Month: November 2020

Miley Cyrus, Please Cover These Songs


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m really digging Miley Cyrus’ latest album. Even though absolutely no one listens to me, here are songs for her to cover for her next hopefully even-more-rock album.

The above song is duh. I keep suggesting different modern female vocalists cover it and nothing happens. Anyway, this song is perfect for Ms. Cyrus because she could scream at the top of her lungs and it would make total sense. It would make a lot of sense for this cover’s rock guitar to come from St. Vincent’s Annie Clark.

This is another great song for Ms. Cyrus because she could scream all she wanted to and it would work with the song, something that can not be said for her cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” which simply made no sense for it.

The above is another great scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs song that Ms. Cyrus might do a good-to-great job with.

Given how — apparently? — Ms. Cyrus is a big old mo as they say, it might be fun for her to sing the Meatloaf side of the above duet. The more I think about it, that would be pretty great. Maybe get Ariana Grande to sing the traditionally female part?

Anyway. No one listens to me.

Neera Tanden — Lightening Rod


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Unlike what The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman would have us believe about Donald Trump, President-elect Joe Biden actually does have some political acumen. As such, that he would name someone as controversial as Neera Tanden to the OMB is curious.

Apparently, Republican Senators hate her guts.

Let me be clear that I don’t know anything and you should probably ignore me, but here’s what I think — she’s a lightening rod that’s meant to goose the African American vote in Georgia.

Here’s the logic — she’s at twofer. Not only does she let Republicans’ vent their bad faith arguments on one person who sums up what a bunch of misogynistic racists they are, but the controversy also helps get out the vote in Georgia.

So, if Democrats aren’t able to flip those two Republican Senate seats, then at least all the vitriol that Republicans might use to simply tell Biden to fuck off will be focused on one person — Neera Tanden.

But what the fuck do I know.

All Systems Go (Again)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Tomorrow, Dec. 1st, I’m going to gird my creative loins and throw myself once more into the breach. Everything fell apart last night with the beginning of the outline and I realized the only way to fix things was to do some serious re-imagining of individual scenes.

And so, from Dec. 1st until just past my birthday, I’m going to be really aware of self-imposed time constraints.

Trump & Potential Presidential Sedition


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump always wants to be number one in everything, and he’s one deranged — and transactional — tweet away from being the absolute worst president in American history. I say this because at least with James Buchanan, his screw up was a passive one. He simply felt he did not have the power to do anything to stop the birth of the CSA.

Meanwhile, Trump could very well incite his followers to actively work against the very government he leads. How’s that for both bad and surreal. And he could very well use any violence that he himself incites to invoke the Insurrection Act and simply refuse to leave office. Or, we do have about two weeks before the Electoral College votes, so it’s possible he might incite violence between now and then use his own violence as an excuse to stop the their vote, or whatever.

What’s I’m saying is — we’ve now entered one of the most unstable periods in American history since 1860. And, as always, our fate rests in the hands of Donald Trump. If he snaps he could a minimum bring down the First Republic and a maximum end civilization as we know it.

Good times!

The Quiet Bill Barr


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the strangest political events of the last few years has been the complete abdication of Interior Minister Bill Barr to be Trump’s legal goon. While I’m quite pleased, I can tell from my Webstats that a shit-ton of MAGA-Qanon shithead cocksuckers are very unhappy that Barr hasn’t lived up to his autocratic PR.

Now, the origin of my fears about Barr — and MAGA cocksuckers dreams — comes from how he handled the Mueller Report. What could have been the thing that ended Trump’s reign of political terror a few years earlier pretty much just vanished — or was strangled — by Barr’s loving touch. So, everyone pretty much assumed Barr would step in and make all Trump’s election problems go away because, lulz, autocrats never lose.

But, to date, Barr has done nothing beyond rush to use the Federal death penalty on as many people as possible.

So, what gives?

One theory is Barr was really good friends with Mueller and so he did one thing goonish because, “for the good of the country” he did not want the real risk of Trump being removed from office — or being severely politically harmed — to occur. But Barr has done a number of down low goonish things since just before the election and, as such, it’s all very puzzling for everyone — MAGA-Qanon shithead cocksucker or not.

Therefore, it’s something of a mystery. If Barr were to strike this late in the game, there would definitely be a civil war or revolution because on a political level, the nation has moved on to the Biden Era. But MAGA state legislatures could still nullify the results and or Trump could attempt to go after the actual humans that make up the Electoral College at some point in the near, near future.

We currently have about two weeks for Trump to ratfuck any number of things.

We’ll see, I guess.

The Conditions Exist For Something Extraordinary To Happen In The United States Soon


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I find myself thinking about the French Revolution a lot these days. It seems as though while Neo-Confederate MAGA-Qanon cocksuckers are so busy thinking about masturbating to a Second American Civil War, they’re totally oblivious to the possibility of a Second American Revolution.

Or, to put it another way, Trump sliced the seal on Pandora’s Box and it seems as though the question is how bad things are going to get. Now, before I continue, the counter argument is that the Trump Era in itself was something of a Cold Civil War. And, while there’s no going back after that particular clusterfuck, in the end, a new equilibrium of sorts will be established and we’ll gradually drift into the New Normal of post-Trumpian politics.

But we WILL remain in the realm of politics.

In all honesty, that’s definitely what I want to have happen.

And, yet, it’s very easy to imagine a future historian describing the fall of the First American Republic, then revolution then civil war and then the founding of a Second Republic. This would not happen in a vacuum, of course. In all likelihood, there would be a World War 3 because of that particular chain of events.

But what, exactly, would happen and why? There are simply too many variables for me to begin to predict. And, yet, I could see Trump going transactional on Twitter which would incite the violence he needed to invoke the Insurrection Act and hunker down to stay in office the rest of his life. Then the military gets involved — maybe even implodes itself — and initially there’s Balkanization of the United States into different major polities (Texas, California, maybe Florida) and isolated incidents of Revolutionary governments being established in, say, places like New York City and the Deep South.

The whole post-World War 2 liberal order would be destroyed and something new created from the ashes. I mean, if big chunks of the globe are a post-apocalyptic hellscape because Sectreary of State Mike Pompeo thought he could “force” Jesus to return, then, well, things might be a bit different going forward.

As is usual with my worse case scenarios, it’s not like I can predict the future. And even if I did, it’s likely whatever happened would occur within a spectrum. The point is — either things snap back to a New Normal, or everything burns to the ground and it’s every man for himself.

The scary thing is, at this point, I honestly don’t know which one it’s going to be.

The Metrics Of Finishing The First Draft


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that things are beginning to get locked down, I have mapped out how, exactly, I’m going to finish the roughly 32 chapters of this novel by my birthday.

The hope is that if I have a specific chronology that my native need for deadlines will kick in and I’ll actually finish some sort of first draft far sooner than if I didn’t really have any idea of how things were going to specifically work out.

I honestly don’t know how much of that is just yet another Lucy-with-the-football and how much is real. But I hope — hope — that if I’m actually looking at the calendar as I write that I can wrap up my first draft far, far sooner than I might otherwise.

We’ll see.

What Are We Going To Do If Trump Finally Snaps?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m still not prepared to believe that there isn’t going to be a successful court coup or Elector coup or some sort of coup on the part of House Trump that pushes the country into a violent civil war / revolution. It just seems like Trump keeps dropping depth charges and eventually the Kraken of violence is going to pop out of the dark waters of our body politic.

And, yet, maybe that –thankfully — won’t happen.

But as we all know, Trump doesn’t take losing well.

So, it’s within the realm of possibility that we may have something of a bonkers spectrum ahead of us. On one end of the spectrum, Trump goes bonkers on a personal level. Let’s call that “implosion.” He whips his cock out and strokes it during a press conference. He tweets out the N-word to Obama. Really crazy — but personal — things.

On the other end of the crazy spectrum is “explosion.” Having failed to woo individual Electors to vote for him, he goes transactional on Twitter. He literally tells his followers to start blowing shit up and murdering people. Or he does so during a Fox News interview that is obviously NOT a joke.

Then what are we going to do? Is there anything we *can* do? Is that how we descend into what seems the near-inevitability of massive political violence? Actual sedition by the sitting president?

Remember, even if it’s one of Trump’s own followers who causes a Reichstag Fire, it’s still a Reichstag Fire. I honestly don’t what happens. It could go a number of different ways.

#Writing This #Novel Has Consumed My Life


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While people have repeatedly attempted to peg me as someone with an “addictive” personality, in reality I have an OBSESSIVE personality. And, as such, I am completely consumed by this novel.

It’s all I think about.

Morning, noon and night, I obsess over every aspect of the novel from structure, to theme to character development to you name it. It’s all I think about. And now, after two years, my obsession is finally beginning to bear fruit. It appears as though within a few days I will lock down “Part One” of the novel and head into the actual story itself.

Part One is pretty much everything from the beginning of the novel to the inciting incident, though a lot goes in these pages as well. It’s not like people are just staring at each other on a smoke break. But anyway. I still hope to wrap the first draft up by my birthday.

In fact, if the first draft is as good as I hope it is, I can show it to people the way I might show a second draft. I might be able to skip a step in that regard. Again, this novel was born out of my absolute, white hot rage at the Trump Administration.

It will be interesting to see what the context of all of that will be once Trump is actually out of office. Hopefully that happens peacefully and we don’t, like, have a fucking civil war. The novel I’m developing and — finally — writing is really, really good.

I look at the outline and then the first three chapters and I’m shocked that at what I’ve managed to pull off. I feel bad that it’s taken me two years to get this point, but at least I’m here.

#Novel Update


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

  1. After about two years of struggle, the novel is finally where I want it to be. My story telling ability has finally improved to the point that I can “just write” as people kept telling me two years ago.
  2. Things are moving very, very, very fast now. Any delay will simply be that it takes physical time to write a novel as long as I intend this one to be.
  3. Wish me luck.