Month: December 2022

It’s When People Come At Me From The Political Left That I Don’t Know What To Do

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to brood about what, exactly, is the “woke cancel culture mob” and if it even exists. At the moment, all I know is that being “woke” simply means whatever it needs to mean so Ron DeSantis gets closer to being POTUS. That’s it — it means everything and nothing.

And, yet, from my own personal experiences on Twitter, there definitely does seem to be a small, but vocal, group of people who would fit the description of being “woke.” I think a better description of them would be “cultural Leftists.” They tend to be extremely touchy about things like pronouns, being “triggered,” the broadest, most complex definition of a what a “woman” is, all the while being totally oblivious to the rise of cold, hard MAGA Nazism.

They’re so busy making people like me who are generally on their side feel bad for not following their very strict orthodoxy about this or that “woke” thing that they totally miss that, in the end, both they the “woke” and me the “unwoke” could endup in the same Trump branded weaponized ICE camp. I’m sure I’m stumbling across some sort of political rule of thumb about how fascism takes over a democracy.

I think what’s most important is that, in general, the center-Left really needs to work on its messaging. When I have to spend five minutes wading through the “anti-MAGA people are all woke members of the cancel culture mob who want to turn everyone gay” narrative from my Traditionalist relatives whenever I try to talk to them about politics — American democracy has a problem.

It’s so bad that it is literally impossible for my Traditionalist relatives to distinguish between Democrats and pretty much the spawn of gay satan…oh boy. All I know is, the “gay scare” of 2022 – 2023 is alive and well in my little corner of the universe. I just want my otherwise sane Traditionalist relatives to help me defeat MAGA Nazism…but they’re just too consumed with the cultural wars to even think about it seriously.

All of this is very touchy and difficult to write about because, well, the “woke cancel culture mob” is known to fly off the handle if you don’t totally, absolutely agree with them on their most extreme positions. Which, of course, proves me point.

Anyway, I fucking hate MAGA Nazis. I just wish cultural Leftists would be willing to cool it and work with more centrist people like me to defeat the rise of fascism in the United States.

Dead Of Winter

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Today has been one of the slowest days of the year. Other than me getting a huge amount of work done on the transition from first to second draft of my first novel….pretty much nothing happened.

I visit my father in the nursing home just about every day and seeing all those people who are alive, but not alive, is a constant reminder that quality life is very, very important. So I find myself being grateful for even days like today which are just cold and meh.

I’m reminded also that even if I get what I want with this novel — for it to be a breakout success — I won’t get what I need: to be 24 years old again. I’m just 24 years too old to get the type of success I always dreamed of in the context of how I dream of one day getting it. That one day just never going to come if I want to run around young in New York City with doing all the cool shit I did in Seoul, only on a much bigger playing field.

I find myself thinking about this whenever someone mentions their 20 year career in this or that industry. Or they talk about how they took the red eye from California to New York City. I suppose it’s possible I might have a 20 year writing career ahead of me….but I’m going to be hold as hell and it will be different than, say, if I was starting off at 24 with an eye to plowing my way through the female populations of New York City and LA because of my long-term success.

I sound like such a crybaby.

I need to just be grateful for my health and even the possibility that maybe, just maybe I might sell a novel — period. The novel I’m working on, while intriguing, isn’t nearly as dark (at least that the moment) as needs to be to fit the traditional mystery-thriller genre.

Overall, I need to just cool it. I need to buckle down and work on making this first novel at good as it can possibly be. I guess I hate being almost 50. I a do-over. I want to be able to use all the experiences I have now to do my 20s and 30s (and 40s) the right way.

But that’s just not to be. Age is a far more intangible condition than sex or race, but it’s just as inescapable.

A Major Milestone

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have finished a fleshed out second draft outline at last. A lot more changed between the first and second draft outlines than I expected, but at least it’s done. Now, I’m probably going to chill out until at least after Christmas, maybe as late as New Year’s.

I need to do a lot of reading and I also want to go into the second draft with as clear as eyes as possible. I want to be refreshed and ready to go when I actually start writing. It may be that the pull of writing will be too strong and I just start writing as soon as Christmas is over.

I just don’t know yet.

But I am feeling very pleased. The story is intriguing and has a lot of twists and turns to it and even a dollop of speculative fiction. There are still some elements that I am a little bit fuzzy on, but the other 90% is pretty locked down and I’m very pleased.

There continues to be the issue of, well, lulz, me. No one takes me seriously and I continue to be unease that I could write The Bible and because I can come across as a drunk crank that no literary agent will take me seriously. Of course, if I became a success the very drunk crank elements of my personality wouldn’t be seen as a turnoff but rather endearing and interesting.

You just can’t win.

Anyway, I’m just going to pretty much chill out for a few days — at least — while I charge my creative batteries up enough to get back to writing. Then I will spend the rest of winter / spring finishing the second draft.

And THEN I get into the tricky issue of the Beta Reader process where I’m really going to have to get outside of my comfort zone in a big way. I can use the summer of 2023 to get ready for the fall 2023 querying season.

Wish me luck!

Who Needs ‘First Contact’ When You Have The Chatbot Revolution?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When I was a very young man, it occured to me that we might create our own aliens should AI (AGI) ever come into being. Now, many years later, I find myself dwelling upon the same thing, only this time in the context of the historical significance of the coming chatbot (and eventually potentially the AGI) revolution.

If we create “The Other” — the first time Humans would have to deal with such a thing since the Neanderthals — what would be the historical implications of that? Not only what would be the historical equivalent of creating The Other, but what can history tell us about what we might expect once it happens?

Well, let’s suppose that the creation of The Other will be equal to splitting the atom. If we’re about to leave the Atomic Age for the AGI Age, then…what does that mean? If you look at what happened when we first split the atom, there were a lot and I mean A LOT of hairbrained ideas as to how to use nuclear power. We did a lot of dumb things and we had a lot of dumb ideas about essentially using a-bombs on the battlefield or to blow shit up as need be for peaceful purposes.

Now, before we go any further, remember that things would be going much, much faster with AGI as opposed to splitting the atom. So, as such, what would happen is a lot of high paying jobs might just vanish virtually overnight with some pretty massive economic and political implications. And, remember, we’re probably going to have a recession in 2023 and if ChatGPT 4.0 is as good as people are saying, it might be just good enough that our plutocratic overlords will decide to use it to eliminate whole categories of jobs just because they would rather cut jobs that pay human being a living wage.

If history is any guide, after much turmoil, a new equilibrium will be established, one that seems very different than what has gone before. Just like how splitting the atom made the idea of WW3 seem both ominous and quaint, maybe our creation of The Other will do a similar number on how we perceive the world.

It could be, once all is said and done, that the idea of the nation-state fades into history and the central issue of human experience will not be your nationality but your relationship to The Other, our new AGI overlords.

It’s something to think about, regardless.

How James Cameron Could Have For Sure Made His $2 Billion With Avatar 2 — The Way Of Water

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Overall, Avatar 2 — The Way Of Water was….good. Maybe not great, but it was definitely good. Though I have to admit that it took a lot of willpower not to leave after I had used its distraction to figure out some issues with the development of the novel I continue to be obsessed with.

If Cameron had really wanted to reach his $2 billion haul, he should have really leaned into making the Red State “Star People” a bit more nuanced and complex. Give them more moral justification for what they were doing other than “Earth is dying.” Make them more human in a way that there were a few red meat dog whistles for MAGA Nazis. Had he done that, the politics of the movie would have been a lot more even handed — at least in the eyes of MAGA Nazis — and they probably would have driven the movie’s success into the $2 billion range.

But here are my complains about the actual story, rather than any political quibbles.

It’s Too Long
This movie is just way too long. I understand that it’s supposed to evoke awe in the audience with all its high-tech image shit, but yawn. Too long. It got really, really slow at times. I did a lot of eye rolling and watch checking. Repeatedly. Again and again. I would much rather it be a tight two hours than a three hour self-indulgent trip through James Cameron psche. There was a really good movie floating around in all that way of water bullshit, but Cameron was just too obsessed with being a show off to let it be seen.

It Draws Too Much From The Cameronverse
Over and over again there were call backs to previous James Cameron movies in this movie. A conspicuous amount. Some of it, it seemed, was an effort to show that he could top himself by doing really difficult shit in water. When I first started noticing all the callbacks, I thought it was fun. Then it became distracting because it was happening so much. There were call backs to The Abyss, Aliens, Terminator 2 and Titanic strone across the three hours of the movie. Give it a rest, Jimmy!

‘Cap or Fact:’ Is Google Saving Us From Ourselves When It Comes To The Looming ChatBot Revolution?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, the “Musk whisperer,” Jason Calacanis, tweeted this image out of an email he got in regards to where Google is when it comes to chatbot technology.

If this is true, then raises a lot of questions of both a technological and political nature. We have no idea — at least at the moment — if this email is true or not, but it definitely *feels* true. It feels like something Google, in their infinite and paternalistic wisdom would do to “save us from ourselves” in regards to a looming chatbot revolution.

And, yet, a part of me is dubious about this claim. If anyone can make money off of the chatbot revolution, it’s Google and, as such, they can talk all they want about “not being evil” but, in the end, the amount of money they might be able to make from being at the center of the chatbot revolution probably is pretty stunning.

The email is very curious to me because there definitely seems to be a little bit of implied whining that if only the evil “woke” people at Google would let their chatbot free then we would have some sort of hyperproductive nirvana. It’s the usual type of bullshit found in any conspiracy theory where everything would be solved but for one piece of the puzzle that the Powers That Be won’t let us have.

I suspect, however, that 2023 is going to be put up or shut up time for Google if they do have such technology. If we do happen to have a severe-ish recession, then the pressure for Google to step in with its advanced chatbot technology will only grow — maybe to a breaking point. I say this because it’s very possible that because coming ChatBot 4.0 might be just good enough to replace many, many, many jobs during the 2023 recession.

What’s worse, in a day-after-tomorrow scenario, someone like Elon Musk might put in a quasi-AI into an EV semi and there go 3 million high paying blue collar jobs virtually overnight. Talk about an economic disruption! If all of this happen before the 2024 election then the possibility that fascist MAGA Nazis will swoop in and transform the United States into Trumplandia becomes a very real possibility. That or, of course, a civil war happens when Blue States dip out of the Union because they’re tired of MAGA Nazi bullshit.

It’s Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can tell from my Webstats that this Website continues to get the occasional view from the occasional person in South Korea. I honestly don’t know what to make of this. I haven’t been in South Korea in a long, long time and I struggle with any rationale for someone living there to care enough about me to check up on me.

I live a very boring life at the moment, other than writing a novel that I hope will be the cornerstone of a six novel project.

But, if I’m honest with myself, I was very much a colorful, larger than life figure during much of my time in South Korea — specifically Seoul in late 2006 – early 2007. I was a wildman, burning my candle at both ends because I was manic and self-medicating with huge amounts of booze. I was a “public figure” in the tiny expat community of Seoul and I was also over exposed because I was both DJing at Nori Bar and publishing what was briefly the only English magazine in town.

The whole experience dramatically changed my self-perception, if nothing else. It was during that time that I realized I was far more creative than I could ever possibly have realized. It was in Seoul when I realized that I was never going to be a traditional journalist.

Ironically, however, I know that given the resources I could probably produce a really cool Website or magazine. Because of my experiences with ROKon Magazine, I know what NOT to do. But I would need a lot of help — I may be articulate and able to expound upon a vision, but I’m shit at persuasion. Which is why, of course, I needed someone like the late Annie Shapiro to make my vision a reality.

Anyway.

There’s no reason for anyone from South Korea to care about me at the moment. Just forget about me. It was a long time ago and nobody cares anymore.

I Need To Up My Game

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I transition from the first to second draft, I find myself dwelling on how I can really engage the reader. Even the few alpha readers I have aren’t sufficiently interested in what I’ve written to read it all the way through quickly. And that is troubling because what I want is the novel to hook you from the first word so you find yourself at 4 a.m. on a Thursday checking your watch as you finish up the novel, not realizing how fast you’ve read it.

But the transition from first to second draft is going really well — so far — and there is a pretty good shot that I will at least be within shouting distance of that desired endgame. Maybe.

I continue to be uneasy about what is going to happen should people do due diligence on me. I’ve always — always — just been myself online and sometimes that “being myself” means not following the established media narrative. Like, if I express angst about how I, as an established white male author might not be able to get as published as easy as someone else…is that, unto itself, problematic?

Probably.

But I can’t who I am. I go where my eyes and ears take me and it definitely does seem that being a “CIS white male” trying to get my first novel sold isn’t exactly helpful. I am well aware that that is actually not the case and most authors are, well, CIS white males. But that doesn’t stop me from having some anxiety about it. It just *feels* true, which, is, of course the type of thinking that got us Trump.

Anyway, I just try to be the best person I can be.

So This Is 50: I Write Because I Have To, Not Because I Want To

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The act of writing comes pretty easy for me — it’s everything else about it that is tough. I can’t spell very well. My grammar is atrocious at times. But the act of writing, and more importantly storytelling — comes pretty easy to me most of the time. And, yet, of course, that’s not the case for many, many writers.

A lot of writers (with MFAs!) are great at the logistics of writing, believe themselves to be writers…but fucking hate writing. Or they’re wracked with existential angst about if they’re even writers at all. Given where I’m coming from — where I love to write and do it a lot without even thinking about it — the difference between them and me is enough to give me a headache.

These writers often want simple solutions to complex creative, existential problems that I simply am not equipped to answer. So they rhetorically ask these deep, meaningful questions about what it means to be a writer and I don’t quite know how to respond. Writing generally comes really easy to me — I’m 100% extroverted — and so I really haven’t come up with any ready answers for how to solve the problems of writers who hate to write, or don’t like to write or can’t write or whatever.

In the end, as I approach 50, all I can do is be grateful for what advantages I do have and to appreciate that most writers who struggle with writing have something I most definitely don’t have — friends. I’m pretty isolated these days and pretty much the more you know me, the less you like me. With a few notable exceptions, of course.

So, as I approach 50, I realize that my quality of life is diminished by worrying about someone ELSE’s inability to function as a writer. I have enough problems on my own, I shouldn’t have to weigh the solutions to OTHER people’s problems. (Which, by the way, would be a great name for a Greta Gerwig move, “Other People’s Problems.”)

As such I’m just going to cool it. I am grateful for the talents and advantages that I have and I acknowledge my many weaknesses.

The ‘Woke’ Tik-Tok Critiques Of ‘Avatar 2’ Are Bonkers

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me first say that I’m not a perfect man. In fact, relative to the purer-than-Caesar’s -Wife expectations of the “woke cancel culture mob” I truly have fallen short of the glory that is Christ. I have drunk too much in the past. I have gotten drunk and ranted about things in a way that did not fit the established media narrative. Also, before I start — fuck MAGA Nazi cocksuckers.

I was rather aghast at the “woke” critique of Avatar 2 — The Wave of Water on Tik-Tok. The Leftist critique, apparently is that the movie wallows in “white savior” tropes and does a lot of cultural appropriation. I am aghast because I was so busy generally enjoying the movie that neither one of those “woke” Leftist criticisms even entered my mind as I watched.

Not that I didn’t notice the underlying pandering to both Red and Blue in the movie here and there. It was definitely there. The bad guys were cool in a “Reds with a cultural chip on their shoulder” way and the good guys were definitely downlow woke.

But the idea that you ding the movie not for being too long and too self-indulgent, but rather for the more esoteric “white savior” trope and cultural appropriation seems a little bit of a reach. Not that I’m not validating those “woke” criticisms. Ok, I get it, but if you’re all that wrapped up in something like that that the vast majority of your average American middle-of-the-road viewer in a suburb won’t notice — you’re the reason why most Oscar movies are a just not that popular with the average person.

The point is to tell a good to great story. That’s it. When you’re done with your story, is a good one? Did you, using subtext, get your point across? Did people leave the movie entertained? I mean, if you really wanted to all fucking woke about things, you would definitely trash Top Gun: Maverick because it glorified the military in a very unwoke manner — even though it definitely told a great story that really entertained people.

I say all this because I’m hard at work on my own story — a novel. And I have done everything in my power for their to be “representation” in the novel, for it to feel inclusive. And, yet, because the country is so fucking divided into Red and Blue, half the audience will probably think it’s too “woke” while the other half will scream at the top of their lungs that a middle aged CIS white male has no right to write from the POV of a non male, non white person.

We’re so fucking divided that you really, truly can’t win. I am again reminded of the MAGA Nazi fascination with the question “What is a woman.” They love the question because it’s an easy bludgeon to use against woke people who have to pause for a moment before they answer the question. So, of course, Nazi MAGA cocksuckers hone in on that question, wallow in it, in an effort to make the center-Left look as out of touch as possible.

Anyway, there comes a point when you just have to accept to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.