Work at home Friday, and all is well, at least as well as can be expected on this fine morning. I do have some meetings to attend via ZOOM this morning, and then I am going to get all my data entry and quality assurance finished before running an errand or two and doing chores–I am thinking about saving the really big cleaning efforts for tomorrow during college football. The LSU game is in the morning (v. Arkansas; my supervisor went there and is going to her first game in Tiger Stadium…as a fan for the visitors; I don’t know that I would do that, honestly–go to an away LSU game. Fans can really be assholes), which is an example of how far both programs have fallen, and I don’t even know who’s playing during the rest of day nor do I care; it’s going to be background noise while I write and clean and read.
It’s kind of nice not being vested in this season, actually.
My friend Angel Luis Colon posted a hilarious burn on pro-pedophile skank Megyn Kelly yesterday; More like Megyn R. Kelly…which was incredibly spot on. It’s also been a lot of fun watching MAGA and their spokes-trash, like Kelly and bottom feeder Jesse Waters and CNN’s sad excuse for a man Scott Jennings desperately spinning, after ten years of calling Democrats pedophiles and screaming for the Epstein files….that, you know, Ghislaine Maxwell, a trusted source and not biased at all, denied their foul god-emperor was involved despite all evidence to the contrary, or “fifteen isn’t really pedophilia it’s barely legal”1, or any of the other horrible talking points that were sent out to the loyal state media…if you weren’t convinced before that GOP stands for “guardians of pedophiles” or they are all lying liars who only care about power and oppression, I don’t know how you can deny any of it today, or play “what about.” My morality isn’t partisan, for the record, and if Obama and Clinton or any other Democrat is in the files, lock them up.
The fact these trash have spent the last decade fear-mongering queer and trans people and calling us pedophiles and groomers only to walk it all the way back and now defend grooming and pedophilia is really something to see.
I will never stop hating MAGA, ever. They’re unspeakably vile, monstrous excuses for human beings, and wrapping their monstrosity in religion is even more vile. Talk about taking their Lord’s name in vain…
I ran my errands after work and came home a bit tired, but not too terribly bad. I did the dishes, another load of laundry, and while I didn’t pick up or clean a whole lot around here last night, I did get some things done, so I am a little bit ahead of the game this morning. I have my meetings, as I mentioned, and then have some data entry to do. Later on, as I said, I’ll probably run some errands and make a bit of groceries so I can be in for the weekend. The weather has warmed up–I went outside to put the wagon away and it’s really nice out–which is a nice change (the cold is coming back; we’re getting a freeze, apparently, on Thanksgiving day itself); I do need to wash and clean out the car, but might wait until the weekend before I drive to Kentucky to do that.
I also want to do some writing and reading over the weekend, which is made easier by the LSU game being so early in the day. It’ll be over before three, and then I can get other things done around here as well. Last night when I got home I mostly got caught up on the news (not paying attention to it while I’m at work every day has been a blessing, really; I can focus on doing my job without my blood pressure–already medicated–rising, and that has made a difference. I am almost completely caught up on all day job duties; after today I think I will be current on everything, which is a really nice feeling. Now if I can apply the same logic to my writing….
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. You have a lovely day in whatever way you so desire, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow before the LSU game.
This stele from the Karnak temple at Luxor looks other-wordly in this light…
Barely legal means legal, you stupid fucks, not legal in three more years.↩︎
It has turned cold (for New Orleans) here; the high yesterday was in the mid-sixties, and I felt cold all day. I had to run uptown to the Sports Medicine institute to get my letter for jury duty and then had to drive to City Park for a work thing. And, thanks to the strange vagaries of New Orleans geography, it turns out Tulane University’s campus is closer to City Park than it is to my house. I still can’t wrap my mind around that logic, but as it starts to spiral off I just think yes, but that weird geography is part of what makes the city unique and then I can stop thinking about it for a while. From there we went to the Dillard University campus for a training (they served us lunch) and from there to Ralph’s on the Park for a final presentation and dinner. I discover that I can eat pasta and meatballs and softer bread; I was able to have the soup and blackened redfish for dinner, which also worked. I would have rather had the steak filet, but I felt pretty certain that wouldn’t work for me. I then came home, and we started watching The Fall of the House of Usher, which spans a lot of Poe’s work, and repaired to bed relatively early. I slept well, but feel a bit under-rested this morning. I certainly don’t feel as awake and alert as I did yesterday. I think we have a busy day at the office, too. This weekend is also going to be a bit off for me; I have a wedding to attend Saturday afternoon, and I believe I have dinner plans with a friend from out of town for Sunday. I have to swing uptown after work tonight to get the mail; tomorrow after work I’ll make groceries, I think.
I’ve selected Angel Luis Colón’s Infested as my next read; it’s a middle grade or y/a, methinks, from the MTV Fear imprint of MTV Entertainment Books. I enjoy Angel’s work; I think we met in either Toronto or St. Petersburg? I could be wrong. But I know I read some of this short stories from his collection Meat City on Fire, and I always have meant to go back and read more. I am hoping to get through it this week, spending the weekend rereading The Dead Zone, and then moving on to Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield. I’d like to get to Elizabeth Hand’s Curious Toys after that, if there’s still time; I may let it spill over into November. I really enjoyed her A Haunting on the Hill and want to read more of her work, and apparently her backlist is pretty deep, which is cool. I also want to get to Lou Berney’s new one Dark Ride, and then I am definitely going to start working my way through the rest of the TBR pile, which is staggeringly enormous and deep.
I suspect I’ll be doing a lot of reading after my surgery next month, too. At least I hope so, at any rate.
As I was saying the other day, having my routines messed with always throws me off track. This weekend I got a lot of rest, did some reading, and cleaned and organized because of the unknown delivery time of the new refrigerator, but I was also clearing my mind and looking ahead to see what needs to be done, and when. I made a to-do list for the week on Sunday but yesterday not being a normal Monday messed me up, and I keep thinking today is Monday, which it most definitely is not. I want to get back to work on writing things; I know I have a short story to finish by the end of the month for a deadline and I know there are some other places open for submissions that I would like to get something sent in for. Whether that will work or not remains to be seen. LSU plays Army this weekend, and it’s a night game, so I should be able to get home from the wedding in time to catch at least part of the game, and then its two weeks until the next game–at Alabama; as usual, the game that can make or break the season. I have no idea how that will go, but Nick Saban’s Alabama has rarely lost to the same team two years in a row; the exceptions being LSU (2010 and 2011) and Mississippi (2014 and 2015). Obviously, I’d love for the Tigers to win out, take the West again and go to Atlanta to face Georgia–but I’m not sure how distant from reality that hope might be. I guess we will find out that weekend.
We also have a very busy week here ahead of me in the clinic, which can be exhausting.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and enjoy the colder weather!
My, what a gorgeous day it was yesterday–the kind that reminds me why I love it here so much and helps me forget the horror that is July-August (although I believe the summer horror began in late May this year). I made groceries in the morning and also retrieved everything from the carriage house to put in the new refrigerator; it’s lovely. I hadn’t realized what a pain in the ass it was making do with the shitty old one. I didn’t get all that filing worked on, but I did make some material progress that will help get me started working on it all again this week. I have more appointments this week–primary care doctor on Wednesday afternoon, and I have to actually go into the office on Friday for a benefits meeting. Our insurance is changing to a new carrier in the new year, which is why it was so important for me to get all this medical shit out of the way while I still have insurance that will take care of everything, or at least I understand how it operates. I absolutely hate the idea that I will have to relearn all my insurance stuff again in the new year.
It makes me tired.
I slept well today, and don’t have to go into the office at all. We’re having a “professional development day”, which starts at City Park at ten this morning and goes all day, from place to place–we go to Dillard University and later to Ralph’s on the Park–before coming home at six pm. Tomorrow goes back to normal. I didn’t want to get up this morning–Tug also wanted me to stay in bed; he followed me downstairs and is sleeping in my lap while I am typing this (Paul has started calling him Sparky, which kinds of fits…) but is also very sweet. He spent most of yesterday either chasing the laser light, playing with an old catnip toy of Scooter’s (catnip didn’t affect Scooter; Tug/Sparky is an entirely different story), or sleeping in my lap. I spent most of the day in my chair finishing Elizabeth Hand’s marvelous A Haunting on the Hill, which I will talk about in more detail in another entry. I also started reading Rival Queens as my new non-fiction read; it’s about Catherine de Medici and her daughter Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre (aka Queen Margot) and of course, this is one of my favorite periods of history and two of my favorite, most interesting sixteenth century queens; Catherine de Medici is fascinating. A version of Game of Thrones played out in France between 1559 and 1594, and I’m always kind of amazed that it’s not written about more–but Americans are always more interested in English history, if they have any interest in history at all.
It’s a pity, because I’ve always found French history more interesting.
While I was reading A Haunting on the Hill yesterday an old idea of mine–a sort of sideways sequel to Bury Me in Shadows started developing in my mind; another Corinth County novel, only this time with Beau, Jake’s boyfriend from the University of Alabama and an archaeology/Alabama history major, as the main character. I’ve had this idea for a short story for a very long time–set in Corinth County–called “Children of the Stone Circle”, which I think I may have even written an entire first draft a long time ago; just could never tell how to make it work and make it real. It came to me while reading the Elizabeth Hand–I always get inspired when I read books that are well-written that I enjoy–and I made copious notes in my journal. That felt good–it felt good to power down my brain for most of the weekend and kind of relax. I am delighted to have finished the Hand–and for reasons that I will explain when I write about the book, I decided the reread of The Haunting of Hill House–which I still want to do–wasn’t a necessary follow up to the Hand. I am going to read Angel Luis Colon’s Infested next, and perhaps some more y/a middle-grade horror. I do want to reread King’s The Dead Zone, too; it’s been quite a while.
I also watched another episode of Moonlighting last night, which I am really enjoying the rewatch of. There were some cultural references to the time that don’t work–last night’s episode had Addison make a reference to a highly popular ad campaign that was already over but still very much a part of the zeitgeist when the show started–but overall, it’s still a great show. Cybill Shepherd was just stunningly beautiful, and she made a great straight man character for Willis to bounce his antics and humor off, and the chemistry between the two of them was simply off the charts. I had also forgotten how utterly charming the character of Miss DiPesto (“My name’s Agnes, but my friends call me Miss DiPesto”) as played by Allyce Beasley was; I was already a fan of hers when the show started because of her turn in one of the best episodes of Cheers, where she played Coach’s daughter.
“But Gregalicious, I thought you were rewatching Friday the 13th the Series this month in honor of Halloween?” I was, but the episodes are on Youtube, the quality of some are terrible (they were clearly uploaded and digitized from old VCR recordings, and for those of us who remember using VCR’s, we also still remember how bad some of those recordings were–especially when you were re-using cassettes) and it became annoying, and then Moonlighting dropped. So yes, I am not devoting myself to all things horror this month the way I had intended to, and no, I’ve not been taking the walks every night like I wanted to when the weather turned. Partly because I am tired when I get home every night from work, and partly because Tug/Sparky needs attention when I walk through the door and I am more than willing to give the adorable little kitty whatever he wants. He fell asleep in my lap yesterday once while still sitting up–his head was still up, not resting on anything, and he was sound asleep, which I’ve never seen anyone or anything do before.
And when he gets comfortable and is deep in dreamland, he sprawls in the most adorable ways. He also was happy in his sleep at one point, too–he started making biscuits on the arm of my easy chair while purring, but was sound asleep.
Yes, he’s adorable and yes, he is now master of the apartment.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will see you later.
Wednesday morning pay-the-bills day blog, and how are y’all this morning?
Yesterday was ever so much better than Monday (low bar) but I slept really well Monday night and felt very rested and centered yesterday as I went to work. Hilariously, as I walked out to the car in my Prevention T-shirt, I felt a bit chilly. When I got into the car it felt downright cold, and once I started the car the a/c started blowing and YIKES! So I quickly switched it over to heat…and as the lovely warm air began blowing through the vents, I saw the thermostat on my dashboard reading 70–it was seventy degrees and I felt cold. But…for well over a month–an endless summer–of temperatures that felt like 110-120; 70 degrees is a forty to fifty degree drop. That is actually a significant drop in temperature, and one that would certainly be felt as cold anywhere.
I have to go uptown to get a sonogram this morning (and no, I am not pregnant). This has to do with the genetic heart defect Mom had; they want to see if I have the same problem (technical term: Arterial tortuosity syndrome) so if things start going haywire with my blood pressure and so forth, they’ll know where to start (it took weeks for them to figure out what was wrong with Mom after her initial stroke). I think part of the reasons I feel so off this week, while exacerbated by the lack of sleep and driving this weekend, has been subconsciously felt anxiety about all these medical tests and things I am having done; plus Dad’s birthday was yesterday and Mom’s is tomorrow; these are their first birthdays with her gone, so it’s going to kick a little harder, which is only natural, I think. I was also productive in that I ordered our new refrigerator this morning to be deliverer on Saturday (yay!) and I registered for jury duty. Of course this is the perfect time to be called for jury duty–when I have a million doctors’ appointments and a surgery scheduled–and of course, you have to show up in person to try to get out of it, which means getting a doctor’s note and showing up at the courthouse on Friday. I can do that, of course–but it’s just more pain in the ass shit to do on a day when I already have a doctor’s appointment. I suppose I could just go there after the appointment. I don’t know. It’s just more irritation on a week where I’d rather not have more irritations. (The MRI is scheduled for Friday morning, that’s what it is.)
Heavy heaving sigh.
I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home yesterday from work, but I didn’t seem to get very much done. I did spend some time reading more of the Sager novel; I’d like to get that finished this weekend at the latest so I can move on to the Elizabeth Hand, the reread of Shirley Jackson, and Infested by Angel Luis Colon. I should, I think, be able to get them all read by the end of the month; I may even have the time to revisit The Dead Zone by Stephen King, which I’ve been meaning to do since the 2016 election. I’m still trying to get a grip and handle on everything, but it’s hard to do with all of these tests and appointments and everything to stress about, even if I try to let it all go it’s still there working away at my subconscious. I also don’t understand why I am so reluctant to face the fact that I am still grieving my mom, seven months later, and her birthday is tomorrow; something else I need to unpack, I suppose. But progress is being made on everything, and of course I am delighted to be getting a functional refrigerator at long last.
Which means I get to spend Friday partly getting the apartment ready for a refrigerator delivery and installation and removal of the old one; which means moving all the food over to the carriage house Friday evening.
I was also thinking back to precisely when I lost the reins of my life and when I started being discombobulated and losing control of my own narrative. I think the stress truly began taking off after buying the car in 2016; the car payments wreaked havoc on my finances and put me even further into debt, which was something I was very concerned about for several years, obviously (still am, but am paying it all down and feel a lot better on that score). Then came the Great Data Disaster of 2018, when I lost all the back-ups and my desk top computer stopped functioning properly; I wasn’t able to afford a new one (thanks to the car payment wreaking havoc on my finances) which also didn’t help–a computer that was super slow, crashed and/or froze up all the time, and was barely functional for what I needed didn’t help–and of course by the time I paid off the car and was able to buy a new computer we were deep into a pandemic and I was doing all that volunteer work while barely holding onto my own sanity by my fingernails. That was also the period of time (2016 on) when the filing got out of control as did my computer files; so now trying to climb out of the wreckage is a Sisyphean task, apparently; I never feel like I am caught up on anything because there’s so much fucking mess to straighten up and organize, and I can never just take a few days to even try to dig out from under the mess because there’s always something else going on that needs attention right now.
These are the things I was pondering as I sat in my easy chair last night watching videos on Youtube–documentaries about the Hapsburgs again–and waiting for Paul to come home. I find that I’ve become a lot more introspective about my past lately (since turning sixty, really) as well as working on unpacking things and understanding why I am the way I am a lot better. I’ve spent most of my life trying to work on myself and become a better person–reading, thinking, watching, etc.–and admittedly, not always succeeding; but a lot of that is because I’ve not looked back and unpacked things I’ve experienced or went through. I’ll give you a case in point: one night during Boucheron I was sitting with my friend Teresa at the pool bar during happy hour enjoying their amazing nachos when Lou Berney joined us. As we talked, he asked us both if we’ve ever come close to death before–close calls. I’d never been asked that before and I really had to think. And while Teresa was answering about a car accident situation where she was almost killed, I remembered an experience I had when I was twenty. I related the story and they both looked at me, eyes open wide, and were like “Jesus fucking Christ, Greg!” I hadn’t really thought about that incident in a really long time; I had started writing a blog entry sometime in the last ten years (it’s still in drafts) where I talked about that experience–it is one of the reasons I am so anti-gun–but other than that…no. But having that brought up into the forefront of my mind, I realized something.
I had never expected to live this long, and I’ve always had the feeling that I would die young. I don’t know if this is a common thing for people or not, but I have just always had that thought in the back of my mind for most of my life–when I’d think about the future, I would always stop because why think about it when you’re going to die young? I gradually began to believe that was because I lived through the 1980’s; the HIV/AIDS thing. But after remembering and talking about that incident back in 1982, I realized that after going through that was when I began thinking I wouldn’t live very long; the arrival of the “gay plague” right around the same time didn’t help much in that regard either. I’m not being coy in calling it the incident–tl;dr: the husband of one of the managers at the Burger King I worked at went over the edge and came into the place and shot her multiple times (today he would have had an automatic weapon and I would have died that day, or been wounded–because that’s not what this post is about and I do want to finish my draft post where I go into more detail.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, if not later.
Saturday in the Lost Apartment, and I am feeling relaxed and good. I had a nice day yesterday, the apartment got more work done on it, and I managed to get everything done that needed doing yesterday. I didn’t really write much last night, but I did read some marvelously macabre short stories, which was lovely, and then watched a few episodes of a CNN documentary series, The History of Sitcoms, which is interesting enough, and feeds into that nostalgia thing we are so prone to as a society. I’ve witnessed any number of nostalgia booms throughout the course of my many years on this speck of dust under the fingernails of God we call earth, and while I am not entirely immune to the appeal of nostalgia, I also recognize that we inevitably remember those past times fondly and perhaps not as accurately as we may think. The 1950’s nostalgia boom of the 1970s, for example, spawned American Graffiti and Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley and eventually Grease; reignited interest in the music of the time (anyone remember Sha Na Na?); as well as sock hops and poodle skirts and “Ch**ese fire drills”* (which is probably racist, isn’t it?) and all that stuff; like Archie comics were documentaries rather than fictions. But the 1950s weren’t this idyllic time of peace and quiet and prosperity people seem to think it was, brainwashed by decades of sitcom reruns of shows that presented the United States back to itself as a fantasy, a fiction, and created an unrealistic vision and interpretation of what perfection and success were in a land of opportunity–an unrealistic vision that has somehow come to be taken as a reality when it was never anything more than a fantasy. That’s the danger of nostalgia.
It’s not that I oppose nostalgia, or don’t understand it–we always tend to idealize our childhoods, and the time period when we were children. It isn’t that it was actually an easier, simpler time, it’s just that when you’re a child you aren’t worried about or concerned with the things adults are contending with–so you don’t remember those parts. I do remember being a child, with rioting going on and protests and police violence; I remember the murders of RFK, Dr. King, and Malcolm X. I remember the struggle over the Vietnam War. I remember Watergate, and all the scandals of the Reagan administration modern Republicans have completely forgotten about (or if they do remember them, they remember them as “evil liberals conspiring to bring down St. Ronald–who they would calla RINO today. I can’t imagine Reagan being fond of DeSantis, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio; but who knows? They remember the 1980s as their ‘golden age,’ so who knows what Reagan would be like today–although I can’t imagine him sucking up to Putin). For me, the 1980’s was about HIV/AIDS and the struggle to come to terms with myself and who I am. The 1980’s also showed me that homophobes literally wanted all queer people to die…and I do not believe the modern day iteration of them is any different than they were thirty or forty years ago. Their messaging is the same, after all–we must save our children from groomers and pedophiles while actually ignoring who the actual grooming pedophiles are–youth ministers, priests, and pastors of their religious faith.
Nostalgia can be incredibly dangerous. Here’s the question I’d like to ask everyone who longs to go back to that “simpler” time of the 1950’s/1960’s: where were all the black people in Mayberry, NORTH CAROLINA? Are we supposed to believe that a small town in the South was entirely white?
Bitch, please.
As I said earlier, I did spend some time last evening reading short stories from my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. “A Death in the Family” by Miriam Allen deFord was quite macabre and interesting, about a lonely mortician who grew up as a foster child with no family who creates his own, only to be tripped up in his macabre game when a dead kidnapping victim is dumped on the front steps of his mortuary. Very tightly written and composed, I also like the clever way deFord set the story up to deceive the reader until there’s a big reveal. This story was in Stories That Scared Even Me, and I enjoyed it. I also read some more stories in My Favorites in Suspense: “My Unfair Lady” by Guy Cullingford; “New Murders for Old” by Carter Dickson; and “Terrified” by C. B. Gilford. Carter Dickson was a pseudonym for John Dickson Carr, a very prolific and popular crime writer of the mid-twentieth century; I’d seen books by either name on the racks when I was a kid but I’d never read any of his work. I really liked “New Murders for Old,” a clever story about murder for gain with a complicated twist that I greatly enjoyed–but wouldn’t work in the modern day because it was dependent on someone traveling being out of touch with the rest of his world back home. “Terrified” is a chilling tale of the aftermath of a car accident, where the survivors in one car can’t decide whether or not to kill the dying victim who can counter their testimony about who was at fault, and “My Unfair Lady” is a chilling tale of a sociopathic child who witnesses a murder, and whether she will clear the name of the innocent man who found the body and is the leading suspect, a bit reminiscent of The Bad Seed, which of course is a suspense classic.
I didn’t do as much cleaning and organizing as I had hoped to do, but I did launder all the bed linens and finished the dishes. The kitchen still needs some work done on it, which I think I’ll most likely do this morning once I get this finished and posted. I plan on writing and reading and cleaning for most of the day, but I do have to run an errand later this morning–my copy of Angel Luis Colon’s new juvenile horror novel, Infested, was delivered yesterday, and I also need to determine whether or not I need to stop and make groceries as well. I am low on a couple of things, but I don’t think I actually need a whole lot of anything. I have been enjoying yellow-meat watermelons lately; a relic of my childhood summers in rural Alabama that I’ve never really seen out of that context or anywhere else. Rouse’s sells them now–personal sized and seedless–but it’s been my experience that the personal-sized seedless watermelons don’t taste as good as regular watermelons and have very little flavor of any kind. The last time we went to Costco (we need to go again once Paul gets home) we’d bought two of the personal-sized seedless red ones; they come in a net bag in pairs. Those watermelons were two of the best I’d had in I don’t know how long, so this week I took the plunge and bought one of the yellow ones this week. Constant Reader, it was delicious, if not the best watermelon I’ve had in years. I finished it off last night, but had bought another the other day. So, I think one of my chores for this morning is to clean out the kitchen cupboards, and throwing shit away so I can determine what exactly I need and if I do, in fact, need to stop at the grocery store when I go get the mail.
I also binged the second season of Heartstopper, which was absolutely delightful and charming, as I expected, even as it entered the darker territory the books dealt with. It’s still incredibly sweet, and it handles the darker turns much better than I could have hoped; the books certainly did, even as the darker material made you love and root for the characters more, it’s still a bit heartbreaking because I love those kids so much (Nick, Charlie, Tara, Darcy, Elle, Tao, and Isaac) that I want to wrap them up and protect them from the world. As I watch, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to see a show like Heartstopper when I was a teenager…at what an incredible difference something like this could have made in my life, which is why shows like this are so fucking important. I just hate that they only give us eight short episodes per season–and yes, Olivia Colman is back as Nick’s mom. (One change from the books to the show I don’t like–while I understand it–was the elimination of Charlie and Tori’s younger brother. Sure, he’s not necessary, as the show proves, but I think the way he reacts to Charlie and Nick, and how much he loves them, would be kind of lovely, if not needed.)
I also thought about the book some, as well as reading all those short stories have helped give me some ideas about my own short stories in progress, and how to fix and finish some of them. I would love to get two chapters of the book written this weekend and to finish two short stories, but I don’t know. I’ll probably wind up feeling lazy and spending more time reading than I should, and of course, I have the new iteration of Real Housewives of New York to finish, as well as the third season of Superman and Lois, and My Adventures with Superman, but I am going to try to put off watching television until weeknights, when I am tired from being at work.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need another cup of coffee, and I should put the clean dishes away. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point!
**It is racist: I checked on wikipedia: “Public use of the phrase has been considered to be offensive and racist. In 2017 a candidate for office in Nova Scotia, Matt Whitman, apologized for using the term in a video and subsequently removed the video.[10] In 2020, Washington state Senator Patty Kuderer made an apology for using the term in a hearing; Linda Yang of Washington Asians for Equality stated that the term was racist and filed a complaint with the state.[11] Kuderer apologized before any formal complaint was filed.” There’s an entire history of how the term began and how it was used, but I have found if a term or a phrase that’s a part of the popular culture references a group of people or an ethnicity or a race, it’s usually not a good thing; in this case, it means something useless–and let’s face it, everyone getting out of the car and running around it while stopped at a red light is pretty stupid and useless.
Friday, and this slightly odd, off-kilter week is finally coming to an end.
I slept deeply and well last night, but am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. Because of the flea situation, I spent most of yesterday laundering things and cleaning and vacuuming, so the weekend’s chores are already finished before the weekend rolls around, which is absolutely lovely; and also means that, if I am feeling ambitious, I can do more advanced cleaning; i.e. the cleaning I never get to because I only have time for a surface clean–so baseboards, cabinets, ceiling fans, etc–can be gotten to this weekend.
I am still revising “A Whisper from the Graveyard,” which I hope to read aloud this weekend and thus be finally finished with the story. I am pleased with how the revision is going; how the story and the character are taking shape on my computer screen; we shall see how it turns out. I also want to finish a strong revision/read-aloud of “This Thing of Darkness,” and I also want to work on “Please Die Soon” and maybe even get back to “Never Kiss a Stranger” this weekend. “Never Kiss a Stranger” is longer; it’s going to end up as a Kindle single, which is the entire point of writing it, and it’s terribly freeing to not have that word limit that limit short stories. I am also working my way through the manuscript of Royal Street Reveillon, and may even get to work on inputting edits and revisions and changes this weekend.
We shall see.
Next up in Florida Happens is a lovely story called “Muscle Memory,” by Angel Luis Colon.
Angel Luis Colón is a Derringer and Anthony Award shortlisted author. His published works include the titles: Pull & Pray, No Happy Endings, the BLACKY JAGUAR series of novellas, the short story anthology; Meat City on Fire (And Other Assorted Debacles), and the upcoming Hell Chose Me(2019).
His short fiction has appeared in multiple web and print publications including Thuglit, Literary Orphans, and Great Jones Street. He also hosts the podcast, the bastard title.
Keep up with him on Twitter via @GoshDarnMyLife
“You don’t like it.” Katie gives me this look I’d swear her mother used to give me whenever I lied but it’s been so many years that a passing glance could evoke the same memory.
Got a laundry list of reasons why I don’t like it here but I keep my mouth shut. I’m sitting on a bed that reeks of old piss and medicine—room’s about the size of a nice bathroom, so it makes sense. Better than a jail cell but not much better. I don’t feel this old. I don’t like Florida.
Single window behind me with faded curtains. Laminate floor. Don’t think there’s a word for the color but if depression had a color, this floor would suffice. Wood panel walls. Framed photographs of people I love without me in them. I shift on the bed. Back hurts. Knees hurt. Head hurts. All the pills I take and not a one seems to dull things enough for me to focus.
I raise a hand and find myself wondering if I always so slow or if my perception’s fucked from the new pills. “It’s fine,” I slur, “Besides, this is where I sleep. They got a bunch of tables and shit out there where I can occupy myself.”
Katie frowns. “I tried to find a spot at the nicer place a few miles up the highway, you know, by the girls’ school. They—”
“Muscle Memory” is, as I said, a lovely story that deals with several issues, but never in a preachy way. The main character is Sean Clarke, a former criminal who did some time for manslaughter, whose wife is dead and is now reaching the end of his life. His daughter Katie has found a senior facility for him to live in, where he befriends an old gay man named Manny and he spends times missing his daughter and granddaughters and wishing life had turned out better for him–but there’s a weary acceptance there. Something is going on with Manny, and Sean is the only one who can do anything about it–or thinks he is. Poignant and sad without crossing into sappy sentimentalism, Colon captures Sean’s voice perfectly. I’d actually like to read more about him, to be honest.
Sunday! I have a panel and a signing at Comic Con today; the Saints have a play-off game, and the Golden Globes are tonight…and sometime today the Olympic ice dancing finals are also airing. Madness! Usually my Sundays are a lot more mellow than this. I did manage to get a lot done yesterday; cleaning and organizing and laundry and filing and even some brainstorming. I am definitely going to be hitting the ground running this week; it’s so lovely to finally feel 100% me again, stupid flu or whatever it was I had.
So, this morning I need to do some more cleaning, am going to do some more brainstorming and perhaps an edit on a story, work on the new Scotty outline, and do some other editing before it’s time to get ready to head down to the Convention Center. Damn it, I also have to copy edit that damn file of Bourbon Street Blues, too, don’t I? Sigh. My work is never done.
And the Scotty Bible. Heavy heaving sigh.
I also read another short story yesterday, Angel Luis Colon’s “My Heart Died on Blackrock Avenue.”
I’ll never forget my first fight.
And I mean a real fight, not the random tussles with my brothers or cousins. I’m talking a knuckle-busting, lip-splitting, eye-swelling fight. The kind of fight where you go savage and the world’s pure fire, where there’s no concern about whether your punches connect or if they’re going to do permanent damage. A real street fight–drawn blood, scrapes and cuts you find later, and that taste at the back of your throat, as if you’d been chowing on pennies all day long. The kind of fight a person with more brains than heart knows to avoid.
Obviously, my first fight was over a girl–surprise, surprise.
I met Angel in Toronto at this year’s Bouchercon; as is usual with the business, we have a lot of mutual friends. And then he wrote this brilliant piece for Medium, and I thought to myself, I need to read this guy, so I ordered his collection Meat City on Fire and Other Assorted Debacles.
Wow.
I said when I posted about Sue Grafton that she was the writer who brought me back to the crime genre; the stuff that was getting published in the 1970’s and early 1980’s that I was reading held no interest for me; I hadn’t heard the term toxic masculinity yet, but that was primarily what turned me off to crime fiction at the time. To this day, I still have trouble reading some male authors for that very reason; I’m just not interested in reading any more books about the tough, tragic, closed-off man who drinks himself into oblivion because the love of his life is dead, or he’s obsessed with some dead, beautiful woman that makes him reflect on life and the harsh, cold, cruel world in which we live. No thank you. This trope also pops up in what’s called ‘literary fiction’ as well; it’s hard for me to identify with, or care about, these kinds of characters; the plight of the straight white man simply doesn’t interest me that much. Does that mean I’m prejudiced? Maybe.
It’s something I can live with.
So, as I started reading Angel’s first story in this collection, I winced a little bit inwardly. Great, I thought, here we go again with the tough-guy stuff. But the story–which isn’t a crime story at all, I might add–isn’t that; it’s actually fantastic, to be honest. There are so many truths, and so much honesty, in this story that it’s almost painful to read, to digest, to think about. I didn’t grow up in Brooklyn, as the main character in this story did, but I grew up in the working class neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, where casual racism not only existed but simmered; where prejudice wasn’t just about the color of one’s skin but also about religion and your ethnicity; if you were a Pole or a Slav, etc. Violence was always just there under the surface, and this story took me back to that neighborhood, the innocence of childhood and learning about the cold, cruel world out there. It’s a truly terrific story, and I encourage everyone to read Angel’s collection, or one of his novels.
I’m really looking forward to reading more of his work myself.
Queer and Loathing in America 