Tag: Weimar Republic

I’ll Never Love This Way Again

Remote Friday, which used to be Work-from-Home Friday–they call them “remote days” at the office now, so I had to rename the blog entry to be correct, because I am nothing if not a stickler (as if). I was correct in assuming I would be brain frazzled when I got home from work (it was a good day, if busy, and I got a lot done. Even wilder, there wasn’t much back-up of traffic on the highway), so I recharged for a bit in my easy chair with Sparky, and reacquainted myself with what happened in the advancing collapse of the Weimar Republic while I turned my attention away, and wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the most recent Neville Chamberlain-like statesmanship from Democratic leadership. The party just needs to die at this point before it gets too ugly…for them. I believe when MAGA turns on the people they voted for it will be incredibly violent and deadly–which is going to be a true Reign of Terror, since the betrayal runs so deep. The failure, and potential death of the Democratic Party–thanks, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, for your utter failure of leadership–will be less ugly, but ugly just the same. It’ll save me some money, since I will no longer be donating to any politician or party going forward…and I certainly will not be doing any campaign work of any kind ever again, either. Right now, the list of donations for 2026 is looking like it will be entirely to primary opponents. Why on earth would I ever support people who aren’t going to fight for the country and the Constitution?

I managed to get chores done last night, as I wasn’t physically tired at all, but had no bandwidth for reading or writing–but instead of sitting in my chair all night, I got my ass up and started doing chores. I did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and washed everything in the sink and reloaded and ran it again. I picked stuff up and worked on the kitchen, too. I hate that my mind is so fried by Thursday, but this was also a busy-ass week and I was in clinic every day. I also slept very well last night, and Sparky wasn’t as insistent that I get up at six as he usually is. I also managed to pay my car registration on line, got the bills all paid, and now get to do some work-at-home duties before running some errands before settling in to read and write for the rest of the afternoon. LSU’s final gymnastics meet is tonight, at Auburn, so we’ll be watching that tonight, and we need to find something new to stream–but we also have this week’s Reacher and Abbott Elementary to watch, too. That’s tonight sorted, any way.

Tomorrow the weather is going to be ugly with some sort of super storm cell capable of producing powerful tornados. We don’t really have basements or interior rooms here, and the houses all have enormous windows, so yeah, tornados here are quite unpleasant. Yet another reason for me to get everything done outside of the house that needs to be done today, you know? I just need to get the mail and some groceries, nothing too terrible and relatively easy to get taken care of, which will be very nice. It also appears that the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade is cancelled, possibly postponed.

By checking the news for the weather, I also saw that today is the anniversary of one of the city’s darkest days in history–the lynching of eleven Italian-American immigrants in the city jail. The police chief had been murdered, and the (bigoted) view of New Orleanians that it was a Mafia or a local Italian crime gang, so when some of them were acquitted…the good white men of New Orleans (sarcasm) stormed the jail and lynched the prisoners. It created an international incident and almost led to war with Italy; to appease the Italian government, one of the things the US did (besides paying an enormous indemnity) was create Columbus Day–which is how that happened….funny that a holiday created to honor a genocidal maniac came about because of bigotry, racism, and murder. I wonder…is this the time period racists mean when they talk about how New Orleans “used to be safer”? Because that doesn’t sound too safe to me…maybe it was when Storyville was open? When the Axeman was killing people? I do want to write about the lynchings some time, but I don’t know how to turn that into a story or a book. Perhaps someday….

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back either later or not till tomorrow morning. I will see you then!

You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling

Bring back that lovin’ feeling now it’s gone, gone, gone….

One of the worst things about being a writer with a very vivid imagination is that I often think I’ve written more of a short story than I have, and inevitably am a little shocked when I open the most recent draft of the story and what I remember writing isn’t there…and then it hits me that I either thought the story through until that point, or I scribbled ideas for it in my journal…so that gradually morphed into oh I never did write that scene/story/ending. I then sigh in disgust at past Greg for not actually writing it into the story itself and then try to remember what I can of it as I try transcribing it. The loss of my short term memory also plays a relatively large role in this madness, too. Can you guess why I am mentioning that this morning? Yep, this was the case when I looked up two short stories to add to my collection; I was trying to decide which stories I have unfinished that just needed a revision and I thought I was there with several more stories than I clearly was when I looked at them last night.

One of the ghastly things for me about being a writer is thinking I’ve written something when I actually haven’t. I was tired yesterday when I got home from work; I hit the wall at some point in the afternoon, so I succumbed to Sparky’s demands and let him cuddle with me in the easy chair when I got home from work. Paul worked at home yesterday, so when he came down we watch John Oliver and then finished Dirty Pop, the Lou Pearlman documentary. It did feel weird not having the Olympics to watch, but this is that fallow two weeks or so between the Olympics and college football getting started. Has the NFL preseason started? I am terrible about that, but since I no longer (refuse to) pay for the Times-Picayune (a ringing endorsement for the red candidate from their editorial board was the final nail in that coffin once and for all) it’s harder to remember about the Saints. I shouldn’t be surprised; the billionaire who bought the paper also is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who ran for governor back in the day. Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t remember the paper being slanted so heavily to the right back in the day. Anyway, there’s certainly no excuse for me to not get a lot done this weekend other than laziness….and laziness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either; I think it’s your body telling your mind to rest. I also have a four day weekend this weekend for my birthday, so that should be really nice. I suppose I should make a to-do list of projects to work on for those four day–definitely taking books to the library sale will be number one on the list.

I did sleep really well and got up pretty easily this morning. I’m still in that I could fall asleep again if I went back to bed stage, but the body is starting to awaken and my mind is feeling sharp. I hope I don’t get tired this afternoon the way I did yesterday, but I don’t really have any control over that. It didn’t, in fact, rain yesterday as was promised; it’s possible again today as well and we’re hitting a heat index of 112. Yay. It didn’t seem so bad yesterday as I drove home, picking up the mail on the way. I’m still listening to the podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno, which makes me laugh multiple times in the car; it’s attempt at being sexy and provocative laughably bad, and their reactions to Belinda Blinked are hilarious. There’s many seasons of this, so I should be set for listening in the car for quite some time. I just haven’t been in the mood to listen to music lately while driving, which is unusual. I’m just tired of all my playlists and albums on Spotify, and I’m so disconnected from what is popular music that I have no idea what everyone is listening to these days, and odds are I wouldn’t care for it if I did. (The first time I heard something popular and thought what the fuck is wrong with kids today was when I was in my thirties…so yes, I’ve been a cranky old man shaking his fists at the clouds for thirty years)

One of the things I have been doing in the evenings is paging through a book I read several years ago called Weimar Culture: The Outside as Insider by Peter Gay (I’ve had Weimar Germany on my mind since about 2015 or so) and it got me to start thinking about my work as art, and its place in the overall world of queer art and literature. I don’t think students of queer literature in the future will be reading and/or studying any of my work, by any means; I think the only thing I have going for me is being prolific and producing a lot of work. I think there are many queer crime writers whose work would be seen as more influential and of more literary and artistic value than mine–Michael Nava, J. M. Redmann, Ellen Hart, Kelly J. Ford, Lev Rosen, Christa Faust, Margot Douahy and John Copenhaver, just off the top of my head, are far more likely to make up the reading list for a Queer Crime Lit class. We really do have some amazing queer crime writers out there currently and some pretty amazing ones in the past. I was thinking about writing about queer crime and its giants, but as a queer crime writer myself the possibilities for giving offense are simply too great for me to even attempt such a thing. I also haven’t read every queer or queer-oriented crime novel, either, so it would hardly be definitive, like Michael Bronski’s Pulp Friction. Besides, I’m hardly an academic; that kind of writing isn’t really my style. I admire it, wish it was a voice and style I could slip into comfortably, but it’s really not.

I would, at some point, like to engage in scholarship. Maybe after I retire. Maybe I could take an on-line class on literature and/or one on writing essays. So many potentialities, so many possibilities…kind of nice.

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