October 31, 2020 at 1:04 am (Surprises, television)
Tags: Fridays, humor, memories, nostalgia, supernatural, suspense, The X-Files
On the eve of the last weekend before the momentous election of 2020 (when we either all stay Americans or become something worse, according to Thomas Friedman of The New York Times), self is giddy with excitement.
Cleaning out son’s room, a very laborious process, which so far has occupied her for months, she finds — WHOA! — a marked-up script from the set of The X-Files. She remembers that a friend of a friend was the Props Manager and sent this from Vancouver.
Yes, this is a real watershed moment: the moment when self holds, in her hot little hands, a copy of the script for the episode Squeezed.
We all remember that episode, do we not?
p. 54: INT. ESCALATOR SHAFT – NIGHT
Mulder crawls further, sweating, covered with dust and grease. He pauses, aims his flashlight at the end of the shaft.
MULDER’S POV – END OF SHAFT
A mound of papers and rags large enough for a human to be curled up inside. It is covered with a yellowish bile.
OOOH!!!!!!!
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October 29, 2020 at 4:25 pm (Books, destinations, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Relatives)
Tags: COVID Reading, memoir, reading lists, US history
Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy, p. 37:
- Edward Ball’s forebear, Yves Le Corgne, washes up in “New Orleans, a town ninety years old.” Compared with his city of origin, Brest, “rocky, cold, and strict, with a military hardness — New Orleans is new, ramshackle, and steaming. The city counts about twenty-thousand, half of them white, half of them people of color.”
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October 28, 2020 at 9:52 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, destinations, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, short story collections, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: COVID Reading, Italy, Just published, reading lists, Valerie Miner
Excerpt from Story # 1: Il Piccolo Tesoro
I chose this Ligurian village in the sensible way, by spreading a map of Italy across my kitchen table in Toronto, closing my eyes, and sticking a pushpin into destiny.
Stanza in affitto: one of the phrases I know by heart.
At the door of the rambling house, I knock assertively.
“Good morning.”
These stories are mostly about women who travel. Alone.
Self doesn’t pretend to have anything in common with Valerie Miner. Not. In. The. Least!
It’s been ages since she’s been in Italy. Or maybe it just feels that way. 2015. The world was so different then.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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October 26, 2020 at 7:34 pm (Books, Memoirs)
Tags: COVID Reading, history, memoir, Mondays, nonfiction, reading lists, US history
pp. 12 – 13
Our Klansman’s story is not just a family story, it belongs to many. I have no first-person testimony for this tale — no letters or diaries, speeches or interviews. There are court records, however. There is thick circumstantial evidence. There are newspaper accounts, victim testimony, wills, property records, sacramental records, interviews by black families struck by Klan violence, supremacist manifestos, and traces of white oral tradition.
It’s pretty balls-y (no pun intended, ha!) of the author to go ahead and write a book on the racists in his family. Self knows that if there happened to be, say, a murderer in her family tree, she probably wouldn’t have the tenacity to go dig around in court records. Props to Edward Ball!
Earlier this year, she read another book about family secrets: Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, by Robert Kolker. The pandemic was just a few months old, maybe that’s what’s coloring her year’s reading choices.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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October 26, 2020 at 3:01 pm (Books, Recommended)
Tags: COVID Reading, history, Mondays, reading lists, Trump
On May 31, 1927, in Queens, New York, about one thousand Klan marchers made their way through the borough’s dense streets. They wore robes and hoods. The parade turned into a riot when Klansmen attacked a smaller Memorial Day march of Italian Americans . . . Fred C. Trump, age twenty-five, resident of the Jamaica section of Queens, was among seven arrested.
— Prologue, Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy
Fred C. Trump, 45’s father, lived in Jamaica, Queens. Must mean he wasn’t rich. HOW DID HE AMASS HIS FORTUNE?
Self always had a feeling the Trumps were nouveau riche. They display all the signs: the tacky attention grabs, the flashiness, the fakery.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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October 26, 2020 at 12:03 pm (Books, Recommended, Surprises)
Tags: COVID Reading, history, Mondays, nonfiction, reading lists, Trump
The 45th President of the United States is the son of a man, Fred C. Trump, who was arrested in New York one Memorial Day during the 1920s at a rally staged by the Klu Klux Klan.
— Prologue, Life of a Klansman: A Family History of White Supremacy, by Edward Ball
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October 24, 2020 at 6:48 pm (Conversations, Filipino Writers, Plays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: flash fiction, humor, Saturdays, work-in-progress
Story. Working Title: WOLFEN ATTACKS BOWL
Wolfen enters the chat.
Bowl: So, Wolfen, are you about to kill us?
Wolfen: Who are you?
Bowl: Bowl.
Wolfen: Am I attacking you?
Bowl: No.
Wolfen: Are you attacking me?
Bowl: Yes.
Wolfen: Stop it.
Bowl: lol
Wolfen: lol
ReAction: lol
Aztec Soldier: lol
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October 24, 2020 at 5:12 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Lists, Memoirs, Surprises, television, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: diaries, elections, interviews, news, politics, Saturdays, Trump, Twitter
1 October 2020
- The tweet informing America that the President has covid went out at 1 a.m., Eastern Time. He went on the debate with Biden and might have had it then. I imagine he doesn’t look very good. His droplets flew back and forth, across the stage, for 90 minutes. His boorish children sat at the first row and removed their masks (against the rules of the organizers). I did not know whether to be happy, sad, or angry, On the one hand it was nice to imagine all the Trumps turned into zombies, But the rest of us –?
8 October 2020
- Trying to create a sense of disgust towards food so that I will stop eating for comfort and lose weight. Hopeful that I can again make public appearances — how awful if no one recognized me because I turned into Jabba the Hut! I try the most disgusting recipes: how to cook Ball Park Franks in your crockpot. No water required! Just drop in the dogs! Set on high! The franks will cook in their own juices! In one hour, the dogs will begin to brown wherever they touch the sides of the pot! Holy cow, I think. Holy cow!
22 October 2020
- A beautiful day. Beautiful. I am taking the opportunity to write before the debate begins. I did not watch the first because I do not need to hear or see a second more of the Malignancy. Today, in preparation, I’m on CNN. Mark Meadows, WH Chief of Staff, is talking to Wolf Blitzer: “When you test more, you’re going to get more cases. I do believe we’re rounding the corner.” That again? Wasn’t that the line three months ago? Is he running out of talking points? The Malignancy has never, not once, urged the American public to wear a mask.
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October 22, 2020 at 11:44 pm (Links, Recommended, television)
Tags: COVID Reading, elections, humor, politics, Trump, websites
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Allison Shoemaker, What’s On Tonight, The A.V. Club
. . . there is one certainty which brings us joy, and which may do the same for you: Unless something really wild happens, this will be, win or lose, Donald Trump’s final presidential debate, ever.
Stay hydrated, maybe pour yourself a nice bourbon or pop an edible, and just imagine never having to see that motherfucker behind a presidential seal ever again.
Can you binge it? We’re all bingeing it, all the time. We cannot avoid it. It is our existence.
wowowowowowowowowowowow
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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October 21, 2020 at 10:17 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: African American Writers, COVID Reading, favorites, mysteries, reading lists
But first, Attica Locke. Woo hoo, self has discovered a new favorite mystery writer. Dragging through the final pages because she doesn’t want to leave Harris County, Texas. Heaven, My Home and its Texas Ranger hero, Darren Matthews, are fantastic.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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