Oui, c’est moi! The “demon on wheels” — Speed Racer. At least I am on Monday mornings, when I head into to town to get the groceries. (Play this 1 minute intro. It’s so fun!!)

Sadly, though, when I needed to renew my car lease, Honda was not offering a “powerful Mach 5” so I had to settle for a boring Honda Civic, instead.

(Although loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that what I really wanted was a Dodge Hellcat, and that the moment I signed the lease for the Civic and was leaving the Honda show room with it,  across the street, in the Used Car lot, was a used Hellcat….)

Ah well. At least with my brand new Honda there’s, like, zero maintenance ever. Not so with a used Hellcat.

And honestly, me in a Hellcat would just be such bad news out here in Muskingum County, where there is almost always no Sheriff. And even though my Honda doesn’t go from zero to 60 mph in (literally) 3 seconds, as the Hellcat does, it at least goes from zero to 60 in less than 10 seconds… (every single time a red light turns to green.)

Okay!!! So yes, I am going to get groceries the minute I post this to the blog. And it is another stunning day here today, although the days are just generally cooler now. But it is still just beautiful.

Yesterday was a really big adventure for me.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that back when last fall began to change into winter (or something like that), the ceiling in my downstairs bathroom leaked really ferociously during a lengthy torrential downpour of rain, thunder, wind, etc., sending plaster to the floor.  And while yesterday, we did not have a lengthy torrential downpour of rain, thunder, wind, etc. , big chunks of that same part of the bathroom ceiling actually came down and was incredibly gross and yucky and awful — it had something to do with me putting off getting the roof re-sealed this past spring because I was so enamored with the idea of getting a new roof on my barn after that heavy wind came and blew the old barn roof right off and set it not too gently down in my backyard.

Oh my god, right?  Where are the handymen when you need them to be living with you free of charge at all times and handling all your many, many, many DIY housing issues?? I sure don’t know. All I know is that I have an exceedingly unattractive ceiling in my downstairs bathroom now, and I can’t really do a darn thing about it until I get the roof re-sealed, otherwise it’ll just happen all over again. And whoever it is who finally does come to re-seal that roof is gonna see that I have really seriously let my gutter go on that side of the house, too (because it’s on that side of the house and no one sees it — many, many teeny tiny maple trees are growing in that gutter), and he is gonna wonder what my fucking problem is. Why bother to own a home if you’re just going to  be insane? (But writing porn is extremely time-consuming… I simply can’t focus on everything around here.)

Anyway. It is indeed upsetting.  I hate to put in an insurance claim on that roof because then they just go and up your annual premium as punishment for actually using your insurance. (And while there are indeed certain types of punishment that I enjoy and perhaps even encourage, rising insurance premiums are not among them.) And oddly enough, just yesterday morning, when I was outside taking care of all the many flowers that are still in bloom, I was looking at that barn and feeling so happy about that new roof on that barn…

Aaaaarrrrrgh…

Oh well.  You know what I’ve decided to do about it for now, right? That’s right: Ignore it.

Okay. So I am still very happy with how the work is going on the new erotic story, “1954 Powder Blue Pickup.” Although, yesterday afternoon, after I had to take a HUGE chunk of time out to clean up that darn bathroom, I found that I was at a place in the story where I was unsure of just how intense I wanted it to get.  I am still thinking that it could be a novella, and if that’s the case, then it really does have to get kind of intense or the plot won’t sustain the length of it.

And I won’t explain exactly why, because I don’t want you to know how my brain actually works, but then I was off on this weird and rather unending tangent, involving Pasolini’s film, Salò: or the 120 Days of Sodom — which, if you haven’t already seen it, I would not suggest running out to see it (or stream it), because if you in fact need to see a film like that then you’ve probably already seen it and know it well.

I’ve seen it and I know it well.

It is, of course, disturbing. But I believe I understand what Pasolini was trying to process (about Nazis and Fascists) by creating that film. And then I was thinking about the Marquis de Sade’s original book, 120 Days of Sodom, which is quite different but which he wrote while incarcerated in the Bastille prison in Paris for 37 days… And I also believe I understand what Sade was always trying to process when he wrote all the books he wrote. (I think I also know what the Bible was trying to process when it wrote about Sodom & Gomorrah… but that, indeed, is a whole other story, and one that interests me way less than Salò or Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. )

Anyway, it is sufficient to say, that after the bathroom ceiling came down, and after I spent time cleaning it up and spluttering the f-word nonstop, and after I went down the intensely intense rabbit hole of Pasolini and Sade, I was kind of spent and could not really get back to work on the new short story.

However, that said! I feel completely confident that the work I’m gonna get done on it today will be very, very, very good! So I’m excited.

But I’m still not sure if I will post any more excerpts from it to the blog. I probably worry too much. But I guess we’ll just see. (Mostly I worry about how much it skirts the “questionable consent” thing.) But we’ll see.

Okay! I guess I’m gonna scoot into town now and get those groceries. I hope you’re having a great Monday, wherever you are in the world. I’m leaving you with something I saw on Instagram this morning — a Neil Young song, but done by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds! “Helpless.” It’s on their B Sides & Rarities CD from 2005, but I think they recorded it in 1990? Anyway. Enjoy. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!