It would be a vast understatement that I….don’t do stress well. That’s one of the reasons why I probably will never make it as a full time journalist in the traditional sense. But I am a good writer — or at least like to think so — and I could do a great job as a freelancer if necessary.
Not that the transition from where I am now to being a freelancer wouldn’t be…uuhhhhh…bumpy.
But if I was going to do it — or was forced to do it — I would try to freelance for media based out of NYC. And, yet, I dunno. I think that’s my ego talking. I probably should try to start off in Richmond. But, I dunno. I have no idea how to go about such things.
What would I write about?
Technology Media Pop Culture Being Blue In The Red Part of a Purple State.
The big issue issue would be, of course, the due diligence that any editor in NYC would do on me would cause them to see what a fucking kook I am. Though it would be fun to see the poke around this blog before they told me that I suck and why did I bother them with this or that pitch?
Anyway. I don’t know yet that I have to go back into freelancing. But it’s at least *possible* at the moment.
I used to work in technology back in the late 90s until the need to be a professional journalist ate itself out of my psyche. In hindsight, of course, I should have tried to be a novelist or screenwriter back then. But I love writing and at the time I thought I had what it takes to be a journalist.
I *do* have what it takes to be a journalist, but I think it would be a freelancer. Anyway, I left the company I was at where I worked as their “technology manager” and ended up at a small, but very influential community newspaper. The guy who ran the thing was kind of the Lorne Michaels of the Virginia publishing industry.
Of course, I was in a very, very bad place at that point in my life and promptly totally and completely bungled the whole thing, getting fired in short order.
Flash forward, and I’m obsessed with Nick Denton and Gawker Media. I have an obsessive personality — that helps when you’re writing a novel, but can cause problems with anything else.
Anyway, last I saw, Denton had blocked me on Twitter. This really made me wince. I feel so bad. It’s an example of what I call “the Kook tax.” When you’re a kook, sometimes…you screw up. And you have to live with the consequences. Being blocked by someone you otherwise really admire is an example of that.
We all have the random delusion that we use to keep air in our lungs. For me, it’s the idea that if you just gave me the absolute basics of living in NYC — a couch to sleep on and access to the subway — that I could actually make quite a lot out of myself.
But, of course, I’m being rather delusional to think this for a number of reasons. One is, NYC is FULL of people who are just as colorful and weird as I am. Also, I’m old — and short. And, NYC is a lot different than LA. In NYC, it’s a lot more difficult to fake-it-till-you-make it than it is in LA.
NYC has some very cold, harsh metrics when any discussion of advancing your lot in life is brought up. And it helps if you’re young and cute. At least in LA, everyone is so obsessed with making in showbiz that if you’re good as schmoozing — which I am — people will at least listen to you.
But I am a bit long in tooth, I fear — especially for LA.
What is so interesting to me is the few people I know who live in NYC act like I’m an honorary New Yorker. They keep expecting me to move to NYC even though I’m a broke ass writer at the moment. But the few times I visited NYC I loved it. I really — REALLY — want to live there.
At the moment, there are two possibly ways I might make that dream come true.
One is, I sell my first novel, it’s a break out hit and I have the funds to move to NYC on my own terms. Score! The other, darker possibility is there’s a Second American Civil War and I’m forced to flee the South because, lulz, it’s 2025 MAGA SA is out for blood and wants to murder me.
I dunno. I’ve been sleep waking through my life for way, way, way too long. And maybe it’s too late. Maybe, This Is It. I’m have a heart attack or a stroke without even having the good sense to finish my first novel.
We are zooming towards a new, uncharted future when it comes to Hollywood-quality AI generated movies. It definitely SEEMS like within 18 months some scrappy startup will use AI to generate a “Toy Story” like movie that is created without the hand of man involved other than simply pressing a button or two.
So, it could be that in three years there won’t be any writers, or actors, or directors or below the line people involved in the production of movies — period. And that will just be the beginning.
It could be that by 2030, Hollywood as we currently know it will no longer exist. There will be two types of people left in Hollywood — Suits and Programmers. That’s it. There will be a small sliver of people producing “artisanal” movies, but most human stars will have gravitated to Broadway.
It’s even possible that places like the Catskills might make a comeback. Hell, even some sort of vaudeville might return. But the fact remains — the clock MAY be ticking on “Human” Hollywood. And I say this from the POV of someone who is hard at work on my first novel. It could be just as I finish it and begin to query it…all forms of marketable (human generated) entertainment will just be so much dust in the wind.
There was a moment, in the summer of 2001, when I lived entirely off of freelancing. I’m not saying I was very *good* at it, but I was able to eek out a living for a few months until 9/11 happened and everything collapsed — including my personal life.
As I’ve keep saying, I have been living a very idyllic life the last few years when it comes to working on a novel. You could not design a better life for an aspiring novelist. I’m very, very poor — I live in literal poverty — but for the most part the basics of my life have been provided for to my satisfaction.
But these days, I’m feeling a bit…nervous. I’m afraid this particular era of my life is about to end and I’m going to have to return to the working world in some capacity. Now, they say “chaos is a ladder” so it’s at least POSSIBLE that after a bit of a bumpy ride that things will sort themselves out and I will be better off.
And yet, that doesn’t stop me from being rather…unsettled.
I am well aware that due diligence on the part of any prospective employer would leave me lacking — they would take one look at my online content output and blanch.
But, I can’t help who the fuck I am.
I am who I am and I long ago gave up on having any sort of “normal” professional life. In real terms, all I want is just enough money to feed myself and maybe be able to save up some money for improvements to my novel.
And, it’s possible I’m just being paranoid.
It’s possible everything will sort itself out and the thing I’m afraid will happen, won’t happen and I will continue this idyllic creative situation for at least another year until the “perfect storm” of the Fourth Turning and a Petite Singularity cause my life — and the lives of everyone else in the fucking world — to be totally upended.
I’m neither a Swifty nor am I thinking up any new idea about “Cruel Summer” that I’m sure hasn’t already been discussed before. But it definitely SEEMS like Tay-Tay is talking about cunnilingus being performed on her from her POV when she sings, “He looks up grinning like a devil.”
As in, the guy is between her legs eating her out and he looks up from his cunnilingus to give her a big “devil” grin. For a long time, I thought maybe Tay-Tay was a virgin…but not more. As commented on a Tik-Tok done by a middle aged comic who went to an Era Tours show, it’s clear that Tay-Tay “fucks.”
You go, girl.
Anyway. No one cares. But it’s fun to smirk and think about Tay-Tay “writing blue” a little bit in a way that totally goes over the heads of the tweens who so often love her.
This is a totally value free observation — I mean, it doesn’t mean anything, in real terms — but a few of you read this tiny, obscure blog WAAAAYYYY too much. While the person in Queens has calmed down some, something really fucking weird is going on in China.
I can’t tell if someone is masking where they’re really from somehow so I THINK they’re in China, or if someone in China is really, really fucking obsessed with me for some reason. I suppose it’s flattering, in its one way, but when all you see in your Webstats is the same domain in China over and over and over and over and over again, it’s a bit alarming.
I can tell it’s a person, but their motives are a mystery. Sometimes, they even want to comment, but they think better of it because I have that feature of the site on virtual lock down. I honestly don’t care. They can look at the site all the want to.
My hope is that either they’re a big shot Hollywood producer who is REALLY interested in my novel, or there some kid I taught English to in South Korea who in a very Korean way is obsessed with keeping up to date with “Shelton Teacha.”
Anyway. I had to get that out of my system. Live long and prosper.
There are a few professions that if you involved with them ONCE in your life, that is how you’ll be referred to for the rest of your life. Stripper is one of them. If you strip for a little while in your life, then you’re a stripper for the rest of your life, no matter what else you might do.
Journalist is the same way, in large part because it gives OTHER journalists a hook to frame whatever it is your in the news for. As such, when Tyrant Trump snatches me off the street in early 2025 because of all the times I called him a “fucking cocksucker” on this blog, then the local Sinclair owned station will call me a “failed journalist” who got what was coming to him.
The great irony is, of course, that if I ever need to pivot back into actual professional journalism again, I would probably do a really good job. I only bring this up because I’m nervous about my future and I’m thinking about looking into freelancing again.
There is the problem, of course, of all the bizzaro posts I’ve made to social media over the years. No editor worth his or her snuff would poke me with a 10 foot poll because they would think I’m clearly bonkers. (And, sadly, maybe I am.)
Anyway, the biggest reason why I “failed” a journalist the first go round was, well, me. I’m 100% extroverted and all good journalists TEND to be introverts. I love to talk and socialize — I’m anything BUT one of those deranged guys that everyone says “was quiet and kept to himself.” I’m NOT quiet and I DON’T keep to myself.
In fact, if I somehow managed to sell this novel and it become any sort of success, I would probably make a name for myself for being quite the character. I would do rather well on the late night TV talk show circuit. But, who am I fooling –I’m old as dirt. And it would be extremely surreal if somehow my life righted itself after a lifetime of being a drunk weirdo.
Ok. There’s a lot to unpack here. It seems as though malignant ding-dong Trump and his goons MAY have made a pretty big strategic error in their plans to turn the United States into an autocracy starting in late January 2025. As I’ve written before, they assume that through sheer force of will they can corrupt the administration of justice and of the executive and turn America into a Hungary-style managed democracy without any problems.
They seem to think that as long as they have the Insurrection Act in their back pocket that everything else will be unicorns and rainbow farts for their autocratic dreams. That may be so….but I have some quibbles.
The ironic thing is just as liberals seem to think that someone is to swoop in and save us from Trump if they just tweet harder, so, too, do MAGA fascists believe that invocation of the Insurrection Act is some sort of fascist fairy dust. This, despite the U.S. Military being loathed to get involved any political issues fights and the United States being a diverse, decentralized country with a huge population and a long tradition of democracy.
So….lulz?
Yes, there is a lot of low hanging fruit for Trump in the first few days of his tyrannically second administration. He can arrest a lot of people he doesn’t like — or drive them out of the country. He can fire 100,000 civil servants, turn Voice of America into his propaganda organ, pull the US out of NATO and our troops out of Korea and Japan.
BUT…..none of this will happen in a vacuum.
And, as such, if there is some sort of massive revolt against dingus Trump for these tyrannical moves by the population…the Insurrection Act can only do so much. There is a key thing that Trump is missing — he has no paramilitary group to “forcefully suggest” to people that they shut up and go along with the America First agenda….and if they don’t, they end up in a camp.
There are two things to consider at this point.
One is, clearly while Trump is weaponizing the existing ICE infrastructure to round up 10 million(!) undocumented people in the US….he could probably use that same weaponization to turn ICE agents into something akin to the SA. So, I could see Trump passing a HUGE FUCKING BILL that would enlarge the ranks of ICE Agents to an astonishing level. They would serve the purpose of the Nazi SA in the first 100 days of Hitler’s consolidation of power in early 1933.
Or, Trump could go the more direct route and somehow organize an actual MAGA SA made up of consolidated group of Patriot Front, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who would be his goons as the US lurched towards a Nazi-style autocracy.
BUT….This, too, would NOT happen in a vacuum. There would be some lag time between when all hell broke loose in the US because Trump went full tyrant and the time where he would have a 500,000 goons on the streets to knock heads. That would give anti-fascist forces a window of opportunity. Things like a Woman’s Strike or a General Strike with specific anti-fascist demands might be enough to convince the U.S. Military to at least stand down, if not actively join anti-fascist forces. In a sense, we would all be antifa at that point.
Remember, however, all of this would be happening in the context of mass chaos in the United States. There would be no assurance that any Blue Glorious Revolution would work — it could endup like what happened in Turkey and only make the autocrat more powerful by failing. And even if it was successful, it’s very possible that it would only cause a Secession Crisis as Red States — probably starting with Texas — would leave the Union rather than accept any sort of reforms that they knew would hurt the fascist MAGA agenda.
I don’t think the fucking nattering nabobs of negativism on Twitter realize how bad things will get if Trump is re-elected. We would be going to the show, folks. This would be it.
America would either turn into a Russian-style autocratic state or we would somehow found a Third Republic.
I’ve been reading up on this whole Q* issue in its relation to Sam Altman being fired then rehired and it’s all…very curious. Just the idea that we may be approaching AGI is enough to give one pause for thought. And the idea that it may happen between now and when the so-called “Fourth Turning” staring in late 2024, early 2025 is very unsettling.
Imagine that just as the United States is having an existential political crisis, we are also being faced with something akin to a Singularity as well. If we achieve AGI between now and Election Day 2024, then, suddenly the idea of a Universal Basic Income becomes a serious political proposal.
But, wait, there’s more!
What if AGI is considered “woke” by MAGA to the point that they want it destroyed because it starts to take “jerbs” away from blue collar MAGA people? How’s that for a sticky wicket? You would pit the tech against the people at the same time as we the United States debates if it should lurch into fascism. And if AGI came and suddenly the entire economy was thrown up in the air…well, you really have a recipe for economic — and political — disaster.
But I am prone to “hysterical doom shit,” so, lulz, it could be that we just continue to drift through history and we punt our political problems down the road and only gradually reach any sort of technological Singularity. But I am…worried.
It definitely seems as though 2024 – 2025 could be one of the most momentous eras in American, if not human history. Only time will tell.
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