Category: From The Editor
Mulling An American Military Junta Starting In Late 2024, Early 2025
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It is definitely hysterical doom shit on my part to suggest that the United States might find itself with a military junta starting in late 2024, early 2025. It would be the first time in our history when such a thing had happen. It goes against everything the U.S. Military believes in even do such a thing in the first place.
As such, it definitely seems as though we’re going to peacefully side into a MAGA-themed autocratic state. Not a shot fired. We just shrug and give up. About 1 million smug Twitter liberals leave the country, leaving Poors like me to fend for themselves.
If such an unlikely thing DID happen, I could see Gen. James “MadDog” Mattis being acting POTUS while we had a Constitutional Convention to push through some MUCH needed structural reforms to our political system.
I think that is specifically what would happen. The crisis of late 2024, early 2025 grows so dire that the there’s a coup, a military junta is established that runs the country for the specific amount of time necessary to hold a Constitutional Convention.
I have to say when that’s your best case scenario for your country, you’re definitely in a “Not great, Bob,” situation. We can only hope that this is just yet more hysterical doom shit on my part.
Idle Reflections On The State of My Novel for October 9th, 2023
Some thoughts about the state of my novel.
‘Ping’
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m a child of the Cold War, so everything that’s going on in the Middle East right now reminds me of what was going on in the background of The Day After before everything went kabluey.
I’m well aware that I’m prone to “hysterical doom shit,” as this may just be more of the same. But it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine things escalating if Israel struck targets inside of Iran for their involvement in what has been going on.
And Israel is one of a few nuclear powers so, yeah. The whole thing is rather unnerving. I only even suggest any of this because this IS the Middle East we’re talking about and the whole region as been unstable for a long, long time.
What’s more, we have the whole fucking “Fourth Turning” to worry about in the United States at some point between now and early 2025. I still think the whole thing is astrology for dudes, but the point the theory makes is still relevant — it definitely seems as though 2025 Is It.
We’ve collectively, on a global scale, enjoyed peace for too long and a lot of idiots are itching to burn the whole post WW2 global order to the ground. I don’t know what to tell you, folks.
Get ready.
Once More, With Feeling
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Well, I have YET AGAIN gotten out of the first chapter of this novel. Now, I plan on re-reading AGAIN the second chapter to see if I can make it good enough to be considered part of the third draft.
I continue to not only do all of this in a vacuum, but to have no idea what I’m doing. All I have is just my gut and a few hunches as to what make a good story. It definitely going to be interesting to see if what the reaction of a professional manuscript consultant will be once I save up the money necessary to get them to read over the novel.
At the moment, the story is a mixture of Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series and Bill Hader’s TV-show “Barry.” I have a pretty clear vision of what I want to do with this story, but it’s a much more difficult struggle than I could have ever imagined.
I still need to think about how to improve my characterizations. I’m getting there, but I need to make things more clear as to motivation. I keep learning — the forgetting, then remembering again — the fact that a passive protagonist is a boring protagonist.
As such, what happens is I come up with what I think is a pretty good plot then I realized — duh — that my heroine is way, way, way too passive and everything gets thrown up in the air while I figure out how to have her push the plot forward by doing whatever she has to do to get what she wants.
Anyway. As I keep saying, but for being 100% extroverted I would go radio silent with this novel. But I just can’t help myself. I sometimes need to vent about how things are going with this novel, over and above my natural extroverted nature.
Still Spinning My Wheels In The First Few Chapters of The Third Draft Of My First Novel
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Just as I thought I was going to push into the beginning of the second act of the third draft of my first novel, I made a strategic error — I decided to read over what I had done so far. As always, always happens whenever I do this, I discovered a new, improved way to tell the story to the point that I am rewriting everything all over again.
My heroine kind of looks like this woman in my mind. Sorta. Kinda.
Some of this rewriting was inevitable — I know I can do better and I given that I consider this the THIRD draft of the novel, I feel compelled to make sure I can produce the absolute best quality copy. I hope to show this draft to some sort of professional manuscript consultant and I would rather do the hard work of rewriting now, rather than waiting until the end.
One thing that I really need to work on is fleshing out my characters. They’re getting a lot — A LOT — better, but they’re still not where I want them to be. I keep mulling the idea of maybe yet another attempt at a character study of my main characters so I can get a better sense of who they are.
But I don’t know if I’m prepared to slow the already slow process down THAT much. I do, you know, what to wrap this third draft up soon enough that I can start to query in late 2024. Which, of course, is when I think we might experience the so-called “Fourth Turning.”
Lulz. Good times!
Is It World War 3 Yet?
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While I seriously doubt this particular “hysterical doom shit” on my part will amount to anything, I am a little bit concerned that if there are two major long-term regional wars going on at the same time that the two events will be linked under the rubric “World War 3.”
What’s more, if the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East are joined by a massive clusterfuck in central Africa then, yeah, the nattering nabobs of negativism may start to throw around the term “World War 3” simply because it would be “cool” and an easy way to explain a very complex situation.
Of course, I have long believed that if the “Fourth Turning” really does happen starting in late 2024, early 2025 that we are going to be royally fucked and World War 3 really will break out. That could happen either because the United States pulls out of NATO and South Korea as it becomes an America First MAGA autocratic state or because the USA has descended into civil war or revolution because of “vibes.”
But that’s very speculative hysterical doom shit. It’s possible that somehow we’ll just punt all our problems down the road and nothing will come of any of this.
I’m Growing Frustrated With AI Generated Photography
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The point of photography, in my opinion, is to capture a moment of the human experience. As such, I’m growing more and more frustrated with the growing popularity of AI generated photography.
What bothers me is there is all this AI-generated celebrity soft-porn floating around on social media that is getting so good that it’s difficult to notice that it’s AI generated on first glance. We’re probably just a few months away from a deluge of AI-generated celebrity porn.
Now, I will note that I’m not so upset with AI generated art. If something is stylized and is clearly an effort to generate art rather than photography, I’m rather indifferent.
But we’re reaching a moment in the development of AI generated photography when it will be impossible to determine if it’s real or not. We’ve already reached a point where some people get really excited by near-hyper-realistic photos that are good, but not so good enough as to not to be clearly AI generated.
Since I’ve staked out that particular pet peeve, I have to accept that there is going to come a point where not only will most photographs be AI generated, but most movies, too. I suppose still photography is more dear to my heart than movies — which I love — so the sting won’t be as great when a AI-enabled TV screen scans my face and shoots out a two hour movie that exactly fits my mood at the moment.
Or, put another way, in a sense I’m just being an old fogy. AI generated everything is the future and no one — least of all me — will be able to escape it.
R.I.P, Shani Louk (Updated)
by Shelt Garer
@sheltgarner
It is not immediately clear that Ms. Louk is, in fact, dead. So, take that into consideration. I hope she isn’t dead and she comes home safe. That would make me feel much, much better.
I’m something of a graybeard these days, but I’m an heartfelt, empathetic graybeard. I’m so much so that you might event call me an “empath.” I cherish compassion and kindness. So when something as brutal and barbaric as what happened to 30-year-old Shani Louk occurs, I get rather upset.
That poor woman. Apparently, she was in the general area of Gaza when the recent war-ish situation broke out and she was murdered in cold blood. What’s more her nearly-naked body was paraded around in the back of a truck. It’s all very disturbing to me. She was obviously a beautiful young woman and the idea that something so cruel would happen to her simply because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time breaks my heart.
Shani Louk
It’s tragic events like this that remind me of my own mortality and how much of my life I’ve wasted simply grieving over a failed expat magazine in Seoul that no one cares about or remembers.
Life is very precious and as the good book tells us, “death be not proud.” You never know when it will all end. Every moment you have on this earth you need to be grateful for.
It Happened *AGAIN*
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Yesterday, I suddenly started thinking about Seoul again out of the blue. I didn’t think anything of it — I think about Seoul all the time to this day. And, yet, today, I checked my Webstats and would you believe someone from Seoul looked specifically at the “ROKon Magazine” tag on this site?
It was all so long ago. I was very curious and dramatic when it happened, but it was a long time ago and nobody cares anymore. I guess? To this day, I wish I could convey what a fucked up, dramatic situation those few months in late 2006 — early 2007 were. And it didn’t stop there. The drama lingered until around my birthday in early 2008.
I still don’t know what to make of what happened in Seoul all those years ago. It was all so curious and mind-bending. It really changed my life and self-perception.
But, if nothing else, it gave me a lot of memories and experience to use as a stepping stone with my first novel that I’m working on. Much of what goes on in this first novel — which is intended to be part of a six-novel project — comes directly from what I know to be true because of what happened to me in the months that ROKon Magazine existed.
Anyway.
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