GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #900: TIME MACHINE

 If I rubbed a lamp and a djinn came out of it, offering three wishes, the first would be for a limitless supply of money. The second would be to never get sick again. The third? No, wishing for more wishes doesn't work. So I have something else I want for that one.

Remember a while ago I begged the universe to send me back to my freshman year of college so I can try at life again? Because I think that would be a good starting point for me to try again. I'd know so much more (and I might be able to skip the money wish if I invested in Apple just before they introduced the smart phone). But I wouldn't want to go back to that time for the wish.

Everyone gets nostalgic, even me. I try to look toward the future as often as possible but even with that mindset I think about the past often. And I'm not talking about capital-H History here. I mean my own life, in particular my childhood before the world was ruined for me by child abuse.

This is a different kind of nostalgia. Those of you my age will know the usual kind when thinking about Thundercats and TMNT and Transformers and 'Eighties horror movies, et al. But when you're just a kid your parents drag you around in their world. Do you, like me, ever feel nostalgia for your parents' youth? Their youth was dying when you were just a kid. The world was moving on, and it was leaving them behind. The world was all but yours at the time.

I remember Mom driving down the road, me sitting in the passenger seat of her Mustang, when I accidentally knocked the cup holder off the window. It was the plastic kind with the tab you slid down into the window trim. I was horrified because it went right out the window. I started crying uncontrollably even when Mom said it was okay, that it was just a cup holder, that we could get another one.

Maybe that's the origin of why I'm almost a hoarder. I sometimes think it was the baseball my dad's parents got me, the one I lost on the Prairie Path, but the cup holder thing happened before that. I'm not too much of a hoarder now, but I still have the impulse. I'm going to have to get pretty tough about it soon.

But that's what I'm talking about. That moment I was in Mom's world, not mine. And I know it sounds crazy to label that incident as traumatic, but I think it really *did* have a say in how I turned out. But I miss her world, the one where she had friends she saw regularly before they stopped coming around. Which coincided with Mom's marriage to my stepdad, not too much of a surprise there.

But I feel a little nostalgia for my stepdad's world, too. When he would drag me around with him to hardware stores and theaters and such, I was in his world, not mine. It wasn't mine yet as we crossed the tracks, him fishing a Winston cigarette out of his shirt pocket with his Zippo from the Army. Though he wasn't Southern he did, indeed, have his name on his belt buckle. For as much self-loathing as he had, he was pretty narcissistic about it.

And then there was Dad's world. When he'd bring me to Dominick's where he worked at the deli, he'd pull lobsters out of the tank with their pincers rubber-banded. I'd touch their weird soft stomachs in wonder. Or when we'd go camping with his Viking pop-up. It had a kitchen in it which he thankfully never used. All cooking during such events was to be done over the campfire. Or the times he'd go to a party because when I was a kid, after his marriage to my first stepmom, it was his world, and he was still making grand use of it. I remember one time my cousin and I slept on one side of the camper. I say "slept," but we were kept awake because the other side of the camper bounced slightly. His world, indeed.

My third wish would be to go back in time and experience living in their world. To experience life before my world started taking over.

I'm kind of surprised that we haven't been kicked out of our house yet. A new bank bought out the bank that owns our house, and they've shown an interest in us again, but we're still here. So I've been going through the house, trying to undo my hoarder-ish ways by throwing out stuff we don't need. Part of that process involves finding caches of photos that Grandma hid all over this house during her last year or so. Many of the photos are of my world, but not all. Quite a few are pictures of Mom's world. Of Dad's world. Of Grandma and Gramps's worlds. But looking at pictures, while amazing, isn't good enough. When you look at old pictures it's easy to think of that old world as being in black and white, for example. Or oversaturated with yellows, browns and greens like photos from the 'Seventies and early 'Eighties. Photos don't do it justice.

I want to immerse myself in that world. Not for long. I wouldn't want to stay there. I think maybe five minutes would work.

When you live a full life it's easy to look around and think of things as permanent. I'll bet the dinosaurs never suspected that they would be wiped out. Just like I'll bet that almost each and every one of you thinks America will go on forever. I know *I* think it will. It won't because that's what the world does. It moves on. The world of my parents is gone as if the Langoliers had eaten it up by the second. *My* world is gone. The generation who would have been my children's age if I had them? Their world is gone, too. If I had grandkids it would be *their* world right now, at least until the world moves on again. Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Not even the planet is permanent. There will someday be no Earth.

Which is why we should all strive for excellence, as Outlaw Vern would say. If all we have is our moment in time, we should make it the best we can.

900 Goodnight, Fuckers columns. When I started these I knew I wouldn't stop, that I'd keep going and going until the world stopped me. The only reason I'm surprised that I made it to 900 is because I'm surprised that I'm still alive. I always figured to die at 40, and I almost did. But before I figured that, I used to think I'd die at 46. I'm 46 now. I was probably wrong about that, too.

Thank you for reading, everyone. Sometimes I idly think I might stop at 1000 if I made it that far. Now that I'm close to that milestone I can safely say I'll keep writing these as long as I keep getting ideas. And one more! The one I wrote for when I die. Nighty-night. See you next week.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #864: OUR AMERICA

 

Happy Fourth to all who celebrate. For all the shit I say in these columns, I am one of those people. I love America, but that's not an unconditional love. Because as much as I love my country, it constantly aggravates me by not living up to its dream, its promise.

A lot of my frustration can be explained by this video in which Weird Al is begging America to stop being weird. Read that sentence again for the full effect.

I'm going to read off a Bill Hicks quote for the billionth time in my life. And it's not just because Garth Ennis quotes it in Preacher, my favorite comic book of all time. This really resonates with me. Every time you read me taking my country to task over something or battling with corporations or tech bros and such, the impetus for that all comes from this quote. I do my best to live by it. I don't always succeed because I'm not perfect, far from it, but if you were to rip my chest open and pull my beating heart from my ribcage, you would see these words etched onto my pump:

I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor--even president, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut. But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero--that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun.

This country stands for freedom, but every day our politicians take freedom from us and put it in the hands of corporations, and corporations are loyal to one concept and one concept only: shareholder value. Everything else can die in a fire. And it's not just politicians and CEOs, it's fellow Americans, too. The last time we were this divided we literally killed each other over it. I think the second Civil War has already begun. It's only being fought on social media right now, but with tensions ratcheted up this high? It's almost a guarantee that the physical fighting will begin when this next election is called.

Americans should not be fighting Americans. We're on the same fucking team, for fuck's sake! But we're at each others' throats, some thinking that they're fighting a good vs. evil situation, others thinking that they're fighting a right vs. wrong situation. It sounds the same, but it's not. The first has religious connotations, the second has morality connotations. You can be a moral person and not have a god. Those people, I think, are the most moral people on the planet. They're doing it because they want to, not because there's some scary threat of Hell behind it.

Ever see Mars Attacks? I realize I sound like Jack Nicholson's "Why can't we all just get along" speech with the same disastrous results. But we really can work together. We really can put aside our differences and go after our true enemy: the corporations that are ruining our lives.

Because we have to live together. And neither side is willing to make any sacrifices on their part because neither side thinks they're wrong or even allows the possibility that they *might* be wrong. And I think that's why America might be over. Irreconcilable differences.

Rome didn't end when the Romans decided to crown Julius Caesar as emperor, nor did it end with the triumvirate that followed his assassination. Depending on which historian you ask, the Roman Empire toddled on for hundreds of years to a thousand years. So whatever we'll have will still be called America, but it wouldn't really be America. The same people who will argue the Second Amendment to death in favor of owning assault rifles to defend against the government want to install Trump as an emperor. And something tells me he wouldn't deny the crown three times, like Caesar. He'll snatch that crown like a beast from the filthy commoner who would hand it to him.

America promises big, but it doesn't deliver. Our system is easily manipulated by criminals and psychopaths, and I hate that that's possible. I hate it when powerful people take advantage of those with little to no power. I hate that the corporations flaunt their power when we have regulations on the books against that but not enough regulators to enforce them. I hate that millionaires and billionaires are considered self-made heroes of the people when all they do is take advantage of the same people who call them heroes, and those people are never the wiser. I hate that Americans hate other Americans for who they are. Racism, sexism, all the -isms continually tear this country apart, and I hate that, too. Most of all, I hate that a thousand years from now the dominant society on earth will point back to the fall of America, comparing it to their own problems, talking about the danger to their own way of life. As Rome is a canary in a mine for us, we will be the same for whoever is the biggest power on earth in the future.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: All I want is for my beloved country to live up to its promise. The ideas are noble and lofty and good. The execution leaves a lot to be desired.

I know this column will have very little effect on the world, but it's all I can do. I have words, and I know how to use them. I can only hope someone who knows how to make America live up to itself reads this and knows how to implement a plan to fulfill this desire. I'm not holding my breath, but at the same time, I don't want to live to see my country turn into the monster that many of us want it to be. I don't want to live long enough to see such a noble idea die a violent and bloody death. And before you object, yes, I know that other countries already view us as monsters. We are pretty bad, but we're not nearly as bad as the worst of us want us to be.

OK, it's cheesy, but fuck it. Why can't we all just get along?

One more thing. The more cynical among you might say something like, "Of course America is unfair. Life is unfair." I agree, America (and life) is unfair, but unlike you, I think we should do our absolute best to change that instead of mindlessly accepting that as a natural state of reality. Human beings are animals with a lot of base desires, but that doesn't stop us from trying to be civilized.

OK, one more thing. For real this time. As always, Charles M. Schulz was possibly the wisest of us all:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #797: ROUTE 66

 

If you've ever had a conversation with me about David Morrell, you'll know that I just can't be silenced on how awesome an author he is. I literally don't know when to shut up. I've been a fan since I read First Blood in high school. As an author, I found his book, The Successful Novelist, to be indispensable.

In that book he talks about what got him into writing in the first place: an American show from the 'Sixties called Route 66, written by a guy with an odd name: Stirling Silliphant. The stories were so good that Morrell felt inspired to write his own stories.

When my disability began I needed to find something to watch that I was OK with passing out in the middle of because I was on a lot of heavy drugs. I wanted to find Combat! because it sounds like Band of Brothers decades beforehand, and I like that kind of storytelling. PLEX supposedly has Combat!, so I downloaded the app and found the show. Motherfucker, it won't play in my area. Goddammit.

But PLEX also had Route 66. Well. Why not find out if it's that good?

Not every episode is great, but many of them are fantastic. The first episode is the best, though.

The idea is, two young men drive around in an awesome car, seeing America. There's just something kind of iconic about that. The Winchesters in the Impala. Dr. Gonzo and his attorney in the shark. And even, in a much different way, Doc Brown and Marty McFly in the DeLorean.

Tod Stiles is a student at Yale when his dad dies. Tod can't afford tuition anymore, so he drops out. The one thing his dad leaves him is a pretty sweet Corvette. His buddy Buz Murdock is very different from him. He's an orphan who grew up in Hell's Kitchen. Give him a book, and he'd probably use it to bludgeon someone. Together they decide to get in the Corvette and see America. Put down roots if they find a place they like enough. It's episodic, but unlike a lot of shows back then, they do refer back to previous episodes. Also unlike other shows, this one was shot on location, not a set. So you can see their progress as they travel around the country. Although I'm 99% sure that Route 66 doesn't actually go down to Florida . . .

They usually get a job in each new locale to fund their journey to the next stop. Adventures ensue. Like in that first episode. In an attempt to find a shortcut to Biloxi (also not a place Route 66 goes to), the boys find themselves in a backwoods small town where everyone treats them like assholes. Of course the townsfolk are hiding a deadly secret that the boys must discover in order to get out of town alive. And Buz gets to kick the shit out of George Kennedy! He also gets to defenestrate someone else later on!

What I really like about the show is that it *is* shot on location, so you get to see the real America as it was back in 1960, not some set on a studio backlot. I also like seeing a lot of actors from the westerns back then in modern garb and driving cars. The only other show from back then I got that from was The Twilight Zone.

But these are snapshots of an America that no longer exists. The backwoods towns are fewer and fewer as corporate America's reach stretches further and further. The only place I've seen on the show so far that is actually the same is Bourbon Street. Probably smells the same, too.

It's all too horrifying thinking about all those places now sporting a Starbucks or worse, a Chick-fil-A. It's definitely not for the better. Sure, it was a more dangerous America, but great beauty often comes with danger.

It's a good show. I watch it when I eat lunch. It's free on PLEX, but it's with commercials, and they don't put the commercials where they belong. They use a stupid algorithm for that, I guess because no one wanted to actually watch the show. Because of that, sometimes the audio is off, so it gives you the feeling of watching something that was dubbed. But these are minor annoyances. Plus there are great guest stars! Like:

Leslie "Don't Call Me Shirley" Nielsen!

And an occasional movie star like:

Lee "Woody Biggs" Marvin!

So yeah, give it a shot. I'm almost halfway through the first season.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #650: LIFE, LIBERTY AND WHAT NOW?

 

Every one of us, as Americans, had to learn about the Declaration of Independence in order to graduate from high school. Almost everyone promptly forgot about what it says, and a lot of others depend on those people forgetting what it means in order to hold sway over them. This is not going to be a history lesson but a complaint. The part of this document that I want to focus on is the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Even if you forgot about every other goddam thing in the Declaration, you at least remember the part about "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." No matter how stupid Americans can be--and that is astoundingly stupid sometimes--they can't possibly forget this part. And while they can quote it, I guarantee they don't think about what it means.

Let's pass by the "men" part. I'll be charitable and say they probably meant "humanity" and not a specific gender. I mean, they didn't, but that's not what I want to talk about. And we'll dismiss the idea of a Creator for the time being, too. Yes, a lot of the Founding Fathers were Christian, but that's not what I want to talk about, either.

Those proud goddam loudmouthed Americans who scream about how great America is (or will be again should a certain lump of shit be reelected) don't really mean that. They just want to keep America for themselves and fuck everyone who doesn't agree with them. The pursuit of happiness is only for them, not anyone they disagree with.

We're getting warmer, but we're still not to my focus yet. I know you're expecting me to bring up Nic Cage and National Treasure, but I'm not going to do that. (Probably.)

We'll skip all the people whose pursuit of happiness is on so many ballots now to be outlawed. You know my feelings on this. If your pursuit of happiness means getting an abortion, I'm in favor of you. If your pursuit of happiness means that you're a gender you weren't born into (or not a gender at all) and you don't want to identify that way, then I'm in favor of you. If your pursuit of happiness means that you want to perform in drag shows, then I'm in favor of you. Anyone who says you're wrong are butting their noses into your business, and I guarantee if you butted your nose into theirs, they would fucking go ballistic.

But my focus goes even deeper than that. Because our system is fundamentally built to restrict the pursuit of happiness to a very exclusive club of people in this country, and as George Carlin once said, "You ain't in it."

The way the system works is, regular people are kept at the mercy of the few people who actually do control the government. Not the politicians. The oligarchs. They're why banks are buying up rental properties and jacking up the prices so the poors can never live there. 'Cause fuck the poors. They have you locked into dead end jobs to scrape by a living just meager enough to keep you alive and coming to work and not enough to let you enjoy yourself. Do you ever wonder why so many people become addicts? IT'S BECAUSE DRUGS WORK. At least up to a point. People are a lot more willing to blow any disposable income on booze and lose themselves in it rather than stopping for a second and thinking about how the system is rigged against them.

I work a sales job. Sales people are always going to be needed. But what about, for example, customer service? I remember a time when customer service didn't exist. If you bought a lemon, you bought a fucking lemon. Better buy from someone else next time. Something not working like you thought? Good luck deciphering the instruction booklet. Maybe you don't need a stove, after all. You can always light a fire in your backyard and cook over that, right? But now that we have customer service, everyone is somehow even more miserable. Everyone who calls into customer service is having a horrible day, and everyone who takes those calls is having a horrible day. And for what? Is this the pursuit of happiness?

Do you know why inflation is fucking crazy right now? Why people are struggling to get by while corporations are reporting record profits? It's because those corporations are continually jacking up the prices and Americans aren't critically thinking about why they're paying for shit.

The good news is, it can't go on forever. It may even reach critical mass within our lifetimes. There will be a breaking point, and then we're going to have a depression so crippling it'll make the Great Depression look like the abundant 'Fifties. And people on the news will scratch their heads and wonder how that happened. What could it have possibly been?

So I have an idea as to what we can do. The Declaration isn't legally binding. It's just a letter to the world stating that the 13 colonies want to be recognized as an independent country. And also, fuck King George III and the nation he rode in on.

HOWEVER! It is false advertising, and what can you do when it comes to false advertising?

You sue. I'm pretty sure a good case can be made that America is not living up to its promise of a pursuit of happiness. One person doing this could accomplish nothing, but a class action lawsuit? Perhaps the biggest the nation has ever seen?

That might move the needle.

Maybe when we can throw off the fetters of this oligarchy that masquerades as a democracy, we can then work on revising and editing the Constitution until it actually makes sense for people not living in 1787. I'm not going to hold my breath, but it's good to have a plan.

After all, you may consider the Founding Fathers as sacred, themselves. They're not, but if you view them as such, then perhaps you feel the need to expound their beliefs. If that's the case, you missed a spot. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched." That wasn't before the US Constitution was written. That was a few decades after.

Let's rewrite it. But first, let's actually pursue happiness for a change.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #3: SAVING THE WORLD

If you're a decent human being, you want to save the world. We all have our plans on how we would do it. What we would outlaw. What we would decriminalize. Things like that. I've been watching TYRANT, and I enjoy it thoroughly. I couldn't recommend it, because I don't know a lot of people who would like it. I didn't have high hopes from watching the previews, but I was sick when the series premiere aired, and I had nothing to do. So I watched it, and I fell in love with it. Why? Because it satisfies one of my major interests: saving the world. Like I said, we all have solutions to what we perceive to be the world's problems. Unlike most who actually try to put their plans in motion, my hubris (big as it may be) isn't quite large enough. The show features an Arab from an important family who escapes his tradition to live in America. He goes back home for a family wedding, but when his father--the local dictator--dies, he decides to stick around because he thinks he can help make the region a better place. That's very noble, but it depends on a lot of things. What works in America wouldn't work in other places and vice versa. What would I do if I were in charge of the US? I have a lot of ideas, and I think some of them are realistic. Most aren't. If you'll remember from last night, I sometimes think up fantasies to get to sleep whenever I'm not drinking. This is another one of them. I want to solve the world's problems, but what if my perspective is wrong? What if I make things worse? The people who instated the Prohibition of the Great Depression thought they were making things better, but instead they created organized crime. Whoops. Who wants to make things worse? No one. But who knows enough to think things through? What sounds like a good idea could turn out to be absolute shit, and that's why I don't run for office. That's what sets me apart from other idealists. So many people are hell-bent on changing the world to suit their own views that it's scary. For example, I'm an atheist. I think that's a completely reasonable viewpoint, but there are a lot of people--maybe even the majority--who think I'm a danger to society. I don't think I am. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would back me up on that. But sometimes, I'm paralyzed by my own fear that I could be wrong. It makes me bullheaded. I try to be a reasonable person, but I doubt myself a great deal. I doubt others a lot, too.


Hence my life philosophy: just so long as you don't hurt anyone else, you should be able to believe whatever you want. As soon as you hinder another's freedom (and that includes freedom from being hurt by someone else), you can go fuck yourself.