Tag: Rolling Stone

We Gotta Get Out of this Place

Thursday morning and there is STILL snow on the ground. I’ve yet to check the weather this morning, but I probably will before I finish this while drinking my coffee. We were told to work from home today, as opposed to having a snow day, mainly because the roads here are covered in ice and snow and it’s not very safe out there. It’s been nice, being snowed in and kind of isolated from the outside world pretty much this entire week; being distracted by the blizzard was also kind of lovely. It also reminded me why I love this city so much; the way everyone reacted to this marvelous surprise was simply adorable; everyone embraced it and had fun with it. Even I got past my distaste for snow and cold, which is kind of a miracle. It’s also nice having a functional HVAC system, so we stayed toasty and warm for the most part. Being closer to the floor, Sparky has obviously not enjoyed the cold quite as much, but it’s also turned him into more of a cuddly kitty too than he was before.

We finished watching White Lies, which had a few more surprising twists in the last few episodes, and really enjoyed it. I also did some writing–not much, of course–done, but I need to really get back on the ball with that. I also did a lot of file clean-up on my computer (the lengths I will go to not actually write anything is kind of amazing), which did, in fairness, need to be done. I am hoping that after I get my remote work done today I’ll be able to dive into the book again headfirst and get back on the writing horse that I kind of fell off of this past week. Blaming it on the blizzard works, of course. The news, of course, is as depressing and overwhelming, but the truth is I never really relaxed in the legal protections and the hint of equality we’ve had as queer people this century, and going back to being an legally oppressed minority doesn’t change a whole lot of things other than mental state for me. I’m also old, and have lived through these things before. But…there’s more than a little hint that this time might be different. The Republicans have gone full fascist (imagine explaining away a Heil Hitler salute done deliberately not once but twice. And don’t blame it on autism, thank you very much. Autism doesn’t make people Nazis, and Germany was not a nation of autistic people in the 1930s), but their vicious cruelty is countered by the utter incompetence. That’s the primary difference; MAGA aren’t competent) so nothing they would do, or try to do, would surprise me. They’re coming for Obergefell, and they are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. Can Social Security be far behind? I mean, I hope everyone who voted for this is getting everything they hoped for out of this administration. But hey, eggs, right? And with the avian flu poised to reach pandemic status soon enough, I have no doubt in my mind this amazing leadership the country voted for will see us through it all safely. I wonder what the death toll will be? Will it be 1918-1919 Spanish flu levels? Remember, keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times!

It’s extremely funny to me that the people who have screamed and shouted the loudest about tyranny and freedom…elected a tyrant. Irony impaired much?

But today I got up early–which I’ve not done all week, really–and so it kind of feels like a return to normal after the wackiness of a New Orleans blizzard and snow on the ground for a few days. There’s still a lot of it out there that it still is a bit startling when I glance outside for a second the way I often do. I am awake and feel functional (I should, since I’ve not stepped inside the office since a week ago) and rested, so we’ll see how the day goes. I’m going to have to run errands at some point–but I also don’t know what’s open and what isn’t; if the grocery store is open, I could do that and check the post office since I was already out. But if it’s not, my postal service most likely isn’t, either, and I don’t think there’s a lot of mail to be had anyway; if the highways and airport are closed, there’s no way for mail to get in or out of New Orleans so that’s not much of a need in the first place. I wisely just checked the delivery estimate of a package that was supposed to arrive this week and yes, it’s delayed because of the weather–and the package is here in New Orleans at the distribution center. No one’s going to work at the post office, either. How long before we get back to what passes for normal around here?

I think the most important thing for me to do to survive the next few years (and being optimistic) is to write. Writing got me through the Bush years that kicked off the century, and writing will get me through this abhorrent one for as long as it can. I’m not a good German, though, so I have to remain dispassionate and not expend energy on outrage. The outrage is partly the point, really; and if we learned anything from the first go round that whatever outrage the legacy media is pushing, there’s something more important happening that they are deflecting from. None of the legacy media can be trusted as a source for information anymore, and it looks like I’ll be getting my news and opinion coverage from Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, and ProPublica going forward. I have to protect my own sanity and mental health, and that is going to be my priority while I survive this horror that has descended upon us. I need to be able to focus, I need to be able to work, and I need to be able to stay energized. I cannot allow defeatism to take root in my head. Having a very fertile imagination, I can always go much further in imagining the worst, as my brain won’t filter itself for protection–I will always take things to their furthest extrapolations–if this than this and then this and then OMG. My imagination is both a blessing and a curse, it always has been.

I can always imagine the worst outcome.

And on that dreary note, I am heading into the spice mines. I should make use of this time productively, and get as much done as I can today before the reality of tomorrow–I’m assuming the office will be open tomorrow, and it seems strange to take my remote day tomorrow when I’ve been home already all week, but…we’ll see. My clinic doesn’t have hours tomorrow, but we do have services open on Fridays in my department, so we will have to see. They usually let us know before noon.

So I may be back today, one can never be certain. But I do need to get shit done today, and maybe even go outside for a minute to check on the car, which is probably still buried in snow. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in either tomorrow or later on today.

Get Together

Saturday morning of a three day weekend and how lovely is that? Thank you, whoever made the effort to give us Memorial Day as a national holiday; this lowly worker is eternally grateful for any extra paid time off. I intend to work this entire weekend; nose firmly affixed to grindstone and butt glued to shabby and disheveled desk chair whilst fingers move rapidly over the keyboard. Yesterday after work I was too tired–more on that later–to do much of anything other than mindless chores, and while doing those mindless chores another integral part of how to improve the book came to me; shortly thereafter, while putting away clean dishes another tumbril fell into place; so my entire weekend’s worth of writing just popped into my head. How incredibly lucky am I? Terribly, shockingly so.

Paul and I watched the Being Mary Tyler Moore documentary on MAX (which always makes me think of Carol Burnett doing Nora Desmond on her old variety show) last night and it was quite interesting. We forget how recently it was that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was breaking new ground; it was during my lifetime. Saturday night television on CBS when I was a kid was the ultimate must-see television; a three hour block of comedy of such high quality it may never have been equaled since. I loved her show; I loved the cast, and it still holds up today, despite how much things have changed, culturally and socially, in the decades since it went off the air after seven glorious seasons. There was a time when Paul was between jobs here in New Orleans when he became addicted to reruns of both it and Rhoda (when I was a kid I didn’t much care for Rhoda, despite having loved her character on the original show. As an adult, I found it much funnier than I ever had as a kid; not sure why that made a difference other than that it did), and I was amazed at how well the show held up.

It’s also interesting thinking about that period of my life (the 1970s) again–because it’s been on my mind. There’s an idea formulating in the back of my head; a crime novel told from a twelve year old’s perspective set in the suburbs in 1975. I’ve thought about it a lot lately. I had the original idea sometime back early in the pandemic, when I was going through my true crime documentary phase of condom-packing back in the day. It comes back to me now and again, and lately it’s been coming to me with more and more regularity, which means it will probably be the next book after the ones already in progress are completed and out of my hair. I have no idea when that might actually be, but I have a great title for it, and images keep dancing in and out of my head. I know the crime and how my POV character becomes involved in it, but I am not sure of much else of the rest–the flashes are bits and pieces of story and scene that I start filling in, in a journal or in a notebook. I already have the file for it made, too.

I have so many files. I am swimming in files. Buried in files, to the point where between the computer files and the physical files I may never ever be able to organize or get rid of any of them. It seems like I am constantly having to find room for more files in places. Heavy heaving sigh.

But I slept deeply and well and even later than yesterday morning, so that’s a very good thing. I have to run a couple of errands today and I have all kinds of writing to get done today, which should go easier this morning because of all the thinking I did last night. We’ll see, I suppose, is the best way to look at it. But as I mentioned, I have to get the mail and stop at the grocery store for a few things (so irritating, really), and so I am hoping after that to be able to dive headfirst into the book so I can reach my daily goal for the weekend. Paul will probably be out most of the afternoon, as usual on Saturdays (he meets his trainer at noon, and then either goes to the office or rides the bike for another few hours) so I have no excuse for not being productive today. Once I finish this I am going to go sit in my chair for a little while and read (I want to finish Lori Roy’s marvelous Let Me Die in His Footsteps at long last this weekend; I cannot believe how long it’s taken me to finish something that I really am enjoying and have been itching to get back to. Lori is one of my favorite writers of the last ten years; not one of her novels have ever disappointed me…but more on that when I finish the book and talk about it on here), and then will head out to the errands around noonish. I want to read for about an hour or so before writing, and then running the errands in order to come back home and write for a while. I may even pick up grocery store sushi (don’t judge me) so I don’t have to be concerned about lunch, either. I may make shrimp creole for dinner, too; I need to do something with that leftover celery. I also cleaned out the refrigerator a bit yesterday as well–should finish that over the weekend, too.

The reason I was so fatigued and drained yesterday was because I got to do that ZOOM interview with Margot Douaihy yesterday, and so I spent a good hour researching her on-line, digging through the book for references, and of course trying to come up with good questions for her. I don’t know that I actually managed to come up with good questions, but when you’re working with someone as smart and talented and layered as Margot, it’s very easy for forty-five minutes to shoot by. I didn’t even get to all the questions I had for her; I looked at the time on my computer and realized we’d been going for three quarters of an hour, and had i continued asking questions we could have been there for the rest of the afternoon. That has always been my issue with interviews, really; whether ZOOM recordings or written ones, you can never get everything in that you want and there’s never enough space to be as thorough. I would love to do in-depth pieces on people like in Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone; I remember Ann Patchett telling Paul and I about having to fly to London on GQ’s dime to interview Liam Neeson or someone like that, and thinking man I would love to have that kind of opportunity. But it exhausted me mentally and physically, so I was very glad I had gotten all my work-at-home chores completed before it started because I was unable to do much of anything when it was finished. I did some chores–the dishes, finished laundering the bed linens, but other than that I was just in my chair letting my mind wander as I watched documentaries about history on Youtube.

And on that note, I think I’m going to make another cup of coffee and repair to the living room to read while my mind continues waking up. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow or maybe even later today; one can never be certain.