Category: Politics

Cool, Cool Considerate Men

We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled blog to talk about US History and current affairs, which is something I don’t do very often here. But since it’s the 4th of July, how can we not reflect on our most imperfect union and the journey to where we are now?

Today’s title is from the musical 1776, which doesn’t get near enough attention. I was thinking about using something from Hamilton, but…I don’t think Lin-Manuel will mind, do you? I saw the film version of 1776 when I was in junior high school (I think it was; we used to go see movies periodically; which is how I saw both Fiddler on the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar1). But 1776 seems to have been largely forgotten.

It’s hard to imagine, really, how courageous the American rebels actually were. They were farmers and lawyers and doctors; yet they believed in their cause enough to defy and stand up to, and take on, the mightiest Empire the world has ever seen. 2They were imperfect humans, as we all are; the attempt by the Right to frame them as infallible gods, guided in their work by the Christian god, is offensive and insulting. The greatest of humans are still human, and all humans have frailties and flaws, and enshrining any human as an infallible instrument of God is, at the very least, blasphemy. The Founding Fathers were both racists (more than a few enslaved people) and misogynists (where are the rights for women?), which made them….fallible. They weren’t gods, they were men.

I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and my education was tailored to the times. We were in a Cold War with the “evil” Soviet Union, when the possibility of nuclear annihilation was always in the back of our heads. Communists were the enemy, and they were evil; so…we all had to be brainwashed into the mentality of American exceptionalism. The right of white Europeans to the continents of the Americas, despite the fact people already lived there, was never to be questioned…the ends justifying the means, I suppose. The true horrors of enslavement weren’t taught; it was just something that happened, we fought a civil war to end it, and then it was over…we weren’t taught about the racism baked into the country and society from colonial days that continues to the present day.

And a lot of the failures of the Constitution were primarily due to the Founding Fathers being unable conceive of things that are just taken for granted by us today–politics as a profession; primaries and elections as a multi-billion dollar industry, and the levels of corruption in our political class, as well as the failures of the news media to hold the government accountable.

The passage of yesterday’s foul and evil legislation was the final betrayal of the Founders, and I think people are finally waking up to the clear and present danger in Washington. Funny that the people always screaming about their freedom and their liberties are too blind to see how their freedom and liberties are being taken from them–and how happy they are to give them up so long as they think other people will suffer. I see a lot of social media posts since yesterday talking about the new authoritarianism, yet have never noticed how the Right has been building to this point for decades. The police state’s foundational legislation was the PATRIOT Act–which has never been repealed and has been reauthorized by Congress several times.

I don’t see a great future for us over the next ten years, frankly. I do not see a way out of this situation we’re in without it becoming really ugly. MAGA isn’t going to go down in any electoral defeat because, as we have seen, they will not accept the results and are more than willing to use violence to get their way. That will get ugly, don’t you think? And let’s face it, our current situation isn’t much different than the one the country was in during the 1850s–when enslavers controlled the Supreme Court, Congress, and the White House. Losing that control led to the Civil War, because enslavers weren’t willing to give up the power they’d enjoyed for so long because they feared losing their slaves.

How long before the people in the prison camps are contracted to work in the fields and doing the grunt work we’ve pushed off onto immigrants for decades?

I always suspected our system was collapsing, rotting from the inside and spreading the foul disease across the nation. I always hoped I was wrong, but the logical side of me couldn’t deny the evidence of the decay.

My one hope was that if I was correct, I wouldn’t live long enough to see the collapse. Ah, well. That ship has sailed, hasn’t it?

Yeah, not up for celebrating seventeen million people losing their health insurance, or the many millions of children who will go hungry.

But there’s always hope, no matter how bleak it seems. As Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to the do the right thing–after they’ve exhausted every other possibility.”

I also believe this will not end well for corporations and billionaires–as it did not for the French and Russian aristocracies.

And in case you’ve forgotten (or never knew) the text:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Funny how some of their indictments of George III also apply today…

  1. I still can’t believe we saw Jesus Christ Superstar and no parents complained. That wouldn’t happen today. The show and movie and music were highly offensive to Christians back in the day, but they don’t complain much about it anymore. ↩︎
  2. I’m always amazed at how the people screaming the loudest that they are the REAL American patriots…would never put themselves at risk for their values and beliefs. For the record, conservatives in 1776 were called…Tories. ↩︎

It Ain’t None of Your Business

I woke up this morning with congestion and post nasal drip, which isn’t much fun. It’s been a while since I’ve had sinus issues, and it occurs to me that this bout might have something to do with my compromised immune system. Great! Another lovely side effect of my illness and its treatment…but of course, as always, it could be worse. (Theorem: bad situations can always be worse.) The Flonase is kicking in now, and I feel a lot better already. My coffee is delicious, and the coffee cake is quite tasty (chocolate marble swirl, if you must know(

I was tired when I got home from work, but I had a very productive day at the office and managed to get everything done that needed to be done for the end of the fiscal year. (Much worse for my supervisor than for me, and I do try to make it easier for her, but there’s only so much I can do.) She’s on vacation next week, which leaves me in charge–I’ll worry about that when Monday rolls around again; the last thing I need is to worry about work over this holiday weekend. I did run some errands on my way home, and managed to get some things done around the apartment as well, but there’s more to do as always. I’ve got some laundry going right now, and it’s also “wash the bedding” day, too. Paul’s planning on going to the gym this morning when he gets up, and then we’re going to probably go see the latest Jurassic movie as a treat to ourselves. Just before bed last night I started writing a post about the holiday, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and how I don’t really feel particularly proud of my country anymore after yesterday’s passage of the heinous legislation that takes us back to pre-FDR days…which was such a great time in our history for the poor and the working and middle classes. I’ll probably finish it this morning and post it–else I’ll have to save it for another time, and is there a more appropriate time to look back as well as to mourn for the country?

There’s the added plus that being critical of the administration will no doubt get me on a list, if I’m not on one already just for being a gay creative with socialist beliefs and values.

Ironically, we streamed a movie last night which was a fun, enjoyable watch–Heads of State, starring John Cena and Idris Elba and Priyanka Chopra, with Jack Quaid in a hilarious supporting role. It’s a silly premise, and it’s an action-adventure movie which opens with Air Force One being shot out of the sky above Belarus, and the President (Cena) and the British Prime Minister (Elba) escape with parachutes and have to get back to civilization to save the NATO Alliance, while trying to figure out who is the insider who helped set up the attack on Air Force One and sent assassins to finish them off. Lots of action, lots of funny situations and dialogue, and a very charismatic, likable cast made it a lot of fun to watch. It’s not going to ever make AFI’s Top 100 Films of All Time list, but it was a terrific diversion for the evening. I did stay up later than usual–the whole 4th of July entry thing, which may actually be better for the newsletter than the blog…decisions, decisions. It’s cloudy this morning, but according to the weather there’s no chance of rain for the weekend, which is a bit disappointing as I love the rain, but what can you do?

I want to finish reading Summerhouse this weekend, and make headway on The Crying Child and Sing Me a Death Song, too. My next read is going to be Megan Abbott’s El Dorado Drive. and will probably do another Jay Bennett for y/a and the next reread will be maybe something by either Mary Stewart or Phyllis A. Whitney, as I love them both and I want to write more about them both. I also want to get some writing done this weekend, as well. I don’t feel tired this morning, which is a nice thing, and Sparky isn’t demanding either my desk chair or my lap (yet, at any rate) so I am going to work on the kitchen a bit this morning while having Youtube on so I can get caught up on the insanity of the world (someone really should write a series of essays about where we are as a nation and what led us here and call it As the World Burns) which will inevitably make me angry and/or depressed and will spoil the rest of the day and maybe I’ll just not do that? There are always LSU highlight videos, after all.

In other exciting news, I found Go Ask Alice on a streaming service, and Paul and I agreed that a rewatch for the first time in fifty years could be campy fun; it was a message-oriented made for television movie based on a fraudulent “diary” novel that hit you over the head with its message and probably was the first real ABC Afterschool Special (I knew the book was bullshit when I read it, and was only eleven, but it fooled a shit ton of people).

And on that note, I have dishes to wash and laundry to fold, so I am going to bring this to a close and open the 4th of July draft to work on while doing the chores. Have a lovely holiday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back shortly!

Adorable out actor Brandon Flynn, whose career is really taking off.

Walking in L.A.

But nobody walks in LA, as the song says. I did a few times, and always heard this song in my head as I strolled down Santa Monica Boulevard. I do miss my annual visits to Los Angeles to sign at A Different Light. I don’t miss the stress and anxiety of signings (will anyone show up? Will I make an utter fool of myself?), but yes, I used to walk down Santa Monica from my hotel and shop on my way to visit the store.

Ah, the good old days…

But it’s Pay-the-Bills Wednesday, always a fun exercise in depression that always ends up with the plaintive cry where did all my money go? At least I can pay them–for now, at any rate. I just really hate paying them and trying to remember all my user names and passwords; nothing makes me feel older than not remembering things.

I was tired when I got off work last night–and actually, was kind of dragging all damned day yesterday. I’m not sure why, either; I was kind of mentally lethargic–and when I am that way, I inevitably come up with new ideas…which is my brain trying to get me to not stress too heavily about not doing any writing: but at least I had some ideas! Insanity, but that’s the way my mind has always worked. I’ve really been wanting to write some more essays for the newsletter; I already have several done that I don’t want to send because I don’t want to become that annoying person dropping into the subscribers’ (I can’t believe I have subscribers!) inboxes all the damned time. I don’t think all my book/movie/television reviews need to necessarily go there? I don’t know. I originally decided to use the newsletter to write longer form essays–ones that were too big to go here–but somehow that evolved into my writing longer reviews of books and movies and television shows there as well. Heavy heaving sigh. I guess I am having a newsletter identity crisis….but now that I am up this morning, I’m thinking I don’t need to write reviews there; I can do shorter ones here and do the longer ones, the ones where I really have something to say about the art, on the newsletter.1

We watched some more of Olympo last night, and there was finally some more gay storyline; Roque, the gay rugby star, is now getting involved with a teammate (Sebas) who is only now beginning to experience same-sex desire, which should be interesting to see play out. Both are gorgeous, too–so was the closeted guy Roque was hooking up with until the closet case turned on him–and as Paul said, “the most interesting characters are the men–the women are unlikable.” He was right, of course, and I don’t think that is gay misogyny at play; they really are unlikable. It’s not as good or as involving as Elité, which took off like a speeding freight train from the opening of the very first episode; this one is more of a slow burn–the primary story of the season is doping, as it would be in most shows about up-and-coming Olympic hopefuls. There are some curiosities about the show–little mysteries that might become bigger story-lines as the show goes on, but for now, the doping is the primary story–as well as the homophobia Roque is experiencing on the rugby team and in the school.

Plus, I love that name: Roque.

I only have one more day of work this week after today thanks to the 4th of July holiday, which seems kind of muted this year. Not surprising, since the entire country is being reshaped in the image Christian Nationalists have been pushing for since Brown v. Topeka Board of Education was decided by a decent Supreme Court, as opposed to the conservative activists currently sitting on our present-day court. I mean, it’s not like the country has ever lived up to its ideals; our country’s sad history of racism, homophobia, and misogyny goes back all the way to Columbus arriving in the West Indies (Spain and Portugal really never get enough credit for kicking off colonization and inventing racism).

I started thinking our empire was beginning to crumble in the 1980’s–I just hoped it would wait to collapse into authoritarianism after I died.

Ah, well. Somber thoughts on this July 4th Eve Eve. I try not to talk about politics or what’s going on in the world; if you come here to read this blog periodically where I fall on the political spectrum shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. I try to leave talking about politics and world events out–I am hardly an expert, and adding to the angry on-line chatter isn’t really appealing to me: there’s no point in preaching to the choir, and anything I say isn’t going to convince someone who disagrees with me that they are incorrect (and vice versa; I don’t engage with conservatives because I will never agree with them on anything, really), and all it does is get me riled up. Sure, I’ll sometimes give in to the urge and go all Julia Sugarbaker here–ignorance and deliberate stupidity get under my skin like nothing else, but I try to resist the urge because I prefer to save my energy and time for productivity. I’m back to not engaging with anyone monstrous on social media–I find blocking trash more satisfying than scoring points off a troll anyway, which is performative in the first place, since all you are doing is showing your followers how witty and smart you are.

Sigh.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like this is a more New Orleans-style summer than we’ve had in years. It’s already miserable outside when I leave the house for work, and even more miserable later in the day when I’m running errands. I know it’s worse because my sinuses and allergies are really kicking in this year–wet and humid with the thick heavy air, the heat, and the sun beating down mercilessly from above; we’ve also had a lot more rain (another sign of insane humidity) this year than we’ve had in the last few. I think the weather, coupled with trip recovery (I was in a car for almost twenty hours over four days), is why I’ve been so out of it this week.

I kind of hope we have some delightful thunderstorms this weekend, too; so I can snuggle under a blanket in my chair while reading. Sparky has been very attached to me since I got back–demanding my lap to sleep in when I get home from work every day, wanting to ride on my shoulders while I do things, and being incredibly playful, too. He really is a dear thing.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably check in with you again tomorrow morning. Till then!

Seriously, where were all these muscular pro wrestlers during my adolescence?
  1. Which means I’ll be moving some of those reviews from the drafts on my newsletter page to the drafts here; and deleting some of the ones in the draft files here. ↩︎

I’ll Take You There

I know a place, ain’t nobody crying…

I love the Staple Singers. I think the fact I was always drawn to great female singers when I was growing up was one of the first clues what my sexuality was going to be. Why precisely was I drawn to the women singers? I can’t answer that any more than I can answer why I was such a fan of the great women stars, like Crawford and Davis and Stanwyck and Hepburn. I definitely wanted to be one of the Pips singing and dancing behind Gladys Knight.

But I am one of the few, if not the only, gay men who doesn’t like The Wizard of Oz.1

I wrote 1300 words on a short story yesterday, but kind of got stuck. I know how I want to end this story, but I am a little stuck on the middle of it–where I always get stuck. So, I am going to stick a pin in it and work on revising something else; I usually solve problems in one work when I’m working on another, odd as that may seem (and last night, as we finished off The Survivors, I figured out the next part of the story; see how that works sometimes?). I was tired yesterday, too. Not sure why that was, but I did go by the mail on the way home (where my copies of Lori Roy’s The Final Episode and S. A. Cosby’s King of Ashes were waiting for me; huzzah!) and after we finished The Survivors, I did chores and got some things organized and ready for tomorrow. It was super nice coming downstairs to a clean kitchen this morning. My coffee is pretty tasty, too.

We had a marvelous downpour last night, along with some truly lovely thunder and lightning. I love rain, I really do, and as I sat in my chair watching the end of the show last night, I couldn’t help but feel so snug and comfortable and warm. There’s just something about rain that makes me relax and feel so content; years ago I used to listen to that “forest rain” CD to fall asleep, and I always fell into a deep one. I also realized that I write about the rain a lot. I love writing about rain; the short story I am working on is at about two thousand words now, and it’s raining in the story. It rains throughout the entire Scotty book that I also need to get back to writing once my creative muscles have regained their fitness and are strong again.

I also am feeling better. I am a little tired this morning, and yesterday I did hit a wall at work yesterday afternoon (but I also got all of my work done and so am on top of everything again, huzzah), and I did sleep well last night (thanks, thunderstorm!), but this morning feels like a Wednesday morning; I’m awake and alive but a little bit tired. But I just need to get through today and tomorrow before getting to sleep late (of my alarm kitty will allow it) on Remote Friday. I am not actually wishing my life away, the way I usually do; that’s another thing that has changed for me mentally since the height of the illness. I still haven’t made a to-do list for this week–so I need to do that today. I also need to make some calls about my treatment plan for this colitis; I spoke to my GI specialist’s office yesterday and he’s fighting with my insurance to get the infusions covered (because they of course declined to cover that, but the shots for the rest of my life they are fine with). Sigh. I knew it was too good to be true. Louisiana Blue (aka Blue Cross/Blue Shield) isn’t really much better than United Healthcare; deny defend depose. I am sure my specialist will win this fight, it’s just insane that an insurer can decide arbitrarily, without examining me or my chart, what treatment options are best for me over the recommendations of the person who correctly diagnosed me and put me on the road to recovery.

This country is so seriously fucked, and broken, because that’s the end result of capitalism. For-profit models do not improve service or keep costs down, the way the Right keeps insisting that the “market place” works and is therefore the best possible option because otherwise SOCIALISM! Yeah, well, you know what doesn’t happen in socialist countries? People don’t die from not having access to health care.

Are we great again yet? Asking for a friend.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll see you here again on the morrow.

  1. Thinking about it now, I only watched it one time when I was a kid and maybe the flying monkeys scared me? Plus our television was black and white, so there was no difference between Oz and Kansas. I also only watched that one time and never again. ↩︎

I’ll Be Around

Tuesday! How you doing, everyone? I’m feeling better every day. I was a little lower energy than I would have liked over the weekend, but it’s a process, isn’t it? I’m also sleeping very well, despite the return of the heat and the humidity and their combined assault on my sinuses. It’s frightening that it’s still relatively early June and it’s this hot already. Going outside yesterday was absolutely miserable. I stopped on the way home to make groceries, and was sweating lugging the bags in from the car. Sigh. Today I need to swing by the post office on the way home, too.

Yesterday was a pretty good day overall. I woke up feeling pretty good, and managed to make it through the day feeling good (other than when I was lugging the groceries in). I now weigh 198, back up from those frighteningly low weights from the illness, and I am also not as hungry all the time as I used to be, or thinking about food constantly? I think my body recognizes what weight I should be–around 200–and was thus convincing me to want to eat more to get back to that weight. I’d like to stay here, honestly; I think this is a good weight for me, and if I can maintain it as I get stronger and keep healing…maybe when I am able to get back into the gym and start working out regularly again, I can get myself into decent shape again. It won’t be easy and it will take longer than it ever did before, because I’m older and my body has been traumatized a lot in the last few years, but I have to remember the patience I am learning with this recovery.

I actually did some more writing yesterday, too–I know, right?–and it went rather well. I am trying to push myself to get a short story written for a submission call that closes soon–there are two others I want to get to by the end of the month, we’ll see how that goes, won’t we? The problem, of course, is short stories don’t pay much so the financial incentive isn’t really there to motivate me, and since it’s an open call no one will care if I don’t finish the stories and turn them in to see what happens with them. But I do want to publish more short stories, and there are so many I have on hand that need to be worked on and revised and rewritten and/or finished. I have so many that I wrote for a submission call that I never turned in–or finished, so I have a lot of story fragments that need to be finished. There are a couple of calls that I have something on hand already that may work, but needs to be revised and/or finished. And I do want to submit to the conference anthologies; nothing ventured, nothing gained. I didn’t write anything for the New Orleans Bouchercon anthology this year, because I am still kind of bitter about not being allowed to submit to the Minneapolis one in case people wouldn’t think I cheated to get my story in, if I did get in–as if I would ever do such a fucking thing; I really don’t like having my integrity challenged and insulted like that, and yes, I do take that kind of shit personally. How is being told people would think I’d cheat to publish a short story not impugning my character and insulting who I am as a professional?

I’d rather not publish something, rather than do so by cheating the system.

And to me, the people who’d accuse me of such a thing are the kind of people who would do exactly that. That isn’t how my mind works. I guess I had better parents than y’all. I don’t know, I guess having integrity is something no one cares about anymore? Well, I do care about it, and if that makes me old-fashioned, I can live with it. I am old, after all.

I’ve really been missing my friend Victoria Brownworth these past few weeks, as the country continues to circle the drain as our democracy slips through our fingers, aided and abetted by the pathetic pieces of collaborationist quisling shit known as the today’s legacy media. Her emails and reporting would have been lit. She was one of the few journalists whose reporting I trusted, and now she is gone. This is why I no longer subscribe to any newspapers on-line and why I do not watch CNN or MSNBC–and why I will never watch anything with that pretentious fuck George Clooney in it ever again. I wasn’t a fan of the asshole to begin with, but occasionally he might make a film over the years where he actually had to do something besides play himself and mug for the camera that I might have been interested in seeing–but no more. The irony that after that bullshit editorial he wrote for the New York Slimes last summer that he was nominated for a Tony for playing Edward R, Murrow was almost perfect; Murrow was a true journalist while Clooney played a role in the downfall of the country.

They are not the same.

Clooney, you’re not fit to lick the shit out of Murrow’s asshole, and you’ll never be anything other than a craven piece of shit who did his best to throw the election to Trump, before escaping to your villa in Italy with your wife. The Reign of Terror, for the record, eventually urned on everyone. I hope you have your day in front of the tribunals.

But after getting my chores done and some writing, Paul and I watched another episode of The Survivors, and I am thinking I may need to add Jane Harper to my list of authors to check out. The show is quite excellent, and cinematically shot in a very stunningly beautiful location, and the way everyone’s lives are knitted together and knotted by misery and tragedy is quite extraordinary. It’s a terrific show, really.

I didn’t get much chance to read last night, alas and alack. But that’s okay; there’s only so much time in a day and I refuse to berate myself or get down on myself about not getting enough stuff done every day anymore. Life will try to knock me down enough on its own without me creating more anxiety and stress for myself, and I don’t ever want to be back in that horrible place I was in, emotionally, before the illness reboot. I am feeling good about my life and both careers (day job and writing), and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

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

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Don’t Blame Me

I wasn’t the one who came up with TACO Trade, but I am totally here for it.

I also love tacos, so there’s that, too. Who doesn’t love a good taco, really?

I’ve been trying to decide how to handle Pride Month posts this year, since June is just around the corner. Last year I wrote some newsletters about “my gay life”, and I think I may have done some on this blog, too. I’m not really sure how I want to handle it this year, to be honest. I can write about being queer and how that has impacted my life until the cows come home, of course–ultimately, I think being queer in a homophobic society has made me a stronger and better person, capable of empathy and being concerned about others in ways I probably wouldn’t be had I been born a cishet white man–and I can talk about queer art and culture and representation, or I could write some scenes from my gay life; experiences I’ve had and so forth. But I also kind of want my theme for the month to be more positive than negative; it gets so tiring reliving homophobic experiences and talking about inbred assholes…but I also know that, inevitably, there will be posts that are angry and negative about oppression we all face, not just queers.

Sigh.

It’s Remote Friday and I have things to do around here; on-line trainings and quality assurance paperwork and some data entry. Later on I have some errands–bloodwork, mail, grocery store, and a prescription, and I am also having dinner with a friend tonight as well. Busy Friday for one Gregalicious, and I’d like to do some of the chores today too so I can spend tomorrow focused on reading, writing, and organizing; I want to work on a short story or two this weekend, reread what I have written on the Scotty so far, and revise some other things, all while resting and relaxing. Yesterday was a nice day, really; there were some marvelous thunderstorms and I was able to get a lot done at the office, which is always a major plus. I was a bit tired when I got home, but finished the chores I didn’t do the night before so when I came downstairs this morning it was to a clean and neat kitchen. Huzzah! I just need to remember to not drink too much coffee this morning and become jittery–my caffeine tolerance is not what it was before I got sick, and that’s really not a terrible thing, in all honesty. I’m also feeling better–I’m walking better and not getting quite so fatigued as I was last week, which is definitely a good thing–and sleeping better, but trying very hard not to get impatient and rush things. My weight seems to have stabilized at 191-192, which is actually a good weight for my height and frame; I just need to trim some from the middle and add some everywhere else. But I have to get my strength back before I head back into the gym and slowly work my way back into better shape and conditioning. It won’t be easy because I am older, have lost muscle mass, and some bone density…patience has never been my strength.

But I am getting better with it, and it’s nice to not feel so fucking fatigued all the time.

I even made a to-do list for the weekend! Look at me, getting all organized again! As much as I hate to think about it, getting so sick forced a reboot on me, and I am actually better for it? In retrospect, it wasn’t such a bad thing, despite how much I suffered through it. Weird, isn’t it?

I also checked my drafts of the newsletters (and the blog) and I think I have enough stuff to finish and post for Pride Month, and yes, some of it is going to be angry. Sorry, you want to persecute me and people like me? Yeah, I’m going to get pissed off, especially given the extent of mediocrity we always have to suffer from cishet white people. Mediocre. Louder for the ones in the back! MEDI-FUCKING-OCRE.

But I don’t care.

We also started the TV series based on Alafair Burke’s The Better Sister, and it’s excellent.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Hope your Friday is as lovely as you are, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One never can be sure!

Me with Wendy Corsi Staub in the hotel club room at Toronto Bouchercon: “Wendy, fetch me some wine!” Also, photobombed by Ellen Claire Lamb!

The Tracks of My Tears

Well, we made it to Thursday, didn’t we? Yesterday was a good day. I slept really well the night before, didn’t have to get up early (and Sparky let me sleep an extra hour; he’s started getting into bed and cuddling up to me every morning around four which is nice), and had a nice doctor visit. I lost more weight–honestly!–and am now under 180, which has been since at least the late nineties that I weighed so little. I did stop at Raising Cane’s to get lunch on my way into the office, and it was very good and very filling. It was a slow day at the office, too, so I was able to get a lot of my Admin work caught up as well. I didn’t feel exhausted, either, which was super nice…and of course I work from home tomorrow and Monday is a holiday, so huzzah! I do want to slowly and carefully work on the house some more over the weekend, and keep building up my own strength.

I really hate being feeble, but my body has been through a major trauma and I’m older, so I need to get over my impatience and take it easy–which is hard for me, because I always see it as being lazy (thanks Mom and Dad!) rather than being something necessary. Maybe if I can get on a roll with my reading and start doing some more writing.

I started writing my essay about Gone with the Wind and how it basically is the Bible of Lost Cause Mythology, which also reminded me of an earlier, equally foul (if not more so) book that was also made into a successful film: Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman, which was filmed as Birth of a Nation and preceded Gone with the Wind by a few decades, priming the pump, as it were. (I downloaded those books from Project Gutenberg, but can’t bring myself to read them.) I’ve really come to hate the Lost Cause myth over the years, but have to admit it’s not surprising that it was allowed to develop and become a horrible part of our history (and present) because stubborn Southerners refused to believe they were, or ever could have possibly been, wrong about anythin1g. (Yet they call themselves “the real Americans” now.)2

I slept well again last night, which is great; maybe uninterrupted sleep is going to be a thing for me again and praise Jesus and pass the ammunition, you know? Yesterday was actually a pretty good day, overall. I got a lot of work done at the office, always a plus to be ahead on my work, and we watched two more episodes of The Last of Us after I made dinner. I fell asleep in my chair instead of cleaning the kitchen the way I’d intended to, but I can do that when I get home tonight. Tomorrow is a work-at-home day for me, and of course that glorious three day weekend of rest, relaxation, and reading right behind it. Huzzah! I feel like I’m getting some of my strength back–a little, not a lot–and the process is going to be slow (I need to be more patient) and steady and hopefully by the end of the summer I’ll be back to some semblance of normality and weight.

And on that brief note, I will bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thor’s Day, Constant Reader, and I will be back at some point soon.

  1. William Bradford Huie–a problematic journalist who committed some serious crimes by “protecting sources” in the Emmett Till case–wrote a book about the civil rights movement in north Alabama in the late 1960s called The Klansman, which showed three different perspectives–and the one from the bigoted police chief who does not believe he is a bigot is probably the best depiction of the Southern bigot mentality I’ve ever read; but the book is horrifically brutal and difficult to read. ↩︎
  2. There are some excellent novels that show the horrors of what the Jim Crow South was like: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due; Time’s Undoing by Cheryl Head, and anything by Wanda M. Morris–all writers you should be reading. And yes, they’re fiction, but so is the Lost Cause myth. ↩︎

The Logical Song

Monday back to the office blog, and it’s taking me a while to get my morning together. I feel good this morning; like this latest round of depression has finally ended. Not that anything happening in the world has gotten better–it certainly grows worse with every passing day; at least Germany had a fairly stable economy for a little while before things got super dark there in the 1930s, you know–but I always have to remember that I am not completely helpless in the face of the rising evil in the world, I do have a voice, and I should never in a million years allow the bastards to get me down and keep me from being tired or feeling beaten. This has been a lifelong struggle for me, and now almost every American is finding out how it feels when the government doesn’t give two shits about you–it never did, but people are finally waking up to the realization that unfettered capitalism, the ideal state for Ayn Rand, doesn’t work because her “men of the mind” always allow their greed and inhumanity to take control of things.

It was very easy for capitalist pigs to convince Americans that regulations–for their own safety–weren’t necessary. So, I guess we all needed a hard reminder that capitalists and corporations only care about money, and don’t care if they poison you in the name of profit, since some people never fucking learn and will never read history.

This last bout of depression was undoubtedly triggered by coming down from the Festivals, having to return to work, and all this horrible fears about my job and potential retirement. Thanks again, MAGA voters. But I do feel good this morning, better than I have since before the festivals, and so am hoping that this will carry me through until I get everything done that I need to get done. I have a shit ton of emails to answer and more to send. I have a lot of writing to do, and I need to get my taxes done once and for all. I need to pay bills, and I need to run some errands on my way home from work. I also feel physically better; I never really got past the Festival induced exhaustion. We’ll see how this goes.

I did manage to read some yesterday, and managed to finish the first part of Moonraker before my mind stopped focusing yesterday. It did amuse me; the entire first fifty pages or so of the book are about introducing the mysterious billionaire Hugo Drax, who has moved to England and is developing an amazing defensive weapon that could protect the UK from Soviet nuclear weapons, and has gotten deeply involved in British politics (sound familiar? That’s part of the reason I am revisiting the novel), and revealing him to the reader as a cheat at cards. He plays at M’s men’s club (ah, those last vestiges of the Empire and class distinctions!), and the manager suspects that he’s cheating, as he is quite successful. The manager and M want Bond (who became a master at cards on the job; can’t help but think of Casino Royale) to figure out how he’s doing it, and then give him a lesson to protect the club from a cheating scandal. Imagine the first part of a Bond film being about cheating at bridge! It also begs the question of just how far from the original character and his world as conceived by his creator, and how insane it’s gotten as the film got bigger, crazier and campier.

I spent more time on social media this weekend than I like to on the weekends, mainly because of the unfocused brain and my inability to focus–although social media, methinks, has had a lot to do with making my ADHD worse–and I could easily do that while watching the country burn to the ground on the news, and while watching documentaries about the Hapsburgs and how their incestuous marriages–a long-standing family policy geared to protect their money and their lands–eventually led to their downfall, I found myself getting sucked into several on-line dramas that just further illustrate divisions in the country. First up was the candle thing; turns out a gay candle maker decided to make a candle commemorating Cory Booker’s filibuster…and one of the options was cotton-scent. First of all, yikes–and then when Black women started calling the dude out for profiting on Black labor, he doubled down, and then someone came to his rescue–or attempted to, at any rate; this person (I am not using pronouns because I don’t know how they identify) was “camp callout”–I’d seen some of their videos about MAGA regrets, but…this person turned out to also be deeply problematic: long story short, Camp has a very well documented MAGA and anti-trans past; and then the candlemaker turned out to be a convicted sexual offender. Whoops!

Needless to say, they have both disappeared from social media, at least for now.

The bouncy house thing was another one of those “is this a real post or is it parody” posts, in which a white woman complained that the Hands Off protest she attended (her first protest) didn’t have any entertainment for her bored child, suggesting a bouncy house…and she got dragged for it, rightfully so. Good on you for going to your first protest, what the fuck are you thinking have you never seen a protest before? Granted, white people tend to not get teargassed or beaten or had police dogs set on them or firehoses trained on them (unless they’re protesting genocide!) because white privilege, but it was an incredibly tone deaf thing to say, given our proud history of incarcerating Black and brown protesters, along with their children. Leave the kids at home. Then another white gay man (sensing a theme) came in hard for Black women laughing at this idiot…calling them bullies. No one was bullying this woman…and tell me you don’t know any Black people without saying the words. I don’t speak for the Black community, but I do know the difference between bullying and clowning, and that was what was going on. People were laughing at her. No one was wishing her or her children harm, any of that stuff.

Maybe make some Black friends, Keith Edwards? Won’t be watching your channel anymore.

This, for example, is why Black people can’t trust white people–and similarly, why queer people can never fully trust straight people (having your bridal party go to a gay bar doesn’t make you an ally…being an ally doesn’t mean centering yourself and crowding out the people you’re supposed to be an ally of, for the record).

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have as lovely a Monday as you can hang with, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)

Saturday morning and I have a couple of errands to do this morning. I need to go by the bank (I haven’t made a deposit in person in eons) and I have to swing by the grocery store. Sigh. I really didn’t want to leave the house today, but here we are. It’s also a struggle these days to get through as we go through and experience the collapse of the American experiment in self-rule. I think another significant part of our history that isn’t taught the way it should be is we aren’t taught about how many Tories there were in the colonies during the lead up to and aftermath of the Revolution. We aren’t taught New England threatened to secede during the War of 1812, or that there were people on both sides of the Civil War1 that sympathized with the other side; North and South weren’t monoliths the way we are taught. We aren’t taught about how many Americans were Nazi sympathizers and isolationists before Pearl Harbor, using the slogan “America First”–so you see why I have always raised a cynical eyebrow whenever anyone uses that slogan; it was tied to Nazi sympathizers to me.

Watching the collapse of our country is challenging and more than a little bit depressing. It is terrible that just as I approach the age of retirement and the final chapter of my life…well, the retirement may turn out to be involuntary, as my clinic’s funding is definitely on the chopping block, Social Security is about to be looted and destroyed, and I don’t want to even look at the paltry 401k, which has also probably evaporated. No job and no retirement funds is going to be awesome when I turn 64. Paul got the notice from the NEH to not bother applying for grant funding, as it’s all been cut, so his job may not survive this, either–no more festivals in the spring. So, miss me with “we need to be nice to MAGA voters now finding out”–fuck them now and forever. I will never forgive them, and their suffering lightens mine. You want to embrace them, be my guess. Me? I will never stop laughing and pointing, let alone mocking them and enjoying their tears. My patience has worn out for ignorant haters, sorry not sorry– and as they so eloquently put it, “fuck your feelings.”

Yesterday was a nice day, overall. I got up, had a virtual meeting at work, and then did my Admin work before running some errands. I got that done, and then Paul and I made a Costco run and spent an insane amount of money. After getting home, lugging everything into the house and putting it all away, I was tired. I collapsed into my chair for a while as Paul went upstairs to work on the NEH grant–but got the email so didn’t have to bother for the rest of the evening and we dove further into The Residence, which I am greatly enjoying. Uzo Adoba is fantastic as Cordelia Copp, the world’s greatest detective, and it’s very well cast, high production values, and the writing is quite crisp. The chief usher at the White House (the divine Giancarlo Esposito) is murdered during a state dinner, and Cordelia is brought in to solve the murder. I think what’s most interesting is the divide between the White House domestic staff v. the White House political staff; the domestics work for the House, the political staff comes and goes. I’d never really thought much about the staff of the residence, so it’s an interesting look at how that all works, and it’s very cleverly structured. Highly recommend.

I do have some errands to do today, and a lot of straightening up to do as well. I want to get some reading and writing in this morning, so I can go to the gym tomorrow (I know, right?) and get some more done. I’ve been letting things slide a lot lately, which probably means I am depressed, which isn’t surprising, given the state of the world and everything else going on in my life. I think there’s an element of why bother with this book, to be honest, which is counter-productive and quite self-destructive, but it’s hard to be productive when your default is almost always pessimism. I always knew Republicans were working very hard to destroy everything decent about this country (unfettered capitalism is sociopathic in nature), but I never dreamed they might actually succeed. To paraphrase Game of Thrones: “Whenever I wonder why the Republicans would do something so counter-productive to democracy, I like to play a little game: what is the worst reason they would want to do this?”

Littlefinger was right, even if he did end up with his throat slit for his treachery.

Yesterday I also realized that one of the great American traditions, going back to colonial days, of evading paying duties and tariffs was smuggling. I used to love to read about Colonial smugglers (John Hancock was one), and some great fiction was built up around smuggling. I’ve always thought the years of Prohibition (and alcohol smuggling) in New Orleans would be an interesting time to write about. That decade saw the rise of Huey Long to power in Louisiana, and there are some fantastic stories about that post-Storyville time here. Jean Lafitte was a pirate, too–but he was also a very successful smuggler. But again, one of the great problems of New Orleans/Louisiana research is going down wormholes and sidebars–my ADHD does not matters at all in this regard; I do remember wanting to write about “Mrs. Officer,” the first woman cop in New Orleans, who was hired because they needed a woman to search and interrogate criminal women, which was a problem during Storyville days. I mean, what a great decade to research and write about! Imagine what “Mrs. Officer”2 endured in terms of misogyny as the only woman cop in an era where women couldn’t vote.

There’s also a protest today scheduled in New Orleans, as well as around the country. I’m hoping to make it, it just depends on how tired I am after getting things done this morning. I feel pretty good right now, but that also doesn’t mean I won’t flag later, either.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you most likely tomorrow morning.

  1. This is a classic example of why I say we don’t teach history properly (which will end up being a longer-form essay for my newsletter at some point). There were plenty of Tories during the American Revolution. There were Southern sympathizers in the North and Unionists in the South–I knew about the North, but whenever I’d come across that about the South I figured it was after-the-fact apologia, excusing Southern whites for their inhumanity. But over the least few years as I’ve done more deep dives into Alabama history, and hearing more old family stories, I’ve come to realize it was actually true. Erik Larson discusses this in more detail in his The Demons of Unrest, which I do recommend. ↩︎
  2. SHe was always referred to as “Mrs. Officer,” which also makes a great title. ↩︎

What a Fool Believes

I’ve always been a fool, but my brain has always worked to convince me that is not the truth. (Spoiler: it is. I am constantly amazed at how foolish I am, or have been, which is one of the many reasons I second-guess myself all the damned time.) I often deceive myself that I handle things better than I do, and it seems I often don’t have the necessary distance from things to evaluate them properly.

I finally wrote about my friendship with Dorothy Allison yesterday on my newsletter; if you are so inclined you can click there and read it (you can also subscribe while you’re there, or not, it’s up to you). She died right after the election, and I never like to share my grief publicly (still fighting that “never bleed in public” training from childhood), because it’s personal to me. Doing the reading on Sunday, I realized I was finally in a place where I could mourn her publicly. Likewise, I didn’t want to do the last-minute reading in honor of Felice Picano because it was too soon. I’ll write about Felice one day, probably this summer, when someone or something will remind me of him and I’ll know it’s time. I hate being at the point in life when you start losing friends with greater regularity. That’s the thing they never tell you about getting old–being older means getting used to loss, and really, that’s about it.

Yesterday was a decent day. It was slow at clinic so I got a lot of my admin work caught up, but I wasn’t all there, if that makes any sense. I wasn’t tired, but just felt…drained. Not sure what that was about, so I came home and did chores, watched LSU win the regional semifinal by breaking 198.00 again (GEAUX TIGERS!), so they’ll be competing in the final tomorrow, and we started watching The Residence, which got off to an interesting start before I went to bed early. I feel pretty good this morning, have some work to do here, and then later will run errands. I mean, I feel as good as I can giving the fact that retirement is beginning to look like it won’t be an option for me ever–and what is most likely is involuntary retirement because of funding cuts. Thanks again, MAGA voters, for giving me another reason to despise you with every fiber of my being–and other people might forgive you at some point, but I never fucking will, and I’ll go to my grave hating and despising you fucking racist and homophobic pieces of shit. The only thing that is getting me through this stress is the grim satisfaction of knowing they’re suffering even worse and they know it’s their own fault. I will never stop belittling and mocking them as long as I have breath in my body. Staying positive in the age of negativity is definitely a challenge…especially now that Wall Street has cratered and we are on the brink of a world-wide depression that is no one’s fault but our own.

I also realized that today’s title really works, because I still cling to the belief that somehow we’ll survive this illegitimate regime and it won’t get that terribly bad. I’ve been bankrupt before, I can live through it again, I suppose. But this is what the Republicans have been pushing for since the Reagan misadministration, which I’ve been saying for fucking decades, only to be dismissed as lightly as Cassandra on the walls of Troy (I really would love to write from her perspective; I can imagine no curse greater than being able to see the future only to have no one believe you. No wonder she went mad)? There have been few, if any, good Republicans since the party was overhauled when everyone who’d really experienced the Great Depression1 was dead and couldn’t remind everyone of the policies that led to that disaster. And here we are, almost to the hundred year anniversary of the stock market crash and the depression that followed.

Americans never learn from their history and always repeat it. We are not a nation of smart people.

And on that truly sad note, I’ll head into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I will definitely check in on you either later or tomorrow.

  1. Worth mentioning that the collapse of our economy led to the same thing, only worse, around the world, which led to the rise of fascism. In true American narcissism, the Great Depression is always taught as an American issue, rather than a global one–another way history is taught incorrectly. ↩︎