Category: LSU

Ooh Baby Baby

Sunday morning and it feels cold here in the workspace again. I slept later than I’d intended (getting up at my usual time for work is going to be horrific tomorrow), but we’re still getting back to normal around here. I drove uptown yesterday to get the mail, and most of the snow is gone (bits here and there that haven’t melted yet). I made groceries, too, but I was right about the store being picked over; no deliveries had been made yet, but I didn’t need to get much in the first place, which was great. I was still exhausted when I got back home, so I settled in and watched the US Figure Skating Championships with Paul before we moved on to season 2 of The Night Agent, which is fun enough (I remember loving the first season, but am not loving the second as much as the first. but the main character, played by Gabriel Basso, is very sexy). I didn’t write anything yesterday because I was so tired, and my brain was a bit too fried to read anything. My shoulder was also very sore, and it feels tight and uncomfortable this morning, so I might push today’s gym visit to either later on today or later in the week. I’ll probably try to read some more this morning, and I’ve pretty much zeroed in on She Who Was No More as my next read because it’s French, so completely different (most likely) than most crime novels, especially those of its time. And my next read, methinks, won’t be in the crime family; I have books by Celeste Ng, Jami Attenberg, Valerie Martin, and Ann Hood in the stack, so general fiction next rather than genre.

I also read this marvelous thread about Huckleberry Finn that reminded me that 1) I’ve never read it, and 2) I really should. I was never really interested in Mark Twain as a writer when I was growing up; we were force-fed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in junior high, and I absolutely hated that book; Tom was an asshole and thoroughly unlikable (I’ve always read books and watched film/TV with this perspective: would I like them in real life? I hated Tom, and the only character in the book I actually cared about was Huck, because he seemed decent–certainly more so than Tom, which was an interesting early lesson in how there’s no reward in life for virtue; Tom was acceptable to people as an orphan being raised by his aunt–whereas Huck was “trash”, despite his bad circumstances of having a criminal father and very poor and from the outside of “society.” The only thing I really took away from reading Tom Sawyer was that society, and it’s thoughts and opinions, were really stupid and required behaving towards people based on a caste system that did not tell whether someone was actually a good or bad person, and how wrong castes in a civilized society are–and really, how unAmerican society can actually be (I’ve always hated snobs, mainly because I am usually the one on the receiving end of their scorn)…which, fifty years later, can concede was a pretty good lesson. But I couldn’t get over how the teacher was trying to push Tom on us as a comic hero–which seemed to encourage that kind of behavior–and never liked Tom and have had no desire to revisit the book, and it also kept me from reading more Twain (we also had to read the jumping frog story, which I also hated) for well over a decade–and it’s why I also have never read Huckleberry Finn.1 When I did come back to Twain in my mid-twenties, I read the lesser known books–Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and the essay collection Life on the Mississippi2—but never got around to Huck; maybe because it was praised so highly? I should probably correct that this year, and I should probably finally read A Confederacy of Dunces, too. Sigh. I know, I know, I’ve never read the great American novel or the great New Orleans novel. Maybe this year.

The NFL conference championship games are today, and I only care because I’d really enjoy seeing Jayden Daniels go to the Super Bowl and make history as a rookie; one of the great pleasures of this past football season is seeing the Washington fans–and the NFL, really–fall in love with LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Eagles today or not, but hey, when was the last time the Commanders3 made it this far? I won’t watch another team in the play-offs–feels too much like cheating on the Saints–but I look forward to hearing the scores later on today.

I’m actually looking forward to going back to work this week, believe it or not. This unexpected weather-related week at home was a lovely and pleasant surprise, but at the same time I like having structure to my life. Yeah, it’s very easy to not be motivated when you’re at home and have things to do, but if it was a permanent condition I’d do better with it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Cleaning to do, coffee to drink, and lots of writing and reading to get caught up on, so I am going to bid you adieu this morning and…may be back later. One never can be sure, after all. Have a lovely Sunday!

  1. When books are overhyped to me, I end up being disappointed by them. ↩︎
  2. The essays are actually kind of brilliant. ↩︎
  3. I’m also really tired of the racist fans who won’t let go of the old team name. You lost, get over it. ↩︎

Do You Believe in Magic

Saturday morning and here we are in the Lost Apartment as New Orleans slowly shakes off it’s blizzard break and returns to what passes as normalcy around here. As I look outside this morning after sleeping really late this morning (I was tired, okay?), the snow is almost completely gone. Yesterday after work I did go to the gym, and we did go to Costco, so I was pretty worn out when that was all completed and didn’t get anything else much done once we got home. We got one of those pre-made Costco pizzas (they really are quite good) which made for an easy dinner, which we ate while watching LSU Gymnastics; they were off last night, alas–but were also missing some of their best athletes. We’d started watching Prime Target on Apple Plus (queer main character? Oh hell to the yes, thank you very much), which we are also enjoying, but…I don’t think we watched anything other than news clips after the meet ended and before we went to bed? I also did my usual Friday chores around here, too–yay, me. Today I need to write and I need to run some errands. I wanted to go make groceries today, but am thinking I may need to wait for a few more days, after the stores are able to take deliveries and restock their shelves; even Costco looked a little picked over yesterday–we still spent over four hundred, and I forgot to look at the price of eggs–and there wasn’t too much traffic, despite the highways and interstate still being closed. I am pretty sure the city is back to what passes for normal around here today. Its cold outside, but sunny and the sky is blue, so whatever bits of snow that are left from the blizzard (it still feels weird saying that, you know?) will most likely melt off today.

It’s been quite a year already, and it’s not even fucking February yet. 2024 seems like it was last century already. This weird past week, though, as I said the other day, was a much needed respite, a forced period of rest for a city still reeling from starting the year with a terrorist attack, with both the Super Bowl and Carnival still on the horizon. I feel like I also kind of needed it, myself–I feel a lot more rested than I did last weekend, of course, and I do think returning to the office on Monday is a nice return to my usual routine. I need to work on the book this weekend as well as some other writing projects that need doing, and of course there are always chores to be done. I did the bed linens and two loads of laundry yesterday, got the sink all cleared out, and finally was able to do some more cleaning around here, too. Tomorrow I’ll walk back over to the gym for another workout–my shoulder and arm are tight and sore a lot more these days, so I am taking it easy for another week before advancing the workout to the next step. I am getting some exercise in, I am burning calories, and so my physical goals should be much easier to achieve this year than in years past. I am feeling more centered than I have in years.

It was also delightful this morning to see that Madison Keys won the Australian Open; good on you, girl! The US even had a man in the semi-finals, too. I’ve not been as big a tennis fan lately as I used to be; the Williams sisters and Rafa retiring left a big gap, and I don’t know many of the players as well as I used to. I guess I’m kind of a homer when it comes to international sport…but it just seems like there’s not been any newer players coming along with the kind of charismatic star power the Williams sisters (and Rafa) had. I really don’t follow figure skating as much as I used to, either; Paul and I primarily focus on US ice dance, of all things; who knew that would gradually become our strongest discipline? We’d even forgotten that US Nationals were this weekend (congratulations to Amber Glenn for winning again), but now that we do know, we can actually watch this weekend (thank God for streaming, right?).

The world continues to burn to the ground all around us, and what else is there left to say? The surrender of everyone to MAGA, from corporations to celebrities to the press, the capitulation in advance, went exactly the way it did in Germany in the 1930s. That’s yet another reason why I think being a writer in these trying times means being an activist. My books, my stories, about queer life through a crime or horror lens, kind of are important in that regard, and as I get older and I become more and more progressive (yes, I am going the opposite direction of the trope that everyone becomes more conservative as they age; hey, don’t blame my generation for the fucking Boomers who sold out everything they believed in after college) I find myself dancing around things in my work. And yes, I do want MAGA voters to suffer, and am saving all my empathy and sympathy for the victims of MAGA voters. I have no sympathy for mediocrities who need the state to made them feel better about their snowflake loser selves, and laughed excitedly about how they were fucking us over. I’m supposed to not want them to suffer the consequences of their actions? People who enjoy the suffering of others and voted for inhumanity? You can miss me with that kind of moral superiority, and if that’s you, just because you think you’re morally superior doesn’t mean you actually are.

And your education certainly doesn’t make you more intelligent and more moral than anyone else. All that means is you knew how to perform for professors by giving them what they wanted, kissing their ass, and not questioning them–which I did all the time, earning their enmity, and the little Napoleons in college English departments aren’t very interested in opinions other than their own correct ones, and punished me accordingly. (I have more publications than all of my professors, across all disciplines.) I don’t like to talk myself up (sing out, Louise!) because it seems arrogant and egocentric, and I don’t like those parts of my personality very much, but yes, I do have more publications than all of my instructors I’ve had throughout the course of my life, so…forgive me for interpreting essays, stories and books differently than a boring Lit professor’s1 (or writing teacher’s) dogmatic devotion to closing their eyes to any new interpretation. I’ve also always felt that you don’t learn by memorizing things; you learn by examining them, thinking about them, and evaluating. Theory is great, but implementation is far far better and way more important.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point.

  1. As long as I live, I will never forgot my Shakespeare professor, talking about the many versions of Hamlet Shakespeare wrote, and how in earlier drafts Queen Gertrude was complicit in the murder of her husband and how that changed. The professor insisted that Shakespeare did this deliberately; which made Hamlet’s dilemma even worse–could he trust his mother? I raised my hand, and pointed out that at the time Hamlet was put on, James I was king of England, and his mother was believed to have been a party to his father’s murder, and married his murderer and the parallel was too close for comfort. He dismissed this with a condescending wave of his hand and said, “Shakespeare was an artist and wouldn’t worry about such mundane things” to which I replied, “several months in the Tower of London and running the risk of being hung for insulting the King isn’t a mundane thing.” That was the last day I went to class, only showing up for tests, and my paper was “Murderous Mothers: The Parallels Between Queen Gertrude and Mary Queen of Scots”, for which I did a lot of historical research. The paper got an A, and I also got one in the class, and I never really trusted professors again after that. ↩︎

Laugh, Laugh

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.

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.

  1. 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. ↩︎

How Much I Feel

Work at home Friday! Isn’t that exciting? It is for me, especially since I don’t have to put in many hours, which is good because I don’t have much to do, other than some paperwork and quality assurance and studying up on a new testing technology we will be piloting at work. I am going to go to the gym later and run some errands. I suspect we will be watching LSU Gymnastics in the evening, before moving on to a new show or a movie. We do live large here in the Lost Apartment, don’t we? It’s also not very cold this morning–granted, I’ve moved the needle a bit over the last few weeks about what is cold and what is not; I’ve also stopped fighting dressing properly for the cold (layers, always layers) out of that refusal to accept the fact that New Orleans gets uncomfortably cold for me time to time; that mentality of I live in New Orleans so I shouldn’t have to wear layers and I won’t, which was the kind of stubborn stupidity that I am trying to overcome in every aspect of my life.

I slept very well last night, but wasn’t exhausted when I got home from work, either–which was great. I cleaned the kitchen (leaving the dishes for today) and it was very nice to get up this morning and walk into a kitchen with clean counters and everything put away. Now that I’m getting better rest and exercise, I seem to have snapped out of the years-long cloud I’ve been under since the pandemic began FIVE years ago. The 2020’s haven’t been the best decade over all, have they? But the nice thing is my optimism is back; I believe in my ability to write again, and I am working out regularly again. I may even be willing to let more of the outside world into my peaceful little bubble here, but I am glad I disengaged from toxicity and from toxic people and a toxic community that embraces and will excuse away every last bit of its toxicity because “oh no we might upset the bigots! Can’t you be the bigger person?” My days of being the bigger person are history, collecting dust in the archives as I write this. I ain’t startin’ none, but as Paul says, “He never starts it, but he will finish it and I feel sorry for you.” I have no qualms with going low; I’ve always thought “going high” was a miscalculation in the first place, much as I love Michelle Obama, and I love that she’s not going to the ceremony ending decency for at least another four years. You don’t fight bullies with moral superiority because they don’t care about that shit. They never have. The party of “family values” who weaponized their “values” to scold everyone and scare people into voting for them, who said Bill Clinton’s adultery showed he didn’t have the moral character to be president, have foisted the only divorced presidents on the country to its great detriment each time. They also gave us our only president convicted of crimes in court. So, miss me with your moral superiority, trash–you have none.1

I did work on the book a little bit yesterday, and I am not happy with this chapter as it is written. It might be okay, and it might be because I am having some trouble with it–but I have to get out of “try to save as much of what you’ve already written” and start slashing and cutting and revising judiciously. But I feel very good about the book itself and where it’s going and what I am going to be able to say with it. I have so much to do this weekend! (Sparky really wants my desk chair to sleep in. He jumps up onto the desk and chirps and head butts me a few times. I try to put him in my lap or on my shoulders–nope, don’t want that. He jumped down to the floor just now and is staring at me, using his cat mental powers to will me out of the chair so he can sleep in it. He’s so cute.) But if I stay focused and relax, I should be able to get everything done that I want to get done this weekend as well as get some rest and relaxation. Monday is a holiday, and we may be getting snow by the end of the long weekend. The city will completely shut down if it does; they tend to close roads here when it snows and gets icy because we don’t have the infrastructure to deal with that here, which means if the office is closed, we’ll have to work from home or something; they’re never going to let us get paid and not work unless legally required to.

Capitalism at its finest.

But yes, I feel good this morning. Which is lovely. I think the day will turn out well for me, all things considered. I do want to do some chores around here today, get those dishes out of the way, run my errands and go to the gym, work on my book and do some reading. I do need to make a to-do list (I started making one yesterday but got interrupted and never finished). I am hoping for a terrific weekend, and to get a lot done–but if I don’t, I don’t. There is an extra day to this weekend, after all. Tuesday morning I will have to get up early to find out if the office is closed, and if it is, I probably won’t go back to bed.

And on that note, I am going to go do the dishes and get to work. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader, and remember to make sure you’re taking time to give your brain a break from the horrors that are to come. And I’ll be back in the morning, most likely.

  1. All I ever have to do when confronted with their attempts to be morally superior, I always reply, “and where were you during the HIV/AIDS pandemic?” That shuts them the fuck up every time. ↩︎

Bad Case of Loving You

And it is now Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. Sparky and I are the only creatures stirring for now, and it’s kind of nice. It’s chilly again this morning, but that’s fine; all I have left to do this weekend is go to the gym and make groceries, and I haven’t decided whether to do that today or tomorrow; probably today so I can get it all over with and won’t have to leave the house tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. I need to do some writing and reading this weekend and some cleaning, too–I’ll have to make a list at some point.

Yesterday was a very good day. I was a little sore and achy–still am–from my return to the gym on New Year’s Day. I got all my work done, and then we made a Costco run; which wore me out and after getting home, lugging all of it inside, and then putting it all away did me in. I did read some more of Winter Counts, which I am really enjoying and hope to finish this weekend. I do have some emails to answer this weekend, and I slept deeply and well last night–Sparky didn’t annoy me out of bed until about eight thirty this morning, so that’s super cool and nice as well. I do feel rested, which is kind of nice, too. There’s no rush for me to run those errands today, either; I can run them at any time today I so choose. No college football today–and I doubt I’m going to watch any more of it this year; I am not only not a fan of any of the final four, but if I had to pick the four teams I absolutely wouldn’t want in the finals, it would be these four (there are a few that can be swapped out for Texas, and I don’t mind Penn State–but ‘not minding’ is a lot different than “that’s who I’m going to root for.” As far as I am concerned, the season is over. The Super Bowl is in a few weeks, which means getting home is going to be challenging for the next few weeks as they start closing streets in the CBD to get ready for it all. I don’t care about that, either–as long as neither the Bears nor the Cowboys nor the Falcons are in it.

I did write some yesterday, too–which was enormously pleasing. I have things I need to do this weekend, and right now I frankly don’t want to do something of them, but might as well get them out of the way. I’ll probably finish this and read for a while, to finish waking up and everything and ease my way into the rest of the day. We did watch LSU Gymnastics last night; they ran away with the meet against Iowa State, and they looked terrific. They were also getting dramatically underscored, which was puzzling, but they still won by over three points. I then spent the rest of the evening watching old clips from Game of Thrones, which I still kind of miss. When the show was firing on all cylinders, it was really was extraordinary; the production values, the acting, and the writing was all en pointe, and provided some of the best scenes of television ever produced. The Battle of Blackwater Bay? The demolition of the sept? The battle of the loot train? The Battle of the Bastards? The death of Ramsey Bolton? Lady Olenna Tyrell’s final dagger to the heart before expiring? The collapse of the Wall? Arya wiping out House Frey? The character arc of Sansa Stark? It really was exceptional television, even if they did blow the final season–and that is just a smattering of the show’s great moments; there are too many to really list. Paul and I were actually talking about rewatching the whole series again–the plots and subplots were so interwoven and plentiful that there’s a shit ton we do not remember about the show to begin with. But…time. The show last eight seasons, every episode is at least an hour long, and who has that kind of time? Maybe when I retire I can make the rewatch A Thing.

Stranger things, after all, have happened. I’d also like to rewatch The West Wing, if for no other reason than it was my comfort watch during the Bush II administration.

I’m also doing much better with my time issues; I am trying not to be motivated by the clock anymore and worrying about wasting time because I have so much else to do. I don’t have that much else to do anymore, thank you very much, and now that the anxiety is under control, I don’t get as frustrated as I used to or get stressed out as much: I don’t have TIME for this! used to run through my brain every time I would get delayed or stuck in traffic or something, and it’s really nice to not have to deal with that anymore. The solution to the Super Bowl street closures is simple–take the Interstate home from work every day, even though the bridge traffic always backs up. I used to tend to get very frustrated and stressed out every time I took the Interstate because of the bumper-to-bumper back up; now I don’t care and can just sit there and listen to whatever is playing through the stereo in my car. (I also forget it has a working CD player; I should start listening to my old CD’s in the car.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and read for a few hours before deciding how to divvy up today’s tasks. Have a lovely Saturday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later–or tomorrow morning.

Yes, I am definitely pushing my boundaries with the social media puritans, aren’t I?

How You Gonna See Me Now

I had something go a little viral (in a very small way) on Threads; New Year’s morning when I saw, after what happened here, that garbage “humans” were blaming “the border”1 for it (um, well actually it was an American military vet, bitch) and posted MTG needs to keep New Orleans out of her hellmouth and at last count, I was at well over a thousand likes and an equally insane amount of reposts–and no “libt@rd” replies for me to block, either. Now, imagine had I put that on Twitter (fuck you now and forever, Elmo, I will always deadname your shitty app). Would I have escaped being swarmed by right wing trolls? Probably not, which was one of the many reasons that helped me break the addiction to Twitter and delete my account. Sometimes I miss interacting with people there (Jericho Brown, for one, and other friends, too), but I do not miss the toxicity and the really bad takes from trashy trolls and bots.

The energy around town yesterday was very off. Of course we all talked about the incident all day at work–the clients, too–and the vibe that’s always there, even when you’re not paying attention, just didn’t feel right. I saw a lot of social media posts yesterday that were love notes to New Orleans, and the love notes far far outnumbered the disgusting bottom-feeding ones (see MTG reference above). And reading those, I started remembering back over the years. Not just the years I’ve been so blessed to live here, but the ones going back to the day when Bienville came up Bayou St. John from Lake Pontchartrain to the island surrounded by swamp alongside the Mississippi River. New Orleans has had this kind of horror before; the biggest mass death event for gay men until Pulse was the Upstairs Lounge Fire in the early 1970s. Hundreds and thousands died during fever season. There was bubonic plague during the Wilson administration, and a massive hurricane a few years later that wiped out entire communities. New Orleans has always understood that death is a part of life, and no one knows when Death will come for you–so live every day like it’s your last; squeeze every bit of joy and pleasure and happiness out of life you can because it can all go away tomorrow, chér. And I remembered back to that time I came here for my birthday in 1994, and an entire new world and life opened up in front of my eyes as I got out of the cab at the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann–and I’ve said before, the city whispered in my ear come live here and I will make your dreams come true.

I love my city, and it will do what it does best. It will mourn its dead and raise money for survivors and celebrate the lives of those lost in this horrific act, the way we always do. New Orleans will not stop being what it is or who we are. We held Carnival after Hurricane Katrina and it was marvelous, absolutely fucking marvelous, and exactly what we needed when we needed it the most. New Orleans will always celebrate being alive, and that’s really part of the charm of this city; not only do we welcome everyone we encourage and celebrate difference, and find joy in finding community all together. What will Carnival be like after this? Joyous but cautious, I would imagine; but as always, Carnival puts everyone into a great mood and we celebrate that we’re still here.

I was tired yesterday–didn’t rest enough I guess after returning to the gym, which I am hoping to do again later on today–so I didn’t get as much writing as I would have liked to get done; I did take Chapter One to over five thousand words from slightly more than three thousand; not bad for a working week. I am hoping to get through the rest of the original chapters this weekend (no college football, nor do I have as much to do as I usually do on a weekend, either, which is absolutely 1000% awesome. The drive home was an exercise in Security Theater; cops and police cars everywhere, and they’d closed off the CBD around the Superdome completely, which was a nightmare as the CBD is the area closest to the interstate–how many people get home from work–so maneuvering around stupid drivers and closed streets and blocked lanes was quite the adventure in irritation and frustration.

Sigh.

Also: I am sick and tired of white racists saying “it’s not safe!!!!” about New Orleans when what you really mean is “too many Blacks live there.” This usually goes along with some pious weeping about how much they used to love New Orleans back when it was safer…newsflash, K-K-Karen: New Orleans is as safe as it ever has been. When you were a child, your parents never talked to you about crime, but when precisely was New Orleans this paragon of safety? New Orleans was always a major port–and major ports aren’t exactly known for decorous behavior and peace and quiet. Was it safer when the Mafia ran the Quarter? When the Upstairs Lounge burned with over thirty people inside? When prostitution was legal in Storyville, or when New Orleans was the liquor capital of North America during Prohibition? Crime has always been rampant here, and this vile racist pretense that before desegregation New Orleans set the standard for law-abiding American cities? Hardly. Just admit your parents or grandparents didn’t want the kids in your family to go to school with Black kids and be done with it, okay?

I feel pretty confident that twink-in-barely-more-than-a-thong will trigger the puritans.

I wonder how long before this post gets flagged by social media puritans as “adult content?” Yesterday’s post was flagged as porn by the cosplaying Puritans at Threads–a man in his underwear is pornography; bare female breasts or some woman with an enormous ass in only a thong proliferate everywhere. Seriously–fuck all of the way off, censors–and think about the message you are actually sending women with your selective application of “oops, this is porn! Shame on you!” to shots of men in swimsuits or underwear, but okaying degrading and demeaning pictures of women every fucking day.

But…Facebook began as a way to rank and score girls who wouldn’t fuck Zuckerberg by a hotness scale, so here we are.

It’s a work at home Friday for me today, and we’re going to Costco later, after I finish my work at home duties. The house is in better shape than usual (thank you, day off on Wednesday and cleaning), so there isn’t as much housework to get done this weekend. My muscles are tight this morning, so I am going to have to do some stretching, and then head back to the gym tomorrow. I also learned something else about myself yesterday–I always rush through my workouts and get extremely frustrated if I have to wait on a machine. When I went the other day, I took my time. I moved through the exercises relatively quickly, but I did them all slowly, didn’t allow myself to get frustrated, and didn’t try to rush through it. And again, I realized I was so focused for so long on using my time effectively and efficiently and trying to do everything as quickly as I can that…it was much easier to get annoyed and frustrated and cut the workout short or something like that. This time, taking my time and actually feeling the muscles work instead of going through so fast that I don’t notice any burn until I am finished isn’t the best way to exercise. I also don’t have the anxiety anymore, so I also don’t feel like I need to get through everything as fast as I can because I don’t have as much to do as I used to. But the good news is my shoulder and arm do not feel any more sore or fatigued than anywhere else; in fact, it actually feels better than it has in a while.

Louder, for those in the back: clearly I should have continued exercising after I was done with Physical Therapy. But…I wasn’t in a good place for the most part last year, so it is what it is and I can’t change that now so move forward and remember. And also remember how good it felt to go to the gym and exercise in the first place.

I also started writing a synopsis of The Summer of Lost Boys last night, too–which felt good and was kind of fun to do. I also need to work on some short stories this weekend, run a few errands, and do some picking up around here. I want to write some today after work, and I think I’m pretty much done with the college football play-offs. There’s no one left that I care about watching; in fact, not a fan of any of the final four, to be honest. LSU already played their bowl game2 and so…who cares? It’s Gymnastics season now, and LSU is the defending national champions, so that’s very cool.

We’re watching Cross, which we’re enjoying; we also finished Hysteria! earlier this week, and it was a lot of fun.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a terrific Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later today; one can never be certain.

  1. They still are blaming illegal immigrants despite the fact the killer was born and raised here and was a veteran of our military! They are quite literally the fucking worst humans ever born. The next four years are just going to be a shit show. ↩︎
  2. They did win, by the way, beating Baylor 44-31. ↩︎

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.

The Door

Work-at-home, with meetings on the computer Friday, and woo-hoo, we made it almost all the way through another week. Christmas is nigh–Lord–but the end of the year always seems to come in a rush, doesn’t it? I mean, college football’s regular season is already over (although, given how LSU did this year, it seemed to last a really long time), and basketball started up again last month. It’s also almost collegiate gymnastics time, too. The SEC will be really interesting with perennial power Oklahoma added to the conference this year. The Grand Prix of Figure Skating final is this weekend, so we’ll probably spend some time with that, too. I think I want to watch whatever that new Alien1 movie is, too. I’ve not seen all the movies, but Alien and Aliens remain favorites of mine, so I am always interested whenever they release a new one. The shoddy state of my memory, however, has made reading or watching series (movies, television, books) a tad more challenging.2 But I shall persevere.

It is cold this morning; right now it’s thirty-eight degrees outside. I slept really well last night, so it was most likely pretty cold last night, too. I was exhausted when I left work early yesterday, and so when I got home, my brain wasn’t functional enough to even read, let alone do anything more creative or enjoyable. I am probably not going to leave the house today other than run to get the mail and to get something to make for dinner tonight (no clues on that score, so will have to figure something out). Paul’s going to be gone for most of the day once he gets up. I’m going to try to get my chores done while working (I can go do laundry when taking breaks from data entry and on-line trainings) today, before I dash out to run those two errands and then come home to edit and write and read and clean. Sounds like a good plan. I am hopeful to get some things done while also getting some good rest.

So, the CEO of the absolute worst health insurance company in the country, United Healthcare, was assassinated on the street in New York the other day, which led to some interesting reactions. Some–the vast majority–people celebrated his death; his shitty insurance company successfully denied 32% of claims last year. I’ve never had the pleasure of being covered through that insurer, but working in a clinic and talking to clients about their health insurance–I get to see (and hear) firsthand how bad their coverage is. Some have astronomical deductibles; still others can’t get their (expensive) PrEP labs3 covered by it4, etc. When I saw the news break, I was only surprised that it’s taken this long for an health insurance “profit above people” company executive to be murdered. A few people on social media (you know the ones–the tireless morally superior assholes who love to try to shame everyone else for their very valid feelings) were very quick to excoriate people for celebrating the murder of an asshole who was definitely the last rung on the ladder of responsibility for a lot of people’s pain, financial ruin, and death, wagging a finger in everyone’s face and letting them know that they are the horrible people in this instance. I block tiresome scolds. You’re not my mom, you’re not my priest, you’re not my employer and you’re a total stranger. Maybe you’re lovely in your every day life, but pulling moral superiority in this case? Will you scold people for being happy when odious garbage like Kim Davis or Mitch McConnell die, too? Go fuck yourself, and get the fuck out of my world. As for their mourning loved ones, why is their pain more valid than that of United Healthcare’s victims? They certainly didn’t mourn or feel bad when United’s cruel profit policies killed, ruined, or bankrupted their clients, did they? No, they spent that money and lived high on that ten million dollars a year (plus bonuses) salary, so miss me with their pain, okay?

And in other, predictable news about the murder, apparently they have images of the killer’s face from security cameras, and people swooned and thought he was handsome and hot. Just like the Boston Marathon bomber and Ted Bundy and so many other “hot” criminals. It’s weird. He is handsome, at least the guy whose face was shared from those images–which also made me think he’s a professional assassin; I mean, who else could flirt with someone on their way to killing someone else? Although it does make for an interesting idea–the hot sexy hit man. Maybe a gay one? (See how my mind is?) Anyway, the assassin is kind of becoming a folk hero, which should give all insurance executives pause. In the wake of the murder, Blue Cross Blue Shield–which has just announced a horrific, draconian new policy about anesthesia, quickly reversed itself and removed all the executive and board of directors’ names on its website.

Read the fucking room. The people are not happy. It’s astonishing how these company monsters don’t realize how hated and despised they are…or at least, didn’t. They do now.

It also occurred to me last week–and not just me; someone posted on social media about it yesterday, which made me think about it again–that what we are actually lurching toward is Ayn Rand’s capitalist heaven of no government regulation, no taxes, and completely unfettered capitalism; the billionaires taking the place of her ridiculous notion of “the men of the mind” who, by virtue of their ambition, intelligence, creativity, and drive5, deserve to be in charge of everything because being good to their employees and their customers is “in their best interest.” Hmm, how has that been working out in the last few decades, Ayn? Atlas Shrugged was such complete and total bullshit, as was everything she wrote and the philosophy she embraced, the virtue of selfishness. I was interested in her because I read Anthem in high school, and it reminded me of another, similar type book (I can’t recall the name of it); that interested me enough to read the other novels and her essay collections. I was intrigued, as so many young white men are, by this interesting way of looking at the world–but at the same time, I also quickly saw right through it as utter and total bullshit; what she described as selfishness was actually self-interest, which are not the same things. I’ve long wanted to write about Ayn Rand and her damaging theories, and how the Right embraced her (except for her atheistic hatred of religion), which is part of the reason why we are where we are now as a country. in thrall to billionaires who don’t care a fig for the rest of us. I also wanted to do a compare/contrast essay about Atlas Shrugged and another conservative author’s railroad book, Taylor Caldwell’s Never Victorious, Never Defeated–which came from the completely opposite direction of Rand’s tome…but writing about Rand means rereading her, and shudder, who has time for that?6

Seriously, I don’t need to write about it that badly. Once was enough. Although what I really want to do is totally deconstruct and destroy her essay about literary arts (like anyone who’s ever read any of her work would think she had the right to theorize anything about art). She has a collection of essays about art called The Romantic Manifesto, which, like everything she wrote, is overwritten, pretentious, and more than a little condescending–not to mention completely wrong about everything. That actually might be fun–I do remember how in the essay about literature she raved about Mickey Spillane…if that tells you anything.

And on that note, I have to get ready for my first meeting. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

  1. Alien Romulus, to be exact. ↩︎
  2. As well as editing, as I mentioned yesterday. ↩︎
  3. Since the ACA requires insurance companies to cover PrEP, this is their way around the rule–the labs are incredibly expensive. So, they will cover the medication but not the labs required for the prescription to be written. Never forget, health insurance is the biggest legal scam in American history. Almost like flood/hurricane insurance: “oh, sorry, that damage was caused by a hurricane” which then becomes “Oh, sorry, that was caused by a flood, not a hurricane.” ↩︎
  4. This is nothing more than anecdotal information; I’m just always surprised that my shitty insurance is actually one of the better ones, which is frightening. And inevitably, whenever I ask my clients who their shitty insurer is, it tends to be United–which was one of the options my day job considered for this year. ↩︎
  5. Amongst all the insanities and idiocies in her pseudo-philosophy, her definition of “men of the mind” are people who built companies and wealth by creating a product that revolutionized whatever industry–people like Henry Ford (blech), Andrew Carnegie, etc. Since she worshipped money, I imagine she’d be on board the Musk/billionaire worship train–but they aren’t really “creators” and “men of the mind” as she saw it. Her brains had myopia, alas. ↩︎
  6. A very dear friend of mine once said of Ayn Rand, “Her writing was the least of her crimes.” Succinct and to the point.
    ↩︎

Midnight, Me and the Blues

Wednesday, and it’s Pay-the-Bills Day. Yay.

Heavy sigh.

I faced up to some hard truths about myself yesterday. I knew I’d kind of coasting along and letting things slide and not really giving things my full attention, and that’s kind of been where my mindset has been for–well, for longer than it should have. Snap out of it, Gregalicious. But at least I was cognizant of that yesterday, which is a step in the right direction. I did get some progress made on work I have to get done soon, but I was very tired when I got off work yesterday and flagging by the time I got home from the office. (My day job is pretty routine for the most part every day. Some days are harder, though, and take a toll on me. Yesterday was one of those days; clients with needs beyond the usual normal work day, and those can be difficult to navigate. I felt great most of the day but by the end of my shift I was very drained and tired. The sometime emotional labor that is necessary to do my job wears me out, which is another reason why I’m not giving my emotional labor away anymore. My two jobs require a lot of emotional labor, and I just don’t have enough reserve in the tank anymore to waste, and so, have to guard it jealously.)

Yesterday I realized I’d been in a weird headspace since my trip up north and the election, which means there was some subliminal depression buried in my head showing itself in a weird kind of paralysis where I couldn’t really motivate myself to do much of anything. Generalized anxiety disorder is very sneaky. I think what happens is that when the depressive side of my brain starts firing off synapses up there, it’s like the anxiety takes hold of the depression and deepens it, all the while never being in the forefront of my mind so I can be aware that is going on–and because I don’t actually feel depressed, well, that doesn’t mean that I am not in a depressive state. It’s always kind of worked this way, now that I am thinking about it with a much more clear head this week (Monday was the last day of the lethargic malaise this time around). I also don’t want to have to add another medication to the chemicals I am already putting into my body more than once a day. I appreciate better living through chemistry as much as anyone, but at the same time…I don’t want to be taking more things if I don’t necessarily need them, if that makes sense? These malaises–I’ve had them before, of course, and usually they show up in the wake of finishing a major project, and I just assume it’s the letdown from no longer needing to use my creativity in a focused manner and it needs to recharge. I guess the malaise is kind of an emotional lull? Being in Kentucky and being in Mom’s house is always challenging; I just keep expecting to see her in the kitchen in the morning when I go for my first cup of coffee and it’s a jolt to remember oh yeah, she’s not with us anymore and I also give a lot of emotional energy to my father while I am there. That, the election, and the drive home–yeah, it’s not really surprising that I went into a malaise. But yesterday? Yesterday I did kick myself back into gear and dove into a project that needs doing, like last week, but I am making good progress and should be finished a week late this weekend. I was very tired when I got off work, but I am feeling like I am back in the saddle again, and there was no way I was going to get anything done last night anyway while I waited for Paul to come through the front door.

I’m taking that as a win, thank you very much.

Paul got home right around nine last night, which was delightful. His travels–usually a problem–all went smoothly (thank you, Secretary Pete) and he was in a pretty good mood. Sparky and I were both very happy to get back into our lives again, and Sparky was so glad Paul was home that he slept in the bed with both of us. There’s something about the regular breathing and heartbeat of a sleeping pet pressed up against you that is so incredibly soothing, isn’t there? I know Sparky sleeping in my lap while I recline in my easy chair always has a calming, settling effect on me as well.

I spent some time with The Demon of Unrest last night while Sparky slept in my lap (and didn’t like that I was reading at first, gnawing on a corner of the book and trying to get in between me and the book before circling a few times and laying down). It’s really quite good–I need to read more of Larson, clearly–and is the kind of history written the way I would have liked to have written about it, you know? It’s actually grabbed my attention away from my fiction read, which is saying something; I’ve always felt that History that is written in a more reader-friendly way, like The Demon of Unrest, should be more of a thing. Barbara Tuchman was really good at this, too; which is why I enjoy reading her so much (A Distant Mirror remains my favorite non-fiction history read of all time). And since I don’t have football games to watch this weekend, I’ll have time to get things done on Saturday–cleaning up around the house, reading, writing, editing–and as I said the other day, I don’t really care that much about the play-offs this year. I might get sucked into it yet, of course, but right now I am kind of relieved the season is over so the easy distraction is gone. It was a very weird season, too, which should get a recap at some point (maybe after LSU’s bowl game) because it’s so weird.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely mid-week day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, though I doubt it. I have errands to run tonight after work (yay), and I imagine after I am done working tonight, Paul and I will start catching up on our shows again.

I just adore Cooper Koch, and am glad he, too, is having a moment as an exceptional young and out gay actor. He was exceptional in Monsters.

Dance with Me (One Last Time)

Paul will be home tonight, hopefully before I go to bed, and it’s about time. Much as I love Sparky and have appreciated the attention, I’d prefer having Paul at home. I just realized last night that this weekend is Championship Saturday for college football and I. Don’t. Care. This play-off thing is definitely odd; when it was limited to four teams and everyone else went to bowls, the bowls absolutely lost something. I didn’t find myself watching as many as I used to, and sometimes didn’t even watch the four team play-off. I’d usually watch the title game, but if LSU wasn’t in it I ‘d usually go to bed before it was over and not know who won until the following morning; that year Georgia finally pulled off the come-from behind to beat Alabama in the title game was one of those years where I thought, damn should have watched that to the end but…watching highlights was also fine. If LSU goes to a bowl, I’ll watch that for sure, but anything else? Kind of doubtful. Too many games and too much to keep track of, thank you very much. Maybe it’ll be exciting and I’ll get caught up in it.

Or maybe not. We’ll see.

I slept well again last night, but was a bit on the tired side when I got home. I worked for a little while before my brain started going a bit on the haywire side, so I called it an evening and repaired to my chair with Sparky and The Demon of Unrest. It’s so weird; it’s like my brain can only handle one creative task at a time. Now it’s in reading mode, so it seems like all it can really do is handle that, rather than editing or writing. It’s interesting to read about a time in our collective history where everything hung in the balance and no one knew what was going to happen next, or what the next day would bring as the tensions over Fort Sumter began rising. That’s the thing about history. I have a basic overview of a lot of history, particularly US or European, but there’s still a lot of things I don’t know the entire story of, like Fort Sumter. I knew the shelling of Fort Sumter was the start of the Civil War, but the histories I’ve usually read simply used that as the starting point of the war: Lincoln was elected, the slave states had a problem with that, and the secession crisis began1. It’s also wild to imagine that so much time passed between the election, the certification of the Electoral College vote, and the inauguration. It is so eerily reminiscent of the 2020 election insanity, and oh-so-much stupidity I’ve seen in this country for I don’t know how fucking long, so I’ll just say “since Fox News became the press agency for the far-right.” I think that, plus how good of a writer Erik Larson is, makes this book kind of unputdownable for me.

But Paul will be home tonight and all will be right in (my) world again. This apartment, which always seems so small to me most of the time, always seems so enormous and empty while he’s gone. Sigh. I think I’ll order a pizza for us tonight for dinner. He won’t get home until later in the evening, but if he’s hungry it’ll be there for him and if he’s not, well, there’s tomorrow’s lunch. It just makes the most sense to me. My weight has also seemed to stabilize at the usual 203 (I dropped down to 197 while in Kentucky but it’s gone back to the usual since then), which is fine. If I ever start making it back to the gym, then I’ll be checking my weight more often. I was going to start back up while Paul was gone, but I just kind of slid into that lethargic lonely state that kind of just took over last week. My creativity has seemed to find an outlet in writing those essays for ye olde Substack lately, which I’ve kind of run with, but I need to take control of my creativity again and harness it, whip it into working shape, and shift into a higher gear. (How many metaphors did I mix in that last sentence?) I’m also thinking that it’s probably not a bad idea to move all the drafts for longer entries here over there, since that’s where they’ll wind up if I ever finish writing them. That will also helped that nagging annoyance about all the unfinished drafts I have in my folder here. I mean, I still haven’t written about Agatha All Along, which I absolutely loved. I also want to write about Joe Locke, whose success I am enjoying, and adorable Jonathan Bailey, who is everywhere right now because of Wicked. It’s so nice seeing how many working, openly queer actors there are in show business right now. This is a really good thing; and progress I hope we can maintain in the face of this most recent, horrible election. (But at least the popular vote margin keeps narrowing–not that it will matter to any Republican. They are claiming a sweeping mandate, which they also did in 2004, and look how that turned out–so badly the country elected a biracial man to two consecutive terms.)

And no, I am saving my sympathies for the people who didn’t vote for this upcoming administration. You voted for him, shut the fuck up and deal with the consequences, I don’t want to hear a fucking word from you ever again. I know no one likes to remember any further back than last week, but the first term of the felon was such an enormous success…(sarcasm) I can see why he was reelected–to the everlasting disgrace of this country.

And yes, I will continue to maintain that straight white people are the worst thing that ever happened to this continent–and they keep doubling down on their sheer awfulness.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again either tomorrow or later today; one can never be too sure about anything, can they?

  1. One of my favorite things since 2016 is seeing people making the ahistorical claim that “the country has never been divided like it is now,” to which I always reply, “several hundred thousand American dead in the Civil War would like a word.” ↩︎