Month: June 2020

Why I Play The Lottery (And You Shouldn’t)



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I lead a very hum-drum life. Not much ever happens of note. I generally think playing the lottery — any lottery — is extremely obscene due to its regressive-tax nature.

And, yet, I find myself playing the lottery these days on occasion for no other reason than it gives my otherwise dull life a modicum of excitement caused by the feeling of you-just-never-know that comes from buying a lottery ticket.

I have, however, come to think the Mega Millions and Power Ball lotteries (the two I play on occasion) are fixed, fixed, fixed. They futz with the calculations of the drawings so the prizes get huge and, as such, draw attention to the game. I also think they focus on certain participating states like South Carolina for some reason. (It always seems to be someone from South Carolina who wins these lotteries.)

With that in mind, I often go to really strange places to buy lottery tickets simply because I hope maybe that will improve my luck (given that where I usually buy my tickets have not be successful to date.) I also am very aware of anything weird happening in my life in general. In the past, that was the only reason why I would play the lottery at all — if something bizarre happened around the time I bought one.

Whenever I play the lottery, the ticket pays for itself by all the daydreaming I do about what I would do if I won. These dreams can grow quite grandiose. I would move to NYC and become a bon viant. I would change people’s lives in a big, historical fashion.

Then I lose, yet again.

So, I think it’s safe to say that I’m wasting my money every time I play. Though, I will note that something I once was told about the lottery did happen recently — if you dream of a dead relative, play the lottery. I dreamed of my late mother over the weekend. I have no idea what that means. Though, I think the exact adage is if you dream of a dead relative “play your lottery numbers.”

Who knows.

Anyway. Don’t play the lottery. You won’t win.

The Worst Case Scenarios Of The #NBCUniversal Goons At The #DCProtest


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are two really, really bad worst-case-scenarios with the goons I saw with the NBCUniversal guy. (If that was, in fact, who he was with.)

1. He wasn’t with NBC Universal and it was all an undercover op on the part of the authorities to monitor who was at the protest.
2. He WAS with NBC Universal and NBC Universal is in on some sort of protest monitoring operation on the part of the authorities.

Ugh.

Both of of those make me sick to my stomach with their implications.

So very curious. (The two meatheads to the left of the guy in white were with him.)

Maybe NBC Universal just thinks their guys need added security at protests. That must be it, right?

The Cognitive Dissidence Of The #NBCUniversal Goons #DCProtest


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I only keep writing about this probably very innocent event because it makes no sense. How is it possible that someone working for NBCUniversal would be hanging out with a bunch of Blackcube-looking motherfuckers.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

Or, put another way, there’s no ready answer to him having THAT much security around him simply doing B-Roll. There are plenty of ways I might be wrong. I might not have seen “NBCUniversal” on his press pass at all. It might have been something totally different and security-related.

But even then, that doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.

It keeps eating away at me, so I keep writing about it. If there was some obvious, logical explanation as to what I saw, then it wouldn’t be such a big deal.

The two goons an the left were with the guy in white.

The #NBCUniversal Goons At The #DCProtest — What I Remember Seeing Exactly



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The first thing I remember was the huge phallic fuzzy mic the older guy was holding. Then I saw his camera. I usually enjoy chatting up journalists and was about to say hey, who you with, when I noticed the huge fucking goons who were with him.

So I got really close and eyed his badge.

“NBCUniversal.”

At least, that’s what I remember in my mind’s eye.

Then I got as close as I could without the goons noticing me. These goons were like fucking brickwalls. I think there were three of them, maybe four. Why one dude needed so much security immediately did not seem to make any sense to me.

It dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t seeing just an old journalist making some B-Roll, I was seeing something far more ominous — I was seeing some sort of undercover op that was monitoring protesters.

If I had a camera with a telephoto lens, I would have taken photos of them doing the B-Roll, but I just had my phone.

Anyway. I simply want someone with NBCUniversal to tell me what was going on so I can go back to cursing the bread and working on my novel.

The Curious Case Of The #NBCUniversal ‘Thugs?’ At The #DCProtest

The guy in the white shirt had a NBCUniversal press pass and was doing B-Roll with a mic. And, yet, he was walking with those two goons to his left.
The guy with the tats was with the guy in the white. What the what?
I still don’t get it.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, there was I was, walking around DC near the White House when I saw a clutch of goons standing around a guy with a video camera and a fuzzy mic doing what appeared to be “B-Roll.”

I took a look at the guy’s press pass and it was (I think) NBCUniversal. But none of it made any sense. Why was that guy with the goons? As you can tell from the pictures, these were not any ordinary goons. These were like, fucking Blackcube or something. These fuckers meant business.

Anyway, I keep talking about this an nothing happens.

It seems as though there are three possible scenarios.

  1. I misunderstood what was happening.
  2. They were simply added security for a NBC News camera man.
  3. They were doing some sort of undercover surveillance of the protest.

I honestly don’t know which one of those three is what was going on. I hope it wasn’t the last one. That is rather ominous.

I wish someone with NBCUniversal would at least tell me one way or another what I was seeing.

Hope To Start Writing Again July 4th Weekend



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are on track for me to start writing again on the novel around the July 4th weekend. The July 4th weekend might get in the way some, so it’s actually just after the July 4th weekend, but the sentiment is the same.

I’m doing a lot of work. Some of that work is flowing easier because I take little breaks working on the outline to refresh my creative juices a little bit. I’ve gotten into the part of the story that I’m most uncertain about.

But, really, it’s just a matter of staying focused. It’s a matter of believing in myself and not getting too distracted with this or that stupid thing. I should be ok, though. I’m not nearly as distracted as I used to be about the DC protests, so I think I should be able to plunge back into writing pretty easily.

I just have to stay focused.

Some Trump Scenarios For The Next Year



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

No one can predict the future. So take that into consideration. But here are some scenarios as to what might happen between now and about a year from now.

Massacre
This is one of the more acute endgames for the clusterfuck that is the Trump Ministration. In this scenario, Trump finally gets his own Tienanmen Square on the National Mall. The bloodshed is enough that he’s quickly forced from office well before Election Day. I don’t really see this happening for a number of reasons. Or, put another way, there might be a massacre, but Trump still won’t leave office.

Rolling Political & Racial Violence
In this scenario, the rolling political violence I have long predicted for the fall simply happens as part of the rolling protests we’re having right now. The two merge as the year progresses and there’s massive violence on Election Day. America has its own “Troubles” until sometime in April-May 2021 when we finally figure out how to pull the now completely insane Trump physically out of the Oval Office

Trump Self-Owns By Going Crazy
There’s a real chance that Trump’s criminality and his lurching insanity will fuse to such an extent that he’ll take the whole country down with him. By the time his enables finally get with the program, it will be far, far too late to save the country and something akin to either an autocratic managed-democracy or a civil war happens. It all happens because no one is willing to stick their neck out in the real world to stop it.

Startup Saves The Day
In this scenario, someone figures out a way to organize the protests happening right now via an app. It would be designed to find leaders and to coordinate these protests in a meaningful manner. This is really me daydreaming because no one ever listens to me.

The Elector Crisis
Trump loses the popular vote, but goes after Electors on a personal level until they vote for him. Or there’s a 1876-type commission because Trump claims a huge amount of voter fraud and SCOTUS believes him. This all ends up with a massive clusterfuck and we either endup with an acting president or knowing way, way more about the personalities and personal lives of individual Electors than we should.

Bides 100 Days
Bides first 100 days — should they happen — may simply be him struggle to keep the country together as Trump rants on Twitter about how MAGA has to kill people to protect their 2nd Amendment rights.

Trump’s Most Dangerous Game



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While Trump is an absolute moron, he is getting advice from someone who isn’t: Putin. So, it has occurred to me there’s a reason why Trump is shipping in Texas prison riot police to DC — he really wants to murder peaceful protesters in cold blood.

It not too much of a stretch to imagine the following: the goons from Texas serve as the Hell’s Angels at Altamont and there’s violence. Enough violence that the entire nation is shocked. This leads to direct combat(!) between the goons from Texas and the US Military.

The America Putin Wants.

The final battle is joined as everyone picks sides.

How exactly that would go down is anyone’s guess. I do think this would be the rolling political violence of the fall I have long predicted, just a few months early and in a different context. Now, there are a number of scenarios you could imagine at this point.

One is Trump really misjudges the whole situation and he is effectively forced from office in a rushed impeachment process at gunpoint on the part of the U.S. Military. But, given how things are likely to actually happen, it’s possible it could get even messier. It would happen very, very fast.

It would be total chaos (which is what Trump’s bestie Putin wants.)

And, really, I would say Trump would win, as always, but for how moronic and incompetent he is. He’s such a self-own artist that when faced with an unprecedented extra-political, extra-Constitutional attempt to remove him from office, he simply won’t know what to do.

A Very American Coup



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Not once in our nation’s history have we ever had a coup in the traditional sense. So, it’s rather surreal to me that I find myself thinking how a coup might happen now.

If any military coup happened, it would be so chaotic in nature that it’s impossible to predict exactly how it might happen. But my best guess is Trump finally gets the massacre of peaceful protesters in DC that he’s so excited about and the military does something completely out of the ordinary for it on a historic and institutional level — it turns on its commander-in-chief.

Given the nature of American political tradition, the only way I could possibly imagine this happening would be the top military leaders contact Nancy Pelosi and tell her in no uncertain terms that the House has to do a snap impeachment of Trump….NOW.

Then, using the same hint-hint methods, the military gets the Senate to do a snap trial and conviction of Trump. This would be the only way for everyone not to feel dirty about what had just happened. Of course, this could all be a setup. Trump could be trying to consolidate power in the military by pushing it to the breaking point, then hoping there would be some sort of coup attempt so he could purge those people. (This happened in Turkey a few years ago.)

All of this is meaningless, of course, because Tom Cotton is likely to be elected president in 2024, no matter what because of the same macro issues that elected Trump in the first place.

Lulz!

The ‘Little Green Men’ Have Landed

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Why am I the only one to notice this:

American Little Green Men
Russian Little Green Men