The more I look over this, it definitely seems like I’ve written a lesbian pop rock song. It’s comical how impossible it would be for any lyrics I come up with to become an actual song, given I don’t know anything about music. But, lulz, it is very relaxing to write a story in really quick in a short burst of creativity.
Sweetspot lyrics by @sheltgarner please give credit if you produce or perform
looking at your sweetspot lying in the wetspot wondering how it came to be that you give time to someone such as me
(chorus) checking my clock wondering why I’m not in your sweetspot giving it all I got
lovers come and go but with you I’m on a roll even if I’m on the doll the toll of my desire only take the two us higher
(bridge) dry as can be when you’re far away from me my lips are cracking from all the smacking longing for you by my side so I can be in your sweetspot
(chorus) checking my clock wondering why I’m not in your sweetspot giving it all I got
I have no skin in the game when it comes to how the Twitter hivemind has decided to make Mindy Kaling the service’s Main Character for this Friday the 13th. Whatever. So what. Meh.
“Velma”
And, yet, there is a certain meta political element to it all that I find alarming. There is a good Scooby-Doo-Without-The Talking-Dog cartoon to be made that would appeal to the adult sensibilities of the people who loved the original Scooby Doo as kids…but I’m not so sure Kaling’s effort is it, from what I have seen.
I’ve often thought about how Olds struggle with the legacy of Scooby Doo because, in a sense, we remember the show as being a lot more serious than it actually was. So, what Olds want from an updated Scooby Doo is something like The Simpsons meets Arrested Development, only with a talking dog. And, yet, because it’s a cartoon…you also have to placate little tykes, too.
But the issue at the moment is — the fact that Twitter is freaking out over Kaling’s show “Velma” is yet another thing that Right wing people with a huge fucking cultural chip on their shoulder can point to and say, “the woke cancel culture mob is at it YET AGAIN.”
And this is happening in the context of the “woke cancel culture mob” absolutely INSISTING that the Velma character is a lesbian. What the what? That certainly isn’t going to help my Traditionalist relatives who think being gay is a “sin” stop having a chip on their shoulder. I really don’t care if Velma is a lesbian or not — more power to her if she is — but, yet again, the fact that it’s the orthodoxy of the “woke cancel culture mob” that a children’s cartoon character is a lesbian is alarming to Traditionalists…which forces them into the arms of fucking fascists.
Yet I must point out that Kaling must be doing something right if both political extremes are angry at her. Lulz, nothing matters. The Right things she’s woke and the Left thinks she a tone-deaf stooge for the anti-Trans movement.
I have fallen into a horrible rut as I reach my 50th birthday. I love to produce media but I loath to consume it. But, as they say, if you have time to write you have time to read (or watch.) I have a new Netflix account and there are all these really good movies and TV shows to watch….and I just can’t get into them.
Meh. I don’t care. *I* want to be the person creating content for other people, not having to slog through some other person’s vision. It’s all very curious and frustrating. I need to get outside my comfort zone, expose myself to new ideas so when I do write content I have those new ideas rolling around in my mind.
It’s all very much a pain in the ass, especially as I yet again start from scratch on a new iteration of the second draft of my first novel. It should not be so difficult. All I have to do is plop myself in front of my laptop and watch something, anything, for longer than a few moments.
The last few TV shows I actually got into were 30 Rock, Mad Men and the first season of Stranger Things — otherwise, nada. This is so embarrassing. Some of it is I have a very specific taste in content to the point that if it doesn’t hit me just right…I can’t bear to watch it.
Anyway. It’s time for me to come to grips with the fact that I’m not some sort of man in a high castle. If I’m going to be a successful content creator, I have to CONSUME content as well. It’s very difficult because as I’ve grown older, I’ve all out of the habit of consuming ANY media outside of the occasional movie.
One of the most frustrating things going on these days is how Right Wing “thought leaders” love to conflate the (annoying) soft power of the smug liberal elite media with the power of the Federal government.
This conflation is serves the purposes of the Right because it reduces everything down to an Us vs. Them situation.
I bring this up because I’m listening to the “All-In” podcast and David Sacks loves to do this very thing. He — and a lot of other Right wing thought leaders bitch and moan about the “bias” of the mainstream media and use that anger as a cudge to demand hard power.
Say what you will about the media and their power, Mr. Sacks, but they can’t put you in jail. Even the people that get “canceled” by the “woke cancel culture mob” are free to do the same damn thing they’ve always done — sometimes to great success.
The issue is that this conflation is parter a broader problem of the United States cleaving into two nations, Red and Blue. Right wing people are alarmed at the hyper societal change going on in the United States and the “bias” of the mainstream media is a shiny object that they point to when they want hard power.
As an aside, I really fucking hate people who are hyper partisan. And people like David Sacks have a huge and I mean HUGE chip on their shoulders and so they lash out. The whole whining about the power of the media is more a symptom of how popular fascism is in the United States than anything else. Sacks makes a point of saying that the evil libtards of the media have such absolute influence that they control the government via their reporting.
This is serious bullshit. Ron DeSantis — but for Trump — is probably going to be the next president of the United States, no matter how much he, and the Republican Party, are hated by the smug Twitter liberals. You can’t have it both ways — you can’t say the only reason why Trump became president was all the free publicity from the press and yet also refuse to acknowledge that the press doesn’t really have much power given that DeSantis now the frontrunner to become president in 2024.
The key issue is — if people like David Sacks get their way, will there be an equal and opposite reaction on the part of Blues? During the transition to a legalistic autocracy, will Blues refuse to “bend a knee” to fascism and demand a National Divorce?
I only keep writing about Emily Ratajkowski’s curious dating life because of how odd it all is. She’s demonstrably the best looking public woman out there today and yet she has become a very public serial dater. It makes you wonder if she suffers from a little bit of “Madonna in 1989 NYC-itis” or if it’s all some sort of extended romantic PR stunt.
Emrata on the prowl.
Or, put another way, Emrata is such a gorgeous bombshell of a woman — at least to me — that the fact that she’s bouncing from man to man to (eventually woman?) is of note. It’s not like she’s just another young woman who wants to have fun dating a lot of men.
She has fans — like me — who struggle to understand what’s going on when she is seen with man after man when she could very well just find A Stud and have an extended PR relationship with him and I could go back to just enjoying her occasional sexxy snap.
The fact that I’m writing about this AGAIN makes me worry that I have some sort of parasocial relationship with her. That’s a good question. No, I don’t think it’s THAT bad. I do think because I have an eye for beauty that I do have a low-key emotional investment in who she’s dating at any particular moment. I think some of it is that there may be a pretty big difference between her public persona and her actual personality.
I think she enjoys the attention for the very thing that’s making me uneasy — bouncing from man to man in a very public manner. Why Emrata is on Raya is beyond me. She has no need to be on a dating service — even if it’s for The Beautiful People.
I guess it could be worse, she could be dating someone like Marylin Manson. Ugh.
Anyway, good luck finding a long-term beau, Ermata.
At the moment, Trump is very much a loser joke — which is what Hitler was for much of the 1920s after the failure of the Beerhall Putsch. So, here is how ding-dong Trump wins the 2024 election.
A Debt Celling Debacle As I grow older, I begin to understand why graybeards are so reluctant to assume that the absolute worst is going to happen. And, yet, we have to take seriously the possibility that MAGA House Republicans are now so extreme that they’re willing to crash the global economy just out of pure spite. If there is a long-feared Debt Celling crisis and we don’t get around to minting a $1 Trillion coin to pay our bills because the House Freedom Caucus stands in the way…oh boy. Are we fucked. If there was a severe global downturn because of the dipshit House Republicans, that would definitely make the average American more receptive to a demagogue like Trump.
Trump Gets Indicted It goes without saying that if Trump is indicted that he will see a dramatic change in his political fortunes. Combine a Trump indictment with a severe economic downturn and a second Trump Administration definitely seems to be a foregone conclusion.
Petite Singularity Recession Even if we manage to muddle through a Debt Celling crisis, there is the issue that not only are we way overdue for a moderate-to-severe recession, but something akin to a Petite Singularity might be about to happen when things like ChatGPT 4.0 comes out and its results are “good enough” that your local capitalist pig can lay off as many workers as possible to save money during the contraction.
President Harris This one really makes me nervous. President Biden is very old. He should not run for re-election, but, lulz, here we are. What’s more, I just don’t have a lot of confidence in Kamala Harris. The worst case scenario would be, of course, that Biden shuffles off this mortal coil at some point between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025 while we’re in the middle of a severe recession, yikes!
A Patriot Party Promise It could be that, in the end, there is some sort of brokered Republican Convention and Trump wins the nomination because he vows to bounce to the Patriot Party if he doesn’t get the nod. It seems to me that the key issue for Trump is just to get the nomination. If he gets the nomination, I will be shocked if he doesn’t win again.
The key thing to remember is — if Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee, the likelihood of a Second American Civil War increases significantly. It will be Blues, not Reds, who demand a National Divorce.
I have a very conservative, very partisan Traditionalist relative who is still enraged over what happened with COVID policy. He has totally bought into simplistic Right Wing podcast talking points to an absurd level. The more I think about it, the more I realize it’s not COVID that he’s angry about.
His rage comes from being a white Christian male who, on a macro level, is flabbergasted at the rise of women’s economic power as well as some of the more exotic policy demands of the “woke cancel culture mob.” Things are moving too fast for him on a social level and because we have non-functioning politics he stews in his juices.
He’s a well meaning person who is not being served by the conservative agenda. If Republicans would do what parties in their situation typically do, he would be fed new, more popular talking points on Right Wing podcasts instead of believing that the United States is a “constitutional republic” not a democracy and fuck you, lib.
But the point is — I’m growing alarmed at how easy it would be for people to being to believe all these people dying a relatively young age has something to do with the COVID vaccine. All it would take is one study that somehow, someway “proved” that and…oh boy. People like my relative who grab a pitchfork and charge the Capitol.
I think some of my concern comes from the innate need to make connections, to see patterns. So, hopefully, we won’t have to have The Debate about how “right” the fucking Right wing nutjobs were about the safety of vaccines. I mean, millions of people have taken the COVID vaccines and nothing has happened to them. They’re safer, in real terms, than The Pill.
But because of hyper partisanship and negative partisanship, even a hint that some of these younger middle age people dying are dying because of the COVID vaccine will be enough to potentially cause violence.
So. I thought I had the novel’s new structure figured out…and then everything collapsed, forcing a hard reboot. A start from scratch. So, I spent much of today cherry picking the best ideas I’ve come up with the last half-month or so and threw them all into a new outline.
My dream title for my first novel.
It goes without saying that I can’t keep doing this forever. I’m going to have to accept that this is my first novel and I’m not Stieg Larsson. I have to accept that I have some severe headwinds against me at this point and no matter how “perfect” this damn thing is, the chance I actually get an agent and a book deal is extremely, terrifyingly remote.
I have to just give myself the right to fail.
I suppose I just don’t want to embarass myself. I want to have pride in my novel to the point that I’m willing to see this whole process to a conclusion one way or another.
I am therefore going to chill out for a day or so and contemplate my next move. I think I’m going to do some low-stress development between now and Sunday afternoon when I’m going to throw myself back into writing AGAIN. But I have to admit to myself that I’ve come up with a really, really good story. It’s just the specifics of it all that I have trouble gaming out.
I need to do a lot of reading. I need to distract myself from what’s going on with this novel so I can return to it in a few days refreshed instead of being stressed out on an existential level that I’m going to die before I ever actually do anything with my life.
I got really drunk last night and the only price I’ve had to pay — I don’t get hangovers — is a serious case of angst about my behavior. Not that I did anything so bad that I embarrassed myself, but I do feel a sense unease that I continue to do something dumb like bar hop and getting wasted on a weekday as I approach my 50th birthday.
But yesterday and today have been really productive otherwise. I talked a lot about the plot of the novel with the people around me and was pleased with the general reaction. Though a number of people, I fear, may have thought I was a little too forward and, as such, kind of creepy. But that’s been a problem my entire life — I generally have never met a stranger, for better or worse.
Anyway, I spent many, many hours today continuing to struggle with the first chapter of the second draft of the novel. The reason why it’s so difficult is the very beginning of the novel is the cornerstone of the whole thing and, as such, I have to figure out exactly what the story is about and how much I’m going to tell readers from the get-go.
This leads to me time and again thinking I have everything figured out, only to realize, nope, sure don’t. Almost all the scenes get thrown out, reimagined and otherwise thrown up in the air. I think I may have stabilized things, but only by pretty much starting from scratch.
Doing this, while necessary, is a real pain in the ass because it definitely makes me feel like I’m treading water. The solution to this during the first draft process, was to just race through things and once I had something, anything settled I kept moving. I feel the bar is a lot higher with the second draft, often what happens is my storytelling ability gets better and everything collapses when I realize I could do a lot better.
My dream title for my first novel.
But even I will admit that my writing and storytelling ability have gone much, much, MUCH better everytime everything falls apart and I have to start from scratch. Having said that I don’t want to let my perfectionist streak cause me to never finish anything.
What Is A Woman lyrics by @sheltgarner please give credit if you produce or perform
when push comes to shove we all have a woman we love who protects us from our fate of wondering when to end the debate she is there for us with care when we scream too loud on a dare
what is a woman you may ask what is a woman what is a woman what is a woman you may ask
she’s love personified no matter what might occur we have to believe she will always be there for in thick and thin ever when we wander into a life of sin but for a woman in our life would there be any delight
what is a woman you may ask what is a woman what is a woman what is a woman you may ask
(bridge) men come and go wanting us to believe they have it all together but if they don’t have a woman in their life they’re all alone without delight
what is a woman you may ask what is a woman what is a woman what is a woman you may ask
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