I’ve vowed to sooner rather than later to take the querying process for my first novel a lot more seriously. At the moment, I’m on track to wrap up the novel around — hopefully — April. Then the plan is to begin querying no later than, say, September.
But it’s always possible that that deadline may slip and it won’t be the fall 2024 querying season that I take the plunge, but, rather the Spring 2025 season. And all of this is happening in the context of not only me Not Getting Any Younger, but knowing damn well that any literary agent who does due diligence on me might just throw up their hands with dismay at all the kooky things I’ve written about and done videos about over the years.
And I am the first to admit that if you don’t know me personally, I can come across as a drunk crank. Ok, I get it. But what am I going to do about it at this point? I am who I am and I have some quirks and sharp edges that might turn some (liberal white women) people off.
My heroine kind of looks like this in my mind as I write her.
I really need to stop stewing about querying and begin to take it concrete steps to be ready to go when the moment comes. But I also want to start to work seriously on some backup stories. I have at least three solid scifi novels rolling around in my head and all the hard work I’ve put into my first novel should speed the process of development up for these “back up stories” a great deal.
It is very easy for us all to fall into the trite trap that, by definition, MAGA is made up of “ignorant” people sucked into a cult. At this late date, that assessment just makes no fucking sense.
The vast majority of the crazier things that MAGA does is a combination of political performance art done in order to “own the libs” and fascist virtue signaling. The key issue is that MAGA is symptom of a number of structural problems in the American political system.
What’s so interesting is MAGA is a movement of imperial retrenchment, not expansion. As such, I would compare Trump not to Hitler, but to Pol Pot. That’s the real nightmare scenario — that as the two sides grow radicalized, that Trump will decide to empty the Blue cities and we’ll endup with something akin to American Killing Fields.
MAGA is mostly made up of angry white (male) Christians who are so alarmed by the browning of America and the rise of women having political and economy agency that they going into the idea of autocracy with their eyes wide open.
In fact, that’s what they want — their dream is my nightmare. And some of them don’t even realize the implications of catching the car. They’re so busy hating on brown people and some ideal of how “every life is precious” while at the same time hating on COVID protocols done in a good faith effort to save lives in a crisis that you can grow rather frustrated with them.
Most of the people who make up MAGA aren’t ignorant at all. They are just really resentful of the modernization of America and they see Trump as their avatar. As such, Trump is NOT a Great Man of history. He’s just too lazy and dumb for that to be the case.
If he was a Great Man, he would never have lost the 2020 election and he would now be well on his way to becoming something akin to a Red King (at least over the Blue portions of the country.) But, here we are, with Trump fighting his way back to see if he can actually live up to all the autocratic rhetoric he spouted the first go round.
Which brings up an interesting point — if Trump really does try to deport 20,000 (or more) undocumented people in the United States, many with American children — is there any point when the Traditionalist who aren’t MAGA will throw up their hands and say, “I’ve had enough?”
That, dear reader, will determine the fate of the United States for generations to come because if Tyrant Trump loses the Traditionalists and they, for a brief movement, become Radical Moderates…we’re going to the show. We’re going to have a battle royale between Blue and Reds with no endgame and no narrative. It really could go either way.
And as all of that is going on, the globe will collapse into WW3 with a number of regional conflicts going nuclear. So one could propose that at least 1 billion people may die directly because of the actions of malignant ding-dong Trump. If my worst fears about the future come true, then Trump will replace Hitler as everyone’s go-to Worst Person in History.
But I can’t predict the future. And there is still plenty of time for us to punt all these structural problems down the road.
My tendency to be really paranoid served me quite well as an expat in South Korea. In the ROK as an expat, you’re pretty much one sentence away from scrambling to stay in the country. Living in America, though, this can make me come across as kind of bonkers.
But, having said all that, let’s think the issue what the fuck I’m going to do if the absolute worst happens and I am forced out of my Deep Red part of my state when the country implodes because of “vibes.”
At lot depends on how bad things get and how quickly. If things get really bad in the sense that I don’t feel safe being a Blue in a Red part of a Purple State, then, I suppose I’ll flee to the home of family in a Blue part of the state. But if things got REALLY BAD, REALLY QUICK, things are more complicated.
If there was some sort of infrastructure for Blue domestic political refugees to use, then I probably would grab my passport and stuff some essentials in a backpack and head North. With a general destination of NYC, if I could somehow finagle it.
But that’s very speculative and maybe a bit — or a lot — delusional. The key thing for me is I have to be prepared to bounce the moment it’s obvious that my political orientation is suddenly An Issue to the people around me. They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and that’s my fear — that I’ll wake up one day at some point after the 2024 Election and a bunch of good olde boys with guns will make it clear that I need to leave town — or else.
And, yet, I’m probably being hysterical. I am prone to think up the absolute worst case scenario. I won’t have to worry about any of this. Right? Right?
It has happened again. Now, to be clear, the following is probably at best simply proof that Tik-Tok is listening to our conversations. But even then, that’s a Not Great, Bob type situation.
But here goes.
Something very curious happened yesterday. I met up with a lot of family for the holidays and it was yesterday that I noticed something very…off…about my Tik-Tok FYP.
It definitely seemed as though the minds of the people I was near during the holidays were influencing my FYP. I mean, why was I suddenly getting all these videos pushed to me that had more to do with my relatives’ lives than my own?
All very curious.
But I seem to be the only person to notice this activity, so, lulz? I suppose it’s all in my head. And, like I said, it could just be that Tik-Tok is listening to our conversations. But given that Tik-Tok is essentially an arm of the CCP, that is Not Cool from a national security standpoint.
And if Tik-Tok is doing that, then of course other Big Tech companies are listening to our conversations, only in a more subtle, downlow way.
I have a few relatives — who I love dearly — who honestly believe that evil liberals are trying to turn everyone gay, ban The Bible and are on the cusp of destroying the lives of conservatives at any moment because they don’t follow the “media narrative.”
This, of course, contributes to the whole “let’s destroy the greatest country in the world because of vibes” problem that we all currently face. What’s interesting is my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — are now free speech absolutists because they think if Nazis can burn everything to the ground, then they will have a better chance of being able to, I dunno, say the N word because black people can?
I don’t have a problem with conservatives. Any strong, healthy democracy has a solid conservative movement. What I *DO* have a problem with is fucking MAGA and fucking Nazis. It is telling that even my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, have bought into to current Gay Scare.
All I can say is, if your political speech gets in trouble because it’s a little too close to Nazi propaganda…oh boy. You got a problem. Maybe tone it down a little bit. And whatever happened to the market place of ideas?
I find it amusing that conservatives think the “free market” can solve everything until that very same free market decides that saving the planet is a good idea. Then it’s “whoa, not THAT free.”
Even though I’m old as dirt and will never be “young in NYC” I do enjoy visiting The Big Apple on occasion. In fact, what I would really like to do is visit LA as well sometime. But if I did that, I would like to have three solid scripts written and that just isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The thing about New York City is the energy. It really sparks my creativity whenever I visit. And there remains a part of me that thinks if I ever was able to live there long term that I would be the most famous person in my borough. I’m an extreme extrovert and something of a kook.
And, yet, I also think that maybe LA would be a better place for that particular element of my personality to get me somewhere. As I’ve said before, I think if I got invited to a cocktail party in LA I would inevitably catch some producer’s attention just because I would get drunk and hold court saying some really provocative and interesting things as the night progressed.
Yes, I know that every drunk thinks they’re the funniest, most interesting person in the room when, in fact, they’re just a drunk.
I do hope to visit NYC at some point in 2024. I just hope it’s not as a domestic political refugee when the country collapses into civil war or revolution in late 2024 after the election.
While disaster could strike at any moment, for the time being, I’m feeling pretty good about the state of the third draft of my first novel. I’m going to focus on having a “alpha release” done as soon as possible. Once I get to that point, then I might start to do some fleshing out of the canon and characters so the beta release will be good enough to show other people.
I’m getting soooooo close to being in a position where I have to take the process of querying seriously. The idea of pitching my long-term delusion to people with money and careers is really going to rattle my cage. But it’s something I’ve been expecting for years now.
The story is pretty strong and it is provocative enough that I could see — if I sell the novel and it is huge success — that Hollywood will be interested. Even though the story isn’t nearly as dark and twisted as Stieg Larsson’s work, I feel confident that anyone who has read his work find my novel to be something of an old brown shoe without it being a hackneyed copy.
This novel is its own thing, it’s just I used Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire” as my “textbook” and, as such, it’s something of a homage. I hope people don’t think it’s some sort of fanfic, because it’s not. It’s very much my own personal interpretation of the general concepts that Larsson wrote about.
I have done everything in my power to make work as original as possible, even as I use some basic techniques that Larsson used in his work — for better or for worse.
I hope to zoom through the rest of the third draft of the novel now. But, like I said, so much can go wrong. But, I try to be hopeful.
I have some very conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — who continue to be enraged by the policies associated with COVID. They tell me they looked at the data and they will *NEVER* trust the CDC again.
Ok, I get it.
And, yet, these very same people lulz the very real economic data that suggests the American economy is humming along quite well. As such, if “doing their own research” and “looking at the data” helps their overall hatred of evil libs who want to turn everyone gay, then they embrace it. But if it DOESN’T help feed into the conservative media agenda being fed them by all the conservative podcasts they listen to…it is to be waved away and or ignored altogether.
They just *FEEL* that the economy is horrible and that the U.S. Military is now so woke that it’s weak compared to China and or Russia. This really aggravates me because the fact are this: the economy is doing well and the U.S. Military continues to be the most powerful fighting force in the world.
But for my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, they are very open to America turning into a white Christian ethnostate because of…vibes. They have an extremely simplistic take on politics to the point that what they believe is little more than a grunt. They just know: “Liberal bad.”
The only reason why I even bring this up is it’s so annoying that they make SUCH A BIG DEAL about how the “data” proves that the CDC should be arrested en mass and taken to Gitmo…but they simply don’t care that America’s economy is doing quite well at the moment and we can kick anyone’s ass in the world.
And it gets worse.
At the forefront of the minds of my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — is the “crisis at the border.” Again, I get it. There is a crisis at the border and more should be done to fix that problem. I will even acknowledge that someone should get impeached to at least focus their minds on the subject.
And they are absolutely against the cornerstone of how to fix the problem — amnesty. Which, I think, tells you what’s really going on — they’re upset about the browning of America more than anything else. But they just can’t bring themselves to admit it, so they get all upset about the “border crisis” then refuse to even address what a fucked up situation we would find ourselves in if we actually tried to deport 20 million people.
But it definitely seems as though if Trump is re-elected in 2024 that the issue of “show your papers” will be the central issue of the day. Birthright Citizenship will be eliminated or ignored and millions of families will be torn apart and a lot of American citizens will be put in camps. AND, the ICE infrastructure that will have to be built out to deport all those people will be ripe for abuse.
And that’s freaky weirdoes like me might find myself in a Trump branded ICE camp at some point after 2025. Good times! But my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — think I’m a crank for even suggesting such a possibility. They’re too busy getting upset by any perceived slight against Christianity to realize that they have people in their immediate family who will cross Tyrant Trump because they refuse to shut the fuck up.
But I understand why this just sounds like my usual hysterical doom shit. I get it. I understand. All my fears are very speculative at the moment. But the fact remains — the economy is strong, America is strong and the idea of Trump having 500,000 armed ICE agents at his tyrannical deposal is a horrible idea.
I am really beginning to grow annoyed with how often AI pretty much lies, or hallucinates when I ask it basic factual questions. And, yet, the case could be made that it is those very hallucinations that are the biggest threat to “human” Hollywood at the moment.
I say this because what is creativity, but simply managed hallucinations? As such, it’s easy to imagine a scenario whereby programmers lean into that specific element of AI to the point that it can hallucinate full movies, books, songs and TV shows.
Or not. I’m no expert. But it is something to think about. I just think maybe we need to rethink how serious a threat to Hollywood AI will be. I think it’s at least possible that Hollywood will be the first industry to be massively “disrupted” by AI to the point that, well, it may not even exist in its current form.
It could be that live theatre and entertainment will be the focus of human generated art in the future.
The Alison Brie vehicle “Somebody I Used To Know” once was just the type of movie that I would really love. It’s the type of movie that would have been a Blockbuster staple. It’s got one of my favorite actresses in it and, apparently, enough T&A to placate my inner horndog. (I only say that because I’ve just begun to struggle to watch the movie and don’t know much about what actually goes on.)
Several things are at play.
One is, I’m older and my standards have gone up to the point that I struggle, I STRUGGLE to watch ANY movie all the way through. I did manage to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer all the way through, but that is the exception to the rule.
Also, as someone who has been fixated on storytelling for much of my life and especially now after years of developing and writing a novel….I just grow restless at a movie that obviously was produced by Brie and as, such, she is willing to be a bit more provocative to try to draw in viewers.
This is the same dynamic as Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings. Both of these movies would have been HUGE in the 1980s or 1990s. People are so dumb and horny that just the idea of either one of these babes showing some skin would have been enough to get people renting. They wouldn’t know, of course, that as producers of these movies, both women had some skin in the game — no pun intended — to make sure that happened by doing some gratuitous T&A.
It is a testament to how The World Really Works that the older women get in Hollywood, the more likely they are to become producers and, as such, whatever concerns they may have had about showing skin in the past seem rather quaint.
Of course there are some women, like Jessica Alba, who remain too modest to show ANY skin to the point that they would rather use a body double or have their clothes digitally removed. Sigh. Ugh. Maybe I’m a dirty old man, but I find something about them being so coy on that front a bit grating. Hollywood is a biz-ness and “double dees, double dees” as the old SNL skit says.
But, whatever, I’m just a lowly middle age man. I don’t have any right to have any qualms on that front.
Anyway. Back to smoking hot Alison Brie. At the moment, I’ve not even gotten to the inciting incident of the movie yet and I pretty much know everything that is going to happen. The thing about Brie is she is so funny in how she toys with the audience in the roles that she takes. One moment she’s a demure yet coquettish community school student, the next she’s a 60s housewife.
I’ve vowed that I’m going to read more and watch more in 2024. As such, I hope to watch Somebody I Used To Know all the
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