Tag: The Gentlemen

Broken Hearted Melody

Ah, Wednesday and the midpoint of the week has arrived. It’s been a good week so far; I’ve not been super-tired at all this week and I think the shifting of my arrival at work from 7:30 to 8 was a smart decision. I imagine, though, it’ll eventually start getting difficult for me to get up later as it has getting up earlier, once I am used to the change. In other words, it won’t feel like I am getting to sleep late eventually.

I saw something interesting yesterday on social media that really resonated with me: Your life should not be a museum, and that’s kind of what my mentality has been. I tend to get stuck in ruts so easily, and I like to accumulate things that have meaning to me (have I introduced you to my library yet?), but do I really need to keep these “artifacts” of my past? I never look at these things, rarely have anyone over to see them, so therefore what is the point? Everyone at the day job laughs about how, at a co-worker’s wedding last fall, someone made a joke about how I always wear Crescent Care T-shirts to work and were surprised to see me outside of the office and wearing something else–and since the joke was made, I’ve not worn one. Not once. I had started wearing them every day during the pandemic when I came to work and it was a further simplification of my life: I didn’t have to pick out something to wear to work, But when he made the joke, I wasn’t offended, but it did kind of snap me out of a rut. You have plenty of other clothes you never wear, and they aren’t doing any good hanging in the closet, I realized finally, so I started wearing my clothes instead of the work T-shirt. I generally don’t care about clothes most of the time but I eventually get to the point, periodically, where I’ll get interested in clothes again and will buy some–I had a shoe experience earlier this year, and now have two gorgeous new pairs of shoes to show for it.

So, why not buy some more Polo style shirts in colors I generally don’t wear or don’t have in the closet? Yes, that’s my way of saying that I did order some new shirts for work yesterday.

Yesterday was also the fifty-year anniversary of women being able to get their own credit cards without their husband or any kind of male co-signer. I remember when this happened, by the way, and I also remember when my mother got her very first credit card; it didn’t have her name but rather Mrs. My Dad. I remember thinking, “yeah, but it’s STILL technically his name.” People also don’t remember that about fifty years ago was when women/wives stopped being subsumed into their husband’s identity at the expense of their own: I am constantly amazed by plaques commemorating civic leaders and donors that list women as Mrs. Chanse MacLeod or Mrs. Scotty Bradley. Women had no identity beyond their husband once they were married. They couldn’t get bank loans, and I am not sure about bank accounts, either, for that matter; women were basically chained to their husband for life and if she got a divorce, she was basically screwed. Once women had financial freedom and no longer needed a husband…well, the divorce rate rose significantly, which is why men were so opposed to treating women like equals.

“What, you mean I have to convince her to marry me? Spinsterhood and divorce aren’t unpleasant fates anymore? That’s it–women need to be controlled.“

Sigh.

We also finished The Gentlemen last night, and I was very pleasantly surprised that it did have a most excellent finale. I don’t know if there will be more seasons, or if it was merely a mini-series, but I really enjoyed it and kind of am in the place where I worry about the continuation; so many shows go on long past their expiration date (looking at you, Friends and Thirteen Reasons Why) and lose me in a later season. (I really worried about it with Ted Lasso.) But we’ve got some other shows lined up to watch, I think the national finals for college gymnastics is on this weekend, and I also would like to get some more writing done this weekend. I did write last night on revising a short story, but today I am going to get back to work on the book (and hopefully finish the short story). It’s been a good and productive week thus far, and I really like this “go in later” thing I accidentally stumbled over on Monday morning. I made it through the day yesterday without getting tired, and I felt good when I came home to His Majesty Sparky, who is now addicted to the squeeze treats I bought for him. But I only have one more day in the office this week, and suddenly it’s the weekend again. I also worked on my taxes a bit more yesterday. Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines again. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back probably a little later.

What’d I Say

Tuesday morning and I slept well again. It’s kind of amazing what a change to my day getting up a mere ten minutes later can make. Yesterday morning I had to swing by the Cat Practice to get his Royal Sparkiness food when they opened at eight. I wound up getting to the office around eight fifteen, and I felt alert and awake all day. Was it a one-time thing perhaps? Well, sleeping ten minutes later again this morning and planning on leaving the house for the office a bit later so I don’t have to rush may make a difference for today too, so we are experimenting with leaving later and staying at the office later and seeing if that also makes a difference today as well. After work, I swung by uptown to pick up the mail, which included my first foray into poetry reading, Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early, a recommendation from Carol Rosenfeld, which I am looking forward to delving into. I also got my Frances and Richard Lockridge short story collection from Crippen and Landru, and the new Scott Carson (Michael Koryta) Lost Man’s Lane, which should be quite fun.

Last night we watched more of The Gentlemen and Star Wars: The Bad Batch, which is kind of fun and very well done. We should finish The Gentlemen tonight, and perhaps move on to our next show to watch.

I can’t say that I was sorry to see that the homophobic right-wing bitch Beverly LaHaye passed away. Well, I am sorry that it took so long for that horrific piece of shit to die–more proof that evil never dies, like Mitch McConnell. I really hope she suffered, and that it was incredibly painful, so she was released from the pain only to have the pearly gates slammed in her fucking face and the hell-slide opened up below her feet sending her to join her true Lord and Master Satan in the lake of eternal fire. She founded the Concerned Women for America, by the way, which was the right-wing predecessors of Moms4Liberty and the vicious hateful pieces of trash who were horrified that I dared to speak to high school students about chasing their dreams. I hope it was a slow metatastic cancer that sapped her energy, her will, and made every waking moment a misery.

She deserved worse, frankly.

Yes I am petty–and proud of it.

And no, I have no sympathy for those who might be mourning her. She was a horrible person, and when you’ve harmed that many people–when it the purpose of your life to spread hatred and bigotry using Christ’s name (the ultimate in bearing false witness) you don’t get to expect people not to celebrate your passing. In fact, you should probably rethink your life if you think people will pop open champagne when they hear you’ve finally deservedly died and gone to hell.

I did write yesterday, about three thousand or so (probably more), which felt good. The book is still sucking incredibly, I might add, so I think I need to think about it some more and where it’s going. I also started working on a short story, “The Last To See Him Alive,” which I think is a great title and it’s working….so far. We’ll see how it goes today, though, won’t we? But I think working on the book first and then moving on to work on a short story may be the way for me to balance my creativity needs while getting everything done that needs to be done, or that I want to get done.

Speaking of poetry–did I mention here that I wanted to start reading it, and understanding it? Probably, since my memory is a sieve. Anyway, I have The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe on my desk, and the other day I opened it, just for the hell of it, to any page and it opened to his poem, “Tamerlane,” and I realized I’d gotten a short story title from it:

Kind solace in a dying hour!

And that’s where the title for “Solace in a Dying Hour” came from, so thank you, Mr.Poe and your poetry. I’ve also got story titles out of Shakespeare before, too, and I am glad I am going to start reading poetry and studying it. I’ve always felt like that was definitely a missing element in my education.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, one never can be entirely sure, can one?

Gotta Travel On

The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.

I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.

I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.

I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”

As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.

And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Turn Me Loose

Sunday morning blog after an uneventful yet sort of productive day yesterday. Our Internet went out around one yesterday afternoon, and was essentially in and out (mostly out) until about eight o’clock last night. I did finish reading my book, which was superb (more on The Cypress House later) and I did get two more blog post drafts finished, which felt great. I ran my errands, cooked outside last night, and did some cleaning up around here as well. When it came back and we could watch television, we finished Pray Away and moved onto The Gentlemen, which we are really enjoying, on Netflix.

It was actually nice not having Internet, if odd–you never realize how much you depend on it until you don’t have it, seriously–because I was able to relax all day, instead of getting caught up on the news (rage-inducing, as always) or watching old LSU football highlights (always a joy) or finding new documentaries to watch. Pray Away was the final step in our “teenager abuse programs” watching, following The Program and Hell Camp, and what’s truly frightening is the gaslighting involved, for both kid and their parents–and that the troubled teen industry is still chugging along, abusing kids and bilking their parents of money. I’ve never wanted to do a conversion therapy story–I briefly touched on this in Baton Rouge Bingo and again in Royal Street Reveillon; that Taylor’s parents wanted to send him to one in Mississippi. I had also talked about a conversion therapy camp in Mississippi before in other works, some of them my Todd Gregory stuff, and maybe someday that will come to fruition in some way. Watching all these documentaries has put me in mind of how to write about one in a Scotty book or a stand-alone; there’s also another idea for a mystery/crime novel I’ve been thinking about a lot as I watched these horrific documentaries, only set in Kansas. (Oddly enough I find myself thinking about Kansas a lot more and more these days, not sure what that’s all about.)

I also was looking through books yesterday after I finished the Koryta to decide what to read next, and I was having trouble deciding; mainly because I have so many damned fine books to read in the TBR stack. I also ordered two more books yesterday morning–poems by Mary Oliver, recommended by the fabulous Carol Rosenfeld (me trying to learn more about poetry and start appreciating it) and the newest Scott Carson (which is a pseudonym for Michael Koryta). I think I am going to read The Pallbearer’s Club by Paul Tremblay (I’m a huge fan) while also embarking on a reread of Thomas Tryon’s The Other, which was probably one of the most influential books I read when I was a kid. I am still reading Rival Queens as my current non-fiction, and I am thinking that The King’s Assassin, the basis for the incredible new Starz series Mary and George (which you should be watching) and again, a period of history I’ve always been fascinated by, and watching the show has given me an idea about how I could approach another project that’s been in the files for almost two decades.

Today I intend to write and read and clean and organize for most the day, although I am sure once Paul gets up we’ll start streaming The Gentlemen again. I have some blog entries I also want to finish writing, and of course, there’s all kinds of writing that I need to get done today as well. I’ve been really scattered with my writing this year, and part of it has been an inability to focus on just one project with my usual laser-like focus, and that’s why I’ve not been able to get anything much done this year. This morning I feel more awake and focused than I have in a long time, which is great. Once I finish this and my review of The Cypress House I’ll get cleaned up, read for a bit, and pick up around here before focusing in on what I want to get written today. Being organized helps, and if I could simply manage to stay organized rather than just letting things pile up everywhere, I wouldn’t have to do as much cleaning and straightening and organizing as I always do on the weekends.

The Lefty Awards were presented last night in Seattle at Left Coast Crime, and I was very delighted to see the results this morning–Tracy Clark, Best Novel, Hide; Nina Simon, Best Debut, Mother-Daughter Murder Club; Naomi Hirohara, Best Historical, Evergreen; and Best Humorous, Wendall Thomas, Cheap Trills. I don’t know Nina, but the other three winners are friends, which is delightful, and I couldn’t be happier for Naomi, Tracy, and Wendall–who was on that Humor panel I had to step in to moderate at Bouchercon in San Diego last year, and was wonderful. Kudos to all winners and nominees!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again later!

The hunky Alan Ritchson, starring in Prime’s Reacher, did an interview recently calling out evangelicals and Trump supporters, who got all in their feelings and have decided not to watch the show anymore. Sounds like ‘cancel culture’ to me. How woke!