Tag: Game of Thrones

Love Sensation

Monday and back to the office with me, lickety-split and all that nonsense. I feel good and rested this morning, if having a bit of a slow start to the day, but once the coffee starts kicking in I should be fine. Here’s hoping for a lovely week. The coffee is quite good; one of the chores I did yesterday was descaling and cleaning the Keurig, which was very overdue. I did quite a bit yesterday, given how much time I spent sitting in my easy chair, chilling out. But I got some work done on the floors, organized the refrigerator and freezer to optimize space, and now probably this coming weekend I will work on the kitchen cabinets and the laundry room and my workspace. It was lovely coming downstairs to a clean kitchen this morning, and also kind of relaxing. I have some errands to do, and am wondering about getting them handled today on the way home from work tonight. We’re in both a heat advisory and an extreme heat watch, with the “feels like” in the high hundred and teens. YIKES!!! The car is going to feel amazing when I get in it after work this afternoon….yay.

Yesterday was a very lovely day–it’s so lovely to enjoy weekends free from stress about the gazillion emails waiting in my inbox, you have no idea–and I did some vastly overdue chores and organizing, while watching television and doing some writing. (So many people think I’ll be bored when I finally retire from the day job. Hardly. Not so long as I can read, watch, and type, darlin’.) I got caught up on the news–Ukraine continues to embarrass and wreck the Russian economy and war effort, and it’s just a matter of time before Putin falls, isn’t it? I am very pleased with how the weekend went, and I feel so completely rested this morning, it’s kind of wild, you know?

House of the Dragon is so much better this season than the previous ones, and I have to say I am glad I went back and gave this season a second chance after that terrible season opener. Finally things are happening instead of the conspiring–not good, especially given Game of Thrones–but I still don’t care who winds up on the Iron Throne, and given it’s Westeros, my guess is none of these contenders that we are seeing will win anything. Royal family feuds inevitably and historically weaken dynasties–so is it such a wonder that the Targaryens fell, and this was how it all started? I just wish the first two seasons hadn’t been quite so slow with all the set-up.

Started rereading Celebrity yesterday, and picked out my next reads–picked out a novel I don’t know how I acquired–and it entirely possible I confused this author with someone else (it’s happened before, and will happen again). Regardless, the first three paragraphs of The Last House on Needless Street sucked me right in AND triggered my creativity, so am looking forward to getting deeper into my read. It seems like one of those fabulous “creepy house down the street in a small town, which I love (We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the ur-novel of this subgenre), so we shall see how that goes. L.A. Noir will be my nonfiction; it’s also research, after all. I also must make a list of research necessary for the next Scotty, so I can get started doing that. I also want to finish this chapter of Chlorine before working on some short stories. I also am thinking again about The Last Picture Show and writing an essay about its depiction of masculinity and male sexuality, which would also require a revisit.

Still digesting Rough Pages, which was so engrossing and smart, with so much to say. I wish I had gone deeper into the importance of queer books, which is the book’s overlying theme, in my newsletter recommending the book to my subscribers. We have so many amazing queer crime writers these days, it’s hard keeping up with them all.

We also started watching Ride or Die, and seriously–can we have Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer in everything, seriously? This show is incredible, and both women are fantastic in their roles. Why haven’t we seen Waddingham as an action/adventure star before? She is a goddess, and the way she lights up the screen is amazing. Highly recommend this one, seriously.

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

Gorgeous out bisexual actor Francois Arnaud for Under Armour. Damn! You see why I’ve been a fan since The Borgias.

Cool Zero

Friday morning and I need to drive out to Dillard University’s campus for an all day training, under the guise of Staff Development Day. I’d rather be working at home today, to be completely honest, but that’s also okay. Next week I finally have my normal four days in, one day at home work schedule for the first time since mid-June. Here’s hoping it’s a fun and interesting day and my mind doesn’t wander, like it does when I get bored (sorry/not sorry; that goes back to first grade with me), which will just make the day drag out longer than it will already seem. Heavy heaving sigh.

I was very tired yesterday, but I managed to run my errand to make groceries on the way home and then I just collapsed into my easy chair “just for a minute” but then Sparky fell asleep in my lap and I stayed there until Paul got home (late). I caught up on the news (sigh) and then just watched clips of Game of Thrones on Youtube; it really was an incredibly well done show until those final two seasons when they blew it all up. The thing that was great about the show was that everything was unexpected and unpredictable; any character could die at any moment, but as the show went on, it became apparent that some characters would make it through to the end for the big climactic arc, which they might not survive. The three Lannister siblings, Sansa, Arya, Jon, Daenarys…they weren’t going anywhere. The finale, and the last two seasons, were a missed dismount, sadly. Would it have been too difficult for them to write an incestuous (but they were incestuous) marriage between Jon/Aegon and his aunt, Daenarys? I guess they really wanted that episode of Kings Landing being destroyed and Cersei dethroned and killed. With Jon/Aegon on the Iron Throne, Sansa wouldn’t have felt the need to make the North independent….ah, what could have been–and yes, the hints of her Targaryen madness were there from the first episode; it’s kind of interesting how Daenarys and Sansa went through an almost similar path to their finale. (It was also kind of awful how character growth for women often involved rape and abuse, or, in Cersei’s case, a public humiliation.)

But if anything was changed, we’d lose that magnificent final scene of Lady Olenna Tyrell roasting Jaime before she dies. (It did beg the question of why she never had Cersei poisoned. Ah, well.)

I didn’t do much writing yesterday, due to being so tired–I really was, but it wasn’t fatigue, it was just being worn out. As tired as I was, it was nice that it wasn’t the fatigue from before. I did sleep pretty well, despite waking a few times, but I am really looking forward to tonight’s sleep–since I don’t need to get up to an alarm tomorrow. Tomorrow? We’ll see how I feel and how it goes when I get up, I reckon. I want to get back on board with my writing, obviously, and may do some tonight when I get home–depending, of course, on how I feel after this day of professional development. I also want to finish reading my book–that’s what I should do after work this evening–and start reading my next. There are also some newsletters I need to get finished and scheduled. I didn’t send one at all this week, and I don’t remember if I sent one last weekend or not. Ah, the last one went out on July 6th, so ten days ago (I did, however, send three over five days that first week of the month) so yes, there is definitely one due this weekend.

I didn’t watch the unpresidential address last night, and it looks like it turned out to be exactly what I expected it to be–more whining and grievances from the colicky diaper baby in the White House, and just yet another reminder of how lovely it was before the unholy alliance between Fox, the Republicans, and the Heritage Foundation to undermine our democracy and establish a conservative religious state, similar to Iran, took hold.

Sigh. At least Ukraine continues to drag Russia to the hell they so richly deserve.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Enjoy your weekend eve, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a full report on Friday!

Live oaks dripping with Spanish moss is one of my favorite things about the South.

Looking for a Stranger

Today’s title sounds like one of my old erotica stories from back in the day, and I am really disappointed that I never used it (makes note in journal).1 Yesterday was pleasant, overall. I was pretty busy at the office during the day, but was able to come straight home from work, which was lovely. I really don’t want to come home to a messy house on Saturday, but we’ll see how motivated I am when I get home tonight. I am leaving tomorrow morning (when I feel like it), and so I think I’ll wait to pack until then, too. I am only going to be gone two nights, so I don’t need to take everything under the sun with me, because I never end up being able to do much of anything other than read before going to sleep at night. I think I’ll just pack the iPad and the book I am reading, and we’ll see how it all goes. I doubt that I’ll be back here until Saturday night or Sunday morning; stranger things, however, have been known to happen, you know. Although I am not sure now if I’m going. A relative (one of his upteen cousins) passed and the funeral was Monday; Dad drove down for that and apparently drove back to Kentucky yesterday. It seems a bit weird for him to do that only to drive seven hours back, so he probably already went to Mom’s grave and I will have a four-day at home unexpected staycation. See the difference not having anxiety any more makes? I would be stressed and tense, wondering about tomorrow and risking obsessively texting. So, either I drive up there and see Dad in Alabama, or I stay here in New Orleans with a glorious four day weekend, and I have to confess, the more I think about it and the more coffee I swill down this morning, the more I like the idea of being home. I could get some rest and get thoroughly caught up on everything and could maybe even do a deep clean on the house. So, either option is roses. I also am not sure how busy we are today, but I do know that I’m in the clinic by myself.

I was a bit tired when I got home from work yesterday and didn’t do a whole hell of a lot. I did scribble in my journal some, but we started watching the new season of House of the Dragon, which…continues to be boring and slow? I mean, a lot happened, but at the same time, it didn’t seem like anything was happening. I am also not vested in any of the characters, and don’t care who ends up on the Iron Throne, and the only characters I feel anything for? That feeling is loathing. I guess we’re hate watching for the dragons and the production values? It is visually stunning, though. The show just feels very drawn out for some reason. I don’t know why we aren’t more engaged, and it does feel like we’re watching because we watched Game of Thrones and are used to it? (It was an amazing show until it went completely off the rails.) Even the battles are kind of dull, and considering how epic the ones in Game of Thrones were…

Apparently eleven people in Louisiana have been hospitalized for drinking raw milk. How can we convince these people that if they take arsenic or strychnine, they’d really own the libs? (Arsenic, after all, is very good for your skin in small doses; Victorian women used to take it for that purpose…so it wouldn’t be a hard sell to anyone with Mar-a-Lago face, would it? Now, I will say I’ve had raw milk before–family of farmers, remember? And I did like it–but not so much that I would risk getting hospitalized for it. It was very rich and thick and creamy–but nowadays most people think whole milk is too thick…I grew up drinking whole milk and switching to skimmed was like going from heavy cream to milk-flavored water–but now I even find whole milk unappetizing.

I have heard from Dad; the trip is still on. He is definitely driving back down tomorrow, but I won’t have to leave until the afternoon so I can get some stuff done around the house and I don’t have to get up early. It should be a nice day for a drive, too. I’ll stop on the way up to eat, and I’ll take my time as there is no rush; the drives all the way to Kentucky are so long they do require an early departure time or else I’ll get there so late I’ll be sleepy in the car–which I do get anyway because twelve hours is a lot, but I think the last time I drove to Kentucky it didn’t bother me at all? But the later I get there the sleepier I am, and of course if I take any kind of stimulant–coffee, energy drink, etc.–I won’t sleep at all that night.

And I may finally be used to my schedule. FINALLY, right? I woke up this morning again before the alarm, and got to cuddle with Sparky for a bit before getting up. I kind of just took my time this morning getting ready to go with no semblance of urgency; which was also very nice. I love this lack of anxiety! Hurray for better living through chemistry!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning before I head north!

A lot of people like Tucks because it’s literally all toilet humor, but I am no longer in junior high so I usually skip it.
  1. It occurs to me that I could actually republish old short stories on my newsletter. Hmmm. Something to ponder for sure. ↩︎

He Stopped Loving Her Today

And here we are on a Saturday morning and I am up early again. I went to bed early last night, too, which was nice–I was a bit tired after this week’s Hacks and The Boys. I feel very good this morning, too. I have some ZOOM things to do for the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon; a reading at three and moderating a panel tonight at seven, and another panel tomorrow at six pm my time. The national gymnastics finals are today at three, so I’ll be watching on my iPad during the reading–with no offense intended at all for the other readers; I’ve been waiting to watch this since last year, and I’ll be listening to the readers, not the meet.

Yesterday was lovely. I got my work-at-home chores done, cleaned some, did laundry all day, and had a nice relaxing day at home, which was super-nice. I spent the early evening ater Paul got home catching up on the news, and ordered a pizza from Reginelli’s–which is another example of how small a town New Orleans can be. When I served on jury duty for that civil case all those years ago, the plaintiff was a Reginelli, and that case inspired Murder in the Irish Channel, a Chanse novel I am particularly proud of, and what our friend Susan would order for our Game of Thrones nights at her home. I also managed to get a late newsletter out, discussing Cheryl A. Head’s marvelous short story “Finding Jimmy Baldwin,” which you can read right here. I am going to try to get another one out tomorrow, to be back on the twice weekly schedule, but we shall see how that goes. I have some errands to run today, too, before settling in for the reading and the panel and the gymnastics. I should also probably pick up and do some more cleaning, too. I am going to try to get some reading done this morning, too…Listen for the Whisperer‘s second chapter, and back to the novel I’ve been trying to get into for several weeks now, with no disrespect intended for the author or the book itself; it’s me, not the book. I think reading the short stories might have helped kick the reading gene back into gear; although I suppose we shall see this morning, won’t we?

And of course, later this month I am going to both Alabama and Florida, which means an audiobook to listen to and write about, so huzzah for that. The audiobooks actually make me look forward to going on long drives again, and of course, I am now anxiety-free so I don’t get tense and tired while driving , which always resulted in me being exhausted; I wasn’t tired at all the last time I drove to Kentucky, which is my benchmark for long drives. Obviously, given a choice I wouldn’t take all these drives, but I make the best of them, and listening to books definitely has made them much more bearable. I’m not sure exactly what I am going to listen to on this drive; I do have some interesting books downloaded already on my phone.

Nothing about that rape academy website (or whatever it was; I was far too disgusted by what it was for and about so didn’t dig into the news reports deeply) surprised me, other than I thought the number of visits (or hits, or whatever the term is for that) was shockingly low at sixty-two million, frankly; I would have assumed it was one out of every two or three men–but then again, not everyone had heard of that website, so it would have been significantly higher otherwise. As everyone says, maybe not all men but always a man, which is accurate. The men are clearly not okay, and haven’t been in a while, but as long as they continue subscribing to the notion that women are merely sperm depositories whose sole function is running the house and squirting out fetuses, they will continue to be. I’ve always been grateful not to be a straight man, because that privilege comes at too great a cost for me. The whole manosphere thing has always been hilarious to me; who thinks Joe Rogan is a fucking role model? How sad and pathetic is that? That man-child Braden Peters (talk about generic white-boy names!) is clearly mentally unwell and his parents clearly failed him. (You can’t start injecting testosterone at fourteen without parental consent, can you? There were places in his life where his parents should have parented better, but he also bears some responsibility for how broken he is; overdosing on crystal meth is a warning sign he clearly isn’t capable of reading.) How can anyone look at Theo Von, Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz, and other grifters of their ilk, and think, that’s what I want to be like.

Shudder.

So many podcasts and their podcasters are the dregs of humanity. But when you’re selling something people want to buy–your inability to get laid isn’t your fault–you’ll always make money.

And their mentality that gay men are somehow lesser than them because we’re not into the bullshit they are is laughable. None of them would get laid if they were gay men; no gay men would ever find them attractive–especially when you know they don’t clean their ass properly because “that’s some gay hit, man.” No fucking thanks. That any woman would ever want to fuck any of their unhygienic selves–I mean, I can smell Theo Von through the screen, you know? He also used to work out at my old gym once in a while; it was weird seeing him when he was nothing more than that douche from Road Rules trying to start a comedy career. And no, even when he was younger and in much better shape–he was still completely unfuckable, to me at any rate. Trust me, bros, you ain’t got nothing to fear from us queers, okay?

So, no, the straight men aren’t okay. Thank God my straight male friends aren’t anything like them–but they wouldn’t be my friends if they were. I don’t assume all straight men are homophobic sexist pricks until proven otherwise…but they often prove themselves lacking in that area without any prompting or assistance from me. I’ve been wanting to tackle the topic of “boys will be boys” and “locker room talk” as one of my masculinity essays, but haven’t really found my way into it–the US Men’s Olympic Hockey team made me think of it, along with the Access Hollywood tape we all listened to back in 2016–and trying to find my way into the subject. The rape academy shit may be the key to the opening paragraph, plus the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time in locker rooms throughout my lie, or in male-only spaces, and have heard it myself.

I also never excused it.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines and getting some breakfast. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Statue of Ramses II at night with the crescent moon

Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)

Saturday morning and I have a couple of errands to do this morning. I need to go by the bank (I haven’t made a deposit in person in eons) and I have to swing by the grocery store. Sigh. I really didn’t want to leave the house today, but here we are. It’s also a struggle these days to get through as we go through and experience the collapse of the American experiment in self-rule. I think another significant part of our history that isn’t taught the way it should be is we aren’t taught about how many Tories there were in the colonies during the lead up to and aftermath of the Revolution. We aren’t taught New England threatened to secede during the War of 1812, or that there were people on both sides of the Civil War1 that sympathized with the other side; North and South weren’t monoliths the way we are taught. We aren’t taught about how many Americans were Nazi sympathizers and isolationists before Pearl Harbor, using the slogan “America First”–so you see why I have always raised a cynical eyebrow whenever anyone uses that slogan; it was tied to Nazi sympathizers to me.

Watching the collapse of our country is challenging and more than a little bit depressing. It is terrible that just as I approach the age of retirement and the final chapter of my life…well, the retirement may turn out to be involuntary, as my clinic’s funding is definitely on the chopping block, Social Security is about to be looted and destroyed, and I don’t want to even look at the paltry 401k, which has also probably evaporated. No job and no retirement funds is going to be awesome when I turn 64. Paul got the notice from the NEH to not bother applying for grant funding, as it’s all been cut, so his job may not survive this, either–no more festivals in the spring. So, miss me with “we need to be nice to MAGA voters now finding out”–fuck them now and forever. I will never forgive them, and their suffering lightens mine. You want to embrace them, be my guess. Me? I will never stop laughing and pointing, let alone mocking them and enjoying their tears. My patience has worn out for ignorant haters, sorry not sorry– and as they so eloquently put it, “fuck your feelings.”

Yesterday was a nice day, overall. I got up, had a virtual meeting at work, and then did my Admin work before running some errands. I got that done, and then Paul and I made a Costco run and spent an insane amount of money. After getting home, lugging everything into the house and putting it all away, I was tired. I collapsed into my chair for a while as Paul went upstairs to work on the NEH grant–but got the email so didn’t have to bother for the rest of the evening and we dove further into The Residence, which I am greatly enjoying. Uzo Adoba is fantastic as Cordelia Copp, the world’s greatest detective, and it’s very well cast, high production values, and the writing is quite crisp. The chief usher at the White House (the divine Giancarlo Esposito) is murdered during a state dinner, and Cordelia is brought in to solve the murder. I think what’s most interesting is the divide between the White House domestic staff v. the White House political staff; the domestics work for the House, the political staff comes and goes. I’d never really thought much about the staff of the residence, so it’s an interesting look at how that all works, and it’s very cleverly structured. Highly recommend.

I do have some errands to do today, and a lot of straightening up to do as well. I want to get some reading and writing in this morning, so I can go to the gym tomorrow (I know, right?) and get some more done. I’ve been letting things slide a lot lately, which probably means I am depressed, which isn’t surprising, given the state of the world and everything else going on in my life. I think there’s an element of why bother with this book, to be honest, which is counter-productive and quite self-destructive, but it’s hard to be productive when your default is almost always pessimism. I always knew Republicans were working very hard to destroy everything decent about this country (unfettered capitalism is sociopathic in nature), but I never dreamed they might actually succeed. To paraphrase Game of Thrones: “Whenever I wonder why the Republicans would do something so counter-productive to democracy, I like to play a little game: what is the worst reason they would want to do this?”

Littlefinger was right, even if he did end up with his throat slit for his treachery.

Yesterday I also realized that one of the great American traditions, going back to colonial days, of evading paying duties and tariffs was smuggling. I used to love to read about Colonial smugglers (John Hancock was one), and some great fiction was built up around smuggling. I’ve always thought the years of Prohibition (and alcohol smuggling) in New Orleans would be an interesting time to write about. That decade saw the rise of Huey Long to power in Louisiana, and there are some fantastic stories about that post-Storyville time here. Jean Lafitte was a pirate, too–but he was also a very successful smuggler. But again, one of the great problems of New Orleans/Louisiana research is going down wormholes and sidebars–my ADHD does not matters at all in this regard; I do remember wanting to write about “Mrs. Officer,” the first woman cop in New Orleans, who was hired because they needed a woman to search and interrogate criminal women, which was a problem during Storyville days. I mean, what a great decade to research and write about! Imagine what “Mrs. Officer”2 endured in terms of misogyny as the only woman cop in an era where women couldn’t vote.

There’s also a protest today scheduled in New Orleans, as well as around the country. I’m hoping to make it, it just depends on how tired I am after getting things done this morning. I feel pretty good right now, but that also doesn’t mean I won’t flag later, either.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you most likely tomorrow morning.

  1. This is a classic example of why I say we don’t teach history properly (which will end up being a longer-form essay for my newsletter at some point). There were plenty of Tories during the American Revolution. There were Southern sympathizers in the North and Unionists in the South–I knew about the North, but whenever I’d come across that about the South I figured it was after-the-fact apologia, excusing Southern whites for their inhumanity. But over the least few years as I’ve done more deep dives into Alabama history, and hearing more old family stories, I’ve come to realize it was actually true. Erik Larson discusses this in more detail in his The Demons of Unrest, which I do recommend. ↩︎
  2. SHe was always referred to as “Mrs. Officer,” which also makes a great title. ↩︎

Lotta Love

Monday morning and back to the office with me this morning. I slept well again last night and had no trouble getting up; I am neither groggy nor tired as I sip my coffee and eat my morning coffee cake slice. It was a nice, if not terribly productive weekend. The Festivals are this weekend, so Paul will most likely be moving to the Monteleone on Wednesday, leaving me home to deal with a lonely, needy kitty in the meantime. I do have a lot of work to get done this morning at the office, so pray for me. I’m taking a long weekend for the Festivals–Friday and Monday, mainly for the recovery aspect–so hopefully next week isn’t too terrible. I also managed to blow off my taxes for the entire weekend, so I need to get that done this week as well.

Sounds like a to-do list is in order to me, don’t you think?

Spring is here! It was gorgeous yesterday when I walked outside to take out the trash. Paul had to go to the Quarter for the annual Stanley/Stella shouting contest at Jackson Square. I couldn’t justify going and taking the afternoon off from chores and writing (should writing be considered one of my chores?) for the day. Maybe next year I’ll remember that I don’t need to be turning books in during the first third of the year. Meh, fall is football season so there’s always something else to take me away from it, isn’t there? We did finish watching Paradise last night, and it really is quite excellent. It’s also one of the best produced and written shows I’ve seen in a while. The acting is stellar, and the writing is very clever and everything that happens in earlier episodes matter in the later ones, so everyone really needs to be paying attention. It’s also incredibly smart, and I am sure any parallels to our current world are purely coincidence and unintentional.

I also watched a documentary–a short one–that explained how the creators and writers of the Game of Thrones show didn’t stick the landing and ended up ruining one of the greatest television programs ever made. Like most everyone, I didn’t much care for the final season, and especially not the last episode…but I put everything aside for the pure pleasure of watching the spectacle–and it was a spectacle. Everyone watched Game of Thrones1, didn’t they? Everyone at my office did, and we always talked about on Monday morning, sometimes re-watching the episode in the upstairs lounge of our old office on Frenchmen Street. There were some incredible cinematic moments on the show, and of course, the acting was always topnotch. Every so often, when I think about it, I’ll go in search of clips from the show on Youtube, which is what I was doing when Paul got home yesterday afternoon with Chinese food for dinner. (I was not one of the people who had a problem with Daenarys going full-on Mad Queen and destroying Kings Landing.) I don’t know, but I can’t help but think a re-watch and a full-on binge of eight seasons could be fun. I know the weekend after the Festivals will most likely be one of those “can’t get off the couch from exhaustion” weekend, so perhaps that is the right timing for a massive binge.

I didn’t get nearly as much done this weekend as I would have liked, and while that is a consistent issue for one Gregalicious, it’s also one that needs to stop being an issue. It’s very easy to get distracted and lose time down a wormhole, especially when I start doing my researches on-line. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept that the 1970’s were actually fifty years ago; my fiftieth high school reunion is in three years. (No, I am not going if they have one; although I am a little surprised that the majority of my classmates, I think, are still alive.) I told Paul last night that I was watching World War II videos yesterday morning, and I realized, to my horror, that the war had only been over for slightly more than sixteen years when I was born, which had never occurred to him before, either. YIKES. Certainly made me feel every second of my age, let me tell you! But it was true. My maternal grandparents were born before the Archduke was assassinated; so when they were born, Austria-Hungary was still a thing, the Germans had a kaiser and the Russians had a czar. The war was still in recent memory when I was a kid, and I grew up in a neighborhood of Chicago that was full of war refugees and post-war immigrants. A friend’s father had numbers tattooed on his inner forearm. The past was still very much the present when I was a kid, and we were also still in that post-war “America is the greatest country EVER” glow, and we were all taught white supremacy, obedience to the patriarchy, and American exceptionalism…but even when I was a small kid things seemed a bit wrong; committing genocide on the natives never sat well with me as a kid, nor did the fact the way US History was taught (and written about for kids) to justify everything we did as a country as “right” and “pure” and “moral” seem correct to me…and I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood recognizing and correcting the fallacies and bald-faced lies and justifications I was taught and groomed to believe.

We were all groomed to be good little citizens who obeyed and never questioned authority. Yeah, that worked, didn’t it?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later or tomorrow morning.

Screenshot
  1. Which proves the point I am always making about history not being taught or presented properly to students. George R. R. Martin drew from European history for his story (clearly the incestuous Targaryens were based on the Ptolemies; and he pulled from both the Wars of the Roses and Maurice Druon’s series of novels about the end of the primary line of the Capetian dynasty in France, The Cursed Kings), so why can’t history be taught in a similar way? I mean, you can never go wrong with basing fantasy on actual history; so why not teach actual history the way you would a fantasy novel? ↩︎

Bad Case of Loving You

And it is now Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. Sparky and I are the only creatures stirring for now, and it’s kind of nice. It’s chilly again this morning, but that’s fine; all I have left to do this weekend is go to the gym and make groceries, and I haven’t decided whether to do that today or tomorrow; probably today so I can get it all over with and won’t have to leave the house tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. I need to do some writing and reading this weekend and some cleaning, too–I’ll have to make a list at some point.

Yesterday was a very good day. I was a little sore and achy–still am–from my return to the gym on New Year’s Day. I got all my work done, and then we made a Costco run; which wore me out and after getting home, lugging all of it inside, and then putting it all away did me in. I did read some more of Winter Counts, which I am really enjoying and hope to finish this weekend. I do have some emails to answer this weekend, and I slept deeply and well last night–Sparky didn’t annoy me out of bed until about eight thirty this morning, so that’s super cool and nice as well. I do feel rested, which is kind of nice, too. There’s no rush for me to run those errands today, either; I can run them at any time today I so choose. No college football today–and I doubt I’m going to watch any more of it this year; I am not only not a fan of any of the final four, but if I had to pick the four teams I absolutely wouldn’t want in the finals, it would be these four (there are a few that can be swapped out for Texas, and I don’t mind Penn State–but ‘not minding’ is a lot different than “that’s who I’m going to root for.” As far as I am concerned, the season is over. The Super Bowl is in a few weeks, which means getting home is going to be challenging for the next few weeks as they start closing streets in the CBD to get ready for it all. I don’t care about that, either–as long as neither the Bears nor the Cowboys nor the Falcons are in it.

I did write some yesterday, too–which was enormously pleasing. I have things I need to do this weekend, and right now I frankly don’t want to do something of them, but might as well get them out of the way. I’ll probably finish this and read for a while, to finish waking up and everything and ease my way into the rest of the day. We did watch LSU Gymnastics last night; they ran away with the meet against Iowa State, and they looked terrific. They were also getting dramatically underscored, which was puzzling, but they still won by over three points. I then spent the rest of the evening watching old clips from Game of Thrones, which I still kind of miss. When the show was firing on all cylinders, it was really was extraordinary; the production values, the acting, and the writing was all en pointe, and provided some of the best scenes of television ever produced. The Battle of Blackwater Bay? The demolition of the sept? The battle of the loot train? The Battle of the Bastards? The death of Ramsey Bolton? Lady Olenna Tyrell’s final dagger to the heart before expiring? The collapse of the Wall? Arya wiping out House Frey? The character arc of Sansa Stark? It really was exceptional television, even if they did blow the final season–and that is just a smattering of the show’s great moments; there are too many to really list. Paul and I were actually talking about rewatching the whole series again–the plots and subplots were so interwoven and plentiful that there’s a shit ton we do not remember about the show to begin with. But…time. The show last eight seasons, every episode is at least an hour long, and who has that kind of time? Maybe when I retire I can make the rewatch A Thing.

Stranger things, after all, have happened. I’d also like to rewatch The West Wing, if for no other reason than it was my comfort watch during the Bush II administration.

I’m also doing much better with my time issues; I am trying not to be motivated by the clock anymore and worrying about wasting time because I have so much else to do. I don’t have that much else to do anymore, thank you very much, and now that the anxiety is under control, I don’t get as frustrated as I used to or get stressed out as much: I don’t have TIME for this! used to run through my brain every time I would get delayed or stuck in traffic or something, and it’s really nice to not have to deal with that anymore. The solution to the Super Bowl street closures is simple–take the Interstate home from work every day, even though the bridge traffic always backs up. I used to tend to get very frustrated and stressed out every time I took the Interstate because of the bumper-to-bumper back up; now I don’t care and can just sit there and listen to whatever is playing through the stereo in my car. (I also forget it has a working CD player; I should start listening to my old CD’s in the car.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and read for a few hours before deciding how to divvy up today’s tasks. Have a lovely Saturday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later–or tomorrow morning.

Yes, I am definitely pushing my boundaries with the social media puritans, aren’t I?

Heart of Gold

Well, we survived Monday, and it was in doubt there for a moment. I had some serious trouble getting motivated yesterday morning in order to leave the house for work, but I did eventually get out and on my way to work, and I had a pretty decent day there, too. It rained almost all day; it was hot and humid in the morning when I left for the office, but by mid-morning the city was being soaked by an almost constant stream of clouds throughout the day. Sigh. All I wanted to do was go back home and get under my blankets, but no such luck on that score, alas.

The most exciting news is yes, I did start writing my new book yesterday. Clocked in three thousand words on Chapter One, and it all flowed really easily. Granted, this project has been in my head for years–I think I wrote the first draft of the novella somewhere in the last ten years or so–but I am excited. I’ve been working on it for about a week now, doing the structural work behind the scenes of the story while also chopping up what was in the novella back into chapters. I am very excited to be working on this book for any number of reasons (not the least of which being that I’ve not worked on a book in a very long time) and it’s a departure from my usual. Sure, there’s crimes and stuff and New Orleans sweltering in a very hot summer, but it’s more ambitious of a story than I’ve tried in a while and I also am going to use dance songs as chapter titles, which is kind of cool. I am pleased with the work I’ve gotten done yesterday, and the direction the book is shaping up to take. It’s so lovely to be excited about writing again, you know?

I slept well last night–it rained all night, which meant the air was cool and damp and it felt amazing under my blankets. I am waking up now, which is nice–I feel very rested, even if my lower back is still a bit tight and sore–and my coffee is going down smoothly. It’s weird to have tomorrow off, and it’s even weirder that today is Pay-the-Bills Day, since tomorrow is a holiday. Such a weird week this is turning out to be on that score. And in a few weeks, I believe the 4th is a Thursday, so I might take that Friday off as well.

We did watch House of the Dragon last night, which was fun. I like how they’ve changed the opening credits to not be so similar to Game of Thrones, separating the show from the original but still connected. I don’t love this show the way we did the original, but it’s entertaining enough, and of course, dragons. I also suppose it’s not quite as compelling because we know the Targaryens eventually lose the Iron Throne and this civil war was the beginning of their end, and the end of the dragons until Danaerys.

Tonight after work I have to run some errands: a quick grocery run and a stop at the post office. I am planning on writing tonight–I really am excited about the this book, and it’s nice to be excited to be working again, you have no idea–and I also need to figure out some more pride posts. I’ve drafted a few ideas here, but am not really certain if some of the ideas I have are worth pursuing, so I need to think about them some more. It would also be nice to do some reading tonight after writing, too. (Tomorrow I will read, write, clean and go to the gym.) I’m actually looking forward to this day off, you know? Very strange and peculiar, but this week was going to be weird and feel off anyway, and a trip to Florida over the weekend. I checked the weather and it’s going to be rainy and overcast the entire weekend over there, but sunny and hot in New Orleans. Go figure. I should also probably check the tropical weather tracker; yesterday the system in the Bay of Campeche was moved from possible to potential cyclone status, and check the path as well. It was predicted for east Texas coast/Mexico yesterday….and that’s what it’s going to do. There’s one off the coast of Florida heading towards land, but it has very low chances of developing into anything before landfall. Christ, it’s so early in the season already to be worrying about storm tracks and so forth, and I hate the entire idea of evacuating again. Heavy sigh.

And I took a moment to check my email, and there was one from Dad, cancelling this weekend because my aunt is having some health issues. Ah, well, I’ll keep Monday off and treat myself to a nice three day weekend.

Which is a good time to bring this to a close. Happy Juneteenth Eve, everyone, and I’ll probably be later.

Bongo Rock

Today is two things–the start of hurricane season and the start of Pride Month. I have a Pride post that I definitely want to finish and post at some point, and I’ve not really decided what kind of entries I want to do–social media and here–to mark the month. I still think the thirty-four convictions of Greg Stillson was the best gift for Pride American queers have ever been given, to be honest, and I still am a little in shock that it happened–trial and verdict. And of course the traitors have all lost their treasonous little minds, too–my personal favorite is “if they can do this to him they can do it to anyone!”

Um yes, that’s precisely how laws and the judicial system work–no one is above the law in the United States.

Period.

I way overslept this morning, but we stayed up super late last night watching Bodkin (we only have two episodes left to go, and it’s really interesting; much more complex and clever than I’d originally given it credit for) but I wound up not getting into bed until midnight, and I didn’t get up until about nine thirty this morning. While I wanted to sleep in, I didn’t want to sleep in that late; I feel discombobulated and like I won’t be able to get the things done this morning I wanted to get done–but that’s just loser talk, methinks, and a way to give myself excuses for not taking the books to the library sale or washing the car or picking up the mail and dry cleaning or go to the gym. But now that my coffee is kicking in, I’m feeling more alive and awake and like fuck yeah I can get that shit done, get out of my way.

Always nice.

Yesterday was a good day. I worked at home, got all that done while laundering the bed linens, and ran my errands, did some cleaning around the house and later in the day we had a massive and marvelous thunderstorm. I grabbed The Rival Queens (my current nonfiction read) and spent some marvelous time with it in my easy chair. I do love that period of time, and I’ve always wanted to write about an adventurous fictional woman who was a member of Catherine de Medici’s Flying Squadron; an accomplished seductress spy, navigating the complicated politics of France during the Wars of Religion and the decline of the Valois dynasty. It was truly a fascinating period, not only in France, but throughout Europe. My next non-fiction read will probably be The King’s Assassin, the book on which Mary & George was based, and that’s another fun period I would like to write about. Someday. There really was nothing like the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for upheaval and Game of Thrones-like cutthroat politics.

I also watched LSU’s thrilling baseball win over Wofford in the regionals yesterday, and they play again today at 4. GEAUX TIGERS!

I also looked at the submissions call for the story I am working on–thinking the deadline was May 31 only to discover it was actually June 1, which means I can let the story sit a while longer before revising it one more time to see if I can make it stronger. I am very pleased with how it’s going so far, and looking forward to getting some more writing done today. I am a little behind on my schedule thus far (the one I made earlier this week, remember?), but the deadline being later certainly has made that a bit simpler and easier to navigate without feeling pressure.

And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines. I’ll most likely be back later–that pride entry I want to write–and I also need to think about what kind of entries to do for Pride Month. Anyway, have a lovely Saturday, and I’ll check in with you again later, okay?

Desert Moon

The spice must flow…

I read Dune for the first time when I was in high school. At the time, it was merely a trilogy, and the original was just starting to move from cult classic to widely read accepted classic. In the 1970s, the book was noted primarily for its commentary on ecology and the environment. I had never read anything like that. I’d not been into reading science fiction up until that time, and I didn’t really much care for science fiction movies, either; with their incredibly low budgets and amateurish special effects that always took you out of the story no matter how much you were enjoying it. I used to watch Flash Gordon serials, when some of those afternoon kids’ shows that Chicago’s television stations would run them–and while badly produced on a shoestring, the stories themselves were compelling enough to hold my interest, and Buster Crabbe was certainly good-looking enough to keep me interested.

I digress.

But reading Dune turned me into more of a science fiction fan than I had been already. Like I said, I’d never read anything like it, and while my teenaged self primarily was interested in the space opera elements of the story–prince loses everything to mortal enemies, but gets revenge on everyone, defeats the enemies of his family, and rises to become not only the new emperor but messiah of a new religion that takes over the vast reaches of the empire, and the holy war (jihad) of conversion that followed. One of the things I loved about the way Frank Herbert wrote the book was how it bounced around the galaxy, uncovering the mindsets and other conspiracies going on throughout the empire (politics) in what seemed like disconnected stories that all converged in the end and were resolved…while showing the connections that were there all along. I read the other two books in the original trilogy that year–Dune Messiah and Children of Dune–and I always thought the second was perhaps the weakest of the series. I’ve never reread any of the books–I think the series grew to six or seven before Herbert died and his heirs took over; I’ve not read any not-Frank generated Dune novels–other than the first, and I know the last time I reread Dune, I was really taken aback by the writing, which seemed poor. I would like to revisit Dune Messiah at some point because it’s more political than anything else; and also set up the rest of the series while the original remains as the only book of the series that can be read as a stand-alone.

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the reluctant messiah

Star Wars was released the summer before my senior year in high school, and it changed special effects, and science fiction films, forever. So when the David Lynch film was released in the early 1980;s, I went into it expecting it to be more than it turned out to be. I had wondered how all the internal monologues would be handled, as well as the entire backstory that was necessary for the film to make sense to people who’ve not read the book. It was a big film, to be sure, but the effects weren’t great–and the choice to hear the internal thoughts as whispers, which meant almost fifty percent of the picture was whispered–weakened it. And really, most of the real action of the story takes place in the second half–and basically the Lynch film condensed the second half of the book to a quick transitional jump, and it wrapped up very quickly. (Having Paul bring rain to Arrakis in the final scene was also a bad choice, which negated everything about Dune’s ecology and the secret of the worms.) But I did like it, if parts (mostly Harkonnens) were over the top. But I was kind of excited to hear Denis Villeneuve was shooting it in two parts. I enjoyed the first part, but the second? Exceptional, and proved that Villeneuve’s vision for the property was the right one.

Dune Part 2 follows the book far more closely than any other adaptation has, which usually seems to run out of steam and time by the time Paul and his mother flee into the desert to seek safety with the Fremen. I also really liked how reluctant Paul was to assume leadership, or to launch his “religion”–because he IS the fulfillment of the Bene Gesserit “prophecy,” which was really just propaganda spread by Sisterhood missionaries centuries, if not millennia, before. He can see the possible futures as well as the entire past, and he knows his holy war will kill millions, if not billions, and he doesn’t want to be responsible for that. Dune Part 2 plays like a galactic Game of Thrones, and I appreciated all the politics on top of the action. I feel like this Villeneuve version of the story is the closest to what Herbert wrote and created. It’s an epic film, shot on an epic scale, with stunning visuals and strong performances–Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha makes you forget all about Sting’s bizarre performance in the Lynch version–and I do look forward to the next chapter in this sprawling saga.

Highly recommended.