Tag: evangelical Christianity

A Cowboy’s Work is Never Done

Sunday morning, after a gloomy rainy day (marvelous thunder and downpours off and on all day) where I pretty much just stayed indoors. I walked over to get the dry cleaning in the morning, and by the time I got back it was starting to sprinkle, and shortly after I came inside the floodgates opened. I curled up in my chair and read The Rival Queens for a while, then Paul got up and we finished watching Bodkin, which I enjoyed but didn’t care for the ending too much, after which we watched LSU lose to North Carolina (fourth ranked; LSU is number 24 and was only ranked after the SEC tournament, so no disgrace there, and they play to stay in the regional again today, against Wofford again. After the game we started Anthracite, a new French show on Netflix that is kind of off-kilter and very interesting. I did some writing in my journal, and I did do some chores around the house so it wasn’t a wash of a day, and really, who cares if it was? I really need to stop being so down on myself and recognize that sometimes I need downtime just like everyone else. I do want to do some things today, though–the whole day can’t be downtime, for sure. I also slept really well last night, for ten hours, which is insane. I am sleeping a lot lately and getting very good sleep, which has been lovely.

I have decided to do the occasional Pride blog post, about “things that made me realize I was gay” growing up, or things that I appreciated that probably were indicative of my sexual orientation from a very early age. Revisiting that dark closeted teenage space for this book hasn’t been terrific, but I think it will also help me deal with it, frankly. The 1970s are also an interesting time to go back to, as well, trying to dredge up memories that are long lost in the dark dusty recesses of my brain. I started a couple of said pride posts yesterday–one about The Other and one about Starsky and Hutch (which was really the first modern himbo show; more on that later)–and am thinking about other ones. My favorite gay anthems? I don’t know. But this year it seems very important to celebrate Pride–and shove it down the throats of the MAGA traitors and their evangelical cosplay Christian allies (looking at you, Mike the Self-righteous Johnson). After all, I can’t go anywhere without having a fucking cross shoved in my face.

Hey “christians”–more teaching by example and less demonstration of how Christian you are not, what do you think? Maybe then people will stop deserting your houses of worship, because they see the lies, self-righteousness, and utter hypocrisy that masquerades as faith in your befouled churches of blasphemy and apostasy.

It looks sunny outside this morning, so I think perhaps the rains of the last three days have now passed. That’s good, because I do want to go to the gym today to continue my rehabbing of my left arm. I am going to try this morning to get this and at least one other of the Pride posts done today; some writing and some chores, and when that’s all wrapped up I’ll head over to the gym for some rehab, come home and get cleaned up, and then read some more. I think I may stay away from LSU’s games today; if they beat Wofford again they face North Carolina again at six pm, for two games in one day, which is rough–and much as I love my Tigers, I can’t spend the day watching baseball, either.

And I am excited about writing again. It’s a lovely feeling. I’m not sure entirely what all I want to accomplish at this point other than trying to get the work done, but I definitely can get it all done if I keep my nose to the grindstone and keep working. I’m on my own schedule, so the only person being hurt if I take a day or so off from writing is me.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably see you again later today.

It’s A Sin

Ah, SIN.

The human concept of sin is something that has alays fascinated me; as does the societal distinction that sin isn’t necessarily a crime. Adultery, after all, made the Top Ten in the Bible; but adultery isn’t a crime, at least in our country. Maybe I’ve been reading too much medieval plague history, but as a result the entire concept of sin v. crime has been running through my head a lot. We also always tend to speak and think of historical as being more religious and superstitious than our modern, “rational” time; which is why when the religious superstitions start finding their way out of the woodwork, people are always surprised. I’ve seen that a lot, actually, since 2008; the surprise of people who were just now noticing that much of organized religion is steeped in bigotry propped up by skillful, selective usage of their “holy” book while ignoring the parts that do not prove their bigotry and ignorance as holy. I’ve been toying, since the start of this current pandemic and the beginning of my own plague readings, with a story called “The Flagellants,” based on an idea obtained from rereading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror and it’s plague chapter–about a movement of religious fanatics who believed God had sent the plague as a punishment for mankind’s sin (as fanatics have always believed in divine punishment as long as they have believed there are gods in the sky), and marched through the streets praying and repenting loudly while flogging themselves; their theory (if one can call it that) was that they were representing mankind’s penitence to God and therefore their behavior was intended to get God to take the scourge away. This set me to thinking about that Christian group that loves to show up here in the Quarter during Southern Decadence and Carnival to loudly tell us all, through megaphones and over amplifiers, that we are all sinners that need to repent and find our way back to the Lord, and wondering why they weren’t parading through the streets of the Quarter, doing something similar. (Their faith isn’t as strong as they would have us believe, apparently.) And so I started writing said story, but wasn’t really sure where to take it…I have some ideas; hopefully this weekend will help me sketch some of those ideas out.

Ah, sin.

A three day weekend is always a delight; I’m of the mind that every weekend should be three days rather than two. It generally takes me one day to rest and recover from the weekend, which is when I do my errands and clean and so forth, and then I am centered enough and rested enough (after two good night’s sleep) to get some work done on Sunday. With a three day weekend, that gives me an extra day to simply focus on writing. Naturally, of course, if every weekend was a three day weekend it would eventually prove also to not be enough time for me, I suppose, and so probably best to leave things as they are and simply enjoy those weekends when they come around. I have some plans for today; primarily a grocery run and perhaps a trip to the gym, along with some cleaning and organizing and perhaps some writing/brainstorming.

We continue to enjoy The Great on Hulu; I do recommend it, it’s very entertaining if not always the most historically accurate–and as I have stated many times, when it comes to television or film adaptations of actual historical events, accuracy inevitably goes out the window (the most egregious example of this being The Tudors. By combining Henry VIII’s sisters Margaret and Mary into one person, and then having her die without children, they essentially erased not only the Brandon/Grey line–no Nine Days’ Queen Jane Grey–but also the Scottish Stewarts; so no Mary Queen of Scots or any of the royalty since the death of Elizabeth I); and complaining about historical inaccuracies in fictional representations of actual history is low-hanging fruit, as it were.

I also want to finish reading Phyllis A. Whitney’s The Red Carnelian, and I’ve also started rereading a book from one of my favorite kids’ series, the Ken Holt mysteries by Bruce Campbell. The Ken Holt series is always neck and neck with The Three Investigators as my favorite kids’ series; they are very well written, action-packed, and well plotted as well; with a kind of hard-boiled edge to them. The first book in the series, The Secret of Skeleton Island, (a title also used in The Three Investigators series) introduces us not only to our young hero but to the people at Global News (Ken’s father is a globe trotting reporter; his mother is dead, and since his father is gone a lot Ken is at a boarding school somewhere outside of New York; I always assumed it was up the Hudson valley but it may have actually been Long Island), and how Ken meets up with, and basically is adopted into, the Allen family. I’m actually enjoying the book–and considering it was written for 9-12 year olds in the late 1940’s/early 1950’s, and it still holds up, is saying quite a bit. The fact these books never caught on or were as popular as, say the Hardy Boys, and have been out of print for decades, is disgraceful.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I look forward to speaking to you again this weekend.

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Two More Bottles of Wine

The weather, apparently, is going to be terrifying today.

I’d planned to run errands, but with the terrible forecast I think it’s best if I stay at home today and ride out the stormy weather. Hail? Flash flooding? Tornadoes? YIKES! And it does look foul out there outside my windows–an eerie gray light and pouring rain, grayish-dark clouds covering the sky. The gutter that drains the back and side yards, running alongside the walk, is full and overflowing; but water isn’t cascading off the house and through the drain pipes. So, yeah, probably best not to go outside.

Okay, that thunder was loud and long. Definitely not going anywhere today.

It’s okay, though; I have plenty to keep me occupied. There’s lots of writing to be done and laundry to put through its cleansing paces; I have reading to do and some other things I have to get taken care of over the course of this lovely time away from the office. I’m starting to get busier, which means I need to guard my time more jealously, budget it accordingly, and perhaps most exciting of all, start keeping lists again.

That gives me such a charge, you have no idea.

I am one of those sick and twisted individuals who gets more done the more he has to do; the luxury of free time lends itself to more leisure, I find–as well as a reluctance to leave the inertia behind. I had a lovely time last weekend, listening to music all day Saturday while doing some important catching up on lo those many things I always tend to let slide and keep on sliding; a body at rest tends to stay at rest–and there’s nothing I love more than proving just how true that axiom actually is. It’s amazing–even this morning, I woke up just before eight but the bed was so comfortable and warm and relaxing, I didn’t want to get out of it. Scooter climbed up on me shortly afterwards and fell asleep while purring, and of course that put me right back to sleep. But I am awake now, not groggy in the least, and confident that now that my body is in motion it will stay in motion. Huzzah!

I continue to read Richard Campanella’s Bourbon Street, and we are now up to the 1950’s. I’m really enjoying my sojourns into New Orleans’ past; these histories are helping me get a better understanding of my home city, which I love more than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. It’s hard to explain sometimes to people, but New Orleans is home more than anywhere; I just have always felt welcomed and a part of the city’s fabric, connected in a way I never did anywhere else–and it’s quite frankly shameful that it’s taken me so long to start studying New Orleans history. They are also helping me with my first real foray into writing historical fiction; I did write “The Weight of a Feather,” which was set loosely in the early 1950’s, but “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy,” my attempt at writing in the Sherlock Holmes canon, is definitely taking me back into a time I am completely unfamiliar with; recreating the New Orleans of November, 1914 is going to be one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done–which makes it all the more exciting, quite frankly.

We watched another episode of Messiah last night, and I have to say, this show is incredible. I can’t recommend it enough. We’re three episodes in, and for me, one of the best indicators of how good a show is how easy it is to get lost in the story; that when the credits start rolling it comes as a shock because it doesn’t seem like you’ve been watching for an hour. That’s how every episode of Messiah has been so far; and as I’ve said before, there’s nothing quite so fascinating to me as religion and religious history. Given how evangelical Christianity is trying to turn our country into a theocracy, and has been for quite some time (the separation of church and state in this country has always been an ideal we never have quite reached), it’s always interesting to me to think about the return of Jesus as supposedly prophesied in the Bible (I’ve never been convinced that Revelations is anything other than the ravings of a madmen rather than actual prophecy–but all of the end times/Rapture stuff traces back to that particular book of the Bible; as well as to The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, a huge bestseller back in the 1970’s and, in my opinion, the beginning of all the Rapture/end times stuff; but that’s for another blog post after I reread the Lindsey book.) and how modern day evangelicals, with their Prosperity Gospel and other nonsense would react–a friend and I refer to the Jesus they worship as “Republican Armani Jesus,” or RAJ for short; that’s why Messiah is so interesting to me. It’s also remarkably well-done.

LSU’s football team arrived in New Orleans last night, which I watched on various social media feeds. It was kind of cool seeing how people lined up on the highway to hold up signs and flags and cheer for the team on their way to New Orleans from Baton Rouge, and there was a mob scene at the hotel on Canal Street when the busses finally pulled in. The route through Baton Rouge was also clogged with fans cheering them on–and you can actually feel the electricity in the air here yesterday. I put in an eight hour day at the office yesterday, and shockingly enough, despite the fact that I had to drive through the Quarter and the CBD at five thirty on a Friday night–the worst day and time for traffic of the week, plus the team was arriving around that time–it only took me a little over twenty minutes to navigate the crowded streets and traffic.

We do love our football teams down here in the bayou country.

Monday is going to be insane.

 But in the best kind of way, really.

Hmm, there’s a lull in the storm. It’s eerily still outside; no wind, no rain, and just really gray and weird. I don’t see our outdoor kitties–we have a new addition; an orange-and-white tuxedo kitty we’ve dubbed Simba. He’s really sweet, and he and Tiger seem to have a wary frenemy relationship. Simba is far too friendly and affectionate to be feral; I don’t know if he’s someone’s cat in the neighborhood that they let roam free, or if he belonged to the asshole college students next door who recently moved away and they left him behind–which really pisses me off. Simba’s ear is also not clipped, so at some point we’re going to need to catch him and take him in to see if he is chipped. I hope, if he is abandoned, he and Tiger are holed up safely under the house or somewhere out of this rain.

It would be so easy for me to become a crazy cat lady.

I think it’s about to start raining again; there was some severe thunder just now.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!

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