Regular readers of the blog — of which there are very, very few — will recall that I’m obsessed with this site’s Webstats. To an embarrassing level. When I should be reading thrillers to get a bead on my competition within my genre, I look very, very carefully at who is looking at this site.
Where they’re coming from, the URL and what they’re interested in is something I’m extremely obsessed with. This has been the case since for 25 years.
Usually, very little of note happens. There are a few regulars who read this blog and I’ve come to ascribe them personalities that they obviously don’t have. I do have a very active imagination, after all.
It’s the people I can’t explain that unnerve me. Why would THAT person from THAT place be interested in ME of all people. I’m a nobody. A crank. A loser. The list goes on.
Then I get a tinge paranoid and start to think that they’re with the FBI. Or I’m about to get canceled for some reason (there are plenty.) Or they really REALLY think I’m a deranged lunatic. (I’m not.)
After I process these insecurities, I start to feel better. Generally, no one cares about me and I feel like I could walk off the face of the earth and only my haters would notice, so getting unusual attention from someone in a big city is a mild distraction.
“You’re a delusional jerk with a good heart,” the late Annie Shapiro about me, circa 2007.
Annie Shapiro and I in happier days.
by Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
Oh, Jesus. One thing that really annoys me is when people won’t give me the benefit of the doubt and assume the absolute worst about me and my intentions. I’m WELL AWARE that I can across as an Internet crank to people who are paying attention. The worst thing ever said about me (above), however, was by the late Annie Shapiro while we were emotionally at war over the late, great ROKon Magazine in Seoul.
Annie called me, essentially, an asshole, when I was extremely unhappy with her for bringing back the magazine we started behind my back. It was probably one of the worst experiences in my life, seeing my “baby” back in print without me being involved. I was, on an emotional level, so kneecapped that I didn’t really have any motivation to do anything for ten years.
This is the Annie Shapiro I remember. Photographer unknown.
But, just in the last few weeks, something has changed. I feel the pressure of a milestone birthday looming on the horizon and I want to do something interesting with my life again. This are finally going well with these four novels I’m working on and I feel as though finally, after much trial and error I’ve figured out what my second tract will be — fashion photography.
I’ve always been a late bloomer, why change now?
I totally understand if you’re someone who’s been paying attention to my ranting online over the years and you think I’m nothing more than yet another deranged Internet crank. First, I think you’re full of shit and second you’re totally oblivious to what happened in Seoul.
In fact, I would go so far as to say now that I have both motivation and ambition, there’s a pretty good chance that I may re-create the situation I had in Seoul at my height where I “famous” for more than one thing. In that case, I was an expat pop-rock DJ AND the publisher of the monthly English magazine in the city. So, lulz and fuck you. (Wink.)
Back when I was famous in Seoul for being a DJ and publishing ROKon Magazine.
It’d kind of wild it’s taken me THIS long to make fashion photography my second creative “track.” I thought it was going to be screenwriting — I went so far as to buy Final Draft — but something weird began to happen recently. For some reason, I was really hyper-sensitive to any reference to professional photography that happened around me.
Things came to a tipping point where I realized that like being a pop-rock DJ, I am a good enough photographer on an organic basis that I probably could do it professionally with the right equipment and some study. So, here we are.
Now, I’m just waiting to save up the funds to buy a REALLY GOOD Nikon camera so I can begin to work my way towards breaking into the fashion photography business. I’m being rather — even extremely — delusional to think I can pull such a think off, but it’s better than just lying in bed and staring into space.
Hope is what keeps us alive.
Believe.
As I grow older, I really appricate that life is precious. We’re given a limited amount of time on earth and it’s our responsibility to use what native talents we have to the absolute best of our ability.
I’m a big believer in the idea that we make our own reality through the choices we make on a daily basis. I’m really good with “The Vision Thing” and as of the moment, I’m mulling how I might be able to, in a way, cover New York Fashion Week next year.
Back to the future.
Once I secure the Nikon camera I want (need?) then I can begin to plot out how I’m gong to get to NYC during fashion week so I can take street fashion photos. Every problem is an opportunity in disguise, so it will be fun think up how I might make such a thing a reality.
I would just want take photos during NYFW for, say, 24 hours. But a lot would rest on some issues that I don’t really have much control over. And, yet, maybe I can figure something out. It would be a dream come true to do something l like that successfully.
The point would be to use such photos to build up my portfolio.
There is so much to think about, now that I’ve picked “professional photographer” as the thing I want to do at some point down the road. Or, more specifically, my ultimate dream is to be a fashion photographer. That — along with being a pop-rock DJ — is kind of the sweetspot when it comes to things I can do well and maybe — just maybe — get paid to do it.
But we’ll see, I guess.
I still don’t have the camera I need — or at least want. Then there are all kinds of other things I need to do as part of this particular vision of my future. AND, while I’m doing that, I have four novels to finish as quickly as possible.
Attempting to develop and write four novels all at once has greatly improved my overall writing ability. And all the hep cats are doing a Substack these days, so, recently on a lark, I signed up there.
My first impression is it’s just Medium fused with MailChimp, but lulz, what do I know. But I got my first sign up recently — even though I haven’t written anything — and so just having one person signed up feeds my already huge ego enough that I’m prompted to actually write something using the service.
My Substack is called Trumplandia and it will be a lot like you’ve read here without me whining about how difficult it is to work on four novels at once or me navel gazing about why people who work at VOX probably thing I’m an Internet loser crank. Having given it some thought, I think what I’m going to do is be a lot more formal with my Substack.
Instead of getting drunk off of rye and ranting about my fears of a civil war or autocracy coming to the United States, I’m going to sketch out each post and give them some thought. The medium is the message and all that.
Please sign up and spread the word. Because I’m pretty sure I have a relative who reads this blog secretly, I may save my more controversial hating on MAGA for the Substack. I’ll still stay they’re collectively a piece of shit, I’ll just say it in a far more diplomatic fashion.
For the moment, this is just an experiment. I have a lot on my plate — which is what I like — so there may be an irregular regularity to when each Substack post is published. In a way, being able to grow a Substack is similar to growing a zine, so it’s right up my alley. Or not. Lulz.
I have very, very low expectations and for the time being my Substack presence will be more about simply proving to myself I still have it in me to write about politics without saying “fuck” a lot.
I’m going to call it now: if Trump runs again, we’re probably going to have a civil war.
I say this because Trump is notorious for screwing up situations where he should get what he wants without any problems. Just look at the 2020 election. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was cued up for him to steal that election — even with a pandemic — and he screwed it up.
Any other would-be autocrat would be enjoying their second term right now and Trump is such a lazy, idiotic ding-dong that he couldn’t pull it off. IDIOT. As such, it’s easy to imagine a situation where between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025, Trump single-handedly sparks a civil war because he’s a fucking moron.
He will have the entire edifice of the Republican Party at his disposal, so when even though everything is aligned for us to peacefully transition into an autocracy Trump, unto himself, will fuck things up. He has repeatedly done this in the past and he will do it in the future.
If someone like DeSantis is the 2024 Republican nominee our transition to autocracy will be swift and peaceful. We’ll just wake up at some point in 2025 to learn the media has been purged and, lulz, sucks to be you, lib. Then the existing ICE infrastructure will be weaponized and Hollywood will flee, en masse to, say, Perth.
So, if Trump announces, have a passport handy. Or be willing to defend — or suffer for — what you believe in. Things are going to get lit in the real world. No more of this “Twitter Resistance” bullshit.
Normal people have responsibilities, and most of all things that are important to them they can lose. Usually, the most powerful of these things are abstract — things like “respect” and “credibility” being among them.
I learned a lot about the “normal” world many, many moons ago when I worked in a corporate environment. One thing I learned is “normal” people either find me interesting and charismatic or they think very little of me, if they think of me at all.
For the last decade or so, I’ve lived a life in neutral because I had a lot of ambition but absolutely zero motivation. I’ve been all talk, in other words. And if you throw in how I can come off as something of a deranged bonkers person — a crank — many, many people who may have been paying attention to me have every reason to think once a loser, always a loser.
And yet…
It’s still very possible that this assessment of me will turn out to be true. But I do know that things have changed a great deal in my life. AND as I approach a milestone birthday, I find myself very, very focused on proving the “haters and losers” wrong.
As such, my eccentricities that are either very appealing or a huge turn off to “normal” people may be my secret weapon. I have a natural talent as a photographer and I can feel myself getting ready to, at last, come out of my shell.
I keep saying, of course, that a lot –and I mean A LOT could still go wrong. But I’m hopeful. The conditions are there for something pretty extraordinary to happen — historic, even. But for some time to come it will all be very touch and go. It could go either way.
But once I have the photographic equipment I want, all I’m going to need is the opportunity and I come take a picture or two that could in, an instant, burnish my reputation. Zero to hero, as they say.
And, yet, that’s pretty much just my usual frothy bullshit at this point. I’ve lost a decade to indecision, I’m damned if I’m going to lose another.
Though the American political system is very, very fragile at the moment, there would need to be some sort of outside pressure for anything close to a “civil war” to happen. One possible origin of such a pressure is some combination of The Durham Report and / or the Arizona Audit “proving” Trump was right / really won the 2020 election.
I troll the Arizona Audit echo chamber a lot these days. The prospect of the Arizona Audit has fused with the prospect of The Durham Report coming out so your typical MAGA New Right person assumed Durham has the Arizona Audit on his desk, ready to release it with his report.
The whole thing makes me ashamed to be an American.
But that’s what the MAGA New Right base is fixated on even at this late date. It’s both pathetic and comical how they have all their hopes of Trump being “re-instated” on some mixture of The Report and the Arizona Audit. They won’t come out and say it, of course, but what they want is a violent overthrow the American government if either — or both — of these reports give them the results they want, need and expect.
So, it is possible that THIS is how we’ll endup having a civil war. Sooner or later Cyber Ninjas “proves” Trump “won’t the election and there’s a sudden push to nullify the 2020 election. Then, lulz, there a secessionist conventions and we have a civil war.
Or something like this.
I’m king of growing tired of ranting about all of this. We’re kind of treading water at the moment. We’re drifting towards a January 2025 existential choice of autocracy or civil war — but for the time being it seems we’re ok. Things aren’t getting better, but they’re really not getting worse on a tactical level. On a macro level — we’re fucked.
I can’t predict the future. In the end, this could all mean nothing because instead of civil war, we just slip peacefully into autocracy. And, yet, with their decision tonight to effectively end Roe V. Wade, SCOTUS has pushed us closer to a Second American Civil War.
I have no idea what it would look like, or if it would be Blue States or Red States that started it, but I do know that the American political system is so fragile right now that this little push on it could ultimately have huge consequences. This is another bolt popping off or liberal democracy.
There will come a point when there are no bolts left to lose and we have to make a historical, existential choice about what we’re going to do about the divisions America faces — are we going to become a Russian-style autocratic managed democracy, or are we going to bomb ourselves into the stone age in our struggle to figure out which vision of America will win out.
Or, put another way — we face a spectrum, with civil war at one end and autocracy at the other end. After generations of stability and muddling through, the United States has again reached a moment in its history where everyone has to take a side — even if they don’t want to. And there will be no clear narrative as to which side is the right side until after the shooting has not just begun, but ended.
I mean, if Red States try to make up for their small populations and economies by using WMD on Blue States during any putative civil war, then, lulz, they could very well win. Or it could be that the United States simply crashes into a number of smaller nation-states that are always at war with each other. We could join the Soviet Union in the dustbin of history — instead of the United States there will be five or six (or 10?) smaller states that exist where the United States once existed.
The case could be made that all China has to do is be patient — they will have every opportunity to take Taiwan around 2025 because either President DeSantis brings the boys home or we’re so busy having a civil war that we don’t have time to worry about saving Taiwan (or anyone else, for that matter.)
I really have no idea which existential choice we’re going to take. For the moment, however, I think our transition into autocratic managed democracy will be peaceful. There may be huge protests AFTER we’re an autocracy, but, just like with Russia…they will be a lulz.
A funny thing happened on the way to American autocracy: the man history shone on to be the agent of destruction for American democracy turned out to be a big old goober. All the macro historical forces were aligned for 240 years of liberal democracy to be smothered.
And then it didn’t happen.
Pretty much Donald Trump, by being a huge ding-dong gave us some insight into the interaction between Great Men and macro trends of history. Trump was not a Great Man, he was simply an avatar for macro trends. America just barely dodged a historical bullet because Trump, personally, could not do the one thing history had assigned him to do: kill American democracy.
I keep trying to think up ways to grade Trump on an autocratic curve and I keep failing to think of anything. Would you believe that idiot Mussolini was more of a Great Man than Trump ever was. Trump, in the end, was all talk. What’s more he gave the Establishment two things it wanted from him: young hack MAGA judges and a huge plutocrat tax cut…and then he failed everyone else who supported him using any other metric.
While Trump continues to have enormous sway over the Republican Party and the MAGA New Right base, Establishment Republicans are growing really tired of his shock and jibe. They got what they wanted from him, now they want Ron DeSantis to finish the job.
But what job do they want DeSantis to do?
Ron DeSantis
In general, Republicans now simply want to use the quirks of the Constitution to establish permanent white Christian minority rule. I don’t think they’ve thought beyond that — they just want to “control” the growing power of women and minorities. They want power and as much money as they can get through continued smash-and-grab tax “reform.”
And, yet, there’s a problem.
Such things don’t happen in a vacuum. Once it’s conventional wisdom that Republicans have, using the quirks of our creaking Constitution, form follows function and they’re going to start abusing the fuck out of the complete lack of oversight.
And that’s where things get tricky. Will we peacefully transition into an autocratic managed democracy or will we descend into civil war?
At the moment, I think it will all happen peacefully, because the Establishment has a vest interest in the sheeple being complacent. Gradually, however, as we grow more and more fascist in our governance, even the Establishment may live to regret how easily they gave up.
It’s pretty bad when I start thinking that the one thing I don’t want — a civil war — is the better of two bad options because at least there’s a chance the “good guys” will win.
My Captain, My Captain
But back to what’s going on with our undead liberal democracy. Because Trump could not do even the most basic of autocratic power plays in 2020, we are now an autocracy without an autocrat. If you know what you’re looking at, it’s all very surreal. There are a huge number of Americans who want an autocracy so much that they think Fox News is “too liberal.” They are so frightened in the abstract about “Cancel Culture” and “Critical Race Theory,” that they embrace the idea of a fascist state coming to America.
Marinate on that for a second.
We have to admit to ourselves that we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked. Soon enough, voting won’t matter and we either accept that or we have a civil war to make voting matter again. Ugh. I hate even having to think about that. But that’s what we face.
The United States is careening towards a huge historical clusterfuck because Trump, chosen by the Fates to transition us into an autocracy, wasn’t a Great Man, he was just a lazy idiot.
Enjoy these few years — months? — of living in a liberal democracy. Soon enough, that may seem rather quaint.
I’m in a unique position in my life where my obvious eccentricities work in my favor. At the moment, I kind of live in the middle of nowhere and all I have to do with my time — thankfully — is write the four novels I’m working on.
And, yet, I’m not getting any younger. I really need to squeeze out every interesting experience I can possibly squeeze out while I still have air in my lungs. If you don’t understand my logic so far, or you’re hate reading this — please fuck off. Why are you reading my blog to begin with?
Anyway, I find myself harkening back to something that is the OTHER part of my identity besides being a writer: being a photographer.
I have an innate, organic photographic ability and I’ve taken some damn good shots over the years. Some examples are below.
Photo Credit: Shelt Garner
Photo Credit: Shelt Garner
It’s been years since I owned a great digital camera that I wasn’t gifted. (I got a really good camera from someone, but it didn’t quite fit my needs so I haven’t really used it that much, sadly.)
But I remember the pride I felt with a real, honest-to-God camera in my hands — not just a cellphone with a camera in it. That’s the thing that people don’t appreciate — being a photographer is just as much an identity with meta needs as anything else. If you’re a photographer, you need a camera, not just a cellphone with a camera.
Since I don’t live in a city — not even close — and I’m going to have to go out of my way to think up something to take a picture of, I’m leaning into this fact. Instead of rushing into things, why not take my time and save the sizeable chunk of money necessary to buy such a great camera as the Nikon 780? I want a camera that is so good that not only can I grow into it but in a crisis moment it will allow me to take The Picture that is so good it might become historic or something. I have such a picture in me, I just need the proper equipment and the proper moment in time.
Things could still go wrong. And if something happens, I’m very open to buying a camera that’s not such a budget buster. But there are some very specific conditions that allow me to pursue this dream.
Once I get everything I need with the camera, I’m going to start looking for public events to take pictures of so I can practice my abilities. And I’m probably going to have to teach myself some of the actual nuts-and-bolts of photography.
As it stands, I just have an organic instinct as to how to take a great picture.
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