GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1090: AI SLOP 4 LIFE!

 So you've decided to suck up to AI companies. Life is hard for human beings. It's so much easier to surrender your agency to a machine.

Thinking is hard! You don't want to put yourself through that. Besides, the techbros have our best interests at heart. That's why they get up every morning, to make life easier for us NPCs. They would never let AI give you bad advice.

Of course, they're also CEOs and other lower forms of life, so they hate humanity and wish to be the only examples of it despite being cold-blooded dead-eyed lizard fucks (see Thiel, Peter). It's obvious that they want people to stop doing work and to rely on their Plagiarism God Machines (TM) to handle everything.

Yay! No more work? You mean, no more red tape and Sunday scaries and commutes and asshole customers? That sounds like a utopia to me!

Except . . . how will you survive without a job? Your home costs money. You have expenses. How will you afford groceries after the workforce is eliminated in favor of AI?

I'm sure the techbros have a plan. They don't have to share it with us. They're altruists. I know we live in a pretend capitalist society, and universal income goes against our make-believe system, but that's what government is for! To take care of citizens who can't take care of themselves. And they're about to take care of every single one of us! It's like we're one big happy family!

What's that? How will the government pay for all of our lives? Why do you ask? The government has unlimited coffers! They'll never run out of money! Of course, we won't get as much as we used to, so we'll have to tighten our collective belts. Nothing is perfect, but hey, I'm sure the corporate overlords will show mercy and lower their prices so even the poorest of us can afford to live.

OH! That's what you meant? I'm not sure how Uncle Sam can afford universal income if there's no incoming tax money. I suppose they could tax the billionaires, but that's unthinkable. Do I look like a miracle worker?

Look, just trust us. Everything will be fine. It will all work out in the end.

Would Elon Musk lie to you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1089: STATE OF ANXIETY

 Not too long ago I overheard a conversation in the waiting room at the doctor's office. An older couple were talking about how everyone had anxiety today. Anxiety here, anxiety there. We're all living in a state of anxiety. It wasn't like that when we were kids. What is going on with this shit?

My first thought was, back when you were kids, admitting to anxiety was not just frowned upon, it was practically forbidden. While there is a lot of truth to that, I've since come up with another theory.

Constant surveillance. When I was a kid, there was a reasonable expectation that, when you left your house, you would not be recorded anywhere. I mean, there were cameras, sure. If you went to the bank or a gas station or a liquor store or any other place that was likely to get robbed, you would undoubtedly see a camera. But outside of those places? To say nothing of the fact that we didn't have cell phones yet, much less cell phones with cameras, so if someone was trying to record images of you, you'd see the giant Camcorder, so not even your fellow citizens could film you unnoticed.

But now cameras are everywhere. Everyone you see could potentially be recording you with cell phones or even with their eye glasses. There are cameras in cars, in door bells, even in your fucking household appliances.

Human beings are social creatures, our modern day behavior notwithstanding. It's important to be accepted by the tribe, and because there are cameras everywhere, a lot of people are trying to be on their best behavior because no one wants to get caught looking bad on camera. Like, that kind of video gets posted to social media, and then that person's life is over. Or, less drastically, someone doing something stupid, like picking your nose and eating the findings. They've been cast out of the tribe.

With stakes that high, why not stay the fuck home? Interact with people? Are you nuts?!

And now the cameras have gotten even worse. They're not just satisfied to steal our images. Now they're reading your license plate. Or they're scanning the data on your car's computer. Your digital footprint is more like a fingerprint. The police can ID you just from a Flock camera scanning your phone, so if a Flock camera busts you speeding, they don't need your face on camera. They know your phone was in the vehicle, so you were undoubtedly driving. Good luck getting out of that ticket.

I believe this is a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights. The Flock cameras aren't police cameras. It's the corporation, Flock, that is in charge of them. But instead of getting a warrant to go after you, the cops can just submit a request from Flock, and they have no reason not to give them that info. In fact, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

But we live in a society where corporations and law enforcement are indistinguishable; therefore, it's a violation of the Bill of Rights.

"You can't fight City Hall," you say.

But you can. I have an excellent idea to get rid of the surveillance state we currently live in, and it wouldn't break a single law. Guaranteed to work! But that's for another day. Stay tuned.

Follow me for more tips on how to kill anxiety and rescue our personal freedom! I'll teach you my easy-peasy two-birds-one-stone solution!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1088: CHANNEL SURFING

 A loooooooooong time back I wrote a GF about how I'm among the last people who know who Laurel and Hardy were. Same for George Burns and Milton Berle and everyone else from back then who are about to pass into obscurity.

At the time I wrote it I thought this was a fucking crime, but now that I'm pushing fifty? I believe it's just the way she goes, to quote a great philosopher.

Young people today don't know a lot of the stuff I know, or even have the same frame of reference, and it's not just pop culture things. They have no idea what it was like to drive in a car that didn't have seatbelts and did have ashtrays.

But kids today will never know what it's like to watch broadcast TV. That's the craziest thing of all to me. They stream everything. They have no idea what channel surfing is. They will never understand the annoyance of discovering jack shit on the tube. That's not just a surface difference in time periods--that's a completely different way of life.

I generally think my readers here are around my age, so I don't think anyone from Gen Z is reading this. But if you are, I have something that might give you somewhat of an idea of what it was like. And for my fellow middle-agers . . . BEHOLD! A walk down memory lane.

I was a child in the 'Eighties, so that one scratched my nostalgic itch. But I'm a curious guy, so of course I looked at the other decades. It's fun.

It worried me a little that whoever put this website together might have used AI because I couldn't figure out how else they would do it, but I read more about the project, and it seems like they did it some other way. And if you think they're missing things, you can even make suggestions.

I'm glad this exists, but I don't know if I'd sit down and watch it for longer than a few minutes. Anytime you want to escape the modern world? Here's a way to do that.

Enjoy!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1087: THE FUTURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

 The laundry room where I live recently swapped out their old washers and dryers for new models. I later learned they did this because they were selling the complex and wanted to get a better price, but that's not today's gripe. The old machines used cards for payment. The new ones require an app.

Because the future is not your friend, I ran into a terrible problem yesterday. I filled up the washer with my clothes and put the liquid detergent (DO NOT USE POWDER!!! says the taped note at the top of each unit) into the tray, and then went on the app to get it started so I could get my reading in for the day.

The app gave me a spinning wheel. Oh no.

I logged out and back in with the same result. Uninstalled and reinstalled and ditto. Called the customer service number. Lo! and behold! The app was down across the country. Did they have an ETA for when service would be restored? Nope!

I ordinarily do laundry on Wednesday, but since I was in Dixon I had to do it yesterday. Luckily I'd taken today off for a three day weekend, or my laundry might not have gotten done, and my coworkers would have to deal with me wearing the same stuff for a few days in a row. I checked the app before I went to bed last night, and it was still down.

So if this were any other week, I'd have been fucked. This turned out to be a mild annoyance, but then I turned my thoughts to the more egregious things the future has in store for us.

Picture, if you will, losing your sight and then having it restored by a chip in your head. You get used to it, but then you experience your first outage. While you're driving. And you're approaching the school crosswalk at lunchtime.

Or, more likely, you didn't pay your bill, so Elon Musk remotely bricks your device. While you're driving.

So yeah. Keep "updating" everything so you have to do it on a goddam app. And another thing! Those dang kids with their dirt bikes messed up the courtyard grass and HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! Hmpf. Some people. OH GODDAMMIT, THOSE KIDS ARE BACK!

*sigh* Yeah, I know. All the same, I stand by it.

It meaning the whole app thing, not the thing about the dirt bikes. Although the dirt bikes are a real thing, and there really is a bunch of grooves in the grass outside my window. I found myself staring at it with disgust the other day and realized, oh shit. It's happening. I'm officially getting old.

I'll be 48 in a few hours. My physical therapist once pointed out that I'm pushing 50. I thought I was kind of borderline on that phrase, but now there's no denying it. I'm pushing 50.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1086: READING LINEAGE

 If you were to ask me for the best word to describe myself, I'd choose "reader." I do not remember a time when I was not constantly reading. My mom told me my first word was not mama (much to her chagrin) but book.

I've often wondered why reading is so important to me. I suspect it was because both Mom and Dad were voracious readers. Dad didn't read around me because he only had me for an occasional weekend, so he had other things he wanted to do with me. But I saw Mom read all the time, and she encouraged me to do the same.

But how did they become such readers?

Dad is easy. His mom was a teacher. There's no way she didn't get him reading. In case Mom and Dad failed me, Grandma Laurette sent me a steady stream of books, all on history, dinosaurs or Ireland. In fact, one day I told her I was having trouble finding a particular book. She said she'd been using this great online bookstore, and they always had hard-to-find stuff. I didn't want to go online. I hadn't embraced the internet yet.

She did not live long enough to see her grandson's books for sale on that very website, which was called Amazon.

Mom didn't live long enough to read my first book. Dad read a few of my books, and it made me proud to know he liked them.*

But Mom's parents were not readers. Though Grandma loved crosswords, I never, in all my life, saw her pick up a book. As for Gramps, he only ever read the newspaper until the last ten years of his life. He started reading the books in my bedroom while I was at work. Believe it or not, his favorites were both by Richard Laymon: Island and Body Rides. But that wouldn't have helped Mom become a reader when she was a kid.

I suspect it was her grandmother, Grandma's mom. As I went through Grandma's books near the end of my time in Elmhurst, I discovered that they were her mom's books, instead. She lived with my grandparents and Mom and died when Mom was pregnant with me. My great-grandma liked to read hefty novels, LIT-rit-chure.

Now I suspect there might have been someone else, too. Gramps's cousin wrote many letters to him, and one of them contained a photocopy of a family picture from Greece. I'll talk about that at some point, but the accompanying letter mentions Gramps's dad and uncles. Apparently they were all readers. She mentioned that my great-grandpa liked to hang out at the library all the time.

I mentioned this to my aunt yesterday, and she said that she was always apprehensive around Gramps's mom as a kid. My great-grandma couldn't speak English, so my aunt couldn't understand what she was saying. I learned from my research into the family stuff that she couldn't read or write in any language, so knowing that her husband, my great-grandpa, was a reader surprised and delighted me.

So. How did he become a reader, then? I don't think I'll ever find out. I know only one thing about his father and nothing about his mother. Sure, I could find out their dates of birth or maybe what they died of, but what are the odds that I'll ever find out something anecdotal about them? And if I did, say, find a letter from one relative to another talking about what a reader my great-great-grandpa was? How would I read it? It's all Greek to me . . .

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*Yeah, I heard that. You know what you can do with your comments about his bias?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1085: FIND YOUR FUN

 I always talk about how the world is currently the tire fire to end all tire fires, and I'm not the only one. I'm not in the habit of pointing out the obvious, but I say it because I'm always trying to remind people to find their fun. Fun isn't going to knock on your door and present itself, wearing its Sunday's finest and giving you a firm and vigorous handshake. Unless you're into that sort of thing. I don't judge.

You have to go out and find it. Or, if you don't want to go out, you can make it at home.

But I like to go out. Today my aunt invited me to lunch. She lives about as far west as you can get in Illinois without being in Iowa, so our mid-point is Dixon, the hometown of Ronald Reagan. I imagine that's why they call I-88 the Reagan tollway. I drove past his childhood home, and I'm sure it didn't look that nice when he lived there.

I mention it because it was a 45 minute drive through beautiful land on a lovely day. For the first time in weeks, it wasn't hot as balls out, so I could drive with the windows down, the wind making my hair dance like one of those inflatable things you see at dealerships.* I felt good, so I turned up the music and enjoyed the trip. And for just a bit, I could ignore the Great American Tire Fire (TM).

Fun shouldn't be a project, but when you find it, you should enjoy it, no matter how little it might be. I'm sure a lot of people are reading this and thinking, that is your idea of fun? It's not capital F fun, but sure, I had fun. It lightened my spirits.

Sometimes that's all it takes. Speeding down 88 at 100 mph through farmland as far as the eye can see.

Added bonus: when I got home I discovered a shipment of Tang from my friends, Alicia and Chris Stamps. It wasn't just a container of Tang. They got me TWO GIANT CANISTERS!

This is only a little shorter than my thigh, and I'm a tall dude.

Also! I won a Goodreads giveaway! That always cheers me up. All in all, it was a good day.

So yeah, sometimes fun really does show up at your door. But it doesn't happen a lot, so make sure you seek it out.

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*Yes, I'm sure it's called something. Also, I am high and do not wish to look it up. You can always write your own blog about these things.**

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**Yes, you can call your blog Goodnight, Fuckers 2: Electric Bugaloo. You're welcome.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1084: PLAYBOY 3

 I have a shit-ton more excerpts from my Playboy collection that might be of interest to us now, in the modern world, as opposed to, say, 20+ years ago when I first got them. So here's a few interesting images:

You can probably guess that was written by Hunter S. Thompson. It was a letter to Hef celebrating the 50th anniversary of the magazine, but it might as well have been written 5 minutes ago. Nothing has changed. Or maybe we're currently living in the future he predicted . . . ?

Alfred Kinsey is a subject of fascination for me. If you've never read TC Boyle's The Inner Circle, I highly recommend it. But good luck scrubbing these pigfucking stats from your brain.

That is a lie from a lying liar. Not one year later he was running for Congress, so . . .

My Favorite Playmate is usually a pretty boring feature, but every once in a while a celebrity says something so outlandish I can't help but laugh. All the same, he didn't choose Nicole Narain?

That's a pretty good author photo of Irvine Welsh. It encompasses his subject matter and tone very well.

Nine. The answer to Edward Bunker's question is nine.

The Beef's got some serious problems. When you're going to Harvey Weinstein for advice, for example, it might be a good idea to keep your mouth shut and your head down instead of doing a Playboy interview.

Speaking of Tarantino, I forgot that he did this. He also did one for Django Unchained.

Any guesses as to who is telling this story? I'll put the answer at the end of this.

I bring this up because this is possibly the worst timed bit in US comedy history. This was published just a couple of months before 9/11. *pulls collar* In case you couldn't tell, this was written by George Carlin.

Ah jeez.

Speaking of Silent Bob, Kevin Smith also did the 20Q feature. That Michael Jackson idea is absolutely insane. Considering *that scandal* I'm glad it didn't happen, because HOLY SHIT.

Tarantino says something here that I identify with 100%. I've read so many books that I'm bored with the things that many people find enthralling. That's why I write outlandish things. The reason I do that is because I hate boredom, and if I ever bore someone with something I've written, I would consider that a crime against humanity. Every book has slow parts, but I try to make them at least interesting.

I used to be a Ron Jeremy fan. Ever see Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy? I thought he was funny in a cornball sense ("How big is my dick? Three inches . . . from the floor!"), and I was fascinated with the fact that he came from such a high pedigree (look up who his parents were). I even learned how to detail my pubic hair from him (shave the shaft and balls bare, trim the bush until it matches the rest of your body hair). But . . .

Knowing what we know now? Define "boink," please. 

Well. He turned out to be a huge piece of shit. Also, if you looked at that and thought, uhhhh, pandering? It has an interesting legal definition. The hell with it. Don't look that up. You need some sleep.

That ended on an ugly note, but I'll have more for you in a bit. Donald Trump and Mark Cuban did the big interview, and I'm probably going to dedicate a night to a compare/contrast of the two and what they said. I've got a long way to go before I'm through with my collection, so who knows how many more editions I'll have for you? To be continued . . .

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I almost forgot: It was Denis Leary. That's right, Dean Martin called Denis Leary a pussy. I have two words for you, oh-KAY?! That's fucking funny.