Category: Politics

The Gambler

I am off work on this glorious Friday, as I prepare to slip into the Festival weekend. I do have things to do–writing–so I am fortunate that I have my mornings free all weekend, so I can get that writing done. I did have a good writing day yesterday–three thousand words and a whole new chapter, which isn’t bad for a Festival widow. I don’t have any assigned duties today, but I am going to head down for the opening party and there’s a panel at 4 I’d also like to attend. I need to do some writing and some chores here before I head out–as well as some errands to run–but I have some time today and it’s going to be a lovely one, methinks. It’s kind of gray outside this morning, but I think it’s going to be a nice day–even though the weather this weekend may not be the greatest.

I got some work done on the book last night, and I feel good about that, and as always, I am quite convinced it’s terrible work. Someday it would be nice to write something I feel satisfied with immediately after, but maybe that will happen for me at some point in the future. But I feel pretty good this morning, well rested and relaxed and my coffee is just simply superb. I’ve started laundering the bed linens already, Sparky seems content to hang out here by my desk and watch Cat TV out the window, and yes, I know he’s just waiting for me to vacate my desk chair–but at least he’s not being obnoxious about it…yet. There’s still plenty of time, especially since I need to unload the dishwasher and reload it and yes, I have a lot of domestic god things to get done this morning before setting out for the day.

There are worse ways to spend a day, you know?

After finishing my word count for the day yesterday (2700 total), I was pretty worn out and drained. It was a relatively easy day for the clinic, so I was able to get a lot of things caught up so I won’t be as behind when I go back in on Tuesday (I took Monday off also this year; I didn’t the last couple of years and totally regretted it); I’ll just have to catch up on Monday’s paperwork and so forth. So, yes, I am feeling good this morning, and I guess last night’s excellent sleep was due to getting the word count in for once and it was the sleep of the righteous. Ugh, just looking around the apartment this morning…yeah, I need to do some cleaning this morning around the writing.

I am also pleased to report that Crime Writers for Trans Rights met our auction goal on only the second day! We still have several days left for the auction, so get in there and bid bid bid! There’s all kinds of great stuff with very low bids on them, and some items that are awesome haven’t got any yet! I cannot even begin to tell you, Constant Reader, how the response to this auction has sort of (not completely, of course) made me feel a little better about this community I belong to. After the intense disappointments and homophobia I’ve experienced, including from people I thought were friends, my opinion of the crime fiction community was pretty fucking low, and as I said, after the betrayal of the election last November, I’d had it. Let me put it to you in a way that’s more understandable, okay, because I know some people have trouble letting go of their own privilege: when you not only will not call out a friend for saying something homophobic, and actually play along with it, what you are telling your queer friends is we can’t count on you if and when things get bad for us…and that election result was a promise that things were, indeed, going to get bad for us. If you won’t say to your buddy, “dude, that’s not cool and homophobic,” how can I expect you to do a fucking thing in the face of a coordinated government effort to strip me of my rights, my humanity and my citizenship? And joining in tells me you not only won’t do a fucking thing when push comes to shove, but you may actually become an informer.

And how I am supposed to feel safe around you, ever again? For the record, that’s what I mean when I say I don’t feel safe–I don’t trust the people I’m around to have my back in the face of homophobia, which isn’t a good feeling.

But at least my fears of negative responses from people to the auction have proven untrue, and my worries about not meeting our goal were clearly unfounded. It’s nice to be reminded that not everyone in this community is a bigot. Doesn’t mean I’m going to start attending crime fiction community events any time soon; I don’t feel safe there, despite the good people, and no, I will never forget having someone who has claimed to be “one of the good guys” saying faggy to my face at Bouchercon in Toronto, or being told I was “nobody” by Bouchercon programmers (speaking of fucking nobodies and hangers on).

I want to preserve my peace, and why the fuck would I spend that kind of money to go get treated like shit and have no one in the organization care? Which, again, is “you’re nobody.”

But thank you to everyone who donated and to everyone who is bidding for restoring some faith in the community for me.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Friday be everything you want it to be, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Tragedy

Thursday, and it’s almost the weekend. Not a normal weekend, but one where I have to actually be presentable and lucid periodically…and have to leave the house for extended periods of time. I slept pretty well last night, for my first night as a Festival widow; Sparky actually slept in the bed with me, too. I didn’t get much done when I got home last night, because I was tired after I got off work and the errands didn’t help much. I did start a load of laundry and ran the dishwasher, so tat is something I got done. I also managed to get some writing done, but not very much, so hopefully tonight’s writing journey will be better. We shall see.

I did watch the season finale of a reality show I follow for some reason–habit more than anything else at this point (I’ve almost always been a completist, and I usually will only ditch a show before its series finale if it gets really bad and stupid and I get annoyed with myself for watching)–and I think I might be pulling the plug on it. I had come very close to stopping watching a few seasons back when the show took a turn I didn’t much care for, and it seems like the cast has decided to circle back around to the behaviors that had me almost stop watching in the first place. I may watch the reunion episodes, but most likely not. I’m not really interested in the bullying antics of a failed grifter, failed gold digger, and failed child star who are actually so bad at their jobs that they can’t even give me a meme-worthy moment or line. I do sometimes need a break from Bravo’s reality shows because the lack of consequence for any of these horrible women reminds me that horrible people often never have consequences in reality (cough Tulsi Gabbard cough Pete Hegseth cough), and that’s not messaging I can really get behind.

The immorality of rewarding amorality gets to me sometimes, you know? I guess that’s why so many people embrace religion and the whole “afterlife” thing–bad people go to hell, right, so their punishment is in the next world, but the concept of the “get out of hell free card” methodology and epistemology negates every bit of the punishment/reward structure of modern American Christianity. “Faith without works is dead,” remember that part?

I think the lack of consequences in the real world is why I started writing crime fiction in the first place, so the guilty are actually punished. A definite argument can be made that crime fiction’s roots are in conservative ideology; the restoration of order after disorder, the Apollonic v. Dionysian paradigms that lie at the root of all good crime fiction, whether we want to admit it or not. I first started thinking about this in the wake of the police murders of innocent Black people over the last decade (shameful that it took me that long to open my eyes), which made me reevaluated my own biases about the police (the mythology vs. the reality), while all the time knowing that as a gay man the police are most definitely not looking out for MY best interests in any way. I was conditioned as a child, by the Chicago public school system, to see the cops are protectors and friends. (Did anyone else have an “Officer Friendly” who came to talk to your class about safety? I remember distinctly being conditioned to trust the police…)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

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Makin’ It

I’ve always felt that Tuesdays are worse than Mondays. Sure, it sucks to get up on Monday morning and go back to the office, but at least you’re coming off the weekend. Tuesday means you’re not even halfway through the week and you’ve already worked the day before. Horror of horrors! I felt this way even in high school–which is where and when I started wishing my life away, as my mom always used to say. Of course, she didn’t start saying that until she stopped working and became, for want of a better word, a housewife. Such an ugly and weird sounding word, isn’t it? But it’s better than “tradwife,” which just might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard–and the whole “tradwife values” thing just kind of turns my stomach ever so slightly.

I do want to write about one, of course. I also want to write about one of those horribly creepy “boymoms.” Straight people are so weird…

But this morning I feel rested and good. I ran some errands after work last night, which was not as painful as I might have expected, and I have to run one tonight when I leave the office. I finished revising my short story and send it in (it’s for a queer crime anthology called Crime Ink), which felt really good (the story is an excerpt from Never Kiss a Stranger called “The Rhinestone”), and I did work on the book a little around Sparky’s intense neediness. I think Paul is moving into the Monteleone tomorrow, so after tonight I’ll be home alone with a super needy cat, which will be challenging. I also need to figure out my schedule for the weekend’s Festivals. I am moderating a panel for the Pinckley Prize tenth anniversary celebration, I know, and I have to do the anthology launch Saturday night, and I am in the Dorothy Allison tribute reading. There’s also a panel on Sunday I am on, and of course both the opening and closing parties. Sigh. I get tired just thinking about it, you know?

But it’ll be fun and invigorating intellectually, and it’s always inspiring to be around wonderful people who love books and writing.

Remember the author I talked about who created a firestorm by writing and publishing that dreadful book where the man fell in love with his best friend’s three-year-old daughter but waits until she was legal before doing anything (as though the pedophilic grooming wasn’t bad enough)? She was arrested yesterday and charged (in Australia) for possession of, and intent to distribute, child pornography. The copies of her own book was the evidence they needed for the arrest! I don’t know what the laws are in Australia, but quite frankly, arguing that it’s a “slippery slope” to be arrested for “dark romance” writing? Dark romance actually requires consent, otherwise it’s rape. You’re trying to ban queer books in the US, yet people are trying to defend the principle of free speech about a book that is 100% about grooming? Yeah, miss me with that. Child rape is child rape, period; and I think the fact so many people missed the real point of Lolita and think it’s a “romance” is why no one should be writing about child rape like it’s just another style of “dark” romance.

And who would ever think to themselves, “I’m going to write a dark romance about grooming!”

Someone I wouldn’t let around kids, that’s who.

Not all speech is protected–which no one seems to understand, which isn’t surprising since they don’t understand their own protected right to free speech and what precisely that means. We really are the dumbest country. This whole “let’s share classified intelligence with a reporter in a group chat” thing would be laughable if it wasn’t so fucking terrifying. IMAGINE EISENHOWER SENDING THE D-DAY PLANS TO A REPORTER, or Truman accidentally telling the Washington Post about the plans to use the atomic bomb on Japan the day before?

Americans have never appreciated our system, or they’d have learned how it works better when they were younger. (I wish I had a quarter for every time I had to explain the Electoral College to smart people–or people I’d thought were smart previously–in 2000 I’d have retired years ago.) So, we kind of have the government we deserve right now.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day. Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again at some point.

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Lotta Love

Monday morning and back to the office with me this morning. I slept well again last night and had no trouble getting up; I am neither groggy nor tired as I sip my coffee and eat my morning coffee cake slice. It was a nice, if not terribly productive weekend. The Festivals are this weekend, so Paul will most likely be moving to the Monteleone on Wednesday, leaving me home to deal with a lonely, needy kitty in the meantime. I do have a lot of work to get done this morning at the office, so pray for me. I’m taking a long weekend for the Festivals–Friday and Monday, mainly for the recovery aspect–so hopefully next week isn’t too terrible. I also managed to blow off my taxes for the entire weekend, so I need to get that done this week as well.

Sounds like a to-do list is in order to me, don’t you think?

Spring is here! It was gorgeous yesterday when I walked outside to take out the trash. Paul had to go to the Quarter for the annual Stanley/Stella shouting contest at Jackson Square. I couldn’t justify going and taking the afternoon off from chores and writing (should writing be considered one of my chores?) for the day. Maybe next year I’ll remember that I don’t need to be turning books in during the first third of the year. Meh, fall is football season so there’s always something else to take me away from it, isn’t there? We did finish watching Paradise last night, and it really is quite excellent. It’s also one of the best produced and written shows I’ve seen in a while. The acting is stellar, and the writing is very clever and everything that happens in earlier episodes matter in the later ones, so everyone really needs to be paying attention. It’s also incredibly smart, and I am sure any parallels to our current world are purely coincidence and unintentional.

I also watched a documentary–a short one–that explained how the creators and writers of the Game of Thrones show didn’t stick the landing and ended up ruining one of the greatest television programs ever made. Like most everyone, I didn’t much care for the final season, and especially not the last episode…but I put everything aside for the pure pleasure of watching the spectacle–and it was a spectacle. Everyone watched Game of Thrones1, didn’t they? Everyone at my office did, and we always talked about on Monday morning, sometimes re-watching the episode in the upstairs lounge of our old office on Frenchmen Street. There were some incredible cinematic moments on the show, and of course, the acting was always topnotch. Every so often, when I think about it, I’ll go in search of clips from the show on Youtube, which is what I was doing when Paul got home yesterday afternoon with Chinese food for dinner. (I was not one of the people who had a problem with Daenarys going full-on Mad Queen and destroying Kings Landing.) I don’t know, but I can’t help but think a re-watch and a full-on binge of eight seasons could be fun. I know the weekend after the Festivals will most likely be one of those “can’t get off the couch from exhaustion” weekend, so perhaps that is the right timing for a massive binge.

I didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as I would have liked, and while that is a consistent issue for one Gregalicious, it’s also one that needs to stop being an issue. It’s very easy to get distracted and lose time down a wormhole, especially when I start doing my researches on-line. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept that the 1970’s were actually fifty years ago; my fiftieth high school reunion is in three years. (No, I am not going if they have one; although I am a little surprised that the majority of my classmates, I think, are still alive.) I told Paul last night that I was watching World War II videos yesterday morning, and I realized, to my horror, that the war had only been over for slightly more than sixteen years when I was born, which had never occurred to him before, either. YIKES. Certainly made me feel every second of my age, let me tell you! But it was true. My maternal grandparents were born before the Archduke was assassinated; so when they were born, Austria-Hungary was still a thing, the Germans had a kaiser and the Russians had a czar. The war was still in recent memory when I was a kid, and I grew up in a neighborhood of Chicago that was full of war refugees and post-war immigrants. A friend’s father had numbers tattooed on his inner forearm. The past was still very much the present when I was a kid, and we were also still in that post-war “America is the greatest country EVER” glow, and we were all taught white supremacy, obedience to the patriarchy, and American exceptionalism…but even when I was a small kid things seemed a bit wrong; committing genocide on the natives never sat well with me as a kid, nor did the fact the way US History was taught (and written about for kids) to justify everything we did as a country as “right” and “pure” and “moral” seem correct to me…and I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood recognizing and correcting the fallacies and bald-faced lies and justifications I was taught and groomed to believe.

We were all groomed to be good little citizens who obeyed and never questioned authority. Yeah, that worked, didn’t it?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later or tomorrow morning.

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  1. Which proves the point I am always making about history not being taught or presented properly to students. George R. R. Martin drew from European history for his story (clearly the incestuous Targaryens were based on the Ptolemies; and he pulled from both the Wars of the Roses and Maurice Druon’s series of novels about the end of the primary line of the Capetian dynasty in France, The Cursed Kings), so why can’t history be taught in a similar way? I mean, you can never go wrong with basing fantasy on actual history; so why not teach actual history the way you would a fantasy novel? ↩︎

Heaven Knows

Sunday morning and I am up early again after another lovely night’s sleep. Sparky is feeling feisty this morning after his breakfast–I noticed yesterday how clawed up my right knee is, since that’s the leg he always attacks and tries to climb while I am working on my desktop–so I have a lap blanket to cushion the claws a little bit. It’s my desk chair; he feels very territorial about sleeping in my desk chair after I go to work in the mornings during the week day and I am actually messing with his normal daily routine. Sigh. But I have work to get done today, around reading and cleaning, so he’s going to have to go sleep on the couch.

Yesterday was pleasant. I felt good in the morning after I got up, and did some cleaning. I read some more of Moonraker (astonishing how different the books are from the films) and started The Get Off, which has one of the best openings I’ve come across in books for quite some time–which is saying a lot, because I’ve read some pretty fantastic books lately–and am looking forward to reading some more of it today. I do need to get some writing done today. I wrote a lot yesterday, which was kind of fun, getting back into the swing of things. I wrote a very lengthy letter yesterday, which I will mail tomorrow, and then I worked in my journal for hours, brainstorming and figuring out how to fix things I am working on and what needs to be done. This morning, after reading and getting cleaned up, I’m going to get a story revised and then dive back into the book some more. Deadlines are looming, and the festivals are next weekend (AIEEEE!!!) and I still haven’t figured out a lot of that stuff out yet. Heavy sigh. I hope it’s a calm day at the office this week that doesn’t wear me out too much so I can get all this heavy lifting done.

We also watched the LSU Gymnastics team power to a second consecutive SEC championship meet in a row, which was very exciting. It was a close meet, but LSU broke 198.00 yet again, and the top three teams (Oklahoma and Florida being the other two) didn’t really have their best meet, either. And now it’s on to regionals and nationals. It’s funny how ever since that bitch on the Oklahoma team flooded social media last year with clips of LSU’s gymnasts and claiming they were being over-scored…Oklahoma hasn’t beaten LSU once. Karma is absolutely a bitch, and frankly, I’ve hated their team for its poor sportsmanship ever since–and their bitch of a coach could have stopped that skank from publicly being a piece of shit any time she wanted to, but she didn’t, and she’s theoretically the grown adult in the room, so the Oklahoma athletic department put their stamp of approval on that gymnast’s trashiness. So, fuck you now and forever, Oklahoma.

We’ve been watching Paradise on Hulu, which is nothing like I was expecting it to be. All I knew going in was that it starred Sterling K. Brown playing an agent on the President’s security detail…but the show is very clever and has lots of twists and surprises…as well as Julianne Nicholson, who is becoming one of my favorite actresses, in a stunning performance as a tech billionaire with delusions of grandeur (sound familiar?); we have two more episodes to go, and we’re really enjoying it a lot. Highly recommended, and a lovely distraction from the country’s acquiescence to authoritarianism.

I hate to break it to everyone, but it’s already here. Undesirables are being shipped to prison camps in another country. Companies and universities are giving up their freedoms and bending the knee to an illegal presidency and an even more illegal regime. We were doomed when Merrick Garland slow-walked everything, the Supreme Court colluded on immunity1, and it was very clear that it was the intent of the Biden administration to not go after the criminal syndicate that preceded him in office, which also belied their own claims on the 2024 campaign trail–and they wonder why the Democratic Milquetoast Party’s approval ratings are in the toilet? They rolled over and let this happen to us all. And after spending an entire election season warning us about the rise of fascism, suddenly it’s here and their position is “oh, well, we have to work with them”–don’t ever ask me for a fucking dime again. From now on, I only am donating to specific candidates, after being betrayed by so many once they were in office (looking at you, Schumer and the Asinine Nine); why is it important to elect rollovers like John Fetterman or Schumer or Gillibrand? If they’re going to vote with Republicans against the best interests of their own constituents and country, why not just let the Republicans just have the seat in the first place? And the complacency of the Democratic base has a lot to do with that. I’d still like to see an audit of Kyrsten Sinema’s professional and personal accounts.

But by all means, let’s just surrender the country. Fuck off now and forever, Chuck Schumer. We already live in a dystopia, can we at least count on you to not make it worse? Oh, silly me, your rich donors mean more to you than your base, how could I forget? I certainly never thought I’d see the day when NEW YORK’s senators would fuck over the entire party.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll shout at you later, okay?

  1. I suspect there were things discussed privately, or that the Supreme Court had decided in the past out of the public eye, about immunity that we are not privy because STATE SECRETS. This ruling also ensured Bush II would never be charged for his administration’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also believe that when we targeted and assassinated Yamamoto during World War II crossed a line.Yes, it was war…but a targeted assassination approved by the White House? I’m sure it was not either the first or the last crime authorized by the executive branch. ↩︎