Tag: American mythology

Maybe It Was Memphis

Maybe it wasn’t?

Sunday here in the Lost Apartment, and all is well. LSU won, 13-10, not a particularly impressive showing. (Tulane also won, GO WAVE!) The games yesterday weren’t exciting or interesting, so after Paul got up we alternated between games and other things (more on that later). It was a very nice relaxing day, over all. I did run some errands in the morning, but after I got home that was it; no more outside for me this weekend. It was actually in the 80s yesterday, too. I didn’t do much cleaning around here yesterday, either, and the kitchen is a total mess (because I made Shrimp Creole last night for dinner) which I will need to clean up at some point this morning. I also didn’t read much yesterday, either; something I need to rectify this morning. I mean, it is a real messy mess. Yikes.

I dropped off four boxes of books to the library sale yesterday morning, and yes, this pruning of the books had helped de-clutter the living room, and I also came across some books I’d forgotten that I had–juvenile mysteries, amongst other things–which was also kind of cool. I’m planning to do another round of pruning once I get back from the trip (but probably not next weekend; I’m going to spend Sunday recovering from the drive); progress! I also want to start working on the storage attic. I know, the non-stop rollercoaster thrill ride of my life is almost too much to read about, isn’t it?

But I came across copies from a juvenile series, Ken Holt, that I really loved when I was a kid (still one of my favorites; it’s a toss-up between this series and The Three Investigators) and while paging through one of the copies (The Secret of Hangman’s Inn) I remembered how incredibly homoerotic the series was, particularly the relationship between Ken and his best friend, Sandy Allen–they are often around each other in varying stages of undress, including nude, for one example–and often share rooms and beds. There’s definitely an essay for the newsletter about this series, its homoeroticism, and how well the books are actually written. They all have a hard-boiled, noir-ish aesthetic that I loved. They were shot at with real ammunition, had to outwit and out think criminals, and since they were journalists (despite being so young) Ken’s write-ups of their cases and Sandy’s photos often went into syndication. Not bad for a pair of eighteen-year-olds! I also think this series is why I kind of wanted to be a journalist when I first went to college–but that is also a story for another time.

I didn’t write anything on the computer yesterday, but I did spend a lot of time writing in my journal. I also went back and reread my current one from the start, picking up on notes and ideas and thoughts about several things I am working on. I came across some excellent notes for Chlorine, for example, and as I reread my notes (just from this journal) I recognized something–part of the problem I am having with writing further into the book is base premise that starts the book doesn’t really work or make sense; the stakes aren’t high enough for my main character to get involved to begin with, and so I have to amp them up, kill my darlings, and maybe start over. I get very stubborn about throwing stuff out that I’ve already written, but those chapters are salvageable, kind of; I may be able to use the bits and pieces, but I am going to dive into it, headfirst, in December with the goal of getting a first draft finished by the end of the year. Stubbornness about your work is not a good quality for an author to have.

I also got my contributor copy of Celluloid Crimes, which ironically has the short story I adapted from Chlorine’s first chapter, “The Last To See Him Alive,” which is still a good story and I do love that title an awful lot. It’s always nice to see your work in actual print in a book, you know?

Around the games we watched some of the skating from Cup of Finland, this week’s season finale of The Morning Show, and a lot of the news shows. I am still processing the Friday news; the bromance in the Oval with FOTUS basically rolling over on his back and showing Zohran Mamdani his belly, and it may take me a while longer to wrap my head around the devolution of the MAGA movement into fascism and Nazism with the embrace of Nick Fuentes, the gay Latino Nazi, which makes no sense to me but I’ve never understood people who lick the boots on their own throats.

I am also really enjoying Ken Burns’ The American Revolution, which at least is honest and doesn’t really get into any of the weird national mythology we’ve built up around our history–basically to erase any wrong-doing and eradicate any questioning of the endless justifications for stealing an entire continent from its inhabitants. The Americas weren’t discovered and colonized; they were actually conquered, in a mass genocide that lasted centuries. US History and the American Revolution were actually my gateways into my lifelong obsession and interest in history; watching this series is reminding me of how I went from US History to English history to European history, with some dabbling in the ancients (Egypt, Greece, Rome); I really should have majored in History, the primary problem being picking a particular period to specialize in. As I said the other day, I should have majored in History with a minor in creative writing, and I could have become a historian like Barbara Tuchman; her A Distant Mirror remains one of my favorite histories and served as an inspiration for my idea to write a popular history of the sixteenth by focusing on women holding power…that century remains an outlier in Europe when it comes to powerful women and queens. I am probably going to write an essay about my interest in US History, and one about my interest in ancient Egypt.

And on that note, I am going to take my coffee into the living room to see if any more news has broken since I went to bed last night, after which I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

The temple at Edfu, Egypt

You Belong with Me

Thursday morning and my last day in the office for the week–and until a week from Monday, at that! Huzzah! The dark is pressing up against my windows this morning, which means the time change is coming. I still get to come home from work in the daylight, though. I slept pretty decently last night, and my legs are tired this morning but they don’t ache, which is much, much better than earlier this week. The bed also felt warm and comfortable this morning. Sparky was a cuddle puddle, too, which wasn’t exactly motivating me to get up, you know? Ah, well.

I was very tired when I got home from work last night, but did my chores so the house isn’t a disaster area this morning. I worked on the book first, caught up on the news (which is truly grim every day), and then cleaned out the sink and ran the dishwasher. I also finished two loads of laundry and folded everything before I started dozing off in my chair. I started my reread of The Haunting of Hill House, and it always, on every reread, just blows me away. Shirley Jackson was such a master.

What a bizarre week this has been, and it’s only Thursday. It hasn’t been bizarre for me, per se, but more along the lines of “I’m not enjoying this final season of United States.” We have Senator Rafael Cruz insisting that we need to “stop attacking pedophiles” (for which I have rechristened him Tedophile), to the government shutting down, to the cowardice of the House Speaker in not swearing in a duly elected congressperson to protect the Epstein files from coming out, to whatever the fuck that was with the top military brass the other day. (Someone posted on social media that the generals were calling them “Fat Man and Little Boy” because they bombed so hard, which made me howl with laughter.)

I do love how President Canks1 seems to think destroying the major cities in this country–which also are the primary economic engines of the country–won’t bankrupt the nation, not to mention a president threatening US cities with military reprisals because they don’t like him is a kind of a terrifying new wrinkle (gee, if only someone could have said something about this before the election…), but not a surprise. MAGA has been running this country as a fascist state since at least 1/20/25, and anyone who doesn’t see that is too stupid to engage with other than a simple “hello” in passing. Is it any wonder everything is fraying and decaying, including everyone’s emotional and mental states? Prices certainly are out of control and getting worse every time I go to the grocery store or order groceries for delivery; how’s that cost of eggs no one on the Right seems to care about anymore? Fortunately I only use eggs for cooking (rarely), and while Paul loves them, he doesn’t eat them very often–thank the Lord. And who would have ever thought the so-called “answer” to illegal immigration was to make the country such a hellhole that no one would want to come here for opportunity anymore? I always thought illegal immigration was the ultimate compliment to our country–that whole “land of opportunity” thing I was brainwashed into believing when I was a kid. My generation was completely gaslighted into the dual mythology of American exceptionalism and white supremacy; talk about a miseducation! I’ve spent most of my adulthood unlearning those lessons.

But I do feel good this morning–I know I’ll be tired tonight, but the only chore left is folding that last load of laundry, so I can probably do a spot of writing before collapsing into my easy chair for the evening. I do hope Paul gets home early enough before I fall asleep/go to bed, so we can watch some shows and get caught up with each other. I think they’re finished moving the office to their new, temporary space.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and don’t let the news get to you too much; I need to follow my own advice, don’t I? See you tomorrow morning!

Double Vision

Well, 2024 was a shit show of a year, wasn’t it? Then again, haven’t they all been pretty bad since 2015 and the golden escalator? It was, however, also a year with a lot of clarity for one Gregalicious; when I woke up to certain realities about life in general and started centering my own self in my life. So, for personal growth I’d say it was a good year; as for everything else in the world, maybe not so much. I didn’t publish anything in 2024; one of the few years since I started writing professionally where I actually had nothing–not even a short story–on my publications list. I did no volunteer work anywhere for anyone, and I just focused on my own recovery, my own self-discovery, and my own investigation into who I am and why I am who I am. It was a year in which I continued looking back, something that began in 2023 when Mom died, and came to a lot of realizations about myself and my history–and made peace with a lot of things that used to make me angry to remember and think about. I can reflect on some of those things now and not get angry. This was also my first full year on my anti-anxiety medication and the loss of anxiety from my life (and everything that branched out from the anxiety) has made such an amazing difference. It’s nice not having my anxiety controlling everything I do, and it’s also very interesting to see how many automatic coping mechanisms I had put into place to manage the anxiety, or at least keep it sort of controlled–especially when it comes to driving.

This was the year I turned against the legacy media, and frankly, I’ve not missed it in the least. I was worried about the election, not going to lie about that, but I also thought it was incredibly shitty they all decided to go with the “Biden is too old” narrative Trump and Fox were pushing on everyone, reporting it breathlessly like it was actually news while completely ignoring the fact that his opponent was a sun-downing narcissistic piece of shit. There have been two different sets of reporting on politics since the 1990s: the lies and demagoguery of Fox News, followed by the legacy media’s reporting on the lies Fox told like they were absolute facts. The positive glee with which the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC reported, rubbing their hands with excitement as they basically committed election interference for the Right yet again, shivving President Biden in the process; has anyone done a wellness check on that shit stain George Clooney yet? He’s managed to keep a low profile since he did Trump’s bidding for him. I do not miss legacy media, and hope they all circle the drain and fail. Maybe then, and only then, will we get the kind of media we deserve in this country and not the failing legacy media. The way they are slanting the Luigi Mangione story is also out-of-touch and offensive; why hasn’t the New York Times sent a reporter to a rust belt diner to see how those MAGA voters feel about Mangione? Oh, no, we don’t care about those viewpoints anymore. No, the legacy media thought they’d help MAGA return to power and then lead the resistance, like they thought they did in the first term. Newsflash: you didn’t.

Has there ever been a pundit class that believed the smoke they blew up their own asses like our current batch? Well, I am not watching them anymore. I follow some pundits on Youtube that I enjoy, but to be honest…I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, to tell you the truth, Constant Reader. I’ve always loved and cared about my country, even as I looked at it very clearly as more and more myths fell the older I got, but I also don’t feel like I need to follow the news everyday or participate in all of the partisan, pro-corporate, pro-rich let’s turn politics into a reality show bullshit. We deserve better.

As someone who witnessed Watergate and everything that followed, I bought into the mythology of journalistic integrity and the importance of truth; wasn’t that why his creators made Superman’s secret identity a journalist? I had planned on being a journalist myself when I went to college, and my intro class was all about integrity and honesty, which I also took as gospel for years, like a fool. Why did I ever think modern journalism had left the days of yellow journalism, of Hearst and Pulitzer, behind? My naive outlook, no doubt, and belief in American mythology. Journalistic integrity–which was beaten into our heads by every sitcom that decided to have one of the characters become a reporter for the school paper–was always for sale and never could be depended upon. So I happily bid adieu to thumb-on-the-scales journalism, and Constant Reader, I am never going back.

As for other things from 2024, let’s see. I fought with my health insurance company over a medication I need for seven months, thank you for that, bottom-feeding scum-sucking health insurance companies. This affected the rest of my care, and forced me to go even further into debt in the new year for medical treatments and so forth, and I am not entirely sure when exactly I will be able to recover from this financial distress. Yay for health insurance, and the entire health care industry. But at least it was straightened out, and the medication was approved through 2030. I also got some people at the insurance company in trouble. Too bad, so sad. Womp fucking womp, trash.

There was a lot of stress for me this past year, which was made even more interesting by the change in medications. My brain didn’t experience either stress or anxiety or even depression this year; my moods stayed fairly level all through the mess, but it definitely weighed on me subconsciously, just like delaying dealing with the holidays for a year didn’t really work the way I wanted other than pushing it back a year. Well done, dumb-shit. Ah, well.

What a strange, strange year it’s been.

And on that note, we’ll be hurtling into the abyss of 2025 at midnight. So, until tomorrow morning, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely lovely eve of the New Year, Constant Reader.

Dancin’ Shoes

Christmas Eve Eve, only day in the office for the week. It’s in the forties here in New Orleans this morning, and it feels every degree of it here in my office nook this morning. I think we’re going to be fairly slow today–although I’ve been wrong about these things before. Cold makes me ache a bit and not want to get up from the bed, but here I am. I can sleep late in my warm bed the next two mornings, after all. Yesterday was nice. I got up and ran my errand, thus remaining ensconced inside for the rest of the day. I worked some, got some chores accomplished, and we watched Alien Romulus (which I enjoyed, but felt derivative) and then went back to The Day of the Jackal, which we’d started the night before. It’s a fun watch, with a little too much extraneous filler (I really do not care about the Jackal’s private life, or that of the MI6 operative trying to catch him), but Eddie Redmayne is pretty good as the Jackal.

Of course, The Day of the Jackal takes me back to the 1970’s, and the search for Carlos, both terrorist and assassin. He got a lot of press back then. Frederick Forsyth wrote the novel The Day of the Jackal, and it was originally made into a film back then. When “Carlos” first emerged, people started calling the assassin/terrorist “the Jackal” because he was similar to the character in the Forsyth novel–already a bestseller, the branding of a real life person as the fictional character drove even more sales of the book. Everyone in the 1970s, it seemed, knew about Carlos; we even did a week on him in my Current Events class in high school. I know I read the book but didn’t see the film; and I’ve essentially forgotten most of it since then. Terrorism was seen as a major issue for the world at the time; and Americans were very smug because there had been no terror attacks inside the United States at the time, so we saw terrorism primarily as a “foreign” problem (until 9/11). Carlos was so known and prevalent that Robert Ludlum created Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity to fight and either catch/kill Carlos. The 1970s were such a different time, or at least it was for me. I was old enough to be aware of the news and the world, but I wasn’t educated enough to understand what it all meant, what the root causes of international problems actually were, and I was in the midst of my indoctrination into the mythology of American exceptionalism and its equally awful twin, White Supremacy. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration that I began to unlearn everything I was raised to believe and began seeing the reality beneath the propaganda.

Alien Romulus, on the other hand, was quite fun but seemed to me, at least, to be a bit derivative; with scenes that were direct callbacks to the first two movies, with lots of dramatic tension and suspense and more than a few excellent jump scares (although at one point I said aloud, “There’s always at least one more, people”–only to have one appear within seconds. The idea of a soulless corporation looking to use and exploit the incredibly dangerous creature(s) at the cost of any number of human lives certainly resonated, since that’s where we’re at in this country at the moment. I recommend it–I think in the chronology of the movies this one comes after the original–but you don’t really need to have seen any of the earlier films to enjoy this one. They are all linked, of course, but each movie (at least the ones I’ve seen) can stand alone on their own individuality.

I also blame George Lucas for the entire concept of prequels and filming series out of order.

I’m looking forward to the holidays this week primarily because of two days off from work, more than the holiday itself. I don’t feel very Christmas-sy this year, frankly, and I certainly didn’t last year with my arm in a brace and all the irritation that entailed. I’m going to get us a deep dish Chicago-style pizza pie from That’s Amore tomorrow, and on Christmas day we’re planning on seeing Babygirl, which will be our first trip to a movie theater since before the pandemic. I think I have to come into the office on Friday this week–not a big deal, since I have two extra days off this week–to cover for someone for the holidays. I work one day, then am off for two, come in for two more, am out for another two, in for another two and then out for another. Yes, these next two weeks are going to be completely disruptive.

SIgh.

I did start getting back into the Scotty book yesterday, rereading and editing as I go on what is already done on the book and plan out the rest of it. I also have some short stories due that I need to write, too. Yikes, indeed. I have a lot to do, don’t I, and I really need to stop blowing off my free time and getting back to serious work on my writing. This Scotty book is going to be a lot of fun; wild and crazy and endlessly silly and full of “really, Greg?” moments. I love when my mind finally snaps back into Scotty mode; it seems like every time I write one I go into it with an overly serious mindset that needs to be snapped out of somehow. I also worked on one of my essays yesterday, about racism in the original texts of a Hardy Boys mystery (The Mark on the Door) that I am hoping to finish and post this week, as well as a meandering essay about Christmas and the holidays and how easy it is to offend the very weak faith of most Christians. (Or I could finish my lengthy diatribe about being groomed as a Christian–and fuck you in advance if you @ me about this; I don’t want to hear your dismissal of my very real experiences, thank you very much.) Although I do suppose setting a goal of writing a Substack essay every week might be a bit much. I write one of these posts every day, not to mention emails and so forth…so yes, I do already write quite a bit, at least 500-1000 words per day on here (closer to the 500 count, and averaging probably less than that, more like). It is a conceit of mine that I do not consider writing this post every morning as words written for the day; I never have. Perhaps I should start?

And on that note, I am getting cleaned up and putting on some warm clothes to face the day. Have a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point, I am sure.

I’ll Think of Something

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, and a very nice day was had here in the Lost Apartment. I worked and ran my errands and cleaned and had a rather nice, productive day. It was also a pretty day to run errands, despite the hordes of tourists on foot in the Garden District who somehow think it’s a pedestrian mall and will literally step out into the street without looking.1 Heavy heaving sigh. I will also never understand tour buses that want to make the left turn off Prytania onto Washington (by the cemetery); Washington is a very narrow two-lane street with cars parked on both sides. Probably heading to Commander’s Palace, but a bus will block the entire street. Ah, the trials and tribulations of driving in uptown New Orleans!

But I got up at a pretty decent hour (this morning as well) yesterday so I could get things done in the morning before I had to venture out into the errands. I was most pleased with what I was able to get done in the morning–the apartment still needs to have the floors cleaned, but at least it’s not nearly as horrifying around here as it was on Thursday night when I got home from work. This morning I am going to do the floors and the weekend’s dishes, so I can head into the work week with a sparking and shining home. I made major progress on a project, and hope to get it finished today. I also did some mental writing of my own on the Scotty book–I am not sure why I always struggle and then remember oh yeah, the plots are supposed to be over-the-top and ridiculous, the more ridiculous the better. So I would really like to get back to work on it, so I need to get this other project finished. When I get this finished I am going to read for a bit before I get cleaned up and get back to work.

I read manage to read some more of Winter Counts, and it’s really exceptionally well written. I am having a good time reading it, and seeing how the standard hard-boiled noir style can be interpreted and developed in an entirely new way and perspective is pretty awesome, too. (Seriously, people: broaden your minds and read diverse books.) I also spent some time with White Too Long, which thus far isn’t really telling me anything new–it opens with an explanation of how the Southern Baptists came into being in the first place, and how it has evolved from those racist roots (without losing the white supremacy) ever since. That may help me with the essay I am writing about religion and why I am so antipathetic to it; unpacking my miseducation on both it and American exceptionalism has been very revelatory–and it also makes me more than a little angry. This is what happens when you confront the truth about this country’s actual history, rather than the American mythology my childhood education groomed me into believing–which is why I guess people are so afraid of the truth and what their children might think of them? You cannot be both a good person and a racist at the same time; because if you harbor bigotry and racism inside of your personality it will spill over into other aspects of your life, and color your decisions and your votes and how you conduct yourself as you navigate through the world.

Paul was at the office for most of the day, and he got home rather late. I bought one of those Costco ready for the oven fresh pizzas Friday, and made it for dinner last night. It was quite good–what isn’t good from Costco, really–but when he got home, he had a tale to tell. As he was leaving his office from the rear of the building he was stopped by firemen (they were hot and young) and he eventually spoke to both the fire chief and the chief of police. Apparently, his building started to collapse while he was at his office. He didn’t even know anything had happened! Ah, New Orleans is always going to New Orleans. Never a dull moment in this city, is there? We’re almost to the anniversary of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse, too.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and read for a while before I get to work for the day. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later on, if Sparky will allow it.

Screenshot
  1. In fact, this made me think about Chanse’s computer guy, Jephtha, and his video game, “Tourist Season.” ↩︎

Shake

Well, yesterday was a good day for one Gregalicious. I didn’t get as much done around the house as I would have preferred, but c’est la vie. I did have football games on all day, mostly as a break from monotonous silence, but I did get to see the Florida upset of Mississippi, and surprisingly enough, LSU beat Vanderbilt last night to stop their three game losing streak…but have to play Oklahoma next, who managed to not only upset Alabama last night but beat them pretty soundly. After the LSU game I caught the end of Auburn-Texas A&M, which Auburn finally won in quadruple overtime. What a crazy year this has been in the SEC, has it not? Now the winner of Texas-Texas A&M will play Georgia for the SEC title. #madness.

But one thing I remembered finally is that I usually read during games I don’t necessarily care about, and so I finished The Reformatory by Tananarive Due at last yesterday, and what a read it was. I’d say it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time, and I read a lot of really good books, so that is really saying something. I’ve added Due to my list of “must-read” writers, and she has a substantial backlist I am looking forward to exploring. It took me a very long time to get through this book, because it was so powerful and the horror in it was so completely real, but more on that later. I am going to go out on a limb and call it a masterpiece for now, and encourage you to read it if you have not. Today I am going to start reading Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen, whom I’ve met and found delightful, and whose career I’ve been following avidly. I’ve yet to read one of his books, but I am very excited to read one of the most acclaimed queer mysteries of the last few years. I’m also kind of thrilled to be reading fiction again. Today I am also going to read a couple of short stories a friend sent me to read, and probably will do some writing, either short story, essay, or the book, today as well. I went to get the mail and made a grocery run yesterday, so I don’t have to do anything errand-like today, but I should probably make it to the gym later this morning. The weather has been wonderful, and one thing I am determined to do this year is drive around the city taking pictures of Christmas decorations. I definitely want to write a nice essay about Christmas this year, and the essay I worked on briefly yesterday, “Recovering Christian,” is one I started working on about twenty years ago. The lovely thing about Substack is I now have a place to post those essays, and share them with the world. I do have to make more of an effort to post content there at least once a week.

I do wonder if all the readers I picked up there during my ranting about homophobia post are expecting that kind of content all the time? I don’t know, but in some ways I am thinking that the Substack (also a place to publish short stories, too, if I so choose) is kind of a good place to write about my life, and explore issues of being a queer American writer, and my thoughts and opinions about systemic bigotry, and all the things I was miseducated about as a child. (American Mythology, hello?) That way it will live up to the name it shares with this blog, “Queer and Loathing in America.” I also want to write essays about my gay life, and the lessons I learned the hard way, as well as writing. I’ve been unpacking my past ever since Mom died–the first time I’ve ever allowed myself to look back–and while I am not sorry I never did this before, I am also learning a lot more about myself and why I do things and why I react the way I do and how much of my life was controlled/driven by anxiety. I was fine at the party the other night, but too many people in spaces still makes me uncomfortable and uneasy, but that’s okay. The claustrophobia might be anxiety related, or it may be entirely it’s own thing, but the primary difference was that there was no adrenaline spike or spiraling. I was able to relax, and kind of enjoy myself more.

And that is what I meant when I said I was pulling back from the crime community and centering myself. I want to focus on myself, on Paul, and our needs and what we need to do and handle and take care of, and I don’t want to do emotional labor for anyone else anymore. I’ve been watching a lot of Youtube and TikTok videos about cutting MAGA voters out of your life, or at the very least setting boundaries, and I saw one that really made a lot of sense to me: we don’t feel safe around them, but we don’t have to cut them out entirely, we just have to stop giving them emotional labor. Go get sympathy from another MAGA voter, since you’re all so empathetic and sympathetic to the concerns, fears and rights of other people. It’s why BlueSky has been flooded by Twitter trolls, now that the genius has killed that platform (but hey, let’s put him in charge of government!). They don’t enjoy talking to each other, so they have to “pwn the libs.” But they just get blocked, so they’re the ones who wind up in a echo chamber. Hell, I block people who annoy me. It’s my space, my experience, and if I don’t want the aggravation of annoying people or giving them time or energy, well…no one can make me engage with people who steal my peace.

I also don’t think people understand how casual homophobia, so easy for straight people to slip into with their excessive privilege, makes us feel when we hear it or hear about it or (in some cases) read about it in screen shots. Not only do we no longer feel safe around you, we can’t count on you to stand up for us when the chips are literally down. There’s been some slightly viral conversation about some Jewish lesbian who voted for Trump and has been cut off from her friends and kicked off a team. “I wouldn’t do this to someone who voted for Harris,” she cries her crocodile tears, as she sits down with right-wing podcasters and plays victim and martyr. She voted for Trump because of pro-Palestine lefties…or so she claims. So she aligned herself with someone who actually had dinner with a Nazi, and has been embraced by American Nazis. Who ally themselves with the Proud Boys and other ant-Semites (who precisely are the voters who chant “Jew will not replace us” again?), and now wants everyone to feel sorry for her and pretends ignorance. Sorry not sorry, bitch–your new buddies and the Karens posting on your instagram talking about how horrible it is that queers actually can see this quisling bitch for who she is? Those bitches will be the first ones to turn you into the SS, moron. It’s especially egregious because my education in feminism and social justice was at the hands of lesbians; I’ve always thought lesbians, of all people, would know better than this bullshit. And this bitch is talking about “how we all need to have these tough conversations”–no, we don’t, honey. The time for tough conversations was before the election, and trust me, there’s not a single tough conversation I could possibly have where I’d be willing to come to an agreement or compromise with people who cheered the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. You don’t compromise with the Klan. You don’t compromise with Nazis. You don’t compromise with people who’s starting position is “you don’t deserve any rights, and you really shouldn’t exist.”

Feel free to pound your head into that wall until it’s pulp, Benedictine Arnold. Enjoy the lonely life of celibacy you’ve set up for yourself.

The funniest thing about her is she is a butch lesbian–short hair, masculine clothes, the whole ball of wax–and you know she is going to get challenged going into the ladies’ bathroom or changing room.

Good. Enjoy what you voted for. I have no patience with queer remoras attaching themselves to the sharks circling the rest of us. I certainly have no forgiveness in my heart for the future informers and camp guards. She showed us who she is, and we believe her.

And on that note, I am going to head over to my chair to read for a bit before I get to work around here. I slept really well again last night, and feel pretty good this morning. I also want to work on my review of The Reformatory, and get some other things done. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later on.

Hang on Sloopy

Work at home Friday! I have a meeting at ten and then I get to do work-at-home duties for a few hours before I can end my work day and dive back into working on the book. I am having to be a bit more careful this time, as my memory isn’t as good as it used to be and I have been making this up as I go so far, so there are no notes for me to look at and think ah yes, the nurse’s name was this or Aunt Del’s second husband’s last name was NOT Alencon, so last night I reread the first four chapters of this masterpiece in progress and wasn’t disgusted, appalled and/or embarrassed at the terrible writing. (It is excruciatingly awful.) But I was writing down the names of the characters and who they are so I can start constructing back stories as well as who they are, and that will lead to more story and more characters. I also have to synopsize and outline those chapters as well…which also made me realize I have to look up the names of Scotty’s parents and grandparents, which means going through the books, which means…I should just start rereading them and pulling together the Scotty Bible at long last. That is my plan for this weekend; to work on pulling together information that is necessary out of the previous volumes and revising the current chapters. I am also really proud of myself for recognizing this work is necessary to make writing the rest easier and fix the mistakes in these early chapters.

I am also up way earlier than I need to be, but I woke up at six. Sparky actually was sleeping with me this morning when I woke up, which is progress on the cuddling front. I woke up at six, and was awake so figured might as well stay up if I am already, you know? My coffee is good and I am a little groggy, but taking a shower once I finish writing this will help with that, and I can get started on my work-at-home duties and be free earlier, which is really nice,..and I can use this afternoon to catch up on chores and get started on the Scotty Bible, which is cool and exciting. Should I be this excited to be writing another Scotty? I don’t know if it’s the writing Scotty that has me so high or if it’s just writing in general? I also don’t have a contract yet, so they may not even want it. But that’s not anything to worry about right now, either. I am just going to stay laser-focused on writing. The apartment isn’t that bad this morning, really. Tomorrow I have an eye appointment to get a new prescription so I can order new glasses, but other than that and college football, there’s really not much going on for us around here. I do want to watch The Deliverance this weekend. So many possibilities!

Our wretched governor this week asked LSU to start bringing Mike the Tiger back into the stadium for football games this season. I do love that tiger (I even made him the focal point of one of my Scotty books), he is stunningly beautiful, and I remember the year they decided to stop bringing Mike into the stadium. (This was the previous Mike.) The rule always was they wouldn’t sedate him and if he refused to get in the trailer, they wouldn’t try to make him. Previous Mike that entire year refused, and so…no Mike. It was disappointing to me the few games I went to that year–Mike’s entrance into the stadium was always one of my favorite parts of the game. The next year, they decided not to try, and I also think the veterinary school also realized that bringing him into the stadium is probably not the best thing for a tiger. There’s a lot of people, a lot of noise, and if he gets upset or irritated or anxious during a game, there’s no getting him out of the stadium again until half-time or the game ends–and what if the fans rush the field? He’s secure in his trailer, of course, but why upset a big animal who was rescued from a bad situation who’s finally getting used to being taken care of and spoiled? I myself began to realize, the longer more time passed and there was no tiger in the stadium, I rethought the whole thing. Whether there should be a wild animal habitat on campus or not is an entirely different argument, and one I am undecided about the right answer, and know that my reluctance to say its not good has a lot to do with my affection for that tiger.

I’ve also begun to really understand two things about college football (and life for that matter) is that when someone talks about tradition, they’re just saying “we’ve always done it this way” and change is scary; and a lot of the time tradition is what keeps problems festering for decades.

I also think the Governor making demands of our flagship university is not good for the school or the state. If you want to interfere with LSU, Governor Landry, why don’t you pump some more money into the school? Cut tuition? Repair or replace some of the crumbling buildings on campus? No, his only interest in LSU is the athletic teams and showing how powerful he is. He clearly doesn’t give a shit about education in Louisiana, especially if he actually believes having the Ten Commandments displayed in every classroom in the state will improve somehow our educational system…when what it actually is another form of the right’s “thoughts and prayers” bullshit they trot out whenever they try to force us to believe their corrupted faith and think that holy bandage they stick on the problem will make things better somehow.

Leaving things to God’s will is an abdication of morality and responsibility; the proverbial “Pilate washing his hands”. And is that what we need leading the state?

I am beginning to remember that the reason I try not to follow state politics more closely than I do is because it leads to fucking despair.

Right-wing media (which is apparently bought and paid for by the Kremlin) have been trying to hide their overt racism lately by using code, what is more commonly known as “dog whistles.” The latest is this “the Vice-President is a phony because she talks differently to different people”, which basically means “straight white people don’t do this so there must be some nefariously horrible reason for this.” No, douchebags, it’s more of a protective coloring, like chameleons, that marginalized people all develop because straight white people can be so fucking awful. One example of this is my parents had very pronounced rural Alabama accents, which began to fade over the years after they left, but it’s still there. Paul used to always love when I talked to my parents on the phone because my own accent comes out, and it would usually take about an hour or so for me to get back to the way I normally talk. I learned how to speak with an accent, which I also quickly learned to disguise in elementary school because it was very clear to me that the way I spoke made people assume I was stupid. It’s not just my family, either, that triggers my accent; whenever I speak to anyone who has one mine comes back out–my brain is coded that other people with Southern accents are safe. Likewise, hard as it is to believe but I also tone myself down when I’m around a majority of straight people I don’t know. This is why gay bars were so important for so long–after a week of coding myself as either “less gay” or “blend in don’t bring attention to yourself”, going to a gay bar where I could completely be myself without worry of losing either my job or being attacked was an enormous release, and I know I’m not the only gay man who saw the bars as a conduit to community and safety. That’s why it kind of bothers me that straight people come to gay bars and hang out because the vibe is so different than straight bars; their presence makes the safe space not as safe, and sometimes it makes them uncomfortable to be a minority and they act out. I suppose it’s kinder to say “straight people need to be more respectful of queer safe spaces.” That’s always been a problem, and really–bachelorette bridal parties need to stay out of gay bars because drunk straight white girls can be the absolute fucking worst.

And don’t come to our bars for entertainment if you don’t support our equality.

Yes, ladies, you’re super-cool for making asses out of yourself in queer bars, and oh so tolerant for gifting us and our spaces with your presence. I know that things have changed since I was younger, and the younger queer generations aren’t so rigid about separating their lives because they don’t have to, and I am all for that. Straight kids and queer kids absolutely should be friends, should hang out, and the sexuality thing shouldn’t make a difference, which is what we’ve always said. Younger generations don’t need that safe space as much, at least in the cities, the way we used to need it. I haven’t set foot in a gay bar in years, so maybe the entire culture has changed, and again, this is how things used to be is not a compelling argument against change. Maybe I’m just that old man who’s out of step with the young ones these days, and I do catch myself all the time questioning things I’ve always thought and believed and are reflexive; I’ve spent a lot of time the last few years sorting things out in my head, and seeing things with the clarity distance provides.

I was wrong about so many things. I blame public education, for teaching me American Mythology instead of US History.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later. Thanks for checking in!

Wasted on the Way

Thursday and the last day in the office for the week. I am very tired this morning. I slept well but could easily sleep for another few hours or so (interesting that I went from almost non-stop anxiety about insomnia to anxiety about sleeping too much, isn’t it?), but as I slowly and groggily get going this morning, the coffee is definitely hitting the way it is supposed to. Tomorrow morning I have a doctor’s appointment and PT, as well as whatever errands I can get run before the parades start tomorrow night. Gah. I can’t believe it is already parade season, and I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked in the meantime. I did work some more on the story yesterday night after I got home from work and the errands (I picked up the mail) and settled in for a relaxing evening.

For some reason I watched the season premiere of Vanderpump Rules, which is now picking up with the fallout from last season’s “Scandoval,” and I don’t know about continuing to watch. I had stopped watching the show years ago–years before Stassi and Kristen were fired for being racists, and long before Jax met and married that bizarre woman. I came back briefly for the scandal, and watching the aftermath I am just not feeling it, and probably won’t watch more. I do sometimes question my fandom of these reality shows, which generally feature terrible people being terrible, all for the sake of entertainment. I had never really watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City before–I had intended to, but then Jen Shah was arrested for massive scale fraud and remained on the show, and that was a bit too much for me (likewise, I stopped watching New Jersey when the Giudices went to jail, and I remain conflicted about Beverly Hills with fraud-adjacent Erica Girardi unapologetically remaing as a member of the cast and even getting, apparently, a redemption arc this season; which I vehemently oppose); I did start watching this most recent season at the urging of friends and yes, I was missing reality drama by not watching; I doubt that I will go back and watch the old seasons, which is something I never really do; why go back and watch old drama that doesn’t matter anymore? Reality shows like these are really like the old prime-time soaps; you can start watching at any time and just jump into the show without having to go back and watch the back stories–which you could never do with the daytime soaps but you could with the night-time.

Well, what do you know? I never finished this before leaving the house this morning so I find myself trying to finish this over my lunch break–and even my lunch is later today than usual, so yeah–been a day. But I feel good, tomorrow morning I have appointments and PT and so forth; before coming home to do work-at-home duties for the rest of the day. I’ve also kind of lost the train of thought I was riffing on before leaving the house this morning, and checking out what I’ve already written here didn’t return me to that particular mindset, so who knows where this is going to wind up going? I hope I have the energy after making groceries on the way home from work today to finish working on my story so I don’t have to worry about that over the weekend. I don’t know how my parade attendance will go this weekend; Paul’s got a lot of work to do and going out there by myself–which I can handle, and have done before–just isn’t as much fun as when I am with Paul, even if we barely speak while we’re out there. And I am not sure how much my stamina is going to hold up, either. We shall see, I suppose.

It’s also supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday, which will put a damper on the weekend anyway.

I did also watch the season finale of Percy Jackson and the Olympians last night, and I have to say I really do enjoy the series much more than I did the films. I did read the books a very long time ago–Rick Riordan’s series are the best fantasy novels for kids bar none, fuck all the way off, TERF Queen–so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I thought the series really adapted the books well, and I also appreciated that the cast went with kids rather than teens (or actors in their twenties acting as teens); which made the story make a lot more sense than it would with them in their mid-to-late teens. It’s also such a great concept; I really envy Riordan that idea, seriously. I used to want to do something similar–I still want to write a young adult novel set during the Trojan War–and I’ve had other ideas involving mythology and gods and goddesses, but nothing has ever come to fruition. The best idea I had I am not sure is usable, honestly, but every so often I remember it and think oh, if only…

Ah, well. As it is, I won’t have time to write everything I want to before I die anyway, so there are some things I will never get around to–and as long as it’s taking me to write this damned short story, I may not even wind up writing the things I do think I’ll have the time to get to, of course.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. You never know, and sorry for being so late today.

(You’re Gone But) Always in My Heart

The late Joan Didion famously said we tell ourselves stories in order to live. I’ve parsed the statement any number of times–it’s most commonly taken to mean that it’s important we tell stories of the human experience (the good, the bad, the mediocre and all the varieties in between) to better understand ourselves, our society and culture. I had never read Didion myself until several years ago; of course I knew who she was and what she had written–although if asked before reading her work, I would have only been able to name Play It as It Lays, which I still haven’t read. One of my co-workers had a library copy of her Miami in his officer a few years ago, and I idly picked it up when I was in his office. He recommended very strongly that I read Didion, and so it was with Miami I started; the opening line (Havana dreams come to dust in Miami) sold me on the book. I enjoyed it, and went on to read other works of hers: A Book of Common Prayer, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and After Henry, among others. I loved the way she wrote; that the complexity of her work came from her poetic use of language and words rather than on complicated sentences. It was reading Didion’s essays (and Laura Lippman’s) that made me start thinking about writing essays myself; I started one trying to use a similar style to Didion–which was interesting–but think it’s rather more important to stick to my own voice, for better or for worse; there was only one Didion, and there should only be the one.

As I was being interviewed the other night I was talking about my re-education; about having to unlearn and relearn things from when I was a kid. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately; part of it was turning sixty this past year, part of it was writing two books back-to-back that are sort of based in my own personal history–so remembering what Alabama and Kansas were like for me meant exploring a lot of my past, reliving and rehashing it with the perspective of time having passed and with a coldly sober, unemotional eye. I remembered, as I was talking about the Lost Cause and other American mythology we are taught as children (Washington and the cherry tree; Honest Abe the rail-splitter; and so many other Americans of the past we have deified) , the Didion quote and found a new meaning in it. When I was a child, I remember that in the South, for some reason, my cousins and their friends and the adults never would refer to someone as a liar; etiquette, perhaps, or politeness being behind this oddity. What they said instead of saying you were lying was “Oh, you’re telling stories.” If someone was a liar, you’d say “he tells stories.”

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

Given this weird rural Southern thing about “telling stories”, this can be reinterpreted as we tell ourselves lies in order to live–and it all falls into place, because we do tell lies to ourselves in order to live with ourselves, within this culture, within this society. Never has this been more evident than is this strange battle the right has started about Critical Race Theory–which wasn’t being taught in any American public school below the collegiate level. If there’s nothing in American history that we should be ashamed of, why is there so much opposition to the truth? Why are we taught lies in order that we may live?

The war cry of the white Southerners who want to keep their monuments to white supremacy and treason has been “Heritage not hate!” But the heritage is hate, which was the entire point of Bury Me in Shadows. You cannot have it both ways: you cannot celebrate a history of treason against the United States, while claiming to be “more patriotic” that other Americans who do not celebrate the killing of American soldiers (ask Jane Fonda about how posing on an enemy gun goes over). The bare facts of the matter are that some (not all) of the states where it was legal to enslave people were afraid they would lose their right to enslave people, and as such they decided they were better off starting their own country. They wanted a war they couldn’t possibly win, and the fact that it didn’t end quickly has more to do with the incompetence of the Union generals and their political ambitions (there are reasons there are no statues of George McLellan anywhere to be found) than the righteousness of the Confederate cause and the brilliant leadership of Robert E. Lee. They abhor Sherman as a war criminal (“he waged war on civilians!” Um, we also firebombed Dresden during the second world war, and what were Nagasaki and Hiroshima if not the obliteration with atomic weapons of civilian populations? Sherman said “war is hell”–you cannot start a war and then complain about how the other side chooses to fight it.). They claim it had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with “states’ rights”…when the reality is the only state right they were concerned about was the right to enslave people–they certainly wanted the federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act against the wills of the free states, didn’t they? Their end game in Congress and the courts was to force the federal government to permit enslavement in every state of the union and every territory; this was the crux of the Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court, which more than anything else set the stage for the war.

If there’s nothing terrible about the actual history, why so much fear around the truth?

We tell ourselves lies in order to live.

If the truth is too terrible to be faced, then it absolutely needs to be.

There’s nothing quite so romantic as a lost cause, is there? Whether it’s the Jacobites in England with their toasts to “the King across the water”; the emigres from the French Revolution; or the Confederacy, losing sides inevitably always romanticize their defeat and the loss of a better world their victory would have created. An entire industry has developed in this country around the mythology of the Lost Cause; how could it not when one of the most successful American films of all time portrays the Lost Cause so sympathetically? The opening epigram of Gone with the Wind reads “There once was a land of Cavaliers and cotton fields known as the Old South…” And yet the movie depicts an incredibly classist society, predicated on the enslavement of Africans; the entire idea behind the founding of this country was the elimination of class distinctions–the equality of all.

But even Margaret Mitchell, when asked if the Tara in the movie was how she pictured it as she wrote about it, scoffed and said, “Tara was a farm.”

And not everyone in the old South was rich or owned a plantation. Not everyone was an enslaver, and not everyone was on board with the Lost Cause. But we rarely hear about the Southerners who fought on the Union side in the war; we never hear about Southerners who were abolitionists; and we never hear about the atrocities inflicted on those loyalist Southerners by the rebels, either.

And speaking of war crimes, what about Andersonville?

We tell ourselves lies in order to live.

We cannot celebrate our achievements without acknowledging our failures. It is far worse to not learn from a mistake than making the mistake in the first place. It is not unpatriotic to look at our history, culture, and society critically, to examine and evaluate how we are failing to live up to the ideals upon which our country was founded. The Founding Fathers were not mythical gods of infallibility; they were all too human, with all the concomitant jealousies, pettiness, arrogance and ego that comes with it. They were, for one thing, mostly unable to conceive of a society where women and non-white people were deserving of equality under the law. But they also knew they were not perfect, which was why they created a system that could adapt to the changing tides of history.

George Santayana’s famous quote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is something I think about every day. I also love the George Bernard Shaw quote, “What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.“

We need to stop telling ourselves lies. The truth might seem to be too much to be faced; it might be ugly and hideous and shameful…but it will also set us free.

Johnny Are You Queer?

I have been wanting to rewatch Johnny Tremain for quite some time now.

When Disney Plus went live, the first thing I did (after subscribing) was search for it there; I did this at least once every two weeks since the service launched, to no avail. I would look for it on Amazon Prime, Netflix, everywhere; whenever I would sign up for yet another streaming service I would look for it. I never quite understood–and still don’t–why Disney Plus doesn’t have it; but the other day at work I realized I hadn’t looked for it for a while, so signed into Disney Plus on my browser: nope. Oh might as well give Amazon Prime a try, I thought, although Disney not having one of its own properties while another streaming service had it was, I thought, highly unlikely.

And yet, there it was: to rent or buy. I didn’t want to buy it, and I really hate paying to rent to stream something when I already pay for far too many streaming services (I really need to get past the mentality of subscribing when I want to watch something when it’s far cheaper in the long run to merely rent the movie or show), but I’v been wanting to rewatch this movie for years and there it finally was; so I did, and rewatched it yesterday whilst making my daily allotment of condom packs.

I also remembered, when I found the film, that Johnny Tremain was my gateway drug to not only my lifelong interest in American history–which eventually led to an interest in history in general. We had an assembly at my elementary school to watch the movie, and I saw it again when it aired on The Wonderful World of Disney (it may even have still been Disney’s Wonderful World of Color). I eventually read the book, which I got from a Scholastic Book Fair, and it became a treasured favorite. I also recognized, before rewatching the movie as a sixty-year-old, that it was a Disney film aimed for kids made in the 1950’s during the Red Scare when we were all living under the shadow of the mushroom cloud; Walt himself was, among many other things, a deeply conservative pro-America anti-Communist homophobe, and given all those things, it was going to most likely be–if looked at with a cold, judgmental, independent eye–a barely disguised propaganda film. (I am also curious to reread the book; since it was published in 1943, during the height of the second world war, it was also probably pro-American propaganda, when all the country needed to be united to believe that we were fighting evil to make the world a better place, and since American democracy was the be-all end-all…you see what I mean?)

I mean, once you recognize and identify Lost Cause mythology as an ideation to perpetrate and protect white supremacy, it’s also relatively easy to start reexamining all of American history and see the mythology that has been built up around the founding and creation of the country, as well as the deification of the Founding Fathers.

But while I was researching the book and movie the other day, I also came across a paper–queer theory–by Dr. Frank Henderson at Furman University that essentially reexamines the text of the novel from a queer perspective looking for subtext: the piece is titled “Could Johnny Tremain Be Gay? Reinterpretation as a Subversive Act” and was published in the Journal of Homosexuality (I read the abstract, and an article about it, rather than paying $40 to access the actual paper and read it; seriously, how do academics research if this stuff is so expensive? I will probably try to track a copy down through the library; which I guess, actually, is what academics do), and it gave me some pause for thought. I do remember that Johnny was more bratty and selfish in the book than he was in the movie (I remember being startled by this when I read the book the first time) and he literally had nothing but disdain for Cilla or any other girl in the book (which, at the time, was part and parcel of that weird societal norm or belief that prepubescent boys think girls are icky and don’t like them or want anything to do with them–again, very odd in a heteronormative culture) but when he becomes friends with Rab, an older boy involved with the Sons of Liberty, he almost idol-worships the older boy and allows himself to forget his innate selfishness and get involved with something bigger than himself–the revolutionary thinking that led Boston to revolt in the first place. That can be read, as Dr. Henderson states, as a queer relationship between the boys, and that Johnny could be read as queer. I seriously doubt that was what Esther Forbes was thinking when she wrote the book–the book was meant for boys and there was, as I said, that weird “boys don’t like girls” norm for a very long time (it certainly was a consistent theme in Disney productions aimed at boys; same with the Hardy Boys book and other mystery/adventure series aimed at boys from the time). This was in theory erased from the film…but I’m not entirely sure it was.

First of all, there’s absolutely no question that Hal Stalmaster, who played Johnny but never really worked much afterwards, mostly guesting on television shows, was a stunningly beautiful young man.

He also wasn’t a very good actor, but the heavy-handed direction of any Disney live-action film aimed at kids for a very long time didn’t inspire the best work from the cast (Mary Poppins, of course, being an exception).

The young actor who played Rab was also ridiculously good looking–and turned out to be a younger Richard Beymer (billed as Dick) who would go on to play Tony in West Side Story and later, Twin Peaks–and they certainly had more chemistry together than Johnny had with Cilla, who was turned into a love interest of sorts, with him giving her a quick peck on the cheek (their only intimacy) as he runs through the streets of Boston with the news that the British would be leaving Boston “by sea”.

The movie was very typical Americana–so yes, propaganda–which sterilized and cleaned up the period in Boston before the outbreak of the war, with rather stiff pronouncements about ideals and principles and freedom and the rights of man and liberties and tyranny–all the patriotic buzzwords cast about by people who want to silence those who don’t agree with them–without any real explanation of what that means.

And yet, as oversimplified and “cleaned up” as this is made to be in the movie, it’s still effective–it’s very stirring to think about the nerve of the American rebels, doing something practically unheard of in history–not just defying their king (there was a long history of rebellions against the worst abuses of kingship throughout the centuries; just the century before the British actually beheaded their king and did without one for eleven or so years; 150 years before Louis XVI went to the guillotine in Paris) but defying the might of the most powerful and richest empire the world had ever seen. It’s hard not to think about–although everyone in this movie is a revolutionary, all Bostonians except for the villains, and the villainous American loyalists are actually worse than the British military themselves–what that period must have been like to live through; the divided loyalties, the betrayal of neighbor by neighbor, spies and treachery and murders. (I’d love to write a historical mystery set in Boston during this period, actually.)

It’s not a bad movie, but it’s also not a great one; and it certainly does its part in upholding the mythology created about the American revolution.

And yes, this could easily be yet another essay.