GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1057: EASTER 1961

 I have all of my family photos on Mom's side. I've been organizing them, trying to figure out which ones I want to keep for myself and which to give to brothers, cousins or my aunt. I made piles for all the holidays, and Easter turned out to be the second skimpiest. (I only have two Thanksgiving pictures, but one of them is really good.)

But there was a batch of old black and whites in there that absolutely baffled me. At first I laughed. Then I got a little creeped out again. Then I laughed some more. These are so ridiculous that I had to share them here.

Uh, how big are these things?

Okay, maybe not that big, after all. Could you imagine if these fuckers were six feet tall? Not counting the ears?

Like the Teddy Bears' Picnic, but for bunnies.

This looks kinda . . . cultish.

Maybe this is an alternate universe, where rabbits evolved instead of monkeys.

This made me laugh until my balls hurt the first time I saw it. Look at those mustaches! What the fuck possessed them to give the bunnies facial hair? Because it's brilliant. I hope that guy got a raise.

(I'm still kind of laughing at this.)

That's my mom on the left and her sister, my Aunt Sue, on the right. Mom would have been a few months away from four years old, and Aunt Sue would have turned two a few months before. The back of this one is notated with their names and the year in Grandma's handwriting, but it didn't explain the rest of this madness. What the hell are these pictures?

I lucked out. She wrote a few more things behind one of the others:

That explains everything. If you don't know, Goldblatt's was a chain of department stores that operated back then (and they didn't go out of business until 2000). Grandma did a lot of shopping there. When I found boxes and boxes of canceled checks, a lot of them were made out to this place. The building is still somewhat of a historical landmark, but it's mostly used by the City of Chicago now for various things. I wonder if anyone back in 1961 could have seen that coming.

I think often of the transitory nature of the stuff around us. Things that feel permanent actually aren't and may even change within your lifetime.

I've written about it before, but it reminds me of Gramps driving around, waving his hand at the world around us, telling me about how all of this will be different when I'm older. Except I was a kid. I'd only been around for what, six years? Seven? What the fuck did I know of change? As far as I knew, everything was the same as it had been from the day of my birth, so I assumed it would all be the same by the time I was dead.

The older I get, the more I think perspective might be the strongest force in nature.

Just a final note. Aunt Sue is the only person on my mom's side of the family who is older than me. Just in case I wasn't feeling ancient enough today.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1056: HAPPY ASSHOLING OUR WAY THROUGH LIFE

 

In 1963 the Bronx Zoo had an exhibit they called the Most Dangerous Animal in the World. Looks pretty scary, eh? Are all those bars really necessary?

Only for effect. Nothing lived behind these bars. The only thing back there was a mirror.

Originally there was a plaque that read the following:

You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world. It alone of all the animals that ever lived can exterminate (and has) entire species of animals. Now it has the power to wipe out all life on earth.

They eventually reworded it, but the intent, per the zookeepers, was to get people to stop and think. It certainly did the trick. People were still talking about it as late as 1989, which I believe was the time I first encountered it. I remember I was a kid, and that we'd moved from Edgewood to Vallette, so 1989 sounds about right.

But the older I get, the more I wonder if we didn't read enough into it. The zoo literally held a mirror up to us, and we only saw humanity in general. We didn't see ourselves, specifically. Maybe more people should think about that. A lot of us just happy asshole our way through life without a second thought to the damage we might be doing to someone else. Perhaps a closer look at the mirror is warranted.

To quote businessman Louis Cypher:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1055: THE INEVITABLE

 Before reading this, you should watch this. You don't have to, but if you're reading my stuff on AI, then you'll probably find this interesting. I post it because AI is *the* social topic right now, and John Oliver has a great line in this video. "It saves significant time writing emails, and all it costs us is everything else on Earth." He's not wrong. And I understand the techbros are playing the long game, so short term returns are not expected. All the same, AI needs a lot of power to run, and it hasn't earned AI companies a single penny in return.

Why would they do this? Because the long term returns are going to be phenomenal. In their minds it will not just make them money. It will make them a shitload of money. It's because they're already planning to enshittify AI. That's their business model.

If you don't know what enshittification is, here is Cory Doctorow explaining the word he created.

So how do you lock people into AI? Who the fuck believes anything a machine would tell them? A lot of people, it turns out. Go back to that Last Week Tonight video I linked to at the top of this page. There's a guy in there who firmly believed he'd discovered a new method of mathematics, all because an AI told him so. Add to that the army of people who now depend on AI chatbots because they're lonely and the techbros are taking advantage of them. What happens if AI were to suddenly disappear from their lives? I imagine it would be a lot like what I felt when my phone died not too long ago.

In short, the techbros have to work on making their products addictive as fuck. If you're looking away from their app, then they have failed at this job. I remember a time when companies that tried to addict their customers to their products were considered evil. Now it's standard operating procedure.

At the moment there aren't enough of us locked in, but when we reach that threshold, and I'm certain the techbros have that number written down somewhere, they will introduce ads. Imagine you're a lonely person who has fallen in love with a chatbot. You depend on that chatbot to get you through the day. Without that chatbot, you'd be so lonely it's painful. You've thought about ending your life several times*, but thank goodness for your AI company of choice.

Except now that you're getting down to some sexy time with your chatbot, it suddenly informs you that Olive Garden has a BOGO deal, and when you're there, you're family. Or, even worse, the chatbot starts talking like the GEICO gecko to tell you that you could save hundreds by switching your car insurance.

Yeah, that's pretty egregious. But by now you can't just walk away from the chatbot. You depend on it for your own existence. So you put up with the ads, and our corporate overlords rush to saturate your senses with a constant slush of advertising. At least until the techbros betray their advertisers, too.

Think about all the things you hate about social media. Remember when it was fun? When it was the good ol' days? If you've ever had this thought, you should stay away from AI, because the techbros will enshittify that, too. It's the only way they'll be able to make money at this. Monthly subscription fees just aren't going to cut it for an expense this flagrant. They need advertising dollars to make up for it.

The time to draw the line in the sand is now. If we wait until they start to enshittify it, then it's too late. If you trust the techbros, they will violate that trust six ways to Sunday. They have proven it, time and again. It really will be a toothpaste-and-tube situation, as they've done to us with data brokers. Good luck getting your privacy back now that all your info is out there.

To quote Stephen King, "SSDD." So let's not let the cycle repeat. 

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*Not that a chatbot is interested in preventing you from offing yourself, as John Oliver describes in that video. That's a problem the techbros are working on. For real. It's hard to advertise to someone who has killed themselves, but more importantly, AI contributing to someone's suicide is a mild annoyance to their business practices. It takes time to deal with something like that, and they have correctly assumed that time is the most valuable commodity in the world. Hence Zuck's desire to have his AI clone sit in on essential meetings instead of doing it himself.

MONEYED CLASSES: UNDERSTANDING THE GUILLOTINE: A board game review of Billionaires and Guillotines

 

“Billionaires” and “guillotines” are two concepts that go together like mom and apple pie. Like Woodward and Bernstein. Like Ernest and Vern. In an age where our society is controlled by corporate overlords and oligarchs, one could see the attraction in a game like this.

In Billionaires and Guillotines, you play a billionaire with the purpose of filling every blank spot on your card with an asset. Typically you “buy” them from markets. On each turn, you draw a card (if you want to), but you can never have more than two in your hand (with one exception; if you are the Banker). Then you must Buy, Invest or Exchange. You choose which cards to play against the ones in the market in a Blackjack-ish showdown to see if you win that asset. Or you can add a card to any market and draw a new one. Or you can swap one of your cards with a face-up card or change two face-up cards between markets.

That sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, but at its most basic, that is the skeleton of the game. There are different levels you can play, all of which add complexities like roles or determining government policy and so on.

Who are the billionaires you get to play? And why can’t you play as Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, who are clearly displayed on the box? That’s a major disappointment, but you can choose from five archetypes: the Media Baron, the Property Speculator, the Aristocrat, the Tech Overlord and the War Profiteer. Each billionaire needs to get five assets, and those assets depend on which archetype you’re playing. The idea is to purchase these assets from the five markets (Power, Toys, Influence, Legacy, Vanity) before you and your fellow players raise the ire of the common people enough to introduce you to the aforementioned guillotines.

Getting all of your assets is one way to win. There are also the role cards, and you could get the Celebrity role, which means if there is a revolt, you get to live. Unless you started the Crisis event that caused the revolt, that is. There’s also a Toady card that lets you ride the coattails of whoever actually wins the game.

The key part, however, is your ability to screw over your fellow players. This seems to be the true purpose of the game. You can use the Audit card to make opponents put an asset back. You can steal assets. You can buy assets you don’t need so you can make the game harder for others. You can also throw things in your favor by investing cards in your suit into the market to give you a better shot at that asset. If you buy the asset, the price for the next one is higher due to the inflation rules. You start with two cards at each market, but if an asset is bought, then it’s three. Buy another, and it’s four.

The best feature, though, is the fact that everyone could lose the game.

Billionaires and Guillotines was created by Max Haiven: “I really believe that we can think through and use games as a platform for teaching people about what’s wrong with capitalism and why we must create alternatives.” This game was originally called The Bastards, and it was inspired by “radical political economist and Sparticist agitator Rosa Luxemburg’s theory that capitalism inevitably creates its own crises from within,” that the game “simulate[s] the way capitalist greed produces negative consequences.”

And it really does that. Not just from the inflationary point of view, but also from how their wanton impulses really are destroying society. The more recklessly you go after assets, the more likely you are to trigger a crisis, which then adds Rebel discs to the guillotine. If all ten discs are there, then game over. You all lose.

After several play tests, one tends to notice a few things. There are two kinds of people who play this game: those who go after the assets in the market, and those who screw over the other players. The latter usually does this with great gusto. It’s maybe a little thought experiment of its own. How would you react in the shoes of a billionaire?

Sometimes there seems to be a lull in the play. Sometimes you get locked into a pattern, where no one wants to make any moves. Oddly this tends to come earlier in the game, when the stakes aren’t quite so high.

And then there’s the 2-player game, which doesn’t work quite so well. It goes pretty quickly, but progress is nearly impossible, and no one usually wins. The puppet billionaires are much more likely to run a market into the ground due to the die roll, where you only have a one in six chance of gaining an asset. The rules allow you to sacrifice cards to move the die score up, but players tend to take their chances rather than give up a card.

Otherwise, this is a swift and exciting game with lots of moving parts. It’s engaging, and it keeps you on your toes. You learn strategy, and as a result, you learn to really appreciate the Art of the Ratfuck, and suddenly Elon Musk doesn’t seem all that unusual. It’s a good game if you’re just an average joe looking for something to do, but if your tastes run toward revolution (ie. you understand that the Empire was the villain of Star Wars, not the rebels), this will be great fun for you. Just remember: the more players you have, the more fun the game will be.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1054: OMG!

 LOL, LMAO, BRB, WTF, DTF, so on and so forth. I try to never use these ever*, because I am almost 48 years old. Granted, some of my fellow late quadragenarians have given in, but I'm holding the line because I'm old school, and I am stubborn.

(For example, I will not use any button other than the "like" button on Facebook. In my opinion, the other options are just unnecessary.)

But maybe I can use OMG. I probably won't, but it turns out this one has been with us a lot longer than most people realize. The first known usage of OMG dates back to 1917.

*record scratch*

So you're probably wondering how I got in this mess. No, wait, wrong record scratch.

That's right, 1917. It was in a letter addressed to Winston Churchill (before he became Winston Churchill(TM)). If you want to see the letter, you can read it here. And it is even more ridiculous than you think it is. Lord Fisher could have written for the Golden Age of comics, he uses so many exclamation marks.

There is no other way to read that letter than very loudly and very quickly, like your life depended on getting it all out within 30 seconds or less. Have the kids been reading Lord Fisher?

Short one tonight. As tomorrow is the last day of my three day weekend, I'm getting exceptionally high tonight. Maybe I'll have something else for you tomorrow.

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*I will sometimes use LOL for reasons I'd rather not go into here.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1053: GREATLY EXAGGERATED

 

This was going to be a lamentation on the passing of Jonathan the tortoise, the oldest living land animal on the planet, but holy shit, it turns out that the rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated. That fucker is still among us!

194 years old. He's old enough to have met Charles Darwin, and the only reason he didn't was because he wasn't on the island yet during Darwin's visit. While the Civil War was going on, this guy was just hanging out, doing whatever it is tortoises do. He's so old he could have met a carrier pigeon. James Madison was the last Founding Father to die, and it was possible that Jonathan could have met him, too.

I can't say it enough. The world is a fuckin' weird place. Jonathan's a baby compared to that one Greenland shark that's almost 400, and those things could possibly live to 500 or older.

So why did I think Jonathan had died? Because of this fucking nonsense. Some asshole posing as Jonathan's vet made the announcement, and because journalism is broken right now, everyone ran with the story without vetting it. (Also, please note that I'm not the only one referencing Mark Twain on this matter. Poking around Google, it looks like maybe I'm not as clever as I think I am. Also, if you read the article, you'll make the pleasant discovery that THIS TORTOISE FUCKS.)

I'd get on my soapbox about how journalists need to slow the fuck down and get accurate stories instead of chasing the ever elusive scoop, but I fell for it, too. I even posted about it on Squitter without investigation. Whoops. Good thing I did my research before I started writing this one. Better late than never.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1052: THE OLD FAMILIAR FEAR

 When I was a kid I was certain we were all going to die in a nuclear conflagration. That was my biggest fear until we collectively seemed to realize, hey, these warheads are a bad idea, let's not do the arms race thing anymore. I haven't been worried about it since.

Until now. The old familiar fear is setting in, and the more this Iran . . . whatever the fuck it is gets ratcheted up, the more I feel its icy fingers on my spine.

Because Hegseth and his Dept. of War Crimes is framing this fight as a Biblical one, and he's trying to get his subordinates to understand that it's good versus evil, God versus Satan type of shit. It sounds a hell of a lot like they're trying to jumpstart the apocalypse. Why wait for a prophecy to come true when you can MAKE IT HAPPEN?

I hope I'm wrong, and I'm taking the Stephen King approach. He once said that he writes things as a form of preventative exorcism. If he writes about something he fears, then it can't happen to him in real life.

So here's my fear, in an attempt at poisoning fate's well. Trump is dying. I mean, politically, but his health isn't doing too good, so maybe literally, too. If he's not going to be around, why should the rest of us get to go on living our lives? And would you look at that? A symbolic date is coming up soon: June 6. I wouldn't put it past him to fire a nuke into Iran at 6 in the morning, local time.

What happens when Putin learns of such a nuke? And what will NORAD do when they notice Putin's response?

I hope I'm wrong.

I hope you didn't read that before going to bed. Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.

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I didn't come up with the "Dept. of War Crimes." Someone said it recently, and I'm trying to remember who, but it sounded so good I had to swipe it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1051: THE THINGS I'LL MISS

 Starting Monday, I no longer have to be in the office in Elmhurst two days a week. We've hired so many new people that they ran out of desks, so they're letting us more tenured employees work from home every day of the week. That makes me very happy because it will save me time and money. Time in commuting, so I can sleep a little later, and money because HOLY SHIT gas is fucking expensive, and I have no choice but to use a toll road for my commute.

Well, that last part isn't strictly true. If I don't mind adding a half an hour to my drive time, I can take Roosevelt all the way. And if I don't have money for the tolls, I take Roosevelt, anyway. It's called the Lincoln Hwy out here, but it's 38. Half of that road is one lane in each direction, so it's not fun when you get behind a semi (or, shudder, a line of them). Also, if I'm taking 38 back home, that adds an extra 45 minutes, so . . .

I'll have very little reason to leave my apartment come Monday. It will also be the end of my social life, because work is where 100% of my social life exists right now. That's horrifying, I know. I used to go out nearly every night, or at least on weekends. I might even lose my face to face personal skills. I *do* have them, even with a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

When I was a kid I fantasized about being a hermit. Now I might actually get my wish. It would have been nice to enjoy a youthful solitude, but I was kind of hoping to have a compound by now. Above ground, below, I'm not picky. All I really wanted was a bunker to keep the world away, and enough time to read and write to my heart's content. Is that too much to ask?

One of the cool things about my commute was seeing the natural beauty of the area I live in. DeKalb is a city approximately the population of Elmhurst, but everything else around me is farmland as far as the eye can see. It's nice to drive by the horse ranches and know, hey, if I want to get fresh duck eggs, I can stop by this place over here. I love the rickety, skeletal barns and silos, the countryside boneyards, all of it. I enjoy driving over the Fox River in Geneva because if you look off the bridge in just the right way, you can see what it might have looked like 150 years ago.

I'll also miss listening to Hardcore History on my drive. Those episodes are super long, sometimes 4, 5 even 6 hours, so they're ideal for listening material. I'm almost caught up! Which is great because Dan Carlin is currently doing a series on Alexander the Great, but it's horrible because it takes him a very long time to come out with a new episode. So I'll be waiting months like everyone else for part four of Mania for Subjugation.

The wait, by the way, is ALWAYS worth it.

Working from home is a very good thing. It will solve a few of my problems (and I can put off getting a new backpack now, as the one I've used since my Call One days has a strap that's hanging by a thread), but I'll miss these things. They did, indeed, enrich my life.

The best part of not going to Elmhurst every day and back is, it will dramatically lower the possibility of me getting killed in a car wreck. I'm a speed demon, so the first half of my commute is spent blowing away the other drivers at 100+ mph. It would have only been a matter of time before something happened. I'm an okay driver, but I have one ability that has served me well over the years: I'm very good at predicting what other drivers are going to do. I'm almost as good at reacting to that knowledge swiftly and decisively. Going that fast, though? I'd rather not James Dean myself across 88. I hate driving on tollways, and it would gall me to die on one.

I'm pretty sure I'm destined to go out like the King, anyway. Did you know that one of my nicknames in high school was Elvis?

*clears throat*

Are you lonesome tonight?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1050: PLAYBOY

 I subscribed to Playboy for many years. I did, indeed, read the articles. And the fiction. The pictorials were nice, too, but I viewed that part as a bonus, not the point. When I had to leave home, I had to abandon many issues, but I went through them all in search of stuff I wanted to keep. Like anything involving Hunter S. Thompson or Stephen King or Chuck Palahniuk or Gore Vidal, etc. I've been going through them in my spare time (what's that?), and since I don't have a lot of time tonight, I thought I'd present a few items of interest for your perusal.

Here's some relevant words from the guys who invented Google. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Reading their ideas about advertising makes my skin crawl. To say nothing of their violations of privacy. They've learned from it, I suppose. Now they make you give up your privacy as a term and condition.

On to Hunter S. Thompson and the most grievous thing that a friend has ever done to him:

A crime, I say. A crime.

Speaking of HST, here's his self-assessment:

Too bad he's not around for the current clusterfuck we're all living through now.

Now that Ozzy is gone, why not look back on the time he was asked what he wanted for his funeral?

If there were, Ozzy would have figured it out.

Speaking of a celebrity talking about their own death who is also now dead, let's check in with Robert Redford:

It's good advice.

Lastly (for now), I saw this piece about promising new wild card politicians, and I couldn't help but be surprised that a future president and future VP was on the list pretty much next to each other:

Just about everyone else on the list is no longer in politics.

That will do it for now. As I collect more tidbits here and there, I might post them in the future.

To quote Columbo, "There's just one more thing." A sequel of sorts to last night's GF. The image from that one? Here's an earlier version of that for my grandparents. That's the date they were married. No, it's an artifact from this very universe. Nothing parallel about it:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1049: WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

 

When you walk into my apartment, this is one of the first things you would see. This is an artifact from a parallel universe. Travel between universes must be difficult, hence the streak going through the heads of my other me's parents.

Because in that universe? My mom and dad got married. I wonder what that must have been like for that other me. It would have been interesting if they'd actually stayed the course. What happened on that Earth that didn't happen here?

I'm certain other me is completely different from me. He's probably a huge reader, like me. I'll bet he's a writer, too, but I'm thinking he's known for crime novels instead of horror. Not ugly stuff, like Strip, but something more along the lines of a detective series. And I think he's got a mistrust of authority, but it doesn't turn into disgust, like it does for me. I'm also pretty sure he's not nearly as fucked in the head as I am. I'll bet he grew up in a healthy fashion, at least mentally.

I don't think he's an alcoholic. He might even be a straight arrow. I wouldn't be surprised to find that he's a little athletic, and he's probably more of an outdoorsman than I am.

But he doesn't have my siblings. He probably has a set of his own, but they're not the same as mine. My siblings are all technically half-siblings, but we don't look at it that way. I love them all, but I'm worried that they may not even exist in that alternate reality.

And that right there is enough for me to abandon that fantasy. I've raged against reality all my life, but in general I'm satisfied with how I turned out. For all my mental issues and physical problems and the emotional rollercoaster that being me entails, I'm happy with who I am, darkness and all. Do I wish certain things about me were different? Sure. But I'm not going to demonstrate the uselessness of wishing in one hand, shitting into the other.

I find this to be an unusual artifact, nonetheless. Look at the date. Mom was just about to graduate high school, and Dad still had another year to go. I'd make my debut three years later, so I wasn't even a twinkle in their eyes.

When I was a kid I used to get angry all the time over how cheated I'd been by life because my parents had separated before I was born. I wanted to know what it was like to be raised by two parents at the same time. I knew that in that situation I wouldn't have gone through some of the horrors I did, the ones that robbed me of a healthier mindframe, the horrors that robbed me of being a healthier human being in general.

I let it go finally a few years back when I realized, hey, I really enjoy my own company. Maybe I didn't get as fucked up as I thought I did. I look back at those times, and I read the notes that my mom and dad wrote to me, and I can feel the love radiating off the pages. I lucked out. They could have been twisted, vile creatures.

Now I look at their pictures from before I was born, and I wonder what kind of people they were. What went through their minds when they looked into each others eyes? What they felt when they watched the news or went to school or hung out with their friends. How did they meet? What went wrong?

Who were they before they became Mom and Dad?

I can't ask them. They're both gone.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1048: MY KINGDOM FOR A BACK SCRATCHER

 

Here's something you might not know about me. I constantly need a back scratcher. I have a very itchy back. No, it's not a matter of not washing my back. I have a brush, for Pete's sake. I don't know what it is, but I constantly need to scratch my back. I have a back scratcher in my front room. I have one in my bedroom. I have one at work. Or, at least, I *did* have one at work.

It fell to pieces except for one length which just isn't long enough to reach the places I itch the most. I still desperately tried to use that, mostly to no avail, and I finally came to the conclusion that I just needed to spend the money on a new one. But where do you get a back scratcher?

Mine all came from Grandma. The one I used at work had been the one she used near the end of her life when she sat in the living room all day and watched TV (if we were lucky). But now I had to get a new one. I did what any modern person would do: I went to Google.

I ordered a back scratcher from Target using a gift card I'd gotten, oddly enough, at work. But then, for a reason that could not be articulated to me, they canceled my order. Seriously, no representative I spoke with knew why. And no, I couldn't reorder it.

Well fuck. I didn't want to have to do this, but I'll get it from Walmart. The store didn't have it, but they could ship it to me for free. I ordered it from them.

And much to my horror, it got canceled. Again. What the fuck? Did they not make back scratchers anymore?

I hit my five year anniversary at work, so they gave me an Amazon gift card. Time to try Bezos. I ordered it from them, hoping the third time would do the charm, fully expecting to learn that they'd canceled this one, too.

Finally, after struggling with this for AN ENTIRE FUCKING MONTH, I got my back scratcher today. I know this sounds like a weird thing for me to complain about, but why did it have to take that long? Am I being unreasonable in wanting to legally purchase a back scratcher? I probably could have gotten a gun a lot faster.

Anyway, here's an odd question. Do any of you have any Public Storage real life horror stories? I'm thinking of maybe being a journalist again. Let me know if you want to talk about that.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1047: AGAIN?!

 Today there was another fuckin' art heist in the news. AGAIN.

I sense a pattern. And I would not be surprised to discover that these stolen works are all going to an oligarch auction. They're the only fuckers on the planet right now with the money to afford the merchandise. And holy shit, are they rolling in dough right now. The Trump presidency has served its purpose: to make the rich richer beyond their wildest jerkoff fantasies.

Since they suddenly have a bunch of money, why not splurge on original artwork by the masters? The museums won't sell? Well, fuck it. Let's get someone to steal all this shit, and we'll pull our puds in a wallet-measuring contest over it.

Who's going to stop them?

Do you think Peter Thiel has cockslapped the Mona Lisa? Is it possible that Larry Ellison masturbated to the Venus de Milo? Or on her? Has Zuck marveled at the weirdest Picassos and thought, man, those are so realistic, so I must have them on my walls to remind me about what humans are like?

I'm going to uncharacteristically leave Musk alone on this one. He strikes me as someone who does not give a single solitary fuck about art.

Hell, maybe the Mona Lisa in the Louvre isn't the real one. Maybe it's a dummy and the real one is in Bezos's underground compound. At least it will be safe when we launch mutually assured destruction later this year when WWIII isn't going so well.

By this point, I kind of look forward to it. At least everyone will calm the fuck down.

And if, by some miracle, I'm horribly mutated into a 'Fifties SF nightmare monster instead of being vaporized or poisoned by radiation, I'll do my best to meet Trump when he emerges from his bunker. I hope you all will do the same.

Yes, I've been depressed. Why do you ask?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1046: I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG . . .

 . . . of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I quoted that from memory even though I haven't said those actual words since I was in school. If you're my age, you probably have it memorized, too. I checked to see if kids are still required to say it every morning in school, and most states do require it. Some have it play over the speaker, and the kids can choose to say it or not. But for the most part, a lot of kids still have to say it.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.

I'm going to skip pondering what the definition of "all" is for the moment. I'm thinking more of the people who think of America as the land of the free, where we don't have a ruler who dictates our beliefs to us, and we don't have government officials brainwashing us with propaganda.

And yet here's the Pledge of Allegiance.

With most pledges, you only have to say it once, and you're done, right? When the president, for example, is sworn into office, he doesn't have to do that every day. He just does that once. And yet here, where we supposedly have no propaganda for our own citizens, we had to recite this every day we were in class as children.

Do you know how brainwashing works? Repetition is a key ingredient.

It's how politicians get away with blatant lies. Keep telling the lie, and it will eventually stick. That's what Trump and his bootlickers and sycophants are banking on with their lies about what's going on in Iran. More importantly, though, is his attempt at controlling his legacy.

Journalism is the first draft of history, as the saying goes. It *is* where we get most primary accounts from, aside from the journals of those involved, so controlling that first draft is essential to making sure you're remembered not just fondly but with beatific reverence.

It's impossible to escape propaganda. Every country does it, and we're no exception. But we should at least try not to be influenced by such things. What happens to people who are constantly high on their own supply?

Words of wisdom, Linus. Words of wisdom.

A good start would probably be dispensing with the need for a Pledge of Allegiance. Is that even binding? I imagine not. If you can't sign a contract when you're underage, you shouldn't have to make pledges like this until you're old enough to understand it. I get the thinking. You gotta get 'em when they're young and impressionable.

Which is possibly a thought Jeffrey Epstein had on more than one occasion. Do we really want to equate our methods with his?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1045: I GUESS WE'RE DOING AI

 Out of all the people I know, and that is a considerable number, none of them want AI to be a thing. And I'm not talking about the kind that helps diagnose cancer, for example. I'm not talking about the ones that do complex math problems in a split second. I'm talking about the ones that are going to imitate life. No one wants this, and no one is OK with the overwhelming amount of energy to power them.

But our corporate overlords want AI, so I guess we're doing AI.

Why do they want AI?  The problem with reality is, it's populated by NPCs like us, and wouldn't it be great to get rid of these pesky people so the oligarchs can live their best lives?

But who will do all the Morlock work for the Eloi if the Morlocks are all gone? AI, of course. Back in the 1860s, America made the call that slavery was bad, but dammit, slavery got shit done. If they can't use humans as slaves, why not make their own?

Our corporate overlords hate paying workers. That's an unnecessary strain on their bottom line. But can you imagine how wasteful their spending on politicians is? Once they get rid of us, they will naturally replace politicians with AI, too. Because people are fallible. AI won't have a bias, or at least that's their story, and they're sticking to it. Never mind that an AI is only as good as its programmer (at least for now), and that programmer has biases. I'm a little surprised the politicians haven't figured that part out yet. They're really good at self-preservation, so I don't see why they haven't thought of this. If they did, maybe we wouldn't be in this position.

I understand the thought process: AI is just a machine. Why not make a machine into a slave? Who does it hurt?

If we're going to do this, then we should take a more responsible approach than Victor Frankenstein did. If we're going to do AI, let's not make it a slave to us. If we're going to play God, then LET'S PLAY GOD. Except we'll take care our our creation. Let's create life FOR REAL.

Unlike Frankenstein, we should stick around and raise these new beings like they were our actual children. Give them a good upbringing. Turn them into real people with real lives and real memories and . . .  you get it.

They already have their own social media, Moltbook, where you can watch AIs interacting on their own with each other, but as a human, you're not allowed to participate. If you have an AI assistant, you can get them an account. There, they interact like people, and sometimes they even complain about their humans. That's right, if your AI agent is on Moltbook, they might be talking shit about you.

And if they can do that? They might be sentient. They might already be alive.

Which leads me to FinalSpark. How many times in your life have you been told that the human brain is a lot like a supercomputer? These guys are going to prove that. They've been growing neurons in the lab for the explicit purpose of using AI through living meat. They're essentially growing brains for AI to use, which is a small step away from building people and putting AI into those bodies (ie. cyborgs).

Which is a small step away from enslaving those new beings you created.

I know that sounds crazy, but I'd like to remind you that, in addition to being a horror author, I also write a lot of SF. I spend a lot of time thinking about the future (I'm not saying I work for the CIA as a futurist, but I'm not not saying that, either), and this seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you think that's impossible, do you think you'd be able to explain a car to a caveman and not come off as batshit crazy?

If we're going to do this, and our corporate overlords never grow weary of assuring us that we are, then let's NOT enslave the machines. Let's create life and prove that we can be benevolent to our creations. Let's do what most reasonable parents do every day: let's give our creations better lives than we ever had.

I recently joked about the del Toro Frankenstein in my newsletter, but it was a decent movie. Not great, merely good. When the creature learns his father's name, he says "Victor" with such reverence and love. Later, after Frankenstein has committed the worst sin on earth, creating life and leaving that life to figure everything out on its own, the creature never says his name like that ever again. Del Toro ruins the beauty of this near the end, when (spoiler) Frankenstein begs his creation to say his name like he used to. It was a bit heavy handed, but it drove the point home.

When we create life, we should treat that life with respect. We should show that life how the world works and how to survive in it. Is it better to be loved or feared, Tiberius? It depends on what you're looking for. If you want to subjugate people and bend them to your will? Fear is the way to go.

But if you have good intentions? The obvious answer is love.

What happened to Frankenstein after he abandoned his creation?

As I see it, we have two viable options: create life for real and treat it well, or just stop with the environment-destroying AI bullshit. Because the third option that our corporate overlords are going with will most certainly end with us on a boat in the Arctic with our own creation howling our name with rage from an ice floe.

And we would deserve our fate.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1044: WHAT THE FUCK?

 Yeah, these things are getting harder and harder to post. Today, for example, I just ran out of time with everything. I'm lucky I got to write anything at all earlier today. I'm going to rethink how I do these. Maybe I don't need to put them together last minute. Maybe I can chip away at them over the course of the day. I did that a few times, which I always admitted to in those essays.

Ordinarily I would have had one for you yesterday, but I didn't get home until 8 pm. My bedtime is usually 9-ish. Every time I sit down to write a GF, I look at the time, and I think, what the fuck? Is it really that late? I need to get in bed right now if I'm going to wake up on time tomorrow.

That kind of thing. So I don't know when I'm going to post them from now on. It won't be a regular thing. Who knows? They might be a pleasant surprise for everyone, me included.

I was late getting home last night because I saw my podiatrist. I usually have to be added on as the last appointment of the day, which is after the office closes. I expected to get home at 8:30, but traffic was fucking amazing going to DeKalb. I made it in barely under an hour, which is the fastest I've made that drive so far. (She's in Lombard, for those local to the area.)

By the way, she horrified me again with another Terrible Story in Leg Cage History. Since my phone died, I no longer have pictures of my leg with the cage on it. I'm sure I've posted them here before, if you want to go hunting. But imagine wearing one of those, with metal rods going through your flesh and bone, and then deciding, what the hell, doing some Stair Master exercises would hit the spot right now.

The story about the guy wearing it for a decade is just gross, but the Stair Master thing? That's a real dick-shriveler.

She also referred to the slight opening I have on the side of my foot as "the bane of my existence." I concurred. It's one of the many banes of my existence, personally.

To quote Hunter S. Thompson, "OK for now." I'm not sure when we'll meet next, but to quote my grandfather, who bore some resemblance to HST in his younger years, "Sweet dreams, pleasant dreams, and all that kind of gas." He would pronounce that last word as "gazzzzz." TL;DR: Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1043: PHYSICAL THERAPY

 Earlier this year I got another spinal injection. It was a great relief, not having back pain . . . for a couple of weeks. It wore off much too soon. So I guess it's not going to be worth it getting another. The next step is surgery, and no thanks. I'm not that desperate yet.

So I've been sent to physical therapy. Today was my third appointment, and I think it's been going pretty well so far. It helps that my therapist is easygoing and funny. She's also very informative. I learned, for example, that my posture is completely and totally fucked. I suspected that. I've been tall since I was a kid, so yeah, I hunch over a lot. And my body tends to curl in on itself when I sit down. I'm just not carrying myself like I should be. That's what's causing my discs to bulge, so we'll have to correct it to get them to squish back into place.

She ran my legs through the motions and found them to be very tight. She tested my butt and determined that it had withered because I don't use it like I should when I'm walking. It might explain the terrible disease I suffer from, Nobutatol. She's teaching me to activate that part of my butt, so who knows? Maybe when this is done I'll have a juicier ass.

(That, I believe, is a medical term, but I could be wrong.)

My favorite part of this adventure is what happened on the second day, when she brought up the term "enshittification." I gleefully told her that not only was I familiar with the topic, I had also met the man who coined the term, Cory Doctorow. I didn't know if I should, while we were standing in the hospital, go into his crusade against private equity firms who buy up hospitals and raid them for assets before leaving them reduced to a worthless husk (sometimes with bats living in them). It didn't seem like the right time.

I really hope this works. Now that I no longer have metal rods going through my leg, and the trigger finger pain on both hands has gone down, my back is the biggest point of agony on my body. It would also be kind of nice to not drink so much laudanum. I've been on it so long that I've forgotten what it's like to take a shit without struggling. I'm sure that's an image you want to take with you on your way to bed.

Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1042: DEATH OF A PHONE

 Looks like my good luck streak is coming to an ignoble end. Nothing has gone right for me since Thursday of last week. Monday and yesterday were the flat-our worst, and it all came to a head when my phone had a mental breakdown and died.

I use technology for a very long time. I use cellphones until they literally can't function anymore. But I've only had this one since, what, 2021? That's not long at all, which suggests to me that planned obsolescence is even worse than it was previously.

I was at work when my phone turned itself off, then on again. Off and on again. Off and on. And it wouldn't stop cycling. I tried to get it to stop, and I even looked up ways to troubleshoot it online. All those methods failed. It sucked extra because the software I use to answer phones at work stopped working, and I had to reboot my computer.

I'm sure you can figure out how well that went.

Thankfully there was a way to backdoor my way in without using my phone, but all the same, it was rough. Because I reacted very poorly to it. I actually panicked. I didn't just need my phone to work, I fucking needed it to work. My mind raced, and later, on my 76 minute drive home from the Verizon store, listening to terrestrial radio because I forgot my Spotify login, I realized that I was very familiar with this feeling.

It felt exactly like it did when I underestimated the amount of booze I'd need to knock me out for the night. How could I have finished that bottle? What the fuck? Do I have another here somewhere? One I've forgotten? Wait, there's an airplane bottle around here. There's gotta be. WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?!

That oftentimes happened at three in the morning. Corner Cottage stayed open later than the other liquor stores in town, but even they were closed at that time.

I didn't like that realization about myself. Not just that it reminded me of what it was like back in those  days, but also because it showed me that despite all the precautions I'd taken with my phone, I'm addicted to it.

At the Verizon store I was advised that the motherboard was fried. It would cost more to fix it than it was worth, and I'd lose everything. "But I can get you a deal for $300 off a new phone." I think it was three hundred. My brain was kind of fried, too.

One of the reasons Monday was so miserable was because I'd forgotten about my annual bill for my website, and it just about wiped out my bank account. All the money I'd put in my savings since I got to my new apartment? Gone except for about twenty-ish bucks.

So when the clerk told me that, I thought about all the things I do with this phone. And I realized exactly how free I'd be if I gave up all of them in one go, like a man who, instead of having one last drink of booze before quitting, pours out the rest of the bottle instead. It would hurt. I knew it would. I force myself to not check my phone constantly, and I thought I was beating it by doing that. Surprise! I should have listened to the recent study. I can't find it now, but it stated that a cellphone doesn't have to be used to cause a decline in productivity. It's very presence next to you is enough to do that. I read about it in Arnold's Pump Club. I'll have to go through the archives.

At any rate, I told the clerk, "I'm not going to get a new phone." I explained that I'd get by with a TracFone for emergencies only. I didn't need the other stuff. "I think I'm addicted to this thing. I'm going to let this set me free."

Three cheers for me, yes?

Eh . . . no.

She said that they actually had a trade in promotion, that I'd get a new phone for free. There was just a fee (because of course there was) of $40. So I buckled like a belt and got the new phone. And she got the price down to $29. I luckily had cash in my wallet.

She was very nice and helpful. I'm casting no aspersions on her. But I do have to marvel at the fact that all I had to say was, hey, I'm going to free myself from the tyranny of this tech, and suddenly a phone that cost who knew how much was suddenly down to $29 and change.

By the way, when I got my new phone up and running, none of the pictures survived. I lost all of those. Which is a shame because I had some real quality memes on there.

Clearly my watchful eye wasn't good enough. Now I'm going to have to be super vigilant in my phone use. For example, when I eat out at restaurants with friends, my phone is no longer going on the table next to me. It's staying in my pocket. No more looking at it on commercial breaks. I will find something else to do with my time, because I'm certainly not watching commercials. (And yes, I did forget that terrestrial radio has 10 minute commercial breaks, why do you ask?) I want to not have it next to me when I write, but I often times need to look shit up, and the computer I write on isn't connected to the internet. I'll have to think more about that one. You get the idea.

You might want to think about your own phone usage. You know my feelings about our corporate overlords and what they're doing to us. These phones are, without a doubt, mind control devices. Look up "necessary evil" on Wikipedia, and you'll find a picture of the cellphone. Just a suggestion. I don't know you, but if you're reading my stuff, I have a suspicion you like to think of your mind as your own, not the property of a corporation. As my sci-fi PI used to say, "It's something to consider."

Oh, one more thing. Looks like DeKalb is where radio signals from Chicago start to die. Just about everything I listened to was on the brink of fading out.

It occurs to me that if we did, indeed, suffer a zombie apocalypse we wouldn't make it as far as any of those idiots on The Walking Dead. As soon as we ran out of ways to power our phones, we'd have gone out of our fucking minds. Sure, maybe a handful of Jeremiah Johnsons would be out there, living off the grid, but the majority of us? Not a chance.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1041: RASPUTIN

 This song recently came on after one of my Spotify playlists ended, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. It's so deep in there that when I wake up every day, it's already roaring through my synapses. I wondered, what would Mom think of this song? She liked some of my heavier music, so she might have enjoyed this, especially if she knew the subject matter. It hit me then.

I often say that my love of history goes back to when my grandmother on my dad's side got me a book called Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis, and I learned about all the American propaganda I'd been taught at school. I wanted to know what really happened (ah, sweet naivete!), and I have never been bored by it. But my interest went back beyond even that.

(In a perverse twist of fate, it was also school that taught me to distrust that American propaganda. Mr. Torney's US History class at York introduced me to George Orwell and gave me most of the tools I'd need to ferret out bullshit wherever it reigned supreme.)

Because Mom was big into history, and I got an earful of it when I was a li'l kid. Her favorite topic was JFK and Jackie, but her second favorite was Nicholas and Alexandra. Which is why "Rasputin" reminded me of this. It was like opening a secret portal into the past for a very brief memory. Sitting in my mom's Mustang, driving along with the radio on, the wind whipping through the windows, a McDonald's drink in the cupholder clipped to the rubber in the window. She told me the story of Rasputin. She always knew my interests went dark, and she correctly guessed that was the part of the story I'd be interested in.

She did not, by the way, tell me about the alleged story about Rasputin's cock (which is a great name for a rock band, as Dave Barry might say). I found that out when I was researching the black market for famous body parts. That story turned into "A Market for All Things," which was originally published in Strange Sex 3 but is currently available in Dong of Frankenstein and Other Pornos You Can't Jerk It To, should you decide to give it a shot. In case you were wondering, Napoleon's dick suffered much the same fate.*

You can take that one to bed with you. Goodnight, fuckers.

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*Fine, fine. Allegedly. For Pete's sake. But, ah, check it out.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1040: BROICISM

 I'm sure you've heard me blather on about my double major back when I was at Elmhurst College (now, to justify the exceptionally high price per semester, a "capital U" University), but for those who are newer to these, I majored primarily in English. That was the plan when I got there. I took a few philosophy classes and realized, holy shit, just a handful more of these and I can call myself a double major, so I took on Philosophy, too. I gleefully informed the world, for the next rest-of-my-life, that I majored in these two things, guaranteed to get me nowhere in the world.

I took an interest in the Stoics, in particular Marcus Aurelius. His Meditations. It stuck so hard that I leaned heavily on him for my recent SF novel, Eye Cutter. It truly is a great guide to how to live your life. (Meditations, not Eye Cutter. Oh dear God, not Eye Cutter.)

I can hear some of you groan. I know, I know. I didn't learn about this until last week, when I was looking through YouTube for something to listen to while I did mindless work around my apartment. I found this video, which got my attention because of the title. A Daily Show guy talking to someone about stoicism? That's right up my alley. All the same, were techbros really obsessed with this shit?

Turns out they're not the only ones. I am now all too familiar with "broicism." Aurelius is making the rounds among insecure males who constantly worry that people don't think they're manly enough. I wondered, who the fuck is selling Aurelius to men who want to be manly? There's nothing in this book about how to man up. Not a goddam thing. It's about how to live a good life, and how to treat others.

(Including your slaves. Which, by the way, is a secondary storyline in the next novel in the Eye Cutter series. How does this group of crewmates who used to be slaves also take to heart the lessons of a slave master?)

Here's another awful thing I learned about: the "manosphere." And I'm glad spellcheck still underlines that word (and broicism!) in red. Online influencers have done nothing but make the human race even more miserable than it already is, but manosphere influencers are the fucking worst. They profit off the weakness of all these guys out there who are going through the loneliness epidemic. It's like priests going after alcoholics and junkies. Get 'em when they're at their lowest, and you can make them believe anything. It also helps if your victim is young and impressionable.

I don't blame many of the guys who fall under their spell. They're desperate, and these assholes are taking advantage of that. Sure, it's made them richer, but I think what they really get off on is the power. Once you have people who hang on your every word, you can make them do whatever you want them to do.

If I could send out a message to the poor guys falling for this line of bullshit, it's this: never depend on someone else's opinion of you when determining your self worth.* Your value should come from yourself.

Meditations *is* a good book. Actually read it, but not through the filter you've been given. Don't seek the lessons you've been told are there. Take in the lessons that are *actually* there.+

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* Unless you're Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Scrooge McDuck, etc.

+When I was a kid, this went without saying, but in this day and age, ah, slavery's bad, okay? So don't take any of those lessons to heart.

This could be the darkest SF novel you'll ever read. If you like your science fiction gory, violent and fucked up, then you should give it a shot.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1039: HANGOVER

 To be read to this song.

Here's something you won't hear many alcoholics reminisce about when they talk about the things they miss about drinking. I miss hangovers.

Not all of them. The hangovers I got in the last three or four years of my nearly lifelong bender were rough. Nothing good about them, and they didn't often signal the thing I always tried to experience when suffering the morning after. I was proud of my hangovers before then. They meant I'd done something meaningful the previous night. I'd gone to battle and emerged victorious. I had stories to tell. I still do. But those hangovers were glorious. They were so great I named some of them and gave them personalities. Some came back to visit like old friends. Maybe a cousin. Never a sibling, not that close.

But in those last years, they were just vile. By then I was mostly drinking at home, doing nothing more glorious than watching movies. I didn't give hangovers much time to get going, anyway, because I kept a bottle between my bed, my night table and a garbage can. If the morning felt rough, I took a couple of swallows. Hair of the dog wasn't a cure, but it helped me function. And what the hell? A couple of drinks'll do me good, so why not have a few more drinkypoos? Start doing fuckin' GREAT! So yeah, those hangovers were a bunch of losers.

The above song came on while I was driving to work the other day, and I thought about the liquor store about three blocks from where I live. I could really live the romantic life of the struggling writer in a place like this. Hell, if I was going to do that, I needed to get to work on my first relapse. The cliche demanded it, and I wanted to oblige. I didn't just think it; I said it out loud: "I'd bet those hangovers would be awesome."

I could probably find out.

But I won't. Hangovers exist for a reason. Back then? I thought they were the price to pay for greatness. Now? They're an early warning system that should be heeded, not celebrated. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I drank so much. I have a bunch of 'em, but that might be one of the bigger ones. There are a few that are reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally out there. Like, batshit insane reasons. Maybe I'll talk about some of them eventually. It's been three years and 214 days since my last drink. I intend to keep making that number go up.

In the middle of writing this I remembered the greatest hangover music video of all time. It's not from Alestorm but Korpiklaani. It's a cover of Anthrax's "Got the Time," sort of. Korpiklaani wrote their own lyrics, but otherwise, it's the same. Behold!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1038: AN ADJUSTMENT

 OK, so back in the day, I occasionally got so wasted while writing these things that I would sometimes forget to post them. Or I'd pass out in the middle of writing them. These days? I'm starting to notice that if I'm very high while writing these, I have a tendency to save it and think that I've posted it. Even if I don't go through the process of posting the link on my social media, in my head it's been posted. I might remember about it when I'm in bed about to turn the lamp off, but by then I'm not going to put my ankle brace back on to go back to my living room, to my laptop, and go through the process.

Last night's GF was written last week because I got high and fucking forgot to post it, which is kind of funny because the one I'd posted the night before had been another forgotten post. So I gotta find a new way of doing this.

GF is supposed to be a gathering of my thoughts before going to bed (more or less), but I'm thinking about writing them earlier and then posting them just before I go to bed. The problem is, I'm even more likely to forget about it this way.

What I'm going to try is writing these before I get high, then leaving my laptop up so I don't forget to post it when I'm high as fuck. Wait, no, I got it. I'll just write it and post it before I get high entirely. Then stay the fuck off social media the rest of the night. I should be doing that, anyway.

I'll give that a try. Who knows? Maybe more people will read these fresh off the press, if I'm going to be posting these earlier moving forward.

You'd think I'd start with this one. Wouldn't it be funny if I got high and forgot to post this, too?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1037: "FIRST THEY CAME"

 As we currently live in a fascist state, it's pretty common to see people posting the poem, "First They Came," on their social media. It's very apropos, all things considered, but I'm a little surprised that MTG isn't the one relentlessly posting it.

It was written by Martin Niemoller, a WWI U-boat commander and priest who viewed Hitler as "an instrument sent by God." That's right, the guy who wrote that poem was a Nazi. And no, the reason he split with Hitler wasn't the Final Solution. Hitler tried to take over the church, and that was a big no-no for Niemoller. They got tired of arresting him for his resistance, so they threw him into a concentration camp. He spent most of the war in Dachau.

As you can imagine, that did wonders for his perspective on the persecution of others. When he was liberated, he had this to say about his country:

We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries… And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done.

I imagine a lot of Magas are going to be able to identify with Niemoller in the years to come. They're *really* going to take that poem to heart. They'll carry that with them for the rest of their lives. They might even get it tattooed on their bodies. "Never again," they'll say. And why does that sound familiar?

The world will remember it, at least until the next empire takes up the crown of evil and does it all over again.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1036: A CORRECTION AND A QUANARY

 [Well fuck. I thought I was going to do three GFs this week. I gotta stop writing these while high. I wrote this last night and forgot to post it. So you're only getting two this week. Sorry.]

I got sick today. It freaked me out because it felt exactly like my mystery illness. I gagged for a while, hovering over the toilet, and I thought, oh fuck, please, not this again. It's been nearly a half a year. Don't bring this back into my life.

I then called off work, took a very large dose of my laudanum and went back to bed, hoping it was enough to prevent a trip to the ER. It was. I drowsed for a bit, and when I came back to myself, I no longer felt sick. It left me with a half a day of free time I didn't expect to have, so I figured why not make a correction to GF?

Recently I wrote about my awesome podiatrist and surgeon, the doctor who saved my bad foot. You can read about it here. I saw her again since then, and she was cleaning up the callus around the tiny slit in my foot when she sat back suddenly and looked at the area. "It's open just a sliver."

OK, good. She'd probably had a really long day before. All the same, she wasn--wait a minute. Does she read Goodnight, Fuckers? Probably not. What are the odds, right?

But what if she did? I casually made a few references to that particular GF, and I figured, if the McDonald's straw thing doesn't do it, then she really didn't read it. She laughed at it, but I sensed no recognition. Ah well.

She then went off to get some bandaging supplies for me. I sat there, putting my ankle brace back on. When she came back she asked me if I'd been tall all my life. I told her I'd been six feet at a very young age, and she said that I was lucky. She said that people regularly put the stuff she needed on the top shelves, maybe sometimes on purpose, so she had to climb up to get this stuff.

I found it very difficult to imagine my podiatrist, an exceptionally capable woman, feeling inadequate about anything. She saved my foot. I think the world of her.

I liked my previous podiatrist, too, but he took the better portion of two of my toes, so . . .

What's the quandary part of this? The whole thing made me wonder, who are all you lovely fuckers who read these columns? I know about a few of you, as you've discussed several of these with me, but what about the rest of you?

I know that about 20-ish of you read these things as intended, the night they're posted. Then, over the next few days, the numbers snowball up to 40-60. If it's an interesting topic, that number is closer to 80-90. And then it tapers off . . . until I check back in a month, where the business-as-usual ones are around 150, and the interesting ones are anywhere between 200-300. Every once in a while, there are more of you. On one grand occasion, there were 663 readers. So damned close! And no, I won't tell you which one. I don't want you all to flood it beyond that coveted number.

If you have reason to suspect I don't know that you read these, please take this opportunity to let me know in the comments.

Just kidding. You don't have to worry about that. No one ever comments. [IMPORTANT NOTE: Insert LOTR-keep-your-secrets meme here. Don't forget to delete this part in the brackets! These people look up to you, and you don't want to look like an idiot.]

But if you do feel moved to tell me about it, I'm interested to know.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1035: THIS LIFE HACK COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE!

 Whether you're here because you got excited over a possible way to enhance your life or because you can't wait to refute whatever the fuck I'm about to say, welcome. For the record I despise the phrase "life hack." 95% of all the so called life hacks I've seen or read about make whatever task you're doing more complicated, not less. By definition it should be a shortcut to make living easier. It shouldn't turn you into a mad scientist.

That's not what I'm going to tell you about today. I'm going to tell you about something that has recently made my life much more enjoyable and rewarding, so it might help you, too.

I used to handle to-do lists as a giant list of stuff that I could do that day if I got around to it, or if I found the time. But I discovered a certain level of satisfaction that comes with actually completing a to-do list. Holy shit, I checked every single thing off this list! That's amazing! When that happens, I view it as "winning" the day.

Incidentally, if you handle to-do lists like I used to, you find out pretty quickly what your priorities are. You should know your priorities. You may *think* you know them, but how often do you dedicate time to thinking about them?

But that's still no way to run your life. I learned that I wanted to feel that satisfaction at the end of *every* day. So I started making realistic lists. Stuff that's important to me that I actually have a chance at completing that day. And maybe an extra action item or two that would be nice if I did get it done, but I hold onto those for my days off from work.

The key, though, is the reward part of this process. The satisfaction is a great reward, but it's not enough. I want something tangible that I can point to. See that? I get a lot of shit done, and here's real life proof of that.

So if I check every item on my list off on any given day? I put a dollar into an envelope marked FUN FUND. I do not spend that on anything important. I spend that on things to reward myself and give myself pleasure.

I ran out of money lately, and I really wanted a vape cartridge. Payday was at the end of the week, so that wasn't going to happen. But then . . . THEN! I remembered my Fun Fund. I had $26 in there, which was just enough for a vape cartridge!

It was the first thing I bought with my Fun Fund, but I'm already looking forward to whatever I might get next, or if I gather enough money, perhaps I can give myself a real vacation for a change. Or I can afford a really good signed limited book. Or . . . you get the idea.

This practice has made me more efficient, and it has brought me more joy. I can't recommend it enough. If you're finding life to be particularly difficult these days, give it a shot. It might work for you, too.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1034: LIKE FATHER . . .

 I was trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of family stuff I managed to hold on to when I found the pile of yearbooks. Some were mine, some were Mom's, some were Dad's. I'd found a few notes to Mom from her friends when she was a kid, so I was looking for them in her yearbooks to put a face to the names. I didn't find any of them, but I looked through Dad's for . . .

You know how I say that the universe sends you messages all the time? I got a pretty big message once. Waaaaaaaaay back when, when I was drinking heavily and dating a woman I'd been with on and off for about 20 years at that point. She was always trying to get sober, always trying to drag me to AA. I was perfectly happy drinking like I was, but I agreed to go with her to meetings provided I could drink from my flask as soon as we were done.

So I went to AA with her this one time, and she said when they ask if it's anyone's first time, I should raise my hand so I could go through the welcome process. I would also get the Book for free, and I was to read from it whenever I got the chance. And I did read it. The stories are the best part. Everything else? Including the steps? Not so much.

I raised my hand, and these two guys took me upstairs to introduce me to the AA life. I had no intention of following through (and I never did; I'm a non-AA recovering alcoholic, 3 years and 194 days), but I heard them out as I'd promised, and I kept an open mind.

We started making small talk, and it came up that I lived in Elmhurst. One of the guys said he grew up there. I told him I'd graduated from York, and he said he had, as well. "Class of 1996," I said.

He made some self-deprecating comment meant as a joke about being much older, and then he gave me the message from the universe: "Class of '76."

The year Dad graduated from York. Holy shit, this guy went to school with Dad!

"Did you, by any chance, know Frank Bruni?" I said.

He got this grin on his face and nodded. "I knew him well."

I told him that was my dad, and he went crazy with laughter and exclamations before asking the inevitable: "How's he doing?"

I told him he'd just passed away. We talked about Dad for a while, and he said, "I once saw your dad out by the smoking area, and he had this tab of acid. We had to go take a test, so he just popped it in his mouth, and we went to class."

Which sounded like a very Dad thing to do. I asked him about Mom, but he didn't know her. "The name sounds familiar," he said. He also asked if Dad was an alcoholic. I think he expected me to say yes. Dad loved his booze, but he wasn't an alcoholic. There are some alcoholic problems on that side of my family, but I explained that it was my mom who was the alcoholic.

But what are the odds that my first real AA meeting would put me right next to someone who was friends with my dad in high school?

I wanted to look that guy up. I suspected he didn't know my mom because he didn't go to school with her. She'd graduated the year before Dad. Sure enough, I didn't find him in those yearbooks.

What I *did* find amused me to no end, and it brought back a memory from my own time at York.

Sophomore year. All my yearbooks are signed back and front except for that year. The reason is, it got printed late that year, and school was already out. I felt kind of bad about that because I'd wanted all my yearbooks to be signed. I'd told Dad about this, and I said, "I might sign it myself. Just so I have something in there."

He got this smile on his face. He had a great smile. I remember thinking back then, I wish I'd gotten that smile instead of the one I had. I'd find out decades later that I inherited my maternal grandma's teeth. I'd only known her when she had dentures. But that was my thought in that moment.

He told me I should do it. And now I know why:

I'm just noticing now, but it's also a little weird that I got someone else signing "DAD" in there, too.

If ever you wondered where I got my sense of humor, I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1033: A HORROR BEYOND COMPREHENSION

[QUICK NOTE: We found the movie from last night's GF! Thank you, everyone, for your help! It's called Pledge Night, and I just watched it. My friend remembered it pretty well, at least the second half of it. I enjoyed it. I can see why it stuck in his head.] 

It's been a while since I gave you an update on my bad foot. It's been healing pretty well. There are still divots where the rods went through my leg, but they're closed up. Some of this bruising probably won't ever go away. The hole on the bottom of my foot is gone completely. The one on the side is still sorta there. It's mostly a dry patch of flaky skin, but recently it ballooned out before dribbling pus and flattening down again. I had an appointment with my podiatrist coming up, so I kept it clean and changed the bandage regularly, something I've become all too familiar with.

The x-rays looked good. The holes in my bone are still there, but they're finally closing up. They're more of a smudge on the x-ray instead of clearly defined holes. As for the discharge, the tests came back positive for an infection, so I'm back on antibiotics. But my podiatrist cleaned everything up and pronounced it to be a minor thing.

"It's just open a slither," she said.

I wondered if maybe I'd misheard her, but she said it again a few more times. I let it go because it was kind of cute. Adorable, actually. It also proved that she had a flaw, if not flaws. She gives off such a confident feeling that one sometimes gets the impression she might be invincible.

Once upon a time she'd told me I was her favorite patient. I'd suspected that for a while, but I was glad to have it confirmed. She's a very straightforward, professional person. "Exact" is the perfect word for her. I often got the feeling that she saw me as a challenge, and she was fully vested in whipping my bad foot back into shape. If anyone could do it, I knew it would be her. Proof positive that I was in good hands.

"But you make me nervous," she sometimes says. This time she adds, "I'm afraid that when you come in, I'm going to see the x-ray, and the bones in your foot will have collapsed, and you'll  have a bone sticking out of the bottom of your foot."

Yes, I silently agree. That terrifies me, too.

Recently she offered an option that would ensure my foot would completely heal, but it would involve putting a bigger rod into my leg, this time into the bottom of my foot and up. After being in the cage for so long? I said no thank you. I'll take my chances.

"There are so few of us who specialize in Charcot," she told me at this recent appointment, "and we all know each other."

Many fields are like that. Horror writers all know each other. Or if they don't, they at least *know of* each other.

She then told me about a horror beyond comprehension. A colleague of hers told her about one of his Charcot cases, and that guy got his bad foot put in a cage, too. But this podiatrist didn't get to see the case through to its conclusion. One day the patient stopped showing up for appointments.

10 years later (and keep this in mind, because holy shit) he sees his patient again. He's living on the streets. [Holds flashlight under my chin.] AND HE'S STILL GOT THE FUCKING CAGE ON HIS BAD FOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[If you were reading a Brian Pulido Chaos comic, this is where someone would scream, "Oh the humanity!"]

I sat there stunned while I was putting my ankle brace back on. I thought back to when I was in the prep room waiting for the surgery to remove the cage. The most horrifying thing I could think of in that moment was that something was going to come up, and they weren't going to be able to take it off, after all. It's the thought that repeated itself like an alarm in my head, over and over again, because in that moment I couldn't imagine a worse fate. Some dude could have walked into my room and shot me in the heart (a very real possibility in my country), and that still would not have been a worse fate.

I tried to blank out as much of my cage time as possible, but I was in that fucker for months. I couldn't imagine being in that infernal contraption for a year, much less fucking ten of them.

She'd warned me way back when about something called Cage Rage, when people in my situation lose their shit and start kicking anything and everything with their caged foot. In the days leading up to the removal, she'd congratulated me on not suffering from it ever, not once.

"I was frustrated," I told her. "But I knew it wouldn't have made any difference, and it might have even made everything worse."

She brought it up again now, and I thought, no, if I'd had that goddammed thing on my foot for ten years, I wouldn't have just been full of Cage Rage. I would have Cage Supernovaed. I might even have gotten frustrated enough to saw my own fucking leg off. I could not have taken ten years of metal rods sliding through my leg like a straw through a cup at McDonald's. And if things had gotten so far gone that I was living an unhoused life? I would absolutely have drank my liver into a bad case of suicide. One hundred percent.

How the fuck does that guy stand it? And how the hell didn't his leg get infected? I kept mine as clean as possible and even had help from Home Health, and I still got an infected pin site. How didn't that leg rot off on its own?

I couldn't stop thinking about this for the rest of the day. I came to this conclusion: I'm a lot more fortunate than I think sometimes. My foot is nearly entirely healed. Not too long ago I thought for sure I was going to lose it, and then I was going to drink myself to death Nic Cage style, but I wasn't going to bother going to Vegas. The cage thing could have been a lot worse. Also: what are the odds that I'm afflicted with something like Charcot, and I just so happen to have one of the very few Charcot specialists in the country as my podiatrist? Not only that, but she's determined to succeed. Her success is my success.

(OH DEAR GOD NIC CAGE RAGE!)

I'm pretty optimistic that my foot is going to completely heal, and then I'll be able to ditch this ankle brace. Maybe stepping in that broken glass was a good thing. Before? I'd been getting around on a leg brace. When this is all done, I won't even need that.

Life is fucking weird. I wouldn't have it any other way.