When I was in Seoul, I came as close as I’m ever going to get to the Algonquin Round Table with something called Talking Crap. It was a little group of really witty people who sat around, got drunk and said witty things.
Now, let me be clear — absolutely no one listens to me and I have no friends. But if someone in New York City could round up a bunch of really interesting people — maybe four? — who would spend an hour each day talking about the New York scene and such.
I wish there was something I could do to make this a reality, but I can’t. I’m powerless. But if you want to know what’s inspired me, watch this video about the “Vicious Circle.”
There is no need to panic. And I’m just speculating, but it seems as though there is a possibility that there is now community spread of monkeypox happening here and there around the globe.
I say this because people are popping up who just seemingly randomly have it. Now, there is a vaccine for monkeypox and it’s 85% effective. So, the key issue is to simply hold tight and see what happens next.
This could pass and it be no big deal. But I will admit that COVID has me a little twitchy with the future o f monkeypox.
Even though I’m fixated on my Webstats to an embarrassing degree, I have come to believe that there’s a lot that goes on with them that my software doesn’t pick up.
One time, I saw someone apparently copy — scrape — my entire blog so they could read it as they liked without me being able see what they were interested in. And so, now, given all these accesses by “Automattic” I think maybe (?) something similar is going on?
Maybe someone is using a scraping bot to copy most — if not all — of my blog so they can look at it in peace later without me seeing them look at anything specific. The details of this elude me, but lulz, it’s fun to think and write about. And maybe I’m totally wrong and I’m just proving myself, yet again, to be a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”
But it would make a lot of sense — the access from “Automattic” isn’t just one hit or two. It’s dozen of hits over a very short amount of time.
Page Views:109 (14 this visit)Latest Page View:19 May 2022 22:26:45Visit Length:34 mins 9 secsResolution:UnknownSystem:UnknownUnknown
Total Visits:25Location:Ashburn, Virginia, United StatesISP / IP Address:Automattic (74.114.154.10) Referring URL:(No referring link)Entry Page: UnknownLatest Page: Unknown
Anyway, lulz, nothing matters. It’s just interesting. It’s interesting that anyone would go to the trouble of scraping this blog when they could just use the Internet Archive. But I guess the person in question doesn’t want me to know anything about them at all — they don’t want me to know their real ISP and they don’t want me to know what they’re interested in.
Which, of course, only makes the whole thing more intriguing. I suppose something bad is about to happen to me — get sued for some reason? — or something interesting might be about to happen. I’m a “terribly negative person” so I’m assuming I’m about to get sued.
It makes no sense whatsoever that anyone from Automattic would give a shit about me. Why would the people who run my publishing software care about what I’m writing on this obscure Website? So, let’s go through the theories.
1.) I’m Going To Be Deplatformed Soon This theory is that all my drunk ranting has caught the attention of someone at Automattic (or maybe Mueller, She Wrote) and they’re going to deplatform me because of it. All my drunk ranting got me deplatformed from Facebook, so I guess it’s possible it could happen here, too. 2) I’m Going To Be Featured Somehow With this theory it’s the opposite — all my ranting is interesting and, as such, I’m going to be praised somehow by Automattic for using their platform to be thought provoking.
3) I’m Looking At Things Wrong The last theory is it isn’t anyone from Automattic at all, but rather someone is simply accessing my content in such a way that it registers with my Webstat software as the Automattic domain name being the point of access. This is the most interesting of the theories. Who could it be? I don’t know. NSA? CIA? Someone from Hollywood interested in my ramblings about my novel now that I’m getting closer to wrapping up the first draft of the first novel?
Well, well, well, AOC is engaged. I’m quite pleased and I wish the couple well. But the pragmatic political observer in me has to smirk — I think AOC may run for POTUS in 2024 should the opportunity arise.
Now, some caveats
One is, I don’t know anything and, as a CIS white male, you should aggressively ignore me. Only an intersectional feminist woman of color can properly talk about the complexities of AOC getting engaged in the context of her political career.
So, if I was smart, I would either a) not write this post or b) stop here.
But, guess what, I’m a dumbass. So I’m going to not only keep going but also address the pink elephant in the room — if AOC wants to be POTUS, she probably needs to have a baby between now and November 2024. I say this as a long-time AOC supporter.
I’m just being realistic.
I mean, if HRC can have one (1) baby, then I don’t think it’s too much to believe that AOC will have one baby simply so the nutjobs on the far Right can’t attack her for not knowing the joys of motherhood.
Anyway. Ignore me. But I had to get that off my chest. I hope AOC runs — and wins — in 2024 (if the opportunity so arises.) And if not POTUS, maybe she can be someone’s veep.
The thing that so many Twitter liberals miss is we face a long term, structural problem when it comes to MAGA. They don’t to win every election, they just have to win enough elections to destroy American democracy. Which, if we were really all that honest, we would admit doesn’t even exist anymore.
We’re an anocracy. Or, in other words, an autocracy without an autocrat.
So, we’re either going to have a civil war or turn into an autocracy. At the moment, I think we’re just going to peacefully turn into a full blow autocracy because the entire system is designed to keep people sedate and placated. It happened in 2000 and when Republicans brazenly steal the 2024 election, it will happen again.
And that will be that.
There will be the occasional huge protest over this or that thing, but in general, they will be as meaningless in the United States as they are currently in Russia. So, lulz.
If you have the means, get out the country. It would be comforting to think that maybe the center-Left might at least put up some sort of struggle…but it definitely looks as though that isn’t going to happen.
I’m just about to wrap up the first draft of my first novel and I’m pleased with the general concept and plot. I still have a lot and I mean A LOT of work to do to get anywhere near being good enough to get published.
But, in general, the concept of this first novel is really good. It’s interesting and thought provoking and I think it will be a really good calling card for the rest of the universe I’ve come up with.
At a minimum, I at least won’t embarrass myself. That’s the goal, at least. And so there you go. I have a huge amount of writing to do. We’ll see how things work out.
Of all the people on SNL right now, I think Sarah Squirm is the edgiest of the troupe and, as such, would be perfect to be one of the two hosts of Weekend Update.
Sarah Squirm
She’s very brash and has the ovaries necessary to drag Weekend Update into the modern era. The only downside is she’s so brash and divisive that I suspect she would only be able to do it for a year or two.
But I really love her style of humor. It’s very, very funny. But it’s also so chaotic that it’s not as timeless as it might otherwise be.
I’m at ~110,000 words with this first draft of the first novel in what is projected to be a five novel project. And, for some reason, writing these last few scenes are a real struggle.
Some of it is I want to rush through these last few scenes, and, yet, I don’t want to. I don’t want to because I have so much slack in my schedule of development that I don’t have to rush — I still have all of May to wrap up the last few final scenes.
But they say the first draft is meant to be a your “vomit draft” so I need to get over the hump and just write something, anything, so I can turn my attention not just to other books in the series but reading a lot.
Anyway, I need to just do it. I need to get over myself and just wrap up this first draft. Yet is comforting that I’m ahead of schedule and I have a week or two where I can kind of chill out and not force myself to write if I don’t want to.
The rise of the celebrity candidate was mentioned in Ready: Player One when it’s mentioned off handedly that presidents were in the the future reality TV stars and so forth.
Oswald Mosley
Or, put another way, were witnessing huge swaths of the American government becoming useless if Republicans are in power. I’ve called this the “Mosleyification” of the Republican Party and I think that’s what’s going on. We’ve already seen this at the height of Trumplandia during the 2017 – 2019 timeframe.
So that’s the future we’re careening into. After Blue States “bend a knee” to Red States, we’ll gradually become no different than Russia. But let me be clear — Trump is too lazy and too much of an idiot for him to successfully turn us in to an autocracy.
But whomever his handpicked successor is, that person will be the person to successfully transition our current anocracy into an autocracy. Now, obviously, there is a risk of the other option happening, which would be a civil war. I don’t want that and I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Ashburn, Virginia, United StatesISP / IP Address:Automattic (74.114.154.10) 
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