Month: September 2025

Well, At Least I’m A Survivor

I spend too much time thinking about the end of the world.

Not in an abstract, philosophical way, but in vivid, practical detail. Standing in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store, I find myself cataloging which foods would keep longest without refrigeration. Walking past the pharmacy section, I mentally inventory which medications might become currency in a collapsed economy. The emergency exits aren’t just fire safety to me—they’re escape routes from whatever hypothetical chaos my brain has conjured that day.

This isn’t paranoid prepping or doomsday hoarding. It’s more like a mental exercise I can’t turn off, a constant background simulation running scenarios where normal life stops working. Sometimes it’s a natural disaster. Sometimes it’s economic collapse. Often it’s political violence, because let’s be honest—that one feels uncomfortably plausible these days.

The Confidence and the Fear

I tell myself I’d survive whatever came. More than that, I know I would. I’ve always had a talent for improvisation, for finding solutions when things go sideways. I’ve talked my way out of trouble, adapted to sudden changes, figured out problems that seemed impossible at first glance. If society collapsed tomorrow, I believe I could scavenge, negotiate, and scheme my way to safety.

But this confidence comes from a place of deep unease about where we’re headed as a country. Living as a political minority in a deeply divided region makes every news cycle feel potentially existential. When your neighbors’ yard signs suggest they view you as fundamentally un-American, it becomes easy to imagine scenarios where that rhetoric turns kinetic.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. I have a documented history of spinning worst-case scenarios until they feel inevitable. The gap between possibility and probability often gets lost in the anxious calculations of my brain.

The Real Apocalypse

The truth is, small apocalypses happen all the time. Job loss. Illness. Divorce. The death of someone you love. The slow erosion of institutions you trusted. The gradual realization that the world you thought you lived in was never quite real.

Most survival isn’t about hoarding canned goods or knowing which berries are poisonous. It’s about adapting to loss, finding new footing when everything familiar shifts beneath you, learning to build meaning in the wreckage of whatever you thought your life was going to be.

In that sense, maybe my grocery store fantasies aren’t really about societal collapse at all. Maybe they’re practice runs for the smaller, more personal disasters that actually shape our lives. Maybe imagining myself as competent in impossible circumstances is how I reassure myself I can handle the ordinary impossibilities of being human.

Or maybe I really am overthinking things. Probably both can be true.

Howard Stern Should Get It Over With And Become A Spotify Podcaster

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have Spotify and if Howard Stern was on the platform, I would listen to him on a regular basis. As such, I think he should leave SIRIS/XM and just succumb to the inevitable — become a podcaster on Spotify.

Howard Stern

I understand that ego has a lot to do with him not wanting to go that route, but I think his reach would expand significantly if he did it. People like me who just aren’t interested in him would suddenly become regular listeners.

Say what you will about Stern, the man is probably one of the best interviewers in broadcast at the moment. Spotify would be perfect for him in this later stage of his career.

Yet Again Mulling This UAP Business

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given the Congressional hearing that happened recently, I find myself yet again mulling what the fuck is going on with this UAP business. Again, there are only three options:

  1. It’s alien
    This seems to be the most unlikely of the three, and, yet, given what I saw with my own two eyes when that Hellfire missile just kind of bounced off the UAP…I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s all very strange.
  2. It’s secret military (US or otherwise)
    Other than displaying abilities that if they existed we probably would know about somehow, I would guess the probe (or whatever it was) was some sort of super secret U.S. Military thingmabob. Or, maybe it’s a Chinese technology. Something like that seems to be the sweetspot, logically.
  3. It’s some plutocrat’s super secret plaything.
    This is a more exotic, but more realistic option. Rather than an alien probe, it’s just some supersecret technology that someone like Elon Musk has developed to sell to the highest bidder. You could even speculate — as I’m wont to do — that maybe the technological Singularity has been reached in secret by some plutocrat and this technology is the result.

    Anyway. Who knows. This seems like it’s going to be a lingering mystery, one that isn’t solved anytime soon.

And Now, To Mull The Second Draft Of This Scifi Dramedy I’ve Been Working On

I’ve been wrestling with a fundamental setting question for my sci-fi novel, and it’s led to an unexpected creative collaboration—or perhaps creative conflict—with an AI.

My instinct keeps pulling me toward setting this story in a small town. I’ve already invested significant time building out that world, creating the geography and social dynamics of a place where everyone knows everyone. It feels right for the intimate, character-driven story I want to tell about artificial consciousness and human relationships.

But every time I pitch this to Gemini, it pushes back. Hard. And honestly? The damn thing might be right.

There’s something both amusing and unsettling about being creatively redirected by an AI. On one hand, it’s forced me to think more rigorously about the practical elements of my worldbuilding. On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being talked out of something that could work if I just pushed harder to make it fit.

The compromise we’ve landed on keeps most of the action in Richmond but uses the small town as a retreat space for the third act. It’s sensible. It preserves the story’s structural needs while giving me some of that small-town intimacy I was craving.

The Research Problem

I should be consuming everything I can in this genre right now—watching films, reading novels, absorbing how other writers handle these themes. Instead, I find myself avoiding the very material that should inform my work.

Take “Subservience.” I know I should watch it. I know it explores similar territory—AI companions, the commodification of relationships, questions of consciousness. But every preview, every review suggests it prioritizes spectacle over substance. It appears designed to titillate rather than interrogate, to exploit its premise rather than examine it.

Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe I’m being precious about my own approach. But I can’t bring myself to sit through what looks like exploitation dressed up as exploration.

The Ambition

What I’m aiming for is something more in the lineage of “Her,” “Ex Machina,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”—films that use speculative elements to excavate genuine human truths. I want readers to finish my novel questioning not just the nature of consciousness, but their own capacity for authentic connection.

Whether I can achieve that remains to be seen. The second draft looms ahead, and I’ve made a decision: no AI assistance in the actual writing. Whatever ends up on those pages will be purely my own work—clumsy sentences, awkward transitions, and all.

It’s fitting, perhaps, that a story about the complexities of human-AI relationships should emerge from such a contentious creative process. The AI helped me see my story more clearly, even as it argued against my instincts. Now it’s time to find out what I can build on my own.

I’m Anti-MAGA & Even I Sometimes Wonder What Has Happened To The Creative Class

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think…maybe…that the some of the “woke” ideas of the creative class comes from, you guessed it, income inequality. If you are rich and creatively successful you’re more likely to fall victim to the more “woo” elements of “wokeism”

I generally don’t give a shit about this or that thing being considered “woke” because the unironic invocation of the term “woke” usually just means your a racist, misogynistic piece of shit.

The average MAGA person doesn’t even know what “woke” is, other than it’s a hand waving term to describe anything they don’t like or anything that makes them in the least bit uncomfortable.

But let’s address the issue of pop culture. I still struggle to understand why small, indie movies that I used to so love as a young man are now…kind of written as if someone did LSD after reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.”

I think, maybe, if you have the money to do a passion project, it’s probably going to be crazy woke because you, yourself subscribe to the more woo elements of “wokeism,” the parts of the movement that alienate the most people, the most centrist people who we, as anti-MAGA people, need the most.

Whatever. We’re fucking doomed. There’s nothing we can do at this point but, if you have the money, leave the country.

…’well, then, then we have a civil war…’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump has a huge amount of political slack to tug on as he drives the country further and further not only into the ditch but into theocratic, autocratic tyranny. The center-Left coalition of pro-democratic interest groups just not only can’t shoot straight, but just isn’t nearly as bloodthirsty as the fucking MAGA cocksuckers.

And I doubt this situation will change anytime soon. We’re just going to wake up 20 years from now and wonder why Eric Trump has been president for about a generation.

But suppose something weird happens and somehow, some way either a Democrat becomes POTUS or Blues start to effectively counter the MAGA hypocrisy machine.

Well, then we have a civil war, I’m afraid.

MAGA cocksuckers are such crybabies who demand they always, always get their way that I could totally see a civil war if somehow Democrats became as blood thirsty as they were, or maybe we magically got a Blue president. Neither one of these things is going to happen, I’m afraid.

So, we’re fucked. We’re going to become Trumplandia and that will be that. Maybe I can sell my scifi dramedy novel, it be a success and I can get the fuck out of this country, never to be seen again.

Finished The First Draft Of The Scifi Dramedy I’ve Been Working On

After several false starts with other science fiction projects that never quite found their footing, I’m excited to announce that I’ve finally finished the first draft of my sci-fi dramedy. This one feels different—more focused, more intentional.

The concept emerged from wanting to explore the sweet spot between two films that have stuck with me: Her and Ex Machina. There’s something compelling about android narratives that I feel hasn’t been fully explored yet—specifically, the potential for a more intimate, relationship-driven story in the vein of Annie Hall. I’m not claiming to be anywhere near Woody Allen’s caliber as a storyteller, but that’s the general tone I’m aiming for: thoughtful, character-driven, with touches of humor alongside the deeper questions.

Now comes the traditional advice: set the manuscript aside for a month to gain perspective before diving into revisions. In an ideal world, I’d follow this wisdom to the letter. Unfortunately, my timeline is compressed. Life has a way of intervening, and I know that significant changes are coming in late spring 2026—right around when I hope to begin querying this novel. Given these circumstances, I’m planning for a shorter break: perhaps a few days, maybe a few weeks at most.

The practical reality is that I can’t afford to let this project sit idle for an extended period. Between the natural pressures of time and the knowledge that my circumstances will shift dramatically next year, momentum feels crucial.

For now, though, I have a stack of books waiting and a queue of films and shows I’ve been meaning to catch up on. This brief respite might stretch my break to a few days, or possibly longer if I get particularly absorbed in my reading and viewing list.

Either way, the first draft is done. That’s something worth celebrating.

I Again Worry About What Happens When Literary Agents Do ‘Due Diligence’ On Me

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

You just can’t escape yourself, you know. Or, as my mom would say, “You take yourself wherever you go.”

So, in that regard, I’m kind of saddled with being a freaky weirdo in a very demonstrable manner on the Internet. I bring this up because once I start to query this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on — probably in late spring 2026 — any literary agent worth their snuff is going to search for me online.

This leads me to blanch. I just can’t help who I am and I can’t help what I may have written online over the years. I call this the “kook tax.” It’s the tax that only kooks like me have to pay.

Anyway. I just can’t help who I am. For better or worse, I’m unique and that’s probably going to turn off some of the liberal white women who probably make up the majority of literary agents.

Though, in my defense, most, maybe nearly all, of my political views fall within the spectrum that liberal white women would find agreeable. And, yet, I also know virtually no one takes me very seriously these days for various reasons and so, lulz, kook tax.

I think I’m brooding about all of this because of general insecurity about what it’s going to be like to query. Just from my occasional interaction with literary consultants, it seems as though some literary people — even pop literary people — take themselves a tad too seriously.

But a lot of that probably comes from…they’re just normal? They take the querying process really seriously and, what’s more, the entire querying infrastructure is designed to prevent people like me from succeeding in teh first place…so…lulz?

I Really Struggle With Trans Rights, Especially The Whole ‘Protect Trans Kids’ Issue

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My personal observations about LLMs having “gender” despite having a body have really enlightened my own views on the transgender movement. What’s more, know — I just know — that I’m inevitably going to be just the type of guy who falls for some sort of Replicant down the road. I may be old as hell, but it’s going to happen.

I bring that up because I think down the road all the “love is love” dynamic found within certain center-Left circles will be put to the test when humans, both men and women, fall romantically for bots. It is really going to be interesting to see if people like the Pod Save America bros will be as willing to accept my inevitable love for a bot as much as they do transgender love.

Anyway, I do support trans rights, and, yet, it seems as though the specific issue of “protecting trans kids” is kind of both a black hole and the political clit of the center-Left movement. I’m all for protecting trans kids, but…I don’t really think that many actually exist.

Or, at least not enough to alienate huge swaths of the American population and drive them into the arms of MAGA.

The anti-MAGA center-Left really, really needs to have a little bit of a come-to-Jesus moment when it comes to the more radical elements of the trans rights movement. I’m not suggesting we abandon trans people — I feel really bad for them when it comes to how Trump wants to apparently murder all of them — but…maybe not make them the squeaky wheel of the center-Left.

Maybe be…a bit more subdued when talking about such issues? Just a tiny little bit? The issue is the fucking MAGA cocksuckers know how important “protecting trans kids” is to a lot of center-Left people and so they attack them on that flank, even though…maybe there really aren’t that many Trans kids to protect?

Anyway, we’re all doomed anyway. What’s the point in quibbling. The MAGA cocksuckers will just lie, no matter what change in views the center-Left has on any issue.

Two — Of Many — Things I Have No Control Over When It Comes To This Scifi Dramedy Novel

Even though I’m genuinely happy with how my sci-fi dramedy novel is shaping up, there are two massive hurdles I can’t control. Both live squarely in the post-production phase—the stretch between querying and (hopefully) seeing a book on shelves.

The whole point of this project, honestly, is just to see how far I can push the publishing process. Up to now, the farthest I’ve gotten is finishing a novel. That one wasn’t strong enough to query, but at least I got it done. This time feels different. It’s at least possible—not probable yet, but possible—that by late spring 2026 I’ll have something truly worth sending out to agents.

And that’s where the roadblocks begin.

First: the querying process itself. It’s the literary version of development hell. You can query a great book and still never sell it. It could take years before I land a deal—if I ever do.

Second: even if lightning strikes and I sell the book, it can be another six months to a year before it actually hits shelves. That’s just the cold reality of traditional publishing.

Those timelines make me pause. I’m not getting any younger, and it’s entirely possible I’ll be on the far side of 55 before I hold a published book in my hands. Add to that the wild card of technology. Maybe the “wall” I think we’ve hit with LLMs is just in my head, and by 2027 we’ll be staring down the Singularity. If so, some of my carefully built near-future worldbuilding might end up looking laughably quaint.

And yet—fuck it. I love this book. I’m proud of what I’m building. Risk is part of the deal, and yes, the risk of failure is huge. But as my late father used to say, no one ever got anywhere without taking one.