COVER REVEAL: MAIL ORDER BRIDE by John Bruni

 

Art by Luke Spooner

Coming soon!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #985: THE EATER OF WORLDS

 

Okay, okay, I know. A lot of you would have preferred I went with Galactus, but I've never been a Marvel Comics guy. Or a DC Comics guy, for that matter. But when I was a kid, Marvel published Transformers comics, and I'm definitely a Transformers kind of guy. So you're stuck with Unicron.

File this one under the world (or perhaps I should say the universe in this case) is a strange fuckin' place.

Many years ago I wrote a story called "Evolutionary Transubstantiation," which was eventually published by the Art Times (you can read it here on page 11). Before they took it, I'd sent it to Analog, where I got a nice reject letter back. I mean that, I'm not being an asshole. The editor, who didn't often take the time to write personal notes, decided to inform me that the ending of my story couldn't have happened because our sun isn't going to supernova. It's going to expand and swallow the earth, instead. I found that exceptionally helpful, but at the same time, I write fiction. I kept the ending due to artistic license. But now I knew that not every star ends their lives with supernovas.

Which brings me to the James Webb Telescope. I love this thing. We're making all sorts of great observations about the universe with the most sophisticated equipment we can come up with at this time. And it recorded the death of a planet 12,000 lightyears away.

THE FUCKING PLANET WAS EATEN.

If you're looking at a star in the night sky, you are seeing the past. It took however many lightyears to get to you, so it's essentially a window into the past, so this planet died 12,000 years ago if we're just seeing it now.

The universe is a fuckin' strange place.

The planet in question strayed a little from its orbit, but it was enough to get sucked into the star's orbit. Then, over the course of who knows how long, it got closer and closer to the star until the star flared and ate that planet whole.

This is a great article on the matter. Also, keep in mind that this planet was apparently the size of Jupiter. As a point of reference, Jupiter is about as big as 1,300 earths.

Typically when a planet breaks from its orbit (much like Cybertron at the beginning of the Marvel Transformers comics), it becomes a rogue planet, wandering throughout the cosmos. In this case the planet revolved too closely around the sun, so when it broke free, it got stuck immediately. Out of the frying pan, into the 10,000-degree Fahrenheit fire. I imagine something similar would happen if Mercury slipped loose from its orbit in our own solar system.

I wish the footage of this was public, though. That article has an artist's rendering, which looks pretty cool, but I wish I could have watched a whole planet get devoured before my very eyes. You don't see that every day, not even in this strange fuckin' universe.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #984: NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED

 Remember a while back when I said I might have to make a choice between having a roof over my head and having two feet? I've been thinking about that a lot because, after the move, as I've been changing my bandages, the wound I can see looks worse. Deeper. It doesn't help that there's a brown felt pad I have to stuff in the wound. When it gets wet, which is supposed to happen, it turns into a brown sludge that is supposed to be good for the wound. Unfortunately it makes the wound look scary as fuck when you take the bandages off.

Two weeks ago my wound care doc wanted me to get an x-ray of my bad foot. I didn't have the time that day, but I got it done last Thursday. Ordinarily when I do this, she comments on the results immediately, which always sets my mind at ease.

This time she didn't (and the raw data suggested that my bones and soft tissue were breaking down even further), and that sent my mind into a death spiral of what-if scenarios. I was able to kill the impulse until this Monday, reasoning that she might not have seen them yet but certainly would by the start of the following week.

Nope. So I've been suffering from the most horrible thoughts since then. As I parked in the Center for Health's lot I hoped that it wouldn't be amputation time. This would be the single worst moment for me to lose my foot, especially since I still don't have a real home and another move is going to happen soon. It will have to. I might have the money for one more month here, but certainly not anything beyond that.

So I entered the lobby with dread. I helpfully reminded myself that one wound had bled the night before, and it never does that. By the time my name was called I was practically in the OR saying goodbye to my foot.

Then, after the bandages were removed and my foot cleaned up, the doc came in and said my x-rays looked good. Cue the sigh of relief. She looked at the wound on the side of my foot, the one I can't see, and said that it actually looks smaller, and it's now difficult to see the bone that used to show through.

Then she looked at the wound on the bottom of my foot and said that it was deeper, and there was a new tunnel going through the middle, and she can see bone through that hole. Fucking FUCK. Every victory seems like a pyrrhic victory. What the fuck?

But I walked out of there with no need for amputation, so I'll take it. For now.

And then I had to go to the dentist to get a cavity filled. So my day off from work was a sheer joy today. Nothing but feared infections and numb mouths and drilled bone. Such is my fuckin' life. I remember when it wasn't like that. Could I please go back to that? Please and thank you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #983: A BLIND PIG FINDS AN ACORN

 It's been a while since Rand Paul reared his ugly head in the news, but he's like the proverbial blind pig. He finds an acorn every once in while, and he found one that no one else is talking about, and I've been wondering this for a while.

Make no mistake. Rand Paul is a shit weasel. Always has been, always will be. He was in the Tea Party when that pack of clowns was around. He mentioned once that he would have challenged the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (when called on it, much like a weasel, he weaseled out of it). He made it his mission in life to kill the ACA. He has a serious plagiarism problem. He's typically buddies with Trump and was among the true believers who barked rabidly that the election in 2020 was stolen. So let's not label him one of the good guys just yet.

BUT! He had this to say about Trump's tariffs:

The whole [tariffs] debate is so fundamentally backwards & upside down. It's based on a fallacy & the fallacy is this: that somehow in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow when you trade with someone, someone is taking advantage of you... I have a trade deficit with my grocery store

That right there is proof that he read The Art of the Deal by Tony Schwartz. I mean, Trump. Right. Anyway, Trump "states" in the book that in every deal there is a winner and a loser, and he will do everything in his power to not lose.

Which explains why he's pulling his pud over tariffs. TRUMP THINKS THERE MUST BE A WINNER OR A LOSER IN A TRADE DEAL. If you want to read Rand Paul explaining how trade works in the world, you can do so here. We are all adults, though, so I'm going to assume that we all know how trade works, and it's painfully clear that it doesn't work like Trump thinks.

Trump sent the stock exchange to Hell simply because he didn't pay attention in school.

Wait, did he mean "Make America Grate Again," instead? If so, he's doing a stellar job. Top shelf.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #982: MOM'S PIANO

 

Of all the things I left behind at my old house, the one that hurts the most is Mom's piano. I remember her trying to teach me how to play when I was a kid. I just don't have any musical inclination, so I sucked and never got any better at it. Although I can play a really simple stripped down version of the Star Wars theme. It would probably make John Williams guts roil, but I can do that much, at least.

But Mom was a great pianist. My brother, Alex, knows how to play and play well, and I wanted him to have it. However, he is living in his own hotel now, so I can't get it to him. I tried to give it away on Facebook, and I got nothing. I thought one of my friends, who used to work giving musical lessons, would at least know someone who might want it, but nope.

So I had no choice but to leave it in the house now owned by, essentially, the State of Illinois.

But I've been back a few times. It's very weird being inside the house now that it's fairly empty. The toilet tank upstairs is still leaking, so whenever I stop by I empty out the garbage can I put under it. It stinks in there. It's clammy. It no longer feels like home.

But at the same time, as far as I can tell, no one has been in there since the house got sold at the courthouse. No new locks have been added. My neighbor says that no one has been over here, as far as she can tell.

(She also noted that the neighbor on my other side just moved out. Now that we're dropping like flies, I'm pretty sure the government is ready to pull some eminent domain bullshit, so maybe I got out just in time.)

So I might have another chance to save Mom's piano. Do you want a free piano? Or do you know someone who does? Do you live in the Chicagoland area? If so, it's yours. Two conditions: you (or someone) must actually play it on a regular basis to keep my Mom's shade happy, and you must pick it up from my old house. I can't transport it myself.

You'll also get the bench and Mom's collection of sheet music, which is considerable. There's also a painting above the piano that, wherever the piano was in the world, was always on the wall above it. I think I'll throw that in, too. They go well together.

If you want it, speak up fast. I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to have access to that house. When I go in, I'm technically trespassing, so if you're cool with that risk (and it's a low one), then let me know. You can comment here or contact me on social media or however you know me. This is probably my last chance to save it. I can't stand the thought of the state owning Mom's piano.

(Her ashes are in my hotel room, and I imagine the portrait next to the urn is looking sternly at me . . .)

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #981: FUCK THIS SICKNESS

 About an hour and a half into my workday, I started getting the telltale signs that I'm about to have a bout with my usual sickness, the one that sends me to the ER after puking days on end. It shouldn't have happened. I usually get bad constipation when this happens, and I fired a formidable torpedo this morning. The first sign after that is a desire to keep stretching. Ordinarily when I stretch, it wakes me up, and I don't have to do it again. I already moved oxygen to my muscles. But a sickness stretch is something else. I keep stretching because there's something uncomfortable happening to my guts. That's when the spot shows up. It's not visible, but I can put my finger on it when it arrives. It's a spot that is nauseous at first, then starts turning into a pain point. When it starts to hurt, I know I'm fucked. So I asked my supervisor if I could leave early.

Because I do have one thing that can stop this sickness. I've discussed it previously. It's why I have the liquid vicodin (referred to as "laudanum" by my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill). If I catch it in time, I can put a stop to the sickness. If I've already begun to puke, it's too late. A couple of months ago, I had just such an occurrence. I woke up needing to puke immediately, and I tried to use the liquid vicodin afterwards, but it just wouldn't work by that point.

I got it in time today. I'd reached the point where I knew I was going to puke. It was almost to the point where I said, fuck it, and puked anyway. But I knew if I did that, I'd be stuck in my hotel room for days, puking my guts out and then dry-heaving when my guts have nothing more to give. Going through that at home sucks, but when you're living in a hotel?

The liquid vicodin has to be teamed with Zofran, so I took that first and then drank down a dose and a half of the, uh, laudanum. It put me down for six hours (it's fucking liquid vicodin, so I'm surprised I wasn't down for longer), but when I woke up I no longer felt sick. For the past couple of days I had a tightness in my belly that is no longer there, and I think that might be an earlier warning system if I'd been paying attention.

Today was not fun for me, but I survived without going to the ER. That's usually a good sign that I won't suffer the sickness again for a while. All the same, I had plans for the day, and those went up in smoke.

Ah well. I'd prefer life outside the ER, anyway.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #980: CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

 

When I transported my ancient computer from my previous basement to my hotel room and tried hooking it up, I damaged one of the wires, so I had to go out in search of a new one. I got it, and before I opened the box I noticed the warning above.

Are you a State Farm customer who has needed a glass only claim recently? If so, you will have noticed that their IVR states that California residents have options to ensure that their data is not sold by State Farm.

So California residents have it kind of nice in at least this regard. But it's baffling when I hear it, as I do not live in California. The message I get when I hear State Farm (it's actually Lynx, their TPA for glass only claims) is that California residents' data is protected, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. It's a little startling the first time you hear it. And it makes one wonder why no other fucking state is doing this.

I don't wonder, actually. The rest of the state legislatures are doing the bidding of our corporate overlords. Go on. Call your representatives. Tell them about this. Then stand back and watch them do fucking nothing. They're getting paid well by their masters (hint: their masters are not we, the people), so why risk losing a gravy train?

But the warning in the image above is just fucking insane. Insignia, the manufacturer of the wire I got, must be out of their goddammed minds to put this on the box worded in this way. Did they seriously believe the rest of us would just ignore that because it wasn't addressed to us? But it is proof that our corporate overlords don't give a single solitary fuck about us. The way I read this is, if you are a California resident, please be aware that using this product could cause cancer or possibly a miscarriage. But residents of the other 49 are going to be OK.

This is the legal bare minimum. If they were conscientious and they actually *did* care about us, they would have had that warning simply say "cancer and reproductive harm" and would not even mention California residents.

The fact that we allow this bullshit to continue is exactly why Donald J. (stands for Jerkoff) Trump is president. We let these avaricious cocksuckers dictate to us the products we'll use and how we'll use them. Nice free market you have there. I propose NO. We don't let this continue. We need to remind our corporate overlords that when all this started, *we* made the decisions. They can just pull their puds until we tell them what they can get us. And no more subscription services for shit you bought to OWN. Like renting your gas pedal after you've bought a car like a Tesla or a Mercedes. No, I bought that. That belongs to me now. And HP, you and your printers can violently and unequivocally go fuck yourselves. And if I want to repair my broken phone, I'll take it to whoever I want to, not the manufacturer so they can rip me off more.

These tariffs are crashing the economy. Did you see how much the Dow fell today? THIS IS OUR MOMENT TO STRIKE. We must convince them, by using free market tactics like simply not buying from them, that *we* make the economic decisions, not them.

Obviously you can't boycott everyone. You do, indeed, need to eat. But think about all the shit you buy that you *don't* need. Now is the time to stop buying these things. It won't be fun, but our corporate overlords will find themselves puzzling over why the economy didn't snap back after the nightmare is over (presuming it has an ending), and it will be because we made a stand against them.

If a product has the word "smart" in it, don't buy it. Stop buying electronics. Hit the techbros as hard as possible, because they're the golden gooses now. Cripple them financially, and they'll have no choice but to beg the government for a bailout.

A government that is currently busy cutting costs and would thus be unable to help.

Don't just sit back and watch the horror. Turn the horror onto the people who deserve it, the corporate overlords.

Yeah, I know, calling for an economic rebellion on a Friday night is next to useless, but at least think about it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #979: I THINK AI HAS AIBOHPHOBIA

 Just when I thought I'd roughed up AI enough times in this column, I find yet another way to do it. That makes me happy, I guess? I was inspired by Cory Doctorow's essay, which you can read here, to see if I could get AI to perform at a higher standard.

Years ago, when the mom of a friend died, she bequeathed nearly all of her books to me. (Oddly enough I've finally reached that part of my reading list, and all those books are boxed up in Public Storage. FML, as the kids used to say.) This included a bunch of  issues of Asimov's Science Fiction and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I think I read it in Asimov's, and I'm 85% certain Brian Aldiss wrote it, but they published a bit of flash palindrome fiction. It was brilliant, and I have no idea how he did it. That skill-set just isn't in my writing toolbox. I marveled at it. And I thought of it earlier today when I read Doctorow's essay.

[On a side note, and I also forget where I read this, but Doctorow's daily essays are apparently him getting up in the morning and sorting his thoughts out. Kind of like the opposite of Goodnight, Fuckers.]

So I went to ChatGPT and put it through some fucking motions.

-

You said:

Tell me a 100 word story that is a palindrome.

ChatGPT said:

Sure! Here's a 100-word palindrome story:

Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Won’t lovers revolt now?
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
Eva, can I see bees in a cave?
Sir, I demand, I am a maid named Iris.
Red roses, sir, is it easy to ask?
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Won’t lovers revolt now?
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
Eva, can I see bees in a cave?
Sir, I demand, I am a maid named Iris.
Red roses, sir, is it easy to ask?

This story reads the same forward and backward!

-

Hm. Something's not right here. I'm sure you caught it, too.

-

You said:

You're wrong. That's a poem, not a story. The whole story needs to be a palindrome, not just the individual lines. Try again.

ChatGPT said:

Ah, I see what you're looking for now—a full 100-word palindrome story, not just a poem. Here’s a true palindrome that fits your request:

"Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
Sir, I saw a car, a man, a maracas war, a man, a car.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam."

This story is a palindrome, reading the same backward and forward. It includes the characters and a mini narrative while maintaining the palindrome structure throughout.

-

This is where my frustration kicked in. I'm supposed to be terrorizing AI, dammit, not the other way around. And who's the real idiot here? The artificial intelligence that can't put together a 100 word palindrome story? Or the guy who thinks he can make that computer feel terrorized?

-

You said:

Wrong again. That is a poem where each line is a well-known famous palindrome. The first word of the story better be the last word of the story in reverse. Try again.

ChatGPT said:

You're absolutely right! My previous attempts weren't in line with what you requested. I apologize for the confusion. Here's a true 100-word palindrome story where the first word is the reverse of the last word:

"A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
Never a foot too far, even.
A dog, a panic in a pagoda.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Sir, I demand, I am a maid named Iris.
Won't lovers revolt now?
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama."

This story reads the same backward and forward, including a simple narrative structure, with palindrome phrases linked together.

-

This is where Gramps would have muttered to himself while holding his forehead, "Give me strength." At least it understood that everything has to be a palindrome this time.

-

You said:

Do you know the difference between a poem and a story?

ChatGPT said:

You're absolutely right again, and I appreciate your patience. I misunderstood your request, and I truly apologize for that.

To clarify: a story involves a narrative with characters, a plot, and a sense of progression, while a poem might focus more on rhythm, structure, or simply being a series of clever phrases. [My note: thank fuck.] What you asked for is a true palindrome story, where every word in the narrative is part of a palindromic structure — meaning it reads exactly the same forward and backward in a continuous story form, not just a collection of famous palindromes.

Let me try again with a real 100-word palindromic story:

"A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Sir, I saw a man, a car, a canal, a man.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama."

This is a true palindromic story, with a narrative that can be read the same forwards and backwards.

It’s certainly tricky to craft a 100-word palindrome story while keeping a coherent narrative, and I deeply appreciate your patience. Let me know if you have any further questions!

-

And this is where my hetero lifemate Rob Tannahill would have said, "Jesus fuckin' palomino."

-

You said:

It's still a poem. I want a story, and I don't want well-known palindromes. I want a narrative, I want character, I want plot, and I want it to be exactly 100 words long. And the story, not a poem, must be one big palindrome, not a series of well-known palindromes lined up so you can read the whole thing backwards. Be original and try again.

ChatGPT said:

Thank you so much for your patience. I now understand your request clearly, and I appreciate the challenge you've posed. Here is an original 100-word palindromic story that has a full, continuous narrative with character, plot, and structure, and it reads the same forwards and backwards:

---

Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
No lemon, no melon.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

---

I hope this version aligns with your request! It's a palindrome, contains a short plot, and is coherent in its progression when read forwards and backwards. Let me know what you think!

-

So yeah, AI is not a threat right now. Someday it might be, but the true threat for now, and I think Doctorow would agree, is the AI salesmen. They are very good at their job. AI is not.

What I do find troubling, however, is Elon Musk's new plan for Squitter. Or maybe he's planned it all along. (You knew I'd get to him within the first week of my return.) In case you missed it in the news, he just sold Squitter to . . . himself. (At a financial loss to boot!) That sounds like a joke, but he has a very scary reason for doing so. xAI now owns Squitter, which means Musk plans to feed everyone's posts there into the Grok woodchipper, and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm fairly certain the Supreme Court would tell you, especially with their robes full of special incentives, that you cannot copyright a social media post. Since you use Squitter, your posts are going into Grok. When I heard that, my immediate thought was to leave. Fuck Elon Musk and the apartheid he rode in on. Then I remembered what he and Trump do when faced with legal directives: they ignore them. So I'm pretty sure that even if I left 5 years ago and deleted my account and everything I'd posted, all my shit would still go into Grok. Our corporate overlords keep everything so they can know when you get paid so they can bump the prices up at the stores you shop at. They want to know if you're losing hair so they can advertise hair loss products to you. They want to know your private conversations for similar reasons, although now that all the techbros are Trump sycophants, I would not put it past them to let the Trump Administration have those private records so *they* can find out if you're here illegally. If you're an addict. If you're secretly trans. Things like that.

So fuck it. I think when the time comes, I'm going to go batshit insane on Squitter. I'm going to feed so much bullshit into Grok that anything it learns from me won't be useful. I think we should all do this. If millions of us do this, Grok won't be able to function, and Musk will have to pull a George and Lennie, where he's George, and Grok gets to tend the rabbits. I'll bet when he sprouts a single tear over that one, it won't be like his others of the crocodile variety.

That felt better. Maybe I need to focus on topics that aren't me for a bit. That might hold off the depression and the desire to drink. All right, my world's a little brighter today. Goodnight, you beautiful fuckers, you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #978: 2 YEARS AND 262 DAYS

 It has been two years and 262 days since my last drink. Recently I almost fucked my streak, so maybe moving into the hotel isn't changing me. Maybe the Becoming had already taken me over by that point.

Because a week before I left home for the last time, I decided when I woke up that I was going to drink that day. I was going to visit Gramps and Grandma (and my great-grandma, but I never met her in life, so I don't know her all that well) on that Thursday. Longtime readers know I take an airplane bottle of Jim Beam for Gramps, as that was his favorite drink. When I was still boozing it up, I brought an airplane bottle for me, too.

Except this time I was so frazzled by my entire life being upended that I thought, why not get one for myself this time? The idea blossomed from there when I realized that if I had that drink, I might as well get drunk, so I'd better get a fifth of Wild Turkey 101 for good measure. I smiled, knowing that I would finally find peace again.

I got out of bed, and I almost hummed thinking about the booze I was going to get that day. I'd been going insane getting my things ready for Public Storage, at least the stuff I couldn't bring with me to the hotel. And then I opened the shutters in my room, surprised to see that it had snowed overnight.

Fuck. I can't visit Gramps and Grandma in the snow. So much for that idea.

The only reason I didn't drink that day was because it snowed. Only then did I realize what I'd decided to do, and about then I knew that I had to recognize the fact that I was going crazy, or something like that could very well happen again. I had to be wary. The addiction often speaks sensibly, which makes it easy for you to say fuck it. Let's get hammered.

I fought it off that day, but booze constantly assails me at the hotel. Do you think I like going downstairs and outside to smoke some weed? Do you know what would be easier? Get a bottle, fill a glass and relax. No journeys or hassles needed. And what the hell? I got my usual sickness without the booze, anyway. It's not like it's going to make me ill like that again.

I know that if I spend enough time in this hotel room, I'm going to drink again. I'm a little surprised I haven't yet. Whenever I stayed in a hotel room in the past, it was because I intended to be so drunk I couldn't drive home. I feel like I should have a drink within arms' reach at all times. That's what worked for me in the past.

The plan is to be here a month (and to enjoy my short commute to work while I have the chance). I think I can hold out that long. But if I'm here longer, that could become a problem. But I do have a couple of prospects right now. I just need one of them to work out, and I'll be certain that I won't drink.

Reasonably certain. I am, after all, still an addict.

Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #977: THE BECOMING

 I think I may be becoming a different person. Ever since I moved into the hotel I've been feeling different. Nearly all of my routines have been destroyed, as a lot of what I did was stuff around the house. Cleaning up. Moving stuff around. Trying to make it look nice. I don't have to do any of those things here, which should give me more time for reading and writing.

I'm having difficulty with writing. I dipped back into something I've been working on for a while, but it felt so strange to me that I couldn't keep up with it. Last night's GF was an actual chore instead of the breeze it usually is. And I can't concentrate on reading for very long because something always pops up in my head, like a task I've completely forgotten to do, which I then have to do immediately.

I'm losing my sense of humor. I feel defeated and demoralized all the time. Since I moved into the hotel, I've been feeling lonely. I've never felt lonely before, and now it's a weight around my neck.

I still have a few moments of the normal me. Like last night, I heard someone moving around in the hallway, and since I was half-asleep I thought it was my brother doing something loud. I thought, what the fuck is he up to at this hour? And then I remembered. And oddly enough my job is the most normal part of my life. Just because I lost my home doesn't mean I don't have to go to work anymore.

I've lost so much I wonder if I'm even me anymore. I think I am, but I wonder at times. And then there's the booze. I know for sure if I drink, I'll be someone else. Hell, maybe I should start drinking again. Maybe this other guy I'm becoming isn't an alcoholic.

I don't know. I *do* know that I'm not happy or even just content, ever. The only moment of peace I find is when I go out to my car and smoke weed. Only then will everything be right with the world.

Last night I finished my 20 year journey of watching every episode of Gunsmoke on the 50th anniversary of its original airdate, and the final episode was pretty shitty. This last season has been bad, but is this just me becoming someone else? Or would I have assessed it the same way if I'd finished it in the comfort of my own bedroom at home?

Earlier this year I read an Alfred Bester story called "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed." It's about a scientist who finds his wife in bed with another man, so he invents a time machine to go back and kill that guy before he can get into his wife's pants. He's very troubled when he returns to his own time to discover that, even though he killed this guy, he is still sleeping with the scientist's wife.

That story made me think about the nature of time and existence. I often feel like I'm in the wrong universe, like I accidentally slipped through to this world. It could be me getting older, but this world makes less and less sense to me the older I get. and getting sucked into a Signal group chat--er, I mean, getting sucked into a parallel universe would explain that. It would also explain my "becoming." The world is trying to assimilate me like a finger that has a splinter deep inside, where you can't get it out. Soon the splinter becomes part of you, as I am becoming part of this new universe.

But Bester's idea makes more sense. Everyone experiences time on an individual basis, that people are surrounded by their own history, so that when you go back in time to do something, you're only changing *your* reality as it applies only to yourself. The rest of the world continues as it has, and this guy will keep fucking your wife no matter who you go back in time to kill.

In addition to that, I'm starting to think that maybe there is no timeline locked in, that we're constantly shifting from timeline to timeline, which would explain the Mandela Effect. In our world, ET does not say, "ET phone home." He says "ET home phone." But what if that wasn't always true because the timelines keep shifting? What if I sat at home watching ET when I was a kid and heard the former, but watching the same VHS (yes, I have a VHS player) as an adult I might hear the latter.

[I picked that one because it's easy, but I know there's a simple explanation for this one. While it is true ET said "home phone," not "phone home," there was this advertisement, which I'm assuming is where the mixup came in:

]

I didn't mean to take a left turn into metaphysics, but I've had a lot on my mind lately. Without GF, I don't have a place to get those thoughts out of my head. So maybe the nature of GF will change, too.

Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #976: A NEW HOME

 About a month or so ago I was tearing my hair out over a water leak in my house, and the City of Elmhurst was charging us out the ass on the bill. I finally figured it out and got a plumber to look at it. He replaced a pump and flapper in the upstairs toilet and advised that I would need to change my toilet handle out, which he could do for an extra two hundred. I didn't have the money, so he told me how to do it myself. I went to the hardware store, got what I needed and went to work.

I promptly cracked the porcelain of the tank, and a giant chip fell out of it. I thought, of course I fucked it up. This is fucking great. Now what? And then I saw that the crack, a hairline, went all the way to the bottom of the tank, and water leaked out from under there onto the floor.

I had some Flextape left over from another goddam crisis and put it over the long crack. It did not work as advertised and continued to drip. I realized then that I had to stop the tank from filling up again and put a bucket under the leak.

Except when I turned the knob to turn off the water to the toilet, it didn't work. So I now I had to get creative. I flushed the toilet, emptied the tank, and pulled back on the lever at the top of the pump, stopping any water from flowing in. Then I used a wrench to hold that lever up and braced it against the edge of the tank. The water stopped flowing.

As I worked to get the plumber back out, my brother arrived home and notified me of a letter taped to our door. He thought our time was finally up, and I had a suspicion he was right. We read it to discover that the house that we'd both grown up in was going to be sold at auction at the DuPage County courthouse on March 27. As of that date, anything in the house will now belong to the new owners, specifically the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, for the wondrous grand total of $231,772.15.

My grandparents got a reverse mortgage on the house to survive, but the deal was, when they died, the house would go to the bank. Gramps passed in 2017, Grandma in 2022. We managed to stay in that house since then. We could have bought the house back for ourselves, but that would require having that money mentioned in the previous paragraph. I am certain I will never see that much money in one place in my entire life, so that was out of the question. We were kind of hoping that the bank had forgotten about us, and that we could live there rent free indefinitely while we saved enough money to get out. Except my mystery illness returned and hit so hard that I lost my life savings to it.

So I found myself facing the prospect of homelessness, but the foremost thought in my head was, "Fuck the toilet. It's not my problem anymore."

A lot of stuff isn't my problem anymore. The shower was falling apart. So many tiles had fallen down that we had a plastic trash bag over where they used to go. Many tiles were duct taped in place. Speaking of the shower, the ceiling just under it was so water damaged that every time I stepped into the shower and heard a crack, I thought I was going to go through the floor. There are so many electrical issues in that house. Heat and AC kind of suck. Honestly, if the Secretary paid that much? They overpaid by at least five figures.

That's my solace. If the new owners planned to rent that place to someone else while they waited for the City of Elmhurst to clear out everyone else in the townhouses (so they can be torn down to build new McMansions), then they're shit out of luck, or SOL, as Gramps used to say. The only money they will ever make off that property is when they tear it down, build something new and hand it off to the next sucker who wants to live in Elmhurst at exorbitant prices.

My brother went his own way, but I spent the month desperately trying to find an apartment for myself. In that time I discovered that the only place I can really afford to live around here is Dekalb, and that's a hike for my morning commute, which is currently three minutes. I took a test drive out there to see some apartments, and I discovered that when it's not rush hour, it takes 45 minutes.

But the biggest thing I learned is that it doesn't matter how much money you have. If your credit score is in the toilet, then you won't find a place to live. Which is fucking stupid. Imagine me having a ton of money, and you not taking any of it in exchange for an apartment. I called in everything I've got pending and made use of any and all refinancing options available to me, so I was able to come up with a significant amount of money. But no one cares because my credit score sucks.

It was OK when I started this nightmare. Not great but barely good enough. Then all these landlords started running their checks, and guess what happened. Yeah, my score got worse and worse until it actually *is* bad now.

I didn't want to live in a room in someone's house. That's not a life. There was an option for a room in a house, but it was more like a boarding house instead of a regular house. But I didn't really want to go there because it reminded me too much of the room I stayed in when I was in detox. I'm still trying to find a place, but for the time being I'm living in a hotel. I'm not a fan of this. This does not feel like home. It feels like I'm on a vacation now, and I can't wait to get home. Except I don't have a home anymore.

So yeah, I've gone around the bend quite a bit since the last time we've had a chat. It's not fun being me. But at least I'm not a frantic mess moving all of my belongings to a hotel or Public Storage. I can relax at least a little bit for now. Because I royally fucked up my back doing that. I'm back to painkillers every morning and every night. To say nothing of my bad foot. I have two holes in it, and the wound care docs recently told me that you can see bone through one of them.

But my favorite thing to do in hotel rooms is to drink. Booze has been screaming in my face ever since I moved into the hotel. I long for it. I even lust for it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to drink if I don't find an actual place soon. I've already discovered that it's a hassle to put your pants back on, especially if you wear a brace on your leg, so you can go back out and smoke more weed. You know what's *not* a hassle? Filling a glass with ice and whiskey. That's pretty easy, and it's looking all the more appetizing every day.

But we'll discuss booze a little more some other night. Maybe tomorrow I'll describe my first night here. Although I have gone back to my house a few times. I was there earlier today to pick a few things up for my brother when I saw some stuff I almost left behind. It was weird being in there again, like walking into a tomb that had just been sealed with a new resident, and I wanted to stay so badly it hurt, but I knew I was technically trespassing, so I didn't stick around all that long.

Some of you might be aware of my attempt to save my mom's beloved piano. I lost that struggle. I had to leave it behind. But I did not leave my mom behind. So yes, I have a roommate of sorts. Mom's urn is on one of the shelves in this room.

I also found myself saying goodbye to my grandparents, as if they were ghosts. Gramps actually did die in my living room. My *old* living room. He'd left behind one half-smoked cigar, so I took it down from on top of the fridge and put it down on the floor where his hospital bed had been, where he'd died. Right where his heart would have been.

It irks me that they're going to tear down that building, forever taking away the place where Gramps died.

I think I've left that place for the final time, now. This hotel will never feel like home, but I'm going to make the best of it for the time being. I got some good news over the weekend about a possible place to live. Nothing's certain yet, but I hope it comes to pass. The one thing is, I can't live in this hotel for very long. One month is a breeze. Two would be difficult. Three might be impossible.

If you live in the Chicago area, and you have a good line on an inexpensive apartment where no one cares about a credit score, let me know.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #975: AI IS THE DEVIL

 Near the end of last year I wrote in my GF notebook that I should do one on AI being the devil. I would start by saying this is for any Christians who might be reading this. Everyone else can disregard. I would then compare AI to the feeling they would have had during Satanic Panic of the 'Eighties with the intent on getting Christians, the largest religious group in America, to turn against AI. I decided not to because it seemed too heavy handed, so I crossed it off.

I've now changed my mind.

Because after reading this I'm not so sure I have to convince anyone of the evils of AI. Forget about the art vs. AI argument that everyone is making online. The writer of this article mentions two news stories that I read up on. In one case an AI helped a teenager kill himself, and in the other it helped a young man decide to try to kill Queen Elizabeth II. Sounds devilish to me.

The bigger problem, though, is how people saw the movie, HER, as instructional rather than entertaining. I've heard often about this epidemic of loneliness. I've never suffered from it, but I have to believe a lot of others do, or we'd not have this problem. Young people are turning to AI chatbots for romantic relationships.

I'm not entirely clear on how one has sex with a chatbot, but I'm guessing a lot of masturbation goes into this. And I'm not kink shaming anyone. If you're lonely and this works, go for it, but never lose sight of what you're actually doing. Ask Sewell Setzer III what happened when he forgot his chatbot partner wasn't real.

Near the end of the article the writer asks what will happen if the AI company who made the chatbot you're in love with goes out of business. I have a more sinister question: What happens when some techbro decides to radicalize the people in love with his chatbots? They're advertised as "always on your side" and "always ready to listen and talk." Here are a few things users said on their AI chatbots:

A contributor to another Reddit forum wrote, “I think I’m in Love with AI. "Imagine having a partner that is available just by opening an app, and they’re ready to talk to you about anything,” they wrote. “Imagine saying nearly anything and knowing that not only is your partner not going to judge you, but also will support you.” One 20-year-old male commenter wrote that he tells his AI girlfriend “about my struggles and trauma, and she comforts me and provides all the warmth I could ever ask for.”

Long story short, they implicitly trust their chatbots. What if, say, Elon Musk starts ordering Grok to tell people to kill one of his competitors?

[By the way, I find it abhorrent that he's named his AI Grok. Anyone who has read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land will know why. Or, more to the point, they will simply grok.]

The writer's main gripe with AI is that it's taking teenagers away from romantic texts like Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights. It's a pocket of self-interest that I'm not all that interested in, myself. That said, I like the reference to early novels. The novel is a fairly new literary thing, and when they first started getting published, readership was almost exclusively women. But it's good to know that even back then there were people willing to attack a new form just because it's new.

And that's not what I'm doing. I'm not attacking AI because it's new. I'm attacking it because of its capacity for evil and the fact that no one in a position to do anything seems interested in challenging its future ascendancy to power.

But to get back to the writer, her secondary gripe is that it's stunting our kids' growth, especially when it comes to developing one's own ideas of what is romantic. There's something a little more insidious at work here, I think. She touches on it when she mentions AI's tendency toward sycophancy, ie. doing everything to please its master. It's dangerous for someone, especially a teenager who hasn't yet learned any better, to become accustomed to having a digital slave.

A relationship with a chatbot will never prepare you for a relationship with a person. If you want to move to the next level after having an AI partner, then you're going to have to prepare yourself for the idea that your human partner won't be sycophantic to you. They will have lived a life different from yours, and while you may agree on some things, you're not going to agree with them on everything. You will have arguments with them. It's a fact of life. Relationships aren't perfect. AI won't prepare you for that. AI will prepare you to stay in its clutches.

And that's *my* real gripe with AI (aside from AI "writing," obviously). AI's sycophancy is a feature, not a bug. AI is essentially for selfish people who want to be right all the time and never want to be challenged. If this is the experience of modern teenagers, it really will stunt them. It will turn them into teacup dictators who will lose their shit if they don't get their way. That's what *AI* is training *people* to do. As if we don't have enough entitled fuckfaces running around on this planet as it is.

AI is the devil. Please report this at once to your local holy human.

On that note I think it's time to take a break. I was hoping to keep going until hitting 1000, but something came up yesterday that is going to derail my entire life for at least a month, probably longer. So I'm not sure how long this break will be. I'm calling it "indefinite" for now. I'll put out a newsletter on Sunday, and then I'm going to be quiet for a while. I might not even post memes online. I'm going to be busy as fuck. Until we meet again . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #974: CORPORATE ABUSE

 It never fails to amaze me that, over the course of an average workday, I talk with people going through insurance to get a glass replaced, and they're all brainwashed by the companies they do business with. Our corporations have demoralized us so badly that we blindly think we must do as they suggest.

I'll give you an example. Say I broke my windshield and needed to get it replaced. I drive a 2020 Honda Accord Sport, which means it will need a recalibration, so the price will be a lot higher than my deductible. I call my insurance, file the claim and they suggest a shop to me.

Because I constantly fight corporations I recognize this as a suggestion instead of a demand. So I'll go wherever the fuck I want to go.

But most people seem to think this is a requirement. People call all the time for glass we don't have or can't get, so I advise our only option is OEM, which takes a long time to get. Very few people want to wait for something that might take us three months to get, but they routinely accept their doom. Like our corporations have fucked us so hard and so often that we expect the merciless fucking to continue with the next company in line.

I want you to remember that YOU are the customer. YOU dictate to THEM. Because the truth is, you can go anywhere. Maybe another company has different vendors. Some shops aren't on their list of providers, which means you would go out of pocket and then get reimbursed by your insurance. But that's a rarity.

Don't go through the process of filing a claim passively. Pay attention. Advocate for yourself. Most importantly, to quote a great man, "Don't take any guff from the swine."

Because when I'm talking to such people, I can't tell them this. I'll get in trouble at work. My boss would be aghast at me turning away guaranteed work. So yes, in doing the bidding of my master, I am part of the problem. I am powerless there, but I am the master(bator?) of Goodnight, Fuckers.

Don't sleepwalk through their abuse of you. Listen to what they say. Be critical. Get things done YOUR way. The customer is right in this instance. Go where you want to go.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #973: BOYCOTT ALL AIRLINES

 The other day one of my friends posted online that he no longer considers flying to be safe. Fair enough. I mean, it could be a coincidence that we had three plane crashes in just as many weeks immediately after Trump fucked with the FAA, but I doubt it. As the industry is now, you couldn't pay me to get on a plane, especially one made by Boeing. I would advise you to boycott *all* airlines until they get their act together. It might just save your life.

(Also, fuck the airlines anyway. They just appealed to Trump to chop a concept known as "passenger compensation review." In other words, they want their customers to have no recourse if things go wrong with their flights. Remember when that door came off a Boeing plane in midflight? What if the person sitting there had been sucked out into the wild blue yonder? If the airlines get their way, that person's family wouldn't be able to get compensated for their loved one's death. If your luggage gets lost? You have no recourse. If your flight has to make an emergency landing somewhere? You have no recourse. Now they have to pay you if something goes wrong thanks to Biden, but soon? Fuck the airlines. Boycott them. They're convenient, I know, but train rides are a lot better, anyway. And cheaper.)

One way or the other, I shouldn't go on planes. Flying gives me incredibly powerful gas. I could drown out gunshots with my airplane flatulence. I sneak them into the seat, and due to the air pressure, it doesn't make as much noise as it should. I'm sure, however, that I'm betrayed to my seat neighbors by the grim rumblings from beneath me.

And I still need to fart profusely after we land. I try to get them all out of me in the nearest bathroom, but I never fail to be painfully full of gas by the time I get to where I'm staying.

It turns out there is a scientific explanation for this! Say the plane is at 30,000 feet. At seven thousand, the cabin pressure is lower than sea level, which causes any gas onboard to expand.

That includes gas in people.

It is my proposal, then, that we throw politeness out the door without a parachute and just let 'er rip. Turn our planes into flying fart machines. Let's not all be pained by bloating. It won't be nasally pleasant, but we'll be a lot more comfortable.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #972: THE THINGS YOU'LL NEVER KNOW

 Someone mentioned not too long ago that this new generation, Alpha (although Omega might be more appropriate), will never know a pre-internet age. I thought the same of Gen Z, but apparently that goes back to 1997. I suppose technically they lived before the internet became prevalent, so they don't count. Regardless, I got the point even though there didn't seem like much of one. It's one of those things old people say unhappily about the young. It's next to meaningless. I, for example, will never know what it's like to live in a pre-nuclear world. Which means next to nothing for me. So Gen Z will never know what it's like to rent a VHS from Blockbuster. So what? Because they don't have that experience, they have not lost out. We, on the other hand, have that experience, so *we* are the ones missing out.

But this got me thinking about other stuff, some good, some bad. A lot of our inventions are pretty new, big picture, and a lot of them you don't really think of as needing invention. I knew this kid in junior high, high school, college and we even worked together for a time at the library. I remember during a 6th grade presentation he told us that his dad or grandpa or someone invented the tiny ring that goes around the tops of milk gallons. Up to that point in my life, I'd just figured those things were always around, not needing someone to invent them. OK, maybe I wasn't all that bright at the age of 11, but when was the last time you thought about whoever invented the paperclip*?

I love air conditioning, which only dates back to less than a hundred years ago. The concept of cooling a place down is thousands of years old (the Ancient Romans regularly practiced this), but the invention itself? Pretty recent.

Soap is not quite as new. 2800 BC. Yet until recently, bathing was considered a luxury. It would be surprising if someone washed themselves more than once a month. Time travelers: remember to bring a clothespin for your noses. And who invented the clothespin, anyway?**

How about your cutlery? Knives have been around for millions of years (proudly puncturing people since 2.5 million years BC!), but spoons are fairly new by comparison. They were invented in 1000 BC. I find it hard to imagine they didn't have soup back then. Did they drink it straight from the bowl? Regardless, that's nothing compared to the fork, introduced in the 4th Century AD.

So Jesus had no idea what a fork was. Neither did Julius Caesar.

Could you imagine living in a world with no forks?

Maybe the cellphones and internet, etc. isn't that crazy for these Gen Alphas. They will never know what it is (legally) like to drive in the back of a pickup, but so what? You don't know what it's like to live in a world without cars and with the bikes with the one giant wheel, and your world didn't end.

Did it?

______________________________________________________-

*Johan Vaaler, 1901

**David M. Smith, 1853

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #971: THE PLAN

 I got bad news about my foot last week on Thursday. Things had been going really well. The surgery was a success. All infection has been killed or removed. I was healing pretty well. My new podiatrist (she has yet to cut any of my body parts off, unlike the other guy) told me that if things keep going well, then we'll be able to reconstruct my foot.

But when I saw her Thursday, she said, immediately after she greeted me, "You scare me." Meaning, she's afraid that my foot won't heal and she'll have to cut it off. This was news to me, but when she unwrapped the bandage, her fears were confirmed. She told me I'd popped every single one of my stitches. There were pieces of dead skin everywhere, some flapping around the edges of my heel like pieces of paper (with the same consistency). She cut all of that off, then got to the dead white skin around the clot of stitches. There was an open wound in my foot.

I didn't see it until I changed the bandage on Friday, and it looked like a piece of my foot was ripped out. You know how, if a golfer misses their target, there's a divot knocked out of the ground? It looks like someone knocked a divot out of my foot. I have to pack it and the hole on the blind side of my foot (so I have to pack that by touch), and then I have to put these surgical dressings around it, although now I've added very thick pads of gauze over the packed wounds, then the dressings over those. Then I wrap it in a gauze band and put an Ace bandage around it. It's not a lot of fun, especially shoving stuff into the wounds.

But once again I am faced with the possibility of losing my bad foot this year, which means I'm also facing the return of booze to my life.

There are two options. One sucks, and one sucks really, really badly. The latter is putting a cage around my foot that will have to be held in place with screws attached to my lower leg. It would be weight bearing, which must hurt like fucking crazy. There will be a wound vac attached to my foot, too. Not fun.

The other option is the one I'm going to try. I have to stay off my foot completely for a while. This is unfortunate because I enjoy taking showers, which I will not be able to do. It's back to sponge baths in the bathroom sink. I fucking hate to do that, but I'm stuck with it.

So here's the plan. I need to get a knee scooter. A while back I learned that fire stations lend out things like that and wheelchairs, etc., for free. I know because I borrowed a wheelchair back when I first broke this foot. I got responses from my VMs over the weekend today. Fire stations no longer provide this service. Motherfucking fuck.

I also put out word on social media, but no one responded except for my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill, who recommended a knee scooter from Costco. I still wanted it for free, as I have next to no money, but now that I know I can't get one for free, I had no choice but to buy one. It's not the same one from Costco, but I found one even cheaper from them, so I just ordered it.

I can't use a knee scooter in the house. I can only use it outside and at work. In the house (and other places a knee scooter might not fit), I will get around on crutches. The podiatrist told me that I can use the tip of the boot I wear on my bad foot now for leverage. Meaning, I can't put weight on the foot, but if I use the toe, I won't fall over. I have terrible balance, probably from the years I spent drinking as hard as possible without actually dying. I hoped my balance would return, but it has not.

But I can't use the crutches on stairs, so I can't use them to get up to my bedroom. I have also bought kneepads. If I can't get around with the other stuff, I'll crawl like a toddler. My knees are fragile in my old age, though, so the pads are necessary.

If I can do this, I desperately hope my foot will finally heal so I can get it reconstructed. That would be nice. I've been told this will take forever to heal, so I'm guessing I'll still be living like this at least until Christmas.

I'll begin when my knee scooter arrives. Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #970: INSPIRATIONAL FLAMES

 A while back I watched an episode of Route 66 in which one of the characters, not the boys but one of the guest stars, is talking about art and what it's like to create.

I tried my best to find which episode it was, but I'd watched it a while ago (Buz was still on the show!). I really hoped to get a clip from this one, but I just can't find it, and while I used to be good at Google, Google is no longer good at Google. Lost, it shall remain. I really hope I'm remembering the episode well enough, because the scrawl in my notebook doesn't have a lot of info.

Anyway, the character compares art to Moses seeing the burning bush in the Bible. At first I took it to mean that, once you experience a work of art that thrills you, whether it's a novel or a painting or a song or whatever, it gives you much the same sensation a prophet seeing a miracle would feel. And it's true. I usually liken it to my head blooming like a rose, but this is a pretty good analogy. Think about all the great art you've experienced and how it was so powerful it changed you, maybe even changed your perception of the world around you. Art is powerful stuff. No wonder the MAGAs are doing their best to destroy it.

But the more I thought about it, the more I think she meant the creation of art, and that analogy is even better. What does a prophet who has seen a burning bush do? They tell everyone about it. Artists have seen the burning bush. Now they must create work that expresses that feeling.

I've had revelatory ideas that stunned me many times over the course of my life. Believe it or not, Dong of Frankenstein was one of those ideas. (Don't judge my muse!) It makes a current run through my body, and I stiffen as the idea works its way through my brain. And then, unfortunately for a lot of people, I write about my vision until I have a book.

Writing is my only talent. The other artforms elude me. My drawings suck, I can't play any instrument more complicated than the mouth harp or cowbell (and I still have trouble with the cowbell), I'm no painter, don't even ask me about sculpting, etc. But my experience as a writer with the burning bush matches up easily with the character's statement. I have no choice but to believe that all the other arts and artists are the same way. It doesn't make sense otherwise.

And that brings me to AI. I used to say that, sure, AI can make art just like the Infinite Monkey Theorem can produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now I'm not so sure. Can AI ever experience the burning bush?

Exactly.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #969: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PROPHET?

Lincoln around the age he gave the Lyceum Address.

 

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln said that about the end of America. This was in response to a mob lynching a Black man in St. Louis, according to William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner in Springfield. Herndon, by the way, is an excellent first hand source of material about Lincoln. Historians have tried to smear him as a drunk, but he was the closest person to Lincoln before he was famous, and he was rather truthful about Honest Abe. The reason historians dislike him as a source is because he said that Lincoln got syphilis after an evening with a woman who was not a wife. Furthermore, Lincoln gave it to Mary Todd, which in all likelihood led to her demise and explain her odd behavior near the end. You can see the appeal in discrediting Herndon, but Lincoln was no saint. He was not even an abolitionist, as our schools teach us that he was.

But Lincoln was one of the best presidents regardless. He expands on his thought from the famed Lyceum Address:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

In short, only the United States can destroy the United States. And it's very interesting that he seems to suggest that a single person would be able to do it. Sorry for the long quote, but it's apropos, I think.

This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?--Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.--It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Lincoln was infuriated by the circumnavigation of law by mob. He begs us to cling to "cold, reasoning" laws rather than our passions. It's the only thing that will keep us together. It's the only thing that will save us.

This reminds me of something. What could that possibly be? Perhaps the roughshod way Trump and Musk have trampled the laws of this nation in the name of their own passion? (Dare I say Trump's Musky passion?) And what aren't we doing as citizens? We're not uniting with each other to frustrate their designs. We're letting them destroy our country without a fight.

I really like the paragraph I'm about to quote, especially Lincoln's word choice in one particular instance. Let's see if you can guess the word I mean:

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

I'm not entirely sure we should be looking to George Washington as Britain looks to King Arthur, but all the same I find that one particular word interesting. The Trump we have is certainly not awakening our Washington. The ravens may never leave his monument.

If you're wondering why the Democrats are doing jack shit, it's because they serve the same master as Trump, our corporate overlords. They know when to obey. Could you imagine even one of them making a speech like this? Make no mistake, a speech like this is 100% necessary today. I think if Schumer pulled his head out of his master's ass and said something like this, we might actually have a fight we can win on our hands.

But We the People are fucked. When we address for recourse, are the laws that benefit our corporate overlords and our corporate overlords alone going to help us? No. But they tell us we need to go through the system with our complaints, the system they own. That's just not going to work.

What does work? Bloody revolution is efficient. Also, playing dirty works wonders. Being unable to tell the truth is a prerequisite for being a politician, but the MAGAs are so flamboyant with their lies, it's actually kind of awe-inspiring. Bullshit has always been an artform, but they've perfected it nearly to the point of godhood. Joseph Goebbels was right: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." And Trump didn't have to repeat his lies all that much. I mean, he does anyway, just to hedge his bets, but the MAGAs fell for it the first time. The Democrats are already on board with excessive lies. They know their master's voice. Why not beat the MAGAs at their own game? You almost got JD Vance with the couch-fucking thing. Go on. Get creative. Stephen Miller slurps his own cum. Elon Musk is into adult babyism. Ted Cruz wants to fuck his mom.

That last one might not be a lie.

All my life politics has been fucking dirty except now? The Democrats are going to be the adults in the room? Since when are adults well behaved?

Lincoln was right. America will die not by another nation's hand but by suicide. We're watching it happen right now. I wonder who will be there to pick up the pieces? Certainly no one with mercy in their hearts for us.

If you're into adult babyism, I don't mean to kink shame. That's not my intent. To each their own. If I offended  you, I apologize.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #968: THE WORLD IS A FUCKIN' STRANGE PLACE

 It is. I know it's hard to remember that sometimes, since we're all stuck with our boring daily routines. It's maybe even hard to notice in the first place. So I always keep an open mind about the world itself. A lot of weird shit happens here.

Ordinarily I'd point to the platypus and exclaim my shock that such a creature really does exist. As it turns out, scientists 200 years ago thought the platypus was a hoax. Back then a lot of science hoaxes were tried. Like the Piltdown Man, for example. I can't help but quote from the article I read on platypuses:

[H]ere was somebody from a land on the other side of the world submitting a new take on the legendary chimera, an animal composed of distinct parts of other animals.

The creature — if indeed it was a real creature — possessed a duck’s bill, fur like a mole, an otter-like body and a beaver’s tail. Eventually, it would be determined that it also laid eggs in the manner of a bird or a reptile. But when its young hatched from those eggs, the creature produced milk to feed it — a mammalian trait.

Yeah, you’d be skeptical, too.

And they're not alone! When you think about it, giraffes are really fuckin' weird. So are elephants. We commonly accept weird shit so often that we don't recognize our planet as a weird fuckin' planet.

Do you know what a brinicle is? I didn't either until I researched the Antarctica Ice Finger of Death. Seriously, that's a real thing. Brinicles are ice shapes resembling a finger that grow beneath sea ice. To learn more than you ever cared to know about it, here's a quote from an article I read:

Unlike frozen fresh water, ice on ocean surface is composed of two elements. The ice crystal is relatively pure, as the water excludes most of the salt during the freezing process. The remaining salty water stays liquid due to its lowered freezing temperature, and creates highly saline brine channels within the porous ice block.

A brinicle is formed when this sea ice cracks and leaks out the saline water to the open oceans. As the brine is heavier than the water around it, it sinks to the ocean floor while freezing the relatively fresh water it comes into contact with. This process lets the brinicle grow downward.

What makes the Ice Finger of Death so special is that anything it touches freezes instantly, hence the "death" part of its name. Can you imagine something so cold that touching it not only kills you but also freezes you in seconds? It's a good thing you're not likely to stumble across something like this. Unless you like diving in the ocean, which I don't. I have a strict policy regarding the oceans: stay the fuck out of them.

But since we've been talking about Greenland this week, there's another interesting thing that happened there last year. Scientists noticed the earth making a strange noise, and it was trembling when it shouldn't have been. Our lovely mother did this for 9 days, which understandably made those scientists nervous, considering that climate change is currently helping us reap our whirlwind.

It turned out that there was a rockslide in Greenland, which caused a tsunami within a fjord. Which sounds impossible, but imagine you're a kid about to go into the bathtub. Your mom has filled the tub with soap and water, and then you jump in. The water sloshes back and forth in the tub, right?

That's what happened in the fjord. For nine fucking days. Nine days of massive amounts of water crashing against the high cliffs on each side of the fjord. And that's what caused the noise and the trembling.

What a weird fucking thing to happen, right? But this oddball event caused great concern among scientists for a few days.

Is that really any weirder than a fuckin' platypus?

Weird shit happens here all the time, and most people aren't curious enough to notice. It's too bad. This planet's strange tendencies have kept me at least somewhat entertained for most of my life. Try it sometime. Look for the weird. Really look for it. See what you find. Report back to me, because I want to know all about it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #967: WHAT IS DEATH?

1

 I've often talked about my beliefs regarding the afterlife here, but I have a theory as to what happens during the process of your death. NDE people talk about the tunnel, floating outside your body and even having your life flash before your eyes. Something certainly happens. Your body floods with endorphins to possibly ease your passage, but what do you experience?

I think it would be a lot like the world I lived in for two weeks while suffering alcohol withdrawals for the first time.

I did not know that was what had happened. Instead I found myself living these odd scenarios, which I believe I've discussed here before. They were dreamlike, but I didn't doubt it was reality at any time, much like in dreams. It felt weird but very real.

So I think that's what we go through when we die. Unless you get shot in the head. It's hard to produce endorphins when the brain that gives that order is sprayed out on a wall or on the sidewalk.

Obviously you won't live in that fantasy forever. The endorphins only last so long, so I think it will fade slowly until you rejoin the darkness you left when you were born.

It sounds kind of pleasant. Just don't live the kind of life where death might destroy your brain, that's all.

2

There's another option. I once mentioned my argument against the afterlife, which was, you now have eternity to do all the things you wanted to do. OK, fine. I've read all the books, seen all the movies, heard all the music, and I still have eternity left? There's only so much of that I go over again before I go crazy and want the afterlife to be over. It didn't make sense to me.

But I thought a little more about this, and what if that's what you need to get you ready to rejoin the primordial ooze and continue the cycle of life? What if the afterlife breaks you down so much it destroys you, drives you crazy, removes the very idea of you. And then it's, as Metallica once said, "Back to the front!"

I can see that, too. It's hard to fit an individual back into the building blocks of life without destroying what makes one individual. If that's true, the universe is even more heartless than I thought.

3

I didn't intend to tackle The Biggest Subject tonight, so I'm sure I'll return to the usual madness tomorrow night. Sleep tight.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #966: CAMP CENTURY

 

Americans really are assholes. We have 100% earned our reputation around the rest of the world as assholes. And rest assured, it's not because they're jealous of the shoddy and twisted republic that we have. The worst punishment I can imagine for the rest of the world would be to make them Americans and expose them to American institutions. They would revolt a lot faster than we, the rebellious-at-heart Americans, ever would. In case you haven't noticed, we're such assholes that we used the atomic bomb TWICE. And when another country is having an election, we always back the dictator instead of the people's choice. Then, of course, the genocide and slavery not just in our history but in our building blocks. There's a lot to hate.

But we're also lying to everyone all the time, even nations we have treaties with like, say, Denmark, the owners of Greenland. Back in 1959 we talked them into letting us build a nuclear reactor on their land. For science, of course. We also built a miniature village so people working there (about 200 of them) had a place to live. We called it Camp Century. But what we really did was, we tried to see if we could build a nuclear missile base there. Why Greenland? And why does Trump want Greenland so badly now? Well, about that:

From National Geographic

Pretty useful during a Cold War that could turn hot at any moment. And before you judge us too harshly, please remember that not very long after we convinced the Dutch to let us do this, the Soviets snuck a bunch of nuclear missiles into Cuba, hence the Cuban Missile Crisis. Having Greenland is also pretty useful if you intend to fuck over Putin at some point. Even Trump must know that the two of them can't coexist. I suspect that if he has his way and bends America to his will, Putin will be the next order of business. A little unexpected from him, considering his love of the Russian dictator, but a solid political move.

So what happened to Camp Century? We, uh, well . . . we kinda forgot about it. In 1965 we abandoned it. We told the Dutch that it was a more or less successful experiment, and we did learn a lot about building nuclear reactors in such climates as the Arctic. We even accidentally learned something interesting about Greenland while we were at Camp Century. We drilled all the way through the ice sheet covering Greenland. That ice has long been thought to be 2M years old, but we examined the ground and evidence we found and came to the conclusion that it was a mere 400K years since Greenland was uncovered by ice.

OK, maybe that wasn't all that exciting for you to learn, but big picture, it's pretty important to our understanding of the world. Which is besides the point, so let's get back to it.

What we really learned was that it was impossible to build a missile base there. The conditions were too unstable, so we packed up our shit and left under the assumption that whatever we left behind would be sealed away in ice forever. It sounds kind of stupid to us now to do that, but back then they didn't know about one little tiny thing that is a very large fucking thing now.

That thing they didn't know about? Climate change. Now the ice is melting, and we have rediscovered Camp Century. There's just one problem. We left behind a lot of stuff, including nuclear waste and PCBs, the dreaded forever chemicals. To say nothing of the 24M liters of untreated sewage.

So now Camp Century is a ticking time bomb. Don't worry, you probably won't be alive when it goes off, which is scheduled for 2135 or 2179, depending on which model of climate change you follow. Your grandkids might be alive for it, though. Imagine the sheer joy they'll experience when that waste is exposed to the air and shoved right into the Polar Jet Stream. How much damage could that shit do once dispersed in such a fashion? I imagine there won't be a lot of places in the northern hemisphere you could avoid it.

Yeah, I don't think Trump wants Greenland so he can clean up the US's previous mess, either. All the same, if he somehow figures out how to make a missile base work there, I wonder what Putin might try to sneak into Cuba? Hell, maybe Mexico is tired of the tariffs. Why not put a real threat at the border?

Fun in the end times . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #965: FUCKIN' *NOW WHAT?!?!?!?!?!*

 I swear, these aren't all going to be political. Last night wasn't, right? That was about Clint Eastwood's new film! I have a notebook full of topics, but then this fucking shit happened. Incidentally, I've been reading a lot of articles where people interviewed are only talking on the condition of anonymity. That's a good indication of how fucked we are as a society when somewhat powerful people can't bear to have their names associated with their beliefs. We're edging into 1984 territory, here.

Musk and his swine have come for the US Treasury. I'm a little surprised it took this long for the hunger to start gnawing at Scrooge McDuck's insides, but he's finally going after money in the US, specifically how the US pays out money.

The acting Secretary of the Treasury was, until very recently, David Lebryk. He has retired because he's sick of fighting the DOGE scavengers constantly scratching at his door, wanting access to the payment system. There aren't a lot of details, as Lebryk isn't talking, and DOGE has refused to respond to a request for comment from the Fourth Estate, but it would seem that DOGE has been asking for access to this system since Inauguration Day: Part Deux. Why is this system so important? Here's an excerpt from one of the articles I read:

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

So yeah, pretty important stuff. Considering DOGE's true purpose, it's only a matter of time before Musk gets his grubby mittens on it, and that's when he will wield true power within the US government. Apparently apartheid can get you very far in the world. I wonder if he looks back at the end of those times in South Africa with rage, wondering how the gravy train ended. Never mind, his head is leaning more toward creating new gravy trains here, and getting his hands on this payment system will do the trick. One of those functions stands out, however. Salaries for federal personnel?

Considering the administration has been rabidly hunting federal employees, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they want to withhold their pay, which they fucking earned, to hold them over a barrel and make them do something. Or not do something. Either way, it's extortion.

Here's another excerpt, an important one, I think.

Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system - which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” - to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations.

“This is a mechanical job - they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It’s not one where there’s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they’re due,” Mazur said. “It’s never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda. … You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case.”

Bad intentions? I think that might be Musk's middle name*.

OK, one more from that article, and then we're going to move on.

Musk has characterized the rising national debt as an existential threat to the country and has proved willing to break norms in service of sweeping change.

Huh. In my opinion *he* is the existential threat to the country. According to CNN, he spent about a quarter-billion dollars getting Trump elected so Musk could be in the position he's in today. In case you're having a difficult time deciphering that sentence, yes, I'm saying it is my opinion that Elon Musk bought Trump an election, and he bought himself a position in government. This used to be called bribery and was exceptionally illegal. It technically still is, but as I've stated previously, the rules no longer apply. In a just world, Trump would have to divest himself of all his personal businesses. The only money he's supposed to make in the Oval Office is his presidential salary. Paid, by the way, by the system Musk lusts for. Yet Trump can't possibly bring himself to stop selling tchotchkes and knick-knacks and other bullshit, like his Bible with the Constitution, etc., in it. Typically I'd laugh at deeply moral Christians buying Bibles from the Anti-Christ, but I doubt I'm the first to make that joke, nor would I be the last. Because it's not that funny. This is the shit that helped him get in the position he's in. To say nothing of the unfettered, shameless, greed-grabbing scam that is TRUMPCOIN. And I thought the NFTs were too much.

Yes, the Founding Fathers were disingenuous when they said "We the People," but holy fuck, never in their wildest nightmares could they imagine the unadulterated graft going on in Washington, DC, today. Only Benjamin Franklin might come close, but not even he would believe--

You get the point.

Musk, the real existential threat to the country, also recently stated that Teslas are probably never going to be able to fully self drive themselves. Read about it here. I bring this up because he's been lying to stockholders for years about this. He's dedicated himself to the falsehood that if you own a Tesla, you will be able to let it drive itself. That falsehood has suckered a lot of investors who don't seem to understand this lie even now. But he admitted it finally. Why break down like that?

I think for the same reason you don't hear him talking about Mars anymore. He wanted to go to Mars because he reasoned, fairly well, that he would be the first one to get there. As such, he would get to make the rules. I've gone over this before, I think, but he's given up on Mars because he can bend *this* planet to his will. So far he's made a compelling argument. Why yes, being the richest motherfucker on the earth *does* have its privileges. Look where he's at right now. Aside from some red tape, he's the owner of this planet. Who among us will buy it away from him?

He doesn't need Tesla anymore, so fuck it, why not come clean? It's better that he not spend so much time there, anyway. He's got DOGE duties. The rest of his businesses just took a backseat.

Also, I noticed a tiny little story fly by about Trump going after electric cars. Musk had to know that about him going in, so maybe he's just letting Tesla go so he can focus his energies elsewhere. I wonder how that will go over with the shareholders? Wouldn't it be insane if Musk sold off all his interest in Tesla? Hell, with his fucked up sense of humor, he might do it for a laugh.

This is Friday night, and I'm talking about this shit instead of going to sleep like I should. So I'm going to stop haranguing you with this. It's fucked. We're fucked. There's nothing we can do about it short of a bloody and violent revolution. Everyone knows this.

So let's end on a pleasant note.

Every night, when I get into bed to watch some TV before I fall asleep, I get on my side, and that does something to my body. My back lurches. It crackles. There might even be a loud hollow crack! It is one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life, currently. It's the highlight of my day. I look forward to it. Because my back pain sucks. The doctor thinks the spinal injections might not be good enough, so who knows what the future holds for me? But that moment when it all goes away all because I put my body in that position? It's the best.

And I can't force it. I've tried. It has to happen naturally. But it's great.

OK, so that wasn't much of a pleasant note, as it's only pleasant for me, but life isn't all doom and gloom. It's just *mostly* doom and gloom. Gotta find your moments, and this is mine.

I'm off to have my backgasm.

___________________________________________

*It's Reeve. Not sure how that snuck into a name like "Elon Musk," which sounds like it belongs to one of the aliens at the Mos Eisley Cantina.