GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #614: 209

 Today is my 209th day from my last drink. I'm surprised I can still say that at this late hour today, considering the things I've gone through lately. I seriously did think about stopping at the liquor store on my way home. I don't think anyone would have blamed me.

While today was not bereft of good news, there was still some tremendously bad news. The toe that I was starting to seriously think I was going to lose is looking a lot better, and my podiatrist is very happy with its progress. He's already taken two of my piggies away from me, and I'd like to leave it at that. (The piggie in question is the one that had roast beef.)

But the bad news.

I'm owed a considerable amount of money, but right now I've asked that person to hold onto it for me for a while. The reason being is that every time I suddenly have real money, something comes up that necessitates my losing said money. Here's a case in point.

I just got my tax refund, which was a good chunk of cash. Plus tomorrow is payday, so it felt nice to not have to worry about money for the immediate future. Especially considering that I will undoubtedly get my 30-day notice next month or April, and I'll need every penny I have.

So I figured something would go wrong with my car. I can hear something squeaking every time I back up, and there is a new squeal when I go forward. I know one of the axles is doomed, but I was told I had a few years before I had to worry about it. Of course it was going to break on me now. But that didn't turn out to be the trouble.

Last week I went to the dentist, and she had bad news for me. My gums had receded from the tooth next to my implant to the point where I needed a graft or I would lose the tooth. She sent me to the periodontist who actually did a gum graft on me previously. It was nice to catch up, but as she examined the gums in question, she said that she probably couldn't, and definitely wouldn't, do a graft there. A nerve sits just below the gumline, and if she sutured too close to it, I would probably wind up with numbness in that part of my mouth (and lip) for the rest of my life.

I already started calculating how much an implant there would cost, and that's bad enough, but she also had more bad news for me.

I needed five more gum grafts. I thought hopefully my insurance would cover it, but dental insurance does their best to get out of paying for anything. Because dental insurance doesn't care about health. They would probably prefer we all go toothless.

I saw the expected bill for all the work, and it's thousands and thousands of dollars. And I have to pay 30$% upfront, which comes out to just under $3K. That's money that I don't have, and I can't risk that my insurance probably won't cover or reimburse anything.

Do you know what insurance will cover? Dentures.

Hell, my teeth are pretty fucked anyway. I'm thinking I'm going to see how long my dentist can keep them in my mouth before I have to throw in the towel. I'm pretty much stuck choosing between my future and my teeth, and it's looking like I'll have to say goodbye to my teeth.

This fucking sucks.

So. Do I know anyone out there with a full set of dentures? Pros? Cons? Annoyances?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #613: POE-NAW-GRAH-FEE

That got your attention.

 

Not too long ago I saw this article about how Louisiana now requires anyone accessing porn sites to provide ID. It's worth a read.

They're doing this in the guise of protecting the children. Anytime a politician says that children need to be protected? They're full of shit. Unless they're talking about putting child rapists in prison. Then they're on point, but otherwise? Full of shit. If they did care? We wouldn't have so many school shootings. Perhaps if children could vote, politicians might change their tune. That would be kind of funny to see, actually. "I'm going after the Caillou vote." Or maybe these pricks will be on Sesame Street yukking it up with Bert and Ernie. (But not Oscar. Oscar would not stand for their shit.)

What this really sounds like to me is an attack on the sex industry. LA is requiring porn viewers to use their digital drivers licenses to access porn sites. PornHub is called out in particular. They claim that they don't keep track of data, and that's probably bullshit, but even if they did, I wouldn't care. They know that the important part of their existence is discretion, and if they didn't live up to that unspoken promise, then they wouldn't have customers. Remember, there are a lot of people who actually have PornHub accounts. Those require credit cards. There's no way they're not collecting data.

However, I'm certain that LA actually IS collecting data, and they're not going to be so benign with it. What better way for Big Brother to keep track of his little siblings? And they'll hold that data over the viewers like the Sword of Damocles. They might not be able to legally use it, but nothing stops them from using it without your knowledge. How often do cops, without a search warrant, break into the place they want to search, search it, lock up, and then figure out a way to get that search warrant in order to return legally? It happens a lot more often than one would think.

Personally I don't care if anyone knows what my kink is. If you're interested? Library porn. Women with glasses and fishnet stockings. Maybe a little public sex. MILFs. Porn parodies. Funny porn. But then again, who am I? People expect me to like porn. Or perhaps the author of DONG OF FRANKENSTEIN is an innocent little angel?

Most people don't want their kinks known. If people have to show their ID to view porn? They're probably not going to do it. If enough people stop watching porn, what happens to those porn sites?

Sure, there will always be the loyal hardcore (so to speak) fans. Maybe they're enough to keep the industry afloat. Who knows?

Protecting children from things they shouldn't see is not the government's job. It's the parents' job. Just like it's a parent's job to raise a kid right instead of raising a psychopath who jerks off thinking about shooting up his school until he actually does it. There are parental controls. Use them.

And to be honest, that will work on most kids because most kids are stupid. There are, however, smart kids, and you'll never deter them from getting something they really want. I'm sure right now there are genius teenagers in LA who have figured out how to use an out of state IP address to look at PornHub. Remember, these are kids who grew up with the internet. When something is a part of your everyday life from birth, you tend to know how to use it to your advantage.

So if it could happen in LA, I can only assume it could happen in the other 49. If porn is really, truly at risk of sinking, then I would recommend going against what your nature is telling you.

Don't get rid of physical media. Keep those DVDs and magazines. I did. And hey, it could be an investment in the future. In a world without porn, how much would someone pay for a stroke mag?

How much, indeed.

Extra points go to whoever figures out the reference in the title of this column.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #612: MOM'S DOLL

 

As I've been packing my things, I've been making little discoveries about the house. I found this one hidden away in a linen closet. Never mind that Dollygram misspelled my mom's last name. I didn't know she and her parents ever lived at that location in Elmhurst. Weird.

I was curious, so I opened the box and discovered this:

Still wrapped in plastic. If you can't see, it says HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I wonder which birthday that was for, and I wonder if she ever saw it. That it was still wrapped in plastic suggested that she hadn't, or at the very least she never opened it. And now here it is, decades later, hidden in the linen closet.

I felt kind of weird looking at this thing, like I'd opened a coffin. Very few things are sadder than a toy that has never been played with. It's kind of like Hemingway's baby shoes. That's the first thing I thought of while looking at Mom's doll.

I wonder if Western Union still does things like this. Probably not.

Am I the only one feeling creeped out and melancholy about that second picture?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #611: HORRIBLE THOUGHTS FROM MY HEAD #611

 I had this thought. And I can't blame cannabis because I wasn't high at the time. And this sounds like a high idea. Really.

I was holding a Choose Your Own Adventure and making a practice run when I thought, what if I did a Choose Your Own Adventure, but . . .

All right. You know how almost all of them start with page one, and then they say to continue to page two, sometimes even three before they give you a choice? What if I did one where you're instructed to keep going to four, then five, then six, and before you realize it, you're not in a Choose Your Own Adventure, you're just reading a book?

It made me laugh, but that's a really horrible idea.

Although thinking about CYOA books recently reminded me of The (Pick Your Own) Adventures of Roily Gemstone: An Autobiography. It is sadly out of print, and the author wishes to remain nameless. A CYOA book that never ends? That's good shit right there. Oh, and that link on the Gemstone review sadly no longer works. I remember enjoying those ridiculous songs.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #610: GOOD GODDAM FOOD

 

Sometimes you're reading a blog or a newsletter, and whoever wrote it decides to give you a recipe. Almost always it's for something that is good for you or at least somewhat healthy. Here is my solemn promise to you: if I post a recipe, it will absolutely be terrible for you. There will be no health benefits. But it will be good goddam food.

Gaze upon that sweet bastard I made a couple of nights ago. It stuffed me like something I'd see in a bad porno. I'm pretty sure just looking at it brought my blood pressure up dangerously high. And it was good goddam food.

Here's what you do. Take one tortilla. Load it up with nacho cheese. Put another tortilla on top of that. Microwave for a minute. Chop up some ground beef with taco seasoning and slap that sumbitch down on top. Put a bunch of rice on top of that. Put a bunch of shredded cheese on top of that. Hit it with a bunch of Chipotle sauce. And then, the koop de Gracie, crumble some Doritos on top of that. Gobble that shit up. It helps if you're high, or you might not make it through the whole meal.

You're welcome. Don't forget to tip your nurses.

I have fairly large hands, so you have a good idea as to the scale.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #609: CHILD OF RAGE (REPRISE)

 OK, I finished Jim Thompson's Child of Rage, and whoo-boy. If I really had saved it to be the last book I ever read, I think I would have gone out on top, but it is a severely fucked up book. SEVERELY. I thought I would post my Goodreads review of it tonight, so here we go:

I try not to curse in these reviews, so I'm going to self-censor a little. This is the most f*cked up thing Jim Thompson ever wrote, and he wrote a lot of f*cked up things.

I don't even know where to begin with this. Allen Smith, the protagonist of this horror show, is one of the most despicable characters in literature. And the shocker of it is that it's not entirely his fault, but you don't know that until the end, and the way we learn this is a bit of a spoiler, so I won't mention it here.

Allen is a young man (just turned 18) who is forced to go to a school he can't stand to be in. He's an African American born to a white woman, and in the world of the 'Seventies, that earns him some privileges but for the most part he's treated like garbage because of the color of his skin. He takes the worst offense from white people who think they're progressive but are actually kinda-sorta racist in their own thinking without even knowing it. I get that. There is even a character who says that some of his best friends are Black. A definite red flag.

But he doesn't just have a chip on his shoulder. It's a boulder, and he takes his rage out on everyone within his path. And in an odd way, in the end they kind of all deserve it. The only damage he causes that was a complete accident is when he kills a baby and feels bad about it later.

He's sex-obsessed and even finds himself in situations where he could have sex with a willing partner, but it turns out that he's impotent unless he's thinking about his mom. And his desire to have sex with his mom isn't entirely his fault. She sometimes invites him into her bed but doesn't let him enjoy it. Not nearly as much as she enjoys it, at any rate.

And that's not the only incest in this book. He discovers that a brother and sister at school have a decidedly un-sibling-like relationship and sets things in motion that you will simply not believe unless you read this book. I expect the lowest of the low from the human race, and even this shocked me. And this isn't Allen's only manipulation. Not by a long shot.

This book is full of racism, sexism, homophobia, incest and a whole bunch of other stuff that would turn most people off. I'm not surprised to see these labels applied to Thompson himself, as he kind of ham-fistedly deals with these issues. I don't think he's a believer in any of those things, though. I think his point, in setting out to write this one, is to point out how horrible people are, and how violence begets violence and hatred begets hatred. I guarantee one thing though: as much as people like to make his books into movies, there isn't a single soul on this planet who would want to turn this one into a film. It is a truly f*cked up book.

There was also a novella in the back of the book, and I wondered why they included it at first. Around the halfway mark I realized that he'd probably written it as a practice run and then wound up cannibalizing it for Child of Rage. It's pretty interesting and f*cked up in its own right. I also found out that this book is actually signed. Not by Thompson, of course. This edition was published more than 30 years after he died. But it was signed by the illustrator, who I'd never heard of before, and Ed Gorman, the guy who wrote the intro. Gorman was a great writer, too, and it kind of surprised me that this was signed. I've owned this book for many years and never knew that. The reason is, the signed plate is usually at the front of the book. In this case it was at the very back of the book. Weird. But a pleasant surprise, nonetheless.

I can't recommend this book to anyone. I enjoyed it, but I have a very f*cked up mind, myself. If you're f*cked up, you might enjoy this book, too.

Oh yeah, one more thing. This is the second book of Thompson's in which he refers to himself. The first time was in The Alcoholics, when he writes about an alcoholic writer named Thompson admitted to an asylum for The Cure. In this one he refers to an alcoholic writer named Tomlinson or Thomas or something like that. It should be mentioned that Thompson literally died of alcoholism. So no matter what you say about him, you can never say that he didn't have a sense of humor about his own situation. I say that as a recovering alcoholic myself.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #608: ALL IT TAKES IS A GOOD TEACHER

 Up until high school I was a pretty straight forward young lad. I trusted (more or less) in authority and thought that the police had our best interests at heart even though I'd already had a pretty rough run in with them in junior high. And then I took Mr. Torney's social studies class in high school.

Mr. Torney had a bad rap around the school because if you fell asleep in his class he would shoot you with a Super Soaker. I never fell asleep in any class, so that was never an issue for me. I wound up in his classroom for the first time and saw that he was probably insane due to the decor. Most teachers went to various other classrooms to teach, but his classroom was clearly HIS. Hanging above his desk was a mannequin head wearing a Nixon mask with a bird perched on its forehead. And that was just the beginning. He had a lot of crazy stuff on the walls, but the one that drew my attention was a poster of an authority figure that said BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.

I soon learned that this was a reference to 1984 by George Orwell, which I read for his class as well as Animal Farm. The more I learned in his class, the more I realized that authority figures might not be authority figures. The older I get? The more I am certain that they're no real authority.

I learned not to trust politicians from Mr. Torney. I learned not to trust the government from him. And I learned not to trust the police from him.

It was an eye-opening experience, taking that class. It taught me that not everything is what it seems, and if you dig deep enough you'll find people's true motives. Sometimes the government is right. A lot of times they're not. It's on a case by case basis, really.

But I think about the police mostly. For a while I even believed that bad apples theory, that when you hear about a cop stepping out of his (almost always his) lane, he's an exception, not the rule. But nope, when you realize that they're all of a brotherhood, that they watch each others backs, that even the so-called good apples will keep their mouths shut to protect the bad apples, you realize that they're all corrupt. And when Uvalde happened, I discovered that they're all cowards, too. Not a single one of them has any kind of courage. Their loyalty belongs only to themselves. No exceptions.

So yeah. I'm all in favor of disbanding the motherfuckers. Replace them with people who are courageous. Who have a loyalty to preserving the peace instead of to themselves. Who don't panic when confronted with a difficult situation. Who, instead of callously murdering people, they try to find peaceful solutions when possible. I get it if a guy is waving a machine gun that he's not supposed to have at the cops. They can shoot that guy. But a bunch of cops piling up on one person who isn't even armed? To the point where they actually KILL that person? I don't care if they thought that person was Satan himself, they don't get to kill unarmed people, no matter how much it will get their dicks hard. And killing people gets a lot of cops' dicks hard.

Wow. That got a little out of hand. I just wanted to talk about learning to distrust authority. But I stand by everything I said here.