Month: November 2023

The Key Thing That Will Make The Beginning Of Trump’s Second Term Different: People Will Leave The Country In Droves

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If malignant ding-dong Trump manages to get re-elected in 2024, the thing that will make everyone in the Unites States take notice will be the sheer number of people who will flee the country. And it could be more than just the usual loudmouth Twitter liberals.

It could be some really notable people in American culture who bounce. To the point that it could begin to be compared to what happened when Hitler took over Germany in 1933. And, if it gets bad enough, it will be referred to as an “American Brain Drain.”

To put another way — the moment it’s clear that Trump has won the 2024 Election, there will be mass chaos in the United States that will either end with the establishment of a military dictatorship or…..?

I AM NOT ADVOCATING ANYTHING.

I’m just pointing out the obvious — Trump may very well push average American to unprecedented extremes. It’s one thing for a lot of well meaning Traditionalists to kick out 10 million undocumented people and a whole different matter when their crank liberal-progressive relative (that would be me) gets sent to a camp.

The United States of 2025 is not Germany 1933. And while there will be PLENTY of “Good Germans” if things get as bad as I fear, the Untied States is so diverse and decentralized — and Trump doesn’t have an SA to be his goons — if, say, a weaponized ICE infrastructure dragnet puts people like me in a camp…who knows what might happen.

I’M NOT ADVOCATING ANYTHING.

Things *Should* Move REALLY FAST Now With The Third Draft Of My Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s time. I have got to start to push myself when it comes to wrapping up this third draft. I have a fairly stable first two chapters of the third draft, now is time to zoom through the first act. Once I hit the second act, things SHOULD move even faster.

My heroine looks a lot like Corrie Yee in my mind.
I have written and re-written so much of this novel, that once I get the new beginning of the novel done, then, zoom, I hope to wrap up the third draft no later than maybe April. I know full well that if I don’t keep and eye on the calendar, it could be fall 2024 before I finish the third draft and the whole world could be being coming apart at the seams.

Anyway. It’s officially put up or shut up time. I have got to finish this third draft ASAP so I can piviot to the next step in the process – querying.

Trump Has A Lot of Slack If He Decides To Go Full Tyrant In 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Talking to my REALLY conservative Traditionalist relatives, it is clear that Trump has a huge amount of slack ahead of him if he decides to go full tyrant before this very important segment of the political body politic cares. They will cheer if Trump crushes BLM or Antifa in Blue State cities using the Insurrection Act. They will cheer if ICE is weaponized and turned into a Gestapo that forces 10 million undocumented people out of the country.

It won’t be until Trump starts to go after the free press and or snatches people they care about — like ME — that they might sit up and take notice. Or maybe they won’t. They might just become Good Germans and keep their head down and when I call Trump a “fucking cocksucker” at a bar somewhere and get picked up by an ICE agent, they may just shrug and say I had it coming. I love my conservative relatives dearly, but I sometimes fear they aren’t taking the threat from Trump seriously.

Of course, it could be that none of this is going to happen. It could be that Trump loses the election and simply wanders off without a peep other than vague threats of a National Divorce. That is a very real possibility. If that is the case, then we punt our problems down the road another four years.

That’s what I HOPE will happen. I WANT to be wrong. I really do. Anyway. if I’m right, then oh boy, are we in serious fucking trouble.

No Matter What, Things Are About To Go VERY FAST

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Either my life gets thrown for a loop very soon and I have to focus all my attention on something unexpected, or I continue this idyllic situation I’m in. With either scenario, time is about to move, very, very fast and I need to buckle down and work on the novel with a lot more focus.

My fear is that if I don’t do that, I’ll wake up and it’ll be the fall of 2024 and instead of having a novel in my bug out bag to show people, I’ll be smarting over being a political refugee without anything cool to barter for food. Wink.

Anyway, the next few days could be….interesting?

Thinking Seriously About Freelancing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It would be a vast understatement that I….don’t do stress well. That’s one of the reasons why I probably will never make it as a full time journalist in the traditional sense. But I am a good writer — or at least like to think so — and I could do a great job as a freelancer if necessary.

Not that the transition from where I am now to being a freelancer wouldn’t be…uuhhhhh…bumpy.

But if I was going to do it — or was forced to do it — I would try to freelance for media based out of NYC. And, yet, I dunno. I think that’s my ego talking. I probably should try to start off in Richmond. But, I dunno. I have no idea how to go about such things.

What would I write about?

Technology
Media
Pop Culture
Being Blue In The Red Part of a Purple State.

The big issue issue would be, of course, the due diligence that any editor in NYC would do on me would cause them to see what a fucking kook I am. Though it would be fun to see the poke around this blog before they told me that I suck and why did I bother them with this or that pitch?

Anyway. I don’t know yet that I have to go back into freelancing. But it’s at least *possible* at the moment.

Never Meet, Er, Get Blocked By Your Heroes

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I used to work in technology back in the late 90s until the need to be a professional journalist ate itself out of my psyche. In hindsight, of course, I should have tried to be a novelist or screenwriter back then. But I love writing and at the time I thought I had what it takes to be a journalist.

I *do* have what it takes to be a journalist, but I think it would be a freelancer. Anyway, I left the company I was at where I worked as their “technology manager” and ended up at a small, but very influential community newspaper. The guy who ran the thing was kind of the Lorne Michaels of the Virginia publishing industry.

Of course, I was in a very, very bad place at that point in my life and promptly totally and completely bungled the whole thing, getting fired in short order.

Flash forward, and I’m obsessed with Nick Denton and Gawker Media. I have an obsessive personality — that helps when you’re writing a novel, but can cause problems with anything else.

Anyway, last I saw, Denton had blocked me on Twitter. This really made me wince. I feel so bad. It’s an example of what I call “the Kook tax.” When you’re a kook, sometimes…you screw up. And you have to live with the consequences. Being blocked by someone you otherwise really admire is an example of that.

Lulz. Moving on.

The Fun Scenario I’m STILL Obsessed With

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, here we are, again, with me mulling my favorite scenario. The scenario is — a Galactic Empire comes to humanity and says, “We’ll zap a few billion of you to three lush, habitable planets in a new solar system, but there’s a catch — you have to bootstrap yourself. No help from us.”

One day, President of Hollywood, one day.

Ok. After nearly 20 years of thinking, here’s what I’ve come up with. There is only one solution to this particular problem that makes any sense — you seed the three planets with Americans, selected by a diverse, large group of global “stakeholders.”

I keep vacillating between thinking you would need just a few people in each various settlements on each planet — maybe 100? — to thinking you could get away with maybe 60,000 each planet divided to settlements of 10,000. It only works if you use Americans, though.

This would ENRAGE everyone else in the world, but it’s the only solution because America is a nation of laws, immigrants and a huge, well educated population. But I think if you had a large group of global stakeholders actually PICK the Americans who would be the first inhabitants of each of these three planets, then it works.

Now, the fun part — the gist of any novel or screenplay — would be all the fucking drama about the specifics of how all of this was done. That’s why this scenario is soooooo addictive. I think I keep discovering different elements of game theory over and over again as I try to think of different ways the different groups would fight over exactly who would do what.

Anyway. Maybe I can write this novel or screenplay when I finally sell my novel.

What The Fuck Is Wrong With The MSM When It Comes To Our Looming Transition To Autocracy?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America is careening towards autocracy and from what I can tell of the mainstream American press — we’re totally fucked. They continue to suffer from a bad case of “both siderism.” They continue to frame EVERYTHING in the context of how this or that bad thing is “bad for Joe Biden.”

There’s no sense of…uhhh…YIKES?

And Trump has already made it clear that he’s coming for the usually center-Left MSM. I just don’t get it. It’s like we’ve just collectively fucking given up. Though, I will note that the press coverage of the march to war in the late 1850s was pretty much the same.

A great book about how everyone “got woke” once the Civil War started is William Safire’s “Freedom.” It’s a tome, but it’s really, really good. If you want to understand what I mean by “Radical Moderates” read that novel. It pretty much is all about how Radical Moderates came to be in the lead up to the slaves being freed.

Anyway. It definitely seems that, at the moment, we’re fucking doomed. Batten down the hatches, ’cause the moment Trump is in power again, he’s gunning for freedom of speech because he’s incredibly dumb and lazy and doesn’t realize he’s setting a trap for himself.

Give Me A Couch & Access To The NYC Subway — I’ll Take Over The World

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We all have the random delusion that we use to keep air in our lungs. For me, it’s the idea that if you just gave me the absolute basics of living in NYC — a couch to sleep on and access to the subway — that I could actually make quite a lot out of myself.

But, of course, I’m being rather delusional to think this for a number of reasons. One is, NYC is FULL of people who are just as colorful and weird as I am. Also, I’m old — and short. And, NYC is a lot different than LA. In NYC, it’s a lot more difficult to fake-it-till-you-make it than it is in LA.

NYC has some very cold, harsh metrics when any discussion of advancing your lot in life is brought up. And it helps if you’re young and cute. At least in LA, everyone is so obsessed with making in showbiz that if you’re good as schmoozing — which I am — people will at least listen to you.

But I am a bit long in tooth, I fear — especially for LA.

What is so interesting to me is the few people I know who live in NYC act like I’m an honorary New Yorker. They keep expecting me to move to NYC even though I’m a broke ass writer at the moment. But the few times I visited NYC I loved it. I really — REALLY — want to live there.

At the moment, there are two possibly ways I might make that dream come true.

One is, I sell my first novel, it’s a break out hit and I have the funds to move to NYC on my own terms. Score! The other, darker possibility is there’s a Second American Civil War and I’m forced to flee the South because, lulz, it’s 2025 MAGA SA is out for blood and wants to murder me.

I dunno. I’ve been sleep waking through my life for way, way, way too long. And maybe it’s too late. Maybe, This Is It. I’m have a heart attack or a stroke without even having the good sense to finish my first novel.

Only time will tell.

Burn, Hollywood, Burn — The First Popular AI Generated Movie Is Probably About 18 Months Away

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We are zooming towards a new, uncharted future when it comes to Hollywood-quality AI generated movies. It definitely SEEMS like within 18 months some scrappy startup will use AI to generate a “Toy Story” like movie that is created without the hand of man involved other than simply pressing a button or two.

So, it could be that in three years there won’t be any writers, or actors, or directors or below the line people involved in the production of movies — period. And that will just be the beginning.

It could be that by 2030, Hollywood as we currently know it will no longer exist. There will be two types of people left in Hollywood — Suits and Programmers. That’s it. There will be a small sliver of people producing “artisanal” movies, but most human stars will have gravitated to Broadway.

It’s even possible that places like the Catskills might make a comeback. Hell, even some sort of vaudeville might return. But the fact remains — the clock MAY be ticking on “Human” Hollywood. And I say this from the POV of someone who is hard at work on my first novel. It could be just as I finish it and begin to query it…all forms of marketable (human generated) entertainment will just be so much dust in the wind.