GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #815: SNOW FORT

 When I was a kid I built my share of snow forts. The unfortunate thing is, I was lousy at it. Thankfully, and this is probably the only time you'll hear me say this, but thankfully I had my stepfather.

I talk shit about him all the time with good reason, but no one is completely a piece of shit. Except for Donald Trump, but he barely qualifies as human. At any rate, my stepfather had a few good qualities, and one of them was he was a genius. He was a biologist with a well-known Chicago area university, and he wrote books on the subject.

I should probably mention, before you start armchair shrinking me, that I wanted to be an author *before* I met him. Just a weird coincidence.

One of the things he was really good at was building snow forts. They were masterpieces of architecture. He tried to teach me how, but I have no skill for building anything, the reason being is I can somehow measure out, say, an inch, but anyone else measuring the same inch would get two. At first I thought I was so unlucky that I blamed every ruler I ever got for being wrong until I realized that the problem was with me.

Hey, I was ten years old when I came to that conclusion.

I shit you not, someone could live in his snow forts. The walls were so solid you could probably punch one and break your hand. And these fuckers were huge. As a child I could stand up inside, reach my hand up and barely touch the ceiling. And he didn't just build this part, because he knew that you needed a refuge during a snow battle, but you needed ramparts to defend, too. He also built those ramparts so that they were nearly impenetrable.

No one could sack our snow fort, no matter how hard they tried. I rarely won anything when I was in his presence, but I could win snow wars. And yes, I did pretend I was on Hoth during such skirmishes.

You know what I never see anymore? Kids building snow forts. It seems they're only interested in snowmen, and that's just barely. I know, I know, kids today have so many things vying for their attention, but I *did* have TV when I was a kid. Maybe the other parents back then forbade their kids from watching TV for too long, and they're not doing that for any and all devices today for whatever reason.

I don't want to come off as a grumpy old man complaining about kids today ("But?" I hear you ask), but my complaint is *not* with the kids. It's with their parents. We have adults today who were raised on the internet and tablets and smartphones, and that can't possibly be healthy. Why aren't parents more vigilant today? I'm sure middle-aged men when I was a kid were bitching about how TV couldn't possibly be healthy for kids, so maybe I'm just muttering darkly at the cloud instead of yelling at it. I *do* think I'm going through a midlife crisis, after all. I could be talking out of my ass, but the older I get the more I enjoy time away from any screen, any modern tech. It feels better, and I'm not sure why other people don't do that. I get it. Devices are addictive. They're designed that way, like cigarette companies putting nicotine in their product.

*sigh* Ah well.

I have very few happy memories with my stepfather, but I do miss those days building snow forts with him.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #451: LANDLORDS

 

It's not often that I'm on the same page as my stepfather. Longtime readers and close friends know how that relationship worked out, and it was not good. But here's one that stuck with me over the years. I didn't realize what it meant at the time, but as I grew older, I got it. And now, I get it, like, a lot.

When I was a kid he would grumble all the time about our landlord. He called him all sorts of names when the landlord wasn't around. My stepfather hated that man with every fiber of his being, and I didn't get why because I didn't understand the dynamic of that relationship. I didn't get it until I got older and understood what a landlord was.

And yeah, I hate those sons of bitches. They were a necessary evil, though, until perhaps now.

A friend of mind told me recently that he and his wife have to move from their excellent apartment in Lisle (it's a beautiful place) because their landlord recently jacked up the rent to an insane amount of money. My friend likened it to a mortgage payment instead of monthly rent. And he's not the only one. All over this country everyone is getting fucked over by their landlords. It's out of control. And people wonder why a lot of folks have to move back in with their parents.

I've watched the cost of rent in my corner of the Chicagoland area rise steadily over the years, but for some reason NOW is when they're really going fucking crazy. How do they expect people to be able to live there? In the middle of a plague? When the cost of living keeps rising but wages remain the same? I'm familiar with the concept. Remember, I'm a writer, and our per word payment has not increased for a hundred years. I'm pretty sure back then they didn't even have a minimum wage. Now we do, and it's piddling. It's just enough for people to buy drugs to help them forget how miserable their lives are.

And I get that it's a complicated thing. The landlords have shit to pay for, too, but holy fuck, this is . . . I was about to say highway robbery, but even that's pretty tame compared to the cost of rent these days. And yeah, inflation. I know. And I can even pinpoint why we're suffering from inflation: some genius decided to take us off the gold and silver standard. Because they got greedy. Back then there was a limited supply of money. Now there isn't because monetary value is an imaginary thing. A dollar bill is worth a dollar because the US government says it is. It doesn't even have a gold and silver backing like it used to.

Perhaps the answer is a finite amount of money. Granted, that would cause all sorts of problems on its own, because who do you think would end up with that finite supply? But I do find joy in one thing: all they can do is hoard it until it isn't even worth anything, because who the fuck will be buying shit when ordinary people don't have money? Maybe the super rich can pass it back and forth to each other, but what good is that, in the long run?

Wow. I didn't mean to launch off on that tirade. All I meant to say is landlords can suck my dick.

I hope no one is wondering why there is a picture of Joe Pesci at the top of this column.