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Posts Tagged ‘New Orleans’

Tweet Wave

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, Words, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Who first used the German word "blitz" ("lightning") to describe sudden, intense bursts of violence? I forget.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T19:43:33.619Z

I just can't get beyond the resemblance.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-16T19:29:02.571Z

When cops use profanity at us, think of what they're telling us. Would you ever curse at your boss? No, but he can curse at you because he has power over you. What would happen if you cursed out a cop? But they curse at us routinely. That tells you how they perceive their relationship with us.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-17T08:31:30.244Z

The universe does things on a subatomic level that would get you arrested for bank fraud if you tried the financial equivalent.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T04:59:00.841Z

People suffering from advanced dementia often fall back on old "scripts". It's why your senile great-grandmother calls you by your mother's (or even grandmother's) name, and it's why Trump seems to think he's still on a TV show he did two decades ago.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T18:14:28.117Z

Magnificent. Words that deserve to be included in future editions of Bartlett's.If you're not following Ken, why are you even on here?

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T18:37:49.142Z

Reporters need to ditch the word "taken" when writing about actions of government thugs.The property wasn't "taken" by goons; it was STOLEN.The person wasn't "taken to the ground"; he was TACKLED.The person wasn't "taken into custody" as if on a date; he was ABDUCTED.Stop soft-peddling evil.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-21T18:12:37.117Z

Reading what people say about Twitter makes me realize that the vast majority online expend absolutely no effort on account hygiene. If they treated their bodies like they treat their social media accounts, they'd never bathe, brush their teeth, or change their clothes, and would eat only junk.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-23T18:27:53.081Z

I will never cease to be amused by the notoriety Fate chose to bestow upon a minor Sumerian merchant of the 18th century BCE.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-24T18:42:59.559Z

Crypto-moralists believe anything unpleasant must be “good for you”.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-25T08:41:09.810Z

In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called "the sick man of Europe". Now the American empire has become the sick man of the entire planet.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-26T19:46:57.721Z

I found my own solution to Thanksgiving guest tensions many years ago: I host. Nobody dares start shit in MY house.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-27T17:53:29.116Z

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-29T03:35:45.932Z

I have lived my life in such a way that I can't picture either of these women accurately enough to compare them in my mind. And I'm very pleased about that.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-11-29T18:42:27.556Z

I block every single MAGA account and every associated lunatic on Twitter the first time I see it. As a result, I now see far more Trumpery on Bluesky than on Twitter, because people keep screenshotting and calling attention to accounts I blocked long ago.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T18:04:51.442Z

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-04T09:14:45.895Z

What's the Greek word for rule by mathematical imbeciles?

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-05T18:10:12.603Z

I'm so exhausted by journalists, who should know the meaning of the words they use, referring to people who are not cautious of change but rather mindlessly destroy every Chesterton's fence they can find, as "conservative".

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-05T20:21:41.880Z

"We are not the party of participation trophies…"I hate to break this to you, but…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-07T03:39:24.651Z

Maybe this misuse of the word "democracy" is a problem of Millennials and Zoomers, who are too young to remember that about half the communist dictatorships of the late 20th century had the word "Democratic" in their names, eg "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic).

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-07T18:47:29.470Z

Mad emperor babbles like a baby: "A pwus pwus pwus pwus pwus!!" {claps tiny pudgy hands and gurgles}

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T20:02:40.319Z

Ahem.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-10T09:23:43.373Z

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-12T19:50:01.065Z

OK, y'all, we all get it: politicians and partisans are all huge hypocrites who theatrically perform anger when the "other team" does the same thing they do when in power.Find another goddamned tweet boilerplate. Holy shit.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-13T18:34:07.084Z

The problem is that the tech industry is intentionally conflating two different things under the fantasy label "AI". Machine learning is a real, useful tool; chatbots are a toy and a technological blind alley. Conflating the two is like pretending color TV is the same technology as a hula-hoop.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-14T18:46:37.811Z

I'm sick of the idiocy of the term "kinetic strike".As opposed to what, a static strike?

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-16T17:48:03.150Z

My home town, ladies & gents.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-12-18T08:51:51.030Z

 

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Until the End of Days

Posted in Fiction, Music, tagged , , on October 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

If you read this blog regularly, you already know I’ve been working on a pulp-adventure novella featuring characters based on Grace and myself; their chemistry and repartee are based on ours, so much that I often cried or laughed while writing and proofreading it, and many of the characters and places are based on ones from my own life.  Now at last it’s done; it will be the centerpiece of my next collection, Lost Angels, which is beginning to look like it will be published in late spring or early summer.   But in the meantime, I’m happy to share an excerpt introducing the main characters; if you’re a paid subscriber and would like a PDF of the whole story, please email me; the rest of y’all will just have to wait for the book!

Friday, October 23rd, 1931

It all started one night at Lulu’s.  Diane and I had taken my Tante Mathilde to see the new Marx Brothers talkie, and we decided to have a drink before taking her home.  Well, to be honest, Tante Mathilde insisted we have a drink, and she had not accepted “no” for an answer from anybody since her husband died 33 years before.  She was the family matriarch, my paternal grandfather’s younger sister, who had already outlived him by 23 years and Maman, my paternal grandmother, by 13.  She was under 5 feet tall in heels and under 100 pounds soaking wet, but she conducted herself like the Empress Dowager and kept up with popular culture better than a lot of people half her age, which is why nobody who knew her would’ve been surprised to see her with her grandniece in a speakeasy.

I had a Brandy Alexander, which is what I always had in those days; Diane had a highball, which is what she always had after it became impossible to get decent bourbon; and Tante Mathilde had a Bee’s Knees.  It may seem strange that I remember that over thirty years later, but it’s because Diane hated lemons and had apparently made some sort of comment about it while I was in the Ladies’, and when I got back to my seat my aunt was pontificating about how Diane didn’t “know what’s good.”

“Honestly, I can’t leave for five minutes without coming back to static.”

“It ain’t my fault if your aunt’s opinions are still stuck in the 19th century.”

“And it’s certainly not my fault if your friend there is a bumpkin.”

“Who you callin’ a bumpkin, you old crow?”

“Waiter!  Another round please!”  I wasn’t actually worried; they always sounded like that.  It was just their way, and they actually loved each other as much as if they’d been blood kin.  They practically were; Diane’s father had worked for Tante Mathilde’s husband his whole life, and she made him the general manager of the sugar cane plantation after the old man died in ’98, so she’d bounced Diane on her knee from the age of three.  Of course, nowadays the size differential was almost the opposite:  Diane was a tall, solidly-built woman of 5’9″ with long, straight black hair and strong features that hinted at her Houma ancestry, and she had a husky voice which made my aunt’s thin soprano sound childlike.

Anyhow, I wasn’t in the mood for their shenanigans, so I figured I’d throw some cold water on it.  But my aunt was not having it.  “She doesn’t even like ‘Stardust’.  Who doesn’t like ‘Stardust’?”

“When did I say I don’t like ‘Stardust’?”

“Just now, when Angela was off to the loo.”

“I said nobody can play ‘Stardust’ like Armstrong, is what I said!”

“Well, the band here did a lovely job of it just now.”

“It had no damn pep at all.  Them cats play jazz like they was playin’ at the Frumps and Fogeys Society.”

“Nonsense!”

“Really, Auntie!  Diane knows more about jazz than both of us put together.”

“Especially since she don’t know beans about jazz.”

“C’mon, Diane, you’ve gotta admit Auntie’s pretty hep for eighty-one.”

“Nobody who can’t dig Cab Calloway is hep in my book.”

“I think Mr. Calloway is a fine musician, but I also think all his nonsense singing is silly.  All that scooby-doo and hi-dee-ho foolishness, what is that supposed to be?  Why can’t he sing sensibly like Jolson?”

Diane had been rolling her eyes while my aunt opined about scat, but in response to that last question she suddenly stopped, looked at her as though she had just upchucked on the table, and stated matter-of-factly, “The only word for Jolson is ‘grotesque’.”

“Grotesque!  You want grotesque?  I’ll show you grotesque!”  With that she reached down as if she were going to get something from a bag that wasn’t there, then said, “What am I doing? Of course it’s at home.”

“What is, Auntie?”

“This simply awful thing I got at an estate sale this morning, and meant to give you.”

“Um…thanks?”

She laughed and patted my hand affectionately.  “Oh, I didn’t really mean it was for you, but I thought your Mr. Girard might like it, since he’s a connoisseur of the outré.”

“Which is probably why he likes Angela so much.”

“Look who’s talking!” I said in mock offense, but Diane and my aunt had apparently left off of teasing each other to have a giggle at my expense instead.  At the time, Armand Girard was my sugar daddy, and though Diane sometimes joshed me about him, Tante Mathilde had no room to judge because his age exceeded mine by exactly as much as her late husband’s had exceeded hers.  Plus, he was basically the only thing standing between me and penury at the moment, and Diane was especially fond of him since he’d given me his “old” car  –  a 1927 Packard Custom Eight sedan  –  last year when he replaced it with a new Dusenberg Model J.  That of course meant she got to tinker with the Packard, and let me tell you, she had that thing purring like a kitten when it idled and roaring like a lion when I stepped on the gas…

I’m sure you won’t consider it a “spoiler” if I tell you that the “simply awful thing” Angela’s aunt bought led our intrepid heroines into the greatest adventure of their lives, one that required all of their wits and derring-do; I hope everyone who reads it has as much fun as I had writing it! 

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Diary #793

Posted in Diary, Fiction, Philosophy, tagged , , , on September 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I’m finally almost finished with “Until the End of Days“.  I finished the rough draft late last week, and on Sunday I wrote the prologue; it may seem strange to non-writers that I saved the prologue for the end of the process, but it was necessary because the story is told in first-person, and I wanted to know everything that happened in the tale (which grew in the telling) before I tried to introduce it.  Part of the reason was practical; if there were any important details I had not managed to fit into the narrative, I wanted to mention them in the prologue.  But another reason was that I wanted to be able to identify as fully with the POV character as possible, since I wanted the tone of the prologue to be more personal.  The word count is now in the vicinity of 19,000 words, and I still have a bit of editing to do, (such as describing three major characters more fully), so I think it’s fair to call it a novella.  I’ve really worked at developing the characters’ world, so much so that I already have the fragments of two prequels and a sequel in my head, and that’s good because spending so much time in that fictional world of the past makes the pain of my real-world present much easier to bear.  The irony is almost too perfect: after spending most of my life living in a future which never came to pass, I now find comfort living in a past that never was.

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Diary #787

Posted in Diary, Fiction, tagged , , , on July 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

As I mentioned in my anniversary column a few weeks ago,

…my Muse of Fiction wants my attention again; perhaps she feels I don’t need her when I’m happy.  Whatever the reason, I’ve written three new stories since finishing Who in Review, and I’m starting on a much longer one than I’ve ever written before, in part as a tribute to Grace…

Because I did want to write a much longer story than is typical for me, I’ve had to develop a new technique; typically, even my full-length short stories come into my head almost fully formed, and all I need to do is write them down and fill in a few details.  But that won’t work for this one, which is currently over 7000 words and only in the vicinity of half-done (generally speaking, anything under 10,000 words is considered a short story; longer than that is in novelette territory).  So what I’m doing is writing each episode of the tale as it comes into my head, then fitting the pieces into the larger whole and editing as necessary.  The first scene I wrote was a pivotal one perhaps halfway through the narrative; I then wrote the first full scene, then the climax and denouement, and now I’m beginning to fill in.  The characters are based upon Grace and myself, the setting is New Orleans in 1931, and the genre is adventure mixed with black comedy (which is why I recently re-watched The Avengers and watched The Thin Man series for the first time).  I’m enjoying the process, and writing action and dialog for Grace’s character is almost like having her nearby, which is part of why I’m doing it.  And I’m already thinking of other situations for the characters.  So even though the word “therapeutic” is probably overused in this sort of context, it’s the right one.  And I hope it will give my readers a little (fictionalized) taste of Grace’s personality, and the chemistry that made us such a great team.

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In the News (#1552)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

This isn’t constitutional interpretation; it’s constitutional gerrymandering.  –  Mike Masnick

Stalkers in Blue

Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do:

A Miami [cop named Zamir Vargas Valerio]…is…facing criminal charges…for giving his ex-girlfriend a traffic ticket…when she…was…deployed overseas…by [fraudulent]ly using the computer credentials of a[nother cop.  Not only was]…the victim…out of the country when the [supposed] violation [supposedly] occurred…the [cop] who supposedly issued the ticket was on disability leave at the time…Vargas Valerio is…a…[repeat offender who] was [previously] arrested…on Aug. 23, 2022…[for] domestic violence [because] he [tried to strangle a previous girlfriend]…in front of her son…the case was later dropped…

Panopticon (#898)

There is no “intelligence” in an automated high-resolution scanner:

The Hertz rental car company, along with its Dollar and Thrifty affiliates, are rolling out [computeriz]ed vehicle inspection scanners that scan [a] rental car as it exits or enters the rental lot for damage…But barely two months into the scanners’ initial deployment…there’s already a problem [with the company overcharging customers for scratches & dings barely visible to the human eye]…the…scanners [are built by]…Israeli…company, UVeye….[which] claims its system increases damage detection…by five times…Hertz…touts “transparency” as one of the main advantages its customers can expect from the tech, though it remains to be seen how transparent things remain when customers invariably require a live human to speak with to dispute the findings.  To note, this is the same company that has left a rental desk unmanned for six hours, attempted to charge a customer $10,000 despite an unlimited mileage policy, attempted to charge a Tesla customer for gas, and settled for $168 million after falsely accusing hundreds of customers of stealing its cars—some of which led to innocent people getting arrested, charged with felonies, and jailed…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1502)

SCOTUS has ruled that the First Amendment does not apply on the internet:

…In the FSC v. Paxton case, [SCOTUS] upheld the very problematic 5th Circuit ruling that age verification online is acceptable under the First Amendment, despite multiple earlier Supreme Court rulings that said the opposite…The practical effect: states can now force websites to collect government IDs from anyone wanting to view adult content, creating a massive chilling effect on protected speech and opening the door to much broader online speech restrictions.  Thomas accomplished this by pulling off some remarkable doctrinal sleight of hand.  He ignored the Court’s own precedents in Ashcroft v. ACLU by pretending online age verification is just like checking ID at a brick-and-mortar store (it’s not), applied a weaker “intermediate scrutiny” standard instead of the “strict scrutiny” that content-based speech restrictions normally require, and—most audaciously—invented an entirely new category of “partially protected” speech that conveniently removes First Amendment protections exactly when the government wants to burden them.  As Justice Kagan’s scathing dissent makes clear, this is constitutional law by result-oriented reasoning, not principled analysis…The real danger here isn’t just Texas’s age verification law—it’s that Thomas has handed every state legislature a roadmap for circumventing the First Amendment online…

To Molest and Rape (ROTW #18)

Good riddance to bad rubbish:

[A typical and representative Washington cop who also worked] as [a] girls basketball coach [in order to stalk prey shot himself after he was caught molesting a victim]…Charles “Rob” Gardiner…[was caught on April 23rd by] the girl’s parents [while he was molesting her] in her bedroom…he fled [after her father tried to physically stop him]…Deputies later found Gardiner dead in his p[igmobile] a few blocks away…the girl was reluctant to share information, but [admitted] she and Gardiner texted regularly, and he had sneaked into her house several times before…The girl’s parents [sensibly became suspicious when] Gardiner…bought her gifts, including an iPad, that they made her return…The iPad was later [found in] Gardiner’s [pigmobile]…the girl’s contact information [was] saved in Gardiner’s phone as “Wifey,” and his phone’s wallpaper [was a nude] photo of her…Gardiner was…[also] a football coach at…a…[nearby] middle school[, but currently does not appear to have molested any kids there]…

The Last Shall Be First (#1531)

This is what Pride should be: a gigantic “fuck you” to authoritarianism:

Around 100,000 people defied a government ban and police orders…to march in what organizers called the largest…Pride event in Hungary’s history in an open rebuke of…Viktor Orbán’s government…which…outlawed [the event] by a law passed in March…The massive size of the march…was seen as a major blow to Orbán’s prestige, as…polls [show] a new opposition force has taken the lead…Orbán and his party have [echoed MAGA] in…[trying to justify their censorship of] Pride…[by absurdly claiming it is] a violation of children’s rights to moral and spiritual development…[trumping] other fundamental rights, including that to peacefully assemble…

Compare this to what Pride celebrations had turned into in the US before Trump ascended the imperial throne and the fascist fair-weather sponsors predictably turned coat.

Pyrrhic Victory (#1541)

The New Orleans city council rewards the NOPD for criminal behavior:

The New Orleans City Council is considering an ordinance that would allow the city’s police department…[to use] the [magic word “]crime[” to justify the]…use [of] real-time facial recognition technology to find and track people as they move about the city…as the[y]…had already been secretly [doing]…via a private surveillance camera network…in…[flagrant] violat[ion of] an earlier city ordinance meant to protect the public’s privacy…the proposed city ordinance would [reward NOPD for violating the previous law by] mak[ing their criminal behavior] legal…the ordinance, as currently written, would allow the police to only “use facial recognition technology while investigating crimes and missing persons cases”…[but since NOPD ignored the previous law there’s no reason to assume this one would be any different], and…these protections could be overturned just as easily as the earlier prohibitions…are about to be…

The Cop Myth (#1542)

Cop deals with problems exactly as he was trained & encouraged to, and everyone is shocked:

[A] Kentucky [cop named]…Bearl D. Ashcraft Jr….[murdered] his girlfriend, Hayley Davidson…[then] killed [himself]…Davidson’s estranged husband, Travis Davidson, says there was…“a lot of domestic violence that was hidden”…Ashcraft tracked her whereabouts using a phone app and others…noticed bruising she tried to cover up with make up [sic]…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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In the News (#1541)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

This is the facial recognition technology nightmare scenario that we have been worried about.  –  Nathan Freed Wessler

Pyrrhic Victory (#1291)

This is no surprise to anyone acquainted with how things are done in New Orleans:

For two years, New Orleans police [have] secretly [spied on]…city streets [with facial recognition] in search of suspects, a[n illegal] surveillance method without a known precedent in any major American city…New Orleans police [abuse]…a private network of more than 200 facial recognition cameras to [leer at] the streets…automatically pinging [cop]s’ mobile phones through an app to [report] the names and current locations of [any possible] matches [for police harassment].  This [blatantly violates] a 2022 city council ordinance, which limited police to using facial recognition only for searches of specific suspects in…violent crimes and [prohibits] generalized…tracking…Each time police want to scan a face, the ordinance requires them to send a still image to trained examiners at a state facility and later provide details about these scans in reports to the city council…[but] the…cameras ha[ve] played a role in dozens of arrests, including at least four people who were only charged with nonviolent crimes…[cops regularly hid] their reliance on facial recognition matches in police reports…to the city council [in order to circumvent the law]…

Secret Squirrel (#1385)

This sickness will get much worse before it gets better:

According to recent research…“nearly 1 in 5 young people believe it’s OK to track their partner whenever they want”…Many constantly share their location with their partner, or use apps like Life360 or Find My Friends…one of the most disturbing notions is that acceptance of digital monitoring is…a way to create – rather than undermine – a sense of trust.  When government officials or tech industry bigwigs proclaim that you should be OK with being spied on if you’re not doing anything wrong, they’re…demanding…we trust them.  But it’s not about trust, it’s about control…and…use of digital spying tools by parents on their children has “anaesthetised young people to the whole idea of being monitored”, teaching them that surveillance is a form of love…and [equating it with] safety…[thus empowering] police, intelligence agencies and…politicians…to undermine [privacy, civil rights, and even]…safety [from state violence]…


Torture Chamber (#1461)

Americans’ sick lust for torture turns ordinary prison sentences into death sentences:

…Missouri prison[ers] have filed a lawsuit [because] they’re suffering from life-threatening extreme heat in their un-air-conditioned cells during the summer…[in] violat[ion of both] the Missouri Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act…Algoa [Dungeon] is one of four prisons in the state where none of the [cell blocks] have air conditioning.  And, due to the building’s design, it is frequently hotter inside…than outside.  Even at night, temperatures remain high…[and the only] heat-mitigation practices include…warm showers; the option to purchase one small, personal fan; and…[splitting] small coolers [of quickly-melting ice among] 100-plus people in each [cell block]…Due to a lack of outlets in solitary confinement, [those locked up] there are unable to use fans…According to legal documents…[similarly-inhumane] prison units in Texas reached 149 degrees Fahrenheit in 2023…

I Saw My Brain (#1492)

The psychopathic Grady Judd won’t pass up any opportunity to inflict harm on as many people as possible:

A recent “human trafficking enforcement operation” in Polk County, Florida, led to 244 arrests—albeit none for human trafficking…ICE…Homeland Security, and the U.S. Army [?]…were involved in [the sophomorically-entitled] Operation Fool Around and Find Out, along with more than a dozen Florida [cop shops beside Judd’s]…In addition to targeting adults for trying to consensually engage other adults in private sexual activity, immigration enforcement seems to have been a goal.  A press release…notes that 36 of those arrested “are here illegally”…[and] color-coded boxes around some [mug shots] denote that the…[victims are] receiving welfare benefits…Among those arrested was [a] former NFL player…[which] catapulted this story into national news.  And that’s meant a whole lot of outlets [parroting]…the police’s preferred narrative…

This will continue until the majority of those arrested fight back with lawsuits, or the voters of Polk County get tired of paying the many lawsuits that are already filed against this cretin every year.

The Cop Myth (#1496)

How long will America ignore the costs of its sick worship of state-sanctioned violence?

Since 2013…Phoenix [cops] have [murdered] 173 people…the second-highest total in the country behind…Los Angeles…The study used data from Mapping Police Violence, a website that has become widely known as the foremost tracker of police killings…in the United States since 2013.  It has utilized information from police and media reports to [do what cop shops and governments have refused to do]…Estimates suggest the database captures 92% of police killings….the five deadliest police forces[are] Los Angeles [with] 199 deaths…Phoenix [with] 173…Houston [with] 128…New York [with] 126 [and]…San Antonio [with] 106…In June 2024, the Department of Justice completed a years-long investigation…[which] found that…Phoenix police…taught…tactics that were “dangerous, unnecessary and unreasonable,” including that…deadly force…would lead to de-escalation….[Phoenix cops regularly] fired…at people who presented no immediate threat and…[often strangled] people who had not committed a crime…

Thought Control (#1524)

Just keep plunging that ice pick in; the bad thoughts will go away eventually:

A fresh round of books — more than 600, by one estimate — have been taken out of circulation from Hillsborough County classrooms after [deranged] state [politicians] ramped up pressure on school district officials.  Those books include Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid‘s Tale, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Ari Folman’s Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation…[Psychopath] General James Uthmeier [foamed at the mouth and waved his dick around while ludicrously barfing that the books were]…“patently pornographic”…He said the state’s newly created Office of [Froot Loop] Rights plans to give [random Froot Loops power to censor any book statewide]…since 2022, Hillsborough County has removed 389,073 books from its collection of more than 2 million books, and will continue to “actively [burn down]” its collections…

Sales Pitch (#1530)

Swedish politicians are angry that their law doesn’t destroy enough lives yet:

Participating in interactive adult live-streams or ordering custom porn clips are about to be punishable by a year in prison in Sweden, where a new law expands an already-[tyrannical] model of sex work criminalization to the internet…The text of the newly-passed bill (in the original Swedish here, and auto-translated to English here) states that criminal liability…shouldn’t have to require physical contact between the buyer and seller…Buying pre-recorded content, paying to follow an account where pornographic material is continuously posted, or otherwise consuming porn without [having to deal directly with the sex worker as a businessperson] is outside of the scope of the law…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Not Decriminalization

Posted in Current Events, History, Perception, Tyranny, Words, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2025| 1 Comment »

The New Orleans Times-Picayune falsely raised a lot of sex workers’ hopes last week by publishing a headline stating that “New Orleans council has decriminalized sex work for crime victims“.  This of course is not true:

The New Orleans City Council on [May 8th] passed a city ordinance that will make it easier for sex workers to report crimes without fear of prosecution for prostitution…[the usual suspects claim]ed it would exacerbate instances of prostitution in certain neighborhoods…

In other words, it’s a fairly typical non-prosecution bone of the sort politicians regularly throw at sex workers so they can pretend to care, which are always riddled with exceptions and workarounds and are generally repealed as soon as a prohibitionist gang complains loudly enough.  New Orleans has enacted similar halfway measures before, such as a December 2010 law which made prostitution a municipal offense so cops could just write tickets instead of subjecting sex workers to violence.  Unfortunately, politicians and other prohibitionists have learned in the past 15 years that decriminalization is viewed by all experts as the best framework, so now they’re all lying by calling whatever modified criminalization scam they’re selling “decriminalization”, so as to trick ordinary voters into believing they actually support human rights.  And lazy graduates of the stenographic school of journalism simply parrot whatever they’re told, without further investigation.

Hey reporters: here’s a simple rule of thumb. If you need to include a preposition like “for” or “if” after the word “decriminalized” when writing about sex work law, what you’re writing about isn’t “decriminalization”, so don’t pretend it is.

“Sex work is decriminalized for the seller…”  Swedish model, not decriminalization.

“Sex work is decriminalized if the seller…”  Toothless rule to placate activists, not decriminalization.

Only decriminalization is decriminalization; don’t let prohibitionists pretend otherwise.

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Diary #776

Posted in Biography, Diary, Favorites, Music, tagged , , on May 13, 2025| 1 Comment »

My tastes in TV shows often run to the eccentric, so I’m never especially surprised when I can’t find shows I enjoyed on DVD.  Sometimes the shows were never popular enough, and often they were cancelled after one season; a lot of the time I seem to be the only person who even remembers them.  One such program was The Steven Banks Show, produced for New Orleans’ public TV station, WYES, in 1994 by ex-NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff after he semi-retired to the Crescent City; I actually caught it on the Baton Rouge PBS affiliate, WLPB, because it aired at 10:00 PM on Saturday night, just before Doctor Who.  At the end of every episode was an address to order a copy of the soundtrack album, and given that I thought Banks’ brilliant comedic songs were the best part of the show, I of course ordered it (and still play it every so often).  That single viewing over 30 years ago, just before the beginning of my “year of disaster”, was the only time I ever saw the show; even after the debut of YouTube I could never find any trace of it other than the Showtime special which was essentially its pilot, and an upload of the soundtrack album.  Then last month, I discovered someone had uploaded all 13 episodes; I immediately contacted the same generous gent who sent me the two missing seasons of The Muppet Show last year, and he found even better copies somewhere online.  So now I’m watching them again; I only wish I could’ve shared them with Grace, because I think she’d have enjoyed all the musical humor very much.  Anyhow, here’s the series on YouTube; I hope y’all enjoy it as much as I do.

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Forty Years

Posted in Biography, Perception, tagged , , , on January 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Forty years ago this month, I accepted money for sex for the first time.  It was Friday of the first full week of January; according to a perpetual calendar that would’ve been January 11th, 1985.  When my blog was only a few weeks old, I shared the story in these words:

An engineer who was a friend of one of my professors had to go out of town on business; his wife, also an engineer, was away as well, but they had been waiting for some time for a contractor to do some work on their house and he had offered to squeeze them in between two long jobs.  The gentleman was willing to trust the contractor in his house but not with his keys, but I came highly recommended so I was offered a house-sitting gig.  All I had to do was open the house at 8 AM, supervise the contractors until they left and close up by 6 PM.  For this I was to be paid $5/hour, 10 hours a day for seven days, or $350 total; not bad for a broke coed in those days.  The contractors got done ahead of schedule, by Friday morning, and the engineer also came home early and arrived about 4 that afternoon.  While I was showing him a few things the contractor had asked me to point out, he kept finding excuses to rub up against me and eventually came right out and propositioned me.

I honestly don’t know what got into me, because without hesitation I said, “Can I stay on the clock?”  He raised an eyebrow and I elaborated, “I was counting on being paid through the weekend.”

“OK, if that’s what you want,” he said, and he was as good as his word.  It took less than an hour, and when he forked over the whole $350 I felt rather proud of myself.

For the next couple of years, I expected guys who wanted to date me to provide a monetary gift in addition to the cost of dinner or whatever; though I was never very specific about amounts, they learned fast that cheapskates would not long remain in my good graces.  As one might expect, that meant most of my gentlemen were at least a decade older than I was, but that never bothered me; undergrad boys were generally far too immature to hold my interest.  I never advertised or otherwise put myself out in public; my business was all word of mouth.  But unlike many of today’s sugar babies, I had no illusions about what I was doing and what prudes (or cops) would call it.  Alas, I was too young to recognize that no one man I was likely to attract would give me as good a deal as I could give myself, and so it was that (almost) exactly ten years later my poor decisions blew up in my face, and I returned to making my way in the world by the same means I had first learned barely two months after turning 18.  The rest, as the saying goes, is history.  But I can’t help wondering how the course of my life might’ve been different (and almost certainly worse) had I not been offered that house-sitting gig four decades ago.

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Greenback Thursday

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

In a few more decades the old accents, terms and customs of New Orleans will be nothing but a memory, a parade of ghosts second-lining into history along with the culture which once made the Crescent City unique. –
“They All Axed for You”

A successful life is judged by its character rather than by the number of years it endures.
– “Enough is Enough”

An insect sealed in amber is so well-protected it can exist changelessly for tens of millions of years…dead, of course, but one can’t have everything.  –  “Utopia”

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