Thirty-three degrees in New Orleans this morning, and it’s very cold here at my desk. I slept deeply and well, forgot to set the alarm last night, but woke up on time anyway–and it felt much better getting up this morning, too. I don’t feel groggy. It was also so cold last night (we had the heat on, but still) that Sparky actually slept in the bed last night, down around my feet! (Paul said after I left for work yesterday morning Sparky got into bed with him and cuddled for a while, too–we may wind up with a cuddle kitty after all!) Yesterday was exhausting at work, in all honesty. We were busy, and I was trying to get caught up on some of my Admin work around the clients, and my ass was dragging by the time I got home from work. We did finish watching Missing You, Harlan Coben’s new show on Netflix, and we enjoyed it. It’s always so nice when really lovely people find a great deal of success, isn’t it? But today is my last morning the office this week, and I look forward to my remote day and my weekend, huzzah! I’m also going to try to make it to the gym tomorrow and Sunday for my two days this week, and I think that’s something that is helping me sleep better.
These wildfires in Los Angeles are terrifying, aren’t they? I have so many friends who live in LA, and of course the last thing any of them need right now is me checking on them to see if they’re okay or out of harm’s way; I remember how awful it was when the mountains around Fresno would catch fire in the summer time. I got up one morning to go to work and it was so hazy from the smoke that the sun was red and it looked like there had been some kind of apocalypse overnight; there were no signs of life, either, and I didn’t see another car until I drove out of the neighborhood, which was creepy as all hell. I’m not sure what the solution to the California wildfire problem might be, but I know it doesn’t involve “turning on a giant faucet up in Canada.” (Jesus, how did this cretinous moron get elected? Oh yes, systemic racism and misogyny–that always works in this shithole country.) It’s always so awkward when friends are going through something horrific like this; I care, obviously, but dealing with well-meaning, concerned friends somewhere else while you’re in crisis–well, they aren’t a priority nor should they be. I never want to be one of those odious chores for someone in crisis, you know? Maybe I overthink it, which I suspect I do a lot more than is completely necessary–which is part of the whole “I never really know what to do when someone I care about is going through something awful.”
That’s where thoughts and prayers comes from, I suppose; the frustration of feeling helpless in the face of something other people are going through. It’s horrible, I know, having felt it myself on more than one occasion–an abbreviation of “thinking about you and sending you good thoughts”–but it’s constant invocation around the latest school shooting massacre (can we start calling them school massacres rather than school shootings, which softens it somewhat? “Shooting” after all, can also mean woundings, but it’s a goddamned massacre AND a terrorist attack, I might add.
And of course, the morons who hate California are out in droves, laughing at this and mocking Californians. What’s especially egregious are the people from Lousi-fucking-ana doing this and being smug about not having wildfires here “because we don’t hug trees down here” and “you get what you vote for”. Can you believe anyone from a state that is in the path of hurricanes and tropical storms every year, and floods on a regular basis without storm surge and hurricanes, would be fucking smug about us not having wildfires? Yet another example of the sorry state of Louisiana education. MAGA cultists really are the absolute worst people to ever live. I wonder what it’s like inside their brains? I always wonder how the cognitive dissonance necessary to keep them from going insane is even possible. I question myself all the time; and try to keep an open mind, so I can adapt and change my values, morals and beliefs based on new information. I can’t imagine freezing my brain in amber and defiantly refusing to learn and grow.
Although–preserving my brain in amber could give way to Jurassic Greg…
Better not, for the sake of humanity.
Okay, on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous day, Constant Reader, and I will check in either later or tomorrow. Stay warm and stay safe!
Tuesday and here we are moving on into the dead zone of the week. Sigh. It’s okay, I just have to reacclimate to normal four-day-in-the-office weeks again, and I’d forgotten (that short term memory loss cropping up again) how long a week can seem on a Tuesday morning–stretching out endlessly into the future. It’s also very cold in my kitchen this morning; yikes indeed. The heater does an excellent job in every part of the house, except for the kitchen/laundry room and the upstairs bathroom are a bit (much) colder than the other rooms. Currently 33 outside, which is going to be extremely fun to run out to the car in. Layers again today; the high is only in the forties. At least we’re not dealing with the extremes and all the snow that everyone else has to; no shoveling snow or scraping ice off the windshield for one Gregalicious; which is why I won’t live north of I-10 anymore.
Yesterday was a pretty good day, despite the frigid cold (warmer than this morning, though!). I got up, went to the office, worked, ran some errands on the way home, and once I was here, settled in. We started watching the new Harlan Coben show on Netflix, Missing You, and we’re enjoying it so far. I didn’t write anything yesterday, but did do some more work on the book (not much) before mental fatigue set in. We’re going to be busy at the office today, too–but tonight I get to come straight home, which is awesome. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more work tonight when I get home. But cold weather makes me want to do nothing more than curl up under a blanket with a book. But today I have to push through the lazy need for warmth and comfort and get some work done. (Apparently tonight is a “freeze watch,” so we’ll have to leave the taps slightly on tonight when we go to bed; and since the high will only be in the low forties, it will be unpleasant getting home, too. One of my top priorities today is to make a to-do list–a thorough one–so I can make sure I get everything done that I need to be getting done. I’ve really fallen off on my organizing, and I need to get back on top of everything. I have to do some things to send back to my publisher so they can start designing the new cover, which is always very fun and exciting to do. I need to clean out my email inbox, and I need to stop avoiding things I don’t want to deal with. This was always a problem when I was younger, and I’ve kind of slid back into those habits again over the last two years. Meh, I’ll deal with this tomorrow is rarely, if ever, the right answer.
Bad Greg, bad Greg!
Get it over and done with is the proper reaction to unpleasant things I have to do.
More time never makes anything awful more palatable.
But I feel more rested today than I did yesterday. My shoulder is tight and sore this morning, but I just need to do some stretching when I get home tonight and that’ll feel better. My next trip to the gym will either be tomorrow night or Thursday (tomorrow more likely; then I can go on Friday and again on Sunday), and I am getting a bit excited about getting into better physical condition, while also bearing in mind that I will never get back into the shape I was in my forties (when I peaked)–and not really sure that’s something I would want, anyway. I just want to lose some weight and get more toned and firm. Everything currently is sagging, and there’s really no need for that, is there? My ego and vanity no longer care about how I look to other people; I’ve always been a much tougher judge and critic of myself than anyone else–and I am definitely trying to be a lot kinder to myself. Despair is pointless and defeating, albeit very easy to collapse into. The removal of stress and anxiety has been marvelous, but the depression/despair genes aren’t as easily impacted by the new meds as the stress and anxiety–but that is something I can live with. I still have a lot of things to get worked out personally, but I am much healthier mentally than I have ever been in my life, I think, and some of that comes from the long, hard look I’ve taken at my life and career and other people, and my decision to not put up with anything from anyone ever again.
One thing that is really funny hit me yesterday, which was when I also realized how my “don’t want to deal with this now” bit me in the ass, kind of. I had gotten a letter from my bank between Christmas and New Year’s, and figuring it was probably a notice about new fees or higher interest rates on my credit card, I just tossed it into my inbox with a I’ll look at it later. Yesterday I was trying to order something from a website that had my debit card saved there as the form of payment, and was shocked to see my debit card had expired on 12/31/24. Goddamn it, I thought, irritated, I’m going to have to call them to get them to send me a new one. But as I sat in my easy chair last night, Sparky purring in my lap, it hit me–didn’t you get a letter from the bank you didn’t want to deal with? So, I put Sparky up on my shoulders (he loves it up there) and went into the kitchen, found the letter, and sure enough, I could feel there was a card inside–and sure enough, it was my new debit card.
This is why you should always deal with things right away.
Point taken, universe.
And on that note, I am going to bundle up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and by all means, STAY WARM!
And it is now Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. Sparky and I are the only creatures stirring for now, and it’s kind of nice. It’s chilly again this morning, but that’s fine; all I have left to do this weekend is go to the gym and make groceries, and I haven’t decided whether to do that today or tomorrow; probably today so I can get it all over with and won’t have to leave the house tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. I need to do some writing and reading this weekend and some cleaning, too–I’ll have to make a list at some point.
Yesterday was a very good day. I was a little sore and achy–still am–from my return to the gym on New Year’s Day. I got all my work done, and then we made a Costco run; which wore me out and after getting home, lugging all of it inside, and then putting it all away did me in. I did read some more of Winter Counts, which I am really enjoying and hope to finish this weekend. I do have some emails to answer this weekend, and I slept deeply and well last night–Sparky didn’t annoy me out of bed until about eight thirty this morning, so that’s super cool and nice as well. I do feel rested, which is kind of nice, too. There’s no rush for me to run those errands today, either; I can run them at any time today I so choose. No college football today–and I doubt I’m going to watch any more of it this year; I am not only not a fan of any of the final four, but if I had to pick the four teams I absolutely wouldn’t want in the finals, it would be these four (there are a few that can be swapped out for Texas, and I don’t mind Penn State–but ‘not minding’ is a lot different than “that’s who I’m going to root for.” As far as I am concerned, the season is over. The Super Bowl is in a few weeks, which means getting home is going to be challenging for the next few weeks as they start closing streets in the CBD to get ready for it all. I don’t care about that, either–as long as neither the Bears nor the Cowboys nor the Falcons are in it.
I did write some yesterday, too–which was enormously pleasing. I have things I need to do this weekend, and right now I frankly don’t want to do something of them, but might as well get them out of the way. I’ll probably finish this and read for a while, to finish waking up and everything and ease my way into the rest of the day. We did watch LSU Gymnastics last night; they ran away with the meet against Iowa State, and they looked terrific. They were also getting dramatically underscored, which was puzzling, but they still won by over three points. I then spent the rest of the evening watching old clips from Game of Thrones, which I still kind of miss. When the show was firing on all cylinders, it was really was extraordinary; the production values, the acting, and the writing was all en pointe, and provided some of the best scenes of television ever produced. The Battle of Blackwater Bay? The demolition of the sept? The battle of the loot train? The Battle of the Bastards? The death of Ramsey Bolton? Lady Olenna Tyrell’s final dagger to the heart before expiring? The collapse of the Wall? Arya wiping out House Frey? The character arc of Sansa Stark? It really was exceptional television, even if they did blow the final season–and that is just a smattering of the show’s great moments; there are too many to really list. Paul and I were actually talking about rewatching the whole series again–the plots and subplots were so interwoven and plentiful that there’s a shit ton we do not remember about the show to begin with. But…time. The show last eight seasons, every episode is at least an hour long, and who has that kind of time? Maybe when I retire I can make the rewatch A Thing.
Stranger things, after all, have happened. I’d also like to rewatch The West Wing, if for no other reason than it was my comfort watch during the Bush II administration.
I’m also doing much better with my time issues; I am trying not to be motivated by the clock anymore and worrying about wasting time because I have so much else to do. I don’t have that much else to do anymore, thank you very much, and now that the anxiety is under control, I don’t get as frustrated as I used to or get stressed out as much: I don’t have TIME for this! used to run through my brain every time I would get delayed or stuck in traffic or something, and it’s really nice to not have to deal with that anymore. The solution to the Super Bowl street closures is simple–take the Interstate home from work every day, even though the bridge traffic always backs up. I used to tend to get very frustrated and stressed out every time I took the Interstate because of the bumper-to-bumper back up; now I don’t care and can just sit there and listen to whatever is playing through the stereo in my car. (I also forget it has a working CD player; I should start listening to my old CD’s in the car.)
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and read for a few hours before deciding how to divvy up today’s tasks. Have a lovely Saturday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later–or tomorrow morning.
Yes, I am definitely pushing my boundaries with the social media puritans, aren’t I?
Woke up to a new year! How exciting….although it doesn’t feel any different than yesterday, other than I don’t have to go into the office today, which is awesome. And of course, as soon as I signed into social media, I saw DM’s and posts asking me if Paul and I were “okay”, which was puzzling, so I went to NOLA.com and I guess there was a terrorist that attacked Bourbon Street last night, driving his truck into the crowd and shooting at police officers? I just saw where the attack occurred–Bourbon and Canal intersection–because I was wondering how that was possible since all the blocks are blocked off to traffic all night, so I knew it had to be an intersection on Bourbon Street, as those are only places on Bourbon you can have a car, or drive. How terrible–and I bet they lock the whole city down for the Super Bowl; shades of the 2002 Super Bowl here after 9/11–when I was coming home from training a client and was stopped at Poydras Street so the military (complete with tanks) could parade from the river to the Superdome in an act of theater designed, no doubt, to make us feel safer; it had the opposite effect on me. It just made me think about how I missed the days where we couldn’t imagine something like that happening.
Yeesh, indeed.
My New Year’s entries are generally about my goals for the new year, and I always explain why I have goals instead of resolutions–everyone inevitably breaks their resolutions, so I’ve never felt they were as important as setting goals for the new year. I don’t always achieve those goals, but they have been enormously helpful in the past and it really feels like I’ve done something when I accomplish one of the goals, or the goal makes positive change in my life, which is always very pleasant. One goal is to continue not participating in the legacy media, by never clicking or putting eyes on their broadcasts or articles. I will never subscribe to the Times or the Post ever again, and I do feel this goal is one that can be set and is completely attainable.
Another goal is to not do any emotional labor for anyone or anything that isn’t Paul, Sparky, my dad, or myself. I’ve been pretty good about that throughout 2024, and it is definitely one of the better things I did this past year was close myself off to other people’s problems. I am going to continue to not attend mystery conferences and conventions this year, and one of those important goals is to not financially support places that allow rampant homophobia and then do nothing when things are reported to them. I’m certainly not taking shit from anyone ever again in this community, so my decision to stay away and not participate in the community anymore is probably for the best for all y’all, because I’m calling this shit out now whenever it happens and since most straight people prefer no conflict, my calling shit out and calling out people for trying to gloss over outright homophobia from now on isn’t going to be fun for people anyway. Heaven forbid the racists and sexists and homophobes be made to feel uncomfortable, but it’s okay for us to feel unwelcome, uncomfortable and unwanted. Maybe we can start calling them convocations instead of conferences and conventions, since keeping Klan attendees is more important than keeping the people they target. FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF. And racist Bouchercon attendees? Feel free to go be racist on Bourbon Street at one in the morning and see how that ends for your skank ass. And for the record, hate is what leads to things like the attack on Bourbon Street last night, so by all means let’s keep encouraging that kind of behavior by glossing it over and acting like it’s not a big deal and it’s just “free speech” until someone is killed. American hatred, I swear, is like kudzu.
The most important goal for the year is to focus more on my writing career and give it the energy and the oxygen it’s always deserved but never got from me. I’ve always felt like I’ve always made my writing the lowest thing on my priority list, and that juggling between day job responsibilities, life responsibilities and the writing itself (let alone the promotion side of things) has always ended with me feeling like my writing isn’t a priority; part of the problem I have always had with saying no to people and to doing things is that fear and anxiety so controlled me and my actions for so long that I’d always end up making it the lowest priority–and “friends” who’d blithely dismiss my “well, I have a book due” with “you always get it done” aren’t really friends; any friends who’d want you to put aside one of the most important things in your life to do something for them aren’t really friends. Writing is what makes me happiest, and not writing always makes me miserable. Part of the depression of the last year or so was enhanced because I wasn’t writing–and whenever I tried, it was hard to get words down and they were terrible; I did some pretty terrible writing this year (as I am finding as I edit these first six chapters of the next Scotty; I did some work on that yesterday after work which was cool) and plan to do some more today, too. I need to get the ebook of Jackson Square Jazz edited and sent to the formatter–BIG priority, especially since it’s the twentieth anniversary of the trade paperback and its Lambda nomination (the hardcover came out the year before). I need to get my website finished, and I need to learn how to do promotion in the digital age, don’t I? Kind of sad that I’ve been doing this for twenty three years this January 20th, and still don’t know what I am doing. I also want to push myself more with my writing going forward, too. This Scotty is a tricky one, since I want the entire thing to take place between the arrival of a hurricane’s first bands and have the story finished before the final band passes and the storm is completely over.
I also need to be better organized going forward, and need to stay on top of things better. I need to file as I go and clean as I go–thanks again, McDonalds, for burning that into my head–and that includes cleaning out the attic and the storage space so I can stop paying for it. My memory is pretty much gone these days, so I need to be better about making lists and consulting them (they don’t do any good if you never look at them), as well as doing things when I get home and I am still in work-mode from being at the office. It doesn’t hurt to feed Sparky, file stuff, do dishes and so forth before writing or reading. I also need to be better about reading; if I read for an hour or so every day I’ll gradually get through that TBR pile for sure. I also need to be better about keeping house.
I know I say this every year but I am going to be healthier this year, and by that I mean taking better care of myself. After Mom died, I intended to be better about all this stuff, but I’d also injured myself so I couldn’t go to the gym either. And I did get some of it taken care of–I got hearing aids so I can hear better and finally spent the money to get my teeth fixed–and of course I needed about a full year to completely recover physically from the surgery. But if I stretch every morning when I get up, and if I go to the gym two or three times per week, and take walks on the days I don’t go to the gym–I’ll get healthier. Sounds easy, doesn’t it, but the reality is much harder to stay on track. I’ve also noticed in the last few weeks that I am not as groggy and tired as I was getting up so early for such a long time; I think I am finally adjusting to it, and I am not always tired when I get home from work, either.
All attainable and doable, I am pretty certain. So on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and get some things done around here so I can head over to the gym. I am going to read until it’s time to go to the gym. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again at some point.
Work at home Friday! I didn’t have to go into the office today after all; the person I was covering for didn’t need me to cover for them after all, so I get to drink my own coffee and do some of my work-at-home chores in my pajamas–including my team meeting. Yay! Yesterday was a gray, rainy day, the kind that is also cold so you get that lovely cold dampness that goes right through you to the bone. I ran my errands on the way home, and I don’t have to leave the house at all today unless I so choose–and I am rather leaning towards choosing no definitively already. I woke up the remnants of a thunderstorm; everything outside my windows is wet and dripping. Yeah, definitely not leaving the house today if I don’t absolutely have to–I can run errands and make groceries tomorrow. I am going to do some chores this morning when I need a break from the computer–dishes, laundry, picking up, etc.–but thanks to the midweek weekend we enjoyed because of the holiday, I am not as far behind on housework as I usually am. Sparky let me sleep late this morning, and was a little cuddlebug before I did get up. It’s not even about getting more sleep anymore, it’s more along the lines of way too comfortable for me to get up. Paul was at the gym when I got home from doing some minor errands after work last night, and then after he came home he went upstairs to work for the evening, leaving me and Sparky to entertain ourselves downstairs, which is why I did some picking up and cleaning last night. Looking around this morning, I can honestly wonder why I didn’t do more last night. Hmmm.
I worked a bit on a Substack essay last night, too; the one I worked the most on is about outing and speculating about celebrity sexuality. Many of the essay drafts I have saved on Substack were triggered initially by something that happened in the world; this one “”Johnny Are You Queer?” was inspired by Shawn Mendes having to address all the rumors and speculation about his sexuality, and how that made me feel. It was the second time a celebrity had to do this recently, the other being Kit Conner from Heartstopper. Both instances made me look at the subject in an entirely new (and more empathetic) light, which was frighteningly staggering; I thought how could I ever speculate about a celebrity’s sexuality, when I personally know what it feels like to have people speculate about you that way–and I was never a good-looking hot young celebrity, either, which would be exponentially worse. This led me to how “outing” originally started; it was a political act of protest from a community that was dying and no one cared, and a way to strike at closet cases who were actively harming the queer community (remember anti-gay Aaron Schock and his Downtown Abbey congressional office? He’s now an A-Gay living on the party circuit, and much happier than when he was a closeted anti-gay politician. I’d say that worked out pretty well for him in the long run, wouldn’t you?). Outing eventually got out of control and more of a tabloid monster, far from its original intent, but I’m also thinking about privacy rights now a lot more than I ever did when I was younger–which I am trying to explore in more detail in the essay. I am also writing one about organized Christianity, but it keeps getting longer with more examples because cosplay Christians are always going to cosplay with their full chests while denying Christ with every breath they take.
I generally don’t pay too much attention to celebrity drama, mainly because I don’t care that much about celebrities; as I’ve gotten older, I care less about entertainment news and the celebrity gossip machine. I remember the Blake Lively thing from last summer when that movie was released, and how she was getting a lot of press for being, well, a difficult bitch on set. I did think it was strange–I generally can’t avoid celebrity gossip, despite trying very hard because it’s fucking everywhere–that if she was that awful, why were all her co-stars and everyone else involved with the movie backing her? Now, I’ve thought Justin Baldoni was hot since his days on Jane the Virgin, and I even bought his book about being a male feminist; because I’ve really been thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man, which is what the book is about. I’ve not read the book–I still might, just to see what it says; even if he’s a hypocrite, that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have a point about some things–but of course the story exploded everywhere again on Christmas Eve when Lively sued Baldoni, claiming he hired a PR team to destroy Lively’s reputation so her concerns about inappropriate behavior on set by Baldoni wouldn’t be taken seriously–and she has receipts. Celebrity fan culture in this country really is something, and it really is out of control; I don’t know why so many people think being a fan of an artist entitles them to know everything about that artist (see above paragraph about speculating about celebrity sexuality), not to mention the horrors of being a celebrity on social media. Yikes, indeed. All I will say is that Hollywood has always had fixers; the only difference is that now they are guns for hire rather than salaried studio employees. Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows explores the horrible world of Hollywood PR and what they cover up, and how they spin damage away from their client to someone else, even if that someone else’s life or career is destroyed by the spin. (Read Jordan’s book, seriously.) There’s a decent show on Prime starring Anna Paquin in which she plays a spin-doctor-for-hire, Flacks.
It’s also why no one can ever completely trust celebrity news; it’s literally the prime example of fake news.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader. I may be back later, one never knows. If not, though, I will definitely be back in the morning tomorrow.
Yea, he’s handsome and has an exceptional build, but Zac Efron is more talented than he gets credit for.
It’s very still and quiet this morning. Paul is asleep, Sparky has been fed and has curled up to sleep again somewhere, and I am finishing my first cup of coffee. It’s hitting the spot, too, I might add. My coffee addiction really is something, isn’t it? I had thought about getting out the Espresso machine and making myself cappuccinos this morning, but went to bed last night without thinking about anything and thus didn’t. The kitchen is also kind of a mess this morning. Maybe I’ll do something about it, maybe I won’t. It’s Christmas, after all. We had a lovely day yesterday; I spent the morning rereading some old Scotty books with the intent of rereading/editing that I have done on Hurricane Season Hustle, but after I ordered the pizza and drove out to Metairie to get it–it was fucking fantastic, too, I might add, with leftovers for today–I just kind of zoned out for the day. We watched La Palma, a truly terrible disaster mini-series, on Netflix (cheesily enjoyable in that over-the-top and rather dumb disaster move way), and then watched Kings of Tupelo, which was insane…but again, Jake, it’s Tupelo. I went to bed late and slept late, and feel good today, if weird that I have to go back to work again tomorrow. We’re driving out to Elmwood to see the afternoon show of Babygirl today, and that’s really about all I care about for today. Maybe we’ll stream some movies tonight, or start a new show to watch or something. It was also sunny and warm yesterday–today looks gray, maybe rain–and once I finish this, I will probably do some straightening up in here before repairing to my easy chair to read for a bit.
What do I want for Christmas? World peace would be nice–hell, single-payer health insurance would be terrific, too–but neither of those are possible as long as this country remains enthralled to billionaires and corporations. That’s been the case for most of my adult life, and as far back as the 1990’s I was noticing how the direction we were heading into as a country economically, both at home and abroad, was firmly setting us on the same paths that led to the French and Russian revolutions and the Great Depression. I wrote about this a lot in my journals from back then; I’d even thought about writing a novel based on those observations, but after the fall/collapse. Do I have any answers? No, not really. People will always vote against their own self-interests because they have been convinced by the mythology of the American Dream that they, too, will someday be rich if they work hard (or smart) enough. I was told repeatedly as a child that if I worked hard, I too could become wealthy. Stories of people who went from rags-to-riches proliferated in the fiction stacks (and movies, too, for that matter); almost every “epic saga” was the story of some impoverished immigrant who seized opportunities–sometimes lied, cheated and stealing–that would make them rich. We’re essentially groomed by our art and culture to aspire to wealth and that the richer you are the better of a person you clearly must be, because you accumulated wealth. The great irony of that, of course, is that Christmas (and Christianity, too, for that matter) teaches us to take care of the sick and the elderly and the poor, and to always be empathetic to those less fortunate. Christianity and Capitalism are antithetical to each other, and the influence of capitalism on Christianity has not been a good thing. The prosperity gospel is a heresy, and the worst kind of heresy because it goes against everything Jesus taught in the pages of the New Testament. Everyone celebrating Christmas today–and the “birth” of Jesus–by spending a lot of money and a lot of excess?
Hardly “the reason for the season.” Put Christ back into Christianity, for your own sakes.
I’ve always loved the messaging of Christmas above what it actually is in reality, to be honest. I can remember watching A Charlie Brown Christmas as a kid and seeing that I was looking past what Christmas was supposedly about and approaching it from a greed perspective. (It’s still my favorite Christmas story.) That was filmed in the 1960s, and was about how the season was being exploited by an orgy of spending and excess, which was never the point of the holiday. I am as sentimental about Christmas and what it stands for as a child; Christmas decorations and trees make me smile and feel warm inside. I even like most Christmas music, even if I am heartily sick of some of them (looking at you, Wham!). I love driving down St. Charles Avenue or Prytania Street at night to see all the houses decorated and lit up. I love seeing how much kids enjoy it all. I even watched a couple of Christmas-themed rom-coms this season. I tend to not write about Christmas, because it is so easy to fall into the cheesy Christmas-miracle and all’s right with the world clichéd trope so many stories of that type inevitably fall into. I did have fun with Royal Street Reveillon, which was simply set during Christmas season but that was all–and even then I found myself trying to take the story in that direction a few times.
Sigh.
And on that note, I’m going to get some more coffee and go sit in my easy chair and see what’s going on in the world while doing some reading. Have a merry Christmas today, everyone, even if you do not celebrate; at least enjoy your day off at any rate.
Who needs tomorrow? Well, it’s Christmas tomorrow, Mr. Seger, so I’d say we could all use a little Christmas this year, couldn’t we?
So it’s Christmas Eve in the Lost Apartment, and Sparky and I are the only things stirring. Paul is sound asleep, and I am going to let him sleep as long as he wants. I am going to order our pizza around twelve, I think, and I am going to go to the gym in a little bit first, methinks. I am going to take today and tomorrow off from anything other than light chores (unless I get a wild hair) and just read and relax and watch things on television and cuddle with Sparky. I can’t think of a better way to spend this holiday, can you? Sparky seems to have that same secret superpower of inducing sleep in us by simply cuddling up and going to sleep on or near either of us that Scooter had. I took two short naps this past weekend, and I blame that entirely on having Sparky sleeping on me–I never take naps! When I got home from work, he’d been cuddling with Paul off and on all day, and he spent the evening going back and forth between us. We finished The Day of the Jackal yesterday night, which was really fun
I was correct about yesterday being an easy day at the office. We were on a skeleton crew, most of the managers and supervisors were out, and thus I was able to focus and get a lot of my work done. It was marvelous. I was able to leave early, and when I got home I even figured out what short story to write for this queer anthology I’ve been invited to participate in, and I’m working on this other one for another anthology I’ve agreed to write for. I am going to take some characters from another project and write a short story about them…I think it’ll work, and then I can just plug the short story into the longer manuscript, which seems rather genius to me. I mean, why not make your work work for you? I’m a firm believer in that–even if I always worry about recycling plots. This morning I am going to clean the kitchen, drink my coffee, and read for a bit. I am intending to have a very relaxing two days off. Maybe I’ll do some work, maybe I won’t. I did finish my Substack essay on the blatant and horrific racism in the original edition of The Hardy Boys adventure The Mark on the Door, too.
The public theater of the Luigi Mangione trial–which is going to be reported on breathlessly by a media completely out of touch with their audience and will probably last throughout 2025, serving as a distraction for the people who cannot with the news from Washington anymore; Romans had their circuses to entertain the populace and keep them from rising; we have our modern media. What’s even odder to me is the disconnect between Luigi’s followers and the vastly smaller amount of law-and-order proponents (mostly in the media, for the record) castigating and moralizing about “condoning murder.” I have never been a fan of scolds or people who primly climb into their saddle atop their moral high horse and lecture everyone else about their moral failings. For the record, I do not respond to being lectured or scolded or condescended to very well–especially by people I do not know on the Internet. I don’t owe you space, I don’t owe you a platform, and you do not know me well enough to talk to me like you’re my mother. She’s dead, for one thing, and I didn’t even let her talk to me like that. You think you matter more to me than my mother? Arrogant much? Maybe have all the seats before coming at me as a fucking straight white woman of a certain age? I blocked two people on Facebook yesterday–one a priggish morally superior straight white woman who came onto my page determined to make the stupid faggot aware of her moral superiority; the other a gay man I’ve never met who did the same. I do my usual test of moral superiority with other strangers that I always do: hmm, what do I think you were doing during the HIV/AIDS crisis when gay men were dying by the thousands? And is you’re so law-and-order, that means you were probably being horrible about ACT UP and all the other in-your-face activism that needed to be done back then, some of which broke laws, which means you folded your arms and scolded rather than actually doing anything while people are dying.
Kind of like you are defending health insurance companies. You cannot be morally superior if you are defending the death panels. To me, that means you’d be a German who turned away during the holocaust and pretended it wasn’t happening, even though you lived in a village near a death camp and could smell it.
Also, slavery was legal in this country until 1865. So you would have supported that? Jim Crow was also the law, Ms. Black-and-White-Binary, and so were the eradication of the natives of this land and the Japanese internment camps in the 1940s and I could go on and on and on. Your lack of nuance is very telling.
And for the record, I never said I condoned or condemned the murder; all I’ve ever said is that I understood the mentality behind it because I have been there myself. I don’t share my own horror stories about health insurance–because all these people do is fold their arms and wrinkle their brows (think Susan Collins) and scold anyway. It’s also amazing to me that people will barge into one of your posts when they do not know you, do not know your situation, do not know your history, to smugly inform you how morally superior they are to you. With that fucking profile picture, bitch? Right before Christmas? Literally, go fuck yourself with barbed wire, skanky bitch, and take the morally superior gay man with you. It’s very easy to judge people (I’m doing it right now) without knowing the full story, but I also shouldn’t have to explain why I feel the way I do in order for other people to consider my opinions valid–that’s dehumanizing, and if you came running up to me at a conference or in a public space and started screaming at me (which is basically what you are doing, dear Ms. Morality), I wouldn’t stand for it, and I will not stand for it on-fucking-line. 1
For me, this case fascinates me, and what is even more fascinating is how this is being reported. There’s definitely been a slant to the coverage of the case, and there has been since it first happened. It was very shocking–a CEO being mowed down like a dog in the street on his way to an investors’ meeting–and very daring, very well-planned. It was, very much, intended as a political assassination; a protest against our incredibly broken health insurance industry. The fact that it was the CEO of United Healthcare immediately raised my eyebrows; they aren’t my insurer, but I work in a clinic for the under or uninsured and believe me, I have never heard a single person with United Healthcare who actually liked their insurance carrier. It’s always horror stories, and believe me, I’ve witnessed some myself. United Healthcare is garbage, it’s expensive, it has high deductibles, and they refuse coverage over 30% of the time.2Their clients have no recourse, either; none of us do when our health insurance companies deny coverage (a favorite of mine is the bait-and-switch; “we’ll cover all of this, no worries” only to find out later that “oh, no, you owe for this and this and this and this.” (That was my experience with my shoulder surgery last year.) I had a surgery that was, over all, about 95% completely covered by my insurance–but that 5% almost bankrupted me. So, miss me with your “sanctity of life” bullshit. Brian Thompson had no concerns about the sanctity of life of his clients, to the tune of billions of dollars of profit last year. I didn’t cry or feel bad when Reagan or Kissinger or Limbaugh died; I won’t feel bad when Anita Bryant or Maggie Gallagher or Donald Wildmon dies. The media also tried to paint Thompson as a “family man”–not that he was estranged from his wife and kids–and couldn’t find any on-line pictures of the family, which is kind of telling. Who doesn’t have at least one family picture on-line?
No one deserves to be murdered in cold blood, but our system is so corrupted and rotten to the core that most people feel helpless in the face of it–that’s the real story no one is reporting in this case, which is also very telling about the news media, how they report stories, and the narratives they try to shape–and feel like they need to step up for the good of everyone. (They were the ones who convicted the Menendez Brothers, after all.) Rather than think pieces and editorials about how “horrible it is that people are cheering for a murderer”–why isn’t anyone exploring or reporting or even considering why people are cheering for a murderer? Everyone was rooting for him before anyone knew what he looked like, and the fact that he turned out to be attractive? Made it a much harder sell for the media, so of course they ran with that–people only support him because he’s attractive, which again, is one-dimensional and offensive to the core. Ever since I walked away from legacy media last July, it’s so much easier to see the narratives and the spins they go for–both sides, really. MSNBC’s breathless reporting, along with their butt-buddy CNN, on the narrative from Fix and OANN and Trump that Biden was senile and dying ensured a Trump election, and I said it at the time and that’s why I walked away from it. The great irony that I agree with the right that it’s all “fake news” has not escaped me. They were right, but only half-right; they think Fox is honest, and they aren’t. The copaganda perp walk? How much money and how many resources did the NYPD waste on their “manhunt,” which accomplished nothing because he was caught by a tip called in? So, that was absolutely copaganda: see how seriously we are taking this, oligarchs? Keep approving our massive budgets which are a waste of money and time. Um, you didn’t fucking catch him, and it’s interesting that the NYPD will mobilize for a rich man’s murder and divert everything to catching the killer, while crimes go unsolved and uncared about on the daily in New York City.
We should be talking about about the health care insurance scandal in this country, and talking about how to fill loopholes and make insurers pay claims, rather than “you only support him because he’s hot.” I’m fucking sixty-three years old. Just because someone is hot doesn’t mean I either like them, support them, or want to fuck them (Zachary Levi? Mark Wahlberg? Nick Bosa?). So stop fucking condescending to me.
And don’t come on my social media scolding me. It won’t end well for you.
And on that note, I am going to get into the holiday spirit by going to my easy chair with Sparky and watching Auntie Mame, my favorite Christmas movie.
The difference between me and so many people is I am exactly who I am on line. It’s not a persona. I don’t reveal everything because I only choose to share certain aspects of my life and who I am, and I don’t have to, either. I am not braver on line than I am in person; if anything, I tolerate more bullshit on line than I ever would in person. ↩︎
How awful for me to empathize with all the people going bankrupt paying for health insurance coverage that doesn’t cover anything! How fucking dare me! That man’s life was sacred.↩︎
And another Sunday fun day has rolled around. It was cold in New Orleans yesterday, but I did drop books off at the library sale, picked up the mail, and made groceries. Irony of ironies, when I got home I realized I didn’t have one of my bags–containing the things I went to the store for in the first place. Sigh. So I will have to go out in the cold this morning to rectify that error, but that’s all right. I got some things done yesterday around here, and worked a bit on my editing of my own stuff (which is going slowly because it’s horribly depressing to see how shitty the writing is, despite reminding myself first drafts are always shitty first drafts are always shitty– it still wears me down).
Okay, I bit the bullet and went to the store to get the things I paid for yet didn’t have when I got home from the store yesterday It was actually pleasant; mayhap in the future I should go early in the morning to make groceries. It’s only forty degrees but sunny here this morning, that always odd combination where it looks like it’s hot and steamy outside but it’s not! Now that I have that out of the way–which is also part of it, the putting it off and putting it off until such time as my day is interrupted and never quite recovers. Now I have that out of the way and don’t have to worry about it, and because it wasn’t a crowded shitshow the grocery usually is right before a holiday, I feel neither tired or burned out from the experience. I know it sounds weird, but a crowded grocery store overstimulates me and wears me out.
I did sleep a little later than usual this morning, and the bed was warm and comfortable and inviting and I didn’t really want to get out from underneath the blankets. But Sparky was hungry and would not rest until I was up, which is just as well. He’s fed and if I’d lounged in bed even longer this morning I would have not gone to make groceries, so everything was a “win-win”. I did have the games on yesterday, for what it was worth. Talk about snooze-fests. Is this what we have to look forward to with this new system? Blowouts in the first round? I also don’t like the home field advantage half the teams get in the first round. It makes a difference. I was at least hoping, despite my antipathy toward everyone playing this weekend, for some good, fun games to watch.
It was a good thought.
Was anyone surprised that disgusting grifting POS Krysten Sinema is going out the way she has chosen to? What a despicably corrupt narcissistic bitch. May we never hear her name again except for her obituary and the outpouring of contempt sure to follow. She betrayed her constituency, she betrayed queer people, and she betrayed her party to cozy up to Fascists and block progressive legislation while taking bribes and enriching herself. One of the problems with our current situation is that anyone can run against a horrible MAGA candidate and look good, rally votes and win an election as a viable alternative to something worse–but there’s nothing stopping said person from selling out for personal enrichment once they are serving. I’d like to see an IRS investigation as well as a DOJ one to find out who’s been paying her to be Mitch McConnell’s little beta bitch since she took office. She was so hated in Arizona that Kari Lake would have beaten her in the general1. I hope she spends the rest of her life getting drinks thrown on her and pies in her fucking face, like the clown she actually is. Good riddance to some serious raw sewage.
I was thinking yesterday (fleeting thoughts I’ve had a lot over the last few months) about James A. Michener and how no one today would read any book as long as his were, back in the day. I enjoyed Michener–Hawaii was a bit much–but I’ve been thinking how amazing it would have been for books in that style to have been written about Kansas, Louisiana, or Alabama. I certainly would never write such a thing–I don’t have the patience to do that much research, let alone turning it into a million words or so of a novel. (Although Michener would have written about three hundred pages about the forming of the Mississippi River delta, let alone the lakes and the swamps.) I was revisiting one of my favorite New Orleans histories, Frenchmen Desire Goodchildren, and I was also remembering that Gallatin Street, one of the worst sections of the old French Quarter, no longer exists. It was a vile place of bordellos and sleazy, dangerous bars; murders and rapes and muggings happened there with a stark regularity until it was demolished to extend the French Market. I’ve been wanting to write another Sherlock story in the 1910’s Quarter, and having either him or Watson visit a nasty dangerous gay bar on Gallatin would be a fun scene to write…if Gallatin was still around by that time; I think it’s badness was over by the time Storyville was set up, but who knows? I’ve resisted writing about Storyville, because it’s already been done so many times…but I also think it would be fun to write about New Orleans during Prohibition, too, when New Orleans became known as the Liquor Capital of the United States. That…could be a lot of fun. Maybe even an ATF agent coming to the city to root out liquor sales, only to hang their head in utter and complete defeat?
Thinking of Michener also reminded me of how much I used to read when I was a kid. Granted, the distractions of a gazillion streaming services didn’t exist back then; there were only three real channels, and we didn’t spend most of our times looking at our phones because there were no images on it. It also has made me think about how my primarily formative years–the 1970s–were awash in cynicism and mistrust of everything and how huge conspiracy theories, or all kinds of other “unexplained phenomena” struck people’s fancies. There was, of course, the JFK assassination conspiracy theories–but there were so many others. The Amityville Horror (on which I called bullshit at the time and still do), the Bermuda Triangle, UFO’s…you name it, people were interesting in it. I read Erich von Däniken’s books about “ancient aliens”, and of course there was all kinds of deconstruction of religion and the Bible, which was also interesting–The Late Great Planet Earth was a huge bestseller, detailing how the prophecies of Revelations and the end times were coming true right before our very unseeing eyes! End times Christian theology took hold–and never really let go, either. The X-Files could have been made in the 1970s (although it would have never been greenlit) but there was a lot of media, especially film, that tried to cash in on all of this. During the shutdown I did my “Cynical 70s Film Festival”, and it’s really amazing how a thread of paranoia runs through so many films of that decade. It was a strange decade, that saw the further inward collapse of the social engineering that took place after the second world war–that excluded everyone outside of the straight white cisgender male. The center wasn’t holding, and now? We’re living in the midst of the backlash towards social progressivism in this country.
And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the morning spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–one never truly knows, does one?
Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and feeling good and rested. I slept in this morning, and Sparky let me! I lounged in bed until almost nine. Sparky did try to get my up around the usual time, but he graciously gave up and slept on my pillow just above my head so he could start pestering me again the moment my eyes opened and I got up. I wound up turning the heat on last night, intending to turn it off before I went to bed, but was very tired and forgot. This morning it’s comfortable, so I am not sorry I forgot.
Yesterday was a pretty good day, all things considered. I drank an awful lot of coffee yesterday morning, to the point that by the time it was ten thirty I was feeling like yeah that’s enough, switch to something else. I got my work at home duties done, picked up the mail and made a little groceries, after which I came back home and worked on cleaning up the house. We also finished season one of The Diplomat (one hell of a season finale, whew), and I picked up some and did laundry and the dishes and puttered around. I read for a little while1, which was nice. It was lovely having a relaxing and productive day. Today I have to run a couple of errands, and I’m going to try to get some writing done while cleaning some more around here. I want to drop off another box of books to the library sale–the laundry room shelves are almost completely denuded of books–and there’s still some straightening up and organizing to do around here, like always. It never ends, and I am finally truly appreciating my mother’s McDonalds2 “clean as you go” mentality; she never left a mess for later and always cleaned it, and was never able to relax as long as there was a mess somewhere in the house that needed attention. (I told my dad once, when he was talking about how hard she worked on the house all of the time, “Well, she liked to be the best at anything she did, and she saw the house as her job.”) Neither my sister nor I have completely inherited Mom’s obsessive to the point of OCD cleanliness; but I do think if I didn’t have to go into the office every day my apartment would be a lot more pristine; it certainly was when I worked at home all the time. I want to keep my house the way my mother kept hers, but I just don’t have the time and am always playing catch-up.
I had the Indiana-Notre Dame game on briefly for background noise while I sat in my chair and read; eventually turning it off. There are three games today (Ohio State-Tennessee, SMU-Penn State, and Texas-Clemson) which I will again probably have on while I do other things. I turned the game off last night because it wasn’t even remotely interesting enough to serve as background noise; my utter hatred for Notre Dame, and hating seeing them win a game, any game, had a lot to do with it. I don’t much care about any of the games today, as every team playing today I either dislike intensely or don’t care about in the least (if I was forced to pick teams to root for, it would be Tennessee, SMU, and Texas–and only if forced as I despise the two UT’s and don’t have a feeling for SMU at all), so not paying much attention will actually work. We’ll have to find a new show to watch–several shows we like have come back with new seasons, and there are new ones that look interesting to me. There are also some movies I’d like to see (Alien Romulus comes to mind), too. We’re still planning on seeing Babygirl on Christmas; it’s showing at Canal Place, which makes it a bit easier to get to–but driving out to Metairie is hardly the end of the world, either. I was thinking about rewatching something last night, something Hitchcockian; Psycho or Rebecca or even Notorious, but didn’t feel strongly enough about any of them to start them up, alas. My mind was kind of floaty last night by the time it was time to put something on and watch it.
I do feel, though, like this is going to be a good, productive, relaxing weekend. I don’t know what Paul’s plans for today are, but I want to read some more, possibly finishing the book I am reading (Winter Counts) before moving onto my next read, which will require some thinking about. So many amazing books I have in my TBR pile, and getting further and further behind as the books continue to pile up. But…that’a always going to be the case, isn’t it? There are always going to be too many books to catch up on over the years, aren’t there? And I would certainly hate to ever get to the point where I have finished my TBR stack and had nothing else to read. That would be my idea of hell–although I could and would always reread something. I used to reread books all the time when I was younger, but now? I barely have time to read, let alone reread something. I’ve not even done my annual rereads of Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House in years. I’ve not even looked over Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, which are so chilling and creepy, in years. Bad Greg, bad Greg!
But on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines; make a list of what to get at the store, what to do today, and get doing some chores. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One can never be certain.
I was horrified to pick up a copy of an original text of a Hardy Boys book, The Mark on the Door, and was horrified to see how horrifically racist it was. I’d never read the original text version–I’ve not read all the original texts, but I have read all of the revised texts, and the later new ones in the original canon. I’m definitely going to address this particular instance. The book was published in 1934, less than twenty years after Pancho Villa and his raids were splashed all over the newspapers…let’s just say that’s probably what most white US citizens in 1934 thought on those rare occasions they thought of Mexico. It was also the time of movies about the Cisco Kid and…remind me why those were the good old days again? ↩︎
For the record, she never actually worked at McDonalds; but she had the same mentality about cleanliness. ↩︎
Well, it’s Tuesday and we survived Monday, did we not? I finally got all my work computer issues worked out yesterday (thank you, baby Jesus) so hurray for that and huzzah and thank heavens things are back to normal around the office and I could get my Admin work done–which was marvelous. I always feel so unsettled when I can’t function the way I usually do, and it felt weird yesterday morning to be using the borrower laptop again. Was Mercury in retrograde, or has it been? My work computer blew up on Thursday, Paul’s office building partially collapsed, and there’ve been other issues around over the course of the end of last week and the weekend. Heavy heaving sigh. Most were just annoying–like the work computer situation–and just had to be gotten through.
I was very tired when I got home last night but hung out with Sparky a bit and just had a bit of a relaxing evening. We watched more of The Diplomat, which is fantastic on every level–writing, acting, casting–and I went to bed a bit early. I did have some trouble falling asleep, though, and had one of those toss-and-turn nights. Getting through today is going to be a bit of a struggle for me, methinks; I am feeling a bit zoned-out this morning. I even worked on the Scotty a little bit yesterday, too, which felt like progress of a sort. I’m still a bit worried about my lack of desire to write anything, which isn’t a very good thing. I’m still getting ideas and thinking about writing all the time, scribbling notes in my journal and so forth, but when you’re not actually putting words down to make progress on fiction–any kind, really–always makes me feel like I’m not really writing. I was also realizing that 2024 was one of the few years since 2000 that I didn’t publish anything; not even a short story anywhere, nor did I write much of anything. On that scale, 2024 was an utter failure of a year, but I don’t want to be terribly hard on myself, either. 2023 was a very rough year, and 2024 was rough in dealing with all of the fallout from 2023’s happenings.
And it’s not like I’m not old. (No need to rush to assure me that “no, Gregalicious, you’re not old! You’re only as old as you feel!” Well, there are days when I feel like I’m a hundred, okay? Sixty-three is fairly old; only two years left to go before what used to be retirement age, until the Republicans decided that was too young to not work anymore.) My body creaks and groans, it’s harder to get out of bed in the morning (although it was never easy for me, ever), and I tire a lot easier than I used to. And every time I look in the mirror, I see an old man–and yes, I am aware that my own issues with myself probably make me see myself in said mirror as a lot older than I think I am; I forget that I’m in my sixties until the morning mirror reminds me. It is a grim way to start the day every morning.
Ah, there’s the morning kick from the caffeine and sugar from my morning coffee cake slice (one of the few sweet treats I allow myself). Hopefully it will be enough to see me through this entire day. I don’t think we’re going to be busy in the clinic today, so I can get caught up on paperwork that I couldn’t get to yesterday due to the work laptop kerfuffle, and I had some trouble getting it to work on some of my paperwork duties, so I am going to have to see if I can get that worked out for this morning. Yay!
The rest of the week stretches endless before me, but tomorrow is pay day, next week is Christmas (Jesus H. Christ!), and I have a lot of things I need to be getting done. But it will be nice to have two days off in the middle of the week next week. We’re going to go see Babygirl on Christmas, which will be nice. I’m thinking about getting us a pizza from That’s Amore out in Metairie for the holiday (and so I won’t have to cook anything and make any mess in the kitchen); Paul mentioned last night that he was sorry the one on St. Charles closed during the shutdown…which got a “um, it’s not that long of a drive out to Clearview Parkway” from me and I tucked that little nugget of information away. I can get up on the morning of Christmas Eve, order the pizza, and then drive out there to pick it up before Paul even wakes up.
That would be a nice Christmas surprise, wouldn’t it?
And on that note I have to get my day going. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.
