Tag: country

Born to Be Alive

Tuesday and somehow the power’s still on and life continues in this hideous new reality when the horrible news comes and just… keeps on coming to the point that my shoulders slump every morning when I get up and sign into my computer, wondering what the hell happened while I was asleep. (This morning it was the news that the Gail Benson and the New Orleans Saints advised the Archdiocese on PR during the most recent child-rape1 . It was bad enough when Drew Brees worked with a homophobic organization to violate the separation of church and state in Louisiana, but helping the Archdiocese look better in their horrific cover up? Seriously, Mrs. Benson? I mean, most Saints fans won’t care, but I am terribly disappointed in her.)

Speaking of the Archdiocese, Catholics also gave me a good laugh yesterday on social media. You see, the Super Bowl committee worked with some local group to do projection art on St. Louis Cathedral and the the museums on other sides. It’s very cool, and changes the looks of the buildings completely. People have been sharing pictures and videos of the light show changes…so of course here come some ignorant Catholics claiming it was “sacrilege” and “how very dare they do this to a Catholic cathedral”! (You know, all caps, lots of exclamation points, bad grammar and spelling errors and specious logic.) You mean the historic landmark of the city that the Archdiocese thinks the city and its citizens should pay for upkeep and renovations and repairs? How is it sacrilege to beam imagery on the outside? And don’t think for one second the Archdiocese didn’t ask for money for this. If you’re mad at anyone, be mad at your church leadership for selling indulgences like a Medici pope.

And try being mad at the administration manipulating the stock market so he and his buddies can buy low.

Speaking of idiots, some (white) people were big mad Beyonce won some Grammys for country music, big mad, and spewing their bile on social media because of course they (butt hurt white people) are the great arbiters of what is and what isn’t great music rather than the members of the national organization of recording arts and sciences. One, awards are lovely things bHow dare this big international superstar and living legend DARE to perform and win awards for country music? If you think that sounds about white, you’d be right. (You really can never go wrong assuming it’s bigotry when it comes to white people because it almost always is) First of all, no one owns country music or gets to decide what it is or isn’t. Music evolves. Country music was originally “country and western” as a category at the Grammys, but it was the western aspect of country music that had the hats and boots and so forth, not country. So country singers and fans thinking they “own” cowboys, boots, and hats is a bald-faced lie and makes them poseurs and pretenders, too. How many of your stars grew up on a ranch or actually worked with cattle? If they didn’t but wear hats and boots, that’s drag. A costume. Nothing more and certainly not authenticity. When I was a kid in Kansas guys who wore hats and boots but didn’t work with cattle were called “goat-ropers” (I don’t know why, but it wasn’t a term of affection). I also seem to remember the term dime-store cowboy as derogatory. It was so anathema that I would never wear a cowboy hat or boots to this very day–and I have always had the kind of legs that boots show off nicely, too. Jason Aldean is a goat-roper, for example. I grew up listening to C&W when I was a kid, and if you’re going to say Cowboy Carter isn’t “authentic country”…I got some bad news for you about a lot of the today’s racist country stars. I walked away from country after 9/11 and what that industry did to the Chicks (THAT was cancel culture, for the record, and THEY WERE RIGHT.) when the genre turned into the “Amurika” music genre. You were wrong about the wars, you were wrong about Bush, and you’re wrong again now, country fans.

You really don’t deserve to enjoy music at all.

The day job situation is still up in the air (thanks again, MAGA voting trash) but it’s going to be a day by day and week by week thing. Yay! I think I may need stronger anxiety medication. Heavy heaving sigh. We’re not sure, obviously, what the future holds but my day job is funded by the federal government through the CDC, so yes, ever since I woke up the morning after the election I’ve been able to add worry about my job still existing to the every day drama of life and all the other existential dread from everything else the administration is inflicting on us. Yay! Woo-hoo!

Maybe I should start drinking again.

I did get to work on the book a bit yesterday. It was painful and excruciating to pull those words out of me–only about three or four hundred, so a pathetic effort–last evening, and I am hoping that won’t be the case today. Sigh. And so, without any further ado I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point.

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  1. I believe in calling things what they are. Priests raped children. Period. Got a problem with that? Take it up with the Archbishop and the Pope. ↩︎

Take Good Care of Her

Ah, here we are on what I wished were Taco Tuesday, but alas, it is not to be. Too much food already on hand to go out and get something entirely new. It’s dark again this morning, and of course there are any number of tropical systems out there that need to be watched, but at least we’re in the final months of the season. I was very comfortable in the bed this morning–Sparky was cuddled up with me when I woke up–but forced myself to get up. My week is kind of messed up already. I had to cover the clinic yesterday because someone’s on vacation (I kept thinking it was Tuesday all day), and now today I am working clinic by myself. That means I’ll probably be tired when I get home tonight, which is okay. I made groceries and got the mail last night, so I can come straight home tonight. I ordered some things on-line this week–new shoes, coffee–and I also repaired a book whose binding had broken (a Three Investigators tome), and tried repairing a pair of very cool Oxfords. I’ve had the shoes for almost thirteen years now, but have only wore them a handful of times (I rarely dress up and they’re too dressy to wear otherwise) so am not comfortable with just throwing them out when they just need to have the sole reattached. (Gorilla Glue failed me, so they’re going to have to wind up going to a shoe repair.) There wasn’t a lot of traffic last night on the way home, and after getting home and bonding with Sparky, I relaxed in my easy chair and bonded with the kitty while watching the news on-line. We did end up watching another episode of American Sports Story, and this season is really about the dangers of the closet, and how that level of self-loathing can twist someone into something dark.

Kind of sad, really; yet another example of the dangers of toxic masculinity (as if we needed another). And the guy who plays Urban Meyer is kind of uncanny.

I also read some more of Rival Queens, and have finally reached the part where the final Valois king, Henri III, has ascended to the French throne, and talks about his gender identity and homosexuality–and of course, the most interesting part to me; the mignons, his handsome young men that danced attendance on him as his favorites. Both mother and sister queens (Catherine de Medici and Marguerite of Navarre) despised the mignons, but weren’t so above the fray to not use them in their own attempts to either control the country or save her own life. It would be interesting, methinks, to write about this treacherous period of religious civil wars in France, with Spain, the Empire and England all meddling in French politics–lots on intrigue, back-stabbing, the changing of sides, assassination and murder, and of course, war. The second half of the sixteenth century saw France torn apart by factionalism and war, which wrecked the economy and kept France from building itself into a major power; fear of France really drove European history for centuries.

There certainly has been a lot of celebrity death lately, so much so that I’ve not really been able to keep up. Maggie Smith–what can I say about Maggie Smith? I first saw her on film in Murder by Death, and she was my favorite part of the movie. When I saw California Suite in the theater, I fell in love with her and wished the entire film had focused on her and Michael Caine; the other stories were dull and trite and cliched. From then on, I made a point to watch anything with Maggie Smith in it, and I was never disappointed. Such a massive talent, and so many great performances left behind. Kris Kristofferson was another giant, of music and acting. I first really noticed him in A Star is Born, and DAMN the man was fine. And that voice! Kristofferson was also a progressive and that came across in many of his classic songs. Just “Help Me Make It Thru The Night”, “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and “Me and Bobby McGee” is enough to ensure an impressive legacy, and that’s just scratching the surface. He was also a very good person, a classy guy who cared about people and the downtrodden–from that period of country music where the greats (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kristofferson) were progressives who stood up to oppression and bigotry. (I also love his quote about Toby Keith’s music–“he’s done for country music what pantyhose did for finger-fucking.”)

In other exciting news, the so-called “abortion pills” have now been banned in Gilead, er, Louisiana; the bill banning them outright went into effect this morning. I never thought I’d see the day when we had a worse governor or legislature than we did during the Bobby Jindal “burn Louisiana to the ground” administration…so of course the Reich Wing bigots in Louisiana had to elect someone far, far worse. Such a beautiful state–with so many ugly people living here. That is unfortunately true about the entire South, really, and no, Southern states don’t deserve hurricanes as punishment, either; that’s the kind of hellfire and brimstone shit the Reich believes in, and I reject any natural occurrence as being “God’s punishment” for sin–when God doesn’t choose to protect children from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, you can miss me with your bloodthirsty god.

I’m looking forward to working on the book some more, and I also want to submit a story to an upcoming anthology deadline that could actually work for me. We shall see how motivated I am, shan’t we?

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I hope you get some tacos tonight!

Never Be Anyone Else But You

Wednesday and we’ve made it to the middle of the week again, well done, Constant Reader! I was beginning to wonder. Yesterday was a bit odd. I slept well the night before, but I didn’t sleep through the night; I woke up several times during the night but managed to fall back asleep. I felt a bit spacy and out of it yesterday as a result, but still managed to stay focused and get through my workday without falling behind, ran some errands on the way home, and did some chores. The weather has also been weird lately; gray and cloudy, but hot and humid at the same time. It looks like it should be cold outside, but it’s not; you walk outside and the humidity slaps you across the face. Guess it’s time to start leaving my sweatshirt/jacket at the office every day instead of wearing it to and fro.

And yes, it’s affecting my sinuses and some of my moods, and I think it made me tired last night, too. I tried to write for a bit before giving up; that part of my brain wasn’t working yesterday, which was more than a little bit frustrating. But I also have to remember that I am still technically recovering from the surgery; my arm might be healed now but I am still not completely recovered. I slept well last night, though, so hopefully I won’t be basically sleepwalking through the day the way I did yesterday.

I’ve been listening to Beyonce’s new album, Cowboy Carter, in the car and I have to say, it’s really quite good. I know the racist section of country music fans (significant in number) are hating on it and calling it aggressive, not country, etc. I hate to break it to you, but no one gatekeeps any creative field, particularly in music. If Cardi B wants to record a country album, no one can stop her. And this has been an issue with country music and its fanbase for a very long time. My dad always hated that old Barbara Mandrell song “I Was Country (When Country Wasn’t Cool)” because it basically pissed all over people discovering country for the first time–and with her variety show and so forth, Mandrell was a pop/country hybrid herself, following in the shoes of Dolly Parton, who crossed over in the mid to late 1970’s. There was a lot of pushback against “not country” artists who were recording music that was being played on country music stations and bought by country fans–look up “Charlie Rich John Denver country music” on Youtube sometime; Charlie Rich went off on John Denver for not being country enough while presenting him with a country music award. (Olivia Newton-John also crossed over, starting in country before moving over to pop.) New artists and new approaches to country music keep the genre alive and fresh. I’ve seen people trying to quantify this Beyonce album as “well, it’s her version of country” and other things like that…but that’s why I am listening to it in the car; giving me the sense that I am listening to the radio, and if I didn’t know it was Beyonce…I probably wouldn’t have ever guessed. Yes, when you know its her you easily can recognize the vocal range and style, but it’s a terrific album I am enjoying…and I’ve never forgiven country music as an industry for what they did to the Chicks.

You know, when the right invented cancel culture? Yes, they were the ones who let that genie out of the bottle they constantly decry these days…until they decide they need to cancel someone else.

I did do some research via the google machine last night to get some information I may need for the revisions of the two stories I’ve written thus far this year. Both stories are going to have significant revisions, but they are also going to be much better stories than they were in their original drafts. I also know where to go next with the book, which is excellent news. I am going to need to rework the beginning again, but that’s fine and inevitable to deeper you get into drafts, anyway.

We are still enjoying Apples Never Fall, and what a horrific and dysfunctional family we have on display! One thing that really isn’t working for me on the show (when I think about it later; when watching I get caught up in it all) is how calm they all seem; their wife/mother is either missing or dead, and no one seems to be all that disturbed or upset by it. Again, who wants to watch hysteria for episodes on end, but I guess they’re all in denial and a little bit of shock, which is also understandable.

All right, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–one can never be entirely sure.