How on earth is it Pay-the-Bills Wednesday again already? As my grandmother used to day, “lord, have mercy” (it sounded like lawd-a-mersuh) But the week has gone rather well thus far, so no complaints on that score. I did feel a bit tired yesterday afternoon at work, but I just keep my head down and keep plugging away. I was very organized and efficient at work yesterday, too, and I have some catching up to do this morning but that shouldn’t be much of a problem. We’re aren’t terribly busy today, either, which is nice. We also started watching a new series on Netflix, Unchosen, which is about a British cult (fictional), but it’s incredibly well done and chilling–and like Trust Me: The False Prophet, focuses on a woman victim of the cult who is starting to think the cult may not be what it’s presented to be. (Watch Trust Me–you literally can trust me on this.) I’ve always had a mild interest in cults; I remember when they found the corpses at Jonestown when I was in high school. There was also a cult in the county seat where we lived in Kansas. They had purchased the campus of a defunct religious college and taken it over as a “religious college”–but only the religion was their cult. Those people were creepy as fuck, and it was even scarier the way they would corner people to proselytize; it happened a few times to me at places as varied as McDonalds, a gas station, and the grocery store. I looked the cult up a few years ago, when I remembered how weird that was–for a religious, deeply conservative Midwestern state, a lot of weird fucking shit goes on there–and they’re declining. The campus was sold to a local land-grant university, and I even found a book by someone who had left the cult. that I ordered but haven’t read yet.
There are still so many Kansas stories I want to tell.
I was also thinking about the hypocrisy of the entire “tradwife” thing. For one thing, traditional farm wives who baked their own bread and churned their own butter generally didn’t have running water in the house or electricity; so these grifters trying to sell this brand shouldn’t be using what the women they are emulating would have called witchcraft. Just a thought. And isn’t it interesting that conservative women are trying to sell women on the notion that it’s better to be so fucking busy in the kitchen and the daily chores to think about what they actually want from life. There’s a harrowing passage in Robert Caro’s first volume of the LBJ biographies he’s writing about what a day in the life of a rural farm wife was like, and I’ve never forgotten how awful and hopeless their lives were when they had to boil clothes and run them on a washboard to clean them–and having to cart the water from the well, which took multiple trips, not to mention trying to keep the house clean and the larder stocked and cook and take care of the children. (Loretta Lynn remembers those hard times with love and through rose-colored glasses in her song “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”)
It’s so patriarchical, isn’t it? “Keep your woman busy so she won’t have the energy to think about how much inequity exists in her life. She’ll be happier.1“
Remember when I was talking about how some show business people decided to turn Colton Underwood into THEE GAY of the moment, and gave us a reality show where Gus Kenworthy tried to show him how to be gay? I think it was called Coming Out Colton. I didn’t watch, and kind of thought it wasn’t very well thought out–“oh, look, an NFL player and former Bachelor has come out, and is a beautiful blonde blue-eyed young man, let’s give the gays a star”–but may watch it someday2. ANyway, the other example of not knowing what the queers want (her reality show revealed how horrible she was), Caitlyn Jenner, was interviewed by the unspeakably vile Tomi Lahren the other day and was whining about her passport being renewed with an M gender marking–entirely due to the policies she actually voted for.3 And of course, being a true piece of confused moronic trash, she “still loves Trump.” Yeah, he ain’t helping you with the passport thing. You’re no use to him anymore. I’d say maybe she’d wake up and pull her head out of her ass, but she’s been in that horrific Kardashian universe for so long it’s undoubtedly broken her brain.
I also did some chores last night; I thought I had turned the dishwasher on before I went up to bed last night, but apparently I didn’t; so I’ll have to empty and reload again when I get home tonight. I also think I’m going to do a load of laundry, too–or maybe that should wait until tomorrow night after work, so I can get another day’s worth of dirty clothes in there and only have the bedding to do on Friday.
I didn’t write anything fictional yesterday; I’m trying to figure out the best way to get the information I need my main character to get in this chapter. I’ll probably go over the nearly two thousand words I’ve already done to edit and revise and add some layers to, which should get me back into the story. It was a struggle yesterday, so I gave up and worked on some essays instead. (I started to say write anything, but caught myself and remembered–nonfiction counts. Rather proud of myself.)
The MAGA civil war continues to entertain. The Candace Owens/Laura Loomer war is hilarious; they are both monsters, but it’s lovely seeing them using their vitriol on each other instead of others. I love that The Onion bought Infowars and Alex Jones is financially ruined, which isn’t everything he deserves but is a good start. He and his followers are clearly heartless and soulless ghouls. I cannot imagine telling parents grieving their murdered children they are liars, or defiling the children’s tombstones. And I am not buying into any MAGA regrets or apology tours either, that take no responsibility or accountability, and then think we owe them forgiveness? I’m more likely to forgive and financially support Westboro Baptist than forgive them without atonement because they are still awful and are just trying to get ahead of the inevitable eventual collapse.
The ebook of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here was on sale yesterday for $1.99, so I snapped it up because I was thinking about rereading it again. I originally read it during the second Bush term because I could see it coming then. The rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News in the early 1990s was the canary in a coal mine, and I saw the signs of this current situation already starting to fall into place. I don’t think our current situation is going to end up in the Turd Reich–we are perilously close right now–because it’s all blowing up, and I don’t think a Fascist takeover with all the reins in the small hands of an insane tyrant whose cognitive dissonance must inevitably cause a complete mental collapse, and I have a lot more confidence now that we can somehow come back from the brink. But there’s so much work to be done after, to even get back to where we were before, let alone make things better.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow.
- Paul asked me, as we watched the show last night, “why do these cults exist” and I replied, “as a means of controlling and subjugating women. All cults seem to have that in common.” ↩︎
- Since I love reality television, I’ve been thinking about doing an essay on gay reality shows, and another on queer people on mainstream reality shows. ↩︎
- I was also rather interested to hear her mention her driver’s license–didn’t she kill someone in a vehicular homicide? How does she still have one? ↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 