GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #627: EVEN THIS SHALL PASS AWAY

 

This is a little embarrassing for me, but here we go. When Christopher Lee died a few years ago, I declared it to be the end of an era for horror movies. What I didn't know at the time was that Ricou Browning was still alive.

That is no longer the case, and now it really *is* the end of an era for horror movies. If you don't know who he was, he was the last living actor to play a classic Universal monster. He was one of two actors playing the Gill-man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy. He was the guy who was in the suit for the underwater work. He passed away today at the age of 93.

That's a hell of a run. The gill-man was the last of the classic monsters, as the first movie was released in the 'Fifties, so it's not too shocking that he would have made it this long in life. But with his passing, it really is a new age of gods and monsters. Sadly this age is more known for studios and producers who make horror movies than the actors in them.

And the age after Lee's generation are looking kind of long in the, uh, fang. I don't imagine it will be very long before the horror monsters I grew up watching follow their predecessors. Robert Englund, Doug Bradley, Tony Todd, Brad Dourif, all the guys who played Jason and Michael Myers. It's a sobering thought because I really can't think of a newer generation with actors known primarily for their work in horror. But, as the Chuck Berry song goes, "Even this shall pass away," and when that happens it really will be the end of an era.

PS: Cocaine Bear is technically a Universal monster now. I don't see us getting many sequels, but still. That's worth knowing, I think.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #626: MY BIBLE

 In case you missed it my Kindle-only book, It Changes a Man, kickstarted my SF series which will be home to all the crazy and fucked up shit that I just can't fit into any other books or stories. I intend to spend most of the rest of my life writing these things, which are all part of a saga that I'm not going to publicly name yet. The name involves a spoiler for the forthcoming first novel in the series. I recently realized that that's a lot of shit to keep straight in my head, and I suddenly knew there was no way for me to keep track of it all without some help.

I'll bet Stephen King wished he kept better notes about the gunslinger's world by the time he started writing The Drawing of the Three.

So over the weekend I started writing my bible for the series. If you don't know, a bible is a document that keeps track of everything for TV shows and comic books, etc. Lucky me, I figured out I needed this thing while I'm just one title in. And I still fucked it up because I noticed one inconsistency while rereading ICaM. Whoops. That's not going to happen with the rest of the series.

I hope.

So I've been rereading the finished novel to add to that bible, and it's been a little frustrating because it's eating into writing time. But at the same time it's going to be worth it. I wonder how many authors rely on their fans for this sort of thing instead of putting together a bible. Hopefully that won't be an issue for me.

I think.

Maybe when I'm old and done with the series (not likely, but who knows?) I'll release the bible. It'll be dry reading, probably, but sometimes that's exactly what boosts your starship.

(That's the distant future's version of "whatever floats your boat," something I would have forgotten if I hadn't been putting this bible together. It's already coming in handy.)

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #625: A WEEKEND

 Did you know that in the almost two years I've worked at this job, I have never taken a paid day off for fun? I lost all of my days to medical reasons. The only time off that I was able to take were holidays. In fact, the only days off I've had since my grandma died, I lost another toe and I went to detox were holidays. I've been at that place for every day I needed to be there since August.

Until now.

I took tomorrow off so I could give myself a weekend. I used to love weekends, which doesn't make me special, but I work M-W, F-Sa, so I never get two days off in a row. Goddammit, I took tomorrow off so I could do that.

I don't intend to do much. I was tempted to do nothing, like Peter in Office Space, but there are still things I enjoy doing. The important things are: getting a Country House cheeseburger (which will pleasantly be my second of the week) and seeing Cocaine Bear tomorrow. Hell, I don't know if I'll even write over the weekend. Read? Sure. Watch stuff? Definitely. But I don't want to be too taxing to myself.

I've been looking forward to this for all month, which means I will probably get in a car accident tomorrow. Or maybe I'll finally have that heart attack that's been looming over me like the Sword of Damocles since I turned 40. Or maybe a toilet seat from the space station will come crashing down on me as God intended.

I hope none of that shit happens, but I've been on a decade-plus losing streak, so I know better than to think this weekend will be great. Hope for the best, expect the worst.

Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #624: TIN EAR

 I'm always impressed when I meet someone who has more than one talent. I meet a lot of authors, and I'm glad to call many of them friends, but when I learn they can do creative things other than writing? That's pretty fucking cool. Especially if it's music. I'm a little jealous of people who can play instruments because I have a tin ear. I just don't know how they do it.

If I'm listening to music, for example, I can't tell the instruments apart. I can't tell the drums from the lead from the rhythm from the bass. Sometimes I can't tell if it's a piano or not unless I know ahead of time there's a piano being played. An instrument has to be off the beaten path for me to recognize it as separate from the others. Like when Ensiferum uses a pipe organ. Or when Korpiklaani uses an accordion. Or when Alestorm uses bagpipes. Or when the Dead Kennedys use a French horn. Which happened once, by the way.

I come from a fairly musical family. Mom tried to teach me to play the piano when I was a kid. I can mangle the Star Wars theme pretty well, and I can do a really terrible job of "Fur Elise." Like, really really bad. My stepfather, for all the rotten shit he did to me, tried to teach me to play guitar. He gave up on that pretty quickly. Besides, he had a son that was fucking phenomenal at it. My brother, Alex, can work a guitar like a pro. He's been doing it since he was, what, four?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For some reason or another, I never could get my head around music. I took a guitar class during my freshman year of high school, and I'm pretty sure I made the teacher doubt her own existence many times, or at least made her think that perhaps she shouldn't have gone into teaching a beginners class with me in it.

Also, for a minute, I played drums in junior high. I use the word "played" very loosely, mostly because I can't keep a beat.

I'm fascinated when watching live performances. Most people just kind of rock out, or they get into the show in whatever way they need to. I watch musicians' fingers kind of like a dog watching a card trick. It's kind of like magic to me. I don't know how they do it, and I wonder if maybe I could figure it out if I watched their hands.

Nope.

I can't draw or paint or sculpt or anything, either. But I'm busy enough with writing, anyway. I take solace in that.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #623: HOARDING NOTEBOOKS

 I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm about a pubic hair's width away from being a hoarder. I'm working on killing that in me, but one thing that was particularly difficult to deal with was my habit of hoarding notebooks. I have a bunch of legal pads and composition notebooks and other vast and sundry notebooks on my desk in my bedroom. Also, on the night table, I have a pile of smaller notepads, most of which I have never used and I'm not very likely to use.

So I had to face some hard facts about these notepads. If I'm not going to use them, I have to get rid of them. And I started the process. Some of the smaller ones, the ones not even big enough to fit in half of my palm, had to go. I don't think I can even write small enough to fit more than a couple of words on them anyway. Into the garbage with you. You know the glue that holds most notepads together at the top? You know how, if the notepad is old enough, that glue strip starts falling apart and even coming off? And then pages start coming loose? I have a lot like that. Into the trash with you. And then there are a few notepads missing the cardboard backs. Those were the hardest to get rid of because they're perfectly good pieces of paper. Do I really need the cardboard backs to use them? Maybe not. But fuck it. I threw 'em out, too.

I actually still have school supplies from when I was in college between the years of 1996 and 2000. I'm probably going to work on getting rid of those, too. When have I ever, outside of school, used loose leaf paper? Or even graphing paper? Index cards? I know a lot of writers use the latter when plotting books, but I'm not that kind of guy. I'm going to have to get rid of it all, too.

Someday soon. Just not today.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #622: SHORTS

 You may have noticed that I've been posting old pictures from my childhood on my social media. I've been going through a lot of things, packing up for the inevitable move. And I found a picture of me in shorts when I was probably five.

It made me think back to when I was on a GF break for the holidays, and a couple of people mentioned to me their separate observations that I never wear shorts. This is true. I never understood why people like to wear shorts so much. As an adult I choose to not wear shorts. My legs these days aren't worth looking at, anyway. Besides, if I wore shorts now everyone would see the brace on my left leg. No one wants to see that.

Although to be fair to myself, there was a period of maybe three years just after high school when I had legs worth looking at. In fact I looked pretty good naked back then, if I don't say so myself.

But when I was a kid I was forced to wear whatever my mom or my grandparents made me wear. However, when I visited my grandmother in Scottsdale and my dad in Vegas while I was in junior high, my grandparents made me wear shorts. "It's the desert," they said. "Everything's hot there. You'll sweat to death if you wear pants."

I've always been a flop-sweater, so they would have been right. But like I said, I choose not to wear shorts as an adult. As a child I had them forced on me.

I didn't like them then, and I don't like them now. Sure, wearing pants in the desert is hot, but at the same time they offer an additional layer of protection when you sit down in a car that's been out in the sun for, say, an hour.

So I won't be wearing shorts anytime soon. Unless I'm super old and I want to make people as uncomfortable as possible. Maybe then.

And no, I'm not posting the picture of li'l me in shorts. Not happening.

NOW AVAILABLE: TRAIL OF BLOOD BY JOHN BRUNI

 

Check it out here!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #621: MOVIE NIGHT?

 It's a little weird, but I've fallen out of the habit of watching movies. Almost everything I watch is a TV show. And that's not just Supernatural's fault. This has been going on for years. It's almost gotten to the point where the only movies I watch are in theaters. Almost.

I'm thinking maybe I should get back to watching movies. Mostly horror movies because they've fallen by the wayside for me. I don't really watch them anymore, and that's a shame. I used to be the guy where if someone wanted to know something about a horror movie, they'd ask me. I'm not that guy anymore.

So I'm thinking of setting one day of the week aside for movies only. No TV watching. JUST movies. And I'm pretty sure I'll be using my Shudder account on that day. Maybe when Gunsmoke is over for another season, I'll start doing that on Sundays. It would be nice. Let's see how that goes.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #620: SPINDLE

 

I just finished reading Fireworks by Jim Thompson, so I officially have no more of his work to read. Everything that has been published has passed before my eyes. Unless new work is discovered, I will spend the rest of my life without reading anything from him that I haven't already read.

Take a look at that cover. It took me a while to figure out what that was. Way more time than it should have. It's a spindle. No one ever uses spindles today because they're dangerous to have around. I saw a few of them in shops and offices when I worked as a parts driver for the City of Elmhurst, but that was twenty years ago. Even back then I thought it was crazy that anyone still used them. So crazy that I used one in my first book, Strip.

If you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, way back when, people used to use spindles to keep track of receipts. Spindles are spikes that point up from someone's desk, and people impaled receipts on them. If you slipped in your office you were likely to impale yourself on it, hence the danger.

Thompson uses it as a weapon in this book. A character pulls another character off balance in an office setting, and that guy lands on his spindle, shoving it through his mouth and out the back of his head. Pretty cool. I liked it.

Here's a part of my writing that no one ever brings up to me: my use of foreshadowing. I don't lack the subtlety of, say, Ti West foreshadowing deaths in X, but I don't think I was hiding it all that well. Here's what happens in Strip:

I just realized I was about to spoil one of my own books. Whoops. I'll try to be vague about it. There is a character, at the end of the book, who kills another character by putting a spindle through that person's eye. Earlier in the book, I believe in the first chapter, the killer sits in that same office fantasizing about shoving that same spindle into someone's eye and killing them.

Spindles, at least in fiction, should make a comeback. They make for excellent weapons.

I'll bet you've never read an essay that uses the word "spindle" as much as this one does.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #619: KILLER FISH

 We got a couple of new fish for the tank at work. We have a couple of zebra danios in there. I remember when I was a kid with a ten-gallon tank, I had a few zebra danios of my own.

They're easy fish to care for, except I noticed mine had a problem. They tended to die on me in a very peculiar fashion. I'd find them dead stuck against the filter. Same place, same position. Although I guess fish don't really have all that many positions, so that part shouldn't come as a shock.

I had a difficult time figuring out why this was happening. It didn't happen to any of the other fish. Just the zebra danios. Were they a depressed kind of fish? Were they committing suicide?

And then I saw it. Because I had another fish in there. A black molly. I saw her deliberately murder a zebra danio against the filter. I was told that these fish were supposed to get along together, and here was evidence to the contrary.

And yes, I know the black molly was a she because she gave birth to a lot of little black mollys . . . and then started eating them. I didn't buy her pregnant. It turns out that they can mate with green swordtail fish, and I had one of those in there. Whoops.

I had one zebra danio left in there, so I decided to separate the black molly from it before she could commit the crime again. I put her in her own tank. She lived a long time on her own, and she never killed another fish. That zebra danio also lasted a while.

The baby black mollys didn't. I guess I fucked that one up. If we had the internet back then I could have looked up how to keep them alive, but all I had to go by was the advice of the pet shop worker, and that didn't work out all that well.

I also had two angelfish at one point. One turned out to be a bully and ate the fins off the other. But that's a story for another day.

No it's not. That's the story. And I told it today in its entirety.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #618: NAZI PUNKS (AND ALL NAZIS, REALLY) FUCK OFF

American Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden circa WWII

 

Did you know that a significant amount of Americans supported Hitler during the WWII era? They kind of leave that out of schoolbooks because, and I know this sounds strange, but once upon a time almost everyone agreed that Nazis are bad, and they didn't want kids reading about how a lot of the US actually supported Hitler back then. It really shouldn't come as a surprise, considering two of the most famous Americans at the time, Walt Disney and Henry Ford, were not just fans of Hitler but were also his friends.

A while back I used to work at the Elmhurst Public Library, and I did something there that I used to think about often because I acted against my ethics this one time. I believe that people should read whatever they want to because I used to think that people who read were smarter than most. I never had any illusions about Nazis disappearing. My illusion was that they were a fringe society far from the mainstream.

Here's what I did. I was working the drive thru window late on a Friday night when I heard someone shove a bunch of books into the book drop. It was my duty to check those in, so I went into that room and discovered that they weren't library books. They were propaganda pamphlets, some book-sized. And there were a lot of them. A sticky note said they were a donation.

I didn't know what they were yet, so I eagerly took them back to my desk to look them over. Once I saw that they were celebrations of Nazism and denigrations of who they deemed as inferior people, my enthusiasm deflated. Ordinarily I would put these by the donations shelf, but I took them home instead. I doubted that they would have wound up in circulation. We have Mein Kampf in the collection, but that's an historical document. These pamphlets were attempts to convince people that Hitler had it right. Still, I didn't want to risk it.

Why did I take them home instead of throwing them out? I thought I'd read them to maybe understand the kind of horseshit these dickheads have in their heads to be spouting such garbage. I never got around to it, though. I put them in my closet, and there they stayed until recently, while I was packing up my things.

I decided then that I didn't need to understand them. Fuck 'em.

I'd taken it upon myself to make sure those books didn't wind up in the hands of impressionable readers, which kind of sounds like banning books, something I'm absolutely against. That's why it bothered me over the years. It no longer bothers me, though. And maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but fuck Nazis.

Because since I took those books I've learned that Nazis aren't just fringe. They're mainstream. Back when Trump was running in 2016 and all these cocksuckers came pouring out of the woodwork? That was a surprise. And guess what: it's no longer obvious to society as a whole that Nazis are bad.

I threw out those shit rags on a rainy day, and I'm certain that they've reverted to the cheap pulp they were made from. I'm glad no one else got to read them because people are stupider than even I thought, and that is saying a fucking lot. If I stopped even one person from nodding along while reading this tripe from saying, "Huh, Hitler isn't so bad after all," then it was worth it. Because I made the world a better place.

A lot of book banners seem to be of the same frame of mind. "I'm making the world a better place by making sure children don't read whatever the fuck I don't want them to read." Here's the difference: the books they're after aren't promoting the idea of killing "inferior" people en masse. To Kill a Mockingbird dares to suggest that maybe, just maybe, a Black man is a person, too. For example. Or The Great Gatsby hints that rich people are decadent and depraved and might just be horrible and untrustworthy people. Don't get me started on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

So yeah. I did the right thing. I will sleep like a baby tonight. And one more thing: Nazis (punks, surfers, whatever their flavor) need to fuck off.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #617: AN UNEXPECTED PART OF GETTING OLD

 I've been told all my life about what it's like to get old, and almost all of it has come true. I say almost because I don't have hair growing in my ears. My nose? Sure. I've been trimming nose hairs for many years now. Just nothing in my ears. Yet.

Here's one thing that no one told me about. I did not expect to have to start trimming my eyebrows. I've been told, in fact, the opposite. That my eyebrow hair would thin. I really hoped that wouldn't happen because, well, look at this.

A little freaky, no?

My eyebrows aren't too bad. The problem is with single strands getting ridiculously long. The other day I noticed that one had somehow managed to get halfway up to my hairline. No one mentioned it to me.

I always kind of wondered what it was about not having eyebrows that makes people look odd. Then, a few years back, I heard an FBI interrogator talking about how psycho- and sociopaths tend not to use their eyebrows in their expressions. He mentioned that at a subconscious level eyebrow expressions endear people to one another. It sounds a little crazy until someone starts talking with you, and you notice that they never move their eyebrows. So I think he might be right. People who don't have eyebrows subconsciously give off a vibe that they're not to be trusted.

Maybe I'm talking out my ass. I don't know. But no one ever told me I'd have to trim these fuckers or look like a beast.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #616: IT'S OK. YOU CAN GO NOW.

 (Before we begin I'd like it noted that everyone knows that 666 is the number of the beast, but there are some biblical sources that say it is actually 616. Heh.)

Sam, Dean, Crowley, Castiel

For the longest time people have been telling me that I should watch Supernatural, that it was right up my alley. I saw it was a CW show, and while they're good for DC shows, I didn't know if I wanted to get involved with it. And then people who know me really, really well started telling me to watch it for Crowley. Finally, I gave in and decided I would give it a shot. I'm very glad I did.

I probably should have taken a look a lot sooner because holy shit! It's the longest running horror TV show in history! That alone should have gotten me into it. Fifteen seasons! And I'm not talking about seasons today, which run about 10 episodes, more or less. I'm talking 20+ episodes each season! There are 327 episodes! That puts it at the 13th longest TV show PERIOD. Some people don't want to include cartoons in such things, and if you're of the same mind, that makes Supernatural the 9th longest running show.

(Also, while I'm looking at the list, did you know that Lassie was on for 19 seasons? How the fuck did that happen?)

(I also hear you point out that Dark Shadows had 1,225 episodes. Not counting the 'Nineties revival. That's a good point, but they weren't even on for five years. The only reason they have more episodes is because they were on every weekday. So no, it doesn't count.)

Supernatural is the story of Sam and Dean Winchester, two brothers who hunt monsters across America. They were raised by their father, a Vietnam vet, to do this. Their mother died when they were kids. Sam was just a baby, and he doesn't remember anything about her. Sam escapes the life and goes to college to become a lawyer while Dean and their father continue to kill all sorts of monsters until one day their dad goes missing. Dean gets Sam out of school to help look for him, and before you know it Sam is back in the life. For good.

At first the stories are low key (and yes, Loki makes an appearance at one point) and monster-of-the-week type stuff, but over time it becomes one big story about good versus evil with apocalypse after apocalypse. There are a lot of supporting characters, and almost all of them die. While watching the show, after I got used to its habit of killing these characters, I started to get nervous every time they brought a recurring character on, knowing this could be the day they die. And I was usually right.

Of the longtime characters, one of the best is Bobby Singer, the cantankerous friend of John Winchester who really raised the boys and offers words of wisdom sometimes. It's just that sometimes those words of wisdom are "idjit" or "balls." There's also Castiel, the angel who rescued Dean from Hell and became the closest ally to the brothers over the years.

And then of course there's Crowley. Everyone who told me I would love him? They were all right. He's a fast-talking contract-writing crossroads demon who lucked his way into being the King of Hell (long story). He's a tricky guy who is always about ten steps ahead of everyone. He's the kind of guy who would stab you in the back, and you'd thank him for the pleasure. But he's also got a human side to him, and you can tell he really does love his interactions with the boys. (Mostly.) The funniest thing is, the reason he got sent to Hell in the first place is because he sold his soul to get a few extra inches of cock on him.

So here's a good place for me to mention that there will be spoilers from here on out. If you don't want to read anything further, then goodnight to you, kind fucker. Come back when you've watched the end of the series.

Just in case you skipped ahead, here is one more warning about those spoilers. You can still turn back.

OK, too late to escape.

Crowley is so smart and so cunning that the only person on the show who could have possibly ever killed him was himself, and that's how it turned out. He had Lucifer trapped on another earth (I swear I wrote that Zimventure before I realized that there was a Supernatural multiverse), and the only way to trap him there was for someone to die for a spell. Crowley was the only one around, and he loved the boys so much (and hated Lucifer so much) that he sacrificed himself to do it. It was a great moment, but I had a couple of regrets. For one, Crowley's plan didn't work. Lucifer found a way out, anyway. And for another, everyone who died in making that moment came back to life EXCEPT for Crowley. Talk about unfair.

Misha Collins, who plays Cass, entertained me a great deal for a variety of reasons.

His inability to effectively insult anyone is one of them.

On a meta episode in which Sam and Dean find themselves on the set of a show called Supernatural (where everyone thinks they're actors named Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles), Misha Collins gets to play himself playing Cass, and it is fucking hilarious. On another episode, Cass gets possessed by Lucifer, so Collins has to play Cass possessed by Lucifer pretending to be Cass, which is a great concept. Also, it's very unsettling. Watching him filled me with such wonderful revulsion!

But I have to say his finest moment was his speech he gives to Dean before he sacrifices himself to save the boys. When he first appeared on the show he was an angel who didn't know the first thing about right and wrong. He just did as he was told. But having spent so many years with the boys, Dean in particular, he discovers what it's like to be human and even becomes human, himself. He learns to love humanity. That speech is amazing. Go ahead and watch it again. And then see if you were fast enough to see the handprint he leaves on Dean's shoulder. Just like the one he left on his flesh when he first met him and pulled him out of Hell.

I'm not going to rehash my thoughts on Bobby Singer. If you want to revisit that, you can read it here.

Here's a thing I wonder a lot about. And keep in mind, this wasn't some niche show that barely anyone watched. This is one of the longest running TV shows ever. As we approached the ending of season 14 we learned who the biggest of the big bads on this show was. It's crazy when you think about it. I mean, I was totally on board, but I'm not . . . usual. God turns out to be the series villain. For most of the show he's kind of a loveable writer named Carver Edlund who then goes on to call himself Chuck instead of God, but when his creations refuse to follow the script, he flips his shit and decides to end the multiverse! Saving his favorite earth for last, of course. But that moment when you realize God isn't on their side is fucking chilling. How do you fight God? How, indeed? And how did the Religious Right not rise up in arms about this show calling God the villain? Or was I just not paying attention? Maybe they don't watch shows like this. I don't know.

This is running a little long (and I admit, I'm cheating a little, as I've been chipping away at this one since I got home from work), so I think it's time we talked about the very ending. While I was watching the penultimate episode I could have sworn it felt like the final episode, and I'm pretty sure they did that on purpose. Like Stephen King at the end of The Dark Tower, you're given a choice. You can take this as a celebratory happy ending, and you don't have to watch the final episode.

But I've never heard of anyone taking King up on that. I would never let it go at that, myself. I can't imagine the kind of person who would.

Because the final chapter is always the one with heartache and woe.

A while back I was having a conversation with a friend about the possible ending of Supernatural. (You'd better not be reading this. I know you still have 10 episodes to go.) I couldn't imagine that it would end with both brothers still alive. I told him if I had to guess, they'd probably kill Dean. He said that he agreed, but he figured Sam would be the one to die. I admitted that the show sometimes went in an unexpected direction, but Dean has been saying throughout the entire series that the only way his story ends is in violent death. I didn't think they would ignore that kind of a buildup.

Sure enough they didn't. Sam and Dean go off on one last hunt, and Dean dies violently, just as he always knew he would. Sam gives his brother a hunter's funeral--ie. burning the body on a pyre--and he gets a call on one of his FBI cellphones. There's another case.

Before I move on with the ending, here's a point that I don't think I understand. When Sam gets that call, he agrees to go, and we see him closing up the bunker. I thought he would go on a solo hunt and live out the rest of his life doing what he does best: killing monsters. But I have another thought, considering how the rest of the episode goes. I don't think he went on this hunt. I think he was actually closing down the bunker and giving up the life. If anyone has any thoughts about this, I'd love to hear them.

Anyway, we see Dean in the afterlife, where Bobby is waiting for him with a beer. Bobby tells him something quite beautiful, and if I were one to believe in the afterlife, it would give me some kind of hope. Bobby tells Dean that "he'll be along." Meaning Sam. To look at death in such a way actually brought a tear to my eye.

And then Dean sees Baby, his 1967 Chevy Impala, is there waiting for him, and he decides to take a ride. And then, as he drives through the afterlife, we get glimpses of Sam's life without Dean. Give it a rewatch here. Guess which part gets me the most. I'll tell you in a moment.

If you guessed it was the moment when old man Sam sits in the Impala, closes his eyes and touches the steering wheel, you would be right.

And then a very old Sam dies. I'm pretty sure that he never taught his son the life of a hunter, that young Dean Winchester will never know the sheer madness of hunting monsters. And that is probably a good thing.

And of course, the whole time you're watching Dean drive through the afterlife, you know exactly how it's going to end.

Oh yeah.

I was a very different man when I first started watching this show. I've been through so much in such a little amount of time. Because I lucked out. I got to binge the show. I have no idea how the rest of you did it, watching weekly episodes over the course of 15 years. If I was still the same, I probably would have had a whiskey, toasting to the Brothers Winchester. May they rest in peace.

PS:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #615: TWITTER NOTICES

A stupid man with a stupid grin and a stupid sink.

 Since Elon Musk's regime began at Twitter I've caught two sensitive content warnings. That's odd, considering that I never post nudity or real life violence. So I've looked around a bit, and I've found not just nudity but hardcore pornography without sensitive content warnings. I'm talking dick in pussy insertion shots, here. I haven't found any real life violence, though, so I can't speak to that.

What were my notices regarding? The first one was for a video of me reading my short story, "Monster Cock 2." There is no nudity in that. There is adult language, of course, and all I typed into the post was something about how you should get some Monster Cock in you, referring to the story. That's it.

The second one was for posting a link to my book, Dong of Frankenstein and Other Pornos You Can't Jerk It To. It was a link to Amazon, so once again, no nudity. And I caught a notice for that.

So that's fucking annoying. On the one hand I'm kind of proud that I offended the delicate sensibilities of the people in charge of the most wretched hive of scum and villainy this side of Mos Eisley. But at the same time, I wonder how many people didn't get to see the video or the link.

I will say that during the appeal process they eventually overturned their decision on the "Monster Cock 2" notice, which is better than Facebook. The Facebook algorithm simply does not give a fuck, and it has no human oversight. I caught a ban once for posting a meme with a topless cartoon character in it. The character? Bobby Hill from King of the Hill.

They also banned me from making video calls for a month because I quoted an episode of Supernatural. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was some biker dude who said it. Castiel was trying to persuade him to let him use the public phone, and the biker said something along the lines of how he's going to finish his call, and then he's going to stab Cass. The Facebook algorithm took it as me threatening someone, so I wasn't allowed to use the call feature. Not that I ever do, anyway, but still. 

Essentially, this is all stupid, but I don't care in the long run. However, I can't help but notice that certain Republicans are taking Twitter to task for banning them before stupid Musk showed up with that stupid grin and a stupid sink. To see these children whine at a fucking Congressional hearing was mindblowing. Holy shit. MTG even said that they were violating her 1st Amendment rights.

I wish more people in Congress would actually read the Constitution so they actually understood it. The 1st Amendment only prohibits the government from stifling someone's free speech. Twitter (or, say, newspapers, if we're being more considerate of the era in which the amendment was written) can do whatever the fuck they want. Don't even get me started on my belief that overturning Roe v Wade is a violation of the 9th Amendment. Come to think of it, Supreme Court justices should read the Constitution, too.

As with all things the Republicans do, they usually accuse the Democrats of doing the very same thing that they, the Republicans, are actually doing. Trump actually wanted Twitter to remove a Tweet criticizing him. I do love that the Tweet in question, from Chrissy Teigen, was read into the Congressional record so that future generations will be aware of what a "pussy ass bitch" Donald J. Trump was.

PS: I guess those Republicans outraged over Twitter taking down nonconsensual nudes of Hunter Biden really like jerking off to nonconsensual nudes of Hunter Biden.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #614: 209

 Today is my 209th day from my last drink. I'm surprised I can still say that at this late hour today, considering the things I've gone through lately. I seriously did think about stopping at the liquor store on my way home. I don't think anyone would have blamed me.

While today was not bereft of good news, there was still some tremendously bad news. The toe that I was starting to seriously think I was going to lose is looking a lot better, and my podiatrist is very happy with its progress. He's already taken two of my piggies away from me, and I'd like to leave it at that. (The piggie in question is the one that had roast beef.)

But the bad news.

I'm owed a considerable amount of money, but right now I've asked that person to hold onto it for me for a while. The reason being is that every time I suddenly have real money, something comes up that necessitates my losing said money. Here's a case in point.

I just got my tax refund, which was a good chunk of cash. Plus tomorrow is payday, so it felt nice to not have to worry about money for the immediate future. Especially considering that I will undoubtedly get my 30-day notice next month or April, and I'll need every penny I have.

So I figured something would go wrong with my car. I can hear something squeaking every time I back up, and there is a new squeal when I go forward. I know one of the axles is doomed, but I was told I had a few years before I had to worry about it. Of course it was going to break on me now. But that didn't turn out to be the trouble.

Last week I went to the dentist, and she had bad news for me. My gums had receded from the tooth next to my implant to the point where I needed a graft or I would lose the tooth. She sent me to the periodontist who actually did a gum graft on me previously. It was nice to catch up, but as she examined the gums in question, she said that she probably couldn't, and definitely wouldn't, do a graft there. A nerve sits just below the gumline, and if she sutured too close to it, I would probably wind up with numbness in that part of my mouth (and lip) for the rest of my life.

I already started calculating how much an implant there would cost, and that's bad enough, but she also had more bad news for me.

I needed five more gum grafts. I thought hopefully my insurance would cover it, but dental insurance does their best to get out of paying for anything. Because dental insurance doesn't care about health. They would probably prefer we all go toothless.

I saw the expected bill for all the work, and it's thousands and thousands of dollars. And I have to pay 30$% upfront, which comes out to just under $3K. That's money that I don't have, and I can't risk that my insurance probably won't cover or reimburse anything.

Do you know what insurance will cover? Dentures.

Hell, my teeth are pretty fucked anyway. I'm thinking I'm going to see how long my dentist can keep them in my mouth before I have to throw in the towel. I'm pretty much stuck choosing between my future and my teeth, and it's looking like I'll have to say goodbye to my teeth.

This fucking sucks.

So. Do I know anyone out there with a full set of dentures? Pros? Cons? Annoyances?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #613: POE-NAW-GRAH-FEE

That got your attention.

 

Not too long ago I saw this article about how Louisiana now requires anyone accessing porn sites to provide ID. It's worth a read.

They're doing this in the guise of protecting the children. Anytime a politician says that children need to be protected? They're full of shit. Unless they're talking about putting child rapists in prison. Then they're on point, but otherwise? Full of shit. If they did care? We wouldn't have so many school shootings. Perhaps if children could vote, politicians might change their tune. That would be kind of funny to see, actually. "I'm going after the Caillou vote." Or maybe these pricks will be on Sesame Street yukking it up with Bert and Ernie. (But not Oscar. Oscar would not stand for their shit.)

What this really sounds like to me is an attack on the sex industry. LA is requiring porn viewers to use their digital drivers licenses to access porn sites. PornHub is called out in particular. They claim that they don't keep track of data, and that's probably bullshit, but even if they did, I wouldn't care. They know that the important part of their existence is discretion, and if they didn't live up to that unspoken promise, then they wouldn't have customers. Remember, there are a lot of people who actually have PornHub accounts. Those require credit cards. There's no way they're not collecting data.

However, I'm certain that LA actually IS collecting data, and they're not going to be so benign with it. What better way for Big Brother to keep track of his little siblings? And they'll hold that data over the viewers like the Sword of Damocles. They might not be able to legally use it, but nothing stops them from using it without your knowledge. How often do cops, without a search warrant, break into the place they want to search, search it, lock up, and then figure out a way to get that search warrant in order to return legally? It happens a lot more often than one would think.

Personally I don't care if anyone knows what my kink is. If you're interested? Library porn. Women with glasses and fishnet stockings. Maybe a little public sex. MILFs. Porn parodies. Funny porn. But then again, who am I? People expect me to like porn. Or perhaps the author of DONG OF FRANKENSTEIN is an innocent little angel?

Most people don't want their kinks known. If people have to show their ID to view porn? They're probably not going to do it. If enough people stop watching porn, what happens to those porn sites?

Sure, there will always be the loyal hardcore (so to speak) fans. Maybe they're enough to keep the industry afloat. Who knows?

Protecting children from things they shouldn't see is not the government's job. It's the parents' job. Just like it's a parent's job to raise a kid right instead of raising a psychopath who jerks off thinking about shooting up his school until he actually does it. There are parental controls. Use them.

And to be honest, that will work on most kids because most kids are stupid. There are, however, smart kids, and you'll never deter them from getting something they really want. I'm sure right now there are genius teenagers in LA who have figured out how to use an out of state IP address to look at PornHub. Remember, these are kids who grew up with the internet. When something is a part of your everyday life from birth, you tend to know how to use it to your advantage.

So if it could happen in LA, I can only assume it could happen in the other 49. If porn is really, truly at risk of sinking, then I would recommend going against what your nature is telling you.

Don't get rid of physical media. Keep those DVDs and magazines. I did. And hey, it could be an investment in the future. In a world without porn, how much would someone pay for a stroke mag?

How much, indeed.

Extra points go to whoever figures out the reference in the title of this column.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #612: MOM'S DOLL

 

As I've been packing my things, I've been making little discoveries about the house. I found this one hidden away in a linen closet. Never mind that Dollygram misspelled my mom's last name. I didn't know she and her parents ever lived at that location in Elmhurst. Weird.

I was curious, so I opened the box and discovered this:

Still wrapped in plastic. If you can't see, it says HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I wonder which birthday that was for, and I wonder if she ever saw it. That it was still wrapped in plastic suggested that she hadn't, or at the very least she never opened it. And now here it is, decades later, hidden in the linen closet.

I felt kind of weird looking at this thing, like I'd opened a coffin. Very few things are sadder than a toy that has never been played with. It's kind of like Hemingway's baby shoes. That's the first thing I thought of while looking at Mom's doll.

I wonder if Western Union still does things like this. Probably not.

Am I the only one feeling creeped out and melancholy about that second picture?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #611: HORRIBLE THOUGHTS FROM MY HEAD #611

 I had this thought. And I can't blame cannabis because I wasn't high at the time. And this sounds like a high idea. Really.

I was holding a Choose Your Own Adventure and making a practice run when I thought, what if I did a Choose Your Own Adventure, but . . .

All right. You know how almost all of them start with page one, and then they say to continue to page two, sometimes even three before they give you a choice? What if I did one where you're instructed to keep going to four, then five, then six, and before you realize it, you're not in a Choose Your Own Adventure, you're just reading a book?

It made me laugh, but that's a really horrible idea.

Although thinking about CYOA books recently reminded me of The (Pick Your Own) Adventures of Roily Gemstone: An Autobiography. It is sadly out of print, and the author wishes to remain nameless. A CYOA book that never ends? That's good shit right there. Oh, and that link on the Gemstone review sadly no longer works. I remember enjoying those ridiculous songs.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #610: GOOD GODDAM FOOD

 

Sometimes you're reading a blog or a newsletter, and whoever wrote it decides to give you a recipe. Almost always it's for something that is good for you or at least somewhat healthy. Here is my solemn promise to you: if I post a recipe, it will absolutely be terrible for you. There will be no health benefits. But it will be good goddam food.

Gaze upon that sweet bastard I made a couple of nights ago. It stuffed me like something I'd see in a bad porno. I'm pretty sure just looking at it brought my blood pressure up dangerously high. And it was good goddam food.

Here's what you do. Take one tortilla. Load it up with nacho cheese. Put another tortilla on top of that. Microwave for a minute. Chop up some ground beef with taco seasoning and slap that sumbitch down on top. Put a bunch of rice on top of that. Put a bunch of shredded cheese on top of that. Hit it with a bunch of Chipotle sauce. And then, the koop de Gracie, crumble some Doritos on top of that. Gobble that shit up. It helps if you're high, or you might not make it through the whole meal.

You're welcome. Don't forget to tip your nurses.

I have fairly large hands, so you have a good idea as to the scale.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #609: CHILD OF RAGE (REPRISE)

 OK, I finished Jim Thompson's Child of Rage, and whoo-boy. If I really had saved it to be the last book I ever read, I think I would have gone out on top, but it is a severely fucked up book. SEVERELY. I thought I would post my Goodreads review of it tonight, so here we go:

I try not to curse in these reviews, so I'm going to self-censor a little. This is the most f*cked up thing Jim Thompson ever wrote, and he wrote a lot of f*cked up things.

I don't even know where to begin with this. Allen Smith, the protagonist of this horror show, is one of the most despicable characters in literature. And the shocker of it is that it's not entirely his fault, but you don't know that until the end, and the way we learn this is a bit of a spoiler, so I won't mention it here.

Allen is a young man (just turned 18) who is forced to go to a school he can't stand to be in. He's an African American born to a white woman, and in the world of the 'Seventies, that earns him some privileges but for the most part he's treated like garbage because of the color of his skin. He takes the worst offense from white people who think they're progressive but are actually kinda-sorta racist in their own thinking without even knowing it. I get that. There is even a character who says that some of his best friends are Black. A definite red flag.

But he doesn't just have a chip on his shoulder. It's a boulder, and he takes his rage out on everyone within his path. And in an odd way, in the end they kind of all deserve it. The only damage he causes that was a complete accident is when he kills a baby and feels bad about it later.

He's sex-obsessed and even finds himself in situations where he could have sex with a willing partner, but it turns out that he's impotent unless he's thinking about his mom. And his desire to have sex with his mom isn't entirely his fault. She sometimes invites him into her bed but doesn't let him enjoy it. Not nearly as much as she enjoys it, at any rate.

And that's not the only incest in this book. He discovers that a brother and sister at school have a decidedly un-sibling-like relationship and sets things in motion that you will simply not believe unless you read this book. I expect the lowest of the low from the human race, and even this shocked me. And this isn't Allen's only manipulation. Not by a long shot.

This book is full of racism, sexism, homophobia, incest and a whole bunch of other stuff that would turn most people off. I'm not surprised to see these labels applied to Thompson himself, as he kind of ham-fistedly deals with these issues. I don't think he's a believer in any of those things, though. I think his point, in setting out to write this one, is to point out how horrible people are, and how violence begets violence and hatred begets hatred. I guarantee one thing though: as much as people like to make his books into movies, there isn't a single soul on this planet who would want to turn this one into a film. It is a truly f*cked up book.

There was also a novella in the back of the book, and I wondered why they included it at first. Around the halfway mark I realized that he'd probably written it as a practice run and then wound up cannibalizing it for Child of Rage. It's pretty interesting and f*cked up in its own right. I also found out that this book is actually signed. Not by Thompson, of course. This edition was published more than 30 years after he died. But it was signed by the illustrator, who I'd never heard of before, and Ed Gorman, the guy who wrote the intro. Gorman was a great writer, too, and it kind of surprised me that this was signed. I've owned this book for many years and never knew that. The reason is, the signed plate is usually at the front of the book. In this case it was at the very back of the book. Weird. But a pleasant surprise, nonetheless.

I can't recommend this book to anyone. I enjoyed it, but I have a very f*cked up mind, myself. If you're f*cked up, you might enjoy this book, too.

Oh yeah, one more thing. This is the second book of Thompson's in which he refers to himself. The first time was in The Alcoholics, when he writes about an alcoholic writer named Thompson admitted to an asylum for The Cure. In this one he refers to an alcoholic writer named Tomlinson or Thomas or something like that. It should be mentioned that Thompson literally died of alcoholism. So no matter what you say about him, you can never say that he didn't have a sense of humor about his own situation. I say that as a recovering alcoholic myself.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #608: ALL IT TAKES IS A GOOD TEACHER

 Up until high school I was a pretty straight forward young lad. I trusted (more or less) in authority and thought that the police had our best interests at heart even though I'd already had a pretty rough run in with them in junior high. And then I took Mr. Torney's social studies class in high school.

Mr. Torney had a bad rap around the school because if you fell asleep in his class he would shoot you with a Super Soaker. I never fell asleep in any class, so that was never an issue for me. I wound up in his classroom for the first time and saw that he was probably insane due to the decor. Most teachers went to various other classrooms to teach, but his classroom was clearly HIS. Hanging above his desk was a mannequin head wearing a Nixon mask with a bird perched on its forehead. And that was just the beginning. He had a lot of crazy stuff on the walls, but the one that drew my attention was a poster of an authority figure that said BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.

I soon learned that this was a reference to 1984 by George Orwell, which I read for his class as well as Animal Farm. The more I learned in his class, the more I realized that authority figures might not be authority figures. The older I get? The more I am certain that they're no real authority.

I learned not to trust politicians from Mr. Torney. I learned not to trust the government from him. And I learned not to trust the police from him.

It was an eye-opening experience, taking that class. It taught me that not everything is what it seems, and if you dig deep enough you'll find people's true motives. Sometimes the government is right. A lot of times they're not. It's on a case by case basis, really.

But I think about the police mostly. For a while I even believed that bad apples theory, that when you hear about a cop stepping out of his (almost always his) lane, he's an exception, not the rule. But nope, when you realize that they're all of a brotherhood, that they watch each others backs, that even the so-called good apples will keep their mouths shut to protect the bad apples, you realize that they're all corrupt. And when Uvalde happened, I discovered that they're all cowards, too. Not a single one of them has any kind of courage. Their loyalty belongs only to themselves. No exceptions.

So yeah. I'm all in favor of disbanding the motherfuckers. Replace them with people who are courageous. Who have a loyalty to preserving the peace instead of to themselves. Who don't panic when confronted with a difficult situation. Who, instead of callously murdering people, they try to find peaceful solutions when possible. I get it if a guy is waving a machine gun that he's not supposed to have at the cops. They can shoot that guy. But a bunch of cops piling up on one person who isn't even armed? To the point where they actually KILL that person? I don't care if they thought that person was Satan himself, they don't get to kill unarmed people, no matter how much it will get their dicks hard. And killing people gets a lot of cops' dicks hard.

Wow. That got a little out of hand. I just wanted to talk about learning to distrust authority. But I stand by everything I said here.