Category: social media

Blue Eyes

Its the morning of Ash Wednesday and I am up at my normal time, trying to get back to normal and back into my normal day-to-day life now that Carnival is over for another year. The city is probably still in ruins, because there’s only so much they can clean up overnight, you know? The trees of St. Charles are dripping with beads and crepe paper and, of course, toilet paper from racist Tucks, er, Sucks1. I am so tired of the insidious nature of racism in incredibly stupid and small-minded white people. I can’t imagine how exhausted racialized communities feel. The closest thing I can think of would be how tired I am of homophobia and homophobes.

You haters are fucking tedious, you know? Get a fucking life already.

Readjusting back to normality after Deep Gras is always tricky. It’s Fat Tuesday that always winds up throwing me off–I am always aware that it’s Monday during Lundi Gras, but it felt like Sunday yesterday and I keep thinking today is Monday, and it’s not. That will take some mental adjusting, as will that tomorrow is my last day in the office again. But I feel very rested this morning, too. I spent a. great deal of time yesterday icing my ankles, so the Achilles tendons aren’t very tender this morning, but I am sure that will change as the day gets longer. I’ll ice them again tonight, of course, and I have some errands to do after work on the way home, too. I made potato leek soup in the slow cooker yesterday–it was sublime, probably the best I’ve ever made, and I added shallots this time, too–and that was quite lovely for dinner. I did chores and picked up a lot around the house, but never got around to the floors, which I hope to get to this weekend. I also managed to read some, which was very lovely, and I had a very strong burst of creativity yesterday that resulted in me making significant headway on an essay for the newsletter after sending a promotional one out over the course of the lengthy weekend, while getting an idea for another one–and I thought I was finished with the promotional Scotty newsletters; so that is a very good thing.

I also need to pack up more beads to donate to ArcGNO this weekend, and should also probably drop off a box of books at the library sale. I made some other reorganization decisions about the apartment this weekend, too–I need to clear out a shelf in the pantry so I can take some boxes down from the tops of the cabinets–and I really need to get the floors done. The house always looks so much better when I’ve done the floors, and maybe this weekend I can get the workspace windows cleaned, depending on the weather; I’ve not bothered to look ahead just yet. If it rains or is too cold, the windows can certainly wait.

While I did things yesterday, I was bingeing Celebrity Traitors from the UK, and even with a majority of the cast being people I had NO idea who they were, it was an excellent cast and an even more enjoyable game. I primarily wanted to see how the game ends, since I’ve never seen a season finale, and now that I know, I am pretty pleased, as I was afraid the way they wrap it all up might be a let down, but it’s not. And there was someone I’d actually met and had dinner/drinks with years and years ago in the cast! Yes, I am going to humblebrag, but the British actress Celia Imrie and I have mutual friends in common–and I had dinner with her and our mutual friend when they came through New Orleans a while back, which was marvelous. Naturally, I was rooting for her, but she was one of the last murder victims, alas. Stephen Fry was also on, and he was the first person I’ve seen note how badly the game is stacked in favor of the Traitors; I also observed to Paul “they really shouldn’t feel bad for banishing people who aren’t Traitors; the Faithful outnumber the Traitors by a 19 to 3 ratio, so of course they are going to banish incorrectly more often than not. I suspect I would be terrible at this game unless I was a Traitor.

If you’re a politics junkie2 and love watching MAGA eating themselves, pay attention to the Louisiana Republican primary for Senator Bill Cassidy (the pro-life OB-GYN who looks like a Muppet gone wrong) for some hilarity. Cassidy, as you may remember, committed the egregious sin of voting for Trump’s impeachment after January 6–hoping the person with no long-term memory would forget that six years later. About a month or so ago, Orange Foolius handpicked congresswoman Julia Letlow to endorse for the race. I’m not entirely certain she’d even announced? Cassidy’s dark money PACs are now going after Letlow, tying her to DEI and Nancy Pelosi and President Biden as a “dangerous liberal” (it took me a while to type that while laughing hysterically); does OF still have pull in Louisiana now? After a couple of weeks of silence, Letlow has finally released her own attack ads on Cassidy and seriously, this primary race can easily be called A Confederacy of Dunces.

I was sorry to hear that both Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall died over Deep Gras. Both contributed significantly to society in their own ways, and giants cannot be replaced. I mean, look at this iteration of the current Democratic Party–where are all the great Democrats I grew up watching legislate? I mean, even the Kennedy in the forefront of public policy today is a very poor imitation of his father and uncles, pissing and shitting all over the family name. I also find it interesting that Hunter Biden was targeted and hounded for having addiction issues, while MAGA celebrates the brain worm guy who had addiction issues and clearly has something wrong with him.

After finishing reading The Secret of Hangman’s Inn, I started writing a newsletter essay about the Ken Holt series and this book in general, with a particular look at the series’ homo-eroticism–based on my recent reread of the book itself. The series, expertly written by Sam and Beryl Epstein under the name Bruce Campbell, is very much of it’s time–and you could easily see how things had changed since they were written. I remember there was a clue in one book that had to do with the cotter pin holding automobile tires on–they don’t have those anymore–and of course, no television, no automatic transmissions on cars, having to depend on phone calls and being home to take them, newspapers and syndicates with journalistic ethics, and so on. But this particular reread made me realize something about the juvenile series that I hadn’t ever caught on to before–and that will also be a strong piece of the newsletter essay.

I also decided yesterday what my next Scotty book will be and when it will be set. I wanted to jump ahead–the most recent, this new one, is set in August of 2019, and I am going to skip ahead to Mardi Gras 2022, when the parades rolled again after the canceled parade season of 2021–and I even know what it’s going to be about. Huzzah!

So yes, I had a very productive and good day yesterday. I feel rested, my right Achilles tendon has a bit of a twinge but the left feels good, and I feel rested and relaxed and motivated to get things done. And as always, we’ll see how long this feeling lasts. I am going to head into the spice mines now, and hope to have a great day post-Carnival.

Have a great Ash Wednesday if you “celebrate”, and if you don’t, have a lovely Wednesday–the rest of the work week is the downhill slide into the weekend, which will be here before I know it or am ready for it!

American swimmer Caeleb Dressel is an Olympic champion. And has pretty blue eyes.

Photographed at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY ORG XMIT: USATODAY-451287 [Via MerlinFTP Drop]
  1. I saw yesterday that the racist assholes who hung black dolls by the neck with beads from their float have been kicked out of Tucks. Good. They also should be named and shamed, but I doubt that will happen. ↩︎
  2. This is an example of a time when I really miss Victoria. ↩︎

Escape from Berlin

It’s Lundi Gras morning, with my favorite parade–Orpheus1–rolling tonight, and I have two more days before returning to work. I am enjoying this little mini-vacation very much. My Achilles tendons are still a bit sore, so after I get home from the errands I have to run this morning, I am in for the day until Orpheus arrives tonight–unless it rains. It looks a bit gloomy outside the windows, if I am being totally honest. It does happen–and it’s been a hot minute since it’s rained, you know? I slept really well the last two nights, and I feel pretty good. I think another easy day of reading and hanging out around the house while doing some chores sounds lovely. I also spent most of yesterday off-line, and that was marvelous. I like that I am spending less and less time on social media. The world is burning, and doomscrolling isn’t much help with that, you know?

We made art during HIV/AIDS, didn’t we?

I did wake up early yesterday after a lovely night’s sleep, and had a pretty good day around the house. I emptied the dishwasher and ran it again, did some straightening up and organizing around here, and had the pairs figure skating short program on the television while I finished reading The Secret of Hangman’s Inn, and started reading another old series book, The Egyptian Cat Mystery, a Rick Brant science adventure. (Rick Brant is another one of my favorites.) I am going to try to read some of the Eli Cranor today, with some more of the Brant, too. I think I may also start Sarah Weinman’s Without Consent as well. I think going forward I will stick with the three–a new fiction read, a reread, and a nonfiction–going forward is my reading plan. I do need to start reading voraciously again; I miss it. I also need to write about Hangman’s Inn. I also managed to send out another promotional newsletter about Hurricane Season Hustle, which you can read by clicking here.

If the weather does hold and my ankles feel okay, I may take a walk later today to get some pictures of the bead trees blooming and all the debris along the sidewalk and in the trees. I feel rested, and Sparky was very cuddly this morning under my warm pile of blankets in the bed. I want to do some writing today, but I may not; it depends on how I feel when I get home from the errands.

We binged more of season four of The Traitors, and I love everything about this show. I cannot believe none of y’all told me I needed to watch this show. I mean, it checks ALL my boxes–murders, pettiness, camp, a castle, robes with cowls, lanterns and torches and executioners! Alan Cumming is having the best time camping it up as the host–and there are some iconic lines on this show; currently my favorite is “snatched tighter than a housewife’s jawline.” And there are three previous seasons to catch up on! It’s all so deliciously Gothic, which I love. We have one more episode from this season before we are caught up, and we’ll probably watch that either tonight or tomorrow; I’m sure Paul has to work, and I know he has his trainer today, too. I should be able to get some reading and writing done today, and today I can finish the floors–which I’ve put off all weekend.

The emails can wait until Wednesday, seriously.

And on that note, I am going to go get cleaned up so I can run my errands. Have a lovely Lundi Gras Monday wherever you may be, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow for Fat Tuesday.

Two Kinds of Love

Muses Thursday! Happy shoe day to you, and you, and you! There are three parades tonight down the Avenue–Chaos followed by Babylon followed by Muses–and we will see if we can keep our 16 year streak of getting at least one shoe. I’ll probably be a bit tired by the time Muses gets to the corner–I am leaving the office early again today–so I can ice my ankles and hips before the parades, and rest and relax. There’s no figure skating to watch today for the Olympics (more on that later) so I can get some things done today and maybe be productive (maybe not); we’ll see how things shake out. I slept really well, which is always a plus, and my legs aren’t very tired, the Achilles tendons are still making their complaints known, if not as urgently as before. I also need to organize both the refrigerator and the freezer, because it’s out of control after going to Costco and making groceries.

Yesterday turned out to be a very good day. The weather was lovely, and we had some slight sprinkles of rain throughout the day, so the air was cool and damp. I left the office early (parade street closings; will be leaving even earlier today) and made groceries on the way home. There wasn’t much traffic on the way home, so the slalom course on St. Charles was much more fun to navigate (why people slow down to five miles per hour to drive around the barriers is a mystery to me; when no one is in front of you, you can go through it at about 20 mph and it’s like a Grand Prix) than usual and then I was home. I did a lot of chores, watched the disgraceful judging of the ice dance, and did even more chores. I was so pissed at the ice dancing (more on that later) I didn’t even want to finish watching Glitter and Gold, which I will probably never finish–but I can also always skip over the #metoo team parts, can’t I?

I saw an ad yesterday for a touring musical coming to the Saenger (I think)–an adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Seriously, who asked for this? It just seems to me that the story isn’t strong enough to carry a musical, nor can I think (I don’t think in terms of music or songs, sadly) of any potential songs that could be added to enhance and improve on the story.

I have now read The Great Gatsby at least four times throughout my life, and to this day I don’t understand why everyone loves it so much; I’ve never understood it, and my antipathy to this so-called Great American Novel goes all the way back to being forced to read it for a Lit class when I was a sophomore in high school. That class was responsible for me always feeling out of step with the Literary Academy and its holy gods and saints. (I was also introduced to Hemingway in that class, and I’ve never read any other Hemingway because I hated both A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea–the sharks! The sharks!) It always puzzled me, but I hated being forced to read something because reading, for me, was always a joyous experience. Having to read something for a grade was an entirely different matter. The first books I was assigned to read were in junior high. I didn’t mind Sterling North’s Rascal, about a pet raccoon, but absolutely loathed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with the white hot passion of a dozen burning suns. As someone who was just a few years older than Tom at the time of the story–I don’t remember how old he was; I’ve pretty much blocked out all my memories of the book I hated it so much–I didn’t think he was amusing or funny; I thought he was an asshole, someone I wouldn’t want to know, and would probably grow up to be an asshole. It was such an unpleasant experience that I developed an antipathy to Twain (I also hated the story about the jumping frogs) that kept me from reading him until my late twenties, when I decided to give him another try–and enjoyed his other work tremendously. There was an essay he wrote about becoming a steamboat pilot on the river, included in Life on the Mississippi, that has always stuck with me; I may have had to read it in high school or college, but I loved the essay so much that it did lead me back to reading Twain.

I went back to The Great Gatsby three more times over the course of my life and I hated it every single time I read it. I kept thinking, what am I missing here? These people are all awful and terrible; was that the point? They weren’t even interesting. I even read other Fitzgerald novels, and failed to see the genius every time. If forced to pick a favorite, I would say This Side of Paradise, if pressed–and I wouldn’t give it another read, either. Rebecca is a much more interesting take on the awful people of the upper class. Hell, Saltburn was a better take; so was Dynasty, for that matter.

And Fitzgerald has nothing on the Real Housewives.

Ironically, a writing teacher recommended I read Faulkner, As I Lay Dying to be exact, and that led me to Sanctuary and Light in August and The Sound and the Fury; and of course, I love “A Rose for Emily” because it was such a perfect capture of small rural Southern town dynamics. Every Southern town had a Miss Emily, didn’t they?

Hilariously, I’ve always considered myself to be dramatically under-educated in classic literature, but as I was thinking about this last night I realized that isn’t the case; I am self-educated in classic literature, and that always subconsciously fueled an insecurity about myself as a writer and as a reader because I did so poorly in college…and I need to get it through my head and into my subconscious that college failed me, not the other way around. I also need to get out of my own way with ambitions and goals and bury self-deprecation once and for all.

I am not going to talk about the figure skating judging farce from yesterday because I am still bitter and angry about the rewarding of the “#metoo” couple from France. Figure skating still has a lot of issues, and this was an incredibly glaring example. I will discuss this when I am more calm about it and can be rational and logical (the French team currently is “Abuser and the Rape Apologist” in my head). There was also some farcical bordering on insane judging in the team event, too. How did Ilia Malinin place second in the short? #madness.

And on that note, I am going to forget about Olympic medal-fixing for now and focus on tonight’s shoe. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow with a report on Muses…if I am not too tired to go out tonight.

No Spoken Word

Thursday, and Parades’ Eve! The fencing and bleachers are up all along St. Charles Avenue, and last night I got to drive the slalom course they turn the Avenue into ever since the terrorist attack onNew Year’s last year. Tomorrow there are two parades, there are six or seven on Saturday, and I think three on Sunday. This is the warm-up weekend before the big final weekend, so we’ll see how it goes. I have to run a bunch of errands tomorrow, too–once my work-from-home duties are completed. I don’t know how productive I am going to be, either. I don’t know that I have the stamina to be out there as much as I could be, either. We shall see. It’s also in the thirties again this morning–it got up in the seventies yesterday, which was weird–and I could feel the floor getting colder last evening through my house shoes. I think the parade weather is going to be in the fifties/sixties, but sunny. We shall see, and we shall also see if my Achilles tendons can handle it just yet–they still are sore and achy. Note to self: look up what to do with sore Achilles tendons.

I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home last night. I was able to fold laundry, do a load of dishes and put them away, and reload the dishwasher to run tonight when I go to bed. The kitchen is in much better condition than it usually is on Thursday morning, so I am not going to have to spend time over the weekend catching up on all those things. We watched another His and Hers (we’ll probably finish it tonight, as there are only two episodes left. There’s also another episode of The Beauty, which I am hate-watching. Paul doesn’t care about that show anymore, so I’ll probably watch it while I am relaxing into my easy chair and bonding with my Sparky. We still haven’t watched the final season of Stranger Things, or the new season of Bridgerton, either. We’re also in the midst of the final countdown to the festivals, the Olympics are starting, parade season, and AUGH. I need to stop procrastinating, don’t I? MY to-do list keeps growing, but very little ever seems to come off of it–which would have led to a complete breakdown before anxiety medication.

Better living through chemistry is definitely a thing I embrace whole-heartedly.

Neil Gaiman tried to come back to social media in light of the Epstein horrors, and I am not really sure what he was thinking. I believe he was driven off social media yet again, but this led to some serious conversations about other author/predators, which led to me discovering precisely why Marion Zimmer Bradley had been canceled, and I might add, ew. I knew it was something bad but I never paid much attention; I’d never read anything of hers other than The Catch Trap, her gay circus romance between aerialists, which…I had some issues with. I have my original copy of it around here somewhere, because I’d always meant to go back and read it again. Overall, I’d enjoyed it, but there was something terribly off about it to me, that kind of made me uneasy as I read it. I also knew that her Arthurian novels were very popular with women, because she told the story through the point of view of the women; but I loved Mary Stewart’s Arthurian novels so much I didn’t think I would enjoy the Bradley novels–and would always be comparing them unfavorably, and there are lots of other things to read, you know. Now, I’m glad I never did, and a critical reread of The Catch Trap knowing what Bradley and her evil husband were doing to their own children will color it. It also makes some of the stuff that didn’t sit right with me in the book make a lot more sense to me now. Anyway, thank you, Karin Kallmaker, for letting me know.

Okay, I looked up the Achilles tendon stuff and the recommendations are rest, ice, and stretching, which means getting my ice machine down from the attic tonight, and we shall see how that will go.

And on that note, y’all, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Enjoy your day, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning.

So pretty!

Rooms on Fire

Good morning! We made it to Tuesday, didn’t we? Yesterday was a bit off for me, not going to lie. But I’m up early, didn’t hit snooze more times than I should, and I am waking up slowly. We’re going to be extremely busy in the clinic today and I am, once again, working an almost full appointment schedule by myself. Heavy heaving sigh. But tis the trials and tribulations of one Gregalicious life, and all one can do is bear it and power through. I do feel less wrung-out than I did yesterday, which is, clearly, a strong and steady improvement over Monday’s horror. It really wasn’t bad, actually, I just felt kind of inside-out all day. Work was its usual, and I stopped to make groceries on the way home–amazing how what I got would have cost about fifty bucks last year but is almost eighty now. Sigh. But we have to eat, don’t we?

We watched another episode of His and Hers last night, which is a very interesting show. I don’t think there’s anyone in the show to root for–they all seem like pretty terrible people, and we are learning everything very slowly, which is interesting but also doesn’t really draw you in because you don’t completely understand. It’s more observing than actually watching, if you know what I mean? It’s very well done, and it’s always fun to look at Jon Bernthal (who should be a bigger star in my opinion). The Beauty drops another episode tomorrow night, so tonight is looking like another His and Hers episode or two. I have to run errands tonight after work–have to go all the way uptown to get the mail and some more prescriptions–and I need to do a load of dishes and a load of laundry, too. Stay focused. I also want to work on the short story I started this weekend. I have a great idea for a story for an anthology that was recently announced, I just have to write the damned thing now. I really need to write something fictional soon–the creative writing muscles are atrophying as I type this.

I was also thinking more about Judgment at Nuremberg and societal guilt some more yesterday–and the subject of “what do the everyday people think” that this movie kind of addresses. The short story–set in a slightly future dystopian Louisiana–has me thinking about all of this sort of thing. I had always believed, since childhood, that the South was utterly and completely racist–and whenever I read a historical novel set during Jim Crow and before Civil Rights that centers heroic anti-racist Southern whites I roll my eyes. (Don’t even get me started on the To Kill a Mockingbird nonsense.) But as I read more actual Southern history, and talk to my dad about it more, turns out the South really isn’t a monolith–there were Southerners who opposed secession and fought on the other side, which sometimes led to horrible atrocities–a distant relative fought for the North, came home on leave, and was skinned alive by the Home Guard (sometimes you supposedly can hear his screams late at night in the back hollers)–aka the Confederate version of the Gestapo. The power structures of the Southern states were in the hands of the racists and the Klan (the argument could be made that they still are) so whites who actually opposed Jim Crow were also afraid. (One of the many striking aspects of Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory was the white family who were in the Klan that the teenaged Black girl worked for; the daughter, who reluctantly helps her, knows Jim Crow is wrong but will only do so much out of fear.) So, were Southerners who opposed enslavement and secession but kept quiet out of fear for their own safety any different from the everyday Germans just living their lives under an evil regime, without the power or safety to do anything? Again, that brings up that morality question–does silent opposition matter when atrocities are being committed?

This is why reading Black authors writing about the South is so important. Progressives are so frequently told we live in a bubble and not reality; but people who don’t read authors from different demographics are also living in a bubble of supremacy and racism that bears no resemblance to reality. (As well as Due, read Wanda M. Morris and Cheryl Head, for a start–and S. A. Cosby is always a sure bet.)

I had a lot of laughs yesterday at the pathetic white people outrage as the casting of gorgeous Lupita N’yongo as Helen of Troy because “historical accuracy.” Just out of curiosity, how many ancient Greeks are actually in the cast? Or Greeks, for that matter? Were you there and can conclusively state Helen was a white woman? Her father was Zeus, who fucked her mother in the form of a swan, and she was hatched from an egg. How many Greek gods are being played by actual Greek gods? Just say you’re a racist piece of shit and miss me with your coward-ass dog whistling.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I will be back tomorrow.

I will never stop being awed by how insanely beautiful Henry Cavill is….

Talk to Me

Monday morning and it’s still cold. Go figure. Parades start this very Friday, and if it’s cold, well, I won’t be bold. I am not going out there to get sick from being out in the cold, and besides, I’m old. Maybe it’s all that history I read where someone old caught a chill that developed into pneumonia and death within days. As much as I joke about it, I am not in any rush to leap into my grave (or the crematorium, as it were). I just don’t like being sick–and last spring I was sick enough to last me for a lifetime, thank you very much. I am about ready for this cold to take a serious hike. Although apparently tomorrow’s high is going to be seventy? But then it gets cold again for the rest of the week, but not nearly as bad as this weekend and today are going to be. Layers, layers, layers.

Yesterday morning was disrupted by the power outage. It was only out for an hour, but it was enough to disrupt the day and throw it off track. I did read in bed under my blankets with my coffee until the power came back on, which was lovely. After which, I went downstairs and read while watching the news. I was pleased that Carlos Alcaraz won the Australian Open (I am no longer a fan of anti-vaxxer Novak Djokovic). After Paul got up we finished The Night Manager before moving on to His and Hers, which is interesting so far. I do enjoy Jon Bernthal, so there’s always that. (I didn’t like his take on American Gigolo, which could have been really great, but we didn’t finish.) I didn’t get a lot of anything done yesterday, overall, but I did get some chores done and the house won’t take much to look orderly. We’ll see how I feel when I get home. I have to make groceries on the way, but that’s not a big deal. I have some dishes to do and such, but other than that and straightening out the kitchen rugs, I think I am pretty caught up on the house? There’s no laundry left to do, the dishwasher is empty and ready to be loaded, so once I put away the groceries, I can do that.

The news, for the most part, has been good lately–or at least, better than it has been. This weekend’s Epstein reveals were staggering, and are only going to continue to get worse and worse. Murder? Rape? Torture? Cannibalism? How nice that our modern elites looked at Caligula’s court and said “hold my beer”, right? I mean, we’re still living under a fascist government, so the news can only be so good, you know? Minneapolis is still under siege, the Supreme Court continues to be a joke on the regular, and day by day the trash that voted for him to “own the libs” are slowly peeling away from him because the hellish policies of the mad king are affecting them, too–which “isn’t what they voted for.” Aw, shucks, sugar, we warned you and you mocked us–and while I am pragmatic enough to understand we need them to turn on all of this and vote it out; but that doesn’t mean I am forgiving anyone. Even those of us who voted for the lady with the weird laugh own this, too–because we’re Americans, and we could have done more to stop this. None of us get to say we aren’t responsible for this because it is our government, we’ve allowed this all to happen, and now we all have to come together to rebuilt it all back together and clean up this fucking mess.

That was part of the reason I wanted to watch Judgment at Nuremberg again–we haven’t finished, we only got about forty minutes into it–because of the entire notion of societal responsibility and guilt. After the war, the common German people–who’d seig heil‘ed and gone to the rallies and threw flowers and cheered the military parades–weren’t allowed to look away from their government had done in their name. The question of “true believer” or “too afraid to say anything” is something that can never really be answered. I was born sixteen years after the war ended in a neighborhood filled with war and post-war refugees from eastern Europe. I was shown the military films of the freeing of the camps in elementary school. I learned very young that fascism and Nazism were both evil. My childhood and teens were filled with stories of the MOSSAD tracking down Nazi war criminals, all over the world. There was a lot of World War II historical fiction out there, too, and even more fiction about Nazism rising again out of the ashes of history–William Goldman’s Marathon Man, for one, and Ira Levin’s brilliant The Boys from Brazil–and I did see Judgment at Nuremberg in my teens, which got me interested in the day-to-day German people, how the scourge rose to power, and what they lived through and experienced. We were taught that Nazis and fascism and antisemitism were societal evils…and that we Americans, with our freedoms and our democratic republic, were morally superior. (We were not–and in our American arrogance we also believed that such a thing could happen here.) Now we are in a situation (again) where our government has turned us into a rogue, authoritarian wannabe dictatorship–just as the Roman republic declined into an autocracy. Don’t blame us! we post on social media in response to foreign scolding, we didn’t vote for this!

How does that make us any better than the former supporters saying this now? The American penchant for dodging responsibility is perhaps our worst, most narcissistic, societal and cultural flaw.

And on that somber note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and try to stay warm if you can.

The dragon float arrives at the Orpheus Ball

Long Way To Go

I slept in a little this morning, until His Majesty King Sparky, Lord of the Lost Apartment, had enough of waiting for his meal and got me up. I feel rested–it really is amazing what a difference waking up naturally (rather than to an alarm) makes. I have to brave the cold today and run some errands, but I intend to get back home and inside as quickly as possible. This morning feels like a read in my chair morning with a blanket draped over me before getting cleaned up and running errands while slurping coffee, which absolutely sounds marvelous. I want to get some writing done today. I had an idea for a short story yesterday for a call for submissions I really would love to do something for, and I would like to get some of that done today or tomorrow. I was also thinking about other stories, and Chlorine, while I worked on the apartment, and also made some notes, which was pretty cool.

Yesterday was a lovely day around here–not so much in the outside world, as ever and always, more on that horror later on–in which I got up, got cleaned up, did my day job duties, and started cleaning and organizing the apartment. I got all the laundry done, a start on the books again, and started organizing the laundry room/pantry shelves. I tried reattaching the exhaust hose to the dryer vent numerous times, but it kept coming loose again, turning the room into a sauna briefly. This is going to call for drastic measures, methinks, like Gorilla tape or something similar. But the shelves in the pantry are starting to look neater and more organized, which is always a plus, you know? And very pleasing to look at, you know? I do still like neatness, organization, and tidiness.

I had the news on while I cleaned and organized and occasionally sat down for a break. I greatly enjoyed all the news about the Bezos bribe documentary, Melania, which might be worth streaming for free for the unintentionally funny parts. (Paul does the best imitation of her opening line from the shitty trailer, here we go again, that is so eerily spot on it creeps me out while making me laugh at the same time.) I doubt that it will become a cult classic for midnight viewing, like Showgirls or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but you know it’s laughably bad. The review in The Guardian was hilariously brutal; I’ve bookmarked it to go back and read it again whenever I feel down and need a cruel laugh to cheer me back up, and who better to laugh at than the soulless Slovenian concubine? The latest Epstein files drop was particularly horrifying (I don’t think most of us have the creatively evil kind of imagination to even consider how horrible all of it actually is–but all you have to do is look at what this vile regime is doing to simply distract us from it to know that its filled with unimaginable horrors. I’ve always said killing the kids was all a part of it, and that was just scratching the surface; the start of the unspeakably vile horrors on that island and various other places. I mean, they arrested a journalist, kidnapped a head of state, killed Americans and Venezuelans, and bombed Iran (unsuccessfully). It’s big, its huge, and the national security of any number of countries are also involved–and we would see behind the curtains at last to see how the wealthy elites have been enriching themselves at our expense in order to do this kind of shit.

The guillotine is too merciful for these pricks. And I hope Don Lemon sues the fuck out of all of them for violating his civil rights, wrongful arrest, targeted prosecution, and abuse of fucking power.

God, how I hate them all.

I have been thinking about my next short story collection, This Town and Other Stories, and finally got the notebook down with the manuscript and notes to take a look and see what I have for it, and what else would need to be finished to finish the collection, and was very pleased to see that I’ve published and sold enough stories since the last time I thought about it that I do have an entire collection of published stories, and won’t need to do write any new ones for it, except as perhaps a bonus for the readers? But we shall see, won’t we?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines.

Ole Smokey, the Orpheus train float, is one of my favorites.

Sister Honey

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, and my last free weekend before parades. It’s so weird to think that parades are starting next weekend. Holy shit, right? But a week from tomorrow is the first night of parades, with Alla and Cleopatra, with six on Saturday and three on Sunday before all the true madness really begins the following week. I hope the weather is nice for the parades this year, since this is the first time in years I’m actually feeling like I can enjoy them this season. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stand at the corner, but I always seem to forget being old and tired when I am out there and the throws are a-flyin’. I also forget about it being damp and cold, too. Paul and I stood out in the rain one night for Orpheus and had the best time. I slept really well and actually woke up around five, to nap on and off until Sparky became determined to get me up for a feeding. Since I did go to the bathroom when I woke up at five, I saw that he was curled up at my feet in the bed–and when I came back, he cuddled up to my calves. Such a sweet, adorable baby…until he started nipping my fingers so I would get up to feed him.

After I ran my errands in the bitter cold on my way home from work, I came home and just collapsed into my easy chair. Sparky curled up in my lap (after being fed, of course) while I caught up on the day’s horrors–er, news–before turning to the final episode of the finale for Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s reunion. I’m not really sure there’s any point to these reunions/rehashings of the season–it just gives them all a chance to yell at each other all over again, with a noncommittal resolution that’s seems required by that smug expired twinkie Andy Cohen (at some point I will do a newsletter about the Housewives shows).

The amount of virality that continues with Heated Rivalry and its stars continues to astound and amaze me. It does also please me; I’ve become rather entranced with them myself and feel almost paternally protective of them. I watch reels and videos about them and their journey to international stardom. They all have such adorable personalities, and are all so humble about all this sudden success and fame…and it’s just kind of fun to see, you know?1 And who doesn’t love a rags to riches story? It also amazes me how different Connor Storrie is from the character he played–and I don’t just mean the acting. He looks different. Similar, but different. As Ilya, he doesn’t really use his very expressive face the way he does as himself; so much so that he doesn’t seem like the same person. I feel like physical actors don’t get as much credit as they deserve; I always think of that scene in Superman where Christopher Reeve changes from Clark Kent into Superman but only in posture and physically, and it was extraordinary; he never got the credit he deserved for his acting talent.

Yesterday was an odd one, energy-wise. I wasn’t tired, and I ran my errands on the way home, coming straight home tonight with no stops, might have things delivered if I need anything over the weekend. We had a lot of no-shows yesterday–I think I wound up only seeing two or three people total–so I found myself catching up on a lot of other work that doesn’t involve seeing clients. We’re scheduled heavier than yesterday and I am alone in the clinic yet again…and I have some other things I need to get done today around clients. I feel pretty good this morning, though, and like I’ll be able to get everything under control today. Tonight when I get home I have some chores to do once His Majesty has been fed and gotten enough attention, and then I think I’ll probably catch up on the news before watching this week’s The Beauty. We’re also a bit behind on The Night Manager, too. And of course the Australian Open is on, and the Olympics are also coming up…during parade season!

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

  1. I’m still bitter about Boots being canceled. ↩︎

I Sing for Things

Wednesday Pay the Bills Day again, and yet another cold morning here in the Lost Apartment. Yesterday was bitterly cold again, and our “break” from the cold is today, getting up into the fifties before we slide back down into the freezing water level and even….SINGLE DIGITS this weekend. It’s in the low thirties outside, and my workspace is really chilly. I forgot to set my alarm last night, but woke up when I was supposed to, which was nice–and I did it without Sparky’s help. Usually he’s trying to get me up before the alarm goes off, but not this morning. He was curled up somewhere warm downstairs, obviously, because he was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs this morning when I came down. Sigh. I have to run errands tonight after work–prescription, some groceries, gas–so am hoping it won’t be too terrible outside when my work shift is over. If not, oh, well. The one thing I don’t like about the cold weather is how my legs get so tired and achy so much faster–and leg exhaustion pretty much sets the tone for your entire body, doesn’t it?

But I did some chores last night–started some laundry, ran the dishwasher before putting the dishes away, cleaned the counters–and it was very nice coming down to a clean kitchen this morning. Note to self: the reason for doing chores during the week is to stay on top of it so I don’t have to spend time on the weekends getting it all caught up. I plan on doing another book purge this week, too, and to do some organizing of the bookcases again. It looks so much nicer and neater in the living room with all those books gone…and absolutely must remember to continue purging when I get to the point where I feel like it’s okay to buy books again.

I spent a lot of time last night watching news clips, interviews, and influencer podcasts about the fallout from the fascism we’ve all witnessed in Minneapolis. (It doesn’t escape my cynical notice that everyone went completely nuts about this–right and left–once they’d murdered a straight white man on camera…so, not to worry, racialized people, queers and women: we still care more about straight white men than any other demographic in this country.) The blame game, the quick shift by Kristi Noem to “just following orders,” and the possible fall of the vile Stephen Miller and his pick-me skank of a wife (IMAGINE seeing that naked and letting him inside of you…I may never stop internally screaming) was just too delicious of a train wreck to look away from. It almost feels like they are in the “find out” part of FAFO, but they are literally like the walking dead. Firing Bovino, Noem, Lewandowski (her adulterous LOVER), and Miller is just a start, for the record. Nothing less than prosecution will suffice.

That, and never being able to show their disgusting faces in public again without heckling.

When I’ve talked recently about wishing everyone could just let us enjoy Heated Rivalry and its success without being jackasses, I was referring to the Cyd Ziegler/Empty Netters podcast that’s been going on since late last week and early into this one. At first, the piece in Outsports was terribly disappointed, as it seemed to indicate that the guys on the podcast were actually homophobic trash who pretended to like the show for views and clicks, by exposing text messages the one supposedly sent to a friend. Obviously, he knew who he sent the texts to–as they are still in his phone–and he did a video defending himself, claiming, as always, they were taken out of context and the timeline of how things happened and played out were muddled to make him look worse. Some of his defensive language was problematic, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole thing…but then I got some more context on Cyd Ziegler, the Outsports journalist who exposed the story.

Cyd is a registered Republican gay man in Florida who supports Ron DeSantis, so anything he says is bound to be suspect, and his claim of years of gay advocacy and activism is rather suspect, given his politics. If you are a gay man, claiming advocacy and activism–how the fuck can you be a Republican and support Don’t Say Gay DeSantis? The backlash was so strong he backtracked, but…you can never believe or trust anything a Republican says, because they lie like it’s mother’s milk to them.

And yes, I will stand in solidarity with straight allies who might not have the best education on queer rights or issues over a self-loathing gay Republican every fucking day of the week. We may both be gay, but we have significantly different values and morals. Queer MAGA, to me, is even more despicable than straight MAGA…”fuck those fags, I’m not like those pansies” is an attitude and mentality I will never align with or support or stand with in solidarity. There’s an essay in this, methinks, for the newsletter.

I also started the new version of Chlorine, and it’s slow going so far; maybe eight hundred words or so? But the voice feels right, and I am looking forward to getting back into it again today.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning for my weekly “last day in the office” blog. STAY WARM!!!

When gorgeous, muscular men are involved, wrestling can create living sculpture as art. Meta will, naturally, hide this as “adult content”

Rock a Little

Monday morning and it’s back to the spice mines with me this morning. There are worse things I could do, one supposes. The cold has arrived; it’s only 29 outside and I can absolutely tell as I swill coffee and shiver a bit here at my home workspace. Sparky has been glued to me since I got up–although why he isn’t cuddled up with Paul in the bed is indeed a mystery to me; that’s where I’d be if the alarm hadn’t gone off and I could have slept another few hours, comfy and cozy and warm under my pile of blankets. But I am awake, it’s not terribly cold inside (it could be worse) and we didn’t lose power, which is a big plus. That was my primary concern–the loss of power and no heat, like that year we didn’t have heat and it froze on Mardi Gras day. Shiver. That was beyond miserable, and not an experience I would like to relive at any point in my life.

This is my first full week of work this year so far–I think; there may have been one earlier that I’ve forgotten about, but it’s been a hot minute since I’ve had to go into the office four days in a row. I don’t think I have to work in the clinic this morning, but have been wrong before. Either way, it’ll be fine. I do hope Dad and the rest of my family in Kentucky have power and are safe and warm and staying inside. They are–I just checked the power outage map up there. Whew. It’s really not feeling too terribly cold this morning; despite the low temperature, but my hips, ankles and Achilles tendons are aching this morning. The most fun thing about being old when it gets cold is these aches I never used to have.

I found myself in a bit of malaise yesterday; more of an emotional exhaustion than anything else. The state of the country and the world just got to be a bit overwhelming for me this weekend–the existential horror of everything was a bit too much and it kind of got to me. What can I say? How are you coping with the daily burning of the Constitution by the fascist administration? I couldn’t focus to write–I did take some notes, but when thinking about anything that I am currently writing, it just seemed kind of pointless and frivolous. I know we need art and literature to help people get through these horrifying times, and feeling and expressing and creating joy in dark times can be a beacon of hope for people trying to cope…but sometimes, I just need to accept that it’s overwhelming and sometimes it causes paralysis. I didn’t do much of anything yesterday other than do some dishes and just mindlessly watch political commentary or old sports highlights or history videos while paging through a non-fiction history (The Fall of the Dynasties, to be exact). I did watch the I Want My MTV documentary–the cultural impact of MTV in the 1980s cannot ever be overestimated–which was kind of fun and had me remembering the early days of it and how we were all addicted to it back then.

One of the few bright spots of this year so far has been the enormous reception to Heated Rivalry, and how its two young stars–Connor Storie and Hudson Williams–have become global superstars in a matter of weeks. I was happy to see they got to carry the Olympic torch in Italy, which was incredibly cool for them. I wish them nothing but the best, and I have to say that I am absolutely delighted for them both, for the show, and the representation. Can we also drop the “but it was written by a woman!” nonsense? Regardless of the politics of who writes who and what is or isn’t cultural appropriation and so forth–which is far too nuanced to be discussed in 120 characters or whatever the fuck the limit is on those Twitter-style social media apps–can’t we just enjoy the fact that a show about two men falling in love is the hottest thing on the planet right now? Can we stop being concerned about straight people watching and their opinions, and whether or not they’re pandering for views or clicks?

I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that the biggest selling gay novel of the modern post-Stonewall era was The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren? I knew Patricia very well, and I can assure you that she was definitely not a man.

Heavy sigh.

And on that note, it’s off to the spice mines with me for the day. Wish me luck on the day–who knows what it will bring in its wake. I’ll be back tomorrow, though. No worries!