Tag: Boba Fett

Broken Down in Tiny Pieces

I will spare you, Constant Reader, the trials and tribulations of my medical travails; I have to see another specialist, and we’ll leave it at that for now.

I also had to research whether either of these specialists he referred me to actually take my insurance (they do) and then get to hope they can see me at some point before this gets even worse and more difficult to take care of. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and trying to put this bullshit out of my head, because all it did was make me angry all over again and, unless I am putting that anger to productive use, it’s just wasted energy. But I’m glad I’m making progress on this at any rate, and I suspect that a doctor will be the murder victim in a book I will write at some point in the next few years. I also made an appointment on Sunday to get the hearing aids process moving along–it would be so great if I could get them before the trip, wouldn’t it?–and so at least soon I’ll be able to hear again, and in about a month I’ll be able to chew again. Yay!

Always look at the positive. Life doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle; it’s how you handle it that matters.

I took a shower to wash the blech of the day off me–it’s amazing to me how that always seems to work and put me into a better mood. The symbolism of washing the negativity off of me is actually effective and works to somehow reset my brain. I also had a great mail day–picking up the mail on the way home and made groceries, too–in which I got the ARC of the new Margot Douaihy Sister Holiday crime novel (her debut, Scorched Grace, is fantastic) and Duane Swierczynski’s short story collection Lush and Other Tales of Boozy Mayhem, which I am looking forward to digging into. Paul got home rather late last night, but we did have time to watch an episode of Turn of the Tide–but I think I actually have lost the thread of the plot. But it’s entertaining enough, still. I do want to start watching Ahsoka on Disney–I’ll try anything Star Wars; so far Boba Fett is the only Star Wars series we didn’t finish.

I’m still behind on talking about the Alfred Hitchcock Presents stories I’ve read lately; but yesterday at the specialist’s office I started reading Brett Halliday’s story “Pieces of Silver” from Stories to Be Read Late at Night, and it was an interesting tale, if dated, and more than a little bit guilty of racism. I’d not read Halliday before, but I’ve heard of him; I remember seeing his Mike Shayne novels on the wire racks at Zayre’s when I was a kid, and i have one of his books Hard Case Crime reprinted, but haven’t read yet. It’s a very typical tale of its time, though–complete with the colonialist mentality toward the indigenous people of Latin America. The story is set in Mexico, and is about an ugly American-type who has come to the region looking for oil. I will say the ugly American is the villain of the story and every step of the way Halliday is very quick to point out the classism, racism, and toxic masculinity of Thurston, the American–the way he treats the locals he hires to take him up river into the jungle; the way he ogles and wants the teenaged daughter of an American expatriate who married a local girl–but while there is absolutely no question that Thurston wound up getting exactly what he deserved…it’s very hard to be sympathetic to the author’s view of Mexico as a still wild, exotic and extremely primitive place; he certainly doesn’t view the Mexican working class with the same respect as Katherine Anne Porter. (On the other hand, I’ve always been bored by Porter’s Mexico stories–because even in them there’s still an element of the privileged white woman viewing the plight of the poor Mexican working class from her lofty perch at a safe distance.)

Reading this story only served to further emphasize to me how tricky this short story from the past that I am currently trying to revise and finish will be. Originally set in the Yucatan (I wrote it after I visited the Mayan ruins there), it was one of those Alfred Hitchcock Presents/ Tales from the Crypt kind of stories, but in reviewing the story as I wrote it, I fell into the trap Halliday did with his story–making the native people exotic and othered; mysterious and primitive. I am sure there are still poor people living in remote places in Mexico, but this isn’t the way to write about them. I’d been thinking of moving the setting of my story from Latin America (in this revision, I created a fictional country) to the Aegean–like there aren’t plenty of Greek myths to build the story around, make it seem real, and of course I can create a mysterious remote Greek island no one ever visits and no one would blink twice. I just haven’t been there myself, but I need to snap out of the mentality that I can only write about places I’ve been. It does help, of course, but…when you’re creating a fictional place, you’ve never been there. No one has.

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

Safe and Sound

Coffee is quite marvelous. Hello, dark roast my old friend…I’ve missed you so these last few days.

Saturday, and all is well again in the Lost Apartment. The power came back on yesterday afternoon, almost exactly forty-eight hours after it went out; and I immediately did the dishes and started a load of laundry. The Lost Apartment was already a mess before the storm came, and without light…well, it’s not only hard to clean but it’s fucking hard to find anything. I also was sleeping a lot–what else are you going to do when there’s no light, no power, no television, no Internet–and ironically, all the extra sleep simply made me more tired.

Then again, it could have been THE LACK OF COFFEE.

So today begins the actual process of digging out. The sidewalk along the house is covered in branches and various other storm debris, which will need to be cleaned up, bagged, and put on the curb. I need to go make groceries today, stop by the bank, get the mail, all sorts of things that have to be done. I need to start going through my emails, remembering where I was with everything and pick that back up again. One of the sad results of the storm is the neighbors spent a lot of yesterday chopping down some of the crepe myrtles in their back yard–those crepe myrtles blocked the sun from my windows, so now with them gone the sun shines directly into them–which is going to be a problem when the summer rolls around again. This means I will probably, finally, have to hang curtains over my workspace windows–else the hot summer sun will turn my kitchen–which already gets too hot–into a green house, and make it completely unbearable in here. I do have the little Arctic Air conditioners, and may have to be a few more to handle this new development. I may even have to figure out a new set-up for my workspace, because even as I type this the sun is in my eyes and quite unpleasant. Damned crepe myrtles, anyway.

LSU plays Auburn today; the sportscasters call it the Tiger Bowl, as both team names are Tigers. It’s a rivalry of sorts–neither school likes each other very much, but it’s not as bitter as the rivalry with Florida, or as long as the one with Mississippi. There’s no trophy, like there is for the Arkansas game, and there’s not as much bad blood as there is with Texas A&M. But LSU-Auburn–which used to cause a lot of conflict with me (not any more)–is inevitably always a very good, exciting game; there are few blow-outs, and it often has come down to the last minute, if not the final seconds. LSU has won three in a row–the out-of-nowhere come from behind upset win in 2017; the walk-off field goal in 2018; and in 2019 Auburn held LSU’s championship team to it’s lowest point total of the season (23; it was the only game LSU didn’t score over thirty points, and one of the very few games in which they didn’t score over forty). The game this year is kind of a make-or-break game for the season for both teams, so I am not sure that LSU will make it four in a row. LSU has only lost to Auburn three times in the past decade (2010, 2014, 2016)–and had they snapped the ball one second faster in 2016 they would have won that game. The game is at Auburn this year; Auburn hasn’t won in Baton Rouge since 1999–an impressive streak, actually. I need to get a lot done this morning so I can enjoy the game in peace, without worry or fear–and I also need to check the game time for the Saints’ game tomorrow.

We watched the season premiere of The Mandalorian last night, and as with every episode, I was incredibly impressed. The episode itself was kind of a throwback to the first Star Wars movie; it brings Mando and the Child back to Tatooine, to look for another mandalorian to help him find the Child’s people so he can deliver him back to his own kind safely, and involved the Tusken Raiders (sand people) from that first movie. They wind up working with guest star Timothy Olyphant (who really should be a much bigger star than he is), his town, and the Tusken Raiders to track down and kill a krayt dragon–which essentially was a sandworm from Dune, and a bit of a change for Star Wars and Tatooine; odd that these creatures never showed up or were mentioned before–but all in all it was a terrific episode and lots of fun, and as always, visually stunning. The Child–the break out star of the show–didn’t really have very much to do in the episode, but really, all he needs to do is be there. There’s also a teaser at the very end that Boba Fett–the Boba Fett–is still alive and on Tatooine; clues are dropped throughout the episode that allude to him, and wouldn’t that be an AMAZING development for the show? Yes, yes, it would. Needless to say, we love this show and are very excited for Friday nights for a new episode.

The weather has also turned; a cold front has rolled in behind the storm and it’s been a lovely change. It feels like fall now, just in time for Halloween. It doesn’t really seem like Halloween, quite frankly, despite the dressing up of houses and the candy on sale everywhere; I can’t imagine children are going to be trick-or-treating tonight, and of course Gay Halloween didn’t happen this year, or any of the big usual New Orleans Halloween things–masquerade balls, haunted houses, etc.–so like with so many other things this year that generally mark the passing of time, Halloween will come and go as just another date on the calendar.

I’m trying to decide what to read next; I have so many amazing books on hand that I want to get to that it makes deciding very difficult for me. I’m still reading Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, and am much further along in it than I thought I was. I’m feeling like I need to read some crime fiction, though some fantasy and horror novels I have on hand are looking pretty appealing at the moment. I didn’t do very well with my Halloween/October horror reading/watching month, which is of course is disappointing, but 2020 has been a rather disappointing kind of year, quite frankly. I think I have another unread Paul Tremblay I could start today–I also think there are some unread Christopher Goldens in my TBR pile as well.

I am kind of seeing the hurricane/power outage as a reboot of the year; like a force restart on my computer. I realize now that yesterday’s rant about the inconvenience of a power outage was evidence of privilege when others in the area are still without power, and lots of people are much worse off. But I also believe that you can’t even berate yourself for being frustrated with events beyond your control and shouldn’t stop yourself from venting simply because you are better off than others; that just bottles it all up and the explosion coming later is all the worse because you’ve bottled up anger and frustration–and Im sure this equanimity about it all this morning will change the moment I start going through my fridge and start dumping spoiled/ruined food that needs to be replaced.

Wednesday night wasn’t a good night, as I may have mentioned before; after the hurricane had passed the release of stress and so forth left me drained and exhausted and sleeping on and off before I went to bed very early (between nine and nine thirty!). Thursday night was kind of more fun; Paul and I lit all the candles and camped out in the living room and pretended we were back in college and one of us had forgotten to pay the power bill so we had to drink wine by candle light and hang out–and worry about paying the bill the next day. I’m rarely nostalgic for the past, and when nostalgia does come over me, it’s usually not my college years I look back to fondly…but there was something nice about sitting around with Paul drinking wine in candlelight and talking about things. I’ve decided to ignore politics and the election as much as I can; I’ve already decided who I am voting for and nothing is going to change my mind, so why torture myself with all the worry and stress and negativity? Everyone I know has decided, if not already voted; so I am pushing it all out of my mind until I get up Tuesday morning and walk over to the International School to cast my ballot for a return to sanity–and it’s all beyond my control anyway. I need to remember the lesson of not worrying about things I cannot control.

I went to the gym again yesterday morning before heading to the office for the afternoon; I am most pleased that I am sticking to the workout routine (although I’d intended to go on Thursday) and will be returning again tomorrow morning. My body feels so much better now that I am working out again, and as I get deeper into it, I am really looking forward to adding cardio and moving on to getting into better eating habits. I need to start checking my Mediterranean Diet cookbook–which I am also assuming will include more olives, feta cheese, and yogurt into my diet–but I need to dig back out from under again before starting something else new.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and start the process of clean up. Have a lovely Halloween, Constant Reader, and may all your Halloween hopes and wishes come true.