Be The Power
By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I hate to be a narc and I can’t possibly be the only person to notice that this great song by Marina:
Sounds a lot like this great song by Britney Spears:
And this great song by Katy Perry:
The only reason why I even notice it is I knew the Marina song sounded a lot like another song then I was like, “Ah ha! Womanizer!” It then also occurred to me it sounds a lot like a sped up I Kiss A Girl, too.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
My Traditionalists relatives love, love, love Florida’s govenor Ron DeSantis. “I wish I could vote for him three times,” is the exact quote. And, it could be worse. If fat fuck Mike Pompeo becomes our American autocrat in 2025, he’s really going to come down hard on freedom of speech right away, while DeSantis will at least wait a little bit.
Form follows function.
Anyway, there’s nothing stopping DeSantis at the moment. Except for Donald Trump.
Either Trump turns on DeSantis an neutralizes him — maybe by threatening to start a Patriot Party? — or DeSantis is about to shiv Trump politically and away we go.
It doesn’t matter though — we’re fucked. Any Republican president we have is going to be an autocrat. And that either prompts us to have a civil war or we slip peacefully into autocracy.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Every once in a while, I will do a major reset of this novel I’m working on and I just finished one. Now, the structure of this novel has nothing to do with Stieg Larsson’s “Girl Who Played With Fire.”
It’s now completely it’s own thing.
Now, I’m going to go through the outline and sketch out each individual scene and then write them. I’ve added one more layer to development, so that’s slows me down with development but speeds up the actual writing once I get around to it.
At least, that’s the theory.
I’m feeling pretty good.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m growing tired of writing about this. But the United States is running on political fumes at the moment. At I think the thing that would spark a civil war in roughly the 2024 – 2025 timeframe will be how the center-Right hides behind the United States being a “constitutional republic” to avoid the tough task of adopting their policies to the realities of modern America.
They would rather use autocracy as a crutch than mellow out or try to figure out how to appeal to non-bonkers white people.
The reason why this is important is should Republicans steal the election but still technically stay within the Constitution, the center-Left will grow so enraged that the “Great Divorce” that MTG keeps babbling about will happen not when the GQP leave the Union, but when Blue states – probably starting with California, do.
Then everything — and I mean everything — will come crashing down. A civil war will start and that will prompt WW3. The “Great Reset” that insane, bonkers Right wing nutjobs believe will happen…will happen. But not because of any conspiracy, it will happen because white people are afraid, in the abstract, of being “canceled” simply for being conservative.
Or we simply have one last democratic death spasm and slip peacefully into autocracy. And if it happens, initially nothing will change but gradually, over time, we’re going to politically become identical to Russia.
Both of our potential options suck so fucking bad. We just won’t be able to muddle through like we have the last few decades. Something’s gotta give.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It occurred to me last night that I really needed to re-work the first novel of this five book project. So, I lopped off pretty much 30,000 – 40,000 words and started the story as late as absolutely possible.
This has led to a huge hole in the second half of the second act, but I think if I just chill out for a few days, I should be in position to start writing again with vigor around January 3 or so.
Anyway, I’m pleased. It’s just is all a lot more work that I could ever have imagined.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Very, very few people look at this Website on any given day. Maybe about a 300. Add to this my two decade obsession with Webstats and it’s really easy for me to get some sense of who’s looking at this site.
All I know, at best, is someone’s ISP and location. That’s it. And even then I think technology has changed so a lot of people view this site and I don’t even know anything about it.
But, moving along…two people from Moscow looked at this site today. They didn’t look at anything specific, but they came in such a way that it seemed like they new this URL, there was no referring link.
It’s very curious. What could I possibly have written that would make two people in Moscow look this site up? If you really wanted to get all paranoid, you might say they were doing a lookieloo at the site to get some sense if I was aware of something the Russians are up to in say, Ukraine.
But that’s real stretch. It could have been anyone for any reason. All I know is where they were coming from and Moscow is a huge city. But that’s why Webstats are so addictive to me — I just never know.
I still think if there’s going to be a major war between Russia an Ukraine, the next deadline is Orthodox Christmas on December 7th. After that, it’s Orthodox New Year, and after that there’s no particular reason to do it or not to do it. It will start to get warmer soon enough and Russia could just strike at any moment in the spring.
We’ll see.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I do not believe any of this is really happening, but it is entertaining to think about. I have a lot of questions about how feasible it would be to hide Queen Elizabeth’s death for a few months.
The Crown could have used deep fake technology for the Queen’s Christmas Address. And, really, if they wanted to shut people up, all they would have to do is wheel her out and let her wave a little bit in public.
It seems like there are two scenarios in this possible conspiracy theory.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Outside of a few things here and there, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. The vast majority of them don’t make any sense or are poorly thought out. But, let’s play pretend and imagine one conspiracy theory that is at least interesting to think about.
Is Queen Elizabeth II dead?
The only reason why I think this is even something to consider is her public appearances have dropped off dramatically, and her last public address was recorded. And, authorities have said that her life will “change” in February — which is also when the 70ths anniversary of her being on the throne happens.
The theory is that the Crown REALLY wants QE2 to make it to 70 years on the throne, to the point that they would hide her death between now and February. Or it’s even possible she’s already dead and the address she gave was some sort of uber deep fake.
For me, the only weakness to this theory is how, exactly, they would keep something so huge a secret and how long they would wait between the 70th anniversary and the announcement of her death.
I don’t believe this is really happened, but it is an amusing concept.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One of the reasons why conspiracy theorists suggest that the government may be hiding the existence of alien life from us all is the prospect that we would all freak the fuck out.
And, yet, I would suggest that under almost all reasonable methods of us discovering that We Are Not Alone, it would all be a lulz. Let me explain.
Right now, as you read this, we know for a fact that the US military has repeatedly over the years run into very strange drone-like things that seem to exhibit technological abilities that are far beyond what we assume humans can do.
And yet…it was barely a blip for one news cycle.
As such, we could discover absolute proof of alien life in the universe and outside of very online people and science nerds… the average person probably wouldn’t care that much. And if they did start to care, then the very dynamic we see with global climate change and vaccines would kick in. If people really started to have to confront the implications of humanity not being alone in the universe, they would think up ways to dismiss it for political reasons.
So, the case could be made that there is only one way First Contact would matter to the average person — “hard” First Contact. We’re talking huge alien spaceships over major cities like in Childhood’s End.
But if it’s a “soft” First Contact that’s not sexxy, then, lulz. It, too, would be important on Twitter for little more than a few hours. Given how clear that is, I think we may be surprised what we learn in the next few years. The Powers That Be probably have figured out how hard it would be to actually scare people about evidence of ETs, so they won’t care if some happens to appear. No reason to hide it if no one cares.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I fucking hate the fucking Bechdel Test. I hate it because it’s a dumb self-avowed “half-joke” litmus test that progressives with their heads up their asses use on art as some sort of Leftist virtue signaling. And it comes from a comic of all things? I am being put through hell because of a “half-joke” proposed in a comic. What has this world come to.
In other words, I don’t come down to their office, knock the cocks out of Leftist cultural critics mouths and tell them how to do their job.
I hate the idea of their being some sort of ideology for storytelling. Just tell a great story. If two women happen to talk to each other about something other than a man, so be it. Ironically enough, I’m fleshing about a scene right now in the first novel I’m working on which would, in fact, pass the fucking dumb Bechdel Test.
Do I win the Olivia Wilde Booksmart Award, now?
Ugh.
Anyway, fuck the Bechdel Test.
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