I love me some Spotify and I keep trying to think of ways to make sure it thrives. And one scenario would be that it merge with Netflix. Apparently, Spotify has a real problem with Apple mooching off it because of a 30% VAT it imposes on any online transaction via its devices.
Or something like that.
Anyway, the point is — I could see a lot of synergies if NetFlix and Spotify became one user interface. It would be an all-encompassing user steaming media experience.
Though, I will note that one interesting addition to this combination would be Siris XM. I would definitely like access to Howard Stern via my Spotify account. That would be pretty cool.
At LAST, it’s possible that I MAY have something akin to a stable first act. A lot of my problems with the first act are bullshit and arbitrary. From what my Beta Readers have told me, the issue for most people is they just want the story to flow and make sense.
My heroine KINDA looks like this.
All this futzing around with the specifics of scene sequence is not something that most readers notice or care about. They just want to be able to read the novel all the way through.
Now, issue that I’ve found myself worrying about is the number of spicy scenes in the first act. Too often, I’ve leaned into the nature of my heroine’s personal life to show some sexual activity and I just don’t know how much people will tolerate it — especially in the first act.
But I’m doing all of this in a vacuum. I just can’t keep spinning my wheels. I have to, at some point, realize that the point is to get this third draft done so I can go through and edit it.
So. As such, I’m trying to write as much as possible as quickly as possible now so I can get out of the first act by the end of October, 2023.
The fact that Saturday Night Live had sketches entirely in Spanish without subtitles has kind of rattled my cage. The reason is, I fucking hate MAGA and yet I found something about it rather grating to the nerves. If it bothered me, then, Lord only knows it probably bothered those 60,000 low information swing voters in five states that will determine the 2024 election.
Add to this how my conservative relative to this day is extremely angry about what happened with COVID and I have a lot of conservative sentiment within my mind to process. If we had a functioning democracy — and no Electoral College — I might switch from a center-Left party to something closer to a center-Right party.
But, lulz, I just don’t have that as an option. So, fuck it, I’m just going to have to double down on my center-Left love of democracy and prepare to potentially risk my life and scared honor for that love. I say that because I believe the best way to fix a lot of these cultural problems is more democracy, not less. So, yes, there are some extremes on the far Left, but the answer is not to turn the United States into a MAGA Nazis white Christian ethnostate.
Anyway. Only time will tell, I guess. I can’t predict the future. Maybe everything really will work out.
So. It definitely seems as though we may have about a year before the United States either slips peacefully into autocracy or we have a civil war (Reds) or revolution (Blues.) Yes, I suppose it’s possible that some sort of third way might happen whereby Biden wins and that breaks the back of MAGA, but….oh boy. Not putting a lot of hope in that one.
All the macro signs at the moment point to Trump winning in 2024 and, soon, enough, the entire post-WW2 global world order is thrown up in the air. And that’s just internationally. Domestically, the United States will become a white theocratic ethnostate, probably as the result of a Constitutional Convention that puts MAGA enabling acts into the Constitution.
Or, put another way, the issue is how bad are things going to get? I mean, my fears of catastrophe are growing so serious that I’m thinking about the need to buy a Ham radio. Because if things really go tits up, communication will be something that we will be sorely lacking.
But, to date, I’m more interested in working on my novel to worry about something so dark. If that changes, then, well, there you go.
Because of how, collectively, Americans are a pretty laid back bunch, I struggle to imagine a situation where there might be any sort of mass revolt against Tyrant Trump should he win a second term. Because of his age, Trump will be seen as a transitional figure, with the result being whomever his successor is being the person who finally throttles our dying democracy.
And, really, much like how Augustus was able to transition the Roman Republic into an Empire, as long as Trump and his immediate successor don’t touch the First Amendment, they should be fine. Even if elections are meaningless, as along as Americans feel as though they can bitch and moan about what’s going on around them, there won’t be any problems in the streets.
But this is Trump we’re talking about.
Trump loves, loves, loves, to besmirch anything and everything that is considered sacred, so it may be almost inevitable that soon enough, Trump will start to attack some pretty basic Constitutional rights. Ironically enough, as long as he doesn’t touch the Second Amendment, his supporters will lulz our descent into a Russian-style autocracy.
But we have to accept that Trump’s second term will not only be one based on revenge, but also will take all the parts we hated about the first term to the next level. So much so, that the entire post-WW2 global liberal order will be thrown up in the air to the point that a full blown WW3 might break out because America pulls out of NATO and South Korea. What’s more, as all of this is happening, a good 1 million smug wealthy liberals will flee the country — at a minimum.
I still, however, struggle to imagine a scenario whereby there might some sort of Glorious Revolution on the part of Blues that might involve a General Strike and that kind of thing. Americans are just too complacent to do such a thing.
The only reason why I even keep writing about this issue is there are some macro trends at work that are extremely alarming. One of America’s two major political parties is now fascist and only see elections as valid if they win them. But I can’t predict the future. Maybe “Mueller, She Wrote” is right and somehow MAGA will evaporate into the mists of political history and everything will work out because some court ruling saves us from ourselves.
I’ve finally come up with a heroine who is, in her own way, just as interesting as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. But there’s a downside to her being so unique. Because of how dumb people can be, and how fixated on sex they can be, it’s very possible that the fact that my heroine is a part-time sex worker (stripper) may overshadow anything else I have to say with this novel.
The character has A LOT of agency — she owns the club she strips at, for what it’s worth — and I like how having the two elements of her life slam against each other leads to some interesting situations. This time of wild dichotomy was successful with Bill Hader’s TV show “Barry” and there’s no reason to believe I can’t find similar success with this novel.
But I AM a smelly “CIS white male,” and, as such, there will be a small, woke cancel culture mob element of the audience who will come at me from the left on this issue. The very element of the novel — validating sex work — that would cause a transgendered undocumented twentysomething woman to be heaped with praise will cause me to be pillared.
At least, that’s my fear.
But, I can’t help who I am or how old I am. I really like the character I’ve come up with. I will admit that my heroine doesn’t have nearly the fucked up youth that Lisbeth Salander had, but, surprise, I AM setting up the life of my real heroine — the novel is set in late 1994, early 1995.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if I manage to query this novel successfully or if the entire world will collapse and I have to use a Ham radio to find out what’s going on with the broader world.
Any debate about the sexual orientation of Taylor Swift usually starts with the wrong question. The issue is NOT if Tay-Tay is “gay” or “queer,” the issue is — how else would one of the most famous women in the world act?
As I keep saying, because we Poors can’t wrap our little poor minds around how things work in the rarified heights of celebrity, a lot of people like Tay-Tay just keep their same-sex bed hopping on the DL because it’s not worth the trouble.
Now, things have changed a great deal — at least for celebrity women. The general public just shrugs most of the time when this or that celebrity starts a same-sex relationship. Though, I have to admit that if the rumor I’ve heard about Shailene Woodley being married to a woman turned out to be true, it would give me pause for thought.
The point is — given her wealth and cultural power, it’s almost a given some, if not all, of the chatter about Tay-Tay sharing a bed now and again with a woman is probably based on some grain of truth. She just doesn’t feel like having to deal with The New Yorker writing 10,000 word think pieces about What It Means For White Liberal Women That America’s Sweetheart Is in a Same-Sex Relationship.
This, of course, brings up the issue of what happens when Tay-Tay finally does settle down and get married and have kids. Those events, unto themselves, will be cultural supernovae.
I have a pretty good system going when it comes to this novel. I alternate between developing and writing and sitting down and reading through what I’ve written. This helps a lot because I’ve noticed a lot — A LOT — of structural problems with the flow of reading.
This novel has a very Barry-eques nature to it. But the downside of this is I’ve found myself spinning my wheels in the first few chapters of the third draft. I’m officially in a put-up-or-shut up era of this novel’s development. I need to start progressing past the first act and start a new, third draft of the rest of the novel.
I’ve kind of decided that whatever I have by November 1st, is what I got for the first act. But I think there’s a good chance that I will be in the second act well before that. I continue to do all of this in a vacuum, so, lulz, I have no idea if any of this is any good or not.
My hunch is it is. There is a progression of events that is pretty good. It’s very interesting. The ebb and flow of the story is such that I know that if you are willing to give it a chapter or two that you’ll be hooked and you’ll be willing to spend the time necessary to finish the novel.
The key thing is as the novel evolves, I’ve managed to infuse a story that to date as been all plot with a lot of character development.
I’m a nobody at the moment. Sometimes, I feel like I could walk off the edge of the world and it would take a while — if ever — for anyone to notice. So, ANY attention I get is of note to me. But I’m not going to complain about how I have one stalker(?) who obsessively checks this site.
No, I’m interested in those curious instances where someone looks at this Website, but clearly doesn’t want me to know where they’re really coming from. It’s no big deal — whatever — but it is curious that anyone would care enough to hide their domain name.
There was a moment in time, when such things really got me excited. But, now, not so much. I just don’t care. It’s no big deal. The idea that someone of note would be interested in me and would go out of their way to hide their URL is intriguing.
I will note that I find it really interesting when it comes to celebrity’s relationship to social media. I think there is a spectrum, with one end a celebrity being too busy doing dope shit to worry about social media and on the other end you have very insecure celebrities with a lot — A LOT — of burner accounts.
One of the most curious situations is people who not only come out of nowhere, but they find some random link deep in the site. It’s very curious. I sometimes think there is a lot going on in my Webstats that I’m not seeing. I think some of it comes from my Webstat software mistaking some people looking at this site as robots and, as such, I don’t see what they’re looking at.
Or something. Something like that. But, in the end, it’s all value free. It is going to be very interesting to see on the backend once I start querying. Of course I’m going to see a deluge of normal people with real careers and real money look through all the drunken ranting I’ve done on this site.
But I know this novel is getting really, really good. And that’s all that matters.
Here are my current theories as to who in the general Queens area keeps checking this site repeatedly during the day.
Someone who knows me from my time in South Korea This makes the most sense. I was kind of crazy in South Korea and it would make total sense for someone to continue to want to keep tabs on me, even 15 years after the fact.
Someone from the Kermit & Friends Community This ALSO makes total sense. I seem to recall one specific young man who was completely obsessed with me who was a part of the KaF community.
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