Month: October 2022

The Country That Can’t Even Laugh At The Same Things Is In Serious Fucking Trouble

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I written about this before, but all signs point to the United States, much like the late 1850s, is tearing itself into two different nations. Many, but thankfully not all, of the signs that were there before the Civil War are beginning to pop up in the modern America of the 2020s.

One really fucked up symptom of how the country is tearing itself apart is how we can’t even laugh at the same things. I’m well aware that much of this siloing is happening because the MAGA Right thinks all comics are members of the “woke cancel culture mob” and, as such, out of sheer desperation they watch Gutfeld! even though the man is objectively not fucking funny. I’ve heard dad jokes that are funnier than anything Gutfeld utters.

Not funny!

As an aside — I continue to be amazed at how MAGA Republicans have embraced Dave Chappelle for his anti-trans statements. What’s telling is, even when I tell them that for all the attempts to “cancel” him, Chappelle remains as popular as he ever was….they simply don’t listen. It’s usually at this point in the conversation when I totally lose their attention. They’re so busy getting angry about the “woke cancel culture mob” and how it wants to turn everyone gay…they just don’t listen to anything else I have to say about Chappelle.

Anyway, the inability of Red and Blue to laugh at the same thing is yet another macro indication that the country is fucked and we face the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta between now and, say, January 2025. I have no idea what the ultimate endgame to this clusterfuck is, but I do know we all had better buckle up — especially if the fucking MAGA fascist cocksuckers take one or both houses of Congress in a few days.

Sometimes, I Wonder If We Should Be Worried About Stephen Colbert

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One thing I’ve noticed about Stephen Colbert is if he makes a mistake, it’s a tell that he’s nervous. A number of really high profile events in his career, he’s fudged his speech just a enough for it to be noticable.

The one time at the forefront of my mind is when he essentially told W to his face to fuck off as part of his monologue in front of the White House press corp.

But lately, I’ve noticed an uptick in his errors during the Late Show monologue. It makes me worried. Is there something going on behind the scenes with Colbert that we don’t know about?

I have no idea what that might be, but lulz, maybe it could be as simple as he needs to pay more attention at rehearsals?

My Hot Take On Twitter Post-Musk Discourse

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a growing body of work written by people a lot smarter and better educated than me about different ways Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk might mishandle his acquisition and “kill” it.

Here’s my addition to all that.

It’s going to take a lot to dislodge the core 10% of Twitter users who produce most of its content. You’re going to need a better mousetrap, if you will, for them to leave the service. So, in that respect, Musk definitely has some breathing room. But at the same time, that breathing room is limited, if the perception hardens that Twitter is nothing more than a more popular version of Gab, or Truth Social, then there may come a tipping point where the service collapses and becomes just another MySpace or Friendster.

It would be at that point, obviously, where someone — probably someone center-Left — would come up with a Twitter clone that would be a “safe space” for people who just want a public form to talk about their food or rant about what a collection of deplorables MAGA is.

A lot is going to depend on the issue of what Musk actually does with the service as opposed to what his fan boys want him to do. If he pretty much just runs it the way it always has been while adding a few features, then the very forces that have made it an accidental success will continue. But if decides to let the malignant dingus Trump back on the platform, then, well, that, unto itself, could be the tipping point that leads to Twitter’s demise.

As I keep saying — all this uncertainty around Twitter’s future has opened up a very narrow window of opportunity for a similar service, maybe one based on an updated version of Usenet’s UX. That’s my idea, at least. I think that would be pretty cool.

But for the time being, I think Twitter is going to muddle through. Musk has a proven track record of success, so I think he’s probably going to pull this one off, too.

Earnest, Well Meaning MAGA Is The Worst MAGA

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m reading a political biography of Hitler’s ascent and I’m struck by how prosaic it all was, or, “the banality of evil” as the old saying goes. Nazism, for the most part, was treated as any other political movement. Yes, it was unusual because it’s leader was a “clown” and there was cult-like reverence for him within the movement, but other than that, it was pretty much just one of a number of far Right political parties in Weimar Germany.

And I’m sure for much of the Nazi Party’s existence, there were earnest, well meaning members who did not take people who hated the Nazis seriously. They were patronizing and did everything in their power to come across as calm and centered — even if everything about what they believed was based on a hateful lie.

I say all this because I still, on occasion, run into a fucking MAGA cocksucker who obviously doesn’t take my distaste for the American Nazism that is MAGA seriously. They like to make jokes, and their tone of voice is very patralizing and you have expect them to call me “adorable.”

I fucking hate that. Take my anger seriously, if you really want to talk to me about your hate-filled movement. Instead of belittling me as if I’m some sort of wayward soul, validate that I fucking think you follow a ding-dong who could very well destroy humanity if things don’t go so great.

But I think I’m deluding myself. In the end, I’m going to face an existential choice in the real world. Am I going to shut up and keep my head down like a Good German, or am I going to keep ranting about how much I think MAGA fuckers can suck my cock?

Of course, I’m going to stand my ground and continue to exercise my freedom of speech, even if it doesn’t exist anymore. Wish me luck. I’m sure at some point after 2025, once we have a MAGA POTUS again, my body will be discovered in a ditch somewhere with an ICE bullet in it.

This Novel Is Getting Good & Spicy Now

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are beginning to move really fast with the second half of the first draft of this novel. I have repeatedly gotten to this point over the years, only for everything to fall apart. But I have enough confidence about how things are going that I’m thinking seriously about the next book in the project.

What’s making my creative juices flow is how…spicy this portion of the novel is. I can see how one might think I’m really putting a lot of words into a subplot to get to something interesting, but because it deals with spicy events, I think people won’t even notice that how hard I have struggled to interweave the overall plot into it.

There are two things that have come to the forefront of my mind at this point in the novel.

One is — I’m dealing with spicy things from a female point of view (third person intimate) so there will likely be members of the “woke cancel culture mob” who pop a gasket that a middle age “CIS white male” would have the gall to do such a thing. But, I must note, Stieg Larsson did something similar and it wasn’t considered the fucking end of the world, in fact, he did a whole hell of a lot worse than I plan to do.

Another thing is, I have a lot of “representation” in these novels and I am growing concerned that I’ll get shit from by the Left and the Right. The Left will be mad because I’m a white dude writing from the POV of people who are neither and the Right will get angry because they’ll automatically assume I’m “woke” or some shit.

But you can’t please everyone. As long as I write a great story that entertains a sizable chunk of the prospective audience, I am simply not going to dwell on the possible slings and arrows I might otherwise have to put up with.

I do wish, however, that I can force some people who think I’m just a drunk Internet crank to take me seriously. It will be interesting to see if can pull that particular hat trick off or not.

My Vision For The Future Of The Simpsons

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here’s a quick run down of how I would keep The Simpsons going for decades to come. First, I would cancel the TV show. Or, more specifically, I would cancel the regular show and have yearly holiday specials, with a lot of emphasis on the Tree House of Horror.

Meanwhile, I would let the franchise lie fallow for a year or two, maybe a little bit more.

Then, I would merge the production company that makes The Simpsons with Pixar. Then, I would have the creative minds behind Pixar churn out at high-quality Simpsons movie every two years.

Ta-da!

Today’s Itaewon Halloween Tragedy Is a Horror

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the huge death toll that is now being reported out of Seoul from a very tragic Halloween incident — 146 at last count — is if I was still in South Korea, I could have been among those who suffered. Itaewon was one of my go-to haunts back in the day.

When I was in South Korea, of course, things were a lot different — Itaewon was pretty sleezy, like 1970s New York City. But things had begun to change by the time I left for good.

The whole thing gives me pause for thought. It reminds you of how fragile life is on a day-to-day basis. I really miss South Korea and Seoul and I worry there are people I may know from my time there who were involved in this tragedy.

That’s probably one of the most jarring things about leaving South Korea — it’s pretty value free, in its own way. You can go, spend a few years there and when you come home, it’s like it never happened.

Though, I will note that there was a time there a few years ago when I somehow managed to continue to influence events on the ground in Seoul. That was kind of surreal.

Anyway, keep South Korea in your thoughts and prayers. They’re going to need them.

Twitter Is Woefully Underdeveloped

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the many reasons why there seems a narrow window of opportunity for someone to swoop in with a new Twitter-like service is how low people’s expectations are when it comes to that space. It’s my impression that on a corporate level, Twitter has always been seen as a loosely controlled, very lucky shitshow that stumbled into its current importance.

Now that we have some sense of what people want, if you had a few million lying around, you could scoop up my “updated Usenet UX” concept and people would be so in awe that they could post a full webpage in the context of threaded discussion in a Group that you might have a real hit on your hands.

Or not, who knows.

But there is, if nothing else, Jack Dorsey’s “Bluesky” startup floating around, which apparently is going to be an opensource protocol that would allow for multiple Twitters to share the same feed — I think.

There is just a lot of potential untapped innovation within the Twitter-like space that would not require that much thought to develop. Or, I could win the lottery soon and do all of this myself. Wish me luck!

Time To Be Productive

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Today, I hope to do a lot of reading. And when I’m not reading, I hope to be fleshing out the second novel in this proposed six novel project. If I had any money, I would have gone to New York City this weekend for a little Writer’s Retreat — but I’m flat broke.

Anyway, things are going really well with the first draft of the first novel I’m writing. I hope — hope — to wrap the first draft up by no later than the end of the year and the second draft no later than at some point in spring 2023. Then, as I keep saying, I will be in position to query during the fall 2023 querying season.

I continue to feel, however, that if I’m going to pull this off, I’m going to have to do a lot of reading and re-reading. Too many of my characters continue to be just moods or ideas created for expediency’s sake.

But I hope to change that soon enough with a lot more reading.

An Intriguing Theory About ‘Bluesky’ & The Future of Twitter

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw a stray tweet tonight that suggests that Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey are going to transition Twitter to Dorsey’s “Bluesky” distributed infrastructure protocol.

This makes a lot of sense.

I mean, obviously “Bluesky” is a placeholder name and it would make a lot of sense if, in the end, Musk simply plopped Twitter onto the chassis of Bluesky and they changed the name…to Twitter.

This is all very, very speculative, but given Musk’s track record, I’m reluctant to bet against him.