It’s not one to one, but as a rule of thumb, the podcasting space is around the same level of development as blogging was around 2003. If I have my chronically correctly, I think Gawker Media was founded around 2002 – 2003.
Anyway, the point is — podcasting is still somewhat under developed. There is still room for a blow out podcast network to blow up out of nowhere. There are a few really powerful podcast networks floating around, but there remains a bit of excitement in the podcasting sphere.
There is a window of opportunity for something cool to happen. I doubt anyone will do anything about it, though.
While it’s still a few steps down the road, I’m beginning to think seriously about the querying process. Apparently, there are two seasons for querying — spring and fall. I’m not making spring 2022 or fall 2022, but I have a decent chance of beginning to query in spring 2023.
I’m so close to wrapping up the first draft of the first novel. I’m getting really excited. As I may have said before, I’m going to pause for a month then write the second draft.
I think if I can factor in the amount of time necessary to write a second draft and to get beta readers to read the second draft THEN writing a corrected third draft, well, that’s around spring 2023. I suppose I may get pushed into fall 2023, but if that happens, I’m going to have the first three of the five novels in the project completed (at least.)
I believe I have a decent shot of actually doing what I set out to do — successfully going through the process of selling my first novel (or more.) I can’t believe it’s been three or four years since I started this process.
But I have to believe. I have to just have to believe that somehow, some way I’m going to not only querying my first novel, but get an agent and then sell it. That’s it. That’s the dream.
I’m reading the new history of Watergate and it’s really, really good. I hope to learn how Watergate is different from the modern post-accountability era of Trumplandia that we currently live in.
Nixon, in the end, at least had, like, shame and shit. But Trump and his ilk are post-shame and because the people who brought Nixon down — the people I call conservative “Traditionalists” are totally co-oped by the fascists MAGA…lulz. We’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked.
Instead of seeing the traditional arc of a Washington scandal that started with Watergate, with Trumplandia we see the system has failed us. No one is going to save us, no matter how often some Blue Check liberal writes a long, breathless Twitter thread meant to leave us with the idea that the system is going to work.
It’s not. The system isn’t working. There’s no hope. No one and no thing is going to save us. We have to accept that we’re either going to have a fucking civil war or we’re going to slip into autocracy without putting up any struggle at all.
Anyone with any “hope” of the system working — as it allegedly did with Nixon — is a fucking fool and I struggle to understand how you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. You should hang your head in shame.
The system didn’t REALLY work with Nixon because he quit before it could. Had he let the system work and allowed himself to be impeached and convicted, I think, in the end, we would have been a lot better off. The crazy thing is the absolute worst elements of the Nixon Whitehouse are now tame compared to how fucking bonkers the modern GQP is now.
There are a dozen people — men and women — who want to be Trump’s autocratic successor. And we’re not going to do a damn thing to stop them. I don’t want a civil war — hell, I hate conflict of any sort — but it’s rather embarrassing that we won’t even put up a struggle at all when our democracy (which is now an anocracy) is finally snuffed out.
Anyway. I haven’t gotten very far in the Watergate history. But I am moving quite quickly. It’s really well written.
The brass ring is right there for Mike Pence and he’s such a fucking coward that he won’t grab it. All he has to do is become a #NeverTrumper and he instantly becomes a darling of the center-Left to the point that there will be talk of him heading some sort of “Unity Ticket” in 2024.
Or not. Don’t listen to me. I’m just some doofus in the rural part of a flyover state.
But the case could be made that if Pence did some domestic realpolitik assessments in his mind that it would be clear that the only way he will ever and I mean EVER become politically relevant again is to become a #Never Trumper. And as Liz Cheney has shown, you don’t even have to change your otherwise antediluvian conservative views.
He would get a pass from the center-Left for all his other brutish conservative views simply because he turned his back on Trump and MAGA. He already has the means, motive and opportunity to do it and…yet he won’t do it. He is beginning to kind of do things on the edges, but in general he’s still towing the MAGA line.
I will note, however, that if there is some sort of Second American Civil War that Pence definitely might change his mind on being MAGA. In fact, I would go so far as to say him jumping ship to Blue State leadership would be a sign that we’re about to have a second American civil war.
Yet, of course, I still am reluctant to believe we’re going to have a civil war in the first place, even though it’s a definite possibility. Blue States just don’t have it in them to leave the Union, especially given their lack in leadership — unless, of course, someone like Mike Pence becomes over to their side.
I’m just about to wrap up the climax of my first novel. Then I have two final chapters and then I’m done with the first draft — at last.
Once that’s finally done, I’m going to finish up printing out the entire thing then give myself about a month to just read, daydream and develop the other novels in the five novel project.
I have, in general, a lot of reading to do.
And, for some strange reason, this specific chapter has been really, really tough to sketch out. I find myself moving things around and changing them like I did for ages with the first act.
But anyway, I’m very, very close to wrapping all this up. I’m getting excited about reading a lot and throwing myself into developing the second novel in this five novel project. A lot –and I mean A LOT — could still go wrong. But, lulz, I’ve gotten this far, why not keep going?
Even though I’m 100% extroverted, I know that it’s possible that someone might get the wrong impression about me and think I’m some sort of deranged person with all my drunken political ranting I do.
I’m not. I’m completely harmless and just sometimes need to let off some steam in between working on wrapping the first draft of my first novel. I got nervous when someone from my hosting company — DreamHost — looked at this blog.
And now someone from the people who make my publishing system — Automattic — have looked at this blog. What the what?
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Anyway. Who knows. I haven’t done anything wrong as best I can tell. I am a little nervous that “Mueller, She Wrote” is thinking of putting a restraining order on me. That would be…interesting?
There will be no “National Divorce.” What there might be is a civil war. And we’re definitely doing to slip into the autocracy of white minority rule if we don’t have a civil war.
The United States is far more unstable than we realize. And, really, the only thing keeping us from having a civil war at the moment (starting around 2025) is a complete lack of leadership on the part of the center-Left. The center-Right, meanwhile, has more would-be autocratic leaders than you can shake a stick at.
There must be, at a minimum, a dozen men and women who could be our first real autocrat — all the have to do is get past ding-dong Trump.
But the center-Left is mush.
The argument could be made, I suppose, that between now and 2025 some sort of center-Left leadership will rise to the occasion. That, or the “radical moderates” of the #NeverTrump movement will take over and populate the leadership of the Blue States.
But that’s a whole bunch of wishful thinking — or drinking.
I vacillate wildly between thinking we’re doomed to a dystopian MAGA hellscape, to thinking we’re doomed to bomb ourselves into oblivion as part of a civil war. I just don’t see there being any middle ground when the time comes.
We’re going to face an existential choice, one way or another.
Enjoy this era of a vibe shift while you can, is all I gotta say.
Since Hollywood is all about using existing IP and not having a single original idea, why not make a Moonlighting movie with Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Maddie Hayes and, say, Ryan Reynolds as David Addison.
It would be great. The show itself was really surreal at times and one could make the argument that Reynolds is nothing more than Bruce Willis with a few tweaks for modern audiences. And Waller-Bridge playing the uptight Hayes would be a great way for her to show comedic range.
No one listens to me. And, maybe they shouldn’t. But it is an interesting idea.
Part of getting older is realizing that the Youngs don’t have the same reference as you do as an Old. As such, there is all established IP that Hollywood could do a hard reboot of that is currently fallow that your average GenZ person wouldn’t eve an blink at.
In other words, as I’ve written before, you could very easily do a hard reboot of the Alien franchise and make a huge amount of money. Yes, a lot of Olds would be enraged that you’ve desecrated not one, but wo great movies — Alien and Aliens — but we’re old coots and so fuck us.
Here’s what I would do — lock in Zendaya to play Ripley for three movies and get the best horror director you can find as well as part of the deal. I mean, I’ve seen the origin story for Batman, like, what six times now? Why not hard reboot the Alien franchise and finally, finally fix some huge fucking structural problems with it.
Let me explain — at the end of the second movie, I was promised Xenomorphs on earth. I never got it. I want it. I was reminded of this promise when I saw the next Jurassic World movie features dinosaurs running around Rome and such. So, what you do is, you somehow rework the third installment of this new Alien franchise such at you kind of get a World War Z vibe to it with Xenomorphs taking over the world and Zendaya having to save the world.
There you go, you can make $1 billion right there.
But, let me be clear, all three movies have to be R rated with lots of horror and gore. If you choke and make them PG-13, then you’re missing the point of the franchise.
I have a fairly decent scifi concept I need to do something with. It flips the script of almost all established scifi tropes. It springs from a scifi scenario I’ve been struggling with for about 10 years. I call it the “Impossible Scenario” because it’s well, impossible to figure out.
But I’ve come us with a version of a solution that still has enough problems with it to generate a plot (problems = conflict = plot.) Anyway, the plot would, in a sense, be a lot like The Last Star Fighter. Sorta. That would sort be the vibe to it.
A video game would be involved, but instead of 80s arcade game, a 2022 strategy game would be involved.
Anyway, I have five novels to work on. This idea is going to, for the time being, continue to be something that rolls around in my mind when I’m bored and struggling for something to think about to fill existential dread. But I’m a lot closer to getting to the point where I could write a short story or something that would deal with a subset of the concept.
One reason why it’s so enticing is you could definitely use it as the basis for a “Don’t Look Up” kind of screenplay. But what I have in mind would not be as silly as that movie was. It would use the concept I’ve come up with as a way to address how divided we are and how even if aliens presented us with an amazing opportunity we would STILL somehow manage to shoot ourselves in the foot.
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