GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1073: DIMITSANA

 

As you know, I've been going through the family pictures before figuring out who should get them. I've saved pictures of people I don't know for last so I can do some detective work to find out who they were. This picture, among about a dozen others, was in an envelope addressed to Gramps in handwriting I now know belonged to his sister, Helen. She and a few relatives went to Greece in the 'Eighties, to Dimitsana in particular.

Gramps and his two sisters were first generation Americans. Their parents came to America in the 'Twenties (and I have their dad and theo's naturalization papers!), and they referred to Gramps as "their American son." Dimitsana is where they were from.

And that house above? Take a look at the back of the photo:

The John in question is Gramps. I was named after him. How many people have a picture of their great-grandfather's childhood home? And to find out that it's 300 years old? Holy shit. I also have his death certificate, so I know my great-great-grandfather was named Zaharis Kyriakopoulos. (No mother is listed.)

That leg of my family comes from a mountain town with more buildings that look like that one. In fact, here's another picture:

And here's the back:

Not sure who Dave is. All I know is, Dave's not here. Not a lot of people live in Dimitsana. Not even 800 souls populate the town, and Kyriakopoulos is a common name there. I almost certainly have blood relatives still living there. There were times when I was a kid when I thought, wouldn't it be weird to go to, say, Greece and look up the Kopoulos family? (I didn't know they shortened the name until I found the papers back in 2022.) Or maybe go back to Ireland and look up the Dunnes? (I actually did go to Ireland only to discover Dunne is one of the most common names in the country.) And then, because I know the least amount about the Bruni family, wouldn't it be nice to go to Italy and look them up?

(Three of my four grandparents were 100% one nationality. Grandma had a lot of diversity in her background, so I can't really pick a country to go back to for her family.)

Now that I've seen The White Lotus? Maybe not. I think that's probably the most realistic way something like that would go down. But it's nice to think about.

I've gone down some interesting paths looking up my family history. I'm pretty good with Mom's side. I come from families with names like Cota, Friend, Noanes, Demeroukas and so on. I just wish I'd thought to ask all the questions I have now back when Grandma and Gramps were still alive. My aunt is the only one older than me on that side of the family, and I've found she unfortunately doesn't have all the answers I'm looking for, just some of them.

Is anyone else at all curious about where they came from? Have you done research without resorting to stuff like Ancestry, etc.? So far I've done a lot of detective work without it, and I've done pretty good, but I'm reaching the brick wall point in my research. Any thoughts on what to do without sending my DNA off to a corporation that is most likely to use it in ways I couldn't possibly imagine?

And now I have an added bonus mystery, this one from Grandma's side of the family. I was under the impression all my life that the one great-grandparent I'd come closest to meeting was Grandma's mom. The reason I had that impression was because Grandma told me, herself. I found something today which she might not have been aware of. I asked my aunt, "When did Grandma's dad die?" She said she didn't know and didn't think Grandma knew, either.

The thing I found? Grandma's mom's death certificate. On it she is listed as married, not widowed. I learned lately that Grandma's parents separated early in her life. I know her dad didn't go too far because I found a picture of him with Grandma's sister sitting in his lap at the 50th anniversary of Grandma's maternal grandparents. That was back in the 'Fifties, and her mom would die in February 1978.

Because next to that MARRIED space on her mom's death certificate? It says she was survived by her spouse!

It is possible that he and I lived on this planet at the same time. I have tried everything to find out what happened to him, and I've come up with nothing. The internet has no idea whatever happened to Harold McKinley Cota, Sr. All I can find is Harry, Grandma's brother. So yeah, any suggestions?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1072: BILLY THE KID

 

I recently got MGM+ again because FROM has a new season. I'm all caught up now. and I'm canceling after the season finale. But they also have BILLY THE KID, and I just watched the final season. (I also noticed they have the show, 12 MONKEYS. I lost cable before the final season aired, so I'm finally getting to watch that. I'll probably write about that experience at some point soon, because it's a little bizarre for me.)

When I first started watching BILLY THE KID, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was written by Michael Hirst. I love his historical shows, like The Tudors and Vikings. Now that he's turned his attention to one of my favorite western outlaws? I was all in.

And I watched as it did its best to distance itself from the Young Guns movies. I can't tell you how much I love those two flicks. But because they're such an important part of the legend, this show needs to steer the boat its own way.

Hirst obviously loves history, but he's not beholden to it. If it comes down to a decision between what really happened (or at least the agreed upon facts) and what makes more sense for the story, he will always go with the latter, never the former. So you can't watch his stuff and expect an accurate history lesson, but he gets the spirit of history rather than the letter.

So the whole time I watched this show, my biggest question was, is he going to go the Brushy Bill route? If you don't know, back in the 'Fifties, an old man named Brushy Bill Roberts claimed to be Billy the Kid, that Pat Garrett hadn't killed him, and that he'd been keeping a low profile for decades. He had a lot of scars that line up with injuries Billy the Kid was known to have had. There were still a few Old West outlaws alive at the time, and when they trotted Brushy Bill out in front of them, they more or less agreed: this really was Billy the Kid. But in an age where DNA testing didn't exist, and the actual location of Billy the Kid's corpse was unknown, it couldn't be definitively proved.

Here there be spoilers. If you're going to watch the show, you'd best stop here. If you've seen it, or you don't give a fuck, please continue.

After Pat Garrett shoots Billy and leaves, Billy still breathes, and a friend rushes to get him out of there. I thought, YES! They're doing Brushy Bill! Because I believe that he really was Billy the Kid. I think that's legitimately part of the story.

But Hirst actually *doesn't* do Brushy Bill. He takes a much bigger swing at history. Like, I'm talking a Babe Ruth kind of swing.

Because later, after Billy is nursed back to health, HE GOES BACK TO GET REVENGE ON PAT GARRETT. He flat out guns Garrett down, and that's it.

Holy fuck, that is huge. It then occurred to me that I actually didn't know how Pat Garrett died. I never had much interest in the guy, although I tend to agree with Young Guns 2, that Garrett was in on Billy faking his death. So I looked it up, and Garrett died under mysterious circumstances, much like the real life Johnny Ringo. In fact, it's very similar to the swing Tombstone takes when it suggests that Doc Holliday killed Johnny Ringo. I've read up on the subject, and the popular belief is that he committed suicide. I think that's the case. But we don't know for sure, just like we don't know who actually killed Garrett.

Could it have been Billy the Kid? If you believe the Brushy Bill story, like I do, then it's within the realm of possibility.

But then Hirst follows it with Billy going up against Thomas Catron, the local politician that was hellbent on eliminating Billy and his Regulators. In the series finale he shoots Catron in the head, which simply did not happen. Catron went on to become a US Senator and died in 1921. But that is par for the Hirst course. It made for a good ending to the series, something that ties up all the loose threads but wasn't necessarily true.

I'm certain that, if he went on for another episode, he would have depicted Brushy Bill. In the end Billy literally--and I mean LITERALLY, not figuratively as many people use that word today--rides off into the sunset with his wife and kid.

That last episode was good. It wrapped up everything. But I don't think it was great, which is also par for the Hirst course EXCEPT FOR THE TUDORS. That show had a final episode that was awe-inspiringly beautiful, one of those moments that takes your breath away. The only reasonable response is to stare in astonishment and silence.

BILLY THE KID was a lot of fun. I'd recommend it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1071: FUCKED NEW WORLD

 

Can we please leave the horny spam to actual human beings instead of AI? I got the email above not too long ago. In case you can't read it, it's from Strong Dick, and the subject is SLAUGHTER HER PUSSY TILL SHE LOSES HER VOICE. What in the actual fuck?

I can't imagine that was written by a human being. When it comes to sex, one of the last verbs that would ever occur to me, if at all, would be "slaughter." But to "slaughter" someone's "pussy" until they're no longer capable of speaking? Number one: why would you want that? And two: why would you want to do that to someone?

At least when some financial prisoner in a call center half a world away sends me an email, I know it will be the usual. "Hey sexy" or "get hard with rhino horns" or "wanna fuck?" and so on. I almost said TEN BUCK PHONE FUCK, but that's not necessarily a spam email. It's more like an ad in a porno magazine.

And while I'm on the subject, porn sites need to stop with the AI advertising. It's creepy as fuck, looking in their fake eyes desperately trying to not look fake. I want to go back to the game that will make me cum in five seconds, or the lonely housewife in my area. At least I know that's a human being trying to take advantage of me instead of an AI trying to get me all horned up.

I get it. A lot of people are lonely. But there's no way anyone is falling for this shit, right? Right?

RIGHT?!

Wouldn't it be creepy if an AI left a thirst trap comment on this post?

UPDATE!

The day after I posted this GF, I got two more spam emails trying to horn me up. Can you figure out which one, based on the criteria mentioned above, I actually appreciated?

In case you can't read it, the one from Addison says, "She wants it now: Buy a beer, take a cock in my mouth!" The one from Emery says, "Fuck her till she screams." I'll give you a moment to think about it. Meet me at the bottom in ten seconds . . .

I did not appreciate Emery because I think he's AI trying to horn me up. I'm guessing it's trying to sell me boner pills. I'm guessing AI thinks fucking someone until they scream is something living, breathing people want. I *did* appreciate Madison, because I'm certain that's an actual human being trying to take advantage of me, like in the good ol' days. The weird phrasing is probably due to mistranslation. The smaller print refers to a meter as a "metre," and I think this person is trying to say, "Buy me a beer, and I'll blow you." Thank you, Addison. A+ for effort. Keep fighting the good fight. Don't let AI take your job.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1070: NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS

 I am 100% certain there are sentient beings living throughout the universe. Existence is a pretty fucking big place, and if the Big Bang is correct, it's still going at approximately 45 miles per second. Go ahead, look it up if you don't believe me. I find it difficult to believe that our planet is the big show. We haven't even gotten beyond the moon, for crying out loud. So no, I don't think we're very consequential in the big picture.

Have these beings visited us? I don't know. There are some great theories that I love, but I don't buy into them. All jokes aside, there aren't good reasons to visit us. I'm going to use the word "alien" from here on out because it's easier. That in mind, any alien with the technology to visit us would need a good reason, and we don't have any. It's laughable that they would come for our resources, and yes, that is rich coming from the author of And Jesus Came Back, in which aliens invade for our resources. The same resources that have not helped us get beyond the moon? What is that to someone who has traveled across how much space?

I like the Annunaki theory because it states that our very existence is to serve these godlike beings from another world. It's essentially what my favorite Star franchise is all about. (That being -gate.) But why waste their resources to come here simply to bend us to their will. And what, exactly, would we be doing for them that they couldn't just handle wherever they come from?

But what if aliens did invade? That's been a concern in some circles of late, with Spielberg's Disclosure Day coming out, possibly to be accompanied by Trump's real life version of it. Would they be here to be friends or foes?

I think they'd be indifferent, but what if they did invade? Do you think your state will survive?

I read this article a while ago, and you should give it a glance. It'll tell you the odds of your state making it through an alien invasion. The first reaction to this kind of thing is, does my state make it? Illinois isn't in the top 10. Out of 100? That's all right, but out of 50? What the hell? Is this just an excuse to talk shit about my home state? I can do that. I can do that all I want, but fuck whoever put this list and/or study together. What do you mean, Alaska's in the top 10 and the Land of Lincoln can go fuck itself?

But that's a kneejerk reaction. The secret to living a reasonably sane life is to ignore those reactions. Almost everyone in America can't do that. It's impossible.

And I think that's why articles like this exist. What other purpose does it serve but to bait people into engagement, which translates all too readily to putting them at each others throats?

I read a lot of articles. One of the things that pisses me off is when I discover, after I've already clicked on a link, that it was "written" by AI. But that is nothing compared to the disdain I have for actual living people who write articles with the express purpose of farming people's attention, never caring that it pits people against each other. I chose this article because it's fairly innocuous, so it's easy to poke fun of it. But this is the kind of shit that happens in articles about real stuff all the time.

All in the name of keeping us so busy with each other that we never notice the Leland Gaunt pulling the strings and wiring us against each other.

If something in the media makes you feel rage, especially if it's pointing that rage at a person or a group of people, feel free to call bullshit on it. Because that's what it is.

This Public Service Announcement is brought to you by the helplessness I feel in an unjust world that will never be just.

The thing that really irritates me about that article is that it assumes each individual state is fighting the invasion on their own. No matter how bad things get, there's no way the states in any given area wouldn't unite somehow to face the invasion together. I feel like there's a name for this . . .

And not just that. What about the rest of the world? Are they sitting on their thumbs? I kind of doubt it.

The likeliest outcome of an invasion is us serving our new alien overlords. Just in case we don't already do that.

No, that's it. I'm done.

FORT HILL REMAINS

 Leon Frank Czolgosz was born on May 5, 1873. He would not even be 30 by the time he died. In the brief years he was alive, he lived up to his own morals and never faltered, not even when death came at its court appointed hour. Many thought maybe he should have, undoubtedly the man who later told a crowd of people to stop beating the kid who had just shot him. His family couldn't understand why he did what he did. Czolgosz's brother asked him, in his prison cell the night before he died, "Who got you into this scrape?" And he couldn't believe it when Leon answered, "Nobody had anything to do with it but me."

We have some information on his early life, but nothing really sticks out. As we'll learn later, he was a perfectly healthy young man, so there wasn't something psychological lurking in there from birth. It seems that he took the first step down this path during the Panic of 1893. He'd been working in a steel mill in Cleveland when the Tariff Act of 1890 went into effect.

Back then the Republicans, like their modern counterparts, were very concerned with foreign competition in the American market, as the red-white-and-blue consistently lost that particular financial duel. To discourage Americans from importing goods, a Representative, who would eventually become the President of the United States, pushed for an average 50% tariff increase. This was known as "protectionism" back then.

Instead it became one of the leading reasons the economy took a nosedive. Soon Czolgosz found his wages reduced. And then gone entirely as the mill shut down.

Out of work, he moved back in with his father, dejected and angry, trying to think of what he could do next with his life. He seethed thinking about the corporate overlords and how the system was rigged in their favor, and the greedy bastards wanted EVEN MORE money. He viewed their mere existence as a crime against humanity. How dare they do this to the working class?

It was a lonely viewpoint, but he eventually found others who thought along similar lines. This led him to the Sila Club and anarchism.

And that led him to Emma Goldman, an activist who was once referred to as the "high priestess of anarchy." He saw one of her lectures in Cleveland and struck up a fast friendship with her. She introduced him around, but he didn't like them. They weren't as dedicated as he was. They didn't have the courage of their convictions, not like Czolgosz.

She brought him by the publishers of Free Society, an anarchist newspaper. If anyone was hardcore, it would surely be them. But Czolgosz got pushy. He wanted to join a secret society. If there was a handshake, he wanted to learn it. He couldn't keep it on the downlow, and instead of being welcomed with open arms, they shoved him away. It got so bad they thought he was a spy, and the paper warned other anarchists away from him:

ATTENTION! The attention of the comrades is called to another spy. He is well dressed, of medium height, rather narrow shoulders, blond and about 25 years of age. Up to the present he has made his appearance in Chicago and Cleveland. In the former place he remained but a short time, while in Cleveland he disappeared when the comrades had confirmed themselves of his identity and were on the point of exposing him. His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be greatly interested in the cause, asking for names or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his appearance elsewhere the comrades are warned in advance, and can act accordingly.

He was the real deal, though, despite the fake name he was going under: Fred Nieman (Polish for nobody). He absolutely believed the number one problem in America could be traced back to the rich getting richer off the backs of the poor. If only someone could fix that problem.

Inspiration struck, if you could call Gaetano Bresci a muse. In Italy he'd shot King Umberto dead. Bresci said he'd done it "for the sake of the common man." Czolgosz finally had a hero to look up to. To emulate. He even got the same kind of gun Bresci had used. All he needed was the opportunity.

Which he got on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. A powerful man was going to be meeting the public at the Temple of Music. The crowd was going to be huge. You can practically see the grin on young Czolgosz's face as he puts his gun in his pocket and gets in line to meet this great and consequential man.

After waiting what felt like forever, the crowd parted, and there stood Czolgosz's target, smiling and extending his hand to shake.

Instead Czolgosz slapped the hand away and fired his gun twice. The first hit a button and whizzed away. The second got President William McKinley in the guts, and the man who had written the Tariff Act of 1890, commonly known as the McKinley Tariff, staggered from the force.

Czolgosz tried to shoot a third time, but someone behind him hit his neck and knocked the gun away, and now every single man in the crowd piled on him, beating him mercilessly.

"I done my duty," he managed to say before the fists and clubs made mincemeat out of him.

"Go easy on him, boys," McKinley said.

The police intervened and protected Czolgosz as they took him to the station.

The wound itself wasn't bad. If McKinley had been shot today, he would have easily survived. The problem was, the surgeons couldn't find the bullet, so they stitched him up and discharged him. Did they disinfect it? No. They didn't know to do that. So septic shock set in, and he died.

As a result, Czolgosz was charged with Murder One. Weird to think about, considering the fame of his victim. 

Czolgosz did not cooperate with the alienist sent to examine him. Nor did he help his own defense attorneys. When he got to court, he proudly pled guilty for the crime of assassinating the president.

The judge disagreed. He essentially said, "I think you meant not guilty." And the trial proceeded as if Czolgosz had pled not guilty instead. Which is sheer lunacy. But if you look it up, a judge does, indeed, have the authority to override a guilty plea. The purpose of this is unclear, but Czolgosz seemed determined to accept his punishment for what he undoubtedly considered his civic duty. That would rob the public of a dramatic trial, though, and the judge in this instance could not tolerate that. To quote Vonnegut, "So it goes."

His lawyers didn't bother to try. They called no witnesses. Historians believe they were more interested in maintaining their own standing in the community rather than their client's best interests. They *did* try for an insanity plea. What sane man would shoot the president in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses? But the legal definition required Czolgosz to not know his acts were wrong, and he never grew weary of assuring the judge that he knew what he'd done was illegal.

It took a jury less than 30 minutes to find him guilty. He was sentenced to death shortly thereafter. His lawyers did not appeal because Czolgosz did not want to appeal.

The night before his execution, the warden sent a couple of priests to visit with him. He turned them away. The warden then forced him to see the priests. He did not listen to them. When his brother came to visit and asked if he was sure about rejecting the priests, Czolgosz said, "I don't want any of their damned religion." He added that his brother and family should not pray over him after he's dead.

On October 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz fried in the electric chair. His last words: "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people--the good working people. I am not sorry for the crime. I am sorry I could not see my father."

His brother tried to claim the body to give Czolgosz a proper burial, but the warden denied him, not out of malice, but because he knew the crowd would try to accost him and steal the body.

An autopsy found Czolgosz was in good health at the time of his death, aside from scarring on his junk from a healed STD. When finished, they put his corpse in a coffin and filled it with sulfuric acid before burying it on the prison grounds. They burned all of his belongings to discourage souvenir seekers. They did not even put his name on his grave. Instead it's marked with a stone that simply says FORT HILL REMAINS.

The Exposition was torn down, and the spot where McKinley was shot in Buffalo is marked with a stone. The gun is in the Buffalo History Museum.

Emma Goldman was arrested as a co-conspirator, but she was released when the charges didn't pan out. She also wrote "The Tragedy of Buffalo," that being Czolgosz's arrest, not McKinley's death. She compared Czolgosz to Brutus, and McKinley to Caesar, "president of the money kings and trust magnates."

Later that same eventful year, Thomas Edison released a three and a half minute film called Excecution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison. It was a rather progressive touch. If Czolgosz had committed his crime ten years earlier, they would have simply sold postcards of his corpse with a tasteful sheet over everything from the neck down. They might have even done a stereoscope presentation for the patriot of discerning taste.

Things have not changed much since Czolgosz and McKinley met that one day in September. The money kings still run rampant, and the Brutuses spin their wheels. The same as it ever was. The former always get their way; the latter never do. Just ask a stone in Auburn, NY. And if you don't get an answer, don't bother to dig him up. Not even his bones remain. They were gone twelve hours after the acid was poured into his coffin, banishing every inch of him from the face of the earth.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1069: HEX AND ELMER MCCURDY

 

I didn't read Jonah Hex during the initial run. I wasn't alive for a lot of it, but when I found Lansdale's rendition, I had to hunt down the originals. I loved it, even though it was a western, not the weird western that Lansdale gave us. (Which is funny considering Jonah Hex regularly appeared in a comic called Weird Western Tales before handing the reins to Scalphunter.)

Imagine my horror when I read the last issue only to discover Hex, in which our antihero is transported to the distant future where he has SF adventures, laser blasters and all. It turned my stomach, but because I'm a completist, of course I read it. I found that it was almost entirely useless as a story.

Almost, but not quite. Because the final issue gave us clues as to Hex's fate. While he was still trapped in the future (and don't get me started on the more recent ones where he's hanging out in modern day Gotham City), he found something . . . interesting . . . in a warehouse. It proved that eventually he would get home, but it still did not bode well for him.

Hex found his own taxidermied corpse, posed like he'd just done a fast draw. How fucking cool is that? The series was worth it for this and this alone. And it was canon. When they revived Jonah Hex years after Lansdale's turn, they referred to his demise a few times. Hex's body traveled the carnival circuit, which isn't all that far fetched. Americans historically love displaying criminals' corpses. Think about how many visitors Dillinger got in that Chicago morgue, how many pictures were taken as souvenirs. In the Wild West it was common to have postcards of dead gunfighters, usually still holding the guns with which they plied their trade.

Imagine my surprise when I found out about Elmer McCurdy. He wasn't necessarily a Wild West outlaw. He came along a little too late for that, although he might have had a run in with Bill Tilghman of You Know My Name fame. When the cops gunned him down, the mortician refused to release the corpse without having his services paid for. When he realized he'd never recoup the loss, he dressed McCurdy's corpse up and put a gun in his hand and put him on display. Before long the corpse had been sold . . . to someone traveling the carnival circuit. McCurdy passed from owner to owner before being more or less abandoned in a warehouse. The only reason we know his story is fucking insane, especially if you're like me and were raised on stuff like The Six Million Dollar Man.

While filming an episode, a propman accidentally broke the arm off a mannequin . . . only to discover an actual human bone poking out of the "wound." They called the cops, and after doing some digging they discovered the truth about Elmer McCurdy, who somehow inspired one of the weirdest Jonah Hex stories ever. Well, weird yet still staying within the realm of the possible, that is.

He was buried in the Boot Hill section of an Oklahoma boneyard, appropriately, but if you want to see the man who entertained carnival goers for decades . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1068: BOB GREENE PISSED HERE

 

I graduated from Elmhurst College in 2000. That night our commencement speaker was a Chicago columnist named Bob Greene. I didn't learn that until I was sitting in the cold folding chair, hearing his name announced. I remember thinking, "Fuck Bob Greeene." I was a Royko man, all the way. I'd read some of Greene's work, and I didn't like it. Not one bit. If I had to choose a word for it, I'd pick "insipid." Although I might be a little too conservative with that choice.

He surprised me that night. He had a new book out, the one you see above, and he talked about his father's hero, Paul Tibbets. An odd hero, to be sure. He's the guy who piloted the plane that nuked Hiroshima. Not, in my eyes, hero material. Still, the story he told spoke to me and helped me articulate a recurring thought of mine that you're all very aware of. A year before I'd read a Readers Digest article--sitting on the toilet like God intended--about a man who had met a Civil War soldier who, when he was a boy, had met George Washington. I ripped it off for my story, "The Hand That Shook the World." But it wasn't until Greene's speech that I could put it into words: history is never far behind us.

Because, in preparing to write this book, he tracked down Tibbets and had many conversations with him, in particular about dropping the bomb. It lit up my brain, and the only thing that stopped me from going out and buying his book was my experience with his writing.

Two years later Greene fell from grace, which surprised everyone except the people he worked with. Apparently he'd allegedly had an affair with a 17-year-old high schooler. I remember thinking, "Fuck Bob Greene." Royko never did anything like that.

I found some pictures from my graduation night, which got me thinking about this. I wondered what Greene was up to now, and I found this article and learned, holy shit, he was a bigger scumbag than I thought. And I know this is not the worst of his behavior, but I found this part particularly galling:

The trouble was, in public comments Greene made it clear that sometimes he did not believe what he wrote. He was just finding an angle that would make a good column-draw attention, promote his career. He mixed candor and calculation so shrewdly that, looking back over his work, it is impossible to tell when he is being honest and when he is just reaching for effect.

And that's why I never liked his work. My bullshit detector was going off, and I didn't realize it at the time. Which means every fucking word he ever wrote is suspect. And now I'm wondering if he ever really met Paul Tibbets or if he made that up, too.

You may be wondering about the title of this one. In that article I linked to, it describes a sign in the bathroom at the university Greene went to. He probably pissed at Elmhurst College, too. If you read my Shit Poems, you know I occasionally write about pissing next to creators, or into toilets they used. For example, I've pissed with Peter Straub and Garth Ennis. I hope I didn't use the same urinal Greene did. Because fuck Bob Greene. Royko is the king of Chicago columnists, now and forever, amen.

There's just one more thing . . .

Only today did I realize that Greene talking about his book during the commencement speech was fucking weird. What does dropping the bomb on Hiroshima have to do with graduating college? That motherfucker used it as a promotional opportunity. Did my professor even notice that? If he did, he kept mighty quiet about it. If he was still alive, I'd ask him about it. Again, ah well.

All right, one more thing, but that's it. Here's one of those graduation pictures I found:

Maybe a lifetime of classes left me deranged. Or, more likely, I just *am* deranged.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1067: BASS-ACKWARDS

 Of all the people Trump has given us, there's only one who I actually enjoy. Legitimately, not out of some twisted joke or ironically or anything like that. It's been a while since I spoke of the Mooch, but I've actually been listening to some of his shows, and they're very good. If I was a Republican, I would probably be him.

One of the things he likes to talk about is how our political system has somehow switched around the voting process. Traditionally, the voters are supposed to select the politicians. With gerrymandering, the politicians are picking the voters, and that is fucking insanity. Pure goddam insanity. How have we let things get so bass-ackwards in this country?

But I'd like to go a little farther than the Mooch on this, because the current market is also bass-ackwards. It was still OK(-ish) when I was a kid, so this is a fairly new development. It may explain why our corporate overlords have so much more money than we do. Their sole purpose these days is to transfer value from our pocket to theirs, and the less they give us in return, the better. The ridiculous thing is, they've somehow gotten it so that even if we buy their products, we don't *own* them. We have to use their products the way they were intended to be used, and if we don't, then we're in violation of the deal we made when purchasing it. Depending on the degree of that violation, it's even possible that we've committed a felony.

I'll give you an example. When I bought my printer, I was under the impression that I could use that printer as I saw fit. If I ran out of ink, and the manufacturer's cartridges are too expensive, I should be able to use another company's ink in that printer. But no, if you try to do that, your printer will reject it. You are legally required to purchase their ink to go with your printer. Cory Doctorow is fond of pointing out that HP ink is more expensive, by volume, than a Kentucky Derby winner's sperm.

To me, that is bass-ackwards. The consumer is supposed to dictate terms to the market. Instead, we find ourselves in Bizarro World where the corporations dictate terms to the market. No wonder the economy is fucking broken. Maybe we should fix that?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1065: AT LEAST I HAVE A PLAN NOW

 You may have noticed that I wrote a GF every day of this week. I felt a little nostalgic for the way I used to do these, and I wanted to see if I still had it in me to do one every night. I do, but I got a little tired of it by midweek, so I'm probably not going back to that release schedule. It felt nice for a while, but it cut drastically into time to write other stuff, stuff I might actually get paid for at some point, so I think next week it'll be back to two a week. Maybe three every once in a while.

In the meantime, I found out why my rent went up so much. It turns out that we have new owners here. When I go in to discuss my lease renewal, I desperately hope they don't say, hey, we need to run your credit score. If they do, they're going to discover that it lives in the toilet, right down there in the flush hole. And if that happens, I'll be homeless in time for my 48th birthday.

And this time, there is nowhere else I can go. At least I have a plan, though, and a plan that doesn't hurt too badly. It would suck to live in my car, but if I also manage to keep my job, I'll have a lot of money coming in and not a lot of expenses. I would have two monthly bills: my car payments and my car insurance. I won't have a phone bill because fuck Verizon. I'm getting a burner if that happens.

Well, I'll have three bills, because I'll also need to get another storage unit for long enough to sell my stuff. The only weak point of my plan is that I'll need movers to take my stuff out of here, and I can't afford that. At least not for now.

I hope I don't need the plan, but my head's in a much better place because I have it. It would be nice if the new owners don't run my credit score, and they don't raise the rent next year. If luck favors me, then I can kick this problem down the road for another year. It would solve the problem, but it will buy me more time to come up with a better solution.

I don't want to leave this place. I love living in DeKalb. For all the problems I've run into, it's really a good place to live. I've enjoyed calling it home, and I hope I don't have to stop doing that.

One other thing. You know how much of an alcoholic I am? I heard earlier this week that Schlitz is being discontinued, and my first thought was, oh shit, I gotta get a case. I'll never get to have Schlitz again. Even though Schlitz was far from my favorite beer. It didn't even kick in until I'd already picked up a pen to write a reminder to get that case at my earliest convenience that, wait a minute, I'm an alcoholic. I haven't had a drink in almost four years.

And then I felt regret. Dammit. Schlitz is going into the ground, and I can't even have one last can.

I had some good times on Schlitz. I remember during one camping trip drinking Wild Turkey 101 from the bottle and chasing it with Schlitz after Schlitz after Schlitz. I passed out early near the campfire, and what woke me up? What felt like about a gallon of beer going directly up my nose. I sat up fast, and it made me puke my guts out for a good long time. What had happened? Two of my friends were shotgunning beers next to me, and the knife one of them used went all the way through the can, spilling its contents into me. What had they been drinking? Schlitz.

Strat's served Schlitz once upon a time! Whenever I ate dinner there, I usually had a Schlitz to go with it. They had to stop serving beer when the car shows they regularly hosted got too rowdy. I remember having dinner with a friend of mine there. She and I were DUI buddies. Because of that, we couldn't drive, so we sat there, talking about a book she wanted to design, drinking Schlitz after Schlitz after sneaking off to the bathroom with my flask. The fight outside that night got so bad the cops had to break it up. Being drunk in public with about a half-dozen cops around didn't do much for us, so Strat's let us call a cab (neither of us had cell phones back then), and we got out of there.

I woke up feeling hungover today, which is weird because I haven't had a drink in years. It's so unfair. So yeah, I've been thinking about the booze a bit today.

RIP Schlitz.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1064: THE SOLUTION TO A VERY OBVIOUS PROBLEM

 The one thing our Founding Fathers never thought to consider: what if one party seizes control of all three branches of the government? What happens to the concept of checks and balances then? Now that we have some unfortunate insight into such results, it would behoove us to fix this very obvious problem.

And I do, indeed, have a solution. We need to amend the Constitution so that, should it turn out that one party is in charge of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, one of them must be turned over to the other party. I know that makes it unfair to any party not part of the duopoly, but that's a problem we can't solve for now. I mean, I've given a few suggestions over the years, but you know what I mean.

It would be too complex to let this fall upon Congress, so they're safe. It would make the most sense to handle the president, but there's no way in hell anyone is going to go for that. Which leaves the Supreme Court.

Justices aren't supposed to have biases, but that's simply not the reality we're faced with. So yes, we'll have to have stand-by justices to take over when we eject whatever number of the winning party's judges we need to, and then the losing party's judges swoop in to take their place. How do we decide on which ones to axe? It can't be the Chief Justice, but anyone else with seniority has to go. It's insane that we let these people serve for the rest of their lives, so that's where we cut. Give the new blood a chance.

The situation we find ourselves in now is untenable. The system cannot be allowed to continue as it is, or if we're lucky enough to have another election, we might just usher in the next Donald Trump. And then we get to go through all of this again, and won't that be fun?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1063: POINT OF NO RETURN

 You may have seen the news lately that New Orleans's days are numbered. Due to the rising sea level, and considering how most of that city exists below that sea level, it is in danger of disappearing altogether. It's possible that whatever civilization follows ours might find its ruins thanks to the distant descendants of our Atlantis hunters. In fact, according to a new study, New Orleans "may be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the century." That's a pretty grim diagnosis.

Think about that. New Orleans is a major city. There's a lot of culture there. And it's all going to vanish soon. Your kids might not see it disappear, but their kids might. The hometown of Anne Rice inspired vampires everywhere is about to vanish from the face of the earth. That's fucking crazy. They're saying people should start leaving right now. Get the hell outta Dodge. We have a few decades, but why waste time?

So I'm sure you know what I'm wondering about. No, it's not about where people will go now to flash boobs for beads and vice versa. (That's the second thing I thought.) No, I'm wondering about . . .

There are some grand cemeteries down there. Are we going to abandon them to a watery grave? In particular, ARE WE GOING TO ABANDON NIC CAGE TO THE GULF OF MEXICO'S MERCILESS WATERS?!?!?!?!?!?!

Because in case you've forgotten, that's where he plans to be buried, under this very pyramid. Is he going to change his mind? Can he be talked out of being buried there?

He's a weird guy. Maybe he wants his body to be flooded forever. Maybe he's into it.

Which reminds me, I learned the other day that he was offered the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. After ensuring I wasn't on the Onion's website, I sat back, shocked. How could that have been allowed to almost happen? I love Cage. I also love LOTR. But the two of them together, especially like that, would have been a disaster. It would have utterly destroyed those films for me. I am eternally grateful for the family obligations that kept him from taking the role.

See?

"NIC CAGE: LOTR"

A Shit Poem by John Bruni

"The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness."

"Let's hunt some Orc."

"You cannot give me this."

"My friends, you bow to no one."

But with mega-acting.

Could you imagine the faces he would make during the battle scenes?

I'll bet he'd do really well with the scene where he has to throw Gimli.

He'd go over the top at the Prancing Pony in Bree

    more like Father Karras in the darkness in The Exorcist III.

What do you say we cut the chit-chat, a-hole.

    and stick to drinking beer from your enemy's skull like a bowl.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1062: TREADING WATER

 All fucking year I've suffered terrible bad luck. You know it's bad when you win a victory only to have something happen that renders the victory useless. For example, I've been behind on sales all month at work. From Friday to Sunday, I made a shocking amount of sales. That's a victory, right? Except I'm not paid on sales. I'm paid on those sales getting invoiced. So guess how many of my 70+ sales got invoiced yesterday and today? Barely a quarter of them. So I'm still behind at work. My wonderful victory meant nothing.

Here's another example: I had a cage on my foot so I could heal said foot. It worked. The cage came off, my foot was healed. But now a new hole has opened, and it won't heal, so what was the fucking point?

I remember the joy I felt when my first book, Strip, was published. I remember the soul-crushing anguish when it flopped so bad it transcended the very concept. To give you an idea, it sold tens of copies. It didn't even come close to cracking 100. Not even FIFTY. Thankfully it has sold a lot better ever since I rereleased it through Riot Forge.

And now for my favorite example: I survived the nightmare of being forced to leave my childhood home by finding a great place to live in DeKalb. I can barely afford it, but if I just keep making my commission at work, at least I'll survive.

It's time to renew my agreement with the complex, and starting July, just in time for my birthday, my rent is going up a hundred dollars a month.

But hey, my tax return this year is more than four grand, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? Except today I got news that after waiting months for them to do the math to ensure I'm telling the truth on my 1040, they need yet another fucking three months to get that done. How likely am I to get that money by July?

I've been treading water since January, and all it has done is exhaust me. It has frayed my goddam nerves. I am full of stark blinding rage all the time. Frustration? No, that left a while ago. The door did, indeed, hit him on the ass, for all the good it did.

Ordinarily I have friends that I can hang out with, that I can vent my spleen with. And I do have many friends, but none of them are here in DeKalb. No one is even close. But I do have you. I'm sorry to puke all my angst at you. In fact, you don't even have to read this. Tonight you are Schrodinger's Fuckers. Obviously you are there because I'm venting to you, but I'm pretending you're not so I can just let loose.

[This note will make more sense later, but while rereading this to make sure it made sense, I accidentally thought I'd typed "I'm vomiting on you," so see? I'm laughing.]

In my awful gut-wrenching throes, my mind is starting to make plans to sell all my belongings. Get the important stuff to family, sell the rest of it, and prepare to live on the streets, and there's an ugly treacherous part of me that looks forward to it. I know that bastard is a liar and a cheat, but there is comfort to be found in ceasing to fight. I'm sick of putting all the effort I've got in me into merely treading water. That's not enough. It's worse than failure. At least with failure it'll all finally be fucking over. It will pass, I know, but that's what that piece of shit is saying right now.

There's also another part of me that is flat out insane. Those who saw me in my party days would probably say I was pretty crazy, considering my batshit conduct, but that's tame compared to all the stuff I hold back. Once the fight is over, and I've lost, there will be nothing holding that part of me back. There's comfort in that, too. If I've lost, then I've got nothing left to my life but to find ways to entertain myself, and I've got a great imagination. Without my personal library to soothe me? My idle hands would very much itch.

I'm tired of fighting every waking moment of my wretched life. I want to relax. I want nothing more than to REST. I'm not looking for riches beyond comprehension. If you gave me a Ferrari, I'd give it away to someone else. I stopped wearing watches, so a Rolex wouldn't impress me. OK, how about something not material, like sex? That's not a thing I overly concern myself with. If it comes my way, I enjoy it, but it's not all that important to me, so I don't even seek that kind of wealth. All I want is for life to stop it's constant assault on my senses. Let me have at least a week where I can get up out of the water and rest on a boat instead.

Thank you for listening. I'm not seeking advice or comfort, so you don't have to reach out. I needed to get this out of me in the hopes that writing about it will exorcise the horror. The feeling is familiar. I know it will pass. I'm trying to *force* it to pass with this.

I can still laugh. Here's proof of that, and also proof of something I would ordinarily hold back. Earlier in the process of writing this, I paused to think if there's anything in my sewer of a brain that I wouldn't talk about in these things. It reminded me of one of the GFs of old that I scratched. One of the ones I'd deleted and written about doing that instead. It was about the annoyance of getting boners at work. Like, if I'm on break reading an unexpected erotic scene in a book, for example. I'd gone into great detail before realizing, what the fuck? No one is going to want to read about this. This is . . . also, what if someone I work with stumbled upon this? How fucked up would that be?

And that made me laugh. So I figured, what the hell. I'm still me. Don't worry. Go back and reread that bracketed sentence again.

All the same, I can't believe I survived the horrors of leaving Elmhurst only to be confronted with this neverending stream of bullshit. And no, I can't find somewhere else to live. I was making a bunch of sacrifices in moving to Joliet, but I figured I'd use my time there to build my credit back up. But things went south instead, and that credit score is completely in the toilet as a result. There's literally nothing I can do about that, so I'm sure no landlord would ever have me.

My life is . . . fun.

I'll try to have something cheerful (or at least not completely full of despair) for you tomorrow night.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1061: IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WEATHER . . .

 . . . just wait a few minutes. We've all heard some variation of this seemingly age-old phrase. I'm not doing a history of that, by the way (I heard that sigh of relief), but I did just learn, mere seconds ago, that Mark Twain said it first, so maybe it's not an ancient proverb, after all.

Just about every region claims this, and almost all of them are wrong. But I've learned during my time in DeKalb, that this is one of those places that is telling the truth. Back in Elmhurst, Addison and Joliet, one of the first things I'd do every morning while trying to convince myself to go to work was check the weather. It was usually accurate or close enough for me. In DeKalb? I've decided to give up on it. The forecast is correct maybe fifty percent of the time, and I'm not going to rely on a coin flip.

Today was the last straw because I'd been promised a nice cool day of thunderstorms. The way my apartment is placed, I can open the east windows wide and never get the floor wet, even on the stormiest day. The west windows? I wouldn't even leave them open a crack. Rain gets in there like little wet bullets.

I work at my kitchen table, which faces the east. I looked forward to the calming effects the rain would have on me, as Mondays are the busiest days at work, and it can easily turn me into a flailing jagged ball of stress.

(There is also something wonderful about being inside while it's raining out. Maybe it's the smell of the storm through a screened window. I always did love that.)

What did I get instead? A half an hour of the weather I wanted, and then a cloudy humid breezeless blah for the rest of the day. At the very least it wasn't a stressful day. Not once did I feel the desire to hang up on an unruly customer. I'd never actually do it, but the thought doesn't just creep in--it busts the fucking door down and announces its presence in a rich baritone.

I haven't even mentioned the surprise rainstorms that suddenly erupt on previously pleasant and sunny days. Storm warnings that sometimes necessitate the air raid sirens also fail to deliver on a regular basis. I got a tornado warning recently, the kind that makes your phone scream terrible noises at you with messages to seek shelter immediately. Out here I felt sure that I should probably take these more seriously than the ones we got in Elmhurst, but when I saw none of my neighbors gave a shit about it, I followed suit.

I'm irritated about barely getting a spring this year. I should expect it by now, but it is my favorite season. It was always just barely cool enough to make a jacket mandatory, and then it went straight into the eighties heat.

Do you know what this means? I've officially become a middle-aged man. I've never complained about weather before in my entire life, and here I am devoting a GF to it. I'm starting to approach 50 a li'l, and I look pretty good for my age. Alcohol is supposed to age you beyond your years, but I suspect it may have accidentally preserved me instead, like a caveman who has tripped and found himself in a bog, although my dad looked young for his age when he passed. He was just about to turn 60 and looked like he was in his late forties. So maybe I'm full of shit about the booze.

At any rate, the years have finally caught up. I no longer have a lawn, so I can't tell kids to get off of it. Is it too soon to worry about developing a taste for Werther's Original? I *do* like Necco wafers . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1060: MY BODY IS A ROADMAP OF PAIN

 

It's been a while since I looked at the state of my body, so why not do an accounting tonight? I agree with Jeffrey Combs in The Frighteners, so I'm not going to go into old injuries. Just the current state of things. We're going to start with my bad foot, and in case you're unfamiliar, you can read this GF from a half-year ago about the cage. If you want to go further back, you can check this out.

Some of those lines are because I just took my sock off, but those dark spots and dents are going to be with me for the rest of my life. Which is OK with me because I'll still have my foot, which I was convinced I was going to lose. And here's what the bottom of it looks like:

No hole! I forget if I posted a picture of what it looked like when wound care expanded the hole after the GF I linked to above, but it was a lot bigger by then, maybe the size of a quarter. And there were two holes on the bottom of my foot. When I first got the cage taken off, I marveled at how smooth and soft the skin was, which is weird because I've had callused feet from years of walking everywhere. It was like I had new skin, which I sorta did. The dead toe is even fixed. The holes in my bone are still healing, so I'll wear the ankle brace for quite a while longer, but most of the pain from the foot is gone.

Photo by my podiatrist.

(I should also mention that there was a hole on the side of my foot. When they took the cage off, it had healed, too. Now it has opened back up a little tiny bit, and it's not closing. I may need surgery to seal it up, in which case I'm going to have to go back to sponge baths for a month or so. See? It really is open just a sliver.)

Moving up to my guts, I'm glad to say that I haven't suffered my mystery illness since I lived in Joliet, where I took the picture of the cage in the first GF link above. There are times when I feel like it's coming back. A couple of weeks ago I puked--still not sure why--and I freaked out, thinking I was going to suffer it again. Joliet was bad, too. There had to be something there setting me off. I suffered it just about every day for a while there. I suspect it was sleeping on the air mattress that did it.

I am, however, backed up like crazy. I've been on opioids for years, and that is a sad but real side effect. It comes in liquid form, as we learned that it can actually stop the mystery illness if it hasn't already progressed too far. I call it my laudanum, and I'm grateful to have it. Because pain has been a constant in my life for a good long time.

Because my back is fucked the fuck up. I have bulging discs, and the spinal injections are no longer helping. I went to PT for a couple of months, and I'm still doing the exercises I learned there. It does help, but I suspect the only thing that will cure me is surgery, and I really don't want someone opening up my back. I live alone, far away from any friends or family who might otherwise help me get through recovery from such a surgery. To say nothing of the risks.

And then there's my hands. A few years back I had a form of tendonitis called trigger finger in the index on my left hand and the middle on my right hand. Surgery fixed that up, but I developed it again, this time in the middle on my left and the index on my right. I got injections for those, and they worked wonderfully. I spent a few months free of pain in my hands, and I thought I was finally done with that bullshit.

And then I bought a bookcase off Amazon. I figured it would be easy to put together. I've done it before, and I expected to do it again, but the bookcase was a piece of shit. I had screws I had to put into the base of the bookcase, screws that were supposed to hold the bottom together. Guess what: there weren't holes where the screws were supposed to be inserted. No problem, I thought, I'll make my own holes, which I did. Oddly, that was the sturdiest part of the bookcase, because as I moved along, it fell apart because the material was so shoddy, it might as well have been built of matchsticks.*

What I didn't know until the next day was that I'd fucked my hands up again. In trying to get this piece of shit to stick together, I'd given myself trigger finger all over again. In both hands. And look at that, the doctor who did the injections for me just retired, so now I have to go through the process with another doctor. I don't expect to get those injections for a few more months.

I'd actually been slowing down taking my laudanum, but now that my hands hurt again? I'm very glad I managed to squirrel a little extra away. It's not great. My fingers lock up and click all the time, and I use them a lot. I'm using them right now, in fact. While the pain is numbed reasonably well, the laudanum doesn't stop my fingers from locking in uncomfortable positions.

Moving on up my body, we come to my teeth. They've never been great, but I chipped one of my crowns in the back of my mouth, one of the two implants I have, and because it would be so expensive to fix it, I've let it go for now. Half of the crown is still there, and it's still anchored in place, but the jagged edge is doing no favors for the side of my mouth, and I have to be careful when eating, lest I chew on my beloved mucous membrane.

Which brings us to my eyes. I'm fairly certain I'm going blind. I've been warned that I'm showing signs of glaucoma, and one of my eyes is developing a neat little cataract. But my problem is with the floaters. Both eyes have giant floaters in them, which gives me a lot of trouble when I'm doing my absolute favorite thing to do on this planet: reading. I'm told there is a cure for it, but I'd have to be blindfolded for two weeks while staying in bed, face down the whole time. Again, I don't have anyone in my life right now who could help me recover like that, so that's out, too.

This and a bunch of other things have me feeling exceptionally depressed right now. It was so bad that on Monday and Tuesday this week, I blew off my to-do list. I worked (which led to its own set of frustrations), and that was it. I couldn't even pick up a book. I didn't want to do anything at all, so I sat and stared at the wall for a bit, thinking about my situation. Thinking about going down the block to the liquor store, because if I was failing this badly at life, I might as well fail all the way.

But that would have required the effort of leaving my apartment, and I was so demoralized I couldn't even do that.

That's a thing I don't like about me. When something starts going wrong, and my immediate efforts to fix it don't work, I spiral and start thinking, well shit. If I'm going to fuck this up, why not make it the biggest fuckup I can possibly make it? And then I watch in horror from somewhere in my head as I tank the fucking thing on purpose just to satisfy this wretched impulse.

I've gotten my shit together (somewhat). I finished my to-do list yesterday, and I'm almost done with today's (this is one of the three last things. After this I have to mark the day off my calendar (because I swore to myself this year I'd pay more attention to passing time), and I have to go to bed. So I'm reasonably sure I'll succeed at that. I don't recall if I've gone into it before, but if I complete my to-do list, I reward myself with putting a dollar into an enveloped marked FUN FUND. Money to be spent solely for fun purposes. Not to be used to pay bills or buy groceries, etc. I've gotten so good at it that those two days I blew off earlier this week were actually a little painful for me.

But it's evidence that I'm at least moving in the right direction. For now, that's good enough.

______________________________

*I got my money back, but they said to not bother returning it. I don't suppose anyone out there wants to come by my place in DeKalb and help me put it together . . . ?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1059: HARDCORE TV

 For many years I've been trying to remember the name of a sketch comedy show that played on HBO way back in the 'Nineties. It was made for adults, because there was cursing and nudity. I remember I'd originally watched it with my cousin, Erik, at his place, because at home I was not allowed to watch anything for adults. If it was the day before my thirteenth birthday, and I wanted to see a PG-13 movie, I had to wait another day until I was actually thirteen. I got to watch lots of stuff at Erik's place that I shouldn't have.

Every once in a while, the subject came up over the next few decades, but I never gave it much thought. Finally, the other day I posted a meme with a Bob Vila reference (who is still alive, by the way), and I realized, holy shit. I live in the future. I have the internet at my fingertips. Why not look it up?

So I did and found Hardcore TV! I watched a few sketches, and some of it is still funny. The segment I'd been thinking of in particular all this time held up well. We'll get to that one in a moment.

As I watched these, especially "Fairy Tales From the Dark Side," I realized maybe this show had more of an influence on me than I thought. "Raging Bullwinkle" is exactly what you think it is, only much more profane. "Bensonhurst 11210" is . . . just watch that. You might see a familiar face.

But the skit my pervy ass wanted to see again was "This Old Whorehouse." Yes, it's a parody of Vila's This Old House, but the house in question is indeed, a brothel. If you've read some of my erotica, like, say, 6669: Demon Porn, then maybe you can see the seeds of, uh, forget the metaphor. It's for the best.

Too bad they didn't last very long. If they'd done it today? I think they'd be very, very successful. Tim Blake Nelson was one of the writers, by the way. I wonder if he ever thinks about resurrecting the show.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1058: THE MAN WHO CONQUERED THE WORLD

Photo inside this photo by John Kopoulos

 And then from the back:

I found this with a bunch of Gramps's old Army pictures, so I can only assume he visited Warm Springs back then. But seeing it made me think about FDR.

In school we're taught about the men who conquered the known world (or even most of it) during their time. People like Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. But they're small potatoes compared to the one man who conquered the world. The whole fucking thing. No "known" about it. That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

He was an absolute master at manipulation. Machiavelli would have been in awe of this wheelchair-bound man who contained more gumption than anyone who had ever lived. He was so good he essentially got Churchill to dismantle the last remnants of the British Empire. I like how Gore Vidal puts it. In his version, FDR tells Churchill that he must give up all the colonies around the world. "Even India?" an aghast Churchill asks. FDR nods and gives a serene smile. "Even India."

I have no idea why FDR conquered the world. I like to think that he was doing it to make a safe and prosperous world for the regular people, not just the elite. What can I say? I'm an optimist.

But we do know this: it's an old story going all the way back to Moses. The great man brings his people to great things only to never enter the promised land, himself. He did not get to enjoy the fruits of his labor because he died while siting for the portrait Gramps saw all those decades ago. Would he have been a benevolent ruler? I think so. He seemed to be an elite who turned against his own. I say that because of all the good he did with the New Deal, benefits that we're recklessly throwing away today.

So Truman was left with victory, and what the hell did he know about ruling the world? Practically nothing, so the power hungry fuckwads around him held dominion over our government. Vidal says dropping two atomic bombs on Japan wasn't about winning the war. It was about intimidating the Soviets. I agree. By the end of the war, Japan was practically begging for peace, and the USSR looked like just the nation to fill their shoes.

But now I wonder if maybe Vidal was thinking too small. I think those bombs were about intimidating EVERYONE. This is our world now. This is your notice. Your compliance is expected. More to follow.

[Pardon the interruption, but I wrote this on May 6. While I was rereading it to make sure it made sense, I realized that everything after this point sounds like anti-American ranting, and all appearances to the contrary, I love America. Not the crazy, stupid and greedy shit that we constantly do. I mean what we say America stands for, things like liberty, freedom, etc. I know in my heart of hearts that we don't mean it, but I want us to live up to the lofty promise of our myth. Am I a proud American? I lean towards Bill Hicks on that one: "My parents fucked there." It's hard to be proud of America at any fuckin' time, but goddammit, this place could be the greatest nation in the history of the planet. We just need to get our collective head out of our collective ass, see things the way they are, and FUCKING FIX THEM.

Because of this, I didn't post it. I had to think about it for a while because I spoke from my heart with what follows, but it is pretty over the top. I weighed just posting the above stuff and deleting everything after this, but the hell with it. There's a lot of truth here, I think, and maybe someone else could benefit from this. You don't have to keep reading if you don't want to.

But I know you will. No one has ever read that warning and decided, nope, that's enough for me.]

The world economy is beholden to the American dollar, meaning if you expect to do business with everyone else, you must first do business with someone who has access to dollars. That and that alone is enough evidence to prove that we've had a strangehold on the world ever since FDR won it in a war. But just in case you need more: Our lawmakers intimidated other countries to put some of our laws on their books so that our corporate overlords would become their corporate overlords, too. And because we're the world hub for the entire internet, we've had access to everyone's shit. As Edward Snowden revealed, we were spying on EVERYONE. Not just our own people. EVERYONE.

Our corporate overlords can brick your car remotely if they so desire. What's to stop them from bricking the internet in, say, England? They wouldn't do that?

Sounds pretty unfair for the rest of the world, right? For them, there is great news. America currently has a president bent on destroying the boot we've used to step on everyone else's throat for decades. That boot is rapidly dissolving. Trust is at an all time low. Other countries are forming coalitions to survive whatever fresh hell we're going to throw at them in the near future.

FDR conquered the world, and Trump is throwing it away like an empty can of Diet Coke from his car window.

The value of the dollar is dropping like crazy. Our debt is now greater than our GDP, which is a pretty horrific sign. Wall Street may be booming, but that shell game means nothing for most Americans. And it is a shell game. Our corporate overlords just keep passing money back and forth to each other while telling everyone else that the exact same money that's being passed around is possessed by all of them at once. And if you think AI is bad right now, just you wait. It's the only thing propping up the economy right now. When that falls apart, and it will since it has not earned a single penny back in return for the biggest investment in investment history, what do you think will happen to said economy?

Every country in the world is in debt, and the way it's set up is, that debt will never be paid, and it will never be defaulted. With the world economy needing a strong US dollar, I can't see why the central banks would let this continue unless there was something a lot more dire happening.

I know this sounds a bit out there, but it is my suspicion that Trump and his Dickless Brigade are tanking the dollar on purpose, and I think they mean to replace it with Bitcoin, most likely, or something similar. There must be a reason why they've decided, out of the blue, that Bitcoin was important enough to stockpile. I hope I'm wrong, but it makes sense to me. The only weakness in the theory is that the central banks would have no say in Bitcoin, unless that's going to change at some point. I'm not entirely sure I know how that works, though, so I might be talking out of my ass with that last sentence.

We live in dangerous times. Never put anything past the Dickless Brigade.

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.