Tag: P. G. Wodehouse

Renegade

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. I’m now recognizing that I need to appreciate every day I get to go into work because my job could easily go away at any moment, with a traitor in the White House who hates everything and everyone and has handed everything over to an unelected foreign illegal immigrant billionaire who essentially bought our country. Yay, tyranny!1 The Founding Fathers would be so proud. The American experiment had a decent run. And again, apologies to our former allies. DO your worst, we deserve it–even those who didn’t vote for it, because we were unable to stop it, and it goes back way further than 2015 and the ride down the golden escalator (an apt metaphor–our worship of the wealthy was literally a ride down to hell paved with gold). We didn’t start paying attention soon enough, complacent with our rights and our Constitution and our mythology that our institutions were strong enough to hold–despite being under steady and regular assault for the last forty years. (This really got going under Reagan, for the record. He was the first step on the path that led us here–the first cosplay Christian divorced celebrity to win the White House.)

I am a little groggy this morning, as getting up at six after not having to for the weekend isn’t an easy transition anymore. Damned disorienting blizzard, anyway. But I had a good day yesterday. I managed to get some writing done (yay!) and some stuff done around the house as well as did some reading. It was a a lovely relaxing day, and we finished watching season two of The Recruit, which turned out to be a lot of fun. I definitely recommend. The lead actor is terrific, and he’s also very good looking, which doesn’t hurt (I’m shallow, okay?). But there are so many of these international affairs/espionage shows now that it’s hard to tell them apart anymore, really. I do enjoy them, too–even if they are pretty much from the same cookie cutter and there’s always insane fight scenes and gun battles and things–which goes back to my love of Robert Ludlum novels and their intricate plotting. (I admire nothing more than an intricately plotted novel–see also Carl Hiassen and P. G. Wodehouse.) I had always wanted to try writing a spy adventure–spinning Colin out into his own series–but I haven’t traveled internationally very much and showing Colin working outside of New Orleans would be kind of weird. I have one idea I’ve been sitting on for a very long time for Colin; maybe someday.

The Super Bowl is also this weekend, and two major arteries for me to get home have been shut down–Poydras and Howard Avenues. I guess I’ll just have to go uptown and run errands this week on the way home rather than going straight home. Yay. And then it will be Carnival, and then…augh. I really need to get cracking on my writing. I know, it’s shocking that I’m having trouble focusing while living through an existential threat. I guess I need to really just push all of that out of my mind while focusing on writing as an act of activism. Writing queer stories has always been important, a way of shedding light on what it’s like to live and operate and love on the margins of society and culture. I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about the political aspect of breathing life into queer characters and their stories, my focus is writing the best narrative that I can. But showing queer people existing, showing that they are normal and want the same things everything else does, is inherently an activist act when you live in a homophobic country2.

I don’t know why I am letting this bother me so much. I mean, after all, we have the Democratic Party fighting for us rolling over and playing dead but still, somehow, asking for money. Never again. Your party has died because of its inefficacy and its cowardice in the face of a threat. You’ve been cowards since 1980. “Oh no Fox might say something mean!” isn’t the position of strength we’ve been asking you to model for us for over forty years. Bravo for not rising to fight the threat to democracy–but your social media posts are really showing your constituents what you really think about us and how much you care about us…by doing absolutely fucking nothing. And when you do, you’ll simply blame us for not fighting hard enough or not donating enough money or something, I don’t know. Of course, the legacy media has also failed us completely, and continue to fail us on the daily, too. I no longer believe anything that comes from our legacy corporate media, frankly. I guess the irony of the legacy media becoming actual fake news after years of being accused of it will be more appreciated at some point in the future, I suppose.

Ironically, my idea for a dystopian novel set in the aftermath of the collapse of the US hasn’t been trying to invade and overwhelm my creativity. I guess when you’re watching as a country jerks through its final death throes writing about the collapse of civilization isn’t an intellectual creative pursuit anymore for me.

And on that cheery note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a great Monday, and I’ll be back tomorrow most likely.

  1. To Mitch McConnell’s eternal shame and disgrace. ↩︎
  2. Miss me with the “not all straight people” bullshit, thank you very much. ↩︎

Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter

Well, here we are on Thursday and it’s my last day in the office for the week. Huzzah! I was very tired yesterday when I got home. I did pick up the mail and did start running out of steam in the afternoon, but I did manage to get a thousand words done on new Scotty before my brain sputtered and went dormant. It’s fine, it’s a transitional chapter and I always kind of struggle with those at first before I break through the wall. I’ll probably get through it tonight. I do feel more rested this morning than I did yesterday, but I imagine I’ll hit a wall this afternoon the way I did yesterday. It also rained yesterday–not all day, on the afternoon and it started raining again once I got home after picking up the mail. Today I am coming straight home from work with. no stops on the way, which will be lovely. The house didn’t slide too badly over the course of the week, so I am not going to have to spend a lot of time on any of those chores tomorrow or tonight or the weekend.

We watched this week’s episode of Bad Monkey, which we are really enjoying. I would like to mention that Bad Monkey was the book that made me a fan of Carl Hiaasen. I had read one of his books when I lived in Florida, Tourist Season, maybe? I didn’t care for it, thought it silly and not very funny at all, and I began grouping comic Florida crime novels together under the category “Florida wacky.” But when I was on a work trip, I ran out of things to read with another night to go before we flew home, so I walked over to a Barnes & Noble for something new to read, and Bad Monkey was on a severely discounted book table, and I liked the font, so I gave him another try–and thought the book was hilarious. I laughed any number of times, and I couldn’t believe how tangled and tightly it was plotted. I went on to read several other of Hiaasen’s books, and found them to be equally hilarious and clever and that plotting! As someone who’s not very strong on plot, people who are capable of such epic plots with off-shoots and side plots and so forth, I really admire that ability. (If you ever want to see mastery in plotting, P. G. Wodehouse’s comic novels about the British upper class have unbelievably intricate plots.) Anyway, Bad Monkey is a terrific series, and Vince Vaughan (not a fan) is actually perfect for the main character of Yancy, and it’s stunningly beautifully shot.

And we’re going to have thunderstorms and rain most of the day, beginning in the afternoon. I’ve not checked the hurricane center to see what’s going on with those two new systems out there, but today is the red-letter anniversary day for five , storms to hit New Orleans–Katrina, Gustav, Isaac, Harvey and Ida. (I don’t even remember Harvey, frankly.) So we’ve made it through today without having to evacuate, but that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear yet. September is a very busy month, and we’ve had them in October before, too.

We have a three day weekend this weekend, too, huzzah! LSU’s season opener is Sunday night, and there are games on Saturday, too. I am getting my COVID booster Saturday morning, so if it makes feel unwell, I can spend the day at home just relaxing, watching football games, and reading. Woo-hoo! So tomorrow I’ll do my work-at-home tasks, and then spend the rest of the day writing and/or cleaning and doing laundry. I also shouldn’t have to leave the house tomorrow, either, which is always a plus for me. But now that I don’t have anxiety (at least not to the crippling degree that I used to have it) leaving the house really isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be, and I don’t resent having to run errands in quite the way that I used to. The new medications have been life changing, and my secret fear–losing the anxiety also was costing me the ability to write, and I would have to choose between them–is clearly not a thing. My brain is rewired, so I am having to come up with different methodologies of doing things now, including writing. Not getting more than a thousand words done yesterday before the new meds would have been a cause for anxiety and Imposter Syndrome and everything else counter-productive in my brain. The meds haven’t taken away the Imposter Syndrome completely, but it’s much easier to deal with now and it doesn’t come with the old spiral the way it used to, and it’s so much easier to deal with when it pops up now. This week, I’ve been ignoring that, and dismissing it as soon as it rears its ugly psychotic head.

More to the point, I’m enjoying writing again, something I’ve not really felt in a while (a lot of the outside stuff was taking up too much space in my brain, so it began to feel like an obligation and work rather than something I find pleasure in–and I really do love writing), and it feels good again. Huzzah!

And on that note, I am going to make some more coffee and head to the spice mines over on Elysian Fields. May you have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back around later. Stranger things, you know. 🙂

Careless Whisper

So, for those of you who are keeping score, I rewrote/revised/edited /redid whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it-Chapter-One of the new Scotty last night and you know what? I found Scotty’s voice again. I don’t know, but when I opened the word document for this next attempt to write this book, I knew what the first sentence was going to be, and when I typed it: I love Christmas…somehow Scotty was there again; I could hear his voice, get into his head, everything I need to do in order to write a Scotty book. My God, I might actually get this thing finished.

Huzzah!

I also made it to the gym yesterday morning before work; without complaining, without once trying to think of a reason or rationale to not go. I just got up, had a couple of cups of coffee, did my morning toilette, and when it was time, I put on my sweats and went out the front door. It’s amazing how much better I feel; how much more energy I have,  I’ve not been sleeping as great as I would like this week–not sure what that’s all about–but maybe I just don’t need as much sleep as I used to? A possibility, no doubt. I’m seeing my doctor again next month; perhaps I can discuss it with her then. I know she’ll be pleased I’m working out more regularly.

I also did some things I’ve been procrastinating about–made an eye appointment, called AT&T because I am paying for cellular service on my iPad and not getting it, called my doctor for a prescription refill, cancelled a digital newspaper subscription–and so I am feeling rather proud of myself.  Yay, me!

I also read some Agatha Christie short stories, from her collection The Golden Ball and Other Stories. I originally read, and enjoyed, these stories when I was a teenager; and they were originally published in the 1920’s. To be honest, while I still enjoyed them, on some levels they bothered me. I’ve actually read criticism of Agatha Christie for being, among other things, classist in her writings; this can be problematic in a present-day reading (I didn’t notice when I originally read her). I also had some other issues with these stories that I didn’t originally; Christie, not only in her short stories but her novels, enjoyed romantic happy endings, which happens in a couple of these stories even though they aren’t a real pay-off and kind of clumsily tacked on.

Listen at me, criticizing Agatha Christie! Some nerve, huh?

The first story in the collection is “The Listerdale Mystery”:

Mrs. St. Vincent was adding up figures. Once or twice she sighed, and her hand stole to her aching forehead. She had always disliked arithmetic. It was unfortunate that nowadays her life seemed to be composed entirely of one particular kind of sum, the ceaseless adding together of small necessary items of expenditure making a total that never failed to surprise and alarm her.

Who hasn’t been there? The St. Vincents are what Christie calls “poor gentlefolk,” essentially, people who used to have money or are technically part of the upper classes but no longer have the funds to live the way they are used to, and are pretty much living hand-to-mouth. Her daughter has prospects–a young man with money–but they are living in shabby place they can’t even afford anymore which won’t “show her off properly.” Mrs. St. Vincent stumbles on a rental advertisement in the paper that seems too good to be true–servants the tenants won’t have to pay; a lovely home with rent so cheap there has to be a catch–but it’s only for the ‘right sort of tenant.’ The St. Vincents qualify; they move in, and everything is wonderful. The daughter, having a proper home that shows her off in the right way, gets engaged to her young man with money. But the son, Rupert, is certain something is wrong about the place and wrong with the deal. The owner, Lord Listerdale, has not been seen nor heard from in quite a while, and Rupert starts looking into things. The ending isn’t quite as sinister as one might think if this were a Stephen King short story, but it’s a pleasant little story. But you see what I mean about the classism; “the right sort of people”…and “poor gentlefolk who suffer in silence” as opposed to the working poor who aren’t the right sort of people and apparently suffer loudly?

“The Girl in the Train” is also quite fun; but again–our main character is a young man whose wealthy uncle has become irritated with him, fired him from his employ, and cut him off financially (shades of Wodehouse!). Our young hero takes this all in stride, and isn’t sure what to do with himself, so he gets on a train to a town that bears the family name: Rowland’s Castle. But before the train pulls out of the station a beautiful young woman leaps into his compartment, begs for help, and dives under the other seat. Thus begins a kind of fun adventure which inadvertently gets him involved not only with the possible kidnapping of an heiress, but with a Scotland Yard investigation into a gang of spies! It’s a fun tale, and all works out in the end….and it very much reminded me of Wodehouse, whom I love.

“The Manhood of Edward Robinson” is also quite fun–if dated. Edward has a good job, good prospects, and everything he could wish for–even if he is a little henpecked by his fiancee who wants to wait several years to get married, which is more sensible. He has won a contest with a prize of 500 pounds–and in a bit of rebelliousness against his fiancee, buys a sportscar, and then lies to her and goes driving out of London one night. He winds up on quite an adventure involving a stolen diamond necklace and a car switch (he winds up with someone else’s car–wouldn’t happen today, but could back then). He comes out of the whole adventure with a whole new outlook on life, and again, the end is quite satisfying.

The fourth, “Jane is Search of a Job,” is perhaps my favorite of the bunch. Jane is poor, needs a job, and finds an interesting advertisement, which she answers and soon finds herself body doubling for eastern European royalty. But all is not what it seems with Jane’s new high paying job, and soon she is off on an adventure all of her own. What makes this story work–along with other Christie novels of the time, like The Man in the Brown Suit–is the female character, who is quite realistic, doesn’t ever get hysterical or lose her head, and greets each new twist in the tale with determination, grit, and a very practical, level-headed  “okay, how do I get out of this” attitude. A very fun read, even if at the end she winds up riding off into the sunset with a man she’s just met and who has fallen madly in love with her. Farfetched as that may seem, though, it is a charming end to the story of Jane’s financial woes–although the message “have a wealthy man fall in love with you” isn’t the most practical of advice.

And now,  back to the spice mines.

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