Tag: Fox News

Jackson

Tis Saturday here in the Lost Apartment, and all through the house, only Greg is stirring now that Sparky’s been fed. I stayed up late doing the laundry, so am off to a late start this morning but that’s okay. I feel good this morning–I was kind of low energy yesterday, so after work and the Costco adventure I was pretty done in. I wound up watching the Oregon-Indiana game (more on that later), and then we watched the figure skating. Some incredible performances by the ladies! I fell asleep in my chair but also wound up not going to bed until after midnight, which I also did Thursday night and needs to stop. I’ll set my alarm for tomorrow morning; this needs to stop so I can be productive!

It barely sprinkled yesterday, in spite of the constant weather alert warnings I was getting in my inbox all day Thursday and yesterday morning. FLOOD WATCH! TORNADOES! And then it was sunny and over seventy all day. It did just start raining, though. I have a couple of errands to do this morning, but I might wait a bit until the rain passes….and read in my chair under my blanket. That would be cozy and lovely, wouldn’t it? It certainly sounds good, at any rate. I’ve already gotten cleaned up because I was groggy and needed to wake up, so I am already ahead of the game. I love rain so much. If it was raining when I woke up, I’d probably still be in bed with Sparky and listening to its patter on the roof… and seeing the stream the walk always turns into outside my windows this morning is soothing.

This has been a no-good horrible week, hasn’t it? This is part of the reason why I wasn’t willing to get super excited about the fresh start a new year brings with it. None of that “goodbye to a horrible year yay for a new one” bullshit for me, thank you very much, having been burned before too many times to think a calendar reset means anything to thugs, fascists, Nazis, and traitors. It’s been a hell of a year so far, hasn’t it? And now that the Gestapo reboot has permission and cover from the administration, Fox, Newsmax, and all the rest to kill Americans pretty much minding their own business. The lies and the spin has been unreal–but those who listen to, accept, and regurgitate those talking points are not the majority. Currently, Kristi Noem is harboring a fugitive from justice; funny how all those states’ rights Republicans only think red states can defy the government.

Are we great again yet? Tired of all this winning?

And then there was the “pick me gay” debacle that blew up yesterday with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers. I sort of liked Bowen Yang (I do not watch SNL) and was on the fence with Matt Rogers. I wasn’t sure what to make of him, in all honesty. I mean, he was cute enough and was built well, but I didn’t have an opinion on him one way or the other until this week. But…this podcast telling people not to donate to Jasmine Crockett because of…well, reasons that sound pretty fucking racist and misogynistic to me? That was not it. At the very best, they sounded deeply out of touch, uneducated on the subject, and probably should have kept their mouths shut rather than coming for Ms. Crockett. I’m not saying they don’t have a right to their opinions, but they also have a right to consequences, and it’s not really smart to go after a politician whose base is the exact same base as your audience. I will never understand the mentality of leaning into what privilege you do have when you’re underprivileged. Yes, yes, you are white (or white-adjacent) men, so by all means go after a Black woman who is doing good in the world because you’re tragically uninformed. Were they honestly so ignorant to think Black women would agree with them? Has their minor celebrity really given them such unearned arrogance? I don’t know what will happen with them–will they learn from this and reflect and do better, or are they going to double down? Sadly, so far it seems that they’ve decided to go the double-down path, at least so far.

I will say I am very happy, though, to see them being critiqued in a non-homophobic way1 (although I am sure there is some of that out there I’ve not seen), so in a way this is sort of progress? I do think there is a tendency (just observational, not trying to be reductive) amongst gay men to think our marginalization is a shield that somehow allows us to be problematic? I also think marginalized people tend to only think about their demographic’s oppression, not understanding that we’re all just branches on the same tree coming from a common root–the patriarchy. They win because they divide us, and because some of us are so desperate for acknowledgment and recognition from the societal mainstream that we accept, and will turn on others, for crumbs.

It’s so disappointing. It’s so much harder to find success in entertainment as a marginalized person, only to use it to be a shit.

And that “mainstream acceptance”? Never permanent. They’ll just take a longer time getting around to you, but they will eventually. WAKE UP PEOPLE.

Then again, if you’re here and reading this, you’re already pretty awake.

Ah, the rain has stopped, so it’s time for me to get moving on the day. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

The gay fantasy of how gym showers work…
  1. I did see one Black woman activist dragging them for filth (the entire thing was epic) and she closed with perhaps the most classic read of two gay men I’ve ever heard; one that was worthy of the Read Hall of Fame, and one that showed she knew exactly who those two were. ↩︎

My Best Friend’s Girlfriend

I’ve always thought today’s title, an old classic by the Cars, would make for a great y/a title. What if a gay teenager was in love with his straight best friend (it happens), only to have the best friend get a girlfriend the gay kid suspects is evil, as in occult evil? No one believes him because they think it’s jealousy…this story always springs to mind whenever I hear the song.

And that first album by the Cars is still a jam, almost forty years (!!!!) after release.

Saturday morning here in the Lost Apartment, and Sparky let me stay in bed later than usual, which was lovely. I am slurping down my first cup of coffee and have already had my coffee cake, probably moving on to cereal in a moment. I do feel good and rested this morning. I took it easy after work yesterday, simply sitting in my easy chair and morphing into a cat bed for a worn out purring kitty. I finished watching Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, which I really appreciated. I did get a little teary when listening to the experiences of the people who couldn’t leave and the clusterfuck of the response to the catastrophic levee failure (which failure was lain entirely at the door of the US Army Corps of Engineers, where it belonged), and the response was entirely a systemic failure. It also went after the media reporting, which was wrong and caused problems for the efforts to rescue people and get them out. I did remember how angry the reporting by the legacy media made me (fuck Fox News and their racism now, then, and forever) because I had a flash of anger again at the incompetence. I’m glad I watched, but I will never stop mourning the New Orleans that was before, or the people we lost. I also decided to go ahead and write a twenty years later essay for the newsletter. Last night as I watched, I was trying to remember what I actually did write about Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath (besides the blog): my novel Murder in the Rue Chartres; my essay “I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet” and a shorter, edited down version called “I’m Still Dancing”; and the short stories “Annunciation Shotgun” and “Survivor’s Guilt.” I think part of the reason I wrote so little about Katrina and the rebuilding was because I didn’t want to be defined as a writer by the storm.

But I think there is another essay about Katrina inside of me that I need to write. I may start writing it this weekend, but we shall see.

I do have to go pick up some prescriptions and some groceries while I am out, and I am going to potentially order some more to be delivered this afternoon. I also made good progress on chores yesterday; I did all the bed clothes, and a load of dishes that needs to be put away, and I also cleaned off my kitchen counters. I also picked some things up around here, too. I want to write and read today, too–once I finish this I will go to my chair and read for a bit before I go run those errands and get them out of the way so I don’t have to leave the house tomorrow. Monday is my last infusion and I took the day off so I can come home and rest and read some more. Huzzah? Huzzah! I think we’re probably going to move on to watching Wednesday’s second season tonight, too.

I do feel good this morning–the cereal was an excellent choice, but now I need toast–and so I am hopeful I’ll be able to get some things done today. So, I probably should put some bread in the toaster and bring this effort to a close for the day by heading into the spice mines for the rest of the morning. Have a lovely and terrific Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back either later today or again tomorrow morning.

Adorable out gay Olympic gold medalist in diving Tom Daley of the UK

More Than This

Wednesday morning and the midpoint of the week. Huzzah! Yes, I am back to wishing my life away, as my mother used to call it. But I can abide, you know? I wasn’t rested properly yesterday, I don’t think, or else it was the off-and-on rain/thunderstorms we had yesterday. That wet cold air inside the office just makes me want to curl up somewhere and go to sleep under my pile of blankets, which makes the workday a bit of a slog. Ah, well. It’s supposed to continue like this until the weekend or so, when it’ll just be hot and sunny and humid and miserable. Yay! And Monday is my next infusion (second of three). Soon I’ll be giving myself shots. Can’t wait…although everyone tells me it’s easy; it’s a pre-loaded pen-like device I just need to stick myself with. And it’s not like my job hasn’t gotten me used to sticking myself and other people over the years. Sigh. It’s hard for me, sometimes, to wrap my mind around the whole this is the rest of your life thing. But it could be worse–it can always be worse–so I will accept this and not let it bug me. I’m sure I’ll eventually get so used to it I won’t even give it a second thought. It’s always the first time, you know? Just like I was nervous about the infusion (when they tell you all the things to look out for during, it can be a bit scary: “if you can’t breathe or have shortness of breath”, you know, things like that) until I did it for the first time.

Definitely will be bringing my book with me on Monday.

I guess Ann Coulter got tired of not being a part of the ICE raids and so decided to glorify genocide on social media, suggesting that the European genocide of indigenous Americans didn’t go far enough? She wound up deleting the post, which is more shocking than the post, to be honest; she’s always been one of those “freedom of speech means I can say the most disgusting things without apology” advocates. Ann Coulter has always been hot sewage, and back in the day she used to compete with Rush Limbaugh to see who could say the most revolting, inhuman kind of shit. Back in the 1990s, as I saw my parents and family getting sucked in more and more by Fox News1, I used to actually read books by right-wingers, including Ann Coulter. (My primary takeaway was they needed to hire better ghostwriters.) Don’t ever forget that Coulter also wrote the introduction to Phyllis Schlafly’s autobiography, and Schlafly was a monster. Like attracts like, I suppose. But since she turned on Trump for not being racist enough in his first term (she probably orgasms with every news report about ICE and Alligator Auschwitz), she’s not as popular on the right as she used to be; how very dare she be critical of MAGA’s God Emperor? I mean, she can’t even get booked on her ex-lover Bill Maher’s show anymore. But she deleted the post. What the fuck, Fraulein Coulter? Outrage used to be what got you out of bed in the morning and paid your bills. I certainly don’t believe she grew a conscience in her sixties.

After the stolen election of 2000, I no longer needed to read right-winger’s books because I didn’t really know what I was gaining by reading them anymore–I used to think it was better to know what they were thinking and saying, but this century, they’ve pretty much started saying the private stuff out loud. It’s impossible to go on-line or watch any news or anything without knowing what the Right’s position on anything and everything is–but you can be sure it’s rooted in racism, misogyny, and homophobia…same as it ever was, same as it ever will be.

Plus, sharing what I learned from reading those books and proximity to right wing voters? I was never believed by anyone on the left, so I just wound up being Cassandra on the walls of Troy…and truly understood her madness. It’s horrible not being believed…but everything I warned about is coming true.

Sigh.

It rained off and on all day yesterday–we even got a flash flood advisory in the afternoon–and I wasn’t really fully and completely mentally functional yesterday. My brain was loopy and my body was fatigued; I felt all day like I could go back to bed without a problem. When I got home from work I did some chores (didn’t finish them, though–there’s a load of laundry that needs to be fluffed and folded, and I need to finish the dishes to load in the dishwasher), and then worked on editing for a while. It didn’t go well, but I made progress, and I do feel more awake and rested so far this morning, so maybe tonight will go super-well. Stranger things have occurred, after all. We also watched the second to last episode of We Were Liars after Paul got home (later than usual), and then I went to bed earlier than usual. I think I need to get back into the going to bed at nine thing again. I also didn’t read anything last night because by the time I sat in my chair my brain was misfiring again. Heavy sigh. Maybe tonight? I think I just need to get back into the writing habit again; everything is still rusty and the gears don’t shift accordingly. so I need to retrain my brain and my body and my creativity into productivity again.

I can do it, I know I can.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Hump Day, Constant Reader, and I will be back again tomorrow morning.

I really appreciate the fact that the majority of pro wrestlers today focus more on their fitness–and have much better bodies than the ones in my youth did. I can easily see this dude dancing shirtless at Oz during Southern Decadence.
  1. In fairness, they were always right-wing; Rush and Fox just confirmed what they thought. ↩︎

Double Vision

Well, 2024 was a shit show of a year, wasn’t it? Then again, haven’t they all been pretty bad since 2015 and the golden escalator? It was, however, also a year with a lot of clarity for one Gregalicious; when I woke up to certain realities about life in general and started centering my own self in my life. So, for personal growth I’d say it was a good year; as for everything else in the world, maybe not so much. I didn’t publish anything in 2024; one of the few years since I started writing professionally where I actually had nothing–not even a short story–on my publications list. I did no volunteer work anywhere for anyone, and I just focused on my own recovery, my own self-discovery, and my own investigation into who I am and why I am who I am. It was a year in which I continued looking back, something that began in 2023 when Mom died, and came to a lot of realizations about myself and my history–and made peace with a lot of things that used to make me angry to remember and think about. I can reflect on some of those things now and not get angry. This was also my first full year on my anti-anxiety medication and the loss of anxiety from my life (and everything that branched out from the anxiety) has made such an amazing difference. It’s nice not having my anxiety controlling everything I do, and it’s also very interesting to see how many automatic coping mechanisms I had put into place to manage the anxiety, or at least keep it sort of controlled–especially when it comes to driving.

This was the year I turned against the legacy media, and frankly, I’ve not missed it in the least. I was worried about the election, not going to lie about that, but I also thought it was incredibly shitty they all decided to go with the “Biden is too old” narrative Trump and Fox were pushing on everyone, reporting it breathlessly like it was actually news while completely ignoring the fact that his opponent was a sun-downing narcissistic piece of shit. There have been two different sets of reporting on politics since the 1990s: the lies and demagoguery of Fox News, followed by the legacy media’s reporting on the lies Fox told like they were absolute facts. The positive glee with which the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC reported, rubbing their hands with excitement as they basically committed election interference for the Right yet again, shivving President Biden in the process; has anyone done a wellness check on that shit stain George Clooney yet? He’s managed to keep a low profile since he did Trump’s bidding for him. I do not miss legacy media, and hope they all circle the drain and fail. Maybe then, and only then, will we get the kind of media we deserve in this country and not the failing legacy media. The way they are slanting the Luigi Mangione story is also out-of-touch and offensive; why hasn’t the New York Times sent a reporter to a rust belt diner to see how those MAGA voters feel about Mangione? Oh, no, we don’t care about those viewpoints anymore. No, the legacy media thought they’d help MAGA return to power and then lead the resistance, like they thought they did in the first term. Newsflash: you didn’t.

Has there ever been a pundit class that believed the smoke they blew up their own asses like our current batch? Well, I am not watching them anymore. I follow some pundits on Youtube that I enjoy, but to be honest…I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, to tell you the truth, Constant Reader. I’ve always loved and cared about my country, even as I looked at it very clearly as more and more myths fell the older I got, but I also don’t feel like I need to follow the news everyday or participate in all of the partisan, pro-corporate, pro-rich let’s turn politics into a reality show bullshit. We deserve better.

As someone who witnessed Watergate and everything that followed, I bought into the mythology of journalistic integrity and the importance of truth; wasn’t that why his creators made Superman’s secret identity a journalist? I had planned on being a journalist myself when I went to college, and my intro class was all about integrity and honesty, which I also took as gospel for years, like a fool. Why did I ever think modern journalism had left the days of yellow journalism, of Hearst and Pulitzer, behind? My naive outlook, no doubt, and belief in American mythology. Journalistic integrity–which was beaten into our heads by every sitcom that decided to have one of the characters become a reporter for the school paper–was always for sale and never could be depended upon. So I happily bid adieu to thumb-on-the-scales journalism, and Constant Reader, I am never going back.

As for other things from 2024, let’s see. I fought with my health insurance company over a medication I need for seven months, thank you for that, bottom-feeding scum-sucking health insurance companies. This affected the rest of my care, and forced me to go even further into debt in the new year for medical treatments and so forth, and I am not entirely sure when exactly I will be able to recover from this financial distress. Yay for health insurance, and the entire health care industry. But at least it was straightened out, and the medication was approved through 2030. I also got some people at the insurance company in trouble. Too bad, so sad. Womp fucking womp, trash.

There was a lot of stress for me this past year, which was made even more interesting by the change in medications. My brain didn’t experience either stress or anxiety or even depression this year; my moods stayed fairly level all through the mess, but it definitely weighed on me subconsciously, just like delaying dealing with the holidays for a year didn’t really work the way I wanted other than pushing it back a year. Well done, dumb-shit. Ah, well.

What a strange, strange year it’s been.

And on that note, we’ll be hurtling into the abyss of 2025 at midnight. So, until tomorrow morning, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely lovely eve of the New Year, Constant Reader.

Dance with Me (One Last Time)

Paul will be home tonight, hopefully before I go to bed, and it’s about time. Much as I love Sparky and have appreciated the attention, I’d prefer having Paul at home. I just realized last night that this weekend is Championship Saturday for college football and I. Don’t. Care. This play-off thing is definitely odd; when it was limited to four teams and everyone else went to bowls, the bowls absolutely lost something. I didn’t find myself watching as many as I used to, and sometimes didn’t even watch the four team play-off. I’d usually watch the title game, but if LSU wasn’t in it I ‘d usually go to bed before it was over and not know who won until the following morning; that year Georgia finally pulled off the come-from behind to beat Alabama in the title game was one of those years where I thought, damn should have watched that to the end but…watching highlights was also fine. If LSU goes to a bowl, I’ll watch that for sure, but anything else? Kind of doubtful. Too many games and too much to keep track of, thank you very much. Maybe it’ll be exciting and I’ll get caught up in it.

Or maybe not. We’ll see.

I slept well again last night, but was a bit on the tired side when I got home. I worked for a little while before my brain started going a bit on the haywire side, so I called it an evening and repaired to my chair with Sparky and The Demon of Unrest. It’s so weird; it’s like my brain can only handle one creative task at a time. Now it’s in reading mode, so it seems like all it can really do is handle that, rather than editing or writing. It’s interesting to read about a time in our collective history where everything hung in the balance and no one knew what was going to happen next, or what the next day would bring as the tensions over Fort Sumter began rising. That’s the thing about history. I have a basic overview of a lot of history, particularly US or European, but there’s still a lot of things I don’t know the entire story of, like Fort Sumter. I knew the shelling of Fort Sumter was the start of the Civil War, but the histories I’ve usually read simply used that as the starting point of the war: Lincoln was elected, the slave states had a problem with that, and the secession crisis began1. It’s also wild to imagine that so much time passed between the election, the certification of the Electoral College vote, and the inauguration. It is so eerily reminiscent of the 2020 election insanity, and oh-so-much stupidity I’ve seen in this country for I don’t know how fucking long, so I’ll just say “since Fox News became the press agency for the far-right.” I think that, plus how good of a writer Erik Larson is, makes this book kind of unputdownable for me.

But Paul will be home tonight and all will be right in (my) world again. This apartment, which always seems so small to me most of the time, always seems so enormous and empty while he’s gone. Sigh. I think I’ll order a pizza for us tonight for dinner. He won’t get home until later in the evening, but if he’s hungry it’ll be there for him and if he’s not, well, there’s tomorrow’s lunch. It just makes the most sense to me. My weight has also seemed to stabilize at the usual 203 (I dropped down to 197 while in Kentucky but it’s gone back to the usual since then), which is fine. If I ever start making it back to the gym, then I’ll be checking my weight more often. I was going to start back up while Paul was gone, but I just kind of slid into that lethargic lonely state that kind of just took over last week. My creativity has seemed to find an outlet in writing those essays for ye olde Substack lately, which I’ve kind of run with, but I need to take control of my creativity again and harness it, whip it into working shape, and shift into a higher gear. (How many metaphors did I mix in that last sentence?) I’m also thinking that it’s probably not a bad idea to move all the drafts for longer entries here over there, since that’s where they’ll wind up if I ever finish writing them. That will also helped that nagging annoyance about all the unfinished drafts I have in my folder here. I mean, I still haven’t written about Agatha All Along, which I absolutely loved. I also want to write about Joe Locke, whose success I am enjoying, and adorable Jonathan Bailey, who is everywhere right now because of Wicked. It’s so nice seeing how many working, openly queer actors there are in show business right now. This is a really good thing; and progress I hope we can maintain in the face of this most recent, horrible election. (But at least the popular vote margin keeps narrowing–not that it will matter to any Republican. They are claiming a sweeping mandate, which they also did in 2004, and look how that turned out–so badly the country elected a biracial man to two consecutive terms.)

And no, I am saving my sympathies for the people who didn’t vote for this upcoming administration. You voted for him, shut the fuck up and deal with the consequences, I don’t want to hear a fucking word from you ever again. I know no one likes to remember any further back than last week, but the first term of the felon was such an enormous success…(sarcasm) I can see why he was reelected–to the everlasting disgrace of this country.

And yes, I will continue to maintain that straight white people are the worst thing that ever happened to this continent–and they keep doubling down on their sheer awfulness.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again either tomorrow or later today; one can never be too sure about anything, can they?

  1. One of my favorite things since 2016 is seeing people making the ahistorical claim that “the country has never been divided like it is now,” to which I always reply, “several hundred thousand American dead in the Civil War would like a word.” ↩︎

Heartaches by the Number

Sunday fun-day, and I am up much earlier than I was yesterday. It wasn’t a bad day, but I clearly needed to sleep in. I slept later than expected this morning, too, but here I am, up at just past eight and feeling pretty good. I really didn’t do much of anything yesterday. I did leave the house and get the mail (I got two shirts I’d ordered from Macy’s) and then swung iby the grocery store to get treats for Sparky and for us (they had the Snicker brownie cookies again, which are fucking amazing), and then I came home. I curled up in my chair with Scott Carson’s Where They Wait, which I am enjoying the hell out of, before Paul got up and we finished the first half of Bridgerton, watched The Iron Claw, and then after we watched the gymnastics meet last night, won by Simone Biles (of course), moved on to Hollywood Con Queen, which in interesting, if odd. I plan on spending some more time with the book today, hopefully finishing reading it this morning before getting some writing done today. I’d like to get this second draft of “When I Die” out of my hair, and I also need to reread and possibly revise “The Last To See Him Alive” before I submit it to an anthology. I have been very lackadaisical about my writing now for almost a year, and I need to start taking it seriously again. I think that’s been part of my feeling off for so long–I am not writing much, either and that always has an affect on my over-all well-being.

I also think the overwhelming pile of things I am working on has a lot to do with my feeling at sea and uninspired, to be honest. I do love to write, but as always, I have to make myself do something I love. I also am much easier to distract these days, too–which I do not like–but when I am home working it’s Sparky who distracts me (he’s adorable and sweet, so it’s hard not to give him attention when he wants some), or Paul getting up and wanting to watch something–I will always drop everything to hang out with him, whether I can afford the loss of time or no, sorry/not sorry–but I do need to get some focus. Maybe I should listen to music on my headphones? Music always works, usually; but who knows if the old tricks will continue to work now?

I also need to get caught up on blog entries, too. I still have to finish my posts about Dead Boy Detectives and Mary and George, I’ll have to do one when I finish reading this book, and of course there are any number of others that are dangling in my drafts folder. I also came up with a really good title for another story yesterday, sigh, which I scribbled down in my journal. My creativity is still there, of course, but it needs to be harnessed again so I can take it out for a ride. I also spent alot of time yesterday thinking about something I definitely want to blog about, which was triggered by Marjorie Taylor Greene, the cro magnon congresswoman from Georgia being the white trash piece of shit she was by attacking Jasmine Crockett’s appearance the other day–don’t come for Jasmine unless she calls you, bleached blonde bad built butch body bitch–and the whole “going high” thing. Much as I love Michelle Obama, I have been saying since the of Rush and Fox News that going high doesn’t work when they are going low; they see going high as being weak and they go lower. The only way to defeat them and shut them up is to give their own back to them with a vengeance–I bet the inbred trash will think twice about coming for someone’s looks again. And as someone who has had people going low at him for most of his life, I will not go high. You open that door and I will fucking shred you–and I also will not be shamed by “allies” (always straight white cisgender women, for the record) for giving it back to them. We are literally in a war for the soul and future of this country; going high with these kind of stakes on the line simply does not work, and I am tired of the right saying racist, homophobic, and misogynist bullshit while being told to “go high.” Sorry, Michelle, I love you–and I love you even more for your class and dignity, but I would love to listen to you read Melania for the racist gold-digging filth she is sometime.

The sad truth is you never win while seated on your high horse, and we as a nation simply cannot afford to lose. And they cannot stand on ANY moral high ground while pedophiles like Matt Gaetz and inbreds like Marjorie Greene are serving in the People’s House, period–as well as any traitors, and there are a LOT of those on the Republican side of the aisle right now.

(I’m also enjoying watching all the trash who hated the Chiefs because of Travis and Taylor now worshipping them because of Hairy Butt. Pick a fucking lane.)

And on that note, I am having some breakfast and then reading for a while. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will probably show up again a little later.

(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I

Wednesday and Pay the Bills Day has rolled around yet again, which is fine. I was tired when I got home from work (I also picked up the mail), so just was kind of blah. I got about 1800 words done yesterday, which was good. They were not good words, but they were words, and I am counting that as a win and progress. Paul is still not feeling quite up to snuff yet, so it was a rather quiet evening at home. We’re watching Palm Royale, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m still not really sure what it is, to be honest, but it’s okay, I guess? Maybe another episode, and I’ll see if I want to continue. The cast is really quite good, but I’m not really sure what the show is all about, or what it’s supposed to be, if that makes any sense? I mean, I know I should feel some sympathy for the main character, but what she wants and needs is inexplicable to me so far. Ah, well.

I slept really well last night and feel pretty rested this morning. Whether that means I’ll make it through the day feeling that way is another question, of course. But I feel like I’m back into my normal groove, whatever that may be now, and like I said, I did get some writing done last night, so hopefully tonight I’ll be able to do more. I also need to get into the gym one night this week, probably not tonight, but potentially tomorrow will work as well.

It’s kind of nice to realize that, stamina issues aside, I am healed and whole for the first time since January 2023. And now I need to figure out a lot of stuff, as always. But it’s nice to feel clear-headed for a change, and rested, and relaxed. I had literally no idea how much I’d accepted my high anxiety as normal, and how lovely it is to have that constant inner voice silenced. I’m doing good work when writing, too–the first drafts are of course horrible, but I am very pleased with the revisions. I also need to update my to-do list, so I have a better idea of everything I want to submit to and try to time out my work going forward. I know I need to get this last short story I wrote revised by Sunday, and I’d like to finish the one I started last week. I need to finish “When I Die” and another one for the collection and then it is finished; praise Jesus and pass the ammunition. I also think I’ll be able to get this other y/a revised this year and submitted as well. And I want to write a story for an anthology about Hollywood crime; and I think I can actually revise the first chapter of Chlorine and use it for this–not that I won’t use it for Chlorine, either; I am a writer so I can do whatever I want with my words whenever I want, can’t I?

And I am really leaning into turning that unfinished Paige manuscript from all those years ago into a Scotty book, and it will be lovely killing off (a fictionalized) Ann Coulter. It’s funny when I think about how politicized I became after the stolen election of 2000 (you want to deny the 2020 results, well, I can deny the 2000 one as well. I will never believe Bush won that election; the Supreme Court interfered and disenfranchised God only knows how many Floridians, and look where that horrible decision got us); I started my political reeducation in the 1990’s. I’d been brought up to be a conservative Republican, but I also stopped hating myself when I walked away from that “value” system. But the Reagan/Republican/Evangelical response to HIV/AIDS in the 1980’s showed me how meaningless and empty those values were, and contraindicated by my religious upbringing. Jesus did not come as a destroyer, He came as a peacemaker with a message of God’s love and forgiveness. The entire concept that He would return to oversee the end of the world and the final battle between good and evil is some pagan-style nonsense. In the 1990s, as my parents got sucked into Fox News (it really was the perfect news station for them), I began questioning everything. I couldn’t vote Republican because they think I’m a second-class citizen (if even that high), and were perfectly content to treat me that way with no discount on my taxes. But I’d also been raised to believe that Democrats were evil and Communist and America-haters–but when I started delving more into it, and actually following the news and reading books (on both sides), I began to see something strange. Democrats, and books by and about them, were generally about helping people and policies to make people’s lives better; Republicans seemed to only be interested in power, consolidating that power, and gaming the Democrats. The 2000 election was a slap in the face–and I was furious that Democrats rolled over so easily (see how Republicans tried to subvert an election loss in 2020? I am also not convinced 2016 was legitimate, either; two can play that game). I don’t bother to trying to understand both sides anymore; the explosion of idiocy, lunacy, and racism that Obama’s election in 2008 unleased was probably one of the most disgusting things I’ve had the misfortune to bear witness to in my lifetime. I don’t need to find common ground with people who want to strip me of my rights as an American–that my books shouldn’t be published, call me a groomer and a pedophile. Those people want me dead, and no one should ever have to explain to other humans why they are deserving of the same treatment as everyone else. Sorry, they are and always have been my enemy, have spent most of my life trying to destroy me, and won’t be happy until the world is free of the scourge of queer people.

They want me gone? I want THEM gone–because I also don’t see them making life anything but miserable for people who are not like them, whether it’s sexuality or gender identity or the amount of melanin in their skin.

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

Stagger Lee

Thursday last morning in the office this week blog. I get to go in a little later because I have to stay until five tonight; and of course tomorrow morning I have PT at the ungodly hour of seven a.m. Gah. But it’s okay, really. I slept super well last night–probably the best night’s sleep of the week–and I finally got my keyboard for the iPad yesterday: huzzah! It works beautifully, too…which is the last excuse I had for not getting any writing done (or as much as I would like). Now I have a functional laptop and a functional iPad for writing anywhere in the house, which is kind of fun. I can get my iPad in the morning and write in bed if I want, or I can take the laptop up there, or…so many plethoras of options, and NO MORE EXCUSES.

Oh, I’ll still make excuses, of course, to get out of doing the day’s writing. And I did do some yesterday–I wrote about seven hundred or so words on “Passenger to Franklin” (an Agatha Christie title homage that really pleases me far more than it probably should)–but very little of anything else other than watching Part II of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion (Kyle Richards remains a disgusting piece of shit bitch who doesn’t need to be on my television screen anymore). I then spent the rest of the evening watching the news (or clips from the news) and despairing further about the future of the country and grateful again that I am old. It’s about the only benefit to being old, really, and not having children: the future isn’t really my problem, but at the same time, I also don’t want the adults of the future to have to deal with a destroyed and/or increasingly hostile and damaged planet, either, because I am not a monster. Sometimes I think I worry about the future more than people who actually do have kids, or are young.

I watched a really interesting conversation between Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace last night–and they were both right: the Republican Party of today wants to eliminate our democracy and set up an authoritarian state where they are always in charge and they can get rid of everyone they don’t like. Sound familiar? See Berlin, 1933. It’s scary to contemplate, and even scarier to realize The Handmaid’s Tale was actually very prescient. I became worried about authoritarianism coming to the US during the Reagan years and what followed, when the Republican party became convinced that they had a divine right and mandate to always be in power. As I watched people get subsumed by Fox Propaganda in the 1990s (when the character assassination of Hilary Clinton truly began), I saw it for what it was: definitely not a news organization, and it’s partisan nature had everything to do with the rollback on rules about what is and isn’t news…during the Reagan administration. It’s astonishing how little people think about the recent past, or even try to put the present in the context of the recent past.

Let alone thinking about the older history, which no one knows1. Then again, I am from a part of the country that proudly claims hatred and bigotry as their heritage, so maybe knowing history might not help as much as I would like to believe.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

I’m doing a panel for a Sisters in Crime chapter on-line event this weekend, do tune in to any or all of the antics this weekend. It’s called Murderous March, and it’s being put on by the Upper Hudson Sisters chapter, and you can register to view the panels here. My panel is at 2:30 eastern, it’s called “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,” and is being moderated by the wonderful Richie Narvaez. My co-panelists are the amazing Carol Pouliot, Edwin Hill, Tina Bellegarde, and M. E. Browning. It should be a pretty good time, I think.

And on that note, I think I’ll head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.