Month: March 2022

Time To Do Some Reading


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve reached something of a milestone — I’ve completed something akin to a pretty decent first act of a first draft of an actual, honest-to-God thriller novel in the tradition of Stieg Larsson.

This is the point where I sheepishly admit that I have about 50 scenes for this first act, which is way too long if each scene is about 1,000 words. Your novel is supposed to be 25% first act 50% second act and 25% third act. If I held to that, I would now be looking at a novel with around 200,000 words.

There are a few solutions, given that the sweetspot for someone in my situation is 80,000 to 120,000 words. One is, the individual scenes aren’t all 1,000 words, but only average 1,000 words. The other is, the rest of the novel isn’t strictly setup the way it’s “supposed” to be and so it’s more like 40%, 40%, 20%. That’s not too bad. But right now, I’m looking at just about 80 scenes for the Second Act so…I got a problem.

Another way to look at this is, I’m just working on a first draft. I can always hack away at things when I work on the second draft. I’d rather have too much than too little copy going into the second draft so, lulz.

As I keep saying, this is the first novel in what is planned to be a five novel (3 + 2) series, with the last two novels hopefully starting an open ended series with my own interpolation of the Lisbeth Salander trope.

At least, that’s the dream.

But I still have a huge amount of work to do. As such, I’ve decided to switch gears for about a week and concentrate on doing a lot of the reading that I’ve not done since I started this project. The second act is where the police procedural element of the novel comes to the fore and I have to figure out how to at least not to embarrass myself.

So, throwing myself into reading it is. There is so much reading I have neglected. Giving myself a sold week of just reading should not only inform things going forward but also refresh me so when I throw myself back into the novel I’ll see things with clear eyes again.

It sure would help if I had a muse, or a girlfriend or a wife.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy Should Go On The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve always thought Joe Rogan was something of a grifter when it came to giving otherwise alienated men something to latch onto. Just because you’re earnest in your masculinity, doesn’t excuse you if you show signs of misogyny, racism or fascism.

But here we are, Rogan is hugely popular in large because a lot of men are struggling to adapt to this strange new world we live in where many “woke” people think that, by definition, being male is bad. Slay the patriarchy and all that.

Then there is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. He gives me hope as a man because he doesn’t have any gimmick like Joe Rogan. He’s just a dude doing traditional dude stuff in a traditional dude manner. So, it makes me wonder what would happen if Rogan in all of his earnest masculinity were to interview Zelenskyy.

I think in the end, Rogan would be a puppy dog to Zelenskyy. I say this because Rogan doesn’t have the weight that Zelenskyy has and he’s always angling in to come across as reasonable, even he’s interviewing a fucking bonkers fascist. As such, Rogan frames his conversations in a way that grades people who are demonstrably bad so they they seem just misunderstood.

There is a reason why Rogan is a alt-right, New Right, MAGA gateway drug. He has a tendency to want it both ways — he wants to have power and yet when it gets called on some dumb thing he says, he does a Jon Stewart and says, ‘Why are you listening to me in the first place?”

Anyway, it would definitely be illuminative for Rogan to interview Zelenskyy. Hopefully the war will be over soon so that can happen.

Movie Pitch: ‘All Clear’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is possible that the Russo-Ukrainian War may evoke a rather abrupt “vibe shift” in American popular entertainment. It could be that the next few years will see the rise of War Movies becoming popular again.

We could see movies set during the various wars the United States has been a part of over the years. And, sadly, we might see more than a few movies set in WW3. So, here’s my pitch for a movie like The Day After.

Act 1

A series of people from all walks of life are seen getting onto a plane in NYC for a cross-country trip to LA. In between their farewells (which would establish each character) we hear bits and pieces of an escalating war somewhere off in some distant land.

Inciting Incident: Now, while they’re up in the air, there’s some sort of emergency. They have to make an emergency somewhere in the midwest.

While there on the ground for what is meant to be a short amount of time, WW3 breaks out and everyone across the US EMPs zap electronics. So they’re stuck in, say, Iowa somewhere.
Act 2

So, the first part of the second act would be the different people on the plane making new friends and realizing that suddenly everything is existential. They now have to figure out what to do. A small group, maybe four or five people, are now a group and they head out of the Iowa city they’re in (chaos is beginning to take over.)

Midpoint: they finally find a small town in the middle of nowhere that will take them.

The latter part of the second is about how this diverse group of people begin to deal with their lives are changed forever. This is when one of the people on the plan begins to grow power hungry and becomes a Trump-like demagogy.

The end of the second act is when people start to realize that Nuclear Winter is here for a while and there’s a chance that they’re all going to die. The power hungry fromer passenger begins to kill people and our small group of goodguys from the plane have to figure out what to do.
End
Things appear to get better when American troops from a part of the country that hasn’t been struck by a H-bomb try to come to save the day. But they come too late — some of the passengers we’ve been focused on have been captured and are set to be killed.

The climax is a Zero Dark Thirty type attack on the villian’s lair.

Our core group of people are saved and the move ends with them heading west to safety and the continue struggle of living in post- limited nuclear exchange America.

The Republican Politics Of Nihilism


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What’s interesting to me is how Republicans have so gamed the system that now it’s impossible to talk about some pretty big issues — gun control, global climate change and racism being among them. They’re off the table, never to be addressed or spoke about ever again.

And, sad to say, it’s possible that once Roe is overturned, they will do the same thing with not only abortion rights, but contraception in general. Because that’s the ultimate goal of fascist Republicans — to make it impossible for people to have sex without the risk of pregnancy. Gay rights, too, are probably going to get wrapped up in the Republican politics of nihilism.

Or, in other words — anything Republicans don’t want to talk about will become impossible to talk about.

That will be the last step before we have the existential choice of civil war or autocracy. Another step in that direction will be when someone hurts someone like, say, Dr. Fauci and Republicans talk about how after years of talking about him like he’s the devil, now is not the time for politics, but “thoughts and prayers.”

Anyway, the point is — we’re fucked. We are so completely fucked that you had better enjoy these last few months of normal life before the Republicans regain the House and Senate and all we do is talk about how many times both Biden and Harris have been impeached.

It’s coming. And it’s not going to be pretty.

Known Unknowns of Post-Production


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are humming along with this first novel in what I hope will be a five novel series. But I’m beginning to grow alarmed at the idea that I’m not taking into account something — even if I sell this series (or just the first book) — there would be a six month to a year delay before the book was actually published.

This is beginning to cause me a great deal of angst.

But I have to press on. At this point, selling any of these novels would be literally the literary equivalent of winning the fucking publishing lottery. However, I see this project as existential for no other reason if I wasn’t working on it, I really wouldn’t doing much of anything else creatively. I would continue do what I did for years and years after leaving Seoul — drift — and I would be in a dark and miserable place.

So, working on five novels it is.

Let’s rock.

How I Would Pitch A ‘New Masculinity’ Book


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m going to shut up about this very soon, but occasionally it takes a few days for one of my ideas to work itself out of my mind. Anyway, the problem with anything like a “New Masculinity” book is because of the woke media narrative we live with, any book that addresses traditional male gender roles in a positive way will be attacked and derided.

The freaky weirdos have won, if you will. (Wink.)

Now, some context. I only even talk about this in this way because I’m growing more and more alarmed by the rise of the fascist MAGA New Right in the United States. One way to slow down — but not stop — the existential choice of fascist autocracy or civil war in the general 2024 – 2025 timeframe is to give one of core elements of the MAGA New Right, alienated Traditionalists men, something to embrace.

In other words, anything to do with traditional male gender roles is a fucking clusterfuck of different groups feeling they have the right to control what that even means. Or, put another way, if someone were to articulate a New Masculinity, then maybe you could walk all Joe Rogan fans off the cliff they’re on where they’re one step away from embracing fascism.

Rather than addressing the issue head on, I think I would hide the notion of New Masculinity in a leadership book. In the male mind, leadership is equated with a traditional male concept. (Even though this is obviously wrong — women make great leaders.)

But the audience for this book would be a college educated Rogan fan. You take something they like — Rogan’s earnest masculinity — and instead of that being a gateway drug into fascism, you give them the option of framing modern masculinity — and leadership — in the context of people like Washington, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Churchill and Zelensky.

So, in a sense, using subtext, you tell these professional men — who should know better about being MAGA New Right -that it’s ok to be a Traditional male in the modern, woke era. You use Zelensky as an avatar, a totem for modern male leadership.

Anyway. Absolutely no one listens to me. And I’m sure if they listened to me with this suggestion I’ll be canceled.

The New Masculinity Manifesto


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

According to the current media narrative, using traditional male concepts as part of traditional male behavior is something to disparage. I’m very empathetic to the crux of this argument.

Zelenskyy

And, yet, just like the slogan “defund the police” is really more about “demilitarizing the police,” so, too, is “slay the patriarchy” really more about the male dominating world being forced to accept the equality of women on a basic level than destroying the world of men in its entirety. (At least, I hope so, for my own sake. Yikes.)

But both slogans are easily corrupted by the MAGA New Right as a bludgeon against a very crucial element of any democracy’s body politic — conservative Traditionalist men.

With this in mind, the conventional wisdom among Blue Check thought leaders in the West at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War was that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, would fold and run away from Kyiv to a more secure location like Lviv in the western part of the country.

But this did not happen.

Instead, Zelenskyy did a very traditional male leader thing — he stood and fought.

That Zelenskyy would do something so basic, so human, so traditional, so masculine without the benefit of a flipping the script in any way came across as something of a shock to Western observers. Zelenskyy was just a traditional male doing traditional things in a traditional way. There was nothing particularly innovative about his leadership style other than it existed and he as just a regular guy doing leading his people in a time of crisis.

This definitely goes against the woke narrative where the only way we can accept leadership is if there is some spicy twist to things. Zelenskyy is not transgendered, nor does he quibble about his pronouns (as far as I know.) He’s just a dude.

So, I propose some discourse over the possibility of what I call New Masculinity. This would be an acceptance that we can both validate and update traditional male concepts without going out of our way to alinate Traditionalist men who are so enraged by the woke agenda that they turn to nothing short of fascism — the MAGA New Right.

It seems to me that there is a possibility that the entire Western world is careening towards a moment when the type of male leadership that Zelenskyy has displayed will be desperately needed. It does not take a soothsayer to notice how unstable the United States is growing and the high risk of a “Great Reset” or “Fourth Turning” around the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.

Maybe we could use Zelenskyy as something of an avatar, a totem that Traditionalists men could imbue with their own, non-woke narrative. I have my doubts that this Hail Mary plot to take the steam out of the misogynistic MAGA New Right will work. But it is something to at least discuss.

The reason I’m doubtful is what I’m proposing is nuanced and subtle. In the extreme polarization of Blue and Red that America currently exists in, the moment Traditionalists adopted my plan, Woke culture would freak the fuck out. Woke people would make fun of the New Masculinity and deride it for not being attune enough to the needs of the modern world. Slay the patriarchy, and all that, don’t you know.

But the New Masculinity of Zelenskyy does produce results. It seems as though Zelenskyy may soon be mentioned in the same breath as Lincoln, FDR and Churchill. He is doing what needs to be done to save his nation from tyranny.

The truly surreal element of all of this is, of course, that because the MAGA New Right is so beholden to the dream of a Russian-style autocratic white Christian ethno state for America, they are wilfully oblivious to the benefits of adopting Zelenskyy as their own.

As I said, I doubt anything will come of this. And if it does, it will probably be corrupted for selfish reasons so it seen as nothing more than the 90s Men’s Movement with a different name or, even worse, some variation of the freaky weirdo Incel movement. But, again, Zelenskyy’s bravery in the face of adversity at least opens the door to some discourse on how he might be an icon for New Masculinity.

‘New Masculinity’ & The Zelensky Zeitgeist


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

American men have, for about a generation now, been derided and castigated as part of the monovalent “patriarchy.” It all kind of creeped up on us. Now, I’m coming at this issue as a rabid anti-MAGA New Right person. I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot rage, to the point that I’m writing five novels that lay out — in subtext — how and why I fucking hate the movement so much.

Zelensky

Anyway.

The point is –I’m very empathetic to women who want to “slay the patriarchy.” And, yet, the point could be made that “slay the patriarchy” is kind of like “defund the police.” It is a slogan that is easily used to get a crucial element of the body politic — “Traditionalists” to join the fucking MAGA New Right and destroy that precious commodity known as democracy.

And, remember, it is actually pretty rare for there to be a “vibe shift” in the way men perceive themselves. The thing that would tip off a vibe shift — how men appear — isn’t really applicable. Dudes are dudes. Either you’re wearing a suit to work and have power and influence or you don’t.

So, I’ve sat up and taken notice at how it’s beginning to look as though the standard, traditional masculinity of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky is beginning to show results. What’s key about all of this is he doesn’t follow the current American media narrative about what it means to be masculine. If this was a Hollywood movie, Zelensky would be a woman struggling to run a nation while “slaying the patriarchy.”

But, surprise, he’s a dude doing traditional dude things in a traditional dude way. There’s no plot twist or flipping the script. It’s the traditional narrative of a man rising to the occasion on the world state in an effort to protect the collective home and hearth of his besieged nation.

So, we now have something of a cultural and historical question before us. Is this just a blip as part of a broader, macro trend towards traditional male values continuing to be disparaged or is there a change that we’re on the cusp of a “New Masculinity” that harkens back to the leadership of Lincoln, FDR and Churchill.

I honestly don’t know. For that to happen, I think we would have to actually have, like, uh, WW3. Only a major global war would force us to appricate the value of traditional male roles and concepts. I’ve already suggested something along these lines when I posited that our current “woke” culture will end around 2024 – 2025 when we decide as a nation if we’re going to be an autocracy or have a civil war.

So, I don’t know. It’s all very much up in the air. It could go either way.

The Idiotic MAGA New Right: Zelensky As ‘The Moment’ For Modern Men & A Vibe Shift


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hope I don’t sound too sexist, but, plot twist, men and women are different. And one of those many differences comes in, shall we say, how the two genders have a mythical “vibe shift.”

Women are far more dynamic than men. Vibe shifts happen for women almost every fashion season. Haircuts come and go at light speed. Fashion trends pop up out of nowhere then vanish as quickly as they came.

Men, meanwhile, are a lot slower with their vibe shifts. Because most professional, and, as such influential, men just wear business suits, vibe shifts take on a whole different nature.

Which brings us to Volodymyr Zelensky. But for how fucked up and divided America is at the moment, I might suggest that it would be the RIGHT, not the LEFT that would make Zelensky an icon. Zelensky behavior of late taps into the Western man’s self-perception of what leadership and masculinity is supposed to be. The people you would think would embrace this — conservative Traditionalists — are so busy having a MAGA New Right circle jerk that they are completely oblivious to what a potent icon Zelensky could be for the things that are near and their political agenda.

So, in a sense, ETTD strikes again — but for Trump being a massive suck up Putin, the MAGA New Right would have a natural inclination to try to make Zelensky “theirs” because it’s unlikely he has time to worry about what his fucking pronouns are at any particular moment.

And, yet, they have their head up their asses so much that they simply can not, will not, break from Trump and do what political logic would otherwise dictate. Crazy man. Just crazy.

The Tragic Missed Opportunity of ‘No Time To Die’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written about this before, but I’m drunk and irritated and so here we go. It is well known that Phoebe Waller-Bridge was brought in to punch up the No Time To Die screenplay.

You can occasionally see glimpses — I think — of her input in the movie’s third act. So, here we are — Bond has a family (at last) and his daughter is in danger as the Range Rovers are bouncing around in the forest. This was the point in the movie when I found myself the most engaged — I was leaning forward in my seat as I saw this, wondering what was going to happen next.

And, what happened next was not much. We’re invested in this unique situation for Bond — having a family — and THEN nothing happens. His daughter bites the villains finger and she escapes. That’s it.

I mean, that’s it.

There was so much more that could have been done with the concept of Bond Family Values. You could have had the little tyke prove her mettle in any number of different ways. It would have been really cool. This is even more so given that they’re going to kill of Bond (or a little while at least.)

And, yet, I still love the Bond franchise I understand why this happened. Bond is supposed to be lightweight summer blockbuster fun. So, lulz. But I do wish the Bond producers would at least think about making the next Bond a lot like The Dark Knight.

Anyway. No one listens to me.