Tag: Neil Gaiman

Guitars, Cadillacs

Merry Christmas Eve Eve! I just have to get through the day and then it’s holiday vacation time! I got a lot done at work yesterday, but was very low-energy. I wasn’t tired, or fatigued, or even sleepy (the three stages of tired for me), but just a little bit off. More of an “odd energy” day than anything else, I suppose. But I wasn’t in the mood to stop and make groceries on the way home as I had planned–and didn’t realize until just now how stupid it is to go to the grocery store the night before Christmas Eve…heavy heaving sigh, but it’ll have to do. I’ll just go uptown and get the mail when I leave the office today, swing by the store, and get gas. No worries, no problems, and no big deal. There was hardly any traffic yesterday morning when I drove to work, and not really much on the way home, either. Here’s hoping that will last through today, right? Sparky was needy when I got home last night, too, so I didn’t get much of anything done last night, either–which is perfectly fine. I did think some things through during the day and evening, so it counts.

It’s the malaise, I suppose. My mind is also unfocused right now, so my creativity energy is bouncing all over the place and so many different works that are in progress right now racing through my brain…it’s actually fun, if annoying. I think I will actually spend Christmas Eve and Christmas not doing much of anything other than mildly picking up and straightening the house, and reading. Then I have three full days to get things done before I return to the office on Monday for a mere three day work week before my next day off, then work at home Friday, and another weekend. I am getting terribly, terribly spoiled.

Hilariously, someone had put up a voodoo doll dressed up as an ICE agent and stuck full of pins here in New Orleans, and that (of all things) went viral over the weekend. The result? MORE of them popped up all over New Orleans, especially after our Attorney General Liz Murrill (aka Pam Bondi Lite) reacted publicly by threatening people with criminal charges for putting up–wait for it–voodoo dolls1. Apparently a significant portion of them have been calling in sick since the first one went up. Thoughts and prayers, guys, thoughts and prayers.

One thing you have to say about Heated Rivalry–it’s enormously popular and driving a lot of conversations. As always, the discourse on who can write who, who can make money writing about whom, and who gets their work adapted for the screen popped up again, as it inevitably does; and it is a conversation that does need to be had…but without hurt feelings, nastiness, and homophobia. As I always say, writers can write about whatever they want and for whatever reason they might have, whether writers should is a different and highly nuanced conversation that cannot be had on social media, for the record.

Let me say this, though: whatever anyone wants to say about them, at least m/m writers don’t write tragedy/trauma porn, and they don’t kill off their gay characters, which put them miles head of most straight authors, who choose to write gay characters as sad, tragic losers destined for unhappiness, misery, and early death.

The noble, tragic gay trope is very, very tired.

And I love that the show is opening eyes, hearts, and minds. What more could anyone ask for? (I do love seeing older straight white women explaining to Gen Z queers how hard it used to be to come out; isn’t it still?) It still burns my ass that Netflix canceled Boots like the craven cowards they are, but they have a history of this; see Dead Boy Detectives (but I think that was canceled because of Neil Gaiman predator blowback, other than having a gay main character). But there is already a second series of Heated Rivalry greenlighted; not sure how that will precisely work.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, and I will be back on the morrow for more holiday cheer!

Ah, the things I would do to Mario Lopez…
  1. And I love that ICE is afraid of voodoo in New Orleans. Shouldn’t have come, Gestapo man, shouldn’t have come. And the curses laid upon you here will follow you for the rest of your life… ↩︎

Get Used to It

Wednesday Pay the Bills Day blog! And it’s also the middle of the week, and the three day weekend looms large. I don’t feel tired or groggy this morning, which is odd, but hey–what can I say? I slept well and feel good. The coffee is also good this morning, and I had the last piece of king cake this morning (yes, it’s all gone already and no, I didn’t have more than three smallish pieces); I’ll pick one up on the way home from work tonight, as I have to make some groceries to get us through until the weekend. I can’t wait for next week, when miraculously all prices will suddenly drop by at least 75% and gas will be back to a dollar. Woo-hoo, life-changing! As if. The presidential troll has already walked that lie back, as he is walking all of his campaign lies back, and things will just be worse, and of course, it’ll be the fault of Democrats somehow, despite the Right controlling all three branches of government and are going to overplay their hand (they always do)–but they will not give up power voluntarily so we’re looking at violence in the next election (should there be one) as the republic continues to limp on and try to recover from the latest Republican attempt to turn the entire country into Alabama. (And I say that as someone from Alabama–although Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee would work just as well.) I mean, if you want to get a sense of what one-party Republican rule looks like, pick a fucking red state and see how it’s doing on every scale of quality-of-life metrics. Funny how regularly blue states aren’t on government welfare, isn’t it? So why would a view of politics and government clearly doesn’t work on a state level work on a national one?

Oh yes, Black and Brown people. You can never go wrong boiling everything right-wing to bigotry and prejudice of some sort. People will always vote against their best interests if you consistently tell them they are oppressed and play to their most basic instincts–it’s not YOUR fault, it’s Black/Brown/gay/trans people’s fault! THEY’RE TAKING AWAY YOUR BIRTHRIGHT!

Ironically, the “party of personal responsibility” loves to blame everyone else for their utter and complete failures.

The Internet continued to roil yesterday over the latest publishing scandal, and it’s even more amazing how many people “just had that vibe about him” and “everyone at his publisher knew not to leave female interns around him” and so on–to me, the latter goes to show how people in power covered for their cash cow, and while I know it’s generally not smart to take shots at big name people who are generally beloved, some of this anger should be directed at the institutions that covered for him and allowed him to get away with it for so long? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with trusting someone who has been kind or generous or supportive of you; I tend to not ask people who are that way with me whether or not they have problematic behaviors or values or beliefs; no one does. When you get a good impression of someone you tend to not look for reasons to not like them. Abusers are generally masters at gaslighting, and sadly, you can’t tell by looking at someone that they are a predatory abusers with a trail of victims in their wake. I also don’t feel like the gaslit people an abuser fooled need to publicly made statements or so forth to distance themselves. I get that the natural instinct is to make sure no one thinks you sympathize with them, or are a collaborator or are complicit, but I also don’t think it’s necessary, either. I also get that it’s hard when your hero takes a fall–which is why I think hero-worshipping is usually a mistake. People are fallible; that design flaw is baked in. You’re always going to be disappointed when someone you’ve given your money and your affections to do something that is against your values and system. But…no one’s values or beliefs are going to perfectly align with yours, and sadly, art doesn’t discriminate–people who do bad things can create amazing (and influential) art. Can you enjoy the art after (or already) you know the artist is a problem? I think that’s up to you. Caravaggio was deeply problematic, but his gorgeous art has lasted for centuries. And granted, someone who’s been dead for centuries is a bit different than a rapist who is still alive. Personally, having the works of a problematic current day artist in my house makes me a bit uncomfortable, but your mileage may vary.

This recent public rending of garments and gnashing of teeth in the wake of the latest “good guy turns out to be predator” publishing news seems funny (in the weird/strange meaning way, not haha funny) to me. For one, I’ve never completely trusted men who claim to be feminists; maybe it’s because I learned feminism from lesbians, but I refuse to identify as a feminist–as a male, I can’t truly be a feminist because I will never completely understand or appreciate the experiences of being a woman. I call myself a feminist sympathizer–please note I don’t say “ally” for the simple reason that I grew up in a society and culture of toxic masculinity, and no matter how much I think I’ve recalibrated that out of my system, every once in a while I’ll have a thought, immediately followed by man, it’s so hard to break that programming, isn’t it? I’m not sure why people feel guilty simply because they knew a predator and thought he was nice. The reasons predators succeed for as long as they do is because their carefully constructed persona is camouflage for the darkness within. Last spring someone I knew in the crime community1–well enough that I not only had his email address but I also had his cell number stored in my phone (if I have your cell number saved in my phone, I consider you a friend and have let you inside a bit). Was I surprised when he was arrested and charged with possession of (an incredible amount of) child pornography? Absolutely. Had I ever seen any sign of such a possibility at any time in any of my interactions with him over the last fifteen or so years? No. I didn’t berate myself for not seeing it sooner, or not having my primordial instincts triggered by his badness. There weren’t many, if any, kids around at writers’ conferences and award ceremonies and other professional environments where I ran into him. Granted, he also wasn’t a hero of mine, either. But…Stephen King’s support of J. K. Rowling was disappointing, and I don’t read him anymore. I didn’t get upset about it, nor did I mind donating all my copies of his books to the library sale. I didn’t know him personally; we met once and had a lovely, if brief, conversation. I don’t know if I have an equivalence for Neil Gaiman in my life?

But it does make me think that I am right to be so guarded with straight white men.

Which reminds me of another book I’ve wanted to write. Sigh.

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

  1. An anthology I was in with him is being reissued with his story removed in a week or so; more to come on that. ↩︎

Promises

Tuesday morning, and I hope all is well with you, Constant Reader. I slept deeply and well, didn’t want to get under the weight of the blankets, but did and now I am waking up. I just had a piece of King cake (the on I bought Sunday has mysteriously been almost completely eaten since yesterday morning) with my coffee this morning. It’s forty degrees again this morning, only getting into the mid-fifties later. I did pick up my copy of Bemused (and a few other books, Disclaimer plus two non-fiction tomes, one about Appalachia and another about the Satanic panic and the Go Ask Alice literary fraud), came home, and Paul and I started watching season two of The Rig, which is interesting; I remember nothing much about the first season, but the show has shifted from the smaller story of the workers trapped on an oil rig in the North Sea and weird shit happening to a much bigger story that was kind of jolting. I do like the cast (including Emily Hampshire from Schitt’s Creek), and it’s interesting as it shifts from a horror story into The Abyss. Definitely an interesting choice, and one I did not see coming.

This year has turned into something, hasn’t it? Everyone was so glad to see 2024 usher itself out the door that we weren’t prepared for 2025 to be a disaster from day one. A terrorist attack on New Orleans to ring in the new year, and of course California is still burning. The very notion of putting conditions on federal aid, as well as “blaming” California for its own situation, is so not very Christian (looking at you, Mike Johnson–the fact that you consider yourself a modern Moses instead of a modern Jesus is telling) and an absolute joke when we open the federal wallet for hurricane relief without question every hurricane season (AS WE SHOULD)—when what we should be doing is figuring out way to make hurricane relief faster and more effective and efficient and to do better by victims of natural disasters–which are only going to keep increasing and with greater impact as we navigate the treacherous waters of the new regime. They come so fast and furious now that it’s easy to forget even the more recent ones. California is burning while North Carolina continues to recover from it’s unexpected hurricane disaster–does anyone even think about North Carolina now, in the winter? I do find it interesting that their state government is far more interested in overturning a free and fair election in their state while so many of their citizens don’t have shelter or power (or both). But we move on, like we always do, and assume that the recovery is completed once the story is out of the news. Angelenos are suffering a trauma right now, just as the North Carolinians still are, and the effects of those traumas are very long-lasting. Trust me, I know, and it will be years before either region is recovered, if they ever do.

Well, the New Yorker dropped its horrific article on the sexual abuse (re: rapes) perpetrated by Neil Gaiman on a LOT of women, and yes, I needed a Silkwood shower after reading it. It’s awful, and yes, it is terrible, but it doesn’t surprise me as much as it did the Gaiman fanboys and fangirls. I’ve never truly been that kind of a fan boy for anyone, really; there have been a few whose beliefs and values wound up not aligning with mine, but it wasn’t a trauma for me nor did it trigger an emotional meltdown because I don’t get that vested in artists as a general rule, so when they turn out to be awful in some way my reaction is generally well that’s a shame and I don’t read them anymore. Simple. Getting rid of Orson Scott Card from my shelves wasn’t a big deal, nor was never reading any further of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s1. I had read David Eddings’ The Belgariad2 in the 1980s when I went through my fantasy reading period, but didn’t know about his crimes (with his wife and co-writer) against their adopted children3 or that they did jail time until the piece on Gaiman dropped yesterday and the Internet lit up with angry former fans and friends denouncing his behavior. As for me, well, I’ll always be fond of The Sandman and sorry the Netflix series is ending after a wonderful first season, but I probably won’t be reading anything else of Gaiman’s, or revisiting The Sandman again. But I do think you can separate the art from the artist, to some degree; but that’s up to individuals and their own ick factors, I think. My mentality is I won’t ever get a chance to read everything I want to read, so why revisit the works of problematic, or read new works by them? I had no problem whatsoever cutting Dan Simmons out of my must-read list, and he was one of my favorite horror writers.

The Internet blew up at Carrie Underwood yesterday for agreeing to perform at the coronation of the anti-Christ Monday. Hey, if she wants to lick his boots, go for it, bitch. I’m not the one who’ll have to answer for it to God someday. Have at it, but remember no gay will ever listen to, download or buy anything you ever record from now on. Everything he touches dies, and why do you think you’ll be exempt from that? I imagine you lost any non-MAGA listener you had, but hey–you’ve got that Aryan Master Race thing working for you, so have fun performing for the glory of the Fascists. How did that work out for Leni Reifenstahl?

I was also a little saddened to read about the death of one of my favorite soap stars, Leslie Charleson, recently. She was the second actress to play Dr. Monica Quartermaine on General Hospital, and she lasted decades longer than the original. I always liked Monica, and absolutely loved the way Charleson played her. Sure, I enjoyed the whole Luke-and-Laura stuff, but I primarily watched General Hospital for the Quartermaines, who were conniving and backstabbing and fucking hilarious. (Jane Elliott’s Tracy remains my favorite soap character ever; scenes between the two were great television.) I always thought they should have their own show, and the way they kept killing off Quartermaines willy-nilly over the years was really aggravating; I wanted more Quartermaines, not fewer, and they never deserved to be on the back burner.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow.

  1. I was a fan of her gay romance, The Catch Trap, and had always meant to read her Arthurian novels…I can live without reading The Mists of Avalon, after all. ↩︎
  2. I’d actually considered revisiting that series, because of my fond memories of it, but now? Ick ick ick. ↩︎
  3. It’s pretty horrible to adopt children so you have victims at your mercy. ↩︎

Tell Me Why

The question of whether one can enjoy art by an artist who is, in some way, problematic in modern sensibilities has been raging off and on almost this entire century; the conversation will die down without any real resolution until someone everyone hero-worships is exposed. This always lends itself to the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth as people question whether it’s okay to continue enjoying art by someone who your ethics and values find to be problematic. I understand why people have these reactions, and there is something to be said about a world in which there was no social media or Internet around to expose artists the way they are now, you know? With the changes in publishing, artists have had to start putting themselves out there a lot more than ever before to connect with readers and hopefully sell some books to keep our careers going; as someone who (despite the blog) tends to be a very private person (“never bleed in public!”) I try not to be controversial about things that, to me, aren’t controversial; anyone who thinks I am not going to support queer equality or fight misogyny and racism with every breath in my body and every keystroke in my fingers…that isn’t controversial to me.

And if you think a gay man who constantly has to justify his existence as a human being and therefore should have the same rights that everyone else has isn’t going to belittle, insult, and rip to shreds people who think I’m subhuman? Go fuck yourself with rusty razor wire and do the world a favor and don’t breed.

And don’t even get me started on the abuse I’ve endured over the years.

The first time I ever was confronted with this ethical and moral question about art was, I think, with Orson Scott Card. Card was a highly successful science fiction writer, and his book Ender’s Game is (was?) widely regarded as a classic of the genre. I read it and enjoyed it, but there were some kind of creepy things in the text that set off an alarm in my head, and the book didn’t leave me with any desire to revisit that universe or any of Card’s other books. So when he turned out to be a devout Mormon actively working to stigmatize and deny rights to queer people…well, that was an easy decision for me. I don’t actively work to deny him rights as a Mormon, do I? So, yeah, his homophobic activism was actually causing harm to an entire community, and was pushing to do more. As far as I know, he’s still a homophobic POS, but he had the decency to fold his tent, pick up his marbles, and go home with the marriage equality fight ended with Obergefell.1

This question has reared its ugly head again recently, in the cases of immensely popular and respected writers Neil Gaiman and Alice Munro2. Gaiman for sexual predation and Munro for not supporting her daughter who was being raped as a child by Munro’s second husband (and yes, Lolita came up a lot in those conversations, and it never ceases to amaze me how many warped people DO NOT understand that book in the slightest. It’s not a beautiful romantic story of forbidden love and a child-temptress; it’s a horrific story of abuse and survival, even if beautifully written. Nabokov was too good of a writer to tackle this subject, clearly). I was going to address this question regarding them in the abstract; I have no skin in either game. I’ve enjoyed Gaiman’s work in the past, but have never met him and don’t have any connection to him other than his work and mutual friends. But hold the presses–someone I actually know was arrested for possessing child sexual abuse pornography.3

That was a shock.

And the more news that came out about this crime, the worse it has been.

There’s no question he’s guilty; possession of child sex abuse pornography cases generally don’t lead to an arrest unless they are 100% certain of conviction; 91% plead out and those who go to trial have a 95% conviction rate, so they have you dead to rights. The sheer volume of this vile imagery on his computer negates any excuses that a defense lawyer could conceivably come up with. I did see, as soon as the news broke, some people urging others to not jump to conclusions and “everyone is presumed innocent”–yeah, that clamor has died down as more information has come out. It’s also made me think about other instances where someone’s horrible behavior has been exposed; there’s always the people who don’t want to believe it–which I think is more of a subconscious defense mechanism in some way; we all want to believe that we can spot these people in polite company, that there are little tell-tale signs we may not have noticed at the time but now make sense, and we don’t want to believe that someone we’ve met, worked with, been around and liked can be a monster.

But as the queers can tell you, people can pretend to be supportive and pretend to be your friend while happily voting against your rights in every election. They can equate drag queens with pedophilia, and deep down think queer people shouldn’t be around children–or when presented with queer people around children, shudder and say “well that’s inappropriate”–so deep down your instant reaction is homophobia, so you’re actually homophobic at heart and need to do some self-work…and don’t be surprised when you spew out something homophobic you get dragged for it, and then pull the “I didn’t mean it that way”–yes, dear, you did.

And it’s not my fucking job to educate you.

It’s a shock, of course, anything like this will rock your world. We don’t want to believe we are in the company of monsters…but you’ll never go wrong as a queer person slightly holding back on straight people. Given the chance, they will always throw queer people under the bus to maintain their own privilege.

That’s how the monsters get away with it, after all…they look like everyone else. We do ourselves no favors thinking we should be able to tell when we’re in the presence of evil. The fact that we can’t makes knowing and liking a monstrous pedophile feel like a personal failing, like “how did I not see it?” Because they are very adept at fitting in…which is how they get away with it for so long.

The crime community has done a very good job this week disassociating with him, but it’s a excellent reminder to always be careful. Always.

And another reminder: Brendan DuBois? Not a drag queen.

  1. I don’t know if he has resurfaced in his role as unrepentant homophobic asshole in the years since, but he’s no longer on my radar and I don’t care what he’s doing. ↩︎
  2. A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER! ↩︎
  3. Not even the first time this has happened; the last time was someone I knew much better than the colleague arrested this week. ↩︎

I’m a Believer

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, Huzzah! It’s been a pretty decent week, overall, which is pretty amazing and pleases me endlessly. Is it just me, or is this summer just swimming by? It’s almost mid-July already, holy crap. I’d fully intended to be further along in my book than I am, so I need to kick it up a notch. Now that I have most of the busy work done around the apartment, I don’t need to spend as much time on that on the weekends and can start focusing on getting back into a strong writing groove again. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the book and developing the characters out further–I need to do some more work on that as well before moving on–so I am working, just not in the way that gets me closer to a finished first draft. A chapter a day for the rest of the month should do the trick, really, but that’s also a lot of writing to cram into a short period of time and I don’t know if I have the mental stamina to do that without burning myself out a bit.

I guess I need to stop being afraid to find out, right? Fear is such a useless emotion when it comes to living your life, really. Sure, if a spree killer is coming for you, you should be afraid–but you need to stay calm so you can think your way out of the situation. (I’ve always wanted to write my own take on a slasher movie; I have a couple of ideas that could be a lot of fun to explore.)

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day at all. I managed to make it through the entire day without getting tired or worn out. I came straight home from work between the rain storms (Beryl’s remnants are still plaguing us in New Orleans, but there was no flood warning last night, either) and we watched Presumed Innocent and more of Outer Range, which is very strange. There’s only one more episode and there’s no way they could possibly get everything wrapped up and explained in one, so it’s either going to be continuing into a second season and a lot is going to be left unexplained at the end of the series. It’s entertaining enough, and the acting is pretty good, so it’s involving us, but part of that involvement is “what the hell is going on?”

Not a way to end a first season or a mini-series, I’m afraid.

I was a bit tired when I got home yesterday, not going to lie about that. Not worn out must lie in chair all night doomscrolling social media while the television plays as background noise, but still fatigued. Today is my last day in the office for the week, so here we are at the end of another week with the weekend looming. I really need to get a to-do list together, because I know I am forgetting things I need to be doing. I think I am going to try to use this weekend to do a few things on the apartment, but get everything looming finished and caught up. I also want to finish Hall of Mirrors this weekend, so I can select my next read, and I have a pretty good idea of what that is going to be–it’s either the new Lori Roy or the new Wanda Morris–and of course I have some other blog posts I need to get finished. Ironically, I was already writing one about “the art v. the artist” re: the recent publishing community scandals when another broke yesterday, involving someone I know slightly and have always liked…so now I can write it from a more personal headspace. All of the scandals were surprises, but once the surprise wore off, it really wasn’t as surprising as I’d initially thought.

I also discovered yesterday that a short story I need to write isn’t actually due until December, so that was very good news. One of the things I need to do is also keep working on short stories. Maybe I’ll work on editing some this weekend; there are quite a few in progress and I really would like to get the collection finished and turned in. It can be very daunting sometimes when I think about all the things I have in progress and the fact that I am probably going to work on two of the more recent ones before I go back to anything else. I also think I am going to start working on the next Scotty book, too. I mean, what’s another thing to have on my plate, really? But I’ve written two at the same time before–going back and forth; when I’d get stuck on one I’d go work on the other, and by the time I’d get back to the original I wouldn’t be stuck anymore. It IS a lot to be juggling two books and a short story collection at the same time, but I have a lot of free time now, which I am still trying to get used to and wrap my mind around and figure out how to manage that time the most effectively I can–it is very easy to get sucked into doing nothing, particularly since I am so damned lazy and “a Greg at rest tends to stay at rest,” which has been true most of my life.

Ironically, I was writing a post about the “art v. the artist” argument this week in the wake of the last two authors outed as shitty people from the outside perspective of someone with no skin in the game (I’ve admired Gaiman’s work, but was never really vested in it; was aware of Munro but hadn’t read her; I bought a collection when she won the Nobel Prize), as has been the case pretty much always; I’d read the Harry Potter books as an adult so wasn’t vested in them, so that author’s descent into homophobic TERFdom wasn’t hard for me…but yesterday news broke about someone I actually do know and have worked with before, which means scrapping that post and starting over again. But even that acquaintance wasn’t much, and while I admired his writing successes, as I do with everyone, but I’d only ever read some of his short stories…so it’s again not something emotionally wrenching for me. So this brings a whole new perspective to it, and so I need to roll it around in my head a bit more.

Jesus, the world in which we live.

And on that horrific note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back probably later.

Private Eyes

I loved this show. 100%.

I wasn’t familiar with the characters before I started watching the show, but you can never go wrong with anything that comes out of Neil Gaiman’s classic run on The Sandman, which is where these characters originally came from, and once I’d heard that, I knew it was going onto my “must watch” list. (I also believe the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman was one of the best television shows of the last decade, and I cannot wait for it to return.) Anyway, the characters were spun off into their own comics series, and that series has now been adapted for Netflix.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Dead Boy Detectives going in–I wasn’t familiar with the characters–but I’d seen a preview so I knew it was about two ghosts who solved cases, which was an interesting idea that I rather liked (and wished I’d thought of myself). The first episode wasn’t great, in all honesty, but I rarely judge a show based on its first episode as they are generally having to do a lot of story and character introduction and set up for the show, which is not easy to pull off. It wasn’t bad, I just had hoped for better, if that makes sense, and didn’t stop watching.

And it hit its stride in episode two, with each episode building on the one before as the series went on–and of course, when we reached the end, we were sorry it was over and wanted a second season immediately.

The show focuses on the ghosts of two very young men, Edwin and Charles, who somehow have (by choice) become trapped on Earth rather than moving on their afterlife; Edwin died as a result of a hazing ritual gone wrong and his soul was sold to the devil by his schoolmates, who didn’t realize what they were doing. He spends numerous decades in hell before managing his escape, and he appears to Charles when he is near death, and comforts him as he dies. Charles is also the first human who’s been able to see Edwin, so he is charmed by that as well. They become friends, Charles dies and rather than moving on, stays with Edwin–and the two decide to become detectives…helping other ghosts trapped on this plane by finding who they are, why they got stuck here, and resolving the issue so the ghost can move on.

In the first episode, they take the case of a young psychic who is possessed by a demon, Crystal, and they exorcise the demon from her but she has memory loss. They decide to let her stay with them until she gets her memory back, and she helps them with their cases. Two other characters, Nico and Jenny, who also start helping them with their cases. There are also any number of recurring characters that are an absolute delight–Lukas Gage as the Cat King is a particular standout, as is Ruth Connell (whom I loved on Supernatural) as Night Nurse, who is responsible for getting recalcitrant souls who haven’t moved on to their proper afterlives–so Edwin and Charles are also in her sights. Each episode is a case, which also moves them forward on their personal through-stories, as well.

Edwin is gay, as is the Cat King, and Edwin is a bit in love with Charles–who has chemistry and an attraction to Crystal. However, this potential “love triangle” is headed off perfectly; Edwin confesses, and Charles–not gay–doesn’t rule it out but certainly not right now, and it doesn’t change how Charles feels about him–he loves him and they are best friends. Sensitively handled and brilliantly welcomed by this viewer, to be sure.

And the Cat King’s barely concealed double-entendres and attraction to Edwin steals the series.

Bravo and well done.

Along Came Jones

Our power went out last night, around 5:45 a.m. per the email from Entergy (if our power is out, how do they expect me to read an email? I guess my cell phone, but still), but for whatever reason, somehow Paul got up to wake me up at the time I usually rise (my Cat Alarm, aka Sparky, also failed this morning but once Paul got up, he started), but I slept so well last night that it took me awhile this morning to get up and going. Not sure what that’s about (thunderstorm, no doubt), but my coffee tastes good and it looks like the kitchen roof didn’t leak last night, so that’s a good thing. We’re supposed to have heavy weather this morning with off and on showers all day (at least that was the forecast yesterday). A quick glance at my phone, however, has let me know that later this morning it will get sunny and it will stay that way the rest of the day. That’s nice. In fact, the sun is out already so I think that forecast may be off. I know there were tornado warnings west and north of the city last night, and most of the truly bad weather missed us.

I’m not going to lie, I felt very off-balance at work yesterday. It started raining in the early afternoon, which certainly didn’t help (damp air and rain always makes me sleepy), and there were some other things that went on in the early morning after I arrived at the office that had me wondering why the hell didn’t you call in sick this morning, dumb ass? But it all worked out in the end, and the rest of the day went swimmingly. I ran my errands once I was out of the office, and then came home. I was a little tired by then, so didn’t get much of anything done last night other than bonding with Sparky (i.e. being a cat bed). We started watching a new British show called After the Flood, which looked really interesting, but I also noted that only the first two episodes (of six) were up on Britbox, which is…odd. We really liked the show, so I am going to have to figure out how to watch the other four episodes. But that’s peculiar, isn’t it? I think I may have let my subscription go, which is probably why we can only access the first two episodes. Heavy sigh. I really need to get a handle on the streaming services I pay for, don’t I?

I am trying to get a handle on easing back into my normality again–a week off is so disorienting, but nice at the same time–so I figured this wasn’t going to wind up being highly productive, either. I need to at least stay on top of things, though, so I am not buried this weekend trying to get caught up. I need to get the dishes done tonight when I get home, and there’s some laundry and other straightening up to do, and I need to get back to reading my book, too. I managed to get all the book posts done yesterday, but still need to get the one for Dead Boy Detectives, which I loved, finished as well. If you’ve not watched, you really should get cracking on it; it’s definitely one of my favorite new shows of the year. It’s been so long since I finished watching that it may be difficult to write about it now (I finished before I left on the trip), but it pleased me enormously, and I loved all the queerness, especially the Cat King (Lukas Gage, who is fantastic in the part). Of course, you can never go wrong with Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, or anything that comes out of it.

I didn’t read last night when I got home, either, being tired. But I am looking forward to spending some more time with Where They Wait, which I was really enjoying reading last week in Kentucky. I also kind of feel a bit off with the writing stuff, too–it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything other than the blog, so the muscles, already rusted, have kind of tightened up on me again, but I also need to deal with things I’ve been putting off because I didn’t want to deal with them and that’s really not a good way to deal with anything. I need to make a to-do list, too.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I hope to be back here at some point later on.

A Lover’s Question

Monday and back to work in the office day. I slept like the dead last night, which felt rather nice, so I am feeling pretty rested and good this morning. My coffee is good, Sparky’s been fed, and I am going to get cleaned up and head in to the office relatively soon. This Monday feels much better than last Monday did, to be sure. Yay!

Yesterday was nice and relaxed for Paul’s birthday. We watched a couple of things, and then started watching Dead Boy Detectives on Netflix, which we are really enjoying. You can’t go wrong with a property from Neil Gaiman; I could be wrong, but I think they originally appeared in the original run of The Sandman comic. I am really looking forward to the return of that show, too; watching convinced me to reread some of the anthology collections of the original run of the comic book, which was a lot of fun and reminded me of how much I used to love comic books. I’m hardly an expert on comic books and the super-hero lore from either DC or Marvel; I started reading comics when I was very little with Richie Rich and Little Lotta and Sugar and Spice before moving onto the Archie books, which eventually led to Superman and the rest. But The Sandman, reading the Gaiman run on that comic let me see, for the first time, that comics–and their stories–could be art.

We spent the afternoon watching the second season of CNN’s The History of Comedy, which was interesting. It’s really funny to remember all the censorship stupidity of television when I was a child–when you couldn’t even say damn on television, let alone other curse words1. Sexual content or references? Not so much. Even as a kid I thought it was weird. My dad swore, my mother rarely (when she did it was serious) but I always have. I added swearing to my vocabulary repertoire in junior high, even though I really didn’t know what I was saying…years later I would realize a lot of so-called bad language was really dumb and not at all what the words meant. (Is “bastard” really a modern day insult? It really means the child of unmarried parents, no more no less; this used to be a horrible insult but really? It’s not the bastard’s fault they are a bastard, and there are a hell of a lot more of them around now than when I was a kid. As an insult, it’s archaic since there’s no shame or embarrassment around being one today, so kind of pointless.)

I didn’t get much done this weekend, between recovering from being exhausted from last week and Paul’s birthday yesterday (which was kind of nice). Being a bad boyfriend, I didn’t get him anything other than a pizza for dinner, but he truly doesn’t care (nor do I). I mean, we’ve been together for thirty years next summer (!!!), which seems astonishing to me. Thirty years. I would have never believed in a million years had someone told me in my early thirties that I would find the perfect person for me. And yet, here we are. Kind of pleasant surprise how my life turned out in the end, wasn’t it?

The Kristi Noem “dog killer” memes continue to flood social media and she, like so many others of her ilk, refuses to admit doing anything wrong. Sorry, Governor, you’re never going to get everyone in the country to agree that “living on a farm means tough decisions”-2-I recognize the attitude about animals, my parents and their siblings pretty much all had the same mentality but never had pets. She’s another one of those pretty Republican women with the dead eyes–nothing behind them at all–like the Republican women who came before her. Remember Michelle Bachman? Empty, dead eyes–although Bachmann’s also had that crazy look to them, too. At any rate, Noem may survive politically in South Dakota, but she’s done nationally. She might wind up as a senator from there, God help us all, but any further national ambitions are pretty much dead…no one is ever going to forget she shot a puppy in the face because she hated it.

I also read a bit more of Michael Thomas Ford’s Suicide Notes, but not much. My mind was too scattered to settle down to focus on reading, so I gave up. Not an indictment of the book, mind, but more a critique of my fevered brain.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

  1. Curse words, and swearing, are a subject for another time but an interesting one. ↩︎
  2. Especially since farm people are weighing in against her. ↩︎

Last Christmas

I was bored briefly yesterday between clients (it’s rarely more than five to ten minutes, and at the time I didn’t feel like answering emails or even looking at social media–after all, I am already taking medication for my blood pressure) so I thought, maybe you should look up the books you read and wrote about here to make a Best Reads of the Year list, but as I started going through the blog I remembered that I only write about the books I feel very strongly about, which would mean trying to narrow the ones I loved down to ten, and I don’t really want to do that. I may just do a list of the books I reviewed here…there were so many damned good ones that I read all year, and of course there were a lot of rereads over the year as well. I also watched a lot of television and film this past year, and almost everything was terrific–we stop watching if we aren’t enjoying it very much–so again, choosing favorites or a top ten list would be incredibly difficult and mentally taxing. But I have no problem saying that the television program I watched that I enjoyed the most was Heartstopper. It was just so charming and pure, precisely the sort of thing I would normally turn my nose up at and dismiss as old-fashioned or overly sentimental, but it took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t expecting the sweetness or the charm, and of course the incredibly charismatic, age-appropriate cast had a lot to do with that, too–although I then read the graphic novels and loved them just as much.

I actually feel good this morning, oddly enough. I slept deeply and well, waking only once, and I was able to go back to the Dreaming (Neil Gaiman/The Sandman reference). My arm is much better, though sometimes it still feels like I have a Charley horse in the biceps. It got colder overnight as well, so that probably helped me sleep somewhat. It feels chilly in the apartment this morning: a quick glance at the weather shows that it’s in the mid-fifties, which feels about right. I have a lot to do this weekend, and of course, forty-eight hours isn’t enough time. But the book is going very well, if not quickly enough, and a strong push this weekend should stand me in good stead. Cleaning up the mess that the first ten chapters is taking me a while, no lie, but it’s getting better and I am starting to have fun with it again. Which is always nice.

It’s been quite a week, and I have to say, December has been a bit of a trying month so far. Keeping all the plates spinning is much harder and I am barely making it to some right as they are about to fall off. I’ve been battling exhaustion a lot lately. I’m not sure if it’s the sleep issues I’ve been having for the last ten years, but it seems to be more of a problem these last few years, which could simply be age-related. I know my body has changed a lot in the last few years–blood sugar drops, for example, were never anything I ever had to worry about before, but it makes a significant difference now. Which tends to happen quite a bit, too–because if I don’t eat when I get hungry, the hunger will eventually go away and I’ll end up not eating at all–which results in a drop in my blood sugar. The fact that it’s noticeable is concerning–another thing to ask my doctor about next month, I need to make a list–so who knows? I hate our health care system. Health care should never be a for-profit enterprise, because that puts profit ahead of patients, and the fact that there is anyone who can’t see that “profit before patients” is immoral really concerns me about the future. But I also have faith in today’s young people. They’re bright, inclusive, and want a better world for everyone. That’s kind of cool, isn’t it?

But it’s been a good year, overall. I just wish I’d been able to enjoy it a bit more. And on that note, here I come for the spice mines. Have a great Friday, everyone.

Over My Head

I can’t get The Sandman series on Netflix out of my head…and isn’t that what great art is supposed to do? Lodge itself into your head until you can’t help but think about it all the more? So, I decided to revisit the comic series, and was delighted that the two volumes I had on hand were actually the first two, and those are the ones that were adapted into the television series. (I’ll have to order the rest.)

Netflix also dropped another episode of the show after its initial ten episode run, which was built around two of the stand alone issues of the original series run–“Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope”, the first of which was animated and takes the reader inside the mind of cats; as a cat person, I absolutely loved it, despite its brutality, which at times made me very upset because, well, I am a cat person. I love cats, as does Paul–something we came to very late in life, with our adoption of Skittle way back in 2002 or 2003 or whenever it was we got that mouse, which led to our becoming converts to cat people–and we will probably always have cats; if we ever end up in a larger space we’ll probably wind up having more than one cat–we’ve come close to getting a second numerous times, which is part of the reason we feed and take care of the outdoor herd that has taken up residence on our block and under the house (everyone on the property–with the exception of Michael in front–are cat people, so the lucky herd generally gets fed multiple times per day; the others also take them to the vet for regular check-ups and so forth, so we get to just enjoy their company; we are down to Buddy–orange and white–and old standby Tiger, a tortoise shell who’s been around since the days of the original outdoor kitty, Bubba, now.

I digress.

I discovered The Sandman when I moved to Houston in 1989 and started reading comics again thanks to my nephew; it was during this time that several of my favorite comics runs took place–the Five Years Later run of the Legion of Super-Heroes; the reboot of The Question; the Will Payton as Starman run; and of course, Neil Gaiman’s stunning run of The Sandman. Over the years, I’d forgotten a lot about the series–I remembered there were seven Endless siblings, that Morpheus was also known as Dream of the Endless and his kingdom was the Dreaming; and I remembered “The Doll’s House,” which was superlative. I went back and bought all the back issues of The Sandman (as I did with Starman; I was lucky with Legion of Super-heroes because the “Five Years Later” reboot began almost at the same time I started reading the books again) because the book was so extraordinary, so literate and beautifully imagined and written and drawn. Seeing the live action series and being so entranced by it sent me back to the original source material; I don’t remember why I bought these two volumes (my comics collection was yet another victim of a move) or when, butI was very glad to have them on hand so I could revisit them.

And they are just as marvelous and enchanting as they were the first time.

I think even people who aren’t fans of comics would enjoy these; they are stunning achievements, and I think you would enjoy them Constant Reader, as much as I did.

I am now going to have to collect the entire run again, heavy sigh.