Tag: John Kennedy

Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It

How is it Wednesday Pay the Bills Day again already? Sheesh!

But yes, I know being able to pay them is a very good thing, but I still resent the money spent.

Yesterday was an odd day, really. I worked by myself in the clinic, and of course–since I had help Monday, over half were no-shows, but everyone came the day I was by myself! Naturally, isn’t that how it always goes? I don’t think we’re nearly as busy today, but I was highly productive at work yesterday, which was awesome. I felt good all day, actually, and when I got home I actually did shit. I did the dishes and several loads of laundry, I made dinner (so the sink is full again), and I even wrote for a little (very little) while, but more on that later. After we ate dinner, we started watching Malice on Prime, which is rather chilling; the “manny from hell” is the plot, and its also very well cast. Jack Whitehall is appropriately creepy as the manny (actually a tutor), with David Duchovny and Clarice van Houten as the wealthy couple he has targeted…although we don’t know why or what he is up to so far. Tonight after work I have to run an errand; I need to make a side dish for our office potluck tomorrow so I need to get the ingredients. I really don’t want to make what I promised to make (my spicy mac ‘n’ cheese), but there is naught to do but do so, methinks. If I make it when I first get home, then I can write or relax or do whatever the hell I want to after. I also slept deeply and well last night, so I feel very awake and rested today.

I was a bit surprised to see the numbers on the votes to release the Epstein files yesterday–and let’s face it, the landslide it turned out to be made me suspicious. After all the shenanigans and lies of this past year, now they are listening to the anger of their constituents? Then again, he honestly believes he could shoot someone and not lose any support, so there’s also that aspect of it; and to his credit, how much spinning have we seen in the last week or so from the right, parsing what technically is or isn’t pedophilia? This should be the complete and final death knell for those Moms for Liberty skanks…hard to push that drag queens, trans women, and other queers are the groomers and pedophiles when you vote for and support actual pedophiles. But it has never been about protecting children, has it? No, that was simply their cover to go after a minority population they don’t like.

And using it as a wedge issue. How’d that work out for you, bitches?

And of course, the only elected official in Congress to vote against releasing the Epstein files was Louisiana’s own garbage human, Clay Higgins. Higgins is– even for a state that produced garbage politicians like our current governor, Steve Scalise, John Kennedy, Bill Cassidy, and Liz Murrill, amongst the other trash we seem to elect all the time–pretty remarkably horrible. He had to resign in disgrace from the St. Landry Parish sheriff’s office for being, well, horrible; is constantly posting racist garbage on-line; is also ethically challenged; and was sued by his ex-wife for back child support in the amount of $14,000.

And he’ll probably be reelected next year despite providing cover for the biggest and most notorious pedophile ring in history. I mean, even Steve Scalise voted for their release. SCALISE!

Electing a Black president who gave them health care really made racist Louisiana voters lose their fucking minds.

Endymion announced yesterday who the musical entertainment at their ball this coming Carnival will be, and you couldn’t pay me enough to attend; I actually feel bad for those who go to the Endymion Ball and will have to sit through performances by the trash they booked, aka Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani. Yuck, yuck, a thousand times yuck. At least their grand marshal will be Livvy Dunne, the former LSU gymnast and Instagram star. I literally can’t with Endymion. I guess Kid Rock and/or Jason Aldean weren’t available? What next, Endymion? Confederate flag throws?

Sigh.

I did work on “A Holler Full of Kudzu” last night; which I actually enjoyed doing and I also renamed the novella “Kudzu Jesus,” which feels like a much better title (although I still like that original one), since the story does involve religion in small town rural Alabama in the 1970s a bit. (I came up with this title when someone posted some pictures of kudzu vines on energy and/or telephone poles, which can sometimes look like Christ on the cross, hence Kudzu Jesus. I don’t know why I keep coming back to this story rather than working on Chlorine, but I think primarily that’s because of the trip next week and the potential for losing momentum by taking that break. Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize! But that’s what I am interested in working on right now, so that’s what I am doing.

And on that note, it’s time for me to hit the spice mines again. Have a great Hump Day Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back on the morrow.

Now, those are some mighty legs…

Eve of Destruction

Good morning to you, Constant Reader. Here we are on Saturday, after another rainy day and work-at-home duties. It is still raining this morning. I can see why it starts to get on people after a few days, but not me. I love it. I am up super early this morning again–I got up at six thirty (!!)–for the second day in a row that I didn’t have to, but I find I like getting up early when I don’t have to so I can get more stuff done, you know? It was great getting all my work stuff done early yesterday so I could run my errands and work on the house and so on, which I did go ahead and do. My eye appointment isn’t today, but I rescheduled it anyway for the first weekend in October.

I did start working on the Scotty Bible yesterday, which was very cool. I feel like progress is being made, you know? Paul was at the office for meetings and to finish a grant, so Sparky and I had a lovely time hanging out. I also started pulling together a cast list for the new book, and started working on the outline. I also figured out how to do the prologue, which I usually do when the book is done, and I have a great opening line to parody. As I was moving stuff around on my desk while cleaning, I pulled out my copy of Collected Stories of William Faulkner, and of course there was a place-holder marking the page where “A Rose for Emily” begins. I know, it’s not very original, but “A Rose for Emily” is one of my favorite short stories of all time, but its brilliant macabre twists and turns are absolute genius, and of course, Faulkner was a genius. Hard to navigate sometimes, but a genius none-the-less. I may reread it to dissect it again, but every small Southern town had a Miss Emily, back in the day. “I have no taxes in Jefferson” is such a great line.

I did read some non-fiction yesterday. I received a book called The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos by Armen Keteyian and John Talty and it’s interesting. It covers the 2023 football season, with all the conference realignments, NIL deals and money, and so on. The nice thing about it is every chapter is about a different coach or team or aspect of the “chaos”, so it doesn’t have to be read in order. I read the chapters about Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh yesterday, as well as the one about the collapse of Jimbo Fisher’s career at Texas A&M. I’m keeping an open mind–my mantra being “change isn’t bad’–about it, but I’m watching college football with a wary eye this year; all the changes and this multi team play-off (the irony that the team that’s royal screwing last year emphasized the need for this has now lost two games already this early doesn’t escape me. They could of course run the table–look at what happened to Clemson already, too–the two powerhouses of the ACC.) But it’s a long season, and everyone counted Alabama out early last year after they lost to Texas, and they did just that–ran the table and went to the play-offs.

When I was running my errands yesterday, I had my first “understand the assignment” experience with a total stranger! I had stopped to get the mail, and of course, it was raining. So I dashed through the rain into the postal service, grabbed my mail, and ran back across the street to where I was parked. As I got into the car, I noticed Harris/Walz signs all over the iron gate of the house next door. I smiled, and decided to take a picture of it once I was safely in my car. I rolled down the window, but the gate started to open and a car pulled in. The woman got out, saw me taking a picture of her gate, and I yelled “love your signs” and gave her a thumbs-up (she also had them on her car) and we yelled it together at the same time: “I understand the assignment!” and we both laughed. As I drove off, I noticed the entire block had Harris/Walz signs, and I started noticing them on cars around the city yesterday, too. Usually all I’ve seen has been Trump decals and stickers all over those “I have a small penis so I need a massive truck” vehicles, but I also know those people aren’t from New Orleans. I mean it when I say I live in a blue dot in a red sea–New Orleans doesn’t play with that sort of thing. New Orleans is so fucking blue it’s almost black, kind of like the dark blue velvet of a cloudless midnight sky on the full moon. Think I’m kidding? Did Hillary get 81% and Biden 83% of the vote in your blue city? WHen we had more population, combining with the other blue dots in the state, New Orleans could swing a statewide election to the Democratic Party; it’s how Mary Landrieu was elected to the Senate twice here,…until she committed the colossal sin of agreeing with and backing our first Black president. The racists replaced her with Bill Cassidy1, that mental giant, because New Orleans didn’t have the electoral power in the state it enjoyed before Katrina–and don’t tell me that part of the response to Katrina wasn’t what it was because Karl Rove wanted to break the Democratic Party in Louisiana, and what better way than to traumatize and break up a solid block of voters? It’s never really recovered, either. That’s why we have those morons Cassidy and Kennedy in the Senate embarrassing us on a daily basis, and why we have a Project 2025 governor now.

The city will turn out for the Vice-President. The rest of the state may be as red as the old USSR flag2, but New Orleans thumbs its nose at their politics of division, hate, and Christian white supremacy. It’s why the rest of the state hates us, that plus we’re a majority Black city. It’s why the racists in the rest of the state are always whining about the crime in New Orleans and how ‘scary’ and ‘dangerous’ the city is; dog whistles, of course. I am white and I have lived here for almost thirty years, and yes, while we have been the victims of a violent crime committed by homophobes from outside of New Orleans, neither one of us ever feels fear here.

And on that note, I am going to get some more coffee and I am going to read for a little while before I get cleaned up and going on my day. Hope you have a great Saturday, Constant Reader; I’ll have the television on in the background during games today. I don’t think LSU’s game tonight is even televised? No big deal, really.

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  1. Thanks again, Louisiana racists. ↩︎
  2. A very deliberate choice for that image, since it appears that Russia has owned the Right in this country for quite some time now. ↩︎