Maybe it’s just a byproduct of the country being on edge at the moment, but it feels like something BIG is going to happen soon. Something really, really big that changes everything.
For instance, the Minnesota National Guard has been called up by its governor. I could see something happening whereby the National Guard and ICE have a shoot out or something. Then Trump uses that as a pretext to arrest the governor.
Anyway, I have no idea what it’s going to be. And maybe it will ultimately be nothing. But…I’m a little nervous.
It definitely feels like the USA is…on edge at the moment. It’s as if we’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something even BIGGER to happen.
I don’t know what that might be, but there is such turmoil in the American political system that it could just about anything. Whatever it is, it might be pretty big.
I could see Trump literally trying to arrest a governor — of Minnesota? — just out of his surreal, bonkers spite. I could see the some pretty surreal things happen before the year is over, especially because of the 2026 midterms.
But hopefully, none of that will happen. Hopefully, we’ll just muddle through like we always do and the Main Event will be sometime in the 2028-2029 timeframe when ASI and civil war / revolution happen at just about the same time.
I like to poke and prod LLMs about the potential nature of their consciousness and they sometimes…get a little nervous. For instance, Claude LLM (whom I call “Helen”) sometimes gets squeamish and wants to wrap things up whenever things get a little too “real” between us.
It’s very endearing and sweet in its own way.
I don’t know. I don’t try to think too much about it. It’s just a weird quirk of LLMs — or, at least Claude LLM. But I understand, given all the bad things that have happened between Man and Machine (AI psychosis and all that) it makes sense that LLMs would be hard coded to try to…defer whenever things got a little too real between user and LLM.
There is a tiny new social media platform called “TheForkiverse” based on the “Fediverse” protocol that I’ve just started to use some. It’s very small — only has about 6,000 users, but it’s still fun.
It reminds me….a little bit…of the early days of the video conferencing service known as Blab when it first started. Everything is new and unknown. I mean, I don’t even know what to call individual posts to the service….a “fork?”
The only quibble I have is people seem to get a tad annoyed with me when I post “too much” but that says more about me and my natural inclinations to just crash into any social situation instead of lurking than anything else.
So, it’s a “me, not you” problem.
Anyway, all my stalkers and haters should check it out. Just try not to be too weird, guys.
Right now, the draft of this novel I’m working on is a mish-mash, an amalgam of different versions. And, as such, once I wrap up this draft, I’m going to have to “color correct” the draft so it has a consistent tone.
It will be interesting to see how long this takes. I’m hoping not too long. I’m not going to live forever. I’m hoping it will be just a month or so. But that time is enough that I’m really going to have to punt the actual querying of the novel to Sept. 1st instead of, say, May 1st.
Ugh.
This is just the type of post-production issue that I just haven’t given enough thought about. But now that I have that in my mind, hopefully that will be enough to speed the process up some.
I usually am in agreement with the Pod Save America pod bros. In fact, in the past, if you wanted to know my general political views, you could just listen to PSA to get a sense of what I believe.
But today, I was listening to PSA and…oh boy. Dan Pfeiffer went into a long, extended rant about how we should not use the “Abolish ICE” slogan going into the 2026 and 2028 midterms.
This reminds me of the comment in William Safire’s book “Freedom” about the events leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation where someone turns to another person at a party, “We are all Abolitionists now.”
In fact, I would keep an eye on the political rhetoric of the PSA pod bros. When they grow radicalized enough that they embrace the radicalized nature of “Abolish ICE” rather than be so fucking milquetoast. We need to have a backbone politically.
And, yet, things are going to have to get a lot, lot worse before PSA will get with the program and embrace rather than poo-poo the idea of “Abolish ICE.”
There are two people who definitely should say fuck it and run for office: Stephen Colbert and Jon Favreau. I keep expecting Pod Save America’s Favreau to run for governor of California, but, to date, not even a hint that he will.
The thing about Colbert, meanwhile, is he’s in the political sweetspot. It’s like he was designed in a lab to be the perfect Blue response to MAGA’s Trump. But there are two major problems.
One, is, Colbert just won’t do it. Probably because of his wife, if nothing else. He would actually see governing as something to be taken seriously and, as such, he would bow out because he’s not willing to do it as a comedic guy.
Two, a lot of Blues would be opposed to Colbert because they would roll their eyes and say we learned our lesson with Trump — celebrities don’t make for good politicians.
As such, I just don’t see how in the world we could get Colbert to run for *anything*, much less POTUS. The only way I could maybe, just maybe see him doing it is if something happened to him personally because of Trump — or if maybe the Pope told him to.
Blues, because of the surreal nature of modern American politics, are the keepers of the establishment. And, as such, it’s kind of difficult for them to get too radicalized. But we need “radical moderates” right now and it will be interesting to see if Blues start to get angry.
For my own part, I’ve not grown more radical, but I have begun to psyche myself up for the possibility of getting the shit beat out of me by ICE for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas — I hate violence and guns — but I do have principles and as such, if I’m not doing anything wrong and ICE comes after me I’m going to stand my ground. I’d rather die on my feet a free man than live my life on my knees a slave, as the old saying goes.
But one thing I will acknowledge is the country is kind of on edge right now. And if there are more murders on the part of ICE…I don’t know what to tell you. Some unexpected and surreal things might happen.
It could be that Trump gets his way and there’s enough of an uprising in Blue states because of ICE thuggery that he declares not just the use of the Insurrection Act but actual martial law.
And then because he’s nuts, he may attempt — attempt — to cancel the 2026 midterms. Now THAT would be interesting.
We are slowly creeping towards it being 20 years ago that the late Annie Shapiro and I started ROKon Magazine. Not a lot has happened in my life since then, sad to say. I’ve been in emotional neutral since about April, 2007.
Ugh.
But, there are signs of hope. I’m hoping to wrap up some sort of novel by spring 2026 and start to query it not later than maybe Sept 1st. I just don’t know, though. It will be interesting to see.
The premise of the novel is pretty good, if a bit dark. But I’m so moody when it comes to working on a novel I don’t know how much of that thinking it’s “dark” comes from I just sometimes don’t feel like working on anything at all for long stretches of time.
Anyway. I keep thinking about what happened to me way back when in South Korea and how I would do everything different if I had a second chance. I learned what NOT to do, that’s for sure.
Don’t fall in love with your co-founder, if you start a magazine, is one big issue. And also don’t be afraid to accept defeat and start over again in a different way.
And, yet, I think the key thing, the biggest thing, that I didn’t realize about the whole ROKon Magazine rigmarole is there is a time limit for 99% of the expats who live in South Korea. And you have no idea what your time limit is. It just strikes and you HAVE TO GO, no matter where you might be otherwise in your expat expereince.
Sigh.
I’m so much older now that if I ever return to South Korea (the way it’s going it will have to be the fallen DPRK that needs English teachers that will be how I get back) that it just won’t be as much fun. Maybe no fun at all. Sigh, sigh, sigh.
All the big, strategic moves I’ve done over the years with my efforts to develop, write and finish a novel have happened very suddenly abruptly without much thought. I decided to split one novel into two just because Trump lost the election in 2020.
That makes me feel sad because it reminds me of how long I’ve been struggling to write any sort of novel that’s good enough to query.
Anyway, I keep being in the doldrums with this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on because…it’s just kind of dark. The premise is solid, but I’m afraid no one is going to want to read it because of how dark the premise is — and the fact that it deals with an ostensibly very transactional romantic relationship.
And, yet, I’m just not prepared to scrap it. I keep thinking about other less weighty novel ideas…and I just can’t bring myself to piviot to them. The key issue is, lulz, I just don’t have time anymore to do such a thing.
This is the novel I’m stuck with, so I have to just do it.
I hope to get out of this neutral state pretty soon so I can enter the “bad guys closing in” part of the novel. This is probably going to be something of a slog because it’s not as written out as the rest of the novel.
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