hope they all circle the drain and fail. Maybe then, and only then, will we get the kind of media we deserve in this country and not the failing legacy media. The way they are slanting the Luigi Mangione story is also out-of-touch and offensive; why hasn’t the New York Times sent a reporter to a rust belt diner to see how those MAGA voters feel about Mangione? Oh, no, we don’t care about those viewpoints anymore. No, the legacy media thought they’d help MAGA return to power and then lead the resistance, like they thought they did in the first term. Newsflash: you didn’t.
Has there ever been a pundit class that believed the smoke they blew up their own asses like our current batch? Well, I am not watching them anymore. I follow some pundits on Youtube that I enjoy, but to be honest…I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, to tell you the truth, Constant Reader. I’ve always loved and cared about my country, even as I looked at it very clearly as more and more myths fell the older I got, but I also don’t feel like I need to follow the news everyday or participate in all of the partisan, pro-corporate, pro-rich let’s turn politics into a reality show bullshit. We deserve better.
As someone who witnessed Watergate and everything that followed, I bought into the mythology of journalistic integrity and the importance of truth; wasn’t that why his creators made Superman’s secret identity a journalist? I had planned on being a journalist myself when I went to college, and my intro class was all about integrity and honesty, which I also took as gospel for years, like a fool. Why did I ever think modern journalism had left the days of yellow journalism, of Hearst and Pulitzer, behind? My naive outlook, no doubt, and belief in American mythology. Journalistic integrity–which was beaten into our heads by every sitcom that decided to have one of the characters become a reporter for the school paper–was always for sale and never could be depended upon. So I happily bid adieu to thumb-on-the-scales journalism, and Constant Reader, I am never going back.
As for other things from 2024, let’s see. I fought with my health insurance company over a medication I need for seven months, thank you for that, bottom-feeding scum-sucking health insurance companies. This affected the rest of my care, and forced me to go even further into debt in the new year for medical treatments and so forth, and I am not entirely sure when exactly I will be able to recover from this financial distress. Yay for health insurance, and the entire health care industry. But at least it was straightened out, and the medication was approved through 2030. I also got some people at the insurance company in trouble. Too bad, so sad. Womp fucking womp, trash.
There was a lot of stress for me this past year, which was made even more interesting by the change in medications. My brain didn’t experience either stress or anxiety or even depression this year; my moods stayed fairly level all through the mess, but it definitely weighed on me subconsciously, just like delaying dealing with the holidays for a year didn’t really work the way I wanted other than pushing it back a year. Well done, dumb-shit. Ah, well.
What a strange, strange year it’s been.
And on that note, we’ll be hurtling into the abyss of 2025 at midnight. So, until tomorrow morning, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely lovely eve of the New Year, Constant Reader.
Sunday morning and it’s sunny outside. It rained off and on for most of the day yesterday, with marvelous thunderstorms bracketing the day. The sky is clear and blue and the sun is out, so I suspect we’re done with the storms. I slept well–and late–this morning, and I’ve already decided to let the day take its own course. I have some dishes to put away and laundry to fold, and I also need to run a couple of errands this morning. I do feel rested this morning, which is a good thing. There are only three days left in 2024, and while I would ordinarily think good riddance to 2024, I don’t have very high hopes about how 2025 is going to go for any of us. Louisiana continues to circle the drain, as our governor seems determined to destroy the state and impoverish everyone (but there won’t be any of the woke nonsense down here, you betcha!), and we all know Republicans can’t govern for shit–already proven from 2017-2021–and they are already fighting a nasty civil war between their Techbros and the MAGA base currently, which gives us a pretty good idea of how the next four years are going to go. Yay.
I really didn’t do much of anything yesterday, really. I rewatched a classic LSU football game–Paul was out with some friends–and went down a bunch of rabbit holes on Youtube doing research. Researching the 1970s is trippy for me, and being reminded of things I’d long forgotten about–products, commercials, movies, books, etc.–inevitably brings a bunch of other memories back with them; buying Hardy Boys books at the Zayre’s, riding my bike to the 7/11 to get milk and a comic book, walking to the bus stop at St. Dominic’s (and walking home from there after school), and reading in bed on the weekends with a bag of either Taco-flavored Doritos or Bar-B-Q Fritos. Research is research, after all, and opening my mind to recollections of my past–which was a very long time ago–is kind of weird, since I spent so much of my life never looking back. I may try to do some writing today–stranger things have happened, after all–but I am not placing any demands on myself this weekend. I have Wednesday off for New Year’s, which is weird, and will probably wind up having the play-offs on all day while I do other things. I still haven’t finished reading my book, either, and I really need to get back to that this week, if not today. It ain’t going to finish reading itself, you know.
And I can’t get deeper into the TBR pile without actually, you know, reading the books.
Memories are tricky things, actually, and one of the most important tricks our (writers on a grander scale, and people in general) brains play on us is how it colors the way we remember things. We not only remember how things were said and who said them, but we also remember how we felt at the time–and those feelings also color how we remember things. I am sure all people, once they’ve reached a certain age, are stunned at how differently our parents remember things from our childhood, and how little we actually did understand when we were younger. It’s also possible for those memories, colored so strongly by protective emotions, to change and become more embedded in our brains with our coloring firmly in place. One of the reasons I never bothered to re-examine disputes or disagreements with people from the part is because I know my memories may not be exact and are definitely have been rewritten in my head to make me the innocent victim, or merely confirmed that I am a terrible person. The first few decades of my life were very chaotic; one of the things I’ve tried to work very hard on as an adult the last few decades was to remove chaos–or agents of chaos–from my life. If you’ve either hurt or deeply offended me, I don’t want to waste any more of my time on you. I don’t want to argue with you, I don’t want to explain why you were hurtful because I shouldn’t have to.
If I have to explain to you how you’ve been hurtful you really aren’t worth my time.
Part of the problem with writing about the past and going from your own memories and experiences is that tendency to make one’s self into a hero even when you have not been very heroic. I’ve kind of always considered myself cowardly for not coming out sooner, for not facing up to who I am, and not getting it all worked out in my head long before I actually did. Wanting to capture that sense of having a dark secret that you so desperately want to share, wishing the world was different yet knowing that it isn’t and probably never will be, looking ahead at the rest of your life as it yawns before you as endless misery and self-denial and self-loathing isn’t exactly inspiring, and capturing all of this on the page from the perspective of a twelve-year-old about to start high school is going to be hard without making him seem self-pitying and kind of pathetic. My own self-loathing about who I was as a child is also kind of self-defeating; I need to forgive myself at some point for not being a good little straight boy because that was never who I was supposed to be. If anything, I should loathe the middle-class cookie cutter suburban existence everyone tried to force me into–a square peg into a round hole, as it were. I suppose writing The Summer of Lost Boys will force me to face those feelings and work through them by writing about a character similar to me but not really me, if that makes sense? I know writing Bury Me in Shadows helped me come to terms with my family’s history–and Southern history in a broader context; #shedeservedit helped me come to terms with my own high school experience, and so maybe, this is the last step to letting go of a lot of things over which I had no control that I’ve punished myself for most of my adult life.
Chaos is never fun, really. I’ve also always felt bad for people who chose chaos rather than cutting it out of your life. I don’t want to waste any more of my life doing emotional labor for undeserving people who are determined to hold onto being miserable rather than letting things go and living more positively–who wants all that negativity in their life? Why would anyone choose that? And yes, I am sure I am vastly over-simplifying here–many people are trapped in horrible jobs and horrible life situations over which they have very little, if any, control over their lives.
There are several books I want to write about my suburb, in all honesty–just as there are any number of Alabama and New Orleans and Kansas books I want to write…which is never going to happen as long as I continue to not write.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and go run my errands. Not sure what I am going to do for the day other than that, but I like having a day with no plans to do much of anything, frankly. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later or tomorrow before work! Thanks, as always, for stopping by this morning.
I actually had to turn the air conditioning on yesterday. Once the storm passed, the sun came out and the temperature climbed up into the seventies, so everything evaporated and thus the air was heavy with water and thick. When I turned the air conditioning on, it was almost seventy-seven degrees inside and yes, that’s a bit warm when it’s humid. It looks less sunny this morning, but it’s likely to be a nice day again. I have some errands to run today, in addition to a bunch of other things I’d like to get done–including writing–but we’ll see how that goes. I spent most of last night after work picking up and doing dishes and so forth; I have more of that to do today as well.
I spent a lot more time than I needed to yesterday laughing at the MAGA Civil War, provoked by the Techbros’ insistence that more H1B work visas were needed to bring in engineers and so forth to help the Techbros get even richer. The racist anti-immigrant branch of the MAGA coalition, which doesn’t want any immigration of any kind, flipped out in the person of troll Laura Loomer, whose presence at their foul lord and master’s side this past summer was deemed “problematic” and so she was banished…and she’s been spoiling for revenge ever since. (Loomer, if you’re unaware, is the MAGA version of the Manson girls.) She went apeshit apparently on Twitter over the holiday and now there’s a full-scale battle over this “betrayal” of the movement by Elmo and Vivek Ramaswamy1, who’s been getting another dose of “we want your vote but you’re still brown” from the movement he belongs to but whose rank-and-file only see him as a useful tool. I went deep into this wormhole last night, laughing and cackling and having the best time–even going so far as to watch MAGA videos about it (and destroying my Youtube algorithm for the foreseeable future) and laughing and laughing and laughing. Yes, who knows how this is going to play out (for me, this is the FAFO his supporters need and deserve; guess what, he doesn’t need your vote anymore so you no longer have any value to him, period) and of course, it hit me last night shortly before I went to bed that this MAGA civil war is actually a class war; the rich Techbros who want to get even richer and can’t understand why MAGA doesn’t understand that–this is their reward for their support, and they have money. Who do you think Shitler is going to listen to? He’s never cared about the working class, ever. You all were duped, and the entire country is going to pay the price for your bigotry and stupidity.
And I, for one, will never ever let you forget, ever. And I will be beating the cost of eggs into the ground at every opportunity in the next four years, so buckle up, buttercup.
I also love that Ramaswamy criticized American culture, too. His complaint about Americans celebrating “mediocrity” by idolizing the jock instead of the Math Olympiad champion made me actually laugh out loud, as it sounded like the plaintive whining of a nerd from high school who can’t get a date. And good luck with that. I hate to break it to you, Vivek, but a lot of athletes/jocks are actually smart, and how are they mediocre when they excel at something we as a society have always celebrated? It also made me wonder if Ramaswamy’s interest in politics is some kind of Revenge of the Nerds fantasy. He did have a point; we should celebrate intelligence and creativity and logical thinking–but MAGA is, if nothing else, an anti-intellectual movement, denying science for the most part–how does that work in his idea of our brave new world?
How does the cognitive dissonance of pushing for intelligence while at the same time participating in a movement that is, above all else, anti-intellectual?
Ah, it’s raining. More of a drizzle than a New Orleans gully-washer, but rain nevertheless. I think I may head over to make groceries early this morning–after I finish this and make a list–and run the other errands later. I am glad to get errands out of the way so all I need to do is write and read and relax around here. I slept super well last night again, and slept a little later this morning despite waking up the first time just before six. I feel rested and relaxed this morning, which is nice. Once I get cleaned up, I am sure I’ll feel even better. Yay! So, I am going to make groceries in a moment, and then run the other errands after putting the groceries away, and curl up with my edits and my book that I’m reading and that I hope to finish this weekend as well. This week is broken up by a holiday on Wednesday, which is kind of wild; I probably could have taken either Tuesday or Thursday off, but I am being a bit more jealous of my paid-time off this coming year. I am also thinking about my goals for this upcoming year. Sigh. At least this year I am in my right mind, sort of; last year I was still doing physical therapy and recovering from the surgery. That does seem like a million years ago, doesn’t it? (The rain just turned into a gully-washer, by the way.) So 2025 is going to start with one Gregalicious in better condition, at any rate.
And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and get cleaned up and hope that it stops raining before I leave to make groceries. Probably no such luck, right? I may be back later on today, one never can be entirely sure of these things, but if not, never fear: I will be back tomorrow morning with a report on today.
’til then, adieu.
The irony that the South African is on the less racist side this time has not escaped me, either. ↩︎
Work at home Friday! I didn’t have to go into the office today after all; the person I was covering for didn’t need me to cover for them after all, so I get to drink my own coffee and do some of my work-at-home chores in my pajamas–including my team meeting. Yay! Yesterday was a gray, rainy day, the kind that is also cold so you get that lovely cold dampness that goes right through you to the bone. I ran my errands on the way home, and I don’t have to leave the house at all today unless I so choose–and I am rather leaning towards choosing no definitively already. I woke up the remnants of a thunderstorm; everything outside my windows is wet and dripping. Yeah, definitely not leaving the house today if I don’t absolutely have to–I can run errands and make groceries tomorrow. I am going to do some chores this morning when I need a break from the computer–dishes, laundry, picking up, etc.–but thanks to the midweek weekend we enjoyed because of the holiday, I am not as far behind on housework as I usually am. Sparky let me sleep late this morning, and was a little cuddlebug before I did get up. It’s not even about getting more sleep anymore, it’s more along the lines of way too comfortable for me to get up. Paul was at the gym when I got home from doing some minor errands after work last night, and then after he came home he went upstairs to work for the evening, leaving me and Sparky to entertain ourselves downstairs, which is why I did some picking up and cleaning last night. Looking around this morning, I can honestly wonder why I didn’t do more last night. Hmmm.
I worked a bit on a Substack essay last night, too; the one I worked the most on is about outing and speculating about celebrity sexuality. Many of the essay drafts I have saved on Substack were triggered initially by something that happened in the world; this one “”Johnny Are You Queer?” was inspired by Shawn Mendes having to address all the rumors and speculation about his sexuality, and how that made me feel. It was the second time a celebrity had to do this recently, the other being Kit Conner from Heartstopper. Both instances made me look at the subject in an entirely new (and more empathetic) light, which was frighteningly staggering; I thought how could I ever speculate about a celebrity’s sexuality, when I personally know what it feels like to have people speculate about you that way–and I was never a good-looking hot young celebrity, either, which would be exponentially worse. This led me to how “outing” originally started; it was a political act of protest from a community that was dying and no one cared, and a way to strike at closet cases who were actively harming the queer community (remember anti-gay Aaron Schock and his Downtown Abbey congressional office? He’s now an A-Gay living on the party circuit, and much happier than when he was a closeted anti-gay politician. I’d say that worked out pretty well for him in the long run, wouldn’t you?). Outing eventually got out of control and more of a tabloid monster, far from its original intent, but I’m also thinking about privacy rights now a lot more than I ever did when I was younger–which I am trying to explore in more detail in the essay. I am also writing one about organized Christianity, but it keeps getting longer with more examples because cosplay Christians are always going to cosplay with their full chests while denying Christ with every breath they take.
I generally don’t pay too much attention to celebrity drama, mainly because I don’t care that much about celebrities; as I’ve gotten older, I care less about entertainment news and the celebrity gossip machine. I remember the Blake Lively thing from last summer when that movie was released, and how she was getting a lot of press for being, well, a difficult bitch on set. I did think it was strange–I generally can’t avoid celebrity gossip, despite trying very hard because it’s fucking everywhere–that if she was that awful, why were all her co-stars and everyone else involved with the movie backing her? Now, I’ve thought Justin Baldoni was hot since his days on Jane the Virgin, and I even bought his book about being a male feminist; because I’ve really been thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man, which is what the book is about. I’ve not read the book–I still might, just to see what it says; even if he’s a hypocrite, that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have a point about some things–but of course the story exploded everywhere again on Christmas Eve when Lively sued Baldoni, claiming he hired a PR team to destroy Lively’s reputation so her concerns about inappropriate behavior on set by Baldoni wouldn’t be taken seriously–and she has receipts. Celebrity fan culture in this country really is something, and it really is out of control; I don’t know why so many people think being a fan of an artist entitles them to know everything about that artist (see above paragraph about speculating about celebrity sexuality), not to mention the horrors of being a celebrity on social media. Yikes, indeed. All I will say is that Hollywood has always had fixers; the only difference is that now they are guns for hire rather than salaried studio employees. Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows explores the horrible world of Hollywood PR and what they cover up, and how they spin damage away from their client to someone else, even if that someone else’s life or career is destroyed by the spin. (Read Jordan’s book, seriously.) There’s a decent show on Prime starring Anna Paquin in which she plays a spin-doctor-for-hire, Flacks.
It’s also why no one can ever completely trust celebrity news; it’s literally the prime example of fake news.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader. I may be back later, one never knows. If not, though, I will definitely be back in the morning tomorrow.
Yea, he’s handsome and has an exceptional build, but Zac Efron is more talented than he gets credit for.
Who needs tomorrow? Well, it’s Christmas tomorrow, Mr. Seger, so I’d say we could all use a little Christmas this year, couldn’t we?
So it’s Christmas Eve in the Lost Apartment, and Sparky and I are the only things stirring. Paul is sound asleep, and I am going to let him sleep as long as he wants. I am going to order our pizza around twelve, I think, and I am going to go to the gym in a little bit first, methinks. I am going to take today and tomorrow off from anything other than light chores (unless I get a wild hair) and just read and relax and watch things on television and cuddle with Sparky. I can’t think of a better way to spend this holiday, can you? Sparky seems to have that same secret superpower of inducing sleep in us by simply cuddling up and going to sleep on or near either of us that Scooter had. I took two short naps this past weekend, and I blame that entirely on having Sparky sleeping on me–I never take naps! When I got home from work, he’d been cuddling with Paul off and on all day, and he spent the evening going back and forth between us. We finished The Day of the Jackal yesterday night, which was really fun
I was correct about yesterday being an easy day at the office. We were on a skeleton crew, most of the managers and supervisors were out, and thus I was able to focus and get a lot of my work done. It was marvelous. I was able to leave early, and when I got home I even figured out what short story to write for this queer anthology I’ve been invited to participate in, and I’m working on this other one for another anthology I’ve agreed to write for. I am going to take some characters from another project and write a short story about them…I think it’ll work, and then I can just plug the short story into the longer manuscript, which seems rather genius to me. I mean, why not make your work work for you? I’m a firm believer in that–even if I always worry about recycling plots. This morning I am going to clean the kitchen, drink my coffee, and read for a bit. I am intending to have a very relaxing two days off. Maybe I’ll do some work, maybe I won’t. I did finish my Substack essay on the blatant and horrific racism in the original edition of The Hardy Boys adventure The Mark on the Door, too.
The public theater of the Luigi Mangione trial–which is going to be reported on breathlessly by a media completely out of touch with their audience and will probably last throughout 2025, serving as a distraction for the people who cannot with the news from Washington anymore; Romans had their circuses to entertain the populace and keep them from rising; we have our modern media. What’s even odder to me is the disconnect between Luigi’s followers and the vastly smaller amount of law-and-order proponents (mostly in the media, for the record) castigating and moralizing about “condoning murder.” I have never been a fan of scolds or people who primly climb into their saddle atop their moral high horse and lecture everyone else about their moral failings. For the record, I do not respond to being lectured or scolded or condescended to very well–especially by people I do not know on the Internet. I don’t owe you space, I don’t owe you a platform, and you do not know me well enough to talk to me like you’re my mother. She’s dead, for one thing, and I didn’t even let her talk to me like that. You think you matter more to me than my mother? Arrogant much? Maybe have all the seats before coming at me as a fucking straight white woman of a certain age? I blocked two people on Facebook yesterday–one a priggish morally superior straight white woman who came onto my page determined to make the stupid faggot aware of her moral superiority; the other a gay man I’ve never met who did the same. I do my usual test of moral superiority with other strangers that I always do: hmm, what do I think you were doing during the HIV/AIDS crisis when gay men were dying by the thousands? And is you’re so law-and-order, that means you were probably being horrible about ACT UP and all the other in-your-face activism that needed to be done back then, some of which broke laws, which means you folded your arms and scolded rather than actually doing anything while people are dying.
Kind of like you are defending health insurance companies. You cannot be morally superior if you are defending the death panels. To me, that means you’d be a German who turned away during the holocaust and pretended it wasn’t happening, even though you lived in a village near a death camp and could smell it.
Also, slavery was legal in this country until 1865. So you would have supported that? Jim Crow was also the law, Ms. Black-and-White-Binary, and so were the eradication of the natives of this land and the Japanese internment camps in the 1940s and I could go on and on and on. Your lack of nuance is very telling.
And for the record, I never said I condoned or condemned the murder; all I’ve ever said is that I understood the mentality behind it because I have been there myself. I don’t share my own horror stories about health insurance–because all these people do is fold their arms and wrinkle their brows (think Susan Collins) and scold anyway. It’s also amazing to me that people will barge into one of your posts when they do not know you, do not know your situation, do not know your history, to smugly inform you how morally superior they are to you. With that fucking profile picture, bitch? Right before Christmas? Literally, go fuck yourself with barbed wire, skanky bitch, and take the morally superior gay man with you. It’s very easy to judge people (I’m doing it right now) without knowing the full story, but I also shouldn’t have to explain why I feel the way I do in order for other people to consider my opinions valid–that’s dehumanizing, and if you came running up to me at a conference or in a public space and started screaming at me (which is basically what you are doing, dear Ms. Morality), I wouldn’t stand for it, and I will not stand for it on-fucking-line. 1
For me, this case fascinates me, and what is even more fascinating is how this is being reported. There’s definitely been a slant to the coverage of the case, and there has been since it first happened. It was very shocking–a CEO being mowed down like a dog in the street on his way to an investors’ meeting–and very daring, very well-planned. It was, very much, intended as a political assassination; a protest against our incredibly broken health insurance industry. The fact that it was the CEO of United Healthcare immediately raised my eyebrows; they aren’t my insurer, but I work in a clinic for the under or uninsured and believe me, I have never heard a single person with United Healthcare who actually liked their insurance carrier. It’s always horror stories, and believe me, I’ve witnessed some myself. United Healthcare is garbage, it’s expensive, it has high deductibles, and they refuse coverage over 30% of the time.2Their clients have no recourse, either; none of us do when our health insurance companies deny coverage (a favorite of mine is the bait-and-switch; “we’ll cover all of this, no worries” only to find out later that “oh, no, you owe for this and this and this and this.” (That was my experience with my shoulder surgery last year.) I had a surgery that was, over all, about 95% completely covered by my insurance–but that 5% almost bankrupted me. So, miss me with your “sanctity of life” bullshit. Brian Thompson had no concerns about the sanctity of life of his clients, to the tune of billions of dollars of profit last year. I didn’t cry or feel bad when Reagan or Kissinger or Limbaugh died; I won’t feel bad when Anita Bryant or Maggie Gallagher or Donald Wildmon dies. The media also tried to paint Thompson as a “family man”–not that he was estranged from his wife and kids–and couldn’t find any on-line pictures of the family, which is kind of telling. Who doesn’t have at least one family picture on-line?
No one deserves to be murdered in cold blood, but our system is so corrupted and rotten to the core that most people feel helpless in the face of it–that’s the real story no one is reporting in this case, which is also very telling about the news media, how they report stories, and the narratives they try to shape–and feel like they need to step up for the good of everyone. (They were the ones who convicted the Menendez Brothers, after all.) Rather than think pieces and editorials about how “horrible it is that people are cheering for a murderer”–why isn’t anyone exploring or reporting or even considering why people are cheering for a murderer? Everyone was rooting for him before anyone knew what he looked like, and the fact that he turned out to be attractive? Made it a much harder sell for the media, so of course they ran with that–people only support him because he’s attractive, which again, is one-dimensional and offensive to the core. Ever since I walked away from legacy media last July, it’s so much easier to see the narratives and the spins they go for–both sides, really. MSNBC’s breathless reporting, along with their butt-buddy CNN, on the narrative from Fix and OANN and Trump that Biden was senile and dying ensured a Trump election, and I said it at the time and that’s why I walked away from it. The great irony that I agree with the right that it’s all “fake news” has not escaped me. They were right, but only half-right; they think Fox is honest, and they aren’t. The copaganda perp walk? How much money and how many resources did the NYPD waste on their “manhunt,” which accomplished nothing because he was caught by a tip called in? So, that was absolutely copaganda: see how seriously we are taking this, oligarchs? Keep approving our massive budgets which are a waste of money and time. Um, you didn’t fucking catch him, and it’s interesting that the NYPD will mobilize for a rich man’s murder and divert everything to catching the killer, while crimes go unsolved and uncared about on the daily in New York City.
We should be talking about about the health care insurance scandal in this country, and talking about how to fill loopholes and make insurers pay claims, rather than “you only support him because he’s hot.” I’m fucking sixty-three years old. Just because someone is hot doesn’t mean I either like them, support them, or want to fuck them (Zachary Levi? Mark Wahlberg? Nick Bosa?). So stop fucking condescending to me.
And don’t come on my social media scolding me. It won’t end well for you.
And on that note, I am going to get into the holiday spirit by going to my easy chair with Sparky and watching Auntie Mame, my favorite Christmas movie.
The difference between me and so many people is I am exactly who I am on line. It’s not a persona. I don’t reveal everything because I only choose to share certain aspects of my life and who I am, and I don’t have to, either. I am not braver on line than I am in person; if anything, I tolerate more bullshit on line than I ever would in person. ↩︎
How awful for me to empathize with all the people going bankrupt paying for health insurance coverage that doesn’t cover anything! How fucking dare me! That man’s life was sacred.↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 