Tag: Elon Musk

Lift ‘Em on Up

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, and I did stay in bed later this morning on purpose because it imply fet so marvelous. I had a small replacement fan delivered yesterday afternoon, and it ran all night and I didn’t wake up once, instead going into an incredibly deep and restful sleep for nearly ten hours! Yesterday was kind of a nice, low energy day around here. Paul is back to working with his trainer and going to the gym again, and so he was gone most of the afternoon. I slept later yesterday, and had a bit of a sleep hangover; I was back to feeling rested and not tired, but my batteries were a bit low. I ordered some things to have delivered, and picked up and organized whenever Sparky wasn’t insistent on my lap for hugs and cuddles and naps, which was also nice. Relaxing is always important for both physical and mental health, and my stamina is getting better. I did get a fan delivered yesterday, to make sure I had both the breeze and noise while sleeping last night. I didn’t read any of my book, but I read some of my work in progress, which counts, doesn’t it? I think this morning I’ll read some of the book I’m reading, which I am enjoying. It’s nice to wake up feeling rested and good.

I’m also late with the newsletters, which I am blaming on being “off” all week. I did do some writing this past week, but not much, and I am definitely behind on everything I am working on. It’s a shame that the response I am writing to that little gatekeeping shit who wrote that op-ed for the New York Slimes recently, trying to restrict the community to those he feels “truly belong” as opposed to, how did he say it? Straight kids trying to be cool? I was very angry when I started writing it, but am glad I waited and let it sit, so I can be very cold and factual as I dismantle his bigoted (and hardly Christian) argument.

Honestly, I had no interest in seeing The Odyssey , and it had nothing to do with it being “woke.” (Which didn’t seem to hurt its opening weekend ticket sales). It’s more along the lines that I’ve always thought Odysseus was kind of a dick; Greek “heroes” aren’t really heroic in the modern sense (the Hero’s Journey is the protagonist’s journey, just like romance originally meant something different than it does now, as did mystery); which always confused me when I was fascinated by the Trojan War (I’ve always wanted to write about Troy) and Greek mythology. Heracles was most certainly not a hero in the sense that the modern American definition thinks of as heroic–and while some of his monstrous behavior could be excused away as acts of the gods, not all of them were because of Hera or some other Olympian with a grudge. (I’ve also wanted to write about Heracles since I was a kid.)

Since I was on low-energy mode yesterday, we did watch Sugar, and a couple of episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which really needs to ditch the soapy time travel melodrama of the cast of characters and more on the monsters, which is why we are watching. Godzilla finally has shown up–it’s funny how these same monsters traumatized me as a child, watching Creature Features on the television, giving me bad dreams for weeks after seeing one, and now I love them–which was vastly overdue. The problem with the focus on the melodrama always makes me zone out a bit, which means I miss key things about the monsters by the same team who are also studying the monsters and predicting patterns of behavior and movement–and also where they come from, hence the time travel melodrama. Sugar? No notes. Colin Farrell is fantastic, and the show is well done and well written and extremely clever.

I have to order some things for delivery today or tomorrow; I haven’t decided. I ordered things yesterday so I didn’t have to leave the house, since we were in a d (“feels like 110!”) so I decided going to the gate to get things or out to the trash to dump garbage and the recycling was enough; the sun glaring off my windshield was blinding and I don’t want to think about how hot the car is on the inside. We’re in another heat advisory today, with the ‘feels like’ at about 112, hence ordering for delivery yet again.

The times in which we live, where Taco Bell has replaced the CDC and Waffle House the National Weather Service. Had someone told me this would be my senior years when I was even middle-aged I would have laughed so hard. An anti-vaxxer in charge of public health and food safety? Let’s remember, the agencies that would have worked on these things were gutted by DOGE, Elon, and his ketamine fueled college-age boys? Where are those little shits now? I know they aren’t behind bars where they belong.

There are two tropical messes trying to form in the upper Gulf, just off the coast, and it will of course affect us with some rain and possible flooding from Tuesday through the next weekend. Heavy sigh–but I am looking forward to the thunderstorm.

Pity about the Tates being arrested for raping and trafficking children. Hope they enjoy dying in prison.

And on that cheerful note–I approve of predators being arrested–I am going to get another cup of coffee and head into the living room to read for a bit before getting cleaned up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will be here again tomorrow morning. Till then!

This artwork is “The Tree of Forgiveness” (1881–1882) by English Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The painting depicts a scene from classical mythology, specifically the legend of Phyllis and Demophoön.
It illustrates the moment Phyllis, transformed into an almond tree, emerges from the bark to embrace her lover, Demophoön, who has returned filled with remorse. (If you ask me, he looks terrified and like he’s trying to escape. Maybe that’s the myth?)

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You?

Tonight, Oshun and Cleopatra roll down St. Charles Avenue to kick off the Uptown parade season, and I will be trapped in my neighborhood tonight through Sunday night. Next week is the true insanity, beginning on Wednesday and going for almost a week. Yay for Carnival! I have a shit ton of things to do today, personally and professionally, so it’s going to be an interesting all-over-the-place kind of day. I’m meeting a friend for dinner at five fifteen, and will have to walk about six blocks to get there, but that’s not a big deal so long as my Achilles tendons don’t get out of control. I just need to keep my wits about me today, not get distracted, and keep nose affixed firmly to grindstone or else the day will go completely off the rails–which nobody wants or needs. I also have a meeting this morning and lots of work-at-home duties to get done today. AUGH. A busy busy day for me, and not off to a good start, as I didn’t get up early but lolled in bed late.

It didn’t rain on Wednesday night, so I didn’t feel as deeply rested yesterday morning as I had Wednesday morning. Maybe I should get one of those rain sound machines to sleep with? I don’t know if the noise will be as effective with the chilly wet air, though. I used to have easy listening CD’s a hundred years ago–morning rain, forest, waterfall, etc.–but don’t think I ever used them. It also didn’t rain last night, either–and the sun is very bright this morning. It’s about forty-eight degrees outside, which isn’t terrible. I am not certain if I’ll go out to the corner tonight or not–will depend, actually, on how tired I am when I get home from dinner. But for now, I just had some toast and finished my first cup of coffee and am feeling pretty good–so we’ll see how it all goes, won’t we?

Maybe the saddest thing that happened this week was the death knell of a once-great urban newspaper, the Washington Post. Nowhere in anything I read about this latest butchering of the paper did anyone note that there was a lot of backlash to the Post after Jeff Bezos cancelled the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris because his fellow pedophile and favored candidate wouldn’t like it. I recently subscribed to the Post–despite my disapproval of them, it was a good deal and they had book coverage, sports coverage, and recipes–and got a great deal at ninety-nine cents per month for digital access, so I figured a dollar wasn’t much to give them, and would cancel when that rate lapsed and went back to normal. It sure didn’t take long for them to make my dollar a waste of money, did they? I also didn’t see anyone else drawing a line from Watergate to right-wing hatred of the Post and this final vengeance for taking down Nixon. (Likewise, they’ve also managed to neuter the New York Times and CBS; the Times reported on the Pentagon Papers, and CBS opposed Vietnam. Conservatives are nothing if not vengeful and vindictive, and can carry a grudge for a very long time.) I had misgivings when Bezos bought the Post, but it took him ten years to take an Elon Musk-like chainsaw to the Post. He’s a monster. I wonder how many kids he raped on Epstein Island? You know he was there.

I think the funniest thing to be about all of this is that the Chatelaine of Castle TERF is in the files. That’s right, that bigoted old bitch who “wants to protect girls and women” is in the Epstein files and was buddy-buddy with him. I knew her fascination with the genitals of children had a much darker origin. Maybe she hates trans kids because she wants to know what genitals they have without checking before molesting them? Yeah, she wraps her bigotry in piety but when you’re friends with the biggest pedophile and sex-trafficker on the planet? Miss me with your concerns about women and children, bitch. The irony that she happily climbed in bed with the Christofascists who’d tried to get her “satanic” books banned and removed from libraries is equally delicious. She jumped into bed with the actual pedophiles and hung around with Epstein. So much for any moral authority she tries to claim. She hates queer people and loves pedophiles. Quite frankly, she deserves worse.

It’s easy to see why religions like Christianity have taken hold–because its basic message is one of elitism and exclusion: we’re going to heaven. Plus, there is nothing fair in this world and there is rarely any justice, so how do the rich and powerful keep the poor and the working class from revolting and guillotining them all? Give them a religion that promises every gets what they deserve in the next world with no proof! It’s easy to see why faith became so popular in the old days–don’t worry about no justice on earth–they’ll get it after they die is some impressive gaslighting, maybe the greatest example of it in history. There was a reason the French Revolution didn’t target ust the upper class–they also targeted the Catholic Church and abolished religion (which often gets left out of the lesson). The promise of the afterlife enables the rich and the powerful to do whatever they please, no matter how heinous, because well, God will send them to hell.

The Olympics have already started, and some of the team figure skating competition has begun, with a good showing by the US team so far, which is very cool. I don’t know how much of the Olympics I’ll be able to actually watch–there are two parades tonight, six tomorrow, and three or four on Sunday. I have to run errands this afternoon so I can get them out of the way because I won’t be able to do much driving after four tonight until Sunday night/Monday morning.

I actually worked on my dystopian story yesterday and it started flowing easily–probably because it isn’t hard to imagine an American dystopia in the near future. But it also felt good to be writing again, and that’s always a good thing. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it finished this weekend.

And speaking of the Epstein files, someone gathered the Epstein emails as an easily searchable Gmail inbox. Just click and you can see if your favorite oligarch or celebrity is there!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Seriously, no one does parade floats quite like New Orleans krewes.

Dance the Night Away

I actually had to turn the air conditioning on yesterday. Once the storm passed, the sun came out and the temperature climbed up into the seventies, so everything evaporated and thus the air was heavy with water and thick. When I turned the air conditioning on, it was almost seventy-seven degrees inside and yes, that’s a bit warm when it’s humid. It looks less sunny this morning, but it’s likely to be a nice day again. I have some errands to run today, in addition to a bunch of other things I’d like to get done–including writing–but we’ll see how that goes. I spent most of last night after work picking up and doing dishes and so forth; I have more of that to do today as well.

I spent a lot more time than I needed to yesterday laughing at the MAGA Civil War, provoked by the Techbros’ insistence that more H1B work visas were needed to bring in engineers and so forth to help the Techbros get even richer. The racist anti-immigrant branch of the MAGA coalition, which doesn’t want any immigration of any kind, flipped out in the person of troll Laura Loomer, whose presence at their foul lord and master’s side this past summer was deemed “problematic” and so she was banished…and she’s been spoiling for revenge ever since. (Loomer, if you’re unaware, is the MAGA version of the Manson girls.) She went apeshit apparently on Twitter over the holiday and now there’s a full-scale battle over this “betrayal” of the movement by Elmo and Vivek Ramaswamy1, who’s been getting another dose of “we want your vote but you’re still brown” from the movement he belongs to but whose rank-and-file only see him as a useful tool. I went deep into this wormhole last night, laughing and cackling and having the best time–even going so far as to watch MAGA videos about it (and destroying my Youtube algorithm for the foreseeable future) and laughing and laughing and laughing. Yes, who knows how this is going to play out (for me, this is the FAFO his supporters need and deserve; guess what, he doesn’t need your vote anymore so you no longer have any value to him, period) and of course, it hit me last night shortly before I went to bed that this MAGA civil war is actually a class war; the rich Techbros who want to get even richer and can’t understand why MAGA doesn’t understand that–this is their reward for their support, and they have money. Who do you think Shitler is going to listen to? He’s never cared about the working class, ever. You all were duped, and the entire country is going to pay the price for your bigotry and stupidity.

And I, for one, will never ever let you forget, ever. And I will be beating the cost of eggs into the ground at every opportunity in the next four years, so buckle up, buttercup.

I also love that Ramaswamy criticized American culture, too. His complaint about Americans celebrating “mediocrity” by idolizing the jock instead of the Math Olympiad champion made me actually laugh out loud, as it sounded like the plaintive whining of a nerd from high school who can’t get a date. And good luck with that. I hate to break it to you, Vivek, but a lot of athletes/jocks are actually smart, and how are they mediocre when they excel at something we as a society have always celebrated? It also made me wonder if Ramaswamy’s interest in politics is some kind of Revenge of the Nerds fantasy. He did have a point; we should celebrate intelligence and creativity and logical thinking–but MAGA is, if nothing else, an anti-intellectual movement, denying science for the most part–how does that work in his idea of our brave new world?

How does the cognitive dissonance of pushing for intelligence while at the same time participating in a movement that is, above all else, anti-intellectual?

Ah, it’s raining. More of a drizzle than a New Orleans gully-washer, but rain nevertheless. I think I may head over to make groceries early this morning–after I finish this and make a list–and run the other errands later. I am glad to get errands out of the way so all I need to do is write and read and relax around here. I slept super well last night again, and slept a little later this morning despite waking up the first time just before six. I feel rested and relaxed this morning, which is nice. Once I get cleaned up, I am sure I’ll feel even better. Yay! So, I am going to make groceries in a moment, and then run the other errands after putting the groceries away, and curl up with my edits and my book that I’m reading and that I hope to finish this weekend as well. This week is broken up by a holiday on Wednesday, which is kind of wild; I probably could have taken either Tuesday or Thursday off, but I am being a bit more jealous of my paid-time off this coming year. I am also thinking about my goals for this upcoming year. Sigh. At least this year I am in my right mind, sort of; last year I was still doing physical therapy and recovering from the surgery. That does seem like a million years ago, doesn’t it? (The rain just turned into a gully-washer, by the way.) So 2025 is going to start with one Gregalicious in better condition, at any rate.

And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and get cleaned up and hope that it stops raining before I leave to make groceries. Probably no such luck, right? I may be back later on today, one never can be entirely sure of these things, but if not, never fear: I will be back tomorrow morning with a report on today.

’til then, adieu.

  1. The irony that the South African is on the less racist side this time has not escaped me, either. ↩︎