Valleri

And here we are on a Thursday morning. I kept getting confused yesterday about what day it was (all day) but that’s disorientation caused by working a full week in the office for the first time since maybe June? I don’t know, it just seems like I’ve had more time off over the last month or so than I usually do. Of course, I could just be a chowderhead who doesn’t remember anything anymore, but let’s hope this is not the case. I felt tired yesterday when I got off work, and had thought about heading uptown to run errands, but by the end of the shift I just decided to head home and do all of that tomorrow1. I am feeling tired this morning, and am waking up slower, which seems more normal than how I always feel tired at the beginning of the week and feel more energized as the week goes on. We’ll see how the coffee works this morning.

Ironically, I already feel more awake this morning since typing that sentence, which is very cool. I think we’re going to be slow today so I can get caught up on a lot of my paperwork and Admin duties.

We had a downpour last night–no thunder that I heard at any rate–and we caught this week’s Presumed Innocent, which was the finale. Spoiler–they did change the ending, despite the fact that the original book and movie are so old I doubt anyone has read or seen it, and those who did have forgotten, but I did wonder why they were redoing this if they were going to use the same big twist. I was on Youtube catching up on the news and also watching analysis from Generation Z political pundits–I really enjoy seeing young people so interested and so involved, and I see them getting really involved now, which is awesome. I have a very good feeling about this year’s youth turnout…and the kids are mostly not conservatives. I didn’t write last night because I was tired, which is shameful…but like I said, I was tired and Sparky was feeling playful. I should have known that once I get wrapped up in Sparky-time I wasn’t going to get anything done. I didn’t even do the chores I needed to do last night, and will have to do tonight instead. I also have to run those errands tonight after work, too. Heavy heaving sigh. I also need to make a to-do list for the weekend. I am doing pretty well with getting things crossed off the one I made for this week; which just goes to show how important making a list is for me. (The coffee is working, but I am fatigued and will be exhausted by the time I get home. DAMN YOU YESTERDAY GREG!)

I also plan to watch the President’s address to the nation last night at some point over the next few days.

I have to say I’ve been delighting in social media lately, which is a very odd feeling. Since Sunday night, my social media feeds have been absolutely delightful. Someone said they were joy-scrolling now instead of doom scrolling, and I have a feeling this is going to be very different this year. The Left is energized, and the MAGAts ain’t got nothing besides name mispronunciations, calling her a whore, and a “DEI hire.” Um, you claim she slept her way to the top–does that mean she fucked the over seven million voters who voted for her in the Senate election? And the mobilization of the HCBU’s and the Pan-Hellenic council? I think the American public–the majority of it at any rate–hates the ugliness and the smears and the slanders. For the MAGAts, nastiness and jeering mockery is the appeal. They feel like they’ve been overlooked and mocked and by gum, them libtards are going to pay! Engaging in a battle of wits and scorn with them is a complete waste of both our times, really; I’ll always go lower but smarter. On my way home from work yesterday I saw one of those Viagra trucks–you know, the ones that start at $70k and are basically luxury cars with a bed instead of a trunk, and cost about $100 to fill the tank weekly? His back window had a massive TRUMP decal across the top, with Make Liberals Cry Again. Usually I just roll my eyes and pity the women in his life; or get super irritated. Yesterday I laughed at his impotence. The truck at least had mud spattered all over it, so it actually is a utility vehicle for him rather than cowboy cosplay (which is what it usually is). Yesterday it just made me laugh, as I pictured him out in his yard with a razor scraper taking that off in November, red-faced and furious and thinking the country is doomed. GOOD.

Make liberals cry again. Like MAGA is the fucking adult in the room rather than a toddler throwing a tantrum blaming everyone else for their problems. It wasn’t liberals who took an electoral loss so badly they stormed and vandalized our nation’s capital, but sure, we’re the crybaby sore losers. Sorry you all are incapable of rational or logical thought, and are so narcissistic and self-absorbed that you vote against your own best interests as long as you think you’re screwing a minority. You really want no more social security or Medicare?

There’s no guarantee, of course, but there are just over a hundred days for them to smear the Vice-President. They don’t have thirty years of baked-in smears and lies like they did with Hillary Clinton. All they have is racism and misogyny and insults…no policy except the vague, broad descriptions of how beautiful and perfect everything will be, as corporations and oligarchs get even more tax breaks, with the full burden of taxes falling on the working and middle classes. Foreign countries didn’t fear and respect him, no matter how many times Sean Hannity trots out that sad, pathetic and tired trope. He was, and is forever, Putin’s bitch, and there’s a Russian thread through their entire party. They cozy up to Putin and Russians (Look at Moscow Marge 6B’s, proudly spouting Russian talking points), and how is that in our best interests? Would Ronald Reagan buddy up to Putin?

Not in a million fucking years. I can only imagine Nancy Reagan, rebranded as a high-brow sophisticated society matron from the lot-whore she was in Hollywood in the 1950s, sitting down to dinner with the Trump family. (Best potential SNL sketch ever–wait, no. Second best, because the best would be the dedication of the Trump Presidential Library.)

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Thursday. I may be back later, but you never can be sure.

Save a horse, ride a cowboy.

  1. And yes, this morning’s Greg is really annoyed at yesterday afternoon’s Greg. ↩︎

No Time

Wednesday hump day and we’ve made it to the midpoint of yet another week, one that is startlingly so much better than the ones preceding it that I actually don’t mind looking at social media. Of course, I’ve purged everyone from the mainstream media outlets I am boycotting now and probably forever, so I am not seeing their bullshit “pick me” scare headlines anymore, and you know, my world is already a much better place without them in it. My social media feeds now are filled with excitement in a way I’ve never really seen before. Does that mean I am in a bubble? Probably, but at the same time my news sources now are more reputable and reliable than the old US Big Four, who seem to be in the tank for authoritarianism and fascism. Who knew the fourth estate was such unethical garbage? The Right, as it turns out, was correct about them all the time, and they are more concerned with appealing to the people who will never buy their paper than serving the audience they’ve built over the decades…after all, now they’re saying we should have had an open convention. The head of the ticket stepped down, so the second person is stepping in–which is how it works and is the most important role of the vice-president–President in waiting, just in case.

And I think a lot of people are starting to wonder about JD Vance being a heartbeat away from the White House, given he is running with the oldest person ever to accept his party’s nomination. (Someone called him a shillbilly yesterday, and I still emit a small snicker every time I think about it.) Republicans have given us a lot of mediocrities as vice-presidential candidates this century, haven’t that? Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and now this grifting garbage.

Yesterday was a good day. I had a very productive day at the office before coming home. I lost track of the evening–BBC America news clips on Youtube, so much better than anything native to these shores–and then checked in with a few of my young Gen Z political news junkies, like Luke Beasley and Meidas Touch (and yes, I know they are biased, but it’s nice to hear someone else puncturing their balloons of hollow logic), and before I knew it, it was late and Paul was home and it was almost time to go to bed. So, tonight I will have to be a bit more productive when I get home. I need to get the kitchen back under control before the weekend, and I need to do some errands on the way home tonight, too. Need to delve back into the book. July has also kind of slipped through my fingers, too, and I had wanted to try to write something for the Malice anthology–which I will probably not get back around to before its deadline, which is the 1st of August. I hate when I let that sort of thing happen.

It’s funny, but I’ve never considered my family to be Appalachian; we’re from Alabama. I knew there were mountains in North Alabama. I don’t think I ever made the connection that those mountains were actually the Appalachians (maybe I did and just don’t remember)–and it is considered Appalachia. So, like Vance, I am Appalachia-adjacent. I am a child of Appalachia but never lived in Appalachia, but spent a lot of summers there, like Vance. I would never write a book trashing my family as worthless and lazy (I couldn’t, because they aren’t), and extrapolating that out to everyone in Appalachia (#notallAppalachians). Even though I’ve always considered Alabama the home place for my family (my real “home” was always where my mother lived), where my roots are and where I come from, I am not really of Alabama or Appalachia. It strongly influenced my life because my parents were technically hillbillies (or Mountain Williams, as an old Bugs Bunny cartoon called them), but hillbilly has always been kind of a slur for poor white trash; and one I’ve always kind of proudly claimed, jokingly. But I don’t know as much about either Alabama or Appalachia as I probably should. I’ve been making up for it with Alabama, but I really do need to study my heritage more–and being Appalachian is a much better heritage to claim rather than the Confederacy.

And I do love my lazy approach to research, in which I idly come back to it whenever I remember.

And I am just as Appalachian as JD Vance, and at least I am neither ashamed or embarrassed by the fact or my family.

I’ve also really enjoyed watching Appalachia come together on social media to drag him for the lying filth he is. (The fact that I got all the jokes, too, was definitely an indicator of the heritage, wasn’t it?) Hell, every time I drive up to eastern Kentucky I am going to Appalachia.

And on that note, I am getting cleaned up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back a little later on.

I’ve had cowboys on my mind lately. They definitely can be sexy as fuck, as depicted here.

Star Collector

And now it’s Tuesday. It’s a bit gloomy outside, and we’ll be getting rain again today (it’s been a very hot wet summer thus far), but I am awake and ready to go while I am sipping my coffee this morning. It also tastes quite good, I might add. I slept decently last night, and feel pretty good this morning. We have a light clinic schedule today, so I hope to be able to get caught up on paperwork and things today around said schedule. Woo-hoo!

Yesterday was a pretty good day, over all. I had a nice day at work in which I got a lot done, and then came home to chill out and relax with Sparky. I went through the manuscript, and didn’t have to do anything to chapters one and two (they need a revision, of course, but that can wait until the whole draft is finished and I start working my way back through it again) after all; it was chapters three and four that needed restructuring and pulling apart. I did the pulling apart and slapping back together last night; I need to reread the two chapters and revise them and make them flow more smoothly before I move on to chapter 5, I think. We’ll take care of that tonight, methinks. I am excited to be writing again, which is always a lovely thing.

We did watch another episode of Those About to Die, which I am not loving, but it’s a light entertainment, and it has a pretty good cast. Like Spartacus and all its iterations, there’s a lot of muscular men and some homoeroticism with some gay characters–not loving the way they are depicted for sure, but my internal jury is still out on that. I am still having trouble focusing on reading, but am hopeful I can make a breakthrough on that this weekend. I just keep getting more and more books that I am dying to read, so having “reader’s block” isn’t helpful as far as that is concerned. The new Ellen Byron is out today, starting a new series set in the California mountains that I knew so well from living there in the Big Valley1 and being close to all the major mountain parks like Kings Canyon, Sierra, and Yosemite. In fact, both Sorceress and Sleeping Angel are set in those mountains, in a town I loosely based on both Oakhurst and Sonora, so in some ways I am going back to my roots by reading her new release. I’ve not written about living in California very much here; I am currently writing a very long entry about my love/hate relationship with Kansas, which briefly flared up over the last weekend. The thing about me is that, despite being crazy and unbalanced and all those lovely things that come with my chemical imbalances, that no matter how miserable I was in the macro sense, in the micro sense I always wanted to have fun so I wouldn’t have to think about how miserable I was until I got to the point where it was overwhelming and miserable, and the thought that that was how I was going to have to live for the rest of my life was unimaginable.

The closet is a horrible, strangling thing.

And yes, I will probably write about living in California at some point, unless I run out of time, which is always possible. I could get hit by a bus on my way home from work tonight–oh, last week, traffic driving home was absolutely miserable; it took me forty-five minutes to travel what is usually a fifteen minute drive last week, but last night I got home in slightly over ten minutes and there was no congestion anywhere, which was peculiar. Hoping that holds true for tonight.

I also have to say I am feeling a lot better about the world in general these last few days. I am actually feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time, and think we might be able to save this ship from sinking into fascism. I also am delighted the media has exposed itself for the craven opportunists they really are–the mask dropped forever–and it will be a long time before any of them will be forgiven by me. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

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

  1. Yes, the San Joaquin Valley is The Big Valley of Barbara Stanwyck television fame. ↩︎

Goin’ Down

Monday and back to the office this morning, woo-hoo! Yesterday was an interesting one. I got up later than expected, did some chores, got cleaned up, and had a book breakthrough, so huzzah for all that. It rained most of the day, heavy downpours around thunder and lightning. The power even flickered once. Sparky and I spent most of the day cleaning and doing bits and pieces and odds and ends while I was thinking about the book and coming up with some answers. I love rainy days when I can stay in the house, you know? Paul went to get a tattoo, and that was when I worked on some essays and picked apart my book, and then he brought a pizza home from Midway on Freret (they are most excellent) before we started watching Those About to Die, which is interesting but…a bit disappointing at the same time. But there’s queer rep, and we’ve already seen some male nudity. The CGI isn’t terribly good and is kind of obvious, which pulls me out of it when it happens, but overall, not bad at all.

Yesterday the mega donors and the news media, along with rich old white men like George Clooney, David Axelrod, and Rob Reiner got their wish (along with the party donors and the news media) and President Biden announced he would not seek the nomination of his party at the convention. My spirits sank immediately, particularly since the racist old fucks never said “step aside for KAMALA HARRIS the vice president” but made it plain that not only did they want the President gone, they wanted to pass her over. Within an hour, though, the endorsements started coming in as the rank-and-file of the party (you know, the voters) started getting inspired and money started flowing and by the time Paul got home, I was excited again1 and ready to get out the vote and donated…to her campaign, not the DNC. From now on, only the candidates I am supporting will get a donation from me directly, no more party donations or PAC donations or anything like that for me. Y’all blew it, as far as I am concerned.2 I also love that Beyoncé has already endorsed the Vice President, and can Taylor Swift be far behind? There’s going to be a lot of racism and misogynistic bullshit being flung from the right for the next three months, and the conduct of the news media during that time will have to be monitored to see if they are on a redemptive path. If not, I never have to watch or read them again and will go with either the Philly paper or the Los Angeles Times.

I feel inspired now, and hopeful. We can do this and save the country, expand the Supreme Court to mitigate the Trumpian/Heritage Foundation damage to the judicial branch, and pass some goddamned laws. We also need both chambers–and there will be, undoubtedly, Manchin 2.0 and Sinema 2.0, and the Pass the Torchers certainly cannot be trusted to act like Democrats. And I will say, as much as I have always liked Joe Biden, I love Kamala Harris. She was my candidate in 2020, and was bummed when she dropped out, and thrilled again when President Biden selected her. I love that we now have the dichotomy of a convicted felon running against a former prosecutor. The right is scrambling now–all of their anti-Biden plans and ads and everything now have to be scrapped while they try to come up with attacks on her. It’ll start with her not being a citizen, of course–alas, we still have birthright citizenship in this country regardless of Project 2025 (which is already being test-driven in Louisiana)–and then the law and order party will no doubt attack her as a cop, which is far too easy to counter–so it’s all going to boil down to her being a biracial woman. You know who else’s parents weren’t citizens? The first nine presidents. There will be all kinds of legal fuckery coming, too–since they can be certain of a favorable rubber stamp from their operatives on SCOTUS, but for some reason I feel much better this morning. I still don’t trust the media at all, but…there are other and better sources that didn’t spend the last four years dragging down the man who saved the country.

As for the book, as you may have noticed, I’ve been having trouble moving on with the fourth chapter because I am at a stopping place for the chapter but it’s not nearly long enough as it is, which means restructuring the first four chapters again. This chapter, for example, can begin in the previous one–where the chapter ran further than I should have allowed it–and it won’t kill me to pull these first chapters apart and put them back together in a better order than I already had them in and perhaps then I can move on. This is a good idea, and it’s been so long since I’ve written a book where I had the time to sit and think and realize I have to go back now in order to move forward–usually I just have to bulldoze through it and hope it all plays out in the wash–which is probably another reason I feel like my work could be better. More time doesn’t mean better, of course, but the stress and anxiety I usually feel from writing a book on deadline feels pretty fucking marvelous, to be honest.

And on that note, I think I am going to get cleaned up and head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back later.

  1. But make no mistake, the Pass the Torch people are on my permanent shitlist and I will never forgive them. I’m still carrying a grudge against Susan Sarandon from 2000. I will carry a grudge to the fucking grave. ↩︎
  2. I, for one, will never forget that it was Biden who got President Obama to change his mind about marriage equality. ↩︎

Tune in Tomorrow

Ah, the wonderful world of daytime soaps. It’s so weird to me that there are only four (The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, and General Hospital) left on the air. At the height of my soap addiction, I watched more than four of them. I mean, you literally could spend the entire day from about eleven till three thirty watching them back then–four and a half hours solid of soaps. Usually there would be some kind of Good Morning America show on, followed by game shows, and then came the dramas. A lot of those game shows came and went, but ones like The Price is Right never seemed to go out of favor with audiences while the others waxed and waned.

Dark Shadows was the one I really loved when I was a kid, and to this day I still remember it fondly.

When we moved to Kansas in the mid 1970s, the town where we lived was only able to pick up one television station, a CBS affiliate out of Kansas City–less than half a year after we moved there we were able to get cable–but that first summer we lived there and I didn’t know anyone? All I did was read and watch television…and with only one channel, there really wasn’t much choice during the day so Mom and I started watching the CBS shows, and I am sure I am going to forget one here: Love of Life, The Young and the Restless, Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, Guiding Light and Edge of Night. (The latter was always one of my favorites, because there was a shit ton of crime. It was really a law-and-order soap, originally created to compete with Perry Mason on radio and had all the markings of a soap, with the usual love triangles, adultery and questionable parentage like all the others–but there was also always a very tangled and complicated murder mystery story running, usually connected to organized crime and sometimes not–but the main characters of the show were inevitably district attorneys and lawyers. Everyone on this show was eventually either murdered or went on trial for murder, which I thought was interesting.)

But the next summer, when I was at home all day, Mom still watched Y&R, but she’d moved on to shows I used to watch with my baby sitter in Chicago (General Hospital and One Life to Live) and a newer one I used to watch with my sister, All My Children, before switching back to CBS for Edge of Night. This was, of course, the beginnings of the General Hospital phenomenon of the late 1970s/early 1980s, primarily focused on Laura (and later, Luke and Laura) and while I did enjoy those stories…my favorites quickly became the Quartermaines, and Jane Elliott as Tracy, in particular. I became obsessed with the shows, watching them whenever I could, and then one day I found this book at a second hand store when I was about seventeen:

It was already out of date; at the time it was published the most popular show airing was NBC’s Another World (General Hospital was breaking all ratings records in the present day), so a lot of the book, when talking about modern times, focused on Another World, and its primary ratings driver, the love triangle between Steve, Alice and Rachel (George Reinholt, Jacqueline Courtney, first Robin Strasser and then Victoria Wyndham as Rachel; Reinholt and Courtney made the book’s cover). By the time I got to the book, Another World‘s ratings were already in free fall and ABC was in firm control of daytime’s ratings. It was also more of a puff piece rather than any in-depth reporting and digging. It was all about how talented and hard-working every one involved in daytime was, and conflicts and other off-camera issues were completely ignored. (It was updated several times, and the last edition I had a copy of, Soap World, was much better and not so “aren’t they all AMAZING?”)

But what was interesting to me about the book the most–and Soap Opera Digest–was that they both had summations/summaries of the soap’s plots from the beginning (not everything, obviously, but the main through plots and popular stories); that was how I actually learned how to write a synopsis. Interested in soaps and fascinated by these summaries, I started doing my own–inventing soap operas, coming up with the family relationships and marriages and so forth, and then would start writing the summaries. I also used to always have a bit of fun writing soap spoofs, generally casting my friends as “characters” and coming up with story lines and writing those summaries, even mini-episodes. I did several of these over the years, but the best was the one I wrote around my fraternity friends, The Young and the Pointless–and I have to say, I learned a lot writing that one. The others I’d done earlier didn’t last long and I’d get bored with it and stop; Y&P (as I called it) ended up being three “seasons” of twenty or so “episodes”, and I soon began understanding the struggles of soap writers–how do you top yourself with a story line? The need to constantly bring in new characters and subplots and balancing everything, until it became a bloated mess and I “canceled” it myself after the third season.

The first book I ever wrote, which I’ve mentioned before, was a sprawling soap opera about a small city in Kansas. Again, it was a learning experience and a difficult one at that; writing this book taught me about overwriting and filler; how bad dialogue can be if you don’t speak it aloud as you write it; and again, balancing characters and plots and subplots and story and keeping track of it all was insane. I’ve borrowed things from it over the years–plots, subplots, characters, locations, etc.–but always knew there was no point in trying to trim it down and use it as is. Murder in the Garden District’s case, in fact, was lifted fully from that manuscript; it was the main story. And I’ve used names from that manuscript repeatedly; they pop into my head unbidden and it isn’t until later that I realize where they came from and I change them.

I watched many soaps over the years; I’d often watch other soaps with friends who watched those shows and would get into them for a bit before going back to my solid three: All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital. I wrote a paper in college for a graduate level course on American culture in the 20th century; the paper was called “How Storylines on Daytime Television Drama Series Reflected Changes in the Mainstream Culture.”1 It was over a hundred pages long, and traced how the soaps went from being primarily marriage and divorce drama to mining social issues for story. I got an A on the paper, of course (I always got A’s on anything I had to write), and I’ve always had some of that information left in my head; and of course as the 1980’s began, they began casting beautiful young men with exceptional bodies to play heroes and villains on the shows–John Wesley Shipp is one I’ve never forgotten, and he’s still a handsome older man today, and so I was also able to occasionally see beautiful men shirtless or in speedos. I approved of this trend 100%.

John Wesley Shipp also did these kinds of photo shoots. My God, that body.

I eventually stopped watching them in the mid-1990’s, when I realized I could keep up with them or use that time to write; I chose to write instead. But even though I no longer watched, I kept up with them some on line and so forth. The twenty-first century purge was horrible to watch, as shows that had once been a popular mainstay of daytime television were mercilessly canceled between 2001 and 2012. It’s hard to believe there are only four left airing, and there haven’t been many in prime time for decades–although the continuing nature of the soaps is now the nature of almost every television series–that cliffhanger shit really does get people to tune back in.

But I always remember them fondly. There were so many wonderful stories over the years–including some completely insane ones–and characters, too. Luke and Laura on General Hospital, Greg and Jenny on All My Children, Viki’s dissociative identity disorder on One Life to Live, and all the wonderful murder mysteries and insane courtroom dramas are all remembered fondly by me–and then of course there was Erica Kane.

It just doesn’t seem like daytime anymore, without Susan Lucci chewing everything in sight as Erica Kane every afternoon, does it?

  1. I really wish I had a copy of it, but it disappeared over the years and many cross-country moves. ↩︎

It’s Nice to Be With You

Here we are on a Sunday morning, wide awake and feeling pretty fine, if I do say so myself. I slept later than I intended–the past two nights I’ve slept for over nine hours, if not ten–which will be a problem for me tomorrow morning, but that’s every Monday morning, isn’t it? Heavy sigh. Our anniversary was nice and low-key. We ran all the errands I didn’t run on Friday because of the weather–we also got rained on yesterday–but I also noticed when I got home from all the errands and had everything put away, I wasn’t exhausted like I have been every time I do a big errand like Costco–and I made groceries, too! I realized once I had the groceries all put away that I wasn’t tired or worn out. This is a great development on my return to normalcy (or what passes for it around here) with recovery and exhaustion and stamina. It also rained overnight–thunder and lighting and downpours–which woke me up around two or three, but the bed was so comfy and warm and cozy, and the sound so comforting that I was able to go back to sleep almost immediately. Sparky also was cuddling with me after I fed him and went back to bed. No wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Paul’s getting a tattoo this afternoon and is going to bring a pizza home, so that’s today sorted. I am going to do some chores this morning, get cleaned up, and want to write this afternoon. I am also going to try to get some reading done–maybe a short story, since for whatever reason I don’t seem to have the bandwidth to read anything longer–and I do want to get chapter four of the new book finished. I’d like to dive into one of my short stories, too, now that I know how to revise them and make them work better. I may even start writing another Sherlock story–crazy talk, right? But my coffee is kicking into gear and my head is clearing, which is always nice, and I should be able to have a productive day. I think I’ll just put Spotify on the television and listen to music while I do things around here. It certainly works for me.

We watched A Family Affair, a romantic comedy that actually worked, mostly thanks to it’s incredible cast of Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King and Kathy Bates. It was cute, and funny, and really well done; which I generally don’t say about this film genre because they are generally goofy and kind of fluffy and predictable. It was like a big budget Lifetime movie, but they put the money into the cast, script and director–and it was also beautifully shot…though I’d kind of like to know how an author can afford a house in southern California right on the ocean, but…fantasy, Gregalicious, it’s a fantasy.

I think today, after Paul gets home, we’re going to start watching Lady in the Lake on Apple, based on a book I loved by an author I loved, Laura Lippman, and after that, we’ll dive into the new gladiator show, Those About to Die, which looks to have lots of gratuitous male skin and homoeroticism. Woo-hoo! I do want to watch some other films that have come out this summer, but not enough to rent them, like Civil War, which was controversial and might be fun to watch from a ‘the world IS burning to the ground’ perspective, and could spark an interesting (to me anyway) entry about dystopian art and/or whether art used for propaganda is still art. I generally have a lot of Imposter Syndrome when it comes to writing essays and so forth, because I have this feeling that any arguments or interpretations i might made during the course of said essay had already been made or debunked–especially when it comes to commentary on any kind of literary art. I like to think I am smart and intelligent and have interesting perspectives, but I always suspect that I’m not as smart as I think I am (no one is as smart as they think they are) and that trying to sound intelligent and discuss something artistic will simply expose my ignorance and lack of education to the world.

Like that’s ever stopped me before.1

And on that note, I am going to finish this, get some more coffee and have some breakfast before getting cleaned up and getting to work. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

I never tire of pictures of Finn Balor. That body! That face! Superstar!
  1. It actually has, to be honest. I often decide not to write things because I fear I am not educated enough on the subject to even try. ↩︎

I Wanna Be Free

Saturday morning and here we are, looking forward to another good day at the Lost Apartment, huzzah! Sparky got me up for food at six thirty, but joined me when I returned to bed (after licking his bowls clean) and cuddled with me another hour or so. He really is a dear, even if he turns into a vicious apex predator terror every once in a while. I’ve not seen any bugs or vermin in the house since we acquired him and brought him home either, so I can deal with the vicious apex predator terror for the short while that mood lasts.

I was thinking yesterday as I cleaned up around the kitchen and waited for Paul to get up (I never wake him up unless I know he has to be somewhere), and as a marvelous thunderstorm moved in, that my Substack hasn’t grown much but I also am not actively trying to grow it, to be honest. It’s free, just like the blog, but what I really want to do with the Substack is make it more essays about stuff that no one will ever ask me to write (or not for pay, at any rate), and leave the more personal stuff here and here only. That way, if you just want essays about queer life, history, culture, books, movies and television shows etc. you can subscribe to the Substack and skip the every day here. If you can’t get enough of me, you can do both or you can just stay here. I may eventually get to the point where those essays no longer get posted here…but that will have to wait until the subscribers make complete separation of self worthwhile. I was also thinking yesterday as the sky darkened and the winds picked up, that all of this new free time I am enjoying so much can also be used for productivity–if I can get back to the point where I’m writing 500-5000 words per day again, then this extra time can be utilized for marketing and teaching myself how to work my website and get it all finished and updated. I also am going to start learning how to do more promotion and format ebooks, too, so I can eventually get to the point where I can do my own ebooks. It would be cool to put up a short story or a novella here and there whenever I feel like it, for free–yes, I know my work has value and worth, but every so often it would be fun to gift readers who like my writing with something free every once and a while, you know, as a thank you for sticking with me all these lengthy years.

I also wrote for a whole yesterday, which felt great. I got about a thousand or so words done, which felt great, and I was most pleased with myself for doing so. I also came up with an idea for yet another book that sounds rather interesting and might be fun to explore thematically; I certainly wrote down a shit ton of notes and ideas and riffs in my journal last night, and I have to say I am really enjoying my journal these days. I also managed to get my review essay of Liebestraße finished yesterday, which felt great, and I hope to get some more of those done over the course of the weekend. Yesterday was, overall, a very good day that I got through without much irritation or aggravation, so I will take that. I do have more errands to run today–we ended up skipping Costco, so we have to do that today–and I hope to have some time to read and write later on after I finish everything.

Today is also our anniversary; twenty-nine years today we’ve been together. Almost thirty years, and almost half of my life. We’re going to watch some movies tonight, and we’re going to have a nice little dinner here at home to celebrate. Next year will be thirty years, and in ten days we’ll have lived here in New Orleans twenty-eight years, too. New Orleans was the key to all of my dreams coming true. I wish I would have been less anxious and more confident when I was a teenager, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone to college at LSU and moved to New Orleans after graduation, and maybe gotten a master’s in creative writing at the University of New Orleans. My life would be completely different now–I probably would have left New Orleans at some point rather than staying here my entire life, but there’s no use in speculating over that sort of thing–especially since I am settled and extremely happy.

We finished the seasons of The Acolyte and The Boys (which is coming hard for MAGA and I am so here for it; the season finale especially was rather pointed) last night and also watched this week’s The Serpent Queen, which is very well done, but most of the drama for the rest of her life now was political; and I don’t know how the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre is going to play out in the show. There are already inaccuracies in the speeded up timeline; Princess Elisabeth was long married to the King of Spain by the time Charles IX was old enough to be depicted as an adult. I try not to get heavily involved in complaining about inaccuracies in historical shows–they are always rotten with them, but I love watching historicals far too much to stop watching them now because they twist history to fit their storytelling purposes…and this is a period of history I am very interested in. Thank you, cable channels, for committing to doing shows set in historical times I love (like Mary and George). I know there’s a television series based on The Three Musketeers, but it’s very hard for me to watch any adaptation of that after loving the 1970s film versions with (sigh) Michael York (who is an incredibly nice man).

There was a lot of open homosexuality at the royal courts of England and France during this time period, even more so in France rather than England. I’ve always wanted to write about Louis XIV’s brother, Monsieur le duc d’Orléans, who often donned women’s clothing to attend court functions and had a long time lover the Chevalier de Lorraine1 (both were depicted beautifully in the series Versailles, which I also loved). Maybe when I’ve retired I can delve into writing more historicals. I also have an idea for a short story that is a historical; another Sherlock story from 1916, which I am hoping to get started this weekend as well. This morning I am going to do some clean-up around the kitchen before doing some writing and cleaning myself up to go run my errands. I also really still want to write my book about the women in power of the 16th century, too. I suppose it could be called The Monstrous Regiment of Women, but I suppose it could also be called When Women Ruled the World.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for now. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

  1. The Chevalier started a society of homosexuals at the court of Louis XIV, which I would also like to research some more. ↩︎

We Found Love

I’ve always1 been interested in Weimar Germany, and Berlin during that period particularly. My interest grew, obviously, as it became more and more aware of how tolerant and progressive the period was; one of the first periods of true freedom for queer people in history. I’m sure there was still homophobia, but the culture and intelligentsia of the period were more interested in examining and studying queerness than eradicating it. This was part of what the Nazis sneeringly referred to as “decadence2” and opposed; everything began changing (for the worst) after 1933.

Sometimes I wonder if the more time passes after the fall of Berlin in 1945 and new generations come along that are farther away from the horrors of the second World War also make it seem less real and more history? It was very recent history when I was a child. My paternal grandfather served in the Pacific theater in the south Pacific, people on the street where we lived in Chicago when I was a kid was chock full of veterans and war refugees, people who lived through the war in Europe. A friend’s father had numbers tattooed on his forearm, and wasn’t Jewish, just an ethnic undesirable. We watched documentaries about the war and the camps as far back as I can remember. There was also an amazing PBS documentary that aired all the time–it was a series, The World at War. War fiction and non-fiction were still being published, still new, and still horrifying. I was a teenager when I read Herman Wouk’s definitive war novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, which became mini-series in the 1980s and I still think should be required reading for US History classes. (Granted, the two books are about three thousand pages long in total; it would take most students the entire class year to read them both, but putting a human face on the war by showing it through the eyes of people who were living through it has always been the best way, in my opinion, to teach history; by putting the students into the place and minds of the people who did experience it.) Anyway, clearly the history of the period isn’t taught correctly in this country else we wouldn’t be facing the rise of fascism here not even a hundred years after defeating it so thoroughly in the 1940s3.

Liebestrasse4 was suggested to me by Kindle Unlimited after I read Sins of the Black Flamingo, and I’m always up for a compelling queer story. My German isn’t good anymore, but I could read the title of this as “Love Street,” and given the nervous way the two embracing men are looking around, I gathered it was a Weimar Republic story.5

How could I pass that up?

And it didn’t disappoint.

It is, as always, both heartening and disheartening to see how open and inclusive Berlin was in those years leading up to 1933; how queer people could be open and live their best lives. Sure, there was oppression–there always has been and probably always will be–but it was easily skirted and just part of the risk expressing yourself has always held for queer people (I was explaining to a co-worker the other day how freeing going out to gay bars used to be for all of us, an escape from the stifling heterosexual world we are all trapped in, all the while knowing a police raid could, at any moment, possibly destroy your entire life.)

Leibenstrasse has no happy endings. Queer lives didn’t have them back then as a general rule, and those who managed it somehow didn’t broadcast it, either–because that would have ruined the happy ending. The main character is a deeply closeted American businessman, one of those alpha sharks we are always taught to respect, admire, and aspire to be–but he’s single, dodging all attempts to avoid being set up with women and dates, parrying all commentary about his private life–and finally decides to take an opportunity to go to Berlin to look for business opportunities for his company as well as to establish the company in Berlin. He does this not only to escape the stifling world he is living in, but also because he’s heard about the freedoms in Berlin, and that is very appealing to him. The story is cast several years after the war, with him returning to Berlin again, and remembering that lost time, and falling in love with an anti-Nazi gay activist and becoming a part of his circle. He gets arrested, and fired, from his company, and decides to go back home to escape the coming Nazi storm. He wants his love to come with him, but he wants to stay in Germany and keep fighting the Nazis…and they lost touch. Is his love still alive? DId he make it through the Nazis and the war?

Or did he die in one of the camps?

It’s a very heavy subject, and it is also one I would love to see more fiction and non-fiction about; how do you handle the guilt for fleeing and leaving your great love behind to potentially die horribly? What does that say about you?

This was an excellent read, and the art is also fantastic. Highly recommended.

  1. Always is an interesting word choice; obviously I didn’t come out of the womb with an interest in Germany between the wars. But as I grew up and became more and more aware of the period, the higher my interest. ↩︎
  2. Decadence, sin, sodomy: it’s all the same thing, so you see why it’s irritating when modern American fascists lie about the Nazis to fool people into thinking they don’t, you know, share beliefs and values with the most disgusting and horrific political ideology of all time. ↩︎
  3. Or maybe not. There’s always been a pro-fascist element in this country–look up “America First 1940” and see what comes up. They were pushing for us not to enter the war at all, or if we did, our natural ally was Hitler against the Soviet Union because communism. ↩︎
  4. In actual German, it would be spelled with a scharfes s, but I don’t know how to make that symbol on here…ß! There it is! ↩︎
  5. I recently bought a copy of Stephen Spender’s novel of the time, The Temple, and intend to reread Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and Christopher and His Kind. ↩︎

Words

I am off today, as I have a lot of appointments to get me and Paul too (we always try to schedule our appointments on the same day to get them out of the way) and we are going to go to Costco later. I need to pick up prescriptions and go to the mail, too, and I also need to get some writing done, some cleaning and organizing, and reading done this weekend. Sparky got me up early this morning, but I’ll take the extra hour or so of sleep he afforded me this morning. Now that he’s been fed, he is nowhere to be seen. This morning before we start off on our long day out in the heat, I am going to finally make that damned to-do list I never got around to this weekend as well as figure out what I need to get from the grocery store this weekend and plan our meals. I think we’ll skip cooking out this weekend and I’ll try some new recipes that I’m interested in. I also need to clean out the refrigerator and get things out of there that need to be trashed. What a big, exciting day I have in front of me, don’t I? But it could be a lot worse.

We had a flooding storm again yesterday afternoon, which had me nervous for my drive home. Traffic in the evenings has been particularly horrible this week, and I’m not sure what that is all about, either, but it’s been highly annoying. It took me almost forty minutes to get home Wednesday night, and last night wasn’t much better–and I left early! But I got home, played with Sparky for a while, and then went down some Youtube video wormholes as I did so more research on 1994. It was only thirty years ago (!) but it was such a different world, and of course my memory is only so good, you know? It was actually a lovely, relaxing, and informative evening that I almost had lost track of time until Paul got home (late, grants again). I also have some electronic files to sort, too (always).

And it’s Friday, so the bed linens need laundering.

Such an exciting life I lead, right?

But it’s kind of nice to be in a period where everything in my life has kind of slowed down and settled. The first half of this year has sped by–at the start of the year I was still going to Physical Therapy twice a week for my arm, and I was tired all the time–and it’s almost August. Our anniversary is tomorrow–twenty-nine long years–and that just kind of snuck up on me. Twenty-nine years! Had someone told me thirty years ago that I was a year away from finding my life partner I would have laughed in their face. I do need to get back into the gym regularly–I’ll do that later on today–and maybe I’ll take tomorrow off from things? My birthday is also a month from tomorrow, too–I’ll be sixty-three, yikes–but I don’t feel sixty-three, but I suppose no one does. My sixties are certainly not what I thought they would be; with all the cruelty of youth I assumed that was Old Age, and it’s kind of not? My body isn’t breaking down at all. The biceps thing was an accident and could have happened at any age, really. My lower back was starting to bother me, and so were my hips, which was worrisome…and then I changed out my everyday shoes for a new pair and voilà! My lower back and hips no longer hurt. Sigh. I really can be stupid sometimes. No, that’s not fair to me, the word I should use is oblivious. I’ve always been oblivious, and when I was younger, I had serious trouble reading a room.

Not that I am much better now, but without the anxiety (thank you meds!) I am not terrified of that happening now.

That, I think, is the greatest life change I made this year: the new meds and getting rid of anxiety. I still have some, to be sure, but I don’t spiral the way I used to and it doesn’t affect me physically anymore, and what more can I ask for? I had no idea how much of my life was controlled by anxiety, and how much of my behavior was either a reaction to the anxiety or a workaround to try to get past anxiety. It’s also nice to not waste time on it anymore, too. (Had I been a medieval king, they would have called me Gregory the Anxious.)

And so, on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later, of course, as there are a few blog drafts I want to finish and get out of the drafts folder, but I hope you have a day that is as marvelous as you are, Constant Reader, and see you soon!

You Just May Be The One

Thursday and my last day in the office this week. I am taking tomorrow off because of appointments with doctors and so forth, and when I am done with all of that we’re going to Costco for a minor visit. I have some things I’d like to get done around here this weekend, but I am mostly going to try to relax and be chill and have a nice time as I gear up for the very next week. We had some rain yesterday, and maybe some overnight as well. I’m turning more and more into my mother with every passing day, as I am now getting to the point where I am getting obsessed with what the weather is going to be like (she always had her television in the kitchen on to the weather channel with the sound off), but there are worse things in life than being like my mom. I’ll do some more pruning of things this weekend, but mostly I want to write and read after I get all of my errands run and taken care of.

I don’t feel tired or groggy or sleepy this morning, either. I haven’t felt that way all week, either, which has been very cool. I don’t like feeling like I need more sleep–I don’t think anyone does–and that’s what I’ve always hated about working full time and having to get up early. I guess I am finally used to this shift after all these years. I think our work-at-home day is going to be phased out, and then I have to get used to being at the office five days a week. Woo-hoo.

I managed to avoid the news and social media for the most part yesterday for my own mental health reasons. Both are just infuriating to me now, and I can’t waste that energy or head space any more getting angry about things I cannot control. The media and some old elite straight white people have decided to try to throw the election, because they learned nothing from 2016 and the garbage’s original term. Corporate greed will be the undoing of this country, and you can’t tell me the pundits who’ve turned on democracy aren’t agitating for keeping their tax cuts. Of course, currying favor with people who already hate you, have always hated you, and always will hate you is a fools’ game–and none of MAGA is going to see any of you (or minorities) as “the good ones.” I get my news now from the Philadephia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times. I am done forever with the NYT and Washington Post, as well as CNN and MSNBC–and I will never go back to any of them.

And for the record, polls showed Hillary in a landslide in 2016, and Trump trouncing Biden in 2020. But sure, elites, let’s base our decisions on polls taken from people who accept landline calls from UNKNOWN CALLER. Let’s listen to polling, which has rarely been right since 2016. But straight white people will always turn on their base–especially when the base isn’t made up primarily of straight white people. The Democratic Party is falling on its sword to keep their tax breaks and get more from the Republicans while the country burns. Never forget that. Project 2025 is a fucking real thing, and rather than rallying behind the candidate, they just want to throw in the towel and disenfranchise how many millions of their voters? How…undemocratic. And if this happens, I’ll still vote for whoever the candidate is–but that party will never get a dime from me again. And the only candidates I will give money to will be primary opponents for the elected Democrats who are taking a dump on their base. That’s the main difference between the two parties–the Republicans always fall into lockstep with their leadership, while Democrats will always shoot themselves in the foot and betray their big party tent base while claiming to be the party where everyone is welcome and has a say. No, we really don’t, because when push comes to shove the leadership will never listen to their base, always think they know better than their voters, and are tepid at best at uniting behind the leadership. My party support has always been resigned; at least they’re better than Republicans was always my mantra when voting for a party that will stab queer people and other minorities in the back at every turn despite calling us their “base” because they don’t want to fight or negotiate or anything.

So, I am tuning it all out and praying for the best. All I can control and all I can do is take care of myself and fight off despair because there’s never any point to giving in to it. I will check on things when I get up in the morning as my brain wakes up and then tune it all out again until the following morning. The American Experiment, noble and high-minded as it was intended to be, had a good run and never quite got the point of making its ideals for liberty, freedom and self-rule actually work the way it should; the situation we are in now is because the founders–many of whom were lawyers–never dreamed that lawyers would become judges with no respect for the law and precedent and twist and pervert the law and the Constitution to strip the federal government bare and leave citizens to the mercy of soulless corporations and rich elites.

Because that’s always worked out well in the past.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I hope to have a good and productive day, and I hope you do, too, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later most likely.