It’s Pay the Bills Wednesday again! Huzzah? HUZZAH! Christmas Eve is a week from today (gulp). I guess that means I am not going to do Christmas cards this year. At least I got them out of the cabinet, right? Maybe next year. It was bitterly cold yesterday morning, and again wore a sweater and layers, so it wasn’t horrible. I was very productive at the office yesterday, was granted the day after Christmas off so I have a five day weekend next week, which will be lovely and relaxing. I also managed to get a lot of chores done around the house while catching up on the news and relaxing a bit. But the sink is empty and the laundry is folded; and tonight on the way home I’ll go all the way uptown and get the mail. There should also be a new episode of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City waiting for me to watch when I get home from that expedition, and there’s really no need to make groceries tonight; there’s plenty of things at home for me to make for dinner, should I need to.
I spent a good portion of free time yesterday laughing uproariously at the new issue of Vanity Fair and its glorious feature on the White House staff. I had let my subscription lapse because I no longer wanted the clutter of a print copy I would never get around to even paging through, or pay for an on-line subscription when I would never read more than one article every few months? Celebrity culture bores me for the most part, and the notion they considered putting Mrs. Canks on their cover didn’t exactly endear the magazine to me (yes, I know the staff rebelled against the new owner’s suggestion to do so, but I also figured it was just a matter of time until everyone was fired and the value of the magazine devalued and devolved) or make me want to subscribe again; but this? The photographs alone are works of art; framed and shot and angled and lit to show precisely how small and insignificant these monsters are; banal and ugly and boring and utterly devoid of class or taste. Madam “Press Secretary” may never recover from that brutal extreme close-up exposing the lines and enormous pores and the lip filler injection marks. The photographer deserves a Pulitzer Prize, and future generations will study these images–un-retouched, unfiltered–to try to make sense of this period of history. That is a futility destined for failure, for one cannot make sense of the insensible.
And you know they were all puffed up and excited to be in Vanity Fair‘s cover story, thinking about how cool and bad-ass they are…only to expose how ill-qualified they are to be in the positions they are in.
So yes, I might be subscribing again–but only for web access. I just don’t need more clutter. Texas Monthly remains my only magazine subscription, and I love that magazine so much (I do get 64 Parishes, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities magazine, but for some reason I don’t consider that a magazine subscription. Can’t explain it, that’s just how it is–and you should consider getting both) I can’t see myself giving up the physical copy any time soon. But yes, the more I pare down the less I want to bring in–which, given my need to always be surrounded by stacks and shelves of books, is kind of a win on that score. I don’t buy many books, at least certainly not on the scale that I used to. I think there is a sense of finality in realizing the reality that I may never read every book I have in the house before exiting this world, and that has made a significant difference…not that I think about dying all the time or even frequently; I think I am just more aware of the time limitations and the sands running out slowly in the hourglass of my life
It was so lovely to come down to an organized kitchen, with an empty sink, clear counters, and the rugs in their right place. I slept very well last night, too. It stayed cold through my drive home from work, but this morning its in the mid-fifties so no need for any layering today; I can brave the outside dressed normally. It’s supposed to rain a bit today, but we are getting a lot over the weekend, and it’s bringing warm weather behind it. The forecast is eighty for Christmas. Eighty.
Madness, indeed!
And on that note, Constant Reader, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Wednesday be marvelous and filled with joy, Constant Reader, and I will be back toorrow morning.
Ah, and here we are, three day weekend in the rearview mirror as we coast headfirst into a Tuesday that is destined to feel like a Monday all day. I set the alarm and got up at seven-ish; an hour later than a work day and really, something completely sensible to do on days off. An extra hour still feels like a treat, and then I have the entire morning to get things done. I washed dishes, made breakfast, wrote two posts, and then dug into the book and cranked out over two thousand words before noon–with the entire day still ahead of me. I wish I could tell you that I worked on some other writing, but I didn’t. I was reading newsletters and magazines that have stacked up (another thing that is stupid–I let magazines pile up, collect dust, and just be clutter rather than simply reading them at first opportunity and then tossing them in the trash–or tearing out an article that may be of interest to me at a later date (can’t imagine how all that paper piled up on me over the years). I am pleased to say I have only three back issues of Texas Monthly (their true crime reporting is stellar) and the latest 64 Parishes to read now. I also watched some news clips on Youtube, fell into a wormhole about the history of the Cathars in southern France and the Albigensian Crusade that killed them all, and finally started reading about the Baptist War in Jamaica–there’ll be more on that at another time, trust me on that– before doing some filing and touching up around here. All in all, it was a lovely weekend, and I am so delighted to be back into the book again (I was worried about picking it back up again after the last few days not working on it), and knowing that my editorial and creative eye is coming back together, too. I still have to get used to my life as it is now, and I know there are going to be bad days that I just need to accept and roll with, and not beat myself up over those sorts of things. Being too tired to write or create is a valid reason for not doing so. It just is painful and the writing isn’t any good, anyway–and it’s not like I need to prove to myself that I can write a goddamn crime novel, do I?
I feel pretty rested and good this morning. We shall see how that develops for the rest of the day. I think we’re pretty busy today; or maybe not; maybe it was next week? We always get busy at the STI clinic after Southern Decadence…which kind of makes me a little proud, because we’ve trained our clients so well that they know about the window periods for the bacterial infections so they wait. (The schedule isn’t that busy; I just checked it–laptop came home with me on Thursday–so yes, it’s next week that is super-busy.) I have to make groceries on the way home from the office tonight; I may be too tired to work on the book tonight but…that’s okay.
Yesterday afternoon I was kind of at loose ends and dangerously close to being bored, when I remembered a conversation at work recently, in which one of my co-workers told me he loves to watch bad movies with a friend to laugh at them, so I asked, as is my wont, if they’d seen Voyage of the Rock Aliens–I have yet to find anyone else who has seen it (I saw it twice in the theater) and so that was in my mind. Right now I can’t remember the brain trail that led me to think of it yesterday, but I did, and the whole movie is up on Youtube…so yes, I rewatched it, and…it really can’t be watched alone to be laughed at properly. Anyway, it was the great Ruth Gordon’s final movie (what an epitaph!), starred Pia Zadora and an incredibly beautiful young Craig Sheffer. It’s a weird mash-up of the bad scifi and beach movies of the 50s and 60s, a lot of the humor is of the time (I’m sure kids today, or even viewers of any age for that matter, would get the Lake Eerie jokes, because the lake was cleaned up), and it’s even more godawful to rewatch after forty years or so. It may even be worth it’s own entry…
We also started watching Kaos, which is demented in a very fun way; a modern twist on Greek mythology. A reboot kind of, if you will. Jeff Goldblum is perfect as Zeus, as is Janet McTeer as Hera. Of course, since it involves Orpheus and Eurydice, it put me in mind of Hadestown, which I saw on Broadway in New York thanks to Mike Ford. I’m looking forward to watching more tonight, if I’m not too tired and Paul isn’t working on a grant the way he has been for the last week or so. Of course, I could unwind with my Alison Gaylin ARC, which I am doling out to myself as a reward for getting things done.
I am very glad that my brain has finally unlocked and I am not only writing again, but writing the way I did before the recent times of troubles. I’m enjoying it, and am having fun with it again. I don’t know if I am all the way there again yet, and I’m not all the way back to normal (or whatever passes for normal in my life) quite yet, but I don’t feel like there’s a dark cloud in my brain and just getting through the day is a triumph anymore. Now that it’s unlocked, I can also see that some of the stories I’ve written over the last four years and not been able to place (or finish)? Now that my mind is more clear than it’s been in a while, I can see what the problems are–the voice and tone of the story. They’re written kind of in a cheery, pleasant tone, and that doesn’t work with what the stories are about. What was I thinking? No, they need to be colder, and more desperate, unsentimental, which isn’t as easy for me as it should be. They need to be harder and colder and crueler, more desperate, in order for the stories to work, which is also pretty cool. I’m so glad I’ve figured this out at long last! I also think part of the reason I made the stories not as dark as they needed to be was because of the shitshow life had become for us all and I didn’t want to write anything dark. My brain was telling me something, wasn’t it?
I also walked to Walgreens to get treats for His Impious Majesty, listening to the My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast and rather enjoying it–it’s really hilarious, you should check it out–when the door opened in my brain and I finally figured out what podcasts actually are: they’re like radio shows of old only with a more modern delivery system. so we’ve kind of circled back around the entertainment my grandparents used to enjoy–radio/podcast, they are basically the same, with the primary difference how you get distributed to listeners, kind of like do-it-yourself radio. Yes, it only took me how many years to figure it out? Heavy sigh. But now that I finally get them, I can start looking for others that could be fun and informational. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around them–sometimes I have to connect newer technology to older so I can understand its purpose. Yes, I am well aware how obtuse I can be, which I think is a part of the wacky brain chemistry that I want to talk to my doctor about. I don’t need medication to control the wandering mind syndrome, as I’ve remembered how to write again, so that’s not an issue. But it would be nice to have a diagnosis rather than simply wondering and self-diagnosing from my reading.
I also started relearning German on Duolingo this weekend, which makes sense. There are crusty memories deep in the recesses of my brain, and doesn’t it make more sense to try triggering my memory rather than starting from scratch with a whole new language. So far, so good. I can order coffee and bread and wine in German now. So, when I am in a German coffee shop I can say, kaffee und brot, bitte.
I didn’t really have much FOMO about Bouchercon over the weekend–obviously, I know I would have had fun had I gone because now I know too many people not to have fun, if that makes any kind of sense to you. I did miss seeing everyone, but my primary regret in not going was not being able to participate in the voting down of removing the DEI (aka inclusion) from the Bouchercon operating by-laws…yes another attempt by a mediocre white man who used to be on the Board and was long associated with it (back in its misogynist, racist, homophobic days where that kind of shit was not only tolerated, but enjoyed) deciding that since he had a problem with inclusion the entire conference should just do away with it. Thanks, Al Abramson, I remember reporting being treated homophobically by programming years ago and you just patted me on the head and basically told me to get over it. Fuck you all the way to hell and back, and don’t think we aren’t fucking organized, you miserable piece of bigoted trash. Can’t imagine why queers felt uncomfortable and unsafe attending your fucking event, and the trash LOC couldn’t even be bothered reassuring us, and in fact, exposed how homophobic the LOC was. But thanks to the alert Board members and some others–CWoC, QCW–rallied the troops, but the Board also refused to consider it and the refusal of this last minute last ditch attempt to make it a Karen-and-Chad conference again. But this is also why we have to be forever vigilant, because there’s always some mediocrity trying to drive out the marginalized.
Must have been a real bitch-slap seeing how diverse the Anthony Awards were.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday that feels like Monday, and may be back later.
Here it is Tuesday, and I am feeling okay this morning–awake and rested, if a little creaky (which is every morning these days)–and my coffee is really tasty this morning, which is lovely. I slept pretty well, other than the occasional sniffing/clawing/biting from Sparky, and I could have easily stayed in bed for another hour or so, but that’s okay. Functionality is perfectly fine.
We watched more Euphoria last night, and I have to say, we are really enjoying it. Nate is a monster, played beautifully (see what I did there?) by Jacob Elordi; but as wild and over-the-top as the show is, it’s also marvelously queer–and also shows the difference between a miserable existence that is completely a lie (Nate’s dad) to Rue’s unabashed, unquestioned bisexuality, and of course there’s a marvelous trans character as well, who is just as developed and three-dimensional and has an interior life as much as the others, which is terrific. Represent, HBO! I’m also a bit surprised that this show hasn’t been targeted by the right–drugs and sex and drinking and teenagers, oh my! But they never came after Gossip Girl either; selective outrage is never consistent, after all.
I did write some last night; it was all garbage, but at least it was something, right? Even as I was typing the words as they came to me, I knew it wasn’t any good. I had the voice completely wrong, and the words, which I’d intended to create a dream-like kind of mood (the way Megan Abbott does, so effortlessly), weren’t good either. It’s just a prologue, and it’s not the actual book I want to write quite yet, but at least it was something–and it was in my mind so much I couldn’t really do much of anything else until I got it out of my system. It’s only about 1500 words or so, and needs to be redone, but I can work on that while I work on these other stories I need to get taken care of. There’s a lot that has to go into this book, which is probably going to wind up being shorter than I had really ever thought about–it kind of needs to be, kind of quick and nasty and dreamy.
Now that I’ve finished Where They Wait (more on that later), I am going to go back to something I’d started before my trip, and then I have some others I’d like to get through relatively quickly; but I do have a three day weekend to look forward to; so hopefully I can get some other reading done, too. I know we are going to Costco this weekend–I need to make a list–and I also need to make groceries, but I’ll probably swing by the grocery store on my way home from work tomorrow since it’s Pay-the-Bills Day. I also want to get a lot of the apartment taken care of, so I can take books to the library on Saturday and I can also drop off the dry cleaning, which will be a lovely start towards making the living room look like a living room and not a fraternity dorm room.
I do continue to keep tabs on the Noah Presgrove case in Oklahoma; his autopsy report was finally released last week (why did it take eight months is another good question), and it’s brutal. I knew it was bad, but Jesus. He literally was beaten to death, and the injuries are horrific. I also became aware of another case yesterday–Tom Brown in Canadian, Texas–which is also weird, is also small town stuff, and Canadian isn’t very far from Comanche, Oklahoma…although I doubt the cases are connected, despite the proximity; poor Tom disappeared on Thanksgiving, and his remains weren’t found for almost two years. Skin Hollandsworth had done an eight-part series on Tom for Texas Monthly, which I will probably read over the course of the weekend. It also occurred to me last night that I have become obsessed with the murders of teenaged boys in rural America lately. But how many cases like this are there, where a teenaged boy (granted, Noah was nineteen, but that still counts) is murdered in a small town where everyone knows everyone, but no one knows who the killer/killers is/are? Come on, now. I’m not buying that for a second.
There’s no corruption quite like small town corruption, is there? That’s also uniquely American, I think, and tells quite a different story than all the “real America/Joe Sixpack” right wing bullshit they try to sell us, where every small town is Mayberry and good American values are still appreciated. Well, in my experience every small town is either Twin Peaks or Peyton Place, and if that defines America….well, we need to rethink that.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.
Sunday morning and it’s cold again this morning. My space heater is warming my legs nicely–it’s amazing how much heat that thing can put out–and I am going to try to get some things done this morning. My desk area is a mess and there’s a load of clothes in the dryer to fold, and another load of dishes in the sink to be washed and put in the dishwasher. I didn’t write yesterday; after braving the grocery store on the Saturday before Christmas I was pretty worn out and over-stimulated, so I spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching some documentaries on television about professional wrestling–there’s a terrific Vice series available on Hulu called The Dark Side of the Ring. I’ve been wanting to write a noir set in a small wrestling promotion in a fictional, highly corrupt Southern coastal city (which I call Bay City whenever I think about it); seeing the dark stories behind the public image was interesting. I watched the episodes about the Fabulous Moolah and the Von Erich family; I just read an old piece in Texas Monthly about them, and so this seemed timely. I loved the Von Erichs back in the day, and I always had a crush on sexy Kevin Von Erich–although I kind of liked them all, frankly. Kevin is the only surviving brother (of six), and they did talk to him on-camera for the documentary, and he was interviewed for the Texas Monthly piece. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose all of your brothers–almost all of your children for the Von Erich parents–but Kevin’s two sons are now working in professional wrestling, carrying on the family name, and they are also carrying on the “hot as fuck” family tradition as well.
After that, I invested three hours in finally watching Avengers Endgame, which was entertaining enough. There were elements of Days of Future Past in it–no surprise, since they came from the same company–and it did have some terrific moments. Visually it was also stunning, but I always have problems with time travel because of the paradoxes (although I did laugh out loud when someone–I think it was Paul Rudd as Antman–said, “SO you’re saying Back to the Future is bullshit?”), and I also figured out, at the end of Infinity War, that they’d have to go back in time to erase what Thanos had done. This created a lot more questions in my head than were answered by the movie, but I can also see why it was such a huge success and why people loved it so much. It’s quite the star-studded spectacle, everyone is well cast, and visually it’s quite epic.
And then I went to bed–a lovely, relaxing day. I may not watch the Saints game–too stressful–but will definitely have it on in the living room while I do other things. Tonight there won’t be a new episode of Watchmen, which makes me sad (and yes, I still miss Game of Thrones) but there should be a new episode of Dublin Murders dropping tonight, and Paul has expressed an interest in watching Titans, so I’ll probably revisit the first season, primarily because I won’t remember enough of it to explain it to Paul is we just start on season two. I’m also trying to figure out how to watch the DIRECTV-only series of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. There are becoming too many streaming services, and we’re getting to the point where it’s almost as much as the cable bill used to be. One thing I need to do is sit down and figure out what all I am paying for and what I actually don’t need, that I am paying for and can be cancelled.
Also, the first episode of Megan Abbott’s series based on her novel Dare Me is available, if I can figure out a way to stream it onto the television.
I also need to write today. I’ve successfully managed to avoid it for two days now, but today I kind of should do some. I don’t know why I always have to force myself to do things I enjoy, but that’s the paradox of my life. I’m also going to spend some time with Laura Benedict’s The Stranger Inside. I don’t know why I am taking so long to read this book, it’s fantastic and incredibly well done; it has more to do with me not being in the mood to read or something, rather than anything negative about the book.
I’m also trying to decide whether or not I want to do one–or several–of those my favorite things of the year posts. Obviously, I didn’t read or watch everything, so I can only write about what I’ve actually experienced; but I also worry that I won’t remember something. There were so many amazing new books this year that I read, and some amazing books from previous years I also read…it’s hard to remember a better year for books, or television–Chernobyl, Unbelievable, Fosse/Verdon–and that’s just off the top of my head. The Emmys are going to be incredibly competitive yet again.
And on that note, I am going to retire to my easy chair with my book for a little while before I start cleaning and writing and doing whatever it is I should be doing on this late December lazy Sunday.
Queer and Loathing in America 