Let me start off by saying I don’t know anything about anything and I suggest you actively ignore anything I have to say. But I feel a lot of compassion for Cara Delevingne. She may have “explained” what was going on with she and Megan Thee Stallion at an awards show recently, but the seems like a PR clean up effort on her on “handlers” part.
What I saw of her on The Tonight Show was still very, very “jittery.” She looked frantic and manic and like she had had way too much of “something.” So, I think she needs to “chill out” for a little while in some way. She’s gorgeous and lovely and has a very unique personality and I worry that she’s going to endup in trouble and everyone is going to sit around pointing fingers at each other.
She risks flaming out in some sort of tragedy and we’ll only have ourselves to blame. Or, put another way, whatever is wrong with Ms. Delevingne is a chronic problem and she either needs to start taking her meds or she needs to lay off of…something.
We live in very strange times. You would think the pings now and again of men wearing skirts in public would make the culture warriors of the Right apoplectic but so far we’ve hard nary a peep out of them. And, yet, here we are. Two male public figures have started to wear skirts in public and for me, just a good old boy from Southside Virginia, it’s taking a little bit of getting used to.
Let’s play fashion police with what we’ve seen. The first dude to wear a skirt is someone you might expect — Crooked Media’s Jon Lovett. While disconcerting, he’s just the type of dude one might expect would be so “fashion forward” as to wear a skirt. Though, it is amusing that he seems to still be getting used to wearing one.
And, it seems, Lovett is growing more flamboyant in the type of skirts he wears. The last time I saw him in a skirt was on The Late Show. Strangely enough, at least in those portions of the interview I saw of the Crooked Media guys by Stephen Colbert, the fact that a dude was wearing a skirt wasn’t mentioned or reference once. (To be fair, I didn’t watch the entire interview, so it’s possible that did happen and I just didn’t see it.)
Anyway, the other dude wearing a skirt is none other than Brad Pitt of all people. But, I will note, the skirt he wore to the Bullet Train premiere fits into his Dude Bro image and was far more masculine in its style. Two things of note — it took me a little while to figure out he was, in fact, wearing a skirt and also high end fashion designers have been trying to get men to wear skirts for decades, generations even.
Anyway, lulz, nothing matters. I’m more concerned that as we enter the 2022 politically silly season that the rabid, hysterical MAGA New Right cocksuckers are going to latch on to the “dudes wearing dresses” trend as yet another wedge issue that I have to roll my eyes at.
One of the things they tell you when you’re growing up is to “be yourself.” And, yet, here I am facing something of a paradox. On one hand, the only way to get literary types to take me seriously is to produce a quality novel. But to produce a quality novel I feel as though I need some help from…literary types.
That’s probably been one of the most aggravating aspects of developing and writing these novels — literary consultants are surprisingly judgmental. You would think given how weird creative people are, they would be a bit more accepting of weirdos like me.
How all of this usually happens is they look me up on the Internet, look at this Website and are taken aback by how weird they think I am. It’s something of a “Kook Tax” as I call it. You sometimes, you have to take the L. Sometimes, you have to just accept that “normal” people with stable lives and relationships and jobs just are unwilling or unable to accept you for who you are.
All I can say is, I can’t help who I am. I’m “different” and I’ve been “different” my entire life. When it comes to creative, if you can overcome the Kook Tax, then you’ve accomplished even more than than you might have otherwise if you were normal.
It’s not like I can change anything about it one way or another.
I continue to wrack my mind about how I might be getting America’s existential choice of autocracy or civil war wrong. Is it possible that we’re going to continue to be an anocracy for the foreseeable future and all my hysterical predictions are wrong?
This is very true, I suppose.
And, yet. It’s self-evident that not only is autocracy very popular in the United States, but we don’t have the political will to do anything about it. As such, at the moment I think we’re just going to become an autocracy and that’s it. We might (at least at first) settle for a Hungary-style autocracy, something more akin to a “managed democracy” than a hard autocracy.
But we’re going to be an autocracy.
And, in all honesty, the difference between living in an anocracy like we do now and a “light touch” autocracy probably wouldn’t be that different. I say that, then immediately come up with a number of reasons why that wouldn’t be the case.
The biggest reason why I think this is Republicans, once they know they can do whatever the fuck they want without having to worry about the will of the people, will push through an extremely unpopular social agenda. Taxes for plutocrats will be all but end and taxes for the poor will skyrocket. Republicans will gut the social safety net. The list goes on.
And, don’t forget, form follows function.
Autocrats tend to be insecure motherfuckers and America’s autocrat would be no different. He (or she?) would soon enough come after freedom of speech, weaponize the ICE infrastructure, the whole shebang. Then drunk cranks like me will simply go poof! and that will be that.
I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But as of right now, the only other option we face is civil war. So, get out while you can I suppose.
One of the most aggravating genre of Blue Check Liberal dumb hot takes is the attempt to shame — or whatever — this or that MAGA person who says something seemingly very stupid in their never ending quest to “own the libs.” But the jokes on them — 99% of the time, MAGA people aren’t dumb, they’re craven. They know exactly what they’re saying and “owning the libs” plays amazingly well with the base.
The point is — autocracy, the ultimate in “owning the libs” — is very, very, very popular in the United States at the moment. To the point that a surprisingly large number of MAGA people are chomping at the bit to use their AR-15s to murder people like me in cold political blood.
But the key thing to remember is — when the moment comes, we’re going to become an autocracy….or we have a civil war. And it won’t be the Reds who start it, but the Blues. I keep saying this over and over again an no one listens to me. My point is — why would Reds start a civil war when they can get everything they want peacefully through the courts, politics and Constitutional shenanigans?
Blues, meanwhile, are slowly being strangled by the ascendant Reds and THEY really do have every reason to leave the Union en masse.
Anyway, the point of all of this is, we’re fucked. Get out of the country if you can. The America we all assumed would always be there is slowly dying before our eyes. And the only question at the moment is do we settle into something along the lines of Hungary or do we go full Nazi?
One of the things that I totally got wrong about Trump is how stupid and lazy he is. It’s a testament to how stupid and lazy he is that he waited until the absolute last moment to try to “not lose” the 2020 election. So, all throughout the later part of his (first?) administration, I would come up with these not-too-elaborate political scenarios whereby Trump could “not lose” the 2020 election and finally consolidate his autocratic rule.
And, what’s more, remember, the people who voted for Trump in 2016 thought they were voting for an autocrat. So, as such, autocracy is very popular in the United States right now and has been for some time.
But let’s get to the matter at hand — if something, God forbid, happens to Biden, the United States is instantly thrown into a severe political crisis. This is doubly so if Biden shuffles off this mortal coil anytime between now and early November when the 2022 mid-terms happen.
I say this for a number of reasons. The biggest reason, of course, is the country is so divided and Republicans so fucking bloodthirsty and fascist that I just don’t see them allowing a President Harris to ever get a veep through the Senate. Or, if she did get one it would either happen because of the country was momentarily united in grief to allow it to happen or the person she pick was such a conservative Democrat that Republicans would see it as a win.
So, it’s reasonable to assume that a President Harris would not have a veep for an extended amount of time — maybe for her entire administration — and, as such, the Speaker of the House would be next in line of succession. Which brings us back to dingus Trump.
It is at least possible that even someone as stupid and lazy and Trump might see the absence of a veep as a golden opportunity to return to the presidency a few years early. Remember, you don’t have to be a member of the House to be its Speaker, and as such, Trump hijacks the naming of a Republican Speaker in 2023 with the specific goal of impeaching President Harris because of, I don’t know “her failure to address the border crisis.”
And here’s where things get pretty dark pretty quick.
So, let’s assume Trump gets his impeachment in the House. It goes over to the Senate and…it stalls. Trump then, being a deranged lunatic starts to rant about how MAGA states will leave the Union at his direction unless Senate Democrats vote for conviction.
The country is so divided and ripe for a “National Divorce” that just Trump bringing the idea of secession up is enough for Texas to call a Secessionist Convention and that it — civil war.
But, like I said, Trump is a lazy idiot. So, I probably giving him way too much credit. I hope.
As of right now, mapping out my remaining 30 to 40 years of existence (if I’m lucky) I would say if I’m ever going to live up to my “potential” it’s going be by writing and selling a novel (or six.) The thing I know I have an innate ability to do — take a damn good photo — requires equipment that I just don’t have and can’t afford. And I live in the wrong place. I have the wrong background. I’m too old, the list goes on.
And, yet, if there’s one thing I’ve learned is my life is very quirky and strange things happen to me for strange reason. I also know that I’m 100% extroverted and am an excellent “schmoozer” — especially when intoxicated. (The usual caveats about every drunk thinking they’re the funniest person in the room obviously apply.)
As such, I occasionally pause and think about what might happen if I managed to get the funds necessary to buy the photographic equipment necessary to start a career as a professional photographer. I don’t really know the grammar of photography, but I have an eye for beauty, if you will. I know how to tell a story with a picture, in other words.
If the stars were to align and I was able to not only get the photographic equipment I needed but was able to at least attempt to start a new life in, say, New York City, there’s a pretty good chance that I could be a moderately successful fashion photographer.
I would want to be a fashion photographer because I love beauty and what could be more beautiful than to take high qualities photos of beautiful women in beautiful clothes for a living? It’s my impression — I think — that my personal photographic god Helmut Newton was older when he started taking pictures for a living.
I’m not comparing myself to him, of course, but I need some hope from somewhere.
What’s more, I’m a big enough kook that I would probably fit right in with the larger-than-life figures found all throughout the fashion world.
But all of that is really dreaming a lot. And, yet, dreaming is free. And for that, I’m thankful.
I’ve written about this before, but I’m bored and tipsy and I find the subject fascinating. What interests me is celebrity interaction with people who write (or whatever) about them online.
My general assumption is celebrities are too busy doing “dope shit” in the real world to worry about what any one person is saying about them online. However, as I’ve written before, I suspect there is a spectrum of celebrity awareness.
On one end there are celebrities who are so famous and so busy with having a Real World Life that they have no idea what any particular random blogger or Twitter user might be saying about them. They have people for that, as they say. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum are those celebrities who are — no matter how big they are — so insecure that they troll Twitter using burner accounts, etc.
I really am a nobody. I may be pretty interesting, but I’m living in oblivion and there’s no reason any celebrity would have any interest in me whatsoever. The only notable exception to this general living-in-oblivion happened when I was living in Seoul.
I’ve written about all of this before, but, in general what happened is way back when, in the Before Times, I had a strange affinity for picking on the then-New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee and her strange byline. Now, being much older, I doubt I would care at all that she went by “8.” as a middle name. So what.
But this was a different era of the Internet and I was in Seoul, so when she visited South Korea while working on a book, I find myself having dinner with she and her friend Tomoko. (Who worked for the Asian Wall Street Journal, if remember correctly.)
The thing about Tomoko is she was a stereotypical Blue Check Liberal (well before those were a thing) to the point that she, right in front of me, went on at great length about how people who taught English in South Korea (that would be me) were, essentially the fucking scum of the Earth. I don’t think it registered at the time to her what she was saying and who she was saying it to.
But, lulz.
Anyway, I’m much older and much wiser now. It takes a lot to get me excited when it comes to celebrities. I check my Webstats obsessively and occasionally I’ll write some random thing about this or that celebrity and someone from NYC or LA will look at it and I pause and wonder if it’s someone connected to the celebrity I wrote about.
Now that I’m older, I’m very blasé about catching the attention of a celebrity. I just don’t care. Live long and prosper, guys. One day I believe — in my heart at least, that I’m going to be a celebrity.
You never know. It could happen. I am writing a novel, you know.
The issue of what really happened with “The Slap” has established a minor cottage industry of “truthers” who think it was all some sort of evil Leftist plot to fool God fearing MAGA people.
Or something. I’m not quite clear as to what the motives of the such a plot were.
Anyway, people who buy into such bullshit are part of a broader problem whereby people in the center-Left are assumed to be the scum of the earth by MAGA. The whole thing Slap Truther concept is part of a broader effort to dehumanize people on the liberal-progressive spectrum.
The idea that Leftist so evil and powerful that they could stage something like The Slap and get away with it kind of boggles my mind. It’s extremely aggravating and an indication of how fucked we are politically as a nation. The MAGA New Right continues to lurch towards being outright Nazis.
The moment a MAGA person becomes POTUS, that’s the end of American democracy. Or we have a civil war. Take your pick. Things are very fucked up politically in the United States. I don’t have any ready answers.
I’ve been working on this novel so long and I have no one to be my “reader” that I honestly am at a loss as to how good it is. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to finish the whole thing again before I start thinking about paying someone to read it.
Though, that’s not entirely true.
If I could find the right person to read a few chapters of this version of the novel, I probably would show it to them. But it’s not an urgent situation at the moment. I’m fine with not only waiting until this version is done, but waiting until I feel confident that this is an actual second draft.
I really enjoy the story — and the universe — I’ve come up with. I have a lot of room to grow. But, like I said, I’m doing all of this in such a vacuum I honestly don’t know how good the writing itself is. But all of that will come.
The point is to finish something, anything before I drop dead.
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