Author: trumplandiareport_zk3po8

Screenwriting And Webstat Paranoia



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw in my Webstats that someone looked at — out of the blue — a post from about two years ago about a screenplay concept I briefly had. This makes me nervous because:

  1. They were from Brooklyn.
  2. They obviously got it as a link (how did the person who send it to them find it?)
  3. Are they going to “steal” that idea?

Some of those are just me being paranoid in general — I have a pretty well developed novel on my hands and even if someone “stole” that concept, it has nothing to do with what I’m working on right now.

I guess I’m more nervous about people being able to poke around my Website without me knowing about it one way or another. But you can’t change the past. You can’t have absolute control over who sees what you post online.

And, given that me talking online is, in itself, part of my development process, lulz.

The ‘Little Green Men’ Have Landed

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Why am I the only one to notice this:

American Little Green Men
Russian Little Green Men

Of Trumplandia, The American Fourth Reich



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Once you reach a certain level of historical momentum, there’s not much you can do. We, sadly, have reached a macro-historical tipping point in regards to America’s new managed democracy. It’s here and there’s no going back.

Trump will win re-election in the fall — it doesn’t matter how — then ICE will be weaponized and I will die in an ICE camp sometime in the next few years.

But, just for fun, let’s daydream about how you might stop this from happening.

Let me stress — I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. But I do love to run scenarios, so, to me, this is just a scenario.

The only way I could see stopping the rise of the American Fourth Reich at this point is people actually willing to risk their lives to stop it. What’s more likely to happen is they will decide to pledge their “lives and scared honor” only after it’s too late and they have to be a REAL “Resistance” like the French Resistance.

What I might suggest is all these protests are really a protest against Trump. Or, put another way, they could evolve into that if there was any leadership associated with it. But, to date, these protests are simply people venting frustration. If there were, like, actual revolutionaries involved in these protests, then there would be demands that could be drawn up, etc.

But, nada.

Nothing is really going on with these protests other than being a huge political windfall to our tyrant president.

Anyway, all I can say is get out of the country if you love freedom and liberty. Trumplandia is, at last, tragically here

Believe In Yourself — No One Else Will



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about someone like Crooked Media’s Erin Ryan is I can mean as well as much as I want — she simply will never accept me for who I am. I’m always going to be a middle-aged loser who is a member of the patriarchy. I only mention this because, well, I’m going to draw upon what I know about her to think up my novel’s female romantic lead.

I am honestly rather indifferent to Ms. Ryan one way or another — live long and prosper, lady. It’s just a little annoying that I can paint the most pleasant picture of her I want via my female romantic lead and she will never, ever return the favor for any reason. It would be bad for her “image” to simply give me an empathetic assessment should some reason arise.

Anyway, I believe in myself when it comes to this novel. I try to bend over backwards to be as empathetic to wide-range of types of people. I want to be as representative as I can possibly be. In fact, I’m a big believer in representation in art. But, again, lulz, nothing matters. I’m a loser to people like Ms. Ryan. I’m not perfect and I’m not some sort of ideal feminist ally. All I can do is try to write something entertaining and see what happens.

Though I will note that pretty much this entire novel gets its energy from my white-hot rage against MAGA. I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot rage. Since I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas, all I got is a novel. All my venting about MAGA is diffused to such an extent in this novel that hopefully you’ll see my hatred of MAGA is more about my hatred of extremism than anything else.

I don’t mean to whine, but the whole thing can grow frustrating. I can’t help who I am. I can’t help my age. I can’t help my background. I can just try to write the best novel I can and see what happens.

‘Deceit’ — #Lyrics to A Pop Song

I’m being delusional. But I need to distract myself from developing a novel, so I’m going to write lyrics.


‘Deceit’
lyrics by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
please give credit if you record or produce

it was a time of universal deceit
people gnashed their teeth
hoping one day for freedom
the lies of the state reek
leaving us all far too weak

we live in a time of deceit
tell the truth
tell the truth
it’s a revolutionary act
and that’s a fact
that’s sad, sad, fact

they’ll come for us all one day
for the smiles on our faces
they can only think of disgrace
hoping for us to collapse
but that would just be a lapse

we live in a time of deceit
tell the truth
tell the truth
it’s a revolutionary act
and that’s a fact
that’s sad, sad, fact

(bridge)
lies surround us
but don’t succum
the peace will return
I’m just biding my time
I’m just biding my time
I’m just biding my time

we live in a time of deceit
tell the truth
tell the truth
it’s a revolutionary act
and that’s a fact
that’s sad, sad, fact

‘Read My Mind’ — #Lyrics To A Pop Song

Just screwing around. Feeling inspired. I know nothing about music, but sometimes it’s fun to blow off some steam by writing lyrics.


Read My Mind
lyrics by Shelton Garner
@sheltgarner
please give credit if you produce or perform

I look at you with a thrill
wondering what is your drill
all I can assume what is done is done
free your mind since you’ve

read my mind
guessed my thoughts
read my mind
read my mind
guess my thoughts
you read my mind

I’m afraid it’s time to go
you’re so worried about the flow
my thoughts are too much I’m afraid
’cause you’re still not going to get laid

read my mind
guessed my thoughts
read my mind
read my mind
guess my thoughts
you read my mind

(bridge)
read my lips
I’m done with your shit
no more to think
action is it

read my mind
guessed my thoughts
read my mind
read my mind
guess my thoughts
you read my mind

I Have No Idea What I’m Doing With This Novel



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really have no idea what I’m doing with this novel. But the outline I’m working on keeps drifting towards something I hope to be very pleased with, so I keep going. I’ve finally reached the point where I fully understand that writing a novel is a marathon, so just because a solution to an immediate problem won’t come to me right away, doesn’t mean it won’t soon enough.

Right now, I’m doing a lot of reading. They say if you have enough time to write, you have enough time to read. So I’m grazing a lot when it comes to reading. I have a number of books — a small library, in fact — of books I hope to read over the coming days to improve not just the general conceit of the novel, but the characters who in habit it, as well.

But, like I said, I have no idea what I’m doing. Yet I do hope to start writing again soon enough. Absolutely no later than July 1st. I am going to have to do a huge amount of reading to get to the point where even the outline is as good as I need it to be before I go to the next step of fleshing out individual lines in the outline.

I look over what I have done of the outline and I’m very pleased. I’ve made considerable progress on the outline in large part because I am no longer attempting to draft off of Stieg Larsson. I’m telling my story, not his (which I was doing on a structural level.) But I continue to use his book The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook” as to how to write a novel.

But I definitely need to read more novels, just in general. And watch more movies. A whole lot more movies. I saw Chinatown for the first time recently and the ending left me shook. Anyway, I really need to be willing to go outside my creative comfort zone more.

Down The Rabbit Hole



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, let me get some things about of the way. Because of macro, existential issues with the United State on a political and sociological level, Trump could murder Joe Biden live on Fox News and nothing would happen. Nothing. Trump would simply bribe Electors to vote for him and get his Constitutional Convention soon afterwards.

So, honestly, there’s nothing that could hurt Trump politically at this point. Maybe if Trump was directly blamed for the DPRK vaporizing Alabama, that might do the trick. Then the Senate might put country over party. But even then, it’s debatable.

Thus, anything that might otherwise harm Trump politically is simply a lulz. And, yet, my curiosity is piqued by a celebrity law firm that recently got its files hacked. The hackers claim they have damaging information on Trump, the law firm says they’ve never worked with Trump.

As such, it seems as though we’ll find out soon enough — the hackers claim they’re going to release the files on Thursday. I will note in passing that someone in Singapore of all places is interested in some of my writing on this Website about Trump being suspected of getting a model pregnant then forcing her to have an abortion.

It makes no sense that the hacking and the (now proven false) accusation could, in anyway, be connected. There are plenty of other reasons why someone might be interested in that information. It’s just curious.

‘Spooky’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When I was living in Seoul, I occasionally would get a weird feeling that someone I was interacting with was….a bit…spooky. Whenever you suspect you’re dealing with spooks, you come off sounding like an crazy person because typically the average person doesn’t run into them.

But the thing about Seoul when I was there was there was a huge military base in the middle of the city. So, every once in a while when I was DJing at Nori in Sinchon, I saw older guys in the audience who just did not fit in. I have an extremely active imagination and so I would stand there, behind the bar, and wonder…are those guys spooks?

The only reason why I even bring this up is I’m listening to the “Wind of Change” podcast and it seems to fit very much in how I view the world in general — “normal” people are way too quick to assume that that just because someone is a kook that they couldn’t possibly have anything of merit to contribute. I am finding a lot of inspiration from the podcast as to how to come up with some out-of-the-box ideas for the novel I’m writing.

It’s this tendency that really bugs the shit out of me about successful Twitter liberals who look down their nose at me because I’m a bit “touched.” I often up come up with rather fantastical ideas. But at the same time, I occasionally do actually figure things out correctly — COVID19 being a prime example. I know why they do this — they have a vested interest in doing things “the right way” and if you don’t fit that metric, then, well, fuck you.

Anyway, I generally have a positive view of spooks these days because, well, we have a mad, tyrannical American Caligula hell-bent on destroying the nation I love and it seems as those if there really was a Deep State, they would be the good guys. Trump is actively trying to replace these good guys with traitors and sycophants, so who knows where things will end up.

Building A Mystery



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After what feels like a very long time — but really is about 18 months — I’ve finally come to the make-or-break portion of development: the mystery. I know what happened at the center of this story, but now I have to figure out how someone would try to unravel it.

So I find myself cramming a number of investigative reporting. I’m reading Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s “She Said.” I’m reading Ronan Farrow’s “Catch and Kill.” And I’m listening to the Crooked Media podcast “Wind of Change.” The latter is interesting because it involves music and the CIA. Which, given the conceit of the novel, is very useful. The more I listen to it, the more I feel I’m going to have to give it a shoutout in the Author’s Note.

But the major issue is I’ve come up with a very complex situation that I have to unravel slowly through investigation. I have to think of different ways to do all of this believably. But it’s also all very much outside my comfort zone. Even when I was a reporter, I wasn’t a very good one. So, I have to really learn a lot of things about investigative reporting that I know nothing about.

And, yet, that’s kind of the crux of the story. The part I don’t know anything about.

I have a huge amount of reading to do about character, investigation and leadership — just to name a few things. That is going to slow me down some, but hopefully not too much. I’m still on track to start writing again no later than June 1st.