I do not want a new car...

Lovely morning, this morning, when the new Jeep Grand Cherokee I'd driven from Buffalo to Great Barrington, MA refused to start. Refused to unlock. Refused to do anything. Even when Avis sent someone out to jump start it...nothing. Completely, totally and absolutely dead.

With all of my packing materials in the back.

I remembered new cars' beeper fobs usually have an emergency key in them, so was able to open the driver's door...but couldn't even get the other doors to unlock. So everything came out the hard way.

I wound up being driven to the Avis counter at Bradley Airport near Hartford, where they were as unaccommodating as possible. Everything is set up, according to roadside assistance. Except they should have informed that Avis office. That took forever, so I go to the packing site 4.5 hours late.

I'm already leery of modern cars with their heavy reliance on electronics, and this has only confirmed my insistence on keeping my little Civic. I'm spending thousands to get the brakes overhauled, but it's an amazing car, considering it's 27 years old. And being without it has shown me how much I need it.

I did have a thought hit me about HNH...that Brendan needs to either testify about being waterboarded...and not being believed...or refusing to talk about. It's too big a deal to ignore.

So I'll add that when I do my corrections.

Strange...

Drove to Great Barrington, MA from Buffalo. An easy drive straight down the 90 going east...well, after I got past Rochester. Supposedly, there was a major wreck on the 90 between Rochester and Buffalo so I took the 33 to the 490 then on to connect, and it was nice. Slower but also more soothing.

Maybe too soothing. Normally when I'm driving I can think about some project I'm working on or want to work on, but not this time. My brain refused to engage. Nothing on DW or BA or even continuing with The Beast as horror erotica. I'd try to start something and it would just drift away.

I'd look at the passing scenery and buildings in the countryside. Decide I prefer the spicy Cheez-its to the bacon and cheese ones. Chew some peppermint gum. Stop for a pee break and to stretch my legs. All without a thought in my head.

One thought that came to me is I've decided no matter what happens next, me having written all three volumes of A Place of Safety is what I'm most proud of. No matter what people say about it, I did right by Brendan and his story. Some details may be wrong, here and there, but the truth of the story stands. 

That is what it boils down to. I wasn't writing a novel about Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I was relating the story of Brendan and his world. How he navigated it. How he almost did not survive it. That's why my initial big-bang ending, where he joins the IRA and kills Father Jack as a tout, was all wrong. It wasn't Brendan's way. Never could be.

So a quiet ending was necessary. Cutting all ties. Heading off into his own existence. I don't know if anyone will understand that...if I related it well-enough...but to me, that is what it means.

The only way to survive in this world is to not let yourself get caught up in its chaos.

Pause

Off to another packing job, tomorrow. And that quickie one almost immediately following. So I'm not back to myself until Wednesday, the 27th. At which time I will need to start considering whether I want to stay with my current health insurance and lose my doctor, or stay with my doctor and change insurance. On top of a number of other situations.

Then there's my car, in for repairs that will be fucking expensive, and I can't charge it. My one workable credit card will be full with the cost of these trips till I get my expenses reimbursed. So there goes most of my savings.

I'm gonna have to work till I'm dead, looks like. That or try this new fad diet called starvation. Can you do a GoFundMe to pay off credit card debt?

I gotta stop my worrying. No matter how freaked out I get over the future, it never turns out like I expect. And reality is, I will have A Place of Safety done and out and available...after decades of working on it. No matter what happens, I have that...and I am fucking proud of myself for completing it...

If I get my editor's feedback in time. I haven't heard a thing from them, yet.

It's funny, but now that I have Queer Manifesto/Porno Manifesto in screenplay format, it's not as pressing a project. I may work on it in the evenings...but I have a lot of books, in my ebook queue. I'd like to get some of those read.

At least I'm not all that depressed, anymore. Seems the MAGAt winners are already beginning to snap and snarl at each other. Maybe chaos in that party will be our friend and protector. Who'd have thunk it?

Major change

I finished a reformatting of Porno Manifesto...now called Queer Manifesto. But to be honest, I'm still not sure about the title. It's kind of meh, to me. I mean, it works into the story and sort of fits with the ending, which is blunt and brutal, because the ending took off in a different direction. Which makes sense...I just don't know if the script leads up to it. 

Freddy, the one who initiates the action against Alec, tries to kill himself because he's been revealed as a self-loathing closet case. Alec sees it happen, albeit months after the fact. He'd put cameras in Freddy's room to record what was going on...and catches it just before the server goes blank.

So...overall, Alec's plan to prove any male is capable of gay sex in the right place at the right time works. But it destroys a couple of lives in doing so.

I have to go through to make certain the dialogue aligns correctly from page to page, so I'll see what happens. The structure of this script is in 5 acts, not three. Which I don't have a problem with so long as one leads correctly to the next.

That's what I'm not sure about. I think they build to the moment when Alec is nearly beaten to death, at the end of act 4, while the last act is his recovery and return to being human, again, and not a vicious beast. It's Freddy's suicide attempt that jolted me, along with the hint that one of his buddies may have suggested it and left him the method he uses.

It's 122 pages, currently, but I have a feeling it will wind up more like 124-125. There are long moments of action in this, without dialogue, so if made it could easily fit over 2 hours. Which I don't worry about. I doubt it will ever even be considered for production.

I still want feedback on this. I may post it on a couple of gay sites to get comments, once I have it in as good a form as I can. Post each act...get an idea of how it's going...

Yesterday was a shit day making me feel even older than I am. And poorer. I slept a lot, once I got home from the errands I had to run. I'm slipping into poverty, not that I was ever rich. Barely middle class. And now it's crashing down around me. So...it will be what it will be.

Down...

 I follow this guy on Xitter...which is becoming a cesspool of filth and degradation.

It speaks volumes that white working class men would rather have a back-stabbing criminal in office than an accomplished black woman. And don't get me started on the supporters of Palestinians in Gaza who said not to vote for Harris, especially in Michigan, and now have their worst nightmares about to come true, there.

The world is so fucking stupid, and completely out of control. I'm almost rooting for Mother Nature to just wipe us out.

WTF???

Jesus Christ, the world is out to prove to me it's completely fucked up. Everything, everywhere around me.

To start...that job in Chicago isn't actually in Chicago. It's 90 miles west of the city. When I asked the client  if this was correct, just got an, Oops, sorry for the confusion. I can still do it, but had to make some changes.

Then it turns out my car isn't even getting worked on till Monday, next week, when I'm out of town. I got the Had to find a part and it won't be in, till then excuse. So I am car-less till I get back from Chicago, 10 days from now.

I thought I could handle it, okay. I had a couple prescriptions to pick up and the Walgreens I use is only half a mile away, so I can walk that. Get some milk and a few other things, too. Only I can't find my sunglasses and it's a cloudless day. I think I left them in the car.

On top of it, this Walgreens doesn't have any milk. At all. Hasn't for weeks. And a couple of other things I wanted were sold out. I'd have got it all from the Rite Aid across the street, but they're caught in bankruptcy and their shelves are, seriously, bare. They don't even have any frozen food; just lots of beer that people walk in and steal.

So I come home and think, I can order some groceries to be delivered and get my stuff that way. Except the Tops I shop at was ALSO out of the things I wanted...like Neutrogena hand cream, which I always get there. Not today. Same for an Icy Hot ointment I use. NO place has it.

I can walk the mile to Target to get those two things. Which I'll do, tomorrow, after an in-home appointment I've got with a Highmark/Blue Cross person. There's an argument between my medical group and them over billing, or something, and they may cut my doctors off. So I'd have to either change insurance in the next 4 weeks or pay for out of network visits, starting in June of next year. I can't afford that.

Then I remembered I have a doctor's appointment on Friday near downtown. I can Uber it for $25 or take the bus. But I also need to hit the bank and stop by the office to get paperwork for the Chicago job...and then how am I getting to the airport to pick up an SUV for next week's job? Got me to looking into bus schedules. But i cannot find out what the fare is. Maybe $1.75 a trip...but that's from a notice posted 15 years ago.

I thought life would be easier, once I got to this age. Instead, the world is disintegrating. I got so off-center I finally just had to lie down on my couch and let myself zone.

Plans tossed aside...

Okay...Chicago job is on. An overnighter. So that had to be set up and worked into my schedule. And I'm having trouble getting a prescription refilled, so that took time. And on top of it, I took my first step in getting back in control of my debt.

I'm using a debt consolidation service that will end my use of a couple of cards that just keep building up. They will work out a deal with my two Mastercards, and I will stop paying 20% a year interest. How it's going to work makes me a bit nervous. I stop making monthly payments and they talk to the cards' people to settle. Should take about six months.

But it's this or I slide into total bankruptcy, and I don't want that. So I've ended a couple of auto-pay charges to them -- like for Ps, Word and internet -- and removed them as usable for flights, hotels and car rental. That last one, with Avis, was a major chore. They wouldn't let me do it online; I had to call to get it straightened out...and got passed up to second tier customer service before it was done.

The good thing is, my rent is rated according to my income. Never more than 30%. And I'll have a lot of deductions, this year, thanks to APoS and the publicity I did for it...that achieved nothing. So maybe in June I can get it lowered.

Guess we'll see how it goes. I just couldn't let things continue as they were, especially if the GOP implements Project 2025's recommendations on Social Security and Medicare. My savings has dwindled way too far down.

Meaning nothing got done on PM. I'm still debating on completing it...but I guess I will. See what happens.

Looks like I'll be working till I'm dead.

Second guessing, once more...

I honestly do not know why I'm working on Porno Manifesto, right now. It was helping me vent some frustrations, but it's proving to be slow-going working in Word, and I'm not sure I'm not wasting my time on a nothing distraction. Again.

What's adding to the pain is going through this script and seeing just how many typos and mistakes it had. So far I've caught myself calling Alec, Alex, five times in just half the script.

One section made absolutely no sense because I'd cut out the part of that was in the book that set it up. And don't get me started on the words missing in the middle of a sentence. God, I wonder if all my scripts were lie this, or if I'm just deteriorating, mentally.

I'd really like to get started on Dair's Window, which is more romance and a bit of history about the marriage fight in 2010, but first I need to get HNH done and out there. Thing is, I can't do anything more on it till I get the feedback from my editor. And considering my current writing capabilities, I'd be an idiot not to wait. God knows how many she'll find.

Bugs is so right about me...

Slow going...

Well, shifting a screenplay from Final Draft to Word is not the easiest thing I've ever done. Actually, it was a pdf copy of the script that I did a cut and paste into a Word doc. Doing that removed all the formatting, but that is not a huge issue. Just a time-consuming one.

Word is cranky at the best of times, for me. So shifting the formatting from the bottom of the page into looking like the top of the page is not A-B-C. I tried to set up tabs but found that wasn't complete enough. So I'm adjusting margins for each bit.

By removing the hard returns at the end of each line, I can make the adjustment apply to an entire bit of dialogue or narrative. That's where it takes time. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the script.

I'm also updating it and making adjustments in the characters and story. Changed one character to a black lesbian. I'm increasing the relationship between my MC, Alec, and a secondary one named Joseph. If all goes well, I should have it done by the end of the week.

Right now, I'm calling it Revenge Manifesto, but that's kind of clumsy. I need a better, more intense one. Like Alec and the Assholes. That's pretty specific, but I don't think it would go over well with the general public. Drop the whole Manifesto bullshit.

I'm still angry about the election and how the Democratic leadership is basically letting the GOP get away with what's looking more and more like voter fraud. The numbers don't add up and people are calling them out about it.

For all the good that'll do.

Another segue...

In honor of the sudden popularity of that vile phrase, Your body, my choice, being hurled at women and girls, I'm reworking Porno Manifesto into a counter-argument. Basically, Alec Presslea is gay-bashed and his bashers are protected by the cops and DA's office. So he sets out to get his own justice.

Which includes him telling his college-boy attackers, "Your ass, my choice." And carrying through with it on a few of them. I think I need a better title, but this does okay, for now.

I don't have Final Draft, anymore, and working in Word to do this as a screenplay is a pain, but it's coming along. What's going to be fun is sending it out to competitions in my usual asshole fashion. I think the story's time has come...pun intended.

It helps me with my anger-issues, right now. Seems the fuck your feelings crowd is a bit taken aback at the fury being directed at them. Nick Fuentes, who's probably the dipshit who most popularized that vile phrase, got doxxed. I honestly don't know if the information being given out about him is correct, since it's a couple years old, but we should find out soon enough.

He's always struck me as a self-loathing closet case out to prove just how much of a monster he can be, so I don't care what happens to him. Same for Andrew Tate, who's waxed eloquently about the joys of getting blow jobs from men at the same time he abuses women. Yeah, some straight-guy heroes for the incels.

What's funny is the assholes on Xitter who think they're getting to me by calling me names and laughing about the situation. They don't seem to like it when I mock them as childish brats unworthy of consideration.

I've stayed in, the last couple days, because it's rather obvious that I am in no mood to be around people.