Then, looking like a cross between a furious Shrek and a mustache-less Mr. Potato Head, there is the lumbering behemoth from the Coral Gate condominiums who has, for reasons unknown, decided that I am Public Enemy Number One (possibly because I put on a face mask as he approached from the opposite direction during one of my morning walks). Something certainly sent him over the edge last Saturday, though I suspect he is never too far from the edge, even on his best days: howling and cursing like a thing possessed, his eyes ballooned and the veins in his temple bulged as he thrust out his chest and stamped his feet, demanding that I not look at him like he was an absolute lunatic and to keep fucking walking. Full disclosure: I kept fucking walking. I'm pretty sure he's a self-loathing closet case; ever since he moved in over there, he's been shooting daggers at me every time our paths have crossed over the past year. That unacknowledged gaydar must really get his knickers in a twist. Saturday was just the first day he gave voice to his rage, and it was not pretty. I'll have to keep an eye on that one, as he is a walking time bomb ready to blow at any perceived provocation.
The good news is C and I got married last Friday. Nothing elaborate, just a quick trip to the courthouse in Deerfield Beach. The entire ceremony lasted a mere 3 minutes, less time than it takes to negotiate the drive-thru at McDonalds. After a leisurely lunch at the Sea Watch On the Ocean restaurant, we returned home and lived happily ever after. So far. More or less. Well, come on, after 16 years, there are very few surprises left. Due to COVID restrictions, the honeymoon will have to wait. We're considering a road trip to Savannah next month, although our good friend Kevin (remember him from earlier blog posts?) has already invited himself to tag along, which figures. Well, why the hell not? The more the merrier, right? If C and I were in our 20's or 30's (or even our 40's), having a third wheel on the honeymoon would be unthinkable. But we are not young. At this point, I'm not even sure we're middle-aged, so whatevs. Kevin is welcome to take the journey with us just as long as he doesn't insist on dragging one of his ex-husbands into the picture (you didn't think I was serious when I said the more the merrier did you?). And at least we won't have to share a room with him. Don't get me wrong, C and I love each other very much, though neither of us are what you'd call romantic. I'm not sure I ever was.
Some other good news: I finished reading The Magus, John Fowles' 600+ page metaphysical mystery (published in 1965, revised in 1978) involving dark obsessions and mind-games played out on a Greek island a few years after the end of WWII. It's infuriating and thrilling, titillating and perverse, highly literate yet always comprehensible, suspenseful and confounding, and never, ever boring. What I like about Fowles is that his writing is erudite without ever seeming pretentious; you don't need to be an Oxford don to enjoy The Magus. It was chosen as one of the Modern Library's 100 best books of the 20th Century (#93) and it's easy to see why (FYI: Joyce's Ulysses comes in at #1 and that's a little more difficult to fathom, but that could be due to my own meager mental resources).
In other news, life is pretty much the same as it ever was, or, at least, as it has been since the COVID outbreak began a year ago. There are doctor visits and grocery runs, fitted in between Netflix series, daily walks and sporadic bits of housecleaning (C is a wonderful housekeeper and cook, actually; me, not so much). With Joe Biden at the helm, the state of the nation is better than it was, although Texas, good old Texas, ever the Republican stronghold, froze solid under a sheet of ice that no one expected to dip that far into the lower 48. While more than 30 people died and millions suffered from the cold snap, (a) Governor Greg Abbott, in a truly WTF statement, blamed green energy for the crisis, (b) a bewhiskered Ted Cruz slipped off to Cancun for a little R&R,
and (c) the ever-brilliant Rick Perry opined that Texans would rather freeze in their homes without electricity than allow the federal government more involvement in the state's energy grid. Yes, he did say that, although almost no Texans who were, indeed, freezing in their homes, seemed inclined to agree with his statement.
A couple of days ago, the United States surpassed 500,000--that's half a million--COVID deaths. President Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for five days to commemorate lives lost in this pandemic.
Meanwhile, here in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis (R) ordered flags to be flown at half-mast in memory of Rush Limbaugh, possibly the worst excuse for a human being to walk the face of the earth since--oh hell, what am I even saying? The Republican Party has cornered the market on worst human beings alive. There is not a single one who is any worse than the others, though Limbaugh, to his credit, came close. Anyway, Ronnie DeSantis crawled out of his swamp long enough to do the Limbaugh jive before jumping back into the legislative pond scum.
Oh, and DJT lives up the road from us now, which is so nauseatingly god-awful that I can't believe I just wrote it. And yet here we are. The Supreme Court denied Trump's bid to hide his tax returns and financial records so now Cyrus Vance and his office will be able to scrutinize 8 year's worth of potential frauds and failures at their leisure. The Capitol insurrectionists are still being arrested at a fairly steady clip and more white-nationalist terror cells seem to be unearthed each day. Regardless of the Republicans' cowardly vote not to impeach Trump, the road to insurrection may someday lead back to him anyway. Between that and the State of New York's Attorney General closing in on him, I am hopeful that justice will be done, and that neither Trump nor his spawn will ever occupy the White House again.
And so that brings us to the end of yet another random day in the life of the blog that nobody sees. Tune in next time for a look at current Netflix and/or Amazon Prime projects that may, or may not, have hit the mark.
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