Better Than Dead

I came across an old meme while poking through and cleaning up this blog’s past and, considering that this year is one for the record books (as the news media keeps telling me), I thought it might be interesting to revive it. (I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that thought was justified.)

I used to blog almost every day, but those days are long gone. Most of the first lines of the month for this year were random quotes of the day, but that seemed like cheating: other people’s lines, not mine. So I kept going through the month until I found something I myself had actually written. (Sometimes that was weeks into the month.) So here, on this penultimate day of the year is my harvest.

January

Well, this Musings post is grossly long, and maybe a bit dated, but I started throwing things into the file, then got caught up in the holidays—and God forbid anyone should be deprived of my Musings.

First quote of the month:
“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend—or a meaningful day.”

—Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, Time, April 11, 1988

February

This is a brief book but absolutely chock full of useful information on warding and cleansing, all of it presented in a practical and straightforward manner.

Review: By Rust of Nail & Prick of Thorn by Althaea Sebastiani

First quote of the month:
“Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.”

—Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

March

Her sister said he was no damned good, but she was crazy in love with him.

First quote of the month:
“I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Sleep is death without responsibility.”

—Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life

April

She was the youngest of nine siblings, a small town country girl.

First quote of the month:
“I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.”

—Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Book III

May

She liked to tell people she could ride before she could walk, then whip out this old picture to prove it—though this horse belonged to friends of her parents and had been sold before she was old enough to remember it.

First quote of the month:
“If you do not raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point.”

—Antonio Porchia, Voices (tr. W. S. Merwin)

June

There were no entries in June that were not quotes of the day. George Floyd was killed May 25 and I didn’t give a fuck about much.

First quote of the month:
“Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.”

—James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village,” Harper’s, October 1953

July

We’ve all probably had a number of things in our lives that made us go “huh.”

First quote of the month:
“I think that it’s much more important to do than to say. And you learn that a lot from your kids, who are watching you, you know? Living by example—that’s always a better teacher than trying to preach. You should do what you’re supposed to do and hope that that ripples out. And speak up when you’re supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.”

—Don Cheadle, interviewed by Maranda Pleasant for Origin Magazine, May 1, 2014

August

I got a weird “spam” call the other day.

First quote of the month:
“I really want to keep my mind open to all possibilities. If I make up my mind in advance what I believe about something … I stop listening. We all stop listening once you’ve made up your mind … I want to be curious. I want to maintain my curiosity about what the answers to the question might be. And I want to hold out for the possibility that someone will surprise me.”

—Gwen Ifill, interview, Television Academy Foundation, Oct. 20, 2011

September

I’m not sure this is a genuine case of high strangeness. It’s easy to dismiss—and, in fact, I dismissed it almost as soon as it happened. But it is strange.

First quote of the month:
“Make up a story…For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.”

―Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

October

Instagram Stories – Bo Peep
I realized that I never finished posting my Instagram Stories here.

First quote of the month:
“I was fine being in the closet at the beginning of my career because that’s what you were supposed to be—until I realized that it didn’t serve anybody, and I was left feeling utterly empty. This is who I am, so I’ve gotta be me.”

—Billy Porter, Advocate.com, April 15, 2014

November

Distracted by inconsequence I rarely realized
I had a faithful partner dancing by my side…

First quote of the month:
“Embrace diversity.
Unite—
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.”

—Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

December

I found a stash of really old postcards.

First quote of the month:
“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”

—N. K. Jemison, The Fifth Season

I’ve started several blogs over the past weeks, even got quite far on some of them, but then I’ll get interrupted, or the tone is somehow off and I need to think some more, or yet another Life Thing comes up and I don’t get them posted.  So instead I’m posting a list of titles.  Heighth of laziness, yes I know, yadda yadda.  Some of these may get finished some day, but the wackyosity that is my life these days doesn’t allow me to predict when.

• When is an instinct an instinct and when is it a kangaroo?
• The League of Anti-Whining Enforcement
• Journey around my room – The Ice Blue Madonna
• Momentary angels
• For Zilznia in her big, comfy chair
• No-Code me, please
• Love, and other fragile-enduring things
• Poll: How do you eat your muffins? (no sexual pun intended)
• Book review: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
• Oh right, this is a novel not a novella
• Jung and the active imagination

I do plan on writing a real blog post again some day—I’ve been cogitatin’ in that general direction—but things have been rather hectic.  The blog still resides mostly in my brain.

Otherwise, the penne with tomatoes, basil, and Italian turkey sausage was splendid. :-/  24 Jan

As was reinforced for me in last night’s dinner: there’s a fine line between carmelizing your onions and burning them. 24 Jan

Chocolate chocolate chip muffin you are mine! I’m sure we’ll be so happy together. Until I eat you (not in a good way). 24 Jan

Jack Lalanne’s motto (as stated at 95): “If man made it, don’t eat it. If it tastes good, spit it out.” Yeah. Right. 24 Jan

Perspective is everything I say. 23 Jan

Cable guy here to see about the horrible tragedy of no modem. 23 Jan

TMI? Mom: Who pooped on the paper? Bird: Bird. 23 Jan

Go Jets! 23 Jan

Too much singing for Min, though. She left the room. 22 Jan

I loved it, but then, I’m a romantic slop bucket. Acting was much better than I expected. Good thing they didn’t let Pierce sing much tho. 22 Jan

All right, I confess. I’m about to watch Mamma Mia. 22 Jan

Fortunately utter tragedy has been avoided because of Mr. Droid. I call him Edwin when it’s just us. 22 Jan

This afternoon my modem went bellyup. No bigscreen internet until at least tomorrow afternoon. So stunned to get a service call so fast. 22 Jan

That was supposed to be “but bwoogity. We’re wimps” but spellcheck is cursed. 22 Jan

This morning we took Bird to have her toenails clipped and her beak Dremeled. We could do this ourselves but velocity. We’re wimps. 22 Jan

Crazy busy days lately, at work, at home.  I’m having company for dinner tomorrow night and have spent the day cleaning and organizing.  We’re doing a low country boil and it should be fun.  Shrimp and sausage and halibut and potatoes and onions and spicy crab boil seasoning.  I won’t be able to have any beer with that, which is a great pity, as the only weekend we could all get together was the weekend before an important (but routine) blood test and I’ve given up sugar in all forms.

But none of that is the subject of this post or why I felt compelled to sit down a half hour before midnight to put it down.  I haven’t had much time to blog lately and there’s a build up of effluvia.  I was afraid if I didn’t take a moment now, some vitally important inane information might be lost to history.  So, here it is: what I’m done with is not housekeeping or cooking, it’s Laurell K. Hamilton.

I hadn’t read anything by her in a long time, but I found myself curious to see what was up with her.  The last Anita Blake book I read actually had some semblance of a plot, contrary to several of the ones that had come before.  I mean, a plot having more to do with being “forced” to have sex with dozens of men and endless discussions amongst the characters as to what had just happened, why it had happened, and why the sexcapades were totally, completely against her real true morality, but she couldn’t help it.  She just couldn’t help it.  At heart, she was really a “good girl.”

Uh, anyway, I stuck with LKH a lot longer than I should have, though most of my friends had given up on her, mostly because of the not-Anita characters.  I really loved some of them and wanted to know what was going on with them, although most of the ones I really liked got short shrift in the cavalcade of porn the books had become.  I’m stubborn, I guess.  So I picked up Blood Noir last night and decided I’d wallow in it, to see if that promise of actual plot in The Harlequin meant LKH was finally snapping out of her narrow focus.  The first several chapters were an extended sex scene between Anita and two guys, plus endless discussions of what had just happened, why it had happened, and why the sexcapades were totally, completely against her real true morality, but she couldn’t help it.  She just couldn’t help it.  At heart, she was really a “good girl.”

And I realized that I really no longer gave a damn about any of those characters.  Finding out what might be going on with them was no longer worth slogging through the slush these books have become.  I like me a good sex scene, have no trouble walking on the pervy side, but I do prefer to have my sexy fiction have some actual fiction in it to go along with the ol’ boogaloo.

I moved consequently LKH’s books from the TBR pile to the recycle pile.  I don’t think they’ll be wending their way back out again.

And no telling when I may get to set down more inane content again.  Watch this space.