Tag: tornados

We Are Family

I got all my sisters with me!

“We Are Family” is one of those songs from the disco era–the ones that still get played on oldies nights in queer bars and continues to live on. Obviously, it’s an iconic gay anthem–about our found families rather than the blood ones that so often want nothing to do with us–and it’s also really popular with sororities…at least it was back then. It’s a very joyful and uplifting song, lyrically, so it’s also fun to belt out at the top of your lungs. Disco was a really fun time for a gay boy in sparsely populated Kansas…it’s where my love of dancing really took off. The dance floor was, for many years, the only place where I felt free.

Yesterday was a decent day. We were very fortunate to not have any of that bad weather that was forecast, at least not here in the Lost Apartment. I’ve not checked on the storm toll throughout the rest of the South yet, primarily because I’ve not even finished my first cup of coffee yet. But I did see yesterday some horrific weather was happening throughout the South as the result of that storm cell yesterday, so I hope everyone got through it okay and is doing well this morning. Weather events are both terrible and terrifying. It’s kind of ironic that my current book I am writing is set during a weather event. But I feel rested this morning and I got up early (Sparky wasn’t quite as kind about letting me sleep later), and am about to start my second cup. I did okay yesterday. I was still mentally fatigued yesterday so wasn’t able to get a lot of creative work done, but managed some. I also did some chores and picked up around here, and walked to Walgreens in the morning to get butter, which I’d forgotten at the store on Friday (and I need a stick of butter for today’s dinner). Aside–Walgreens actually had stock. The one-two punch of Hurricane Ida and the pandemic dealt it a blow I didn’t think it was going to ever recover from; there were empty shelves everywhere, empty refrigeration cases, and you could never be sure they’d the one thing you needed–which happened more than once over the years since then. But I was very pleasantly surprised to see they had finally restocked, and they had things….not just the butter I needed but some other things I also needed and didn’t think they would have. NARRATOR VOICE: They did have those things, which was most pleasing to mine eyes.

This is delightful news–not quite “oh they opened a new Rouse’s in the CBD that’s actually on my way home” delightful, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to get in the car to go get things necessarily anymore. I love when my life becomes more convenient.

I spent some more time with Moonraker yesterday, and it’s…something. There’s an unemotional distance in Fleming’s voice (he also uses the distant third person omniscient narrator style of writing, which I was trained so long ago not to use–I always use first or close third person, and it always surprises me when I read a legendary author’s work to find they use it), and there’s no sentimentality to it, either. The casual misogyny of the time is an eyeful, as well as the way Bond (and by extension, the secret service and the culture/society as whole) doesn’t really view women as people, but rather as almost ignorant children who need the guiding of a man). It’s also a good reminder that the Bond novels weren’t as over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek as the films1. The original novels definitely have a completely different feel from the movies, that is for damned sure. Fleming died around the time the first film was being made, so he never saw what Hollywood did to his characters and stories. I suspect he wouldn’t have cared much for them; the books are very cold. But it’s interesting to revisit it, and the similarities/prescience of Hugo Drax to Elmo Dusk are definitely eerie and make the book more compelling to read than it would have been a year ago.

Three out of four of the Lefty Awards last night went to friends–James L’etoile won Best Novel; Rob Osler won Best Humorous; and John Copenhaver won Best Historical–and two were openly queer writers writing about openly queer characters! Woo-hoo! The times, they are a-changing! There were also a number of other friends also nominated, so shout out to one and all the nominees and winners! Huzzah!

We did finish watching Running Point, which was a lot of fun and we greatly enjoyed it. We then watched the first three episodes of Adolescence on Netflix, which is disturbingly real. It opens with a 13 year old boy being arrested for the murder of a classmate, and the child is very definitely disturbed. We’ll finish that today probably, but I also have a lot of writing to do. We’ll see how everything goes.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, all, and I’ll be back at some point.

  1. Ayn Rand, in writing about “heroes” in film and novels, wrote about the early Bond films in an essay about art. I remember how much she loved Dr. No–really one of the only Bonds to be done as a serious film–and how much she hated Goldfinger. ↩︎

It’s Too Late

Thursday!

Fortunately last night’s horrible weather seemed to miss our neighborhood for the most part; I’m not seeing any news about storm damage or power outages in the metro area, so we must have dodged another bullet. It was supposed to come through the city around four; they closed the office and sent us to work from home remotely for the rest of the day. I think the thunderstorm got here around eight pm last night? That was when I heard the first thunder and the rain started. Better safe than sorry, of course, but weather scares that turn out to be nothing inevitably make people take future storm threats not as seriously, which becomes problematic over time–it’s why people don’t evacuate for hurricanes, for one thing–but it’s also a no-win situation for the weather forecasters. It’s their job to warn us and keep us safe from inclement weather, so they have to take potentially dangerous storms seriously. But when they’re wrong…people stop listening…and inevitably the time will come when they are right. After last week’s tornado on the West Bank/lower 9th/New Orleans East–and it was a big bad one–well, the possibility of a repeat is pretty fucking scary. And we don’t have basements or interior rooms in most of our houses–I don’t think there’s a basement anywhere in Orleans Parish–and all of the old houses here were built to stay cool in our miserably hot summers, so most don’t have a room anywhere inside that doesn’t have windows because that room would be unbearable pre-air conditioning.

Today is my last day in the office for the week, which is nice. I woke up super-early again this morning yet somehow feel incredibly well-rested; go figure. I was tense about the storm yesterday afternoon when I got home from the office, so I spent my work-at-home time making condom packs while watching the weather reports in my easy chair. I really need to get back to working on my story that I have due at the end of April; I am hoping the malaise will lift somewhat so I can get some writing done. After my work-at-home duties were completed, Paul and I watched the rest of season two of The Righteous Gemstones, which was quite enjoyable; this show doesn’t get near the attention it deserves. As I said yesterday, the corrupt televangelist has almost become a stereotype–like the closeted homophobic politician–but the show handles it very well; that weird line between having faith while at the same time a lot of human frailty.

I will have a lot to focus on this weekend to get done in preparation for my trip to Albuquerque next week; it’s my first ever trip to Left Coast Crime, which I am extremely excited about–this is my first really big event in years; it would have been the combined festivals of last weekend had I been able to actually go down, hang out and spend some time enjoying them. (I am still a little bitter about not having the time to actually enjoy the weekend, but the truth is it’s my own fault because I could have planned better and gotten the work I needed to get done finished long before the weekend; this is what happens when you procrastinate, Greg so remember this the next time you start convincing yourself you can push something to do back another day or so.) But I do think I can get some things done this weekend; the entire weekend looms before me with nothing really do or that must get done…so I should be able to have a nice relaxing weekend at home to get things done, to read, to write and clean and get my house in order so I can safely leave town next Thursday.

It’s so nice having Paul home at night again.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, everyone.

Sub-culture

Thursday!

And no, today’s title does not mean today’s blog will be about the dom/sub dynamic, although it might make for an interesting post at some point.

I slept well again, and apparently Tuesday night in the wee hours of the morning a tornado touched down and rampaged through New Orleans; it touched down in the Carrollton area of Riverbend, kind of followed Carrollton and Canal Street to the river and then hopped across to Algiers. I was a bit confused about this, as people kept tagging me on Facebook to make sure I was okay–which puzzled me; I wasn’t aware it even happened (I knew we’d had some awful storms overnight, but didn’t know there was a tornado) until late yesterday afternoon when I saw there was a news conference about the tornado from the mayor’s office.

Sometimes, it’s best not to know, you know?

I went to the gym after work last night and had a marvelous workout–I’ve noticed that I am pushing myself a bit more rather than just sort of going through the motions, and it feels good, like my body has finally gotten used to the concept of weight lifting and the strain again at last. It also isn’t as exhausting as it used to be, even though I am working harder than I was–but then that could also be a by-product of actually getting sleep at night. Paul’s lorazepam, which is what I’ve use the last two evenings, is marvelous; it actually makes me sleep like I used to when I was younger, shutting down mind function completely and dragging me down in the clutches of Morpheus. I came home from the gym, got cleaned up, and then worked on the outline for Chlorine for a bit, getting the first five chapters mapped out–it was a bit of a struggle; I know the premise, I know the story, and I know the beginning and end, but as always, the middle is going to be a slog because I don’t really know how to write the middle (which is where everything I write always gets bogged down.), so I imagine I will be struggling to figure out the second act for quite some time…but I may go ahead and start writing the first drafts for the rest of the first act; that sometimes helps. So I can hopefully get that started this weekend. Tomorrow morning I am finally taking the old desktop into the Apple Store, and since I am already going to be out that way made some other appointments–eyes, etc.–and had to take a personal sick day from work. Maybe I can start it tomorrow….we shall see how everything plays out, shan’t we?

We also watched the latest episode of Cruel Summer, which remains interesting, but a bit confusing–but the real story of what happened to Kate while she was being held captive in the cellar for a year is slowly starting to come out–but I don’t get the motivation for her to blame Jeannette, or for the whole town turning on Jeannette and her family. But it is still holding my interest, and we will probably see it through to the bitter end. Mare of Easttown is also doing a great job of holding out interest, but this is primarily because of the brilliant performance Kate Winslet is giving at the heart of the show. Mare isn’t particularly likable, and it’s not hard to see her character as the female version of the male detective who usually drives these kinds of narratives–they are also doing a most excellent job of portraying the claustrophobia of small towns like this. I’ve also made a decision on what my next read will be–Robyn Gigl’s debut, By Way of Sorrow, which looks terrific. I’d like to get it finished, since the next book I will read will be James Jones’ massive doorstop of a novel, From Here to Eternity, all over 900 pages or so of it, which I will be taking with me to Kentucky next week while I travel.

I can’t believe the trip is next week already. Wow. So much to do before I fly out on Thursday morning a week from today. YIKES.

The house is, as always, a total mess. I still haven’t reattached the doors to the laundry room–it’s a two person job, and I might see if Paul can help me with it at some point, even though he is terrible at this sort of thing; but if I hold them in place surely he can use the electric screwdriver to put the screws back in? They are taking up an awful lot of space in the living room, and I have also found a drop box to clear out a lot of our excess beads and throws that have accumulated over the last dozen years inside the Lost Apartment. My filing organization also still leaves an awful lot to be desired–so many fucking files piling up everywhere in this place–and I honestly wish I had room for a four drawer filing cabinet, but alas, I do not. (That would take care of a lot of this problem, even if it would take me an entire weekend to organize it and put everything away into it–it would be so worth it to not have files stashed everywhere.) I am thinking after I finish everything I have to do tomorrow morning, with appointments and so forth, that I might start taking boxes of books down from the attic in order to take them to the library sale on Saturday; after all, if the attic is cleared out somewhat, I can start putting boxes of dead files up there. I should really do at least a box a week every week, slow and steady, which will eventually get the attic emptied out.

An old queen can dream, at any rate.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. I have some time to do the dishes and so forth before I have to start making today’s quota of condom packs, and I still have to decide what movies to watch while I do so. Maybe some classic Hitchcock that I’ve never seen will be today’s jolt of classic cinema; I’ll have to take a look around on my streaming services and see what’s available.

And so, until tomorrow, have a lovely day, Constant Reader!