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.

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*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.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #964: JUROR # 2

 Have you seen Clint's new movie, Juror #2? WB really fucked him over on this. How much money has Clint made for them over the decades he's been making movies? How many awards do they have because of him? Yet because he's an old man, it's time to push him out the door. Instead of releasing a film by Clint Eastwood, one of the greatest living film directors we have, in theaters, it's been released to streaming instead. It's on Max if you wish to look it up. Yes, it did get, what, 50 theaters? But seriously, for a Clint movie? I don't even think that qualified him for Oscar season.

It's a great movie, and it shows that Clint is at the top of his game still. He might not even have a bottom to his game. The story is of a soon-to-be father getting sucked into jury duty only to discover the man accused of a murder might be innocent because the juror did something stupid when he was drunk many years ago. It starts out like 12 Angry Men, but before long it becomes obvious that it's 12 Angry Men From Hell. (12 From Hell? Like Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell?).

I don't want to go too much into the movie itself, because it's so much better if you go in knowing nothing more than this, but I was talking with my comics guys today, and I brought up this movie. As I talked about it I realized something interesting.

I like Nicholas Hoult. His performances are always top shelf, whether he's a young Beast from the X-Men or Renfield. Even when he's telling us stuff like, "Oh what a day! What a lovely day!" You can tell he's something special.

It occurred to me that, decades from now, Hoult is going to be an old man, possibly a director himself, talking to young film students. And one of them is going to ask about this film. More importantly, they're going to ask him, "What was Clint like?"

There will be a YouTube video. If you're alive at the time, check and see if I'm right.

Because Hoult does know Clint now, and he can tell these kids about what the old master was like. He can tell them about all the legends he worked with, and I know someone's going to ask him about Nic Cage. And that's the nature of history. The youngest one of the group usually tells the next generation (or even the next-next) what the rest of them were like. I'm thinking here of the Clint we remember from Rawhide, from the beginning of his artistic journey. He worked with just about everyone except John Wayne, and that wasn't for lack of trying. There's the famous story about . . . eh, not tonight.

I tried to think of what that would be like for Clint. Who would a film student ask him about now? I'd wager Sergio Leone, but it could very well be Don Siegel. He knew Lee Marvin and Richard Harris. Pat Hingle. John Vernon. Guys like that. As a nonagenarian he is an encyclopedia of Hollywood knowledge that will probably be lost when he dies. Has he done a Masterclass? If not, I hope he does one soon. I hate to think of that knowledge vanishing from the earth, never to be recovered. I feel the same way about another nonagenarian, Mel Brooks. I shudder to think of the world we will lose when they're both no longer among us.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #963: THE PROOF IS IN THE WATERMARK

Just so we're on the same page.

 Speaking of AI, this lovely story was released before I took my writing vacation, but I didn't get around to it until now. It's pretty important because of AI's betrayal of its users (again, delicious schadenfreude), and it offers a look at the gross future of AI.

ATTN: AI "authors." If you wrote a book using AI, chances are, your text is covered with an invisible watermark.(They use it on images, too, so where did you get your book cover?) Google definitely does that, and if they do it, I'm sure the others do, too. Google's is called SynthID, and apologies for the giant quote block, but this is how it works:

SynthID-Text works by discreetly interfering in the generation process: It alters some of the words that a chatbot outputs to the user in a way that’s invisible to humans but clear to a SynthID detector. “Such modifications introduce a statistical signature into the generated text,” the researchers write in the paper. “During the watermark detection phase, the signature can be measured to determine whether the text was indeed generated by the watermarked LLM.”

The LLMs that power chatbots work by generating sentences word by word, looking at the context of what has come before to choose a likely next word. Essentially, SynthID-Text interferes by randomly assigning number scores to candidate words and having the LLM output words with higher scores. Later, a detector can take in a piece of text and calculate its overall score; watermarked text will have a higher score than non-watermarked text. The DeepMind team checked their system’s performance against other text watermarking tools that alter the generation process, and found that it did a better job of detecting watermarked text.

Why does the watermark exist? The article suggests a few reasons, and you can read it here if you wish. They claim to be doing God's work, helping the normies figure out if text was generated with AI or not. The tool isn't 100% accurate, but that's not my issue with this. Because if their mission statement with the watermark is true, then why isn't SynthID in the hands of said normies? The website certainly claims it is, but nope. I looked all over. There's no option for someone like me to use it. I even asked Gemini, and Gemini bullshitted me like Donald Trump in front of a crowd.

That's because its true purpose is to help Google figure out if something making a lot of money was generated by their tool or not. At this time, the law does not recognize a user's ownership of AI generated material. It can't be copyrighted. As such, if something created in such a manner is, indeed, a goose that lays golden eggs, anyone on the planet can copy and paste and start making money, and the original user has no recourse. The theme for these political times, I think, is taking well-known rules and erasing them legally. I'm sure Google will even be able to sue noncompliant AI authors. And what the hell? If a novel you published is selling really well, and it was made with Google Docs, why not squeeze you for a piece? Without their product, after all, you would have no product of your own.

Google is a convicted monopoly. Their punishment has yet to be announced, but considering how they just renamed the Gulf of Mexico in Google Maps, they might just get a slap on the wrist from the Trump Administration. But you don't get to be a monopoly without having not just skeletons in your closet, but also a Dahmer wonderland of culinary delights. Monopolies know all sorts of questionable shit, and I'm certain that Google has plans to eventually make it so that AI material *is* copyrightable (has Trump thanked them for the Gulf of America yet?), but only in Google's name. So AI authors would end up owing Google money instead.

AI is a corporate trap. There's a reason all these techbros are jerking off at the thought of an AI in every home. That reason is utter domination, not just of the market, but of the human race. Having all our money isn't enough for them. They want our immortal souls, too. And your first born. And your second. And your third . . .

PS: Even if you think you've avoided the AI craze, your devices might not have. I was surprised to discover that I had three of them on my laptop, even though I've had this machine longer than the AI craze has been in the public consciousness. I uninstalled them. You should do the same.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #962: SCHADENFREUDE

 Speaking of schadenfreude, Silicon Valley is in a tailspin (meatspin?*) over a bit of news out of China, and it just tickles my balls. These tech assholes have been sucking up to Trump because they're looking for federal funding for their massively expensive AI ventures. Remember when I said Microsoft assumed command of Three Mile Island? 

To keep up with these things, a week ago Trump announced a plan to spend $500B on AI infrastructure. Because the universe is cruel and loves to take stuff away from me, this project has been named Stargate**.

Enter schadenfreude. China just released their own AI, just as good and possibly better than ours AT A FRACTION OF THE COST. We're talking 3-4%. Holy fucking shit. That really is a gamechanger.

I'm actually a little hard thinking of Musk and Zuck and the others seething at the universe's betrayal of them. These fuckers entered a race to see who could outspend whom (Musk might not win, as rule number one of the stock market is NEVER USE YOUR OWN MONEY), and China comes along and shits in their cereal bowl. Nvidia, the company that makes the microchips for AI, has been riding high so long they practically had a license to print money for themselves. When China released DeepSeek and their AI chatbot, R1, Nvidia stock took a fuckin' nosedive. They lost $600B in ONE DAY. That's not just a terrible loss. It's the worst one-day loss in HISTORY. It took China two months and less than $6M to beat the mortal shit out of us. R1 is free, and more importantly it's OPEN SOURCE. If you want the gory (and exceptionally boring) details, here they are.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still not happy because we still have AI. I'm just happy that these cocksuckers, who thought they were kings of the tech world, ratfucking everyone they come in contact with so they can ratfuck humanity for centuries to come, have been rendered irrelevant.

What's next for the techbros? I can only assume that, since it is open source, they're going to rip off DeepSeek for themselves, take it private and charge out the ass for people to use it while screaming about the godless Commies living in China and how we can't trust their products because they are evil.

Speaking of China, what has President Trump done to fight the godless Commies that he promised he was going to fight? Heh. Just kidding. Him and Xi are . . . not BFFs. That would be Trump and Putin. But S(econd)BFFs?

Schadenfreude is very rewarding for those who don't fall into its trap. I just have one question left: does this mean that Microsoft has to give up Three Mile Island? I still don't trust those corporate fucks.

_______________________________________________

*Don't Google that.

**Joke's on you, you will have to pry Stargate from my cold dead hands.

BONUS! Are you looking for a job, and you couldn't get hired by RFK, Jr.? Maybe Elon Musk will take you at DOGE!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #961: DOGE CONTINUES TO SUCK MY BALLS

 

Gaze upon what is possibly the stupidest logo for a government department ever conceived. It looks like something from a stock photo site, but it's the official logo of the Dept. of Government Efficiency, or fucking DOGE, one of Musk's obsessions. We should perhaps come up with a list of things he likes waaaaaay too much. Like the doge meme, for example. The letter X. Mars, or a world that he can mold to his liking. It doesn't have to be Mars. It could be the planet we're on now in the present time. Never mind, I don't like spending that much time thinking about his desires.

Judging by everything you've seen in the news, what would you say is the main purpose of DOGE? I expected it to be about Musk and whoever else poring through the government, looking for organizations and regulators to cut, er, I mean, stuff the government spends too much money on. For all intents and purposes, this is what they continue to talk about when referring to DOGE. There are even news stories making fun of DOGE for being too far behind on their job already.

But this is *not* the purpose of DOGE. In fact, the stated purpose is so vastly different from what we were told that I have no choice but to believe that, no, it wasn't an error. They're flatout lying to us.

Big surprise, I know. Makes you wonder if there's any truth over at Truth Social . . .

If you want to know what they're really up to, it helps if you read the stuff they release. A president can't equivocate when it comes to wording executive orders, so why not read the executive order that created DOGE? Give it a shot here.

There's a lot of stuff there, but this is the relevant part:

Section 1.  Purpose.  This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.

Nothing about cutting the CFPB there. So if Musk is still doing that, he doesn't have authorization for it. If you see him doing that kind of work, you must stop him immediately. Explain the paragraph you just read like he was 5 years old. He is, effectively, five years old. Draw pictures if you need to. Make goofy faces and sounds with your mouth to make sure he continues to pay attention. If all else fails, show him a doge meme.

Remember when a conflict of interest was important? Anything goes these days.

So what is DOGE *really* supposed to be doing? Modernizing tech always sounds like a good idea. If you have tech stuff to do, you'd rather have top of the line, hot off the press shit, right? It sounds reasonable, but it is my suspicion that Musk is really building backdoors into all the IT infrastructure so even if he's no longer in the government (and I guess technically he is), he would have no problem getting back into the government's shit and then doing whatever it is he plans to do. Wield his conflict of interest like a club? Steal tech from competitors through government contacts? Cut corners and red tape in one fell swoop? Borrow some data and maybe use it to manipulate the stock market? Or worse, sell it to Putin? There's a lot he can do with that kind of thing. I'm sure Trump is under the illusion that Musk is doing this for the good of his master, but Musk could royally fuck Trump up if he wanted to. If Trump maybe didn't like something Musk did. Instead of throwing a fit like he usually does, why not just step through that backdoor and sabotage a few things?

Trump's followers apparently call him daddy. Mel fucking Gibson called him daddy at least once. Trump might seem like the daddy, but if Musk is allowed to continue working on the true purpose of DOGE, then Trump is going to find himself living in a trailer park raising Don Jr and Eric on food stamps. Which would bring a great sense of schadenfreude to me, of course. I'm a huge fan of schadenfreude.

But I don't think MAGA will suffer like everyone seems to think they will. A massive amount of people who should know better are underestimating these cocksuckers. I'll give you an example. Everyone on the left seems to believe that Trump can't end birthright citizenship. It's enshrined in the 14th Amendment, as Evil John Bruni recently explained (poorly, I might add). I don't mean to alarm you, but you should be alarmed. Granted, only one amendment has been repealed thus far (the 18th by the 21st), but do you think that can't happen again? All it takes is one asshole in the House to propose the bill, then for the House, owned by Trump, to pass it to the Senate, also owned by Trump. Then, and only then, will the amendment land on . . . who's desk? Sure, he could veto it, but do you think he will?

Goodbye birthright citizenship.

If they can do that to one amendment, what about the rest? What about the 1st? I'll allow that doing so would be a bright burning red flag declaring they are, indeed, evil, but what else have they been doing so far? I can't think of a single thing they've done that is actually good. Even Nixon did something good every now and then. All these assholes do is bitch and moan and steal rights away from others. None of that can even remotely be viewed as good.

Stop underestimating these swine. The rules you're familiar with no longer apply. You're living in a different world than you did on January 19, 2025. MAGA is not fucking around, and we shouldn't, either. They demonstrably lied to us. I proved it tonight. The thing that gets me most, though, is that proof doesn't matter, either. The choir will concur, as is their solemn duty, but the people who *need* to be shown the error of their ways will never believe it. MAGA is a brainwashed cult even worse than a cult, as they currently have the reins of government in this country. Imagine if Charles Manson suddenly took over California in the 'Seventies. That's the kind of thing we're dealing with, here. Do you think his children would listen to sense?

Trump's children won't, either.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #960: 2 YEARS, 195 DAYS

 It has been 2 years and 195 days since my last drink. A few people have started to notice that I don't say "I've been sober for . . ." That is by design. I'm an alcoholic, not a weedoholic. I have problems with booze, not cannabis.

But this "sober" thing came up, I don't know, maybe a year ago? I forget what the association of ideas was that led me to this particular thought, as I promptly forgot the thought almost as soon as I had it. But last night, as I waited for sleep to take me, my brain spoke up and reminded me of it for some odd reason. Possibly to plague me. My brain is very good at plaguing and vexing me. Thankfully it's good at positive stuff, too.

I realized that I've never had a sexual encounter as an adult while sober. Every instance has been while I was blind stinking drunk. I've had a few sober sexual experiences from when I was underage, but that can't possibly count. I don't recall who said it, but every time you remember something, you're actually remembering the last time you remembered that thing, not the thing itself. As such, it turns into a game of inner telephone. I think there might be some truth to it. I imagine sober sex would be vastly different between the 13 year old boy I was and the 46 year old man I am now.

The last time I had sex was late 2020. I like to think it was in December, but it was probably in October, possibly earlier than that. I was pretty drunk. The last sexual encounter wasn't long after that. It's pretty pathetic, actually. We were in the shower together, cleaning each other before getting dirty again, but I was drunk and 70 lbs. heavier than I am now. My chest felt weird, and I felt like I was out of breath. She helped me sit on the closed toilet seat so I could catch my breath. By the time I felt normal again, the mood had passed.

My sex drive had been dropping, anyway. It was at its lowest just before I went to detox in July 2022. Since quitting the booze it's picked up again, but, and here the author of Dong of Frankenstein and 6669: Demon Porn must make a confession, sex has never been something I've been very interested in. I don't pursue it. Sometimes it pursues me, and I give in to it. It feels great and then makes me insatiably crave it for about two weeks before I'm back to normal. I'm sure there's a werewolf metaphor in there somewhere.

But now I wonder, what must it be like? To have sex with someone without any foreign chemicals in my body? I'm childish at nature, so would I be able to take it seriously? I've never been good at talking dirty, so I'm almost certain I'd take it too far. And I'm lazy and like to be ridden. Probably not popular idea.

As a young boy I had encounters with two young girls and I had sex with another. I was still, legally, 13 at the time, but I was just about to turn 14. The experience was very enjoyable but also traumatic for a while afterward. I caught the clap. That was enough to make me swear off of sex for a long time afterward. I didn't come back to it until years later. Every once in a while I would develop an attraction for someone, but I'd shove it down until I didn't feel it anymore. I didn't want to risk possibly finding myself in a position to have sex again.

I'm sure I'll find out some day about the sober sex. Unless I die in my sleep tonight.

Laugh if you will, but how creepy would it be if I did? It's not urban legend material, but I'm sure I'd make a Buzzfeed list somewhere.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #959: A SUREFIRE WAY TO TAX RICH PEOPLE

 OK, I don't have a lot of time tonight, so this will be a short one. You know how people complain about rich people not paying their "fair share," ie. taxes? They actually don't need to. It's not required. If you were given a choice between paying taxes and not paying taxes, would you?

Seriously. They don't have to. That's perfectly legal. This is how they do it:

If you want to make Elon Musk, for example, pay his fair share, make the NO TAX column taxable. Write to your representatives and make it happen. They're not likely to do it, so you'll have to run a media campaign that is more like a blackmail racket than anything. Hold their feet to the goddam fire. Also, stop treating corporations like people. They are not. We have a flat tax of 21% on the cocksuckers, so they'll never be afraid of getting stuck in a higher tax bracket, like the rest of us.

There's your blueprint. Go forth and conquer.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #958: MOODY AND THE BRIDGE

From the EPA's website

 Have you ever read The Bridge by Skipp and Spector? It's an environmental horror masterpiece. Everyone should read it and fear it. But that's not the world we live in. We've always been (mal?)adroit polluters, and we don't seem to care about the damage we're doing to the planet that is very necessary to our continued existence. As long as our corporate overlords are making money, nothing else matters.

That's not news, but sometimes something so egregious happens that it boggles the mind. I'm thinking of the fire that started at the Moody Landfill near Birmingham, AL. A friend of mine alerted me to this years ago, and I'm only now getting around to it. The most shocking thing about this is, the fire started in 2022 (where was Billy Joel back then?) and is still burning.

"With a landfill, you can never really extinguish the fire," said James Pinkney with the EPA.

“And what we’re doing—the approach we took at this landfill is using soil to basically suffocate the flames. But a landfill can burn for an extended period of time underground.”

Uh . . . what? Never? You mean to tell me that when the sun expands and swallows the earth, that landfill fire will still be burning? That's concerning. Are you trying hard enough?

That can't be good for the people who live nearby. Here's what the EPA advised them to do:

EPA is working with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to review data and appropriately evaluate the potential effects of the smoke from the fire. In the meantime, if nearby residents are concerned and wish to reduce potential exposure to landfill fire smoke, the following actions are recommended:

• If you have respiratory problems such as asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), or emphysema, stay indoors when you see or smell smoke.
• Reduce your outdoor activities, and do them more slowly, when you see or smell smoke.
• Close the doors and windows of your house to keep smoke from getting inside.
• Talk to your health care provider if you have respiratory conditions such as asthma, COPD, or emphysema, and you think your condition may get worse when you breathe smoke.

That doesn't sound like nothing. It sounds like this fire is doing a lot of damage to the people unfortunate enough to live close to this thing. According to Envirotech, while the people suffered, the local and state authorities were too busy pointing the finger at each other to actually do anything. Nothing got done until the feds stepped in, and they supposedly smothered the fire with sand. Here's the thing, though: it didn't extinguish the fire even though they said it did. I'm not going to identify my friend, but I will quote: "The problem is that locals see fire burning and our news had been reporting that it was out. Fucking unbelievable corruption."

The EPA says that they stopped monitoring the landfill on March 24, 2023. That's pretty alarming considering that the fire was still burning at the time. Most sources seem to agree that at the very least the fire burned for 15 months. That puts us early in the year 2024. And the EPA confirmed that forever chemicals are present. And their levels are higher. Not at the landfill. The corrupt fucks have that covered. But someone looked at the river nearby and found them in the water. Enough to raise a red flag. Not enough for national coverage.

I understand that such a situation is difficult, but come on. This should be a fucking priority, and yet I had to be told by a friend about this. And it's not just an Alabama problem. I'm sure this kind of thing happens all over the world.

The landfill was used for vegetative waste, yet the EPA found "unauthorized waste materials," which I can only take to mean that some asshole, much like the assholes in The Bridge, had a bunch of waste they couldn't be bothered to get rid of legally, so they knew a guy at the landfill who would take it. And look at what they've wrought. And no one wanted to take the blame for this, so the local politicians are fucked in the head.

This should be a bigger story, but now that we have the Department of Government Efficiency, I can only assume that the regulations that we *do* have for this sort of thing will be cut. Trump wants to bring drilling back to the US, but how safe can that be if we're pumping toxins into our own soil? What happens if you start to drill, and you hit a pocket of pollution from a burning underground fire? How many die because of that?

If we let these bastards continue, we're fucked. Do you remember how The Bridge ends?

Yeah, I thought so.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #957: COMICS ROUNDUP

 Not even half a year ago I wrote about Diamond, a monopolistic comics distributor until Covid, and how they might have been a good monopoly. In case you don't pay attention to the comics industry, they recently declared bankruptcy. I suspected something might be wrong near the end of December when my comics guys weren't getting any shipments at all, or half-shipments, or they got massively shorted. It was no big surprise when the news hit the streets. As a result I did not get comics today. None were delivered. They might get them tomorrow. I'll check. But it seems like it's been a while since I did a comics roundup. Let's see what I've been reading . . .

BATTLE ACTION VOL 3: Ever since Ennis has been planning on moving back to Ireland, he's been getting involved in UK comics pretty deeply again, and he's making some odd choices (I'm looking at you, Hawk the Slayer), but Battle Action is not odd for him. I think his war stories are his personal passion. A lot of his other stuff goes off the rails, but his war stories are powerful, contained, and he colors in the lines on these. I'm not a fan of Johnny Red, and Ennis is doing that as a serial story for these new issues. But so far it's going pretty well.

THE BLOOD BROTHERS' MOTHER: Azzarello and Risso continue their vicious western. A lot of it looks like it might have been painted instead of illustrated. Risso is doing some of his best work here. Azzarello knows his westerns. I miss LOVELESS. That was a good one. This one's not as good, but I like it nonetheless.

THE CREEPING BELOW: A young woman hangs out with a Scandinavian black metal band in the woods and is murdered by them. She doesn't stay dead, naturally, so she's out for revenge. Azzarello doesn't do horror often, but this is great. It's no Moonshine, but it's pretty good.

GI JOE: Now that the four miniseries are over, the new GI Joe is starting to walk more than crawl. I prefer the original series that I read when I was a kid, but this is solid work. I like that they're really leaning into the madness of Cobra-La. I'm interested to see where it goes.

GI JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO: One of the books I read as a kid, continued after having a ton of time off. 'Nuff said.

THE GOON: I'm still a little surprised that this one is back. Eric Powell ended it pretty nicely a few years ago, but I'm glad the Goon and Frankie have returned. So has the Priest. How can you go wrong with a book that, on occasion, has one of their characters stabbing people's eyes out screaming, "Knife to the eye!"

HELLO DARKNESS: A horror anthology series. Some of the stories are good, some are bad. But every issue has a story from Garth Ennis at the back. It's the continuing tale of what happens when the world experiences a nuclear winter. A group of friends make a go of surviving it, but we're down to the last two by now. In the latest installment one of the guys who tried to storm their cabin and died is actually still alive, and he has a conversation with one of them to pass the time while he waits to die. Very interesting stuff.

JIMMY'S LITTLE BASTARDS: Aftershock might be bankrupt, themselves, but Previews still swears the final installment of Garth Ennis's story will be released. It's a shame they keep bumping it. First it was supposed to be out in November, then January, now August. We'll see what really happens.

JUPITER'S LEGACY: FINALE: This book is finally coming to an end. Too bad the Netflix show didn't work out. It was decent. In the finale, the heroes and villains are learning who and what are behind their superpowers, and what those beings have planned for humanity. Hint: It's not pretty.

LIFE: I love the fuck out of Life. Azzarello is doing some of his best work with this one. It's double-sided, like the old Ace double paperbacks. One side is PROS, for the professional criminals. The other side is CONS, for the convicts the criminals will have to face. The pros have arrived on an abandoned prison planet because there's supposed to be vast riches kept there. Except it's not abandoned, and the cons are willing to fight to the death against these attackers. Great fun.

THE MAGIC ORDER: This is probably my least favorite of the Millarworld books, so I probably won't miss it when this final story arc is over. But they're getting very weird with the finale, and I'm kinda digging it. Look at that cover!

NIGHT CLUB 2: This is a fun book, too. The idea is, a group of teenagers are turned into vampires, so they decide to use their powers to fight crime while they wear luchador masks. In the second series, one of them has fallen for the hot girl at school, and because he's now a star jock himself, he gets in with the popular kids. Unfortunately, he trusts the girl too much and turns her into a vampire. She turns the others into vampires, too, and they've decided to use their powers for evil, starting with killing Night Club . . . I still think Millar is probably upset because someone already took Bite Club.

SAGA: If you're into comics, and you're not reading this book, what the fuck is wrong with you?

THAT TEXAS BLOOD: It's on hiatus for now, but since the Enfield Gang Massacre is over, I'm hoping it will return soon.

TORPEDO 1972: It's weird to see Risso working without Azzarello on this one. It's about an old mob scumbag and his partner still out in the world, shooting and beating the shit out of people. He's an asshole, but he's kinda funny.

TRANSFORMERS: When Kirkman bought Transformers and GI Joe, I thought that was an odd decision for him. I'm glad he did, because he's putting out the best Transformers stories since IDW ended the Autobot/Decepticon war. IDW should have stopped making them then, but for some ungodly reason they continued and drove the property into the ground. It's good to see these characters in a new story. A good story. Although I'll have to get used to Megatron being a bad guy again. I really loved it when he put the Autobot symbol on his chest and tried to become a better person. The struggles he had when evil kept knocking at his door were phenomenal.

UNDERHEIST: This is a horror heist book. It's actually done, but it slipped past me and my comics guys. I just need to get the last two issues. It's a Lapham book, so it's very good. If you've never read Stray Bullets, give it a shot. It's the best comics crime being written by someone not named Azzarello or Brubaker.

VOID RIVALS: I did not expect to like this book. It started the Energon Universe, so I felt obligated to read it. It's surprisingly good. So far we've seen Transformers in this world and some of Cobra-La from GI Joe. It's pretty cool.

And that's it. What are you all reading?

PS:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #956: A GARBAGE JOB INTERVIEW

 One of the unfortunate things about not writing GF for a period of time is that during my writing vacation a young man snuck up on the CEO of United Healthcare and shot him dead. Considering how often I talk about how most CEOs are the lowest form of life on the planet, I'm sure you were clamoring to know my feelings on the subject. I was chomping at the bit to possibly write a Goodnight, Fuckers: Special Report.

#FreeLuigi. 'Nuff said.

I'm sure I'll get more into it at a future date, but it made me think about the time I tried to get a job with United Healthcare. It turned out to be the worst job interview I've ever been involved with. So yeah, fuck them and their executives. Not just for that, obviously, but you know what I mean. Funny thing: one of their executives led the interview. I had to check the dead guy's face to see if it was him. It was not.

A few years ago I was desperate for a job. I applied for just about everything. There was a confidential listing on Indeed. It was a customer service position. The pay was really good. Ordinarily when that happens, I have my doubts, but the confidentiality of the listing made me wonder if maybe they were telling the truth.

I applied and got an immediate email back saying they wanted to interview me. It wasn't the blink of an eye, but not very much longer than that. Something in the back of my head said to forget it, but I plunged ahead. Got in my suit. Headed out to the address. When I arrived I saw the office belonged to United Healthcare. All things considered, they really needed customer service help. Maybe that was why they were paying so much.

I talked to the receptionist, who signed me in and told me to wait in the conference room. The one where a bunch of other people are sitting? Yes, that one.

Red flag. If you've been invited to a job interview, and it turns out to be a *group* interview, you should leave immediately. I was desperate and a little curious, so I took a seat with the rest of the applicants. They were dressed nicely, but I was the only suit in the room. No one else seemed to be feeling dread. They were all rather cheerful. But my hopes were pretty low at that point. I started writing a story in my notebook--which I swiped from a previous job, as it looked like leather (it's not) and was very professional--hoping no one would want to drag me into one of their cheerful conversations. I looked busy. I'm good at that.

The executive comes in, and I suddenly know what this is before he even opens his fucking mouth. I have been lured in with a customer service position, but the trap is that it's a sales position. Hence the high salary ($1000 biweekly! If you're good at selling stuff, and that is TBD). Also, this guy is here to pump us up like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street. Oh my God, is this a fucking boiler room? I make a silent bet with myself. Before this presentation is done, he will say something along the lines of, "Did you see that Mercedes out there? One of my reps just bought it. Only been working here for two years."

He goes into his spiel, and it sucks just as bad as I thought it would. He's going on and on about how much money we'll be making at his company, and if we sell a client, every time they spend money with the company, we would get a piece. Your pay can only go up! The sky is the limit! No commission caps!

He pointed out the window. "Did you see that Mercedes out there? Parked out front? That belongs to a *new hire* who has only been here half a year."

Ah fuck.

I wondered if I should just tell this guy to go fuck himself in front of all these potential employees. It would feel good. It might even save a few of these people from wasting their time at a bullshit job. But I stayed quiet. A lot of them looked desperate, and their eyes kept getting bigger and bigger the more this asshole talked about the Mercedes. They needed the money. I kept my silence.

Finally the presentation ended, and he handed out fucking job applications for us to fill out. Dude, I already gave you my fucking resume. I'm *not* going to write the whole thing out for you on this fill-in-the-blank sheet. (And it was only one sheet long. Apparently I should have had only two jobs before this one. Higher education seemed unnecessary, but they left a line for it just in case.)

At that point I gathered my things, put on my coat and got the fuck out of there. The executive was hanging out at the reception desk talking, and he looked up when I walked out of the conference room like he expected me to ask questions.

I said, "No thanks. I've worked enough shitty sales jobs."

He looked flabbergasted. He might have said "uh," but I walked past him and left. Once in the parking lot, I looked for the Mercedes. There wasn't one.

I can only think that the dead CEO was this guy's boss.

I get it. Some people watch movies like The Wolf of Wall Street or Glengarry Glen Ross or Boiler Room, and they want to do that job. Sex in the office and fearmongering your possible customers sounds like a lot of fun. But if you think about the reality, you don't want to work at those places. If you're ever in a situation like the one I was in, get as far away from it as possible. You don't need the money that bad. There won't be much of it, anyway.

And yes, I did honor the bet. I removed a dollar from my wallet, as it was just a token wager, and I put it right back in. I seem like an okay guy, sometimes.

I do, no matter how painful, pay off any bets I lose. I don't bet often, only when I'm dead certain of something, so betting against me is usually a losing proposition. But I did lose a painful bet at my previous job. I was working with a guy I'd worked with at the job before that one (telecom is an intensely incestuous business). We sat in the same pod at the time, his desk next to mine. There was an intern that summer who kept finding excuses to hang out at my friend's desk. She was very flirty with him, much to his horror. He was in his fifties at the time, and she couldn't buy a legal drink of alcohol. He wanted nothing to do with her, but he used to be a very good salesman (he might still be, but I hope he's retired by now), so it was against his nature to tell her off.

The summer ended, and she came by to say she was going back home. She added, "I'll see you next summer!"

As soon as she was gone he said, "That's not happening."

I smiled. "Oh? She's smitten with you. How do you plan to avoid her?"

I forget what he said next, but it was something along the lines of, "Not happening, dude."

I pressed on. He said, "I'll bet you a bottle of whiskey that it doesn't happen."

We worked it out so that if I won, he'd get me a bottle of Wild Turkey 101. If he won, I'd get him a bottle of Jack. If you've been around me a long time, you'll know that I despise Jack Daniel's. I'd go into it, but I've done it a thousand and one times. I'm sure I've written extensively of the reason in GF somewhere. So if I lost, it would be exceptionally painful for me.

I was dead certain that she would be back, and there was no way he was going to escape her clutches. My mistake was assuming that my friend was just as much of a loser as me, possibly worse because he thought he could get away from someone who bordered on being a stalker.

Near the end of the year (I think? I drank a lot back then, so I'm fuzzy on that as well as most of my thirties) he announced that he was moving on to a better job, that he'd put in his two weeks' notice. I felt the icy stab of betrayal in my back. That son of a bitch had to have known this was going to happen.

He claimed that he was just looking back then, but I have this nagging feeling in the back of my neck that he's lying to me, that he knew he was getting out of this place. He knew for a fact I would lose when he made the bet.

Fast forward to his last day. He's getting ready to pack up his things and leave. It's now the last half-hour, and he comes by my desk. We had these shelves at the end of our desks, about chest high, so he perched both arms on top of that, shaking his head down at me.

"I never figured you for a welsher, Bruni," he said.

And that stung even worse than his betrayal. But I'd played it like I was welshing, just to see his reaction, so I have no one to blame but myself.

"How dare you?" I said. I reached into the giant drawer that was on the other side of my desk. I revealed the fifth of Jack and held it just outside of his reach. "I shouldn't give this to you. I think you cheated."

He gave his explanation, as stated above. I sighed and let him have it.

He grinned, and in that moment I knew for sure he'd played me. Goddammit, that hurt. The guy at the liquor store knew of my JD psychosis and looked askance upon me. "Just ring it up," I said.

And now my friend had that bottle. No matter how painful, it must be done.  And . . .

At least he shared the bottle with us. It was Friday near 5, so we could drink in the office if we wanted to. And we did. That bottle was empty by the time we left.

Looking back now, that's actually a pleasant memory, all treachery aside. I lost track of him when I went crazy in 2020. I wonder what he's up to these days. I hope she found him, that rat bastard.

I miss him.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #955: THE RUMP IS STILL IN TRUMP

I stand against every president we've ever had. But Trump has my special interest. I will stand against Trump for as long as I have breath. For as long as he's in the White House. For as long as he has a breath to utter his crazy and evil bullshit. --me, Goodnight, Fuckers #252

That quote is from a GF written near the end of January 2017, not too long after Trump took office the first time. I've been rereading some of these pieces to get a grip on Inauguration Day: Part Deux, as Trump takes back that office in much the same way Grover Cleveland reclaimed his. Like it or not, Trump sets presidential records. He's got more impeachments than any other president in history, and he's the first presidential felon. For example.

That first time, in 2017, I noted that Trump had the executive and legislative branches, and he almost had the judicial. That was the only thing standing in his way, that one tiny li'l check and balance. He lost Congress at the midterms, but he very shrewdly fixed that judicial problem he had last time. Now he has the whole fuckin' thing. All three branches. No checks and balances. He has, indeed, been given a mandate. I have my doubts about it being from God, but the American people sure seemed eager to give it to him. Trading politically is how politicians survive. It's how citizens make their peace with their electoral choices. And now, I'm flabbergasted if I can see how the American people decided that the economy is more important than people. Then again, this country was made for oligarchs from the start, not the people, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised in the Land of Property Over People. But a lot of folks ought to be ashamed of themselves. They think they're the good guys. When you're doing evil shit, you tend to know it and feel guilty about it, at least a little. When you think you're the good guys doing good deeds? The people trying to stop you, like me, are the evil ones in that scenario.

The fact that Trump is once more in the Oval Office is perverse to me. All the same, what would it be like if Kamala Harris had won? Everything would be kinder, but it wouldn't make much else of a difference. Two heads, one beast.

I don't vote. No, that does *not* mean I can't complain. I am voicing dissent over a system that does not work unless you are upper class. It doesn't work for anyone else. I will not willingly take part in a system that does not give a shit about me or anyone else below a certain salary level. It's a device designed to specifically never change from that primary directive.

"If voting is so inconsequential, why are politicians trying to take that right away from people?" I have to admit, I've thought about that a great deal. Sometimes it even tricks me into backing away from my values. For a couple of years there I'd even started believing the question was an important one, but it isn't. Voting is a good way to distract people, because those votes ultimately don't matter. The Electors decide who is president, and their choice is between two people our corporate overlords have already approved of.

Voting has a second purpose. The true owners of our country have ensured that the president will only ever be a Democrat or a Republican. There is actually only one party, as Gore Vidal tells us: The Property Party. Every four years, I believe our corporate overlords take note of who gets voted in and act accordingly. They floated Trump, the perfect American slob, as a possible dictator in 2016, and we went for it. If we'd reelected him, then hooray! Let's take these suckers for all they're worth. But we went with Biden.

And this time, we went with Trump again. "Oh, they like a dictator, do they?" the cigar-chomping assholes say while having their dicks sucked on their new pedo-island. "Let's give 'em a dictator."

America has chosen fascism, which isn't entirely surprising. Our system is irreparably broken. It works only as a machine to make the rich richer. And we'd better get used to it. Since no one is going to do anything, my advice is to get familiar with cannibalism.

I said something else in that GF I quoted, something about refreshing the tree of liberty, not with the blood of patriots, but of tyrants (the other part of the Jefferson quote that people forget). Voting certainly doesn't work. It only encourages our corporate overlords. So if someone's planning a Tea Party, now's the time.

[I just remembered the Tea Party, as in, the political party. Yeesh. I feel a little sick knowing that some of those swine are still around.]

Trump really is trying to remake America. He can't make it great again. He's nowhere near man enough to figure out how to do that. Please. Putin plays chess. I doubt Trump knows how to even play checkers. You mean to tell me that Trump, the guy who regularly sucks Putin's dick, is going to stop the most villainous dictator currently on the world stage? He couldn't even bluff Droopy Dog *without* the sheriff's badge. But he has a lot of important people backing him up, and he's not making America great again for everyone. America will only be good if you are white, born male (and you stayed that way), hetero and have lots of money. And don't worry about those pesky borders. There won't be any. Canada the 51st state? Taking Greenland and the Panama Canal back? Why stop there when Russia could be the 100th state (when we get around to it)? He's planning big, but he on his own is not a capable man. The capable people are backing the son of a bitch.

I think he intends to rule the world. How do you stand in the way of something like that without prodigious amounts of violence and bloodshed?

America has not been great for a very long time. Our country is in the twilight of its years as the Leader of the Free World (TM). It should be. We started our country with genocide, got it built and kept it moving through "the peculiar institution" and now we have to get rid of all the nonwhites, all the LGBTQ+ people, most of the women. We'll keep the white women. The white men need to reproduce, and it's frowned upon not to stick to one's own race. But if we could get rid of the white women, we would!

It occurs to me that, while these pricks are busy doing that garbage, that we'd be very vulnerable to attack. If the rest of the world ganged up on us, they might actually stand a chance, and that would be their moment to strike. This is, of course, science fiction. A parallel universe where they can all put aside all their differences and tackle the Big Bad together. See? No, that's obviously not *our* world. The Big Bad is the US of A. That's mirror world shit. Right? Someone do a goatee check on me.

When we (mostly McKinley and Theodore Rex) started worrying about our place in the world, just before the beginning of The American Century (please envision those words in an Indiana Jones swoop), we killed thousands of Filipinos (in their own country!) to have a foothold in Asia. How many thousands? No one knows for sure (possibly 200,000), but I suspect we were angry with Hitler for taking the Genocidal World Record from us, which we did, indeed, previously have. This genocide was so wanton that Mark Twain said, in response, that our flag for the Philippines should be an American flag with black stripes instead of white, and a skull and crossbones in the place of stars.

I suspect we may have a use for that flag, ourselves.

Some of you might be saying, "It's only four years. Then some other asshole is going to be in charge." Steve Bannon already floated the idea of getting rid of term limits for Trump. One of his underlings presents it in the House. And so it flies through Congress, which belongs to Trump, all the way up to his very own desk. What's he going to do, veto it? It'll be interesting to see if we actually have an election in 2028. If we do, I'll be surprised if it's a real one, as we very loosely define "real."

One last thing: you might find this amusing, especially when I accuse the 2016 election of being rigged. If you lose an election and don't accuse it of being rigged, did you even run for president? In case you've forgotten I did run for the White House that year as a book promotion, which is why I refer to not even voting for myself. Which book was I promoting? It wasn't Dong of Frankenstein, was it? Dear God, I think it was! It couldn't have been And Jesus Came Back, that was too late. It had to be Dong!

And I *didn't* win?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #954: AN OPEN LETTER TO ELON MUSK

 Dear Elon Musk,

Hi. You probably don't know me, but look around my blog, and you'll notice I'm far from your #1 fan. In fact, I think you ought to be drowned in liquid shit like the abortion you should have been, but I'm going to set that aside for the moment.

To quote a great politician, "Let's get one thing perfectly clear." Trump did not invent the Dept. of Government Efficiency. He wants to be an emperor, and he wants America's borders to not exist at all, that the world will be America. That's a pretty egotistical thing, but he seems to have a handle on it. Yet I get the feeling that if you two were in high school, he'd be giving you atomic wedgies and seeing how long he can keep your head in the toilet. He thinks he'll top out at 10 flushes, but Bannon thinks less of you. I'll bet he has you at six, and he has that look in his eye. That is essentially the attitude of the MAGAs, so none of them are socially inept enough to come up with the name of that agency. If Ramaswamy was an OK dude, I'd feel bad for him getting roped into that. But he's not.

[Incidentally, you make Bannon look good. That should be impossible, as he is also a shitnugget clinging to the bottom of one's flipflop, but here we are. Also, spellcheck has no problem with "shitnugget."]

Anyway, this agency is all you. I can't help noticing the CFPB is on your hitlist. As is the FTC, I'm sure. A ton of agencies are on that list, and many of them have a bone to pick with you. You're the richest man in the world, so why not just get yourself appointed to a bullshit agency so you can shut down those who would regulate you? I assure you no one is stupid enough not to notice that. Trade politically for it? Sure. That's the law of the land. But they didn't *not* notice it.

But I did notice you mention something, a throwaway comment, that made me think there might be hope for you. It's slim-to-none, but, well, you know the Michael Scott saying about the shots you don't take.

You mentioned that we were in the financial situation we're in because we went off the gold and silver standard. I've been saying that here for quite some time, but it's the first time I've ever heard someone of consequence, no matter how ill-gotten, say it.

Our money used to be backed by the silver and gold in Ft. Knox. In 1933, the real emperor of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, took us off that standard. I understand why he did it. He wanted an economic boom, and he certainly got one. Why not spend all your money if it is, indeed, not backed by anything stronger than imagination?

But that kind of behavior catches up to you. As in, it's catching up to us now. My point is, we're suffering dick-breaking amounts of inflation, and you want to cut a bunch of regulators in the name of "efficiency." Your plan WILL NOT WORK. No matter what it is. Yes, corporate greed has driven up the prices of everything beyond an ordinary citizen's ability to cope, but even if you ended corporate greed (yeah, I know, not your thing), we would still be stuck up Shit Creek, and the paddle is unfortunately in your hands, way way far away from anything even resembling a shit or a creek.

Here's some basic economics: the more scarce something is, the more it is worth. If we have, in theory, an infinity of dollar bills, then it stands to reason that those bills would be next to worthless, especially if you add the idea of credit on top of that.

If you want to bring up the value of a dollar, you must do at least two things: burn every greenback you can get your hands on, and end the credit card industry. Short of that, it is time to make our money supply finite, not pretend like it is now. Supply and demand. Or, and this is a perverse idea so obviously I'm into it, you can make money with expiration dates. They renew each time you spend them, so the new owner of that bill won't be put out any. Do you mean to tell me you intend to put chips in people's heads, and you can't put a digital readout on dollar bills? All right, fine. You can check online when your money expires, but I gotta be honest, if that's the case, the internet should be free for everyone. I think by now that's a human right, anyway.

All right. I've had my say.

Sincerely (and I do mean that),

John Bruni

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #953: A NIGHT LIKE TONIGHT

 The appointment I had with my podiatrist ran a lot later than expected today, so by the time I got home I wasn't really in the mood for anything, especially considering how I'd just spent the last money I'm likely to see in a while.

I slumped down on my bed and glanced out the window to see the sky painted perfectly. It always, by the way, is painted perfectly. But tonight made me think of nights like tonight of old. The sky was dark and gray, compacted like a snow that has lasted overnight, and at the edges it went light, fresh, and I watched as the white turned darker until only a scrim of white remained. It would be blown away like a snow dusting, or it would freeze and become one with the snow by morning.

On a night like tonight I would be getting ready to go out drinking with friends. Depending on which group, I might just toss a shot of whiskey down before heading to the local bar, or I'd have a couple of drinks under my belt before driving out to whatever town we'd be drinking in.

The sky darkened until it all looked compacted and ready to turn to ice for the hungover shuffle the next morning. But as the light vanished entirely, I drew in a breath of that sinus-clearing cold freshness of a winter night, and it was that last breath of fresh air before going into a bar and drinking everything in sight.

There was a freedom in nights like tonight (and mischief) because it was the weekend, and I didn't have to work the next day. I didn't even need to wake up my own bed. And if I had my breakfast whiskey waiting for me? What of it? I had another day to fuck off, too.

Fuck me, I miss weekends.

If I was lucky I'd have a warm hand in mine, the light perfume of a girlfriend on the chill of the night.

I thought back to those nights--O Discordia! gone forever!--because I feel nostalgic when I'm hopeful. I am almost never hopeful, so I never give up the chance to feel a nostalgia honestly found, not the cheap crap they try to sell you in commercials.

My new podiatrist seems very surprised that my foot looks so well. She says I'm healing pretty quickly. There were two drains for the discharge, and one of them is almost completely healed. She said if the other does the same, and everything looks good when the stitches come out, then we can reconstruct my bad foot.

When this year started, I was pretty sure my bad foot was infected. I tried to stay in denial, but the signs built up to the point of no return, so I had to go to the ER. I thought I was taking my last steps as I went from my car to the hospital. I thought my foot would be gone, and I'd be drinking myself to death soon. By now, in fact. I had a good run. Fuck. So it goes. It was so real I saw myself in a vision drinking the cheapest shit I could find directly from the plastic handle, watching as blood seeped through my stump bandages.

What I did *not* expect was to not only still have my foot but also have the possibility of rebuilding it so I wouldn't need a brace anymore and would be able to walk like normal again. My God! I would be able to go for my night walks again! I'd be able to go hiking at forest preserves again! I could even go down that one path in Fullersburg where you eventually see the other path on a cliff above you, where the tree root goes all the way up. I could climb that fucker again! Just like I used to. And I'd get up to the top, push myself to my feet with no problem and brush my hands off. I could go to the second waterfall and the island where no one has been in decades. I wonder if that's still true, but I'd be able to go find out for myself.

I have hope again, and that's something I never expected to feel again. No, I'm never going to go back in time to nights just like tonight. I wouldn't be able to drink in those places or anywhere, anyway. But instead of sitting inside like tonight, I could go out for a long walk, maybe all the way down to Spring, see how the bars are hopping, but maybe staying outside. And then I could walk back, the fresh crisp cold night air in my lungs, and I could feel like I used to in those old days. Not the old days. *Like* the old days.

And that's maybe the best I can get for the rest of my life.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #952: CLOSE CALL

 That was a scary hospital stay. Good thing I didn't have a bone infection, or I'd be Pegleg Johnny by now. They went into my foot and cut all the garbage out including a terrible pocket of infection that was ON MY FUCKING BONE. I'm stitched up, but I hope that soon that will be done, and my foot will be healed.

Because if that's the case, they might be able to fix my bad foot. I have Charcot's Foot, if you want to know what it is specifically. It turned out that the podiatrist in the hospital is an expert in Charcot's to the point where she seemed pretty excited to work on me.

And then she mentioned something that perked me right the fuck up: Charcot's Reconstruction. If I heal from this infection, it's possible to fix my bad foot! I don't know if I'll be able to do stuff like running and jumping, but the idea that I might not need a brace for the rest of my life is very appealing to me right now. I'd like to walk without worrying about my bad foot constantly, and now I have this ray of hope for the first time in the years since the break that caused this problem.

In case you're new around here, I like to say I broke my foot in an ass-kicking contest, but it's from a stress fracture. I walked too fast on my way to work, in other words. So yeah, if I can put the bad foot behind me (as in healing, not amputation) then maybe I can do other things, like restore myself with exercise. And night walks! I want to walk at night again. I miss doing that. I used to get a couple of miles in a night. That was great.

For now, my foot looks terrifying. I thought I would be able to change the bandages on my own, but now that I've seen what it looks like? I have my doubts. You'd be grossed out by how much gauze I can fit in the drain in my foot. Thankfully I have an appointment with the podiatrist soon so she can take a look at her work. I really hope she's as good as I think she is.

The alternative sucks.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #951: 2025 DOES NOT BODE WELL

 For the past few days I've been getting ready to take this mantle up again, and I thought I'd jump right into politics before January 20 comes along, but fuck that. Because big picture? That's terrible for everyone, even the unsuspecting MAGAs. Besides, small picture (but fucking huge for me) is what I'm looking at this year.

I can't imagine I'll end 2025 with two feet. Gotta be honest, today I had a bad feeling about The Foot. A lot of drainage came out of it today, and it is super swollen. I could not get my shoe on this morning. I had to go back to the medical shoe with the velcro strips. Often times today I thought maybe I should just go to the ER. But if these are going to be my last days with the foot, I want to get the most out of them. I also want to start planning to fuck over the corporations who are going to swarm me when I no longer have money because my second prediction for the year is I'll be out of a job. First and foremost is jailbreaking my car so the dealer can't brick it from afar. The plan is to also . . . I'm a little crazy right now, so I'll hold off on that.

(I did message my podiatrist. He asked me if there was any redness, and there isn't. He doesn't seem worried, but now I'm thinking about how cold I was on Friday. That is also a sign of infection.)

There are a few things that are probably going to come up this year on my Reasons to Start Drinking Again list, but those two are the big ones. So to top it all off I'm probably going to drink again this year. My life has been a constant downward spiral, but I may be reaching the end. It angers me that I won't get to beat Mom's high score of 53, much less Dad's 59.

I hope this is just the paranoia speaking, but last night I thought about all the things I wanted to do with the new year, about all the life changes I would incrementally make over time. I have a little notebook half-filled with my ideas and how to implement them. But whenever I start making big plans for myself, the universe shoves the Fickle Dick of Fate right up my ass. It's been probing me all day, but I hope it doesn't make me drink during the first full week of the year.

I thought maybe I should go to the ER anyway tonight, but I have a plan of action. I see Wound Care on Thursday, but I have some antibiotics (they accidentally gave me two packs, and I'm not going to just return one) in case I have an infection, and I have tons of ice to kill the swelling. It went down a little today, but maybe by my appointment, I'll have fixed this. Or they'll highly suggest I go to the ER, so I might want to pay a bag on Thursday . . .

The really fucked up part of this is, I started looking forward to losing my foot so I could drink again. That, my fine fuckers, is the very definition of addiction. I killed that horrible thought as soon as I detected it, but I can't deny it was there.

I'm hoping tomorrow's better. And hey, this was mighty depressing. You should check out the new issue of The Cocaine! Bros.