Tag: Cowboy Carter

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.

Screenshot
  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. ↩︎

Tragedy

Thursday morning last day in the office for the week blog post, and I am pretty pleased, overall, with how the week turned out. It was hard to get back on the horse after the drama of the weekend, and recovering from that was a thing. One of the things about being older is you do really have to be more selective about what you spend your energy on…and I wished I’d realized that “saving my energy for things that matter” was probably a lifestyle choice I should have made when I was in my forties, at the latest.

It’s very weird how my body has adjusted now to getting up early. I used to be fine early in the week and gradually grew more tired as the week went on, until Thursday morning when I got up I was so groggy I could barely focus on anything. Now, I am tired and groggy early in the week and as the week goes on, I sleep better and wake up more easily later in the week. I feel a bit stiff this morning, but that’s all right. My coffee is tasting good and hitting the spot, and I just have to get through today before my work-at-home day tomorrow. We have a department meeting tomorrow morning at nine, but I can sleep a bit later and head downtown for that–and then run some errands on the way home. I was a bit fatigued last night, but managed to get almost two thousand words down before my brain fizzled out, after which we finished watching Apples Never Fall (enormously disappointing final episode) and got caught up on Will Trent, which we really are enjoying more than I thought we would. Not sure why I thought we wouldn’t like it, but I was wrong and glad we finally started watching. Tonight LSU competes in the regional gymnastics championships with a very good shot at making it all the way to the national finals. GEAUX TIGERS!

I finished listening to Cowboy Carter in the car on the way home from work yesterday, and I really enjoyed it. There’s not a bad song on the record, really, and some serious jams. And yes, it is a country album no matter what the racists in that genre want to believe. Oh no, a BLACK woman recorded one of the best country albums of the century! Cue white outrage! Seriously, people, if you’re not aware that ALL modern American music comes from jazz and blues (two forms of music created by Black people) then have all the fucking seats, trashbag. Country is more blues than jazz, and the lines definitely get blurred sometime, but face it: every song on Cowboy Carter could be a hit single. Every. Last. One. Of. Them. When was the last time any country artist could say the same? Shania Twain at the turn of the century, maybe? The fragility of white people, and their constant need to be the victims, is so fucking tired already. Get over yourselves, seriously. I can’t imagine living life with braces on my brain, can you?

And this morning when I synced my phone with the car, surprise! Spotify started automatically playing the new Pet Shop Boys album, Dancing Star, and it’s also a banger so far. I love me some Pet Shop Boys, and their music never seems dated, old or tired. Can’t wait to get back in the car to go home tonight so I can listen to some more of it. The Pet Shop Boys always take me back to when I was younger and basically living in gay bars on the weekends; they were kind of the soundtrack of my gay adulthood, really…and listening to their music from any year always puts me into the mindset where I want to work on “Never Kiss a Stranger,” which may actually be a novel and not a novella; that could the reason why I can never finish the story is because it could easily be longer. Maybe what I should do is just work on it and see where it goes and how long it lasts.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines so I can get this last day of work in the office for the week over and done with. I may be back later and I may not; one never knows. But have a lovely Friday Eve, everyone.

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.