Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

I’m Really Worried About 2026

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a feeling that 2026 is going to be a very turbulent year for me one way or another. It’s going to be a year of transitions, no matter what. If I’m really lucky, the weird vibe I’m feeling about the coming year will be because I know in my heart that the novel I’m working on is good enough to successfully be queried.

If I’m not lucky, then, lulz, some pretty fucked up shit is going to happen to me on a personal level because of macro changes out of my control.

And, yet, I’ve really appreciated this surreal moment in my life where I got to be an artist and just sort of drifted through life.

But, as I alluded to, I think this era in my life is probably about to wrap up because of fucking Trump. And, what’s more, we do have the 2026 midterms coming up and there are no assurances that they will be free and fair. The States kind of exists in a luminal political state at the moment where we’re not quite a democracy but not quite a total authoritarian state.

I think the exact term is “anocracy.”

Anyway, wish me luck, guess. If all goes according to plan, I am going to spend a big portion of 2026 querying a scifi dramedy. And, who knows, maybe it will be sold, be a success, and a new, a lot more fun era in my life will begin.

YouTube Thinks It Has Me Figured Out, Apparently

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a very specific cohort of songs that YouTube pushes to me as part of my MyMix Playlists. It’s always the same songs: Song on the Beach from the movie Her, Air on G String, Clair De Lune, and songs that use clips from The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I don’t quite know what to make of it all.

On one hand, it’s just a fluke of YouTube. On the other, I wonder if, like there’s some sort of secret ASI lurking inside of Google services (Prudence?) trying to catch my attention.

I am well aware that it’s the former not the latter. But it’s just eerie how persistent YouTube is about pushing that core group of songs. It’s getting kind of annoying. I don’t know what it means.

I would like Google services to push me different songs as part of my MyMix Playlist. Of course, I guess I could just use Spotify more. I’m kind of torn. The songs that I’m being pushed by YouTube really are good, but it would be nice to have a little bit of variety.

Anyway. Lulz, nothing matters.

I Really Did Not Like The Movie ‘Marty Supreme’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Where to begin with this one. I went into Marty Supreme largely blind. I knew it was a movie about ping-pong and that was about it. Well, jokes on me because it turned out it was more about the disastrous life of a 23-year-old asshole.

I was expecting a rousing, audience pleasing tale of a young man making it big in the world of professional ping-pong. But, lulz, that’s not at all what happened. It just seemed like a succession of poor decisions on the part of the hero.

I didn’t care about the characters. I didn’t care about the sport. So about 90% in I walked out. Maybe the last 10% of the movie gave me what I expected, but I had better things to do, so I don’t know.

Anyway, I struggle to understand why people think Marty Supreme is such a great movie. Every time I think I’ve gotten a handle on it, it slips through my grasp. The ending must have been a lot better than I expected for everyone to love the movie so much.

I just found the experience tiresome and grating on my nerves.

Trump Is A Fascist (Now What?)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Apparently, if you call Trump a fascist you get put on some sort of list of “terrorists.” Really? Is that what we’re going with these days? Ugh.

This is particularly amusing — and grating — since the incoming mayor of New York City called Trump a fascist in the Oval Office. (Essentially.) And Trump was cool with it.

But Trump is a fascist.

The Downside To Being An ‘AI First’ Aspiring Author

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I use AI as my manuscript consultant, since I can’t apparently get anyone to either listen to me or take me seriously. But at the same time, I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that the actual writing is mine.

But that isn’t enough to not make me insecure when people read, say, the first chapter of the novel and say how great and wonderful it is. I worry that everyone is going to think my writing hasn’t improved, I’ve just been using AI.

So, like I said, I’m going to really work as hard as possible to make the actual writing of the novel my own work. But also, as I keep saying, I kind of use AI like an enhanced spell checker.

I’m a horrible speller and I probably wouldn’t ever have had any writing gigs without the ability to lean into the advantages of a spell checker.

‘Just Write A Short Story’ (Ugh)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I was talking to a relative recently and, they, obviously fed up with my talking about a novel without any discernable product said, “why not just write a short story.”

No more discouraging words can be said to me in the English language, I fear.

I would rather fail writing a novel in a monumentally spectacular manner than waste my time on a piddly short story. I probably would spend six months to a year on a short story anyway and that’s six months to a year I could spend working on a novel.

But I get it, if you just hear me talking about writing a novel for years and year and nothing comes of it, it makes a lot of sense to just get frustrated and tell me to write a short story.

Fuck that. I have said from the beginning that I just want to see how far I can get with this process. And if I don’t succeed with this novel (which would mean first writing something good enough to query then being a published author) then I try again with something else.

Stephen Colbert Is The Only Guy Who Can Save Us From Ourselves

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

America is a very unserious country at the moment. We don’t want to be governed, we want to be entertained. As such, I think the only sure-fire way for Blues to gain power again is through someone like Stephen Colbert being their candidate.

But I would be stunned if he was willing to do it. And that’s kind of the crux of the Blue dilemma going forward. Blues just can’t accept that what people want is a policy-free “vibe” candidate like Trump.

They don’t want serious policy-wonk candidates who will actually have a vision as to how to make their lives better. So, especially in the context of us being in a luminal space when it comes to be a democracy at al….I just think we should accept that we’re going to be governed by idiot MAGA people for the foreseeable future.

I Think I May Be A Rahm Emanuel Independent, Politically

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am not a Democrat. But I fly pretty close to that political sun, so I listen to a lot of center-Left podcasts and when former Obama era Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was on Pod Save America, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot.

The core problem for Blues is what people want — an infotainment figure who makes politics “fun” and a blood sport, comes exclusively from the center-Right. The only person who comes close on the center-Left who could be a Trump-like figure for Blues is Stephen Colbert and he just won’t do it.

So, as such, Blues have to hunker down on good policy.

And I think Emanuel’s policy views are pretty good. Things like telling Democrats to de-emphasize “project trans kids” and also pass legislation that would bar under 16 children from using social media makes a lot of sense to me.

But we will have a long ways to go. A very long ways. We still don’t know if we’re even enough of a democracy still to ever have free-and-fair elections.

A Jon Lovett Disturbance In The Crooked Media Force

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What the fuck is going on with Crooked Media’s Jon Lovett. He seems…cranky. He seems like he’s not very happy with his position at the organization. It seems, if you reverse engineer things, that he keeps demanding in-house side projects for some reason.

He’s currently got a Bravo in-house side project that I assume he was given to placate him for some reason.

I just get the sense that a lot more is going on with Lovett at Crooked Media than we’re being told. It’s just it’s such low stakes that it’s not like Page Six gives enough of a shit to investigate exactly what’s going on.

And while we’re on the topic of Crooked Media, those guys keep reminding me that I think they’ve jumped the shark. They’ve grown kind of full of themselves and they’re not longer the plucky upstart outsiders to the Democratic Establishement.

They ARE the Democratic Establishment (or at least the center-Left Establishment) and, as such, some of their policy views are pretty self-defeating. Especially when it comes to trans Rights.

Let me be clear again — I support trans rights, I just think the whole “protect trans kids” (because there are so few “trans kids” in reality) is kind of self-defeating and hands a loaded gun to fucking MAGA fascists who swoop up and collect “normal” people who feel aliened by such rhetoric.

Anyway. It will be interesting to see what happens with Lovett and Crooked Media in 2026.

The Curious Case Of Dave Chappelle

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to make of Dave Chappelle these days. He’s still the GOAT as they say, but…is he MAGA now? Or at least MAGA adjacent? I’ve been viewing his latest Netflix special in dribs and drabs on Tik-Tok and…I’m not impressed.

He seems to make up a lot excuses for performing in Saudi Arabia when he should have just stuck to the truth: he did it for the money.

And he shouldn’t give any mealy mouth “whataboutism” answers to questions about why he did it, or whatever. Just admit he has a lot less principles that we thought he had and he did a gig in a country ruled by a murderous thug for cold hard cash.

Anyway. No on listens to me.