Month: March 2021

‘Shadow Banned’ — #Lyrics To A Pop-Rock Song


Phoebe Bridgers in “Kyoto” is sooooo close to what I think of as “Rona Rock.” In fact, all that would need to happen is Miley Cyrus and Phoebe Bridgers mix and match whatever it is they’re doing right now and you would have “Rona Rock.” You would have pop rock. You would have music with a beat that you can dance to. Sadly, this will never happen. Fuck. But, anyway, here’s a quick big of doggerel from me.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Please give credit if you produce or perform

no one wants to read my shit anyway
but here I am cooling my heels
seeking cheap thrills
waning days are afoot
for my relvanance
’cause I’ve been

shadow banned
shadow banned
shadow banned

if you’re not careful
you’ll be taken off the platform
with no where to squeal
people don’t believe it’s true
but it is
one day they’ll see
when they’re

shadow banned
shadow banned
shadow banned

bridge
let the sun in
make things bright
we’ll scale the hights
to something out of sight
we’re done in
’cause of our sin

shadow banned
shadow banned
shadow banned


‘Shadow Banned’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The last few days absolutely no one has been looking at this Website. It’s almost as if even on the Web I’ve been shadowbanned. Or, maybe, I’m just more boring than usual.

But I still have the novel I’m working on.

It’s going quite well. The more I drink the faster I can write, natch.

Lyrics To ‘Arni’s Resistance:’ ‘Nothing Is Real’


I have no idea what I’m doing. But it’s a challenge to at least try to fit lyrics to music. Techno is good it’s easier to find instrumentals of it on Soundcloud.

Nothing Is Real (But The Way You Make Me Feel)
Music from Arni
lyrics by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
please give credit if you produce or perform

nothing is real
nothing is real
nothing is real
nothing is real

but the way you make me feel
but the way you make me feel
but the way you make me feel

Bridge
your look is hard as ice
making me strive more
to warm you in the night
to end this blight of hate
because nothing is real

but the way you make me feel
but the way you make me feel
but the way you make me feel

Toplining Lyrics To Destructo’s ‘Techno:’ ‘Listening To Me’


Apparently, a lot of songs are actually “toplined,” which is when a lyricist is given music then told to write lyrics to it. I don’t know anything about music, but I can write and like to tell stories via music. So, I’m going to experiment with “toplining” a little bit.

Listen To Me
using the music from Destructo
Lyrics By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Please give credit if you produce or perform

I can hear your voice in my head
wanting to get me into bed
your body languge has been read
nobody listens to techno
but you’re listening to me

listening to me
listening to me
listenting to me

perfect in your glow
nobody but me can hear you now
we’re as close as can be
soon we’ll be inside

listening to me
listening to me
listenting to me

bridge
sounds come and go
just like a bump of blow
I can hear you in my skin
that’s when we begin again
with the two of us in sin

ScriptNotes, My Novel & The Curious Case Of The Female Villain


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because my novel is meant to be something of an vaguely allegorical rant about the Trump Era, I need an Ivanka Trump. As such, I doing something that Stieg Larsson didn’t do in his original Millennium series — have a female villain.

I have this “female villain” for a number of reasons. One, because I want to slyly rant about Ivanka Trump being so fucking complicit and also because I want a more realistic depiction of human nature than the all-women-are-heroes that was found in the Millennium Series. And I need a female villain because that’s one way to show the “bad guys” side of things without reveling some pretty huge secrets that I want to hide from the audience until the Third Act.

So, that’s how I realized I needed a flawed female character.

This is even more interesting when you realize the screenwriting podcast ScriptNotes just recently talked about this very thing. In general, there is a huge dearth of female villains. This is probably because, well, one, male writers struggle to write accurate depictions of non-villain women and there’s a real danger of coming across as a misogynist if you don’t do it right.

But I’m an idiot, so I’m going to at least TRY to have a very flawed, very complicit female character in the novel I’m working on who is aware of some very dark things that her dad is doing, but does nothing to stop him. At least, that’s the vision at this point.

Things That Should Change With The Internet, But Won’t Change


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Internet is no longer new. An entire generation has grown up with it at its beck and call. So, it’s time for it to grow up and accept that it’s a mature medium. As such, here are some things that should happen, but won’t happen, like….NOW.

  1. Metered Email
    It make no sense to allow this valuable potential profit center to go unmetered and untaxed. Now, I know that Republicans REALLY HATE THE POSTAL SERVICE, but what better way to fund the postal service as it exists today than to allow them to meter email in some way. You want fast email, you pay a few cents more than free email. Or something. Unfettered email is something we all take for granted so much that to change it would freak everyone out, enrage them. But it’s something that SHOULD be done, but WON’T be done.
  2. Everything Behind A Paywall
    Maybe if all MSM content was behind a paywall of some sort, then we could go back to the halcyon days when even freaky weirdos like me could at least freelance. While a lot of MSM has gone behind a paywall, not enough have.
  3. Burn Newspapers To The Ground To Save Them
    Someone with a few billion lying around should begin to buy up newspapers en mass and convert them to something new, something like an app. Almost all newspapers besides the LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The USA Today are pretty much just zombies. Why do they even exist? I would buy as many other newspapers as I could up and completely re-imagine them. Or, if you wanted to be an asshole, you destroy newspapers by doing the same thing but without buying the newspapers. You build an app that gives you the very best of Twitter-like content from an paid editorial staff — make it hyperlocal for places all over the country — and go directly after newspapers. Everyone would hate you, but there’s a chance you’d make a shit tone of money.

‘The Lady Bird Gambit’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The novel has an existential problem, in a sense. And that problem is it’s meant to be a vaguely allegorical critique of the Trump Era and the Trump Era is, thankfully, over.

And, yet, I press on for two reasons. One is what I call “The Lady Bird Gambit.” This is the idea that if you really develop character and plot — and just make something a great experience for the audience — that they’ll forgive you if you’re also leaning into “instant nostalgia.”

Love this movie.

So much has happened, in a sense, since 2020 started that I think if I make it clear that’s when the novel is set, then when I go off on subtextual rants about how insane those days were, then people will give me a pass if the story they’re reading is otherwise just a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, the other issue is MAGA-GQP-Trumplandia ain’t going nowhere. In fact, if my fuzzy understanding of novel post-production is accurate, then just about when this novel would be published (IF I SELL IT) would be just about when we have to start worrying about the fucking MAGA cucksuckers again.

As such, in a sense, I keep working on this novel because I know in the long-term I’m putting my stick where the puck will be, no where it is right now. But, also, I just love this story and I’ve gotten so far into the process that I simply can’t in good conscience give up.

You can’t edit a blank page, as they say.

The Secret Singularity


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It never occurred to me until now that a form of the Singularity may be a upon in secret. Or, put another way, Big Tech isn’t exactly going out of its way to tell the general public that some technologies that would be considered a part of the Singularity are already here and being used in ways that are changing people’s lives.

Take, for instance, automated cars.

What happens when hard AI arrives via cars…and we just accept it as a part of life like automated elevators? In other words, what if Big Tech cracks the nut of hard AI and does in a way meant to make us all shrug and continue to curse the meat?

For me, the main reason why this is unnerving is if Big Tech can figure out hard AI to make money, then an autocratic government could use it to control its population more effectively. Given it’s loudmouths like me that always run afoul of autocratic governments, the idea that President Pompeo or President Hawley might have access to hard AI to monitor domestic communication is not cool at all.

So, it’s at least possible that either we’ll find out about the Singularity when some sort of whistleblower pops out or something like hard AI will arrive via a Her-type personal assistant.

But I agree with Elon Musk — unregulated hard AI is probably one of the biggest dangers facing humanity. Too bad it may already be here in secret.

‘Cancel Culture’ & Breakfast At Tiffany’s


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

How exactly does the conservative bugbear of “cancel culture” work if the easy pickings of Mikey Rooney’s portrayal of Holly Golightly’s Asian neighbor in Breakfast At Tiffany’s hasn’t caught its attention yet?

The depiction is so fucking racist that it makes what is otherwise The Perfect Movie in to a solid B+ movie. It comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really do much to serve the plot. In fact, I would go so far as to say we should either cut out that part of the movie altogether or film the movie again shot for shot with a new cast and simply change the plot as necessary to avoid that character’s existance.

The only thing I can think of as to why the movie hasn’t been “canceled” in some way yet is it’s not on any of the major streamers and, as such, it hasn’t come up as an issue.

The Implications Of A ‘Secret’ Soft Singularity, or ‘Where’s My $1,200 Mindcap?’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I struggle to figure out what’s going on right now with technology. On one hand, it definitely seems as though Big Tech is pulling a fast one on us with some some pretty fantastical technologies like “Digital Telepathy,” while at the same time…Silicon Valley seems obsessed with the modern equivalent of the old rural party lines.

I want my Mindcap.

So, it’s possible to imagine a rather Dark Mirror-like future where The Singularity arrives…and no one tells us. The power of the Singularity is used deep within the bowels of Big Tech (or an autocratic government) to leech money off of us or to two control us. The general population never knows that hard AI is here and is being used to control us.

Sure, the occasional cool thing may pop out like a “Her” like personal assistant, but the various Singularity-like technologies we’ve been promised will come no later than 2045 won’t be marketed as such. They just will arrive far earlier and be used in some unexpected ways to screw us all over.

The more I think about it, the more chilling it becomes.

Instead of a $1,200 Mindcap, we may simply get the Pompeo Administration using digital telepathy to monitor what’s going on in our minds and if we commit Thought Crime, then, sucks to be you. It’s just wild to imagine something as huge as The Singularity being hidden from us.

It’s like Columbus discovering the New World, then keeping it from everyone in an effort to control the path to Asia. Wow. Just wow.

But I’m a just a nobody. Absolutely no one listens to me.