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.
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. ↩︎
Saturday morning and I got up early; I went to bed last night at my usual time. I was kind of worn down yesterday after I finished my work at home duties, so I just kind of collapsed into my easy chair to watch some documentaries because my brain still felt fried. I hate that for me, and I hate not being able to get things done that I need to. I was able to get chores managed and completed, which was nice. The kitchen is pretty much in good shape this morning, so there isn’t much to do around here this morning major, but I can do little things to made things tidier around here. I also have some business to take care of this morning (hello, IRS!) as well as writing to get done. Paul’s going to be at the office for most of the day, but hopefully he’ll be home in time to watch the SEC Gymnastics Championships tonight. LSU is in the night group, so that also gives me all day to write and clean and read and the taxes and other chores that need to be done. Whew. That’s a day, isn’t it?
It is indeed.
Well, here’s hoping that I have a productive day, at any rate. I am easily distracted these days, as I imagine many are, by the current events that pummel us into insensibility and rage every goddamned day. There are times, I swear, when I think the Christians’ “rapture” has already happened because all we have around these days are the faux kind, the ones who cosplay at being Christians but have no interest in actually being Christ-like. Nothing is more irritating that someone who is arrogant in their faith–especially since their Holy Book firmly establishes in the first part that God despises everything other than humility from humans, and the second part is all about being kind and helping the sick and the poor and feeding the hungry. All of that, of course, was ignored for centuries by the established European version of the religion, which really came to be about earthly power and the accumulation of wealth. Men pick the pope, after all–and men are capable of corruption, and no man is as capable of being corrupted as someone who has chosen the path of religion for money and power. Jesus would weep at the corruption of his faith, and at the false miracles invented to reward humans with godhood1, the way the Romans did with their emperors?
And how is that not heresy and/or blasphemy?
But that’s not my job to figure out. But I feel pretty confident that people who are performative Christians–the ones who pray loudly in public, who proclaim themselves to the world as saved and so forth, and who proselytize and weaponize their faith (I don’t think there’s anywhere in the Bible where Jesus ever says to the faithful to use their faith to bash and beat down anyone; the message of Christianity–of religions in general–is to be a good person who cares about others and cares about the world–but not its rewards. It saddens me to see that religion has grown so corrupted and worldly, the way false prophets can pervert the word to make themselves wealthy while they do nothing for the faithful or the poor and unfortunate.
Can you tell I had an encounter with a cosplay Christian on-line the other day whose arrogance and pride is antithetical to Jesus? That always makes me laugh about religion, and think about it some more. I was raised that way, and it is very ingrained in me. I also noted the hypocrisy of the denomination I was raised in; the mealy-mouthed “amens” during the service and the piety they claimed to espouse…while being liars, adulterers and thieves while judging others for their sins…and those sins are usually things so little considered in the Bible that you really have to look for them. Three misinterpreted passages about homosexuality, but literally hundreds about lying, cheating and stealing…that they never bring up.
Remove the mote from thine own eye.
I have been writing an essay, off and on, for nearly thirty years, about religion and morality, and how difficult it is to break the Christian conditioning we are groomed into, and how that grooming often includes the stuff Christianity has been corrupted into targeting–gays, minorities, trans folk, etc. Call it what it is: grooming. Children aren’t given a choice about religion, are they? And it’s very hard to shake that training off. I haven’t set foot in a church for anything other than a wedding or a funeral in over forty years, going on fifty, and while I don’t consider myself to be a believer anymore…I can’t say I’ve broken through the training completely, but I no longer believe the Bible is literally true nor do I believe the Earth is less than six thousand years old. I do not believe the entire world was flooded and every living thing except what was loaded into an ark made of wood perished. The actual teachings of Jesus–particularly the Sermon on the Mount–are something I try to adhere to, not always successfully, as a guide post for my life.2
I also refuse to believe that you can be a horrible person all week but will go to “heaven” so long as you go to church every Sunday and perfunctorily go through the motions of the devout. If the ritual is that important whereas your regular behavior isn’t, what kind of god is that? And I’ve never understood why anyone would believe in predestination, which is antithetical to Christianity itself because it removes free will, which is kind of the cornerstone the entire faith is built on?
I also owe a friend a letter. I am a little worried about writing said letter because, obviously, I’ve not written a letter in decades. I was a faithful letter writer when I was younger, and moving so much…I did try to stay in touch with people I thought were my friends after moving away, but they would never write back quickly, if at all, and the correspondence would always die when they owed me a letter. I always wrote people last…which was a very early lesson in out of sight, out of mind as well as they weren’t really your friends which is another reason I stopped trying to stay in touch with people whenever I moved. I was always the last person to reach out to anyone, so it’s always funny to me when people from my past–especially the far distant past–will act like they’re sorry we fell out of touch, and much as I always want to say “you stopped responding to ME”, I never do.3 But my friend typed out a note and mailed it to me, and rather than emailing (which is a most sorry substitute for writing a letter or getting one in the mail) I am going to write a letter back. I am oddly excited about it?
I am awake and feel good, and feel like I can get things done this morning. I am going to post this, and then go read in my chair for a little bit before getting cleaned up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, one never knows!
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No one will ever convince me that the saints aren’t anything other than a continuation of the pantheon of Greek/Roman gods and demigods and other mythic creatures. There’s a patron saint for everything that you can pray to—just like the Greeks/Romans had a god or nymph or something that they prayed to. ↩︎
Which is why I am so fully aware that one cannot be both a Christian and an adherent of Ayn Rand, Republicans. ↩︎
And there are very few of those people from my past that I’ve let have access to me again that I didn’t regret later. ↩︎
Ah, Wednesday and it’s all downhill for the rest of the week, isn’t it? Huzzah! I feel good this morning, too, more rested and alert than I have been for most of the week. So, this week feels back to normal in that weird way of feeling better later in the week as my body again resets to getting up early every day. I was fatigued again last night when I got home from work, but I wrote for a little while once I was home, and did some chores (the kitchen looks presentable again) before zoning out with The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the news last night. I also ran an errand after work, picking up my copy of Christa Faust’s The Get Off, the third and probably final book of the Angel Dare series. I loved the first two (Money Shot and Choke Hold), and nobody writes like Christa. If you’ve not read Christa, and love noir, you really can’t go wrong with reading this trilogy. It really is fantastic.
As a general rule, I simply watch the antics of “”book social media” from a removed, slightly bemused distance and don’t get involved, other than a comment about how jaw-droppingly insane the latest controversy on those sites are, and these controversies usually involve the actions of a problematic author and/or publisher. I have my thoughts and opinions about each and every topic in those hashtags and posts that grow heated (remember the fun days of American Dirt? Good times!) but I don’t contribute to them because I don’t see any point. Are there authors that write bigoted, uninformed work that is questionable at best and horrifying at its worst? Are there readers who will embrace those works because said stories confirm their prejudices and values? 100%. Are they all, authors and readers, awful people? Certainly. Will arguing with them on social media do anything other than raise my blood pressure and wreck my day? Not likely. Personally? I don’t want to ever unintentionally offend anyone (unless you’re MAGA, in which case you shouldn’t be reading my work in the first place because you are not my intended audience but if you are reading it, suck it up snowflakes, and fuck your feelings); and I constantly question my choices in my work. My go-to is always if I question it, best to remove it. (Sidebar: I bet the American Dirt author–Jeanine Cummins?– was really happy about the pandemic because it made everyone forget about her and her shitty racist book.) There have been some tempests in this week’s (and last’s) social media teapots1, haven’t there? Sheesh. There was an explosion (again) of homophobia in the m/m writing community, which got people riled up (I love when cishet straight white women inform gay men that books with two men falling in love aren’t for us.) There was another kerfuffle where a romance writer gave her main male character an HEA–just not with the female lead, but another man. Horrors! Needless to say, that also triggered an on-line meltdown, and I am reminded again why I never want to write romance…just like I eschew the y/a publishing community, which is also a snake pit.
I’d rather jump into a piranha-infested river, to be honest. Or be forced to be on a Kardashian television show.2
And yesterday, the “Tori Woods” groomer romance situation blew up on the Internet–and her book, about a “romance” that begins when an adult male is attracted to a three-year-old “but waits for her to grow-up so it’s not child sexual abuse”, is from the same publisher as the last author who wrote racist books and was “canceled” (whatever the fuck that means) deservedly for being a racist piece of shit. Sounds like a publisher issue to me, doesn’t it? I think the publisher has also published problematically racist books before, too. There was some historical romance writer who also outed herself as a racist pos–apparently, people of color only existed in the past to be enslaved or rescued by noble white people–and seriously, how did RWA take so long to burn to the ground in the first place?3
Don’t get me wrong; I still want to write a gay romance novel at some point–and maybe even more than one, honestly. But I’d really rather not get dragged into that on-line community, if I can. (I saw yesterday that someone is publishing a grooming romance–and the grooming started when the girl was THREE. Um…yeah, no thanks.) Did not trying to be a part of the on-line y/a community probably, possibly have cost me some sales? For sure, but at the same time I am really grateful to have my peace of mind.
Peace of mind is priceless.
I also got my assignments for Saints and Sinners/Tennessee Williams Fests, and I am going to be hopping all weekend, it looks like–panels, a tribute reading, the anthology launch–and I will have LOTS of friends in town, too. But this year I took Monday off, too, so I can recover from the weekend and get things done around the house. I’ll also be commuting back and forth so Sparky’s not alone for the whole weekend, and someone needs to feed him, anyway. He is not going to be happy. Paul went to the office yesterday and wasn’t home when I arrived, so Sparky was especially cuddly and needy. I don’t mind, but clearly he doesn’t like being left alone–or puts on a good show after he has been.
My Youtube algorithms, always an interesting mystery, have recently started showing me videos about the classic scifi television program V. I loved V when it originally aired, but when it became a regular weekly series in the 1980s, I stopped watching because I lost interest. I did love the rebooted series, which was fantastic and again ended on a great cliff-hanger. And of course, once I watched one video, it started showing me more. This of course is because I’ve been watching videos about the rise of fascism in Europe between 1918-1939, World War II, and the “America First” movement of that period (newsflash: conservatives were Nazi-adjacent until Pearl Harbor)…and that’s the allegory at play in the series–the Visitors are stand-ins for Nazis, etc. I had grown up believing that it could never happen here…but watching this show made me realize how incredibly easy it is for people to side with their oppressors. It’s something, sadly, that is very human. I also remember a school did a social experiment with fascism, which was made into a TV movie called The Wave, which was again the same thing–the way we can so easily slide into being “good Germans.” I read Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here during the reign of Bush II: Electric Boogaloo, which cemented it even further into my head. I’ve talked before about writing a book that I originally got the idea for in the 1990s, where the queers fill in for the scapegoated minority…interesting, though, that my video research into fascism triggered the algorithm to remind me of V, which was also probably, along with Red Dawn, the biggest influences on that idea.
And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a wonderful midweek Wednesday, and I’ll probably be back later or tomorrow.
Although I am really hoping the move to cancel Kim Kardashian and her odious family really takes this time. ↩︎
Please, God, let this be the end of all things Kardashian. Haven’t we suffered enough? ↩︎
Racists working with a gay white man (racist) brought RWA down, remember? ↩︎
Remote Friday, which used to be Work-from-Home Friday–they call them “remote days” at the office now, so I had to rename the blog entry to be correct, because I am nothing if not a stickler (as if). I was correct in assuming I would be brain frazzled when I got home from work (it was a good day, if busy, and I got a lot done. Even wilder, there wasn’t much back-up of traffic on the highway), so I recharged for a bit in my easy chair with Sparky, and reacquainted myself with what happened in the advancing collapse of the Weimar Republic while I turned my attention away, and wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the most recent Neville Chamberlain-like statesmanship from Democratic leadership. The party just needs to die at this point before it gets too ugly…for them. I believe when MAGA turns on the people they voted for it will be incredibly violent and deadly–which is going to be a true Reign of Terror, since the betrayal runs so deep. The failure, and potential death of the Democratic Party–thanks, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, for your utter failure of leadership–will be less ugly, but ugly just the same. It’ll save me some money, since I will no longer be donating to any politician or party going forward…and I certainly will not be doing any campaign work of any kind ever again, either. Right now, the list of donations for 2026 is looking like it will be entirely to primary opponents. Why on earth would I ever support people who aren’t going to fight for the country and the Constitution?
I managed to get chores done last night, as I wasn’t physically tired at all, but had no bandwidth for reading or writing–but instead of sitting in my chair all night, I got my ass up and started doing chores. I did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and washed everything in the sink and reloaded and ran it again. I picked stuff up and worked on the kitchen, too. I hate that my mind is so fried by Thursday, but this was also a busy-ass week and I was in clinic every day. I also slept very well last night, and Sparky wasn’t as insistent that I get up at six as he usually is. I also managed to pay my car registration on line, got the bills all paid, and now get to do some work-at-home duties before running some errands before settling in to read and write for the rest of the afternoon. LSU’s final gymnastics meet is tonight, at Auburn, so we’ll be watching that tonight, and we need to find something new to stream–but we also have this week’s Reacher and Abbott Elementary to watch, too. That’s tonight sorted, any way.
Tomorrow the weather is going to be ugly with some sort of super storm cell capable of producing powerful tornados. We don’t really have basements or interior rooms here, and the houses all have enormous windows, so yeah, tornados here are quite unpleasant. Yet another reason for me to get everything done outside of the house that needs to be done today, you know? I just need to get the mail and some groceries, nothing too terrible and relatively easy to get taken care of, which will be very nice. It also appears that the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade is cancelled, possibly postponed.
By checking the news for the weather, I also saw that today is the anniversary of one of the city’s darkest days in history–the lynching of eleven Italian-American immigrants in the city jail. The police chief had been murdered, and the (bigoted) view of New Orleanians that it was a Mafia or a local Italian crime gang, so when some of them were acquitted…the good white men of New Orleans (sarcasm) stormed the jail and lynched the prisoners. It created an international incident and almost led to war with Italy; to appease the Italian government, one of the things the US did (besides paying an enormous indemnity) was create Columbus Day–which is how that happened….funny that a holiday created to honor a genocidal maniac came about because of bigotry, racism, and murder. I wonder…is this the time period racists mean when they talk about how New Orleans “used to be safer”? Because that doesn’t sound too safe to me…maybe it was when Storyville was open? When the Axeman was killing people? I do want to write about the lynchings some time, but I don’t know how to turn that into a story or a book. Perhaps someday….
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back either later or not till tomorrow morning. I will see you then!
I am sure the pathetic POS who cosplays the Village People now would say it’s a song about the joys of patriotic service to your country, when every gay of a certain age knows damned well the Navy a hotbed of, um, shall we say male camaraderie?1I mean, the first two lines of the song are:
Where can you find pleasure? Search the world for treasure?
Pleasure and treasure? Oh yes, totally about nothing but heterosexual manly man!
I don’t know why that shit pisses me off so much–oh, wait, yes I do; no matter what that piece of cosplaying trash says, there were gays in the Village People, they were named after Greenwich Village (a gayborhood in New York) and most of their songs were slyly told young gay men what joys awaited them if they knew the right places to be–and some of the song titles told them exactly where to go be free, gay and happy.
So, yeah, fuck off with your Trump worship, douchebag, and keep flogging forty year old songs for current relevance. Just remember everything he touches dies, okay?
Friday remote day for me, with a trip to Costco on the horizon after I complete my work chores this morning. I was a bit on the tired side when I got home from work yesterday, so I decided to take the evening off and relax, knowing the weekend was coming and I was feeling a lot better about writing and everything, so I know I am going to get back into that groove over the next three days. Huzzah! I do have some things that need to get done this weekend (including my taxes), and I am hoping that it’s going to be a very good weekend. I’d also like to try to make it to the gym a couple of times, but we’ll see how that goes. The weather should be a bit on the chilly side, but no rain or high winds or any of that apocalyptic kind of shit we’ve been having this year so far. What a trippy year down here–the terrorist attack, the blizzard, the Super Bowl, and then Carnival. We’ve barely had a chance to breathe, and I’ve been up to Alabama and back, and had jury duty, and was sick. Whew. It’s already been a year, hasn’t it? But once the Festivals have passed and my deadlines met, I can breathe a little easier. I don’t have to travel again until May, which is nice.
And I have some things to do around the house, as always. There’s a load of clothes in the dryer that need fluffing again and then folding, as well as a load of dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away, and of course, there’s always things to pick up and put away and organize. It really never ends, does it? I used to always think if I didn’t keep my apartment the way my mother used to keep her house, I was slovenly and should be thoroughly ashamed of myself (my mom would totally judge people by their housekeeping skills). I also need to accept, when I am thinking about things like that, that the house was Mom’s job for the last fifty years or so of her life. The house was always tidy when she worked at Western Electric in the city, but after we moved to Kansas when she was 33, she never had to leave the house to go to a job again. Mom also was very driven to be the best at whatever she did, so she kept her house immaculate at all times and taught herself to cook…and no one could cook like Mom (I know everyone thinks that about their mother, but mine really was. Kids in high school in Kansas loved coming to my house for dinner because Mom went to town. Everyone in the immediate family always deferred to her as the best cook in the family, and neither my sister nor I are pretty good in the kitchen). She also always made everything from scratch, too–pancakes, waffles…anything worth making was worth making from scratch for her. But keeping house isn’t my job, and looking at my apartment and hearing Mom’s voice in my head criticizing how bad at it I am is very self-defeating. If and when I am able to retire, yeah, you’ll be able to eat off the floors once I don’t have to go to work every day. I also have to write and edit and promote my books around my day job and cleaning house.
Be kinder to yourself, Gregalicious.
We watched another episode of The Madness last night, and it’s really exceptional. Colman Domingo is phenomenal in the lead role (I’ve not seen either of his Oscar nominated performances, but I’m perfectly happy with him winning an Emmy for this), and the way it keeps twisting and turning is really something. I don’t have any idea of how this is going to end, or where it’s going to go from here, but…we’re down to the last two episodes this weekend, and so we’ll be finishing it tonight or tomorrow. I do highly recommend it, if you’re interested. The base point of the story, where it all starts, is with Domingo’s character, a CNN reporter about to be given his own show, rents a cabin in the Poconos for a couple of weeks to work on a book he’s writing (and how lovely does that sound? Two weeks in the peace and quiet of the woods to just write? Sigh), only when he goes to ask a neighbor for help, he stumbles over two masked men who’ve murdered his neighbor and dismembered him…and are now after him, and he’s being framed for the murder. And oh, the neighbor was a notorious white supremacist…and that’s just how it starts.
And on that note, I am going to head to the spice mines for the day and get my work done. Have a great and happy Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later.
Tuesday of Jury Duty and parades; Sunday’s parades are rolling tonight, which should make getting home tonight a lot of fun. Jury duty was painless, other than I sat there without being called up to the pool until all juries were seated and they let us go in the early afternoon. I then had to go to work because the slip they gave me was for only five hours, and I wasn’t up for using my paid time off to get to eight for the day, so…there I went. I mostly scrolled through my phone while reading Lev AC Rosen’s marvelous The Bell in the Fog, which I am really enjoying. I do have to report again today, and I hope that’s it for the week. They did say that the city was shutting down at 5 tonight until Ash Wednesday (yes, we do pretty much close the city down for the last week of parades, don’t you wish you lived here, too?), so I don’t think I’ll have to go back after today. But that’s fine. I’ll either go up for voir dire or be let go after the morning, so hopefully I’ll be able to spend time reading my book while waiting to be called or released and that will be the end of it. Sunday’s rained out parades are tonight, so I am going to want to be home well before four. (I did slalom by driving on St. Charles Avenue; they have barricades so no car can get up enough speed to really do a repeat of the New Year’s terrorist attack on Bourbon Street…and it’s kind of fun. Traffic will continue to be a nightmare until after it’s all over. I just need to make it through this week until Friday…
I managed to work on my story last night. I deleted the extra, unusable 900 words, which dropped it down to about a thousand, and am now at a little less than three. Good progress, and I should be able to get it finished tonight. I doubt I’ll go out to the parades tonight–getting up at six every morning certainly puts a damper on that–but I do want to get home before the true madness starts. I’ve been very lucky with parking so far–praise be to the Carnival gods–and I know that’s not going to last through the entire season before the car is permanently parked for about five days Friday morning. I am debating whether to take all of Lundi Gras off, or going in for a few hours and leaving early. The latter makes the most sense, after all; save that time jealously! I don’t want to run out again, and I am actually at the point where I’ve got a nice amount of both (sick and vacation) in my bank now. Woo-hoo! At least I don’t have to worry about the time off I need to use for parade season. That’s a lovely release.
The country continues to swirl around the toilet bowl more with each passing day. Yesterday we betrayed NATO and Ukraine at the United Nations, joining with the true axis of evil on this planet–Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.–and continue to lose whatever moral leadership and authority we ever had (not that we ever had much of anything on that score to begin with); we are becoming isolated, the way we were before and between the world wars…which turned out so well for the world in the end, didn’t it? What happened in Coeur de Lion, Idaho the other day was appalling and recorded for the entire world to see (another black eye for the country); the violent abuse of a woman simply because she was calling out the bullshit she was hearing, while white people (men and women) cheered and applauded and the moderator of the event taunted her from the stage on his microphone, making jokes? That is some seriously small-dick energy, really. It also resulted in the usual social media nonsense, with people on-line responding (especially white women) with the usual lack of self-awareness: “I would never allow that to happen in front of me without saying or doing something!” Newsflash: white people–both men and women– always turn their heads and look away, “not my problem” or “I am not putting myself at risk to intervene” and so on…until it actually affects them. Where was all this energy on November 5th? Where was it for George Floyd or Breonna Taylor? Where is it for trans people, being stripped of their rights every day? Where it it for queer people, ever? Where, after all, were all the Southern white people who were opposed to racism, Jim Crow, and lynchings that I always hear about now, but actually did nothing while it was actually happening?
Not my problem is always the response, but everyone marginalized (you know, the people so many straight white women like to lord it over) is supposed to immediately DO SOMETHING when it’s a straight white woman–and if you point out their blatant hypocrisy…you’re a misogynist. Straight white women LOVE to pull out their “oppression” card whenever a discussion isn’t going their way and they have no defense for the appalling things they say other than “you have male privilege.” Really? My sex life was a crime until 2003. Was yours for the first forty-two years of your life, ma’am? I couldn’t marry my partner until 2014. Did you have to wait until you were fifty-three before you could legally marry the love of your life? I watched all my friends die (twice over!) in the 1980s while most straight white women smiled dismissively and said “not my problem.” Some of the biggest public homophobes of my adult life were straight white women. I know as a cisgender male I do have privilege; I certainly have more than lesbians and trans people, for example. But I have always lived under the threat of violence as a gay man; and before I owned my identity I did not pass as straight.
And yes, gay men also get sexually assaulted–and usually with objects. Gay men also get beaten and attacked, even killed, by straight white men. Sometimes with straight white women cheering them on. You just don’t hear about it up there in your precious lily-white privilege tower because you don’t care. Often assaults on gay white men–just like assaults of straight white women–don’t get reported because the cops don’t care and blame the victims. You don’t care unless it’s a white woman…when white women made sure the ERA didn’t pass; white women got Black and brown men killed all the time; and the Daughters of the Confederacy weren’t exactly gay white men, were they? A Republican controlled US government laughed about AIDS killing gay men.
But do go on with your homophobia, dear.
We all need to do better. It’s very easy to see something appalling in an online video and be very upset at the failures of witnesses to act, and to say “I would never.” But ask yourself this, white people: have you ever seen a white someone being racist to a Black person and said nothing? Have you watched as homophobes come for queer people, in real life or on-line, and did nothing? Do you challenge racism, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia when you see it, or do you leave it alone? I know what the answer to that question is, by the way, and keyboard warriors who do nothing but talk big on-line sicken me to my core.
And for the record, I will always go on the offensive when some ignorant bitch of a white woman tells me I’m a misogynist when I am agreeing with her–especially when she tells me she’s done more for queer rights than me, using the condescending straight people “honey.” Literally, go fuck yourself with barbed wire, you homophobic bitch. Misogynist enough for you? (She also trotted out the “gay friends” defense–and when I pointed that out she then claimed “I never said they were friends”–oh, so you don’t have any friends but you’ve been to Pride a few times and even marched in a parade once! My God, let’s put up a statue of you in front of Stonewall! WHERE WOULD QUEER PEOPLE BE WITHOUT THE SACRIFICES OF STRAIGHT WHITE WOMEN? I guess I should be glad you didn’t go with the old pedophile/groomer shit, Miss Zero Followers. I screen capped the entire thing before blocking her flat bony unwashed ass.)
Coeur de Lion is now in the “find out” phase, and if we actually had a real government this would be investigated as a civil rights violation by the Department of Justice…but we don’t have a real government anymore. I always wondered what it felt like to be an abolitionist in the 1950s, when the government was geared to protect slavery in the land of the “free.” The company that employed the thugs that assaulted the woman has lost its business license, and it also looks like the grinning douchebag sheriff has been defrauding the LAPD pension fund–working another LE job while drawing a disability pension from another one–so I hope California throws the book at him.
This is what we are. This is what we have allowed our country to become. Even those of us who voted against this didn’t do enough to stop this—and it should have been stopped when it was the Tea Party. Remember those racists? The ones who didn’t want healthcare and the media dutifully reported on everything they said and pushed it breathlessly without ever calling out ONCE the clear and obvious racism? FOTUS climbed aboard the Tea Party train, remember? He started the birther bullshit and promoted it on every network who would let him because he was a “celebrity.”
But no, white people who patted themselves on the back for voting for Obama were very quick to stay home in the 2010 midterms because cleaning up the Bush mess was taking longer than everyone thought it should.
And God forbid everyone get health insurance. The HORROR!
We all own this, you know. Every last one of us white people. And we’re the ones who need to clean it all up–even though we know the fucking assholes we’re saving will knife us in the back again at the very first opportunity. They might regret their votes now–but they would do it again in a heartbeat. They prefer this to having a biracial woman in charge.
This is exactly what they wanted. And we should never let them forget. Letting them getting away with it was a mistake in 1865.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, and remember to do your part–even if it’s something you think small or inconsequential. Water wears away stone and the effects may not be immediate.
I also love to boogie–especially in the disco round, oh yeah, baby.
Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment after kind of a nice, slow and easy day around here. Paul stayed up late working so pretty much slept the entire day away again, and I myself got up late yesterday, too. I didn’t mind, even though I was a little perturbed that I got up so late. But I had a nice morning. I did some things I needed to do and cleaned and organized some more, and I got up pretty early this morning, too. I don’t know how motivated I feel today, but I am hopefully going to get some good writing work done this morning so I can spend the afternoon reading. Sounds like a winner to me. We did finish catching up with Reacher, Abbott Elementary, and Prime Target last night, too. Tomorrow I get to report to Criminal Court for jury duty in Mid-city, so I will be finding out what’s going on with that. I’m hoping to be dismissed before parade days start; I’d rather go to the office and leave early than try to get home at five from Criminal Court in Midcity, which would probably require taking I-10/90, getting off at Tchoupitoulas, and doubling back from there with no place to park. Ah, well, this too shall pass, and as a crime writer, it’s always interesting to see how criminal court–or courts in general–operate up close and personal.
It’s gray outside, and rain is expected, which should put a damper on any and all parades today. There are no night parades, so technically I could make a grocery run after King Arthur ends, but I doubt I’ll want to be out and about at that time anyway. I do have all kinds of things to do today–I want to spend the morning writing and the afternoon reading, if at all possible. It’s always so nice to curl up in my chair with a blanket and read while it’s raining, you know? I like feeling snug and cozy; which is why I am so particular about sleep arrangements. Want to know something weird about me? I sleep with four blankets, because that’s enough weight to make me feel snug and comfortable. I have a soft wool one on the bottom and one really velvety soft one on the top. I need two pillows, always, and also need the ceiling fan on and a little personal fan on my nightstand going. Weird? Just a little bit. But I think we all have things that we do, little rituals, that bring us comfort and joy. Just me? Probably. I always default to me not being normal, I suppose; the product of my youth. Thanks, bully trash!
I did work on an essay yesterday a bit, one called “Try That in a Small Town.” I started writing it when the Jason Aldean nonsense happened last summer, because that “real America” bullshit has always, always pissed me off; and essentially has always been used to demonize cities–you know, the economic engines that fucking drive the country–and reassure provincial types who stay in rural areas that they are more important than the city dwellers. This of course goes back to the lies that were always told to encourage immigration when white people felt the need to “fill the continent” with white people while exterminating the natives. You can be free, you can own land and property, you can prosper because the government will leave you alone to do as you please and not restrict your freedoms. No, the rich people needed more consumers, and they also needed population in the “empty” territories to produce and buy. The United States has always been expansionist; even the Founding Fathers assumed more states would be formed out of native land, after they were pushed out. Anyway, I actually lived in a very small town in a very rural county in an underpopulated state for five horrible years–and I will dispute to my dying breath this notion that small towns are the “real America” (fuck you again and again with razor wire, Sarah Palin)…because everyone acts like they’re like Mayberry when they are really Peyton Place–horribly judgmental with lots of cruel gossip and backstabbing, and the sexual perversions of these “good meat-and-potatoes Americans” not even Grace Metalious could have dreamed up–and Peyton Place was nothing more than a novelization of things she witnessed and experienced in a small town. It always infuriates me, you know, to hear this “real America” shit. Try to make it without Chicago, New York, LA, Boston, and San Francisco. The fucking economy would crater in about two seconds. But…cities are usually Democratic strongholds, so they must be demonized, always.
And there’s the rain! I knew it was coming. It’s just a drizzle but it’s enough for the gutter to drip water on the cat enclosure just outside my laundry room–and it’s only raining on that side of the house. This happens here a lot–it can be raining on one block but not the next; one part of the city can be getting a flooding rain while it’s sunny and bright in another–but I don’t remember the last time it only rained on the other side of the house. New Orleans, always so bizarre.
It also seems that the American people are getting fed up with what’s going on in Washington, and they are starting to push back. I’ve progressed beyond FAFO, to be honest1; the danger to the country’s future is that strong that the mocking and pointing fingers and laughing and atonement can come after the threat has been overcome. I think this is the kind of lesson we needed to learn; we’ve always taken our system for granted and always assumed the government was stable and would hold–forever smug about governments toppling and falling in other countries while we remained stable. The problem is that stability was only achieved through horrific compromises…and human rights should never, ever, under any circumstance, be left to public or government whim. The seeds of self-destruction were planted in the Constitution with the compromise on enslavement. Senators used to be appointed by state legislatures, not the people. BUT it was also designed to be a living document, changed and amended over time to clear up inconsistencies and always, always, intended to protect the people from government overreach. I also agree with something I saw on social media yesterday–every elected official should be required to have regular town halls to meet with their constituents, and they also need to remember they were voted in to work for their district, not the president. Separate but equal branches of government means nothing when elected officials in Congress abdicate their roles for whatever reason.
And really, what is MAGA but the modern Confederacy? Yes, they are also Nazis…but remember–the Germans learned about how to deal with undesirable sub-populations by studying enslavement and Jim Crow. There’s your heritage, rednecks. You were Hitler’s blueprint. And weren’t plantations simply concentration/work camps with a nicer name?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning (or night).
I’ve not, and never will, forgive MAGA voters, to be sure–just like I’ll never stop mentally dancing and pissing on Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s graves. But I can put that aside for now to overcome this threat. But there needs to be a reckoning–unlike after the Civil War and 1/6/20. ↩︎
A cold Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment. My doctor’s appointment went well–all my vitals were at appropriate levels, my lungs are clear, and all medications appear to be working properly, which is lovely. I came home from that appointment to do chores and make the house orderly before we headed out to Metairie for Paul’s appointment, after which we went to Costco. You know, for the first Friday of parade season, it wasn’t that terrible. It was crowded, yes, and there were times I had to wait for inconsiderate assholes who were blocking aisles thoughtlessly (a regular occurrence at the grocery store, a rarity for Costco) and the check out lines ferociously long, but it didn’t take us long to spend a shit load of money (Paul also ordered a new pair of glasses and our membership was also due for renewal). I was a bit concerned about parking when we got back, as it was closer to parade rolling time that I was comfortable with. I had noticed there were a lot of cars parking in the neighborhood–unusual–when I left for my appointment, and there was also a lot more traffic on the roads I usually traverse. Understandably, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to park within a mile of the house, but once we departed for Metairie/Costco I realized why everything was the way it was–they’ve turned the side of St. Charles people can drive down1 while parades are rolling into an obstacle course2. This is, I imagine, for crowd safety precautions after New Year’s, but damn…it’s going to make negotiating St. Charles and the neighborhood about ten times harder than it is usually is.
Thanks, asshole terrorist. I hope you’re roasting in hell like you deserve.
I also spent some time with Lev AC Rosen’s marvelous The Bell in the Fog, the second book in his Andy Mills detective series set in early 1950’s San Francisco. It’s an interesting period to read about: after the war but before Stonewall, when sodomy was still an enforceable crime and the hatred of queer people was so intense they were targeted mercilessly and no one fucking cared.3 Lev is a terrific writer–I loved Lavender House–and this one starts out really well. It’s very reminiscent of the old masters of crime/noir/hardboiled–Hammett, Chandler, Cain–which is why he gets nominated for awards so regularly.
I also have apparently sold another short story. I had sent something to an anthology at some point last year and completely forgot about it, to be honest; yesterday I got an apologetic email from (I guess? It has been a while) the editor saying they want it if it’s still available. That was a lovely bit of news, to go along with the terrific feedback from the other anthology that asked me for one. I am going to finish writing another one this weekend (if it kills me) so I can focus on finishing my book. I’d forgotten–as it has been a hot minute–how nice it is to get positive feedback from peers. And rather than questioning or explaining it away in my head (just being nice, etc etc), I decided to accept it and feel good about it, which is a lovely new approach to my career. In the moments when I allow myself to go down the natural path of current events (my publisher will get shut down, my books removed from the bookseller websites–it galls me that they’re on Target’s website, although they probably make very little me off me–and my career shut down completely in the de-queering of the country), I find it ironic that my stress, anxiety and depression didn’t allow me to ever enjoy my career very often, and that now I am finally beginning to enjoy myself and the nicer side of publishing/writing, it could all be stripped away from me. (For the record, straight people, losing our writing careers because of our sexual identity is something we have to think about all the time. Do you? So, fuck off with your I’m-an-ally-as-long-as-it’s-just-words-online bullshit. DO SOMETHING.)
But yes, I am feeling like I definitely need to get back to producing work, and that feels good for a change, you know?
Sparky also let me sleep late this morning, the little darling, and even curled up in the bed with me rather than trying to get me up. I think he waits for my alarm like Pavlov’s dog; I’ve trained him to react to the sound as well as his stomach. We watched LSU Gymnastics win at Kentucky last night, but they didn’t have a great meet–a bit of a letdown after defeating Oklahoma last week in Baton Rouge and a packed house–but it was fine; they hadn’t won in Lexington since 2016, and this year they did despite a bad meet. We then watched the premiere episode of Season Three of Reacher, which is based on one of my favorite Reacher novels, and am loving it. (I also like that his portrayer, Alan Ritchson–whom I’ve liked since I first noticed him on Smallville–is a devout Christian and not a cosplay one; he calls out the evangelicals and their false prophet regularly. He recently gave an interview to GQ in which he talked about Matt Gaetz, whom he went to high school with, and just ripped him to fucking shreds. You see? I don’t object to Christianity when people actually are real Christians.) We also watched some Arrested Development, too, before going to bed much later than we should have.
Overall, Friday was a pretty good day. I am going to get some reading and writing and cleaning done today–I need to unload the dishwasher and refill it at some point; and there’s always organizing and cleaning to get done. I also need to answer emails–I no longer have to stick to my old rule of “no emails on the weekend”–and I need to get some more newsletters written and finished to send. I’m trying hard to not deluge people with my newsletter; I am very prolific, as has been pointed out in the past repeatedly, and who wants to read my thoughts, views, and opinions on a daily basis? Even though I didn’t publish anything–not even a short story last year–I still produce a prodigious amount of writing all the time.
And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines–more accurately, I am going to repair to my easy chair with my book for a while before I actually start getting things done around here–and I may be back later. I am trying not to do more than one post here per day…but anyway, have a lovely Saturday, and I’ll be right back here tomorrow.
Screenshot
I’ve always marveled that one side of the neutral ground is for the parades and the other side is open to traffic heading uptown. St. Charles is a major artery of the city, and they usually have to keep that side open because everything inside the parade is blocked off–and people do need to get uptown. Not really sure how this obstacle course drivers need to negotiate will work, or if they are going to take them down every night and put them back up again before the parades start–which means shutting St. Charles down for however long it takes to set up. Sigh. ↩︎
Friday morning and I have the day off! I have some doctor’s appointments and an errand to run on top of that–it’s parade season and I won’t be able to leave the neighborhood from tonight around five till Sunday around six–and we are going to Costco today, too. There’s another errand, too, and I am not certain how much parade participation there will be. It’s supposed to be cold and a bit rainy all weekend, and beads hurt when it’s cold. I can do cold, I can do rain, but both together? That makes standing on the corner getting pelted with flying objects not a lot of fun. (One of my favorite parade experiences was one warm night when it was sprinkling as we went out to greet Orpheus. The crowds always start departing about halfway through Orpheus so they can get up early for Fat Tuesday, but even more than usual left that night because it started raining harder with the parade not even half over yet. Shortly, Paul and I were the only ones out there, getting drenched and getting buried with beads from the drunk riders trying to get rid of everything they could to the few of us who remained to see them pass. Staying to the end of Orpheus was why our Fat Tuesday started so much later than everyone else’s.) It’s very sunny and the sun is quite bright out there this morning, despite how cold it is. (I’m not going to bother to check–it can wait till later.) There are two parades tonight–Alla and Cleopatra.
I felt really good yesterday and rested and managed to get some things done. I did the dishes when I got home, worked on the laundry for a bit, and wrote a little bit, too. I stayed up later than usual–Paul got home late and we chatted for a while before I went to bed. Sparky tried getting me up at the usual time, but was very sweet and patient and let me sleep for a while longer before he got too hungry and insistent it was time for breakfast. I also had my first piece of cream cheese-filled king cake this morning (I bought one the other night on the way home from work, but hadn’t had any. You can imagine my shock to open the box this morning to find that there was no knife in the box (cardinal sin) but there was only about a quarter of it left. (Paul does love him some cream-cheese king cake.) I have to start getting ready to go to my doctor’s appointment, too. I made my Costco shopping list (seriously, newcomers to Costco–lists are crucial when going to Costco. I also advise going to their website before you go into you local store for the first time; the website can be set to your local store and so you can look up things to see if they’re in stock), and we’ll be heading there after I get back from the appointment. Parades also start tonight and this weekend, so once we get back…we’re pretty much trapped in the neighborhood until after King Arthur passes.
And next week I get to navigate jury duty during parades. Can’t fucking wait.
I was also a bit satisfied to see that Canada beat our national hockey team last night. I certainly never thought I’d see the day when I’d feel that way about a US national team loss, but here we are. I am ashamed and embarrassed by all these MAGA assholes talking about annexing Canada–which would wind up worse than our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, since it would mean that their Resistance would be majority white, so our systemic racism wouldn’t know what to do, which means atrocities on the level of Abu Gharib, if not worse.
And if you think Guantanamo Bay hasn’t had a concentration camp there for decades, you’re an even bigger fool than I thought. You can never go wrong assuming the worst about our government... and you’ll still be shocked and appalled by how awful our leadership has always been. The variances in foreign policy generally aren’t great between presidents. Obama campaigned against the forever wars when he ran in 2008, but once he was in office he didn’t really end those wars, did he? The only significant changes in our foreign policy during my lifetime came during Jimmy Carter’s presidency (governing as a Christian, he couldn’t continue supporting the regime of the Shah of Iran, which was horrifically oppressive…) or Trump. The difference is our allies supported Carter. The rest of the world is realigning to escape alliances with the United States because we are now a rogue nation. A fucking rogue, outlaw nation, led by conmen and grifters where everything is up to be looted by the billionaire class and everything else sold off for spare parts.
Now they are talking about “checking” the gold in Fort Knox. Brace yourself for a torrent of lies. Not even Goldfinger got away with going after the gold in Fort Knox, and both the book and movie picked Fort Knox because it was so impregnable. No one ever talks about the gold in Fort Knox anymore; when I was a kid everyone did. I mentioned Fort Knox the other day at work and many of my younger co-workers didn’t even know what Fort Knox was…it’s not part of the national conversation anymore, the way it was when I was a kid. “Safe as the gold in Fort Knox” used to be a saying back then. Maybe it was the influence of Goldfinger on the zeitgeist, but it was definitely there.
It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.
And on that note, tis off to the mines of spice with me. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader
Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Tomorrow is my usual remote day, but I have a couple of doctors appointments so I am taking the day off. I was right about being tired; by the end of the day I was so tired I thought I might fall asleep driving home! But I didn’t, and I got the mail and came home and got inside safely, locking the door and the cold outside. It’s very cold this morning, too (currently a toasty 31 degrees!). We watched some Arrested Development last night, and I did some work on my writing. I got some welcome feedback on a short story I wrote for an anthology, which was also very nice. I slept very well last night, too–the cold, I think, played a part in that as well as my physical exhaustion when I got home last night. I even did some chores last night, which was very pleasing. I have an errand to run on the way home from work tonight, and once I get home from the appointments tomorrow, I’ll be in for the rest of this very cold weekend in New Orleans, and buckling down and writing. The parades also start this weekend, so I need to be very judicious in my parade attendance so I can get some writing done. I am feeling more into my writing than I have in a very long time, so that is very cool and kind of exciting to me. I was terribly concerned over the last two years that I’d never write anything again. I think that the combination of everything else going on, in my life and in the world, along with severe burnout, was why I was struggling to write, and when the depression is mixed in, well, it’s no wonder I was uninterested in writing anything and couldn’t get anything done.
Definitely wearing layers today, too. The apartment is warm, but here at my desk? Not so much, really. But I am so grateful for last night’s sleep! I actually am awake and alert and not foggy in the least. It feels good to feel like I’m totally present, which I didn’t feel like the first part of this week. God, sleep is the best, isn’t it? I feel like today is a day when I can get things done and function and get my entire act together for a change. Hopefully, this feeling will last me for a while. I guess the trip last weekend required some readjusting back into my life–it’s weird how something like that can be so disruptive once you’ve settled into a routine (rut, whatever) with your life, isn’t it? But I am also in a very good mood this morning, and I’ve kind of been too tired lately for that to be a thing, you know? And definitely plan on riding this wave as long as it lasts–it’ll probably crest this afternoon. I do have some chores I need to do once I am back home, and of course, back to the store today on the way home (thank God for CBD Rouse’s, so I don’t have to go the long way uptown).
IN my tired state last night (and after being scolded/lectured by two trolls on social media, whom I made very sorry that they emerged from under their bridge) I was thinking about things–going to Alabama always makes me think about things from the past, plus all that 70’s research I’ve been doing lately–and I was remembering, with Sparky curled up in my lap, how different life is now from when I was a child. (Shocking, right? Who knew that I’d go through the same things every other older person has throughout history!) I was talking to Dad about Mom and her mother and what things were like for Mom growing up (Dad always talks about how great Mom was and how she never complained, despite how poor they were when they were first married; I replied, “Yeah, that apartment in Chicago might have been tiny but she had running water and a telephone, so that probably seemed like a step up. She didn’t know any better.”), and of course that led into how Mom and her mother never, ever reminisced or thought about the past…and I said “Well, it’s also kind of weird to think when my grandmother was born the Archduke hadn’t been assassinated yet and Europe was dominated by monarchies and empires”…which tripped him out a little. And she had older relatives who’d seen the Civil War. I was born during JFK’s presidency, before Vietnam and in the midst of the civil rights movement. Women couldn’t have credit in their own names and were erased as people, assuming their husband’s name legally as “Mrs. John Smith” rather than as “Lisa Smith.” There was no such thing as no-fault divorce, and the grim reality was most women made their hellish marriages work, dooming them to a life of misery.
Our country really hasn’t been around that long, and neither has our progress toward the ideals of the founding–we’ve never achieved that original ideal, and now we are sliding back into the abyss as a tyrant is in charge (Reagan could only dream of the power the FOTUS has assumed and been gifted by his craven political party) and our constitutional republic is on the ropes. I also have realized over the last week that the only people who can save the country from this threat is the opposition–the courts aren’t going to do it, Congress sure as hell isn’t, the media is laughably unconvincing propaganda-pushers with no desire to do their jobs properly, and neither are the “all-in” party that supports this. I no longer subscribe to the notion that MAGA voters and politicians have been “fooled” somehow, conned…at this point, we just need to accept the fact that they are willing participants–all of them. They can’t say they didn’t know because he told them, for years, what he wanted to do and they cheered, so yeah–I have no empathy for any of them. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as “MAGA regret” because I will personally guarantee that if the election were done over and held again tomorrow, every last one of them would vote for him again despite what they now know.
There can be no forgiveness without atonement and true repentance–that should be the lesson of the Civil War.
Well, this turned into a rather lengthier tome than anything else I’ve done on here this week, hasn’t it? That’s a good sign I am going to take with me into the spice mines for today. Have a great Thursday, everyone, and stay warm!
Queer and Loathing in America 