Tag: SEC Championships

Heaven Knows

Sunday morning and I am up early again after another lovely night’s sleep. Sparky is feeling feisty this morning after his breakfast–I noticed yesterday how clawed up my right knee is, since that’s the leg he always attacks and tries to climb while I am working on my desktop–so I have a lap blanket to cushion the claws a little bit. It’s my desk chair; he feels very territorial about sleeping in my desk chair after I go to work in the mornings during the week day and I am actually messing with his normal daily routine. Sigh. But I have work to get done today, around reading and cleaning, so he’s going to have to go sleep on the couch.

Yesterday was pleasant. I felt good in the morning after I got up, and did some cleaning. I read some more of Moonraker (astonishing how different the books are from the films) and started The Get Off, which has one of the best openings I’ve come across in books for quite some time–which is saying a lot, because I’ve read some pretty fantastic books lately–and am looking forward to reading some more of it today. I do need to get some writing done today. I wrote a lot yesterday, which was kind of fun, getting back into the swing of things. I wrote a very lengthy letter yesterday, which I will mail tomorrow, and then I worked in my journal for hours, brainstorming and figuring out how to fix things I am working on and what needs to be done. This morning, after reading and getting cleaned up, I’m going to get a story revised and then dive back into the book some more. Deadlines are looming, and the festivals are next weekend (AIEEEE!!!) and I still haven’t figured out a lot of that stuff out yet. Heavy sigh. I hope it’s a calm day at the office this week that doesn’t wear me out too much so I can get all this heavy lifting done.

We also watched the LSU Gymnastics team power to a second consecutive SEC championship meet in a row, which was very exciting. It was a close meet, but LSU broke 198.00 yet again, and the top three teams (Oklahoma and Florida being the other two) didn’t really have their best meet, either. And now it’s on to regionals and nationals. It’s funny how ever since that bitch on the Oklahoma team flooded social media last year with clips of LSU’s gymnasts and claiming they were being over-scored…Oklahoma hasn’t beaten LSU once. Karma is absolutely a bitch, and frankly, I’ve hated their team for its poor sportsmanship ever since–and their bitch of a coach could have stopped that skank from publicly being a piece of shit any time she wanted to, but she didn’t, and she’s theoretically the grown adult in the room, so the Oklahoma athletic department put their stamp of approval on that gymnast’s trashiness. So, fuck you now and forever, Oklahoma.

We’ve been watching Paradise on Hulu, which is nothing like I was expecting it to be. All I knew going in was that it starred Sterling K. Brown playing an agent on the President’s security detail…but the show is very clever and has lots of twists and surprises…as well as Julianne Nicholson, who is becoming one of my favorite actresses, in a stunning performance as a tech billionaire with delusions of grandeur (sound familiar?); we have two more episodes to go, and we’re really enjoying it a lot. Highly recommended, and a lovely distraction from the country’s acquiescence to authoritarianism.

I hate to break it to everyone, but it’s already here. Undesirables are being shipped to prison camps in another country. Companies and universities are giving up their freedoms and bending the knee to an illegal presidency and an even more illegal regime. We were doomed when Merrick Garland slow-walked everything, the Supreme Court colluded on immunity1, and it was very clear that it was the intent of the Biden administration to not go after the criminal syndicate that preceded him in office, which also belied their own claims on the 2024 campaign trail–and they wonder why the Democratic Milquetoast Party’s approval ratings are in the toilet? They rolled over and let this happen to us all. And after spending an entire election season warning us about the rise of fascism, suddenly it’s here and their position is “oh, well, we have to work with them”–don’t ever ask me for a fucking dime again. From now on, I only am donating to specific candidates, after being betrayed by so many once they were in office (looking at you, Schumer and the Asinine Nine); why is it important to elect rollovers like John Fetterman or Schumer or Gillibrand? If they’re going to vote with Republicans against the best interests of their own constituents and country, why not just let the Republicans just have the seat in the first place? And the complacency of the Democratic base has a lot to do with that. I’d still like to see an audit of Kyrsten Sinema’s professional and personal accounts.

But by all means, let’s just surrender the country. Fuck off now and forever, Chuck Schumer. We already live in a dystopia, can we at least count on you to not make it worse? Oh, silly me, your rich donors mean more to you than your base, how could I forget? I certainly never thought I’d see the day when NEW YORK’s senators would fuck over the entire party.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll shout at you later, okay?

  1. I suspect there were things discussed privately, or that the Supreme Court had decided in the past out of the public eye, about immunity that we are not privy because STATE SECRETS. This ruling also ensured Bush II would never be charged for his administration’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also believe that when we targeted and assassinated Yamamoto during World War II crossed a line.Yes, it was war…but a targeted assassination approved by the White House? I’m sure it was not either the first or the last crime authorized by the executive branch. ↩︎

It’s Just a Matter of Time

Sunday morning and the last day of Saints & Sinners. It’s been a lot of fun, if tiring. I headed down there yesterday afternoon in a Lyft, hung out in our suite for a bit and practiced for my reading–I read my story “The Ditch” from School of Hard Knox, and I think it went very well. It was a terrific reading session; Rob Byrnes, Jean Redmann, Marco Carocari, David Slayton, David Pederson and one other person whose name I can’t recall off the top of my head; my apologies because I really enjoyed what he read.I then went back up to our suite and came back down for the anthology launch with Paul. Those readings were also fantastic–and I am looking forward to reading the book more than I already was. I am also the judge for next year, so I’ll be reading a lot of stories in the fall. That will suffice as my volunteer work for 2024, so don’t bother to ask; the answer will be no.

I started reading an old Evan Hunter novel yesterday, Last Summer. It was a book I’d always wanted to read when I was younger, and I was reminded of it sometime during the pandemic, so I got a copy of it and its sequel, Come Winter, from eBay and so I started reading it at long last yesterday. I’ve never seen the film, either; but I do remember Barbara Hershey and Richard Thomas (aka John-Boy Walton) starred in it. It also put me in mind of another trope from that era of publishing; books with teenagers as protagonists (and/or antagonists) were almost always set during the summer, and so many were set on coastal islands–this one, Summer of ’42, A Summer Place, etc. It of course makes sense; teenagers had a lot of free time to get into shenanigans during the summer, especially when they were on a vacation somewhere. I’ve actually fallen into that trope a couple of times myself–Dark Tide, Lake Thirteen–and numerous other stories I would like to tell at some point. I do like the idea of gradually getting rid of all this paper around here by digitizing or disposing of things that I’ll never get around to writing. I don’t want to start writing fast in a frenzied attempt to write everything I want to before I die–and there’s always new ideas, too. But i know I’d really like to eventually get back to that novel where I based the victim on Ann Coulter…hmmm, maybe that could be the next Scotty. That’s actually a very good idea. Hmmmm.

It’s so nice to be around writers. It really is a balm for my soul. I did write some yesterday morning, but I am not going to even try today. I am very tired–I’ve done a lot of walking this weekend–and of course having to be “on” is tiring. The truth is I am not at 100% yet, much as I want to believe that I am, and there’s nothing wrong with that. One exciting development of the weekend is that I experienced no stress, anxiety or stage fright for my reading yesterday. Not only was I calm and not sweating buckets, I was actually able to relax and enjoy the experience. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before? It was wild. I’ve actually been relaxed the entire weekend; I don’t believe I understood before how much my anxiety impacted me at events like this. Having a calm and quiet head is a lovely thing, and now that the creativity has come back, I might actually start enjoying my life again.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time reminiscing about past S&S weekends, too; remembering how it all started, how much of it was done on a fraying shoestring because there was no money for it, and held in donated spaces at gay bars. It also used to be in May, so the weather was a LOT hotter. Paul and I used to always get the pool suite at the Olivier House for our home base, and people always used to wind up in our room later in the evening to drink and socialize and have a lot of fun. I couldn’t do that now–as it is, i stayed up past my usual bedtime Friday night and paid for it all day yesterday (legs are tired today, too). I also came up with a title for my memoir should I ever try to write one: Unreliable Narrator.

And LSU won the SEC women’s gymnastics championships last night in very dominant style. They weren’t as on as they usually are, and still set an incredibly high score and really have the potential to win the national title this year, too. And the US had a great outcome at the World Figure Skating Championships, winning two golds (men’s and ice dance) and a silver (women’s).

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely see you tomorrow.