Tag: Mary Landrieu

Cry Wolf

Monday morning and back to the office this morning before the madness of the last lead-up to Mardi Gras begins. I have to leave the office early on both Wednesday and Thursday this week, before work-at-home Friday. I also took Lundi Gras off so I wouldn’t have to deal with insanity and can make groceries during the day before Orpheus. Today the low is in the fifties and the high in the seventies, so not terribly cold; here’s hoping it lasts through the weekend. I didn’t go out for any parades yesterday; I was much better yesterday than I was on Saturday, but was still a bit tired so thought it best to ice my ankles and spend the day relaxing rather than standing and jumping for throws. I did walk to Walgreens yesterday morning for a loaf of bread, around nine thirty or so, and it was already crazy and crowded out on the parade route. I did forget about the Super Bowl, so I missed the Bad Bunny show–but was very pleased to see what a ratings loser the Kid Rock alternative was when I got up this morning. Robert Kraft’s team losing was just icing on the cake, frankly.

I did watch the figure skating yesterday, and was very happy to see the US team clinch gold yesterday; I love that everyone who skated in the team event gets a gold medal. So fucking cool! The Japanese team, with the silver, skated so incredibly well, too, and good for Italy getting their home ice bronze. After watching the Olympics, we started watching the second season of Hijack with Idris Elba–and then switched to the Netflix documentary about the ice dancing for the Olympics, Glitter and Gold, which was actually really good. I didn’t know, for example, that the French team were Disney villains. I’d always been a fan of Guillaume Cizeron with his former partner, Gabrielle Papadakis–they were one of the best teams in the history of the sport, but I saw on-line there’s a lot more bad stuff about him and his new partner in the rest of the episodes, which we will watch tonight. That’s a shame, but I had him pegged as domineering and controlling from the very beginning–he just kind of has “bitchy perfectionist queen” written all over him. Pegged it! I do want the US team of Chock and Bates to win gold in the individual event–been a fan of theirs for well over a decade, and it would be nice for them to get another gold–I think they are our most successful ice dance team of all time.

One of the things that has been annoying me lately is it seems like every time I want to stream something on Youtube I am getting local state political ads, which were amusing at first but speak to the growing divide on the right. Our other useless senator, Bill Cassidy–the pro-life OBGYN–voted to impeach Emperor Palpatine after January 6th, which of course is an unforgivable sin to the Emperor…and Palpatine never forgets a slight. So, he anointed someone serving in the house for a replacement, Julia Letlow. I don’t know her, but the endorsement was all I needed to know she has a dark soul and is willing to cover for pedophiles, so yes, she’s garbage. But Senator Cassidy the Useless has decided he doesn’t want to give up his taxpayer funded job, so he is running ads attacking Palpatine’s choice as a LIBERAL who is a stock trader like PELOSI and she may have even voted for Biden’s policies a time or two! THE HORROR…which is hilarious. Like any elected Republican in Louisiana is a liberal? Hell, they aren’t even centrist Republicans!

On the other hand, a special election here in Iberville Parish for a suddenly opened state congressional seat–a district that was +12 for Palpatine went for a Democrat with a +23 margin, a 35 point swing….in Louisiana. If that isn’t sounding every alarm bell in the Nazi bunker I don’t know what will. I’ve always thought Louisiana was more of a swing state than a ruby-red state; we’re gerrymandered, of course, but we also had a very popular Democratic governor for eight years. The national party wrote us off after Mary Landrieu lost her seat to the very same pro-life OBGYN who’s trying to hang onto that seat after playing Judas to the right’s god/emperor. Good messaging and some actual work here could do the trick and swing the state left. I don’t know who is running for that senate seat on the Democratic side, but this could split the MAGA vote and give us a shot at–hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?

I’ve been listening to Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks a lot lately in the car, and it’s such a treat to hear that great old music again–which has never ever gotten really old. I still think Bella Donna is her best solo album, and Rumours, of course, is still their best album. There will be, methinks, some newsletters about their music as well as other music I listened to when growing up and how my musical tastes have grown over the years, and changed.

Tonight after work I have to go uptown to get the mail and make some groceries. Our postponed trip to Costco will occur tomorrow night after I get off work, and then it’s parades parades parades trapping me inside the route until Friday morning.

And on that note, I am going to have some breakfast and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning!

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. ↩︎