GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #577: ANDOR

 

So when they announced Rogue One, I couldn't help but think, we don't need this shit. The story of how the rebels got the Death Star plans? Fuck that. But then I saw the movie, and it turned out to be pretty fucking good. In fact, it has the greatest ending to a Star Wars movie that isn't called The Empire Strikes Back.

And then they announced the show, Andor, based on the past of one of those characters from Rogue One. And I couldn't help but think, we don't need this shit. Fuck that. But in the end, I loved the show. It had a rocky beginning, and I almost checked out of the show, but around the middle it got really good, and by the end it had blown me away.

Star Wars has had a long history of saying fuck The Man. The evil empire needs rebels to take it down and give freedom and peace to everyone. Andor continues this tradition on a much starker level. There are no lightsabers and Jedi. Darth Vader does not make an appearance. This is all about rebellion and making The Man pay dearly for his widespread policy of oppression.

It's kind of weird when I see Star Wars fans siding with the government on a lot of things, especially when they're voicing their opinions in favor of oppression. People worry about the rail workers going on strike and ruining their day, for example. They want the government to stop that strike from happening by throwing those rail workers a bone instead of giving them what they need. I wonder if it ever occurs to them that they're encouraging a very real evil empire. I don't imagine they watch Star Wars because they agree with the Emperor.

It puzzles me even more that Disney allows this to happen. What are the biggest corporations in entertainment? Don't bother to Google it. Disney is number one with a bullet. You don't get to be that big without being in bed with the evil empire that rules you. Disney essentially is the Empire, and yet it's giving us this story about how important it is to rebel against the Powers That Be? Very strange.

Then again, these are strange times. But to quote a great man, "They always were."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #576: RIP NEGAN AND FRIENDS

 I was a fan of The Walking Dead for a long time before the show premiered. I knew the team of Kirkman and Moore before even the first issue came out. I was a huge fan of their previous book, Battle Pope, and at my first comics convention I bought a Battle Pope shirt off of them personally.

In case you're not familiar with Battle Pope

When I saw that they were putting a book out through Image about the zombie apocalypse, I got very jazzed. Bought it fresh off the press. The Walking Dead #1. I eventually got it signed by Kirkman and Moore. This was in the days just before the show started. Kirkman was easy to get. He wasn't even on the list of guests. He was just hanging out at the Image booth. I got to talk to him while waiting in line for Moore, who had been on the guest list. Our talk went so well that he gave me volume one of the Invincible omnibus for free. That's a hell of an expensive book, but it paid off. I got all the others in the series, too. Moore was a lot harder to get, and that's a story for another day because this isn't about the comics.

It's about the show. I remember when the first episode aired. It was a double episode, if I recall. I made it very clear to my girlfriend at the time that no matter what we did it would involve watching The Walking Dead. So we did. I loved the hell out of it, and after getting fabulously drunk and having lots of sex, we both passed out only to be woken up in the middle of the night by the replay. Specifically by the car alarm scene because I'd left the TV blaring when we passed out.

But after that first season the show had its ups and downs. A lot more downs than I would have hoped for. It got to the point where I was baffled by the writers because they weren't doing anything cohesive with this. If they found an opportunity to make a tangent, they would do so and follow it until they had no choice but to go back to the story. They lacked focus. But every once in a while they fired on all cylinders, and that kept me engaged.

And then they introduced Negan. They handled the end of his first episode poorly. His second went pretty well when he out-Neganed the comics Negan by killing Abraham and Glenn. That was pretty sweet. But Rick and his crew kept descending into madness and stupidity until I reached the point where I thought FUCK THEM. I want Negan to kill them all and take over the show.

And so Negan and Friends was born. And when I got tired of Fear the Walking Dead, I started calling it Where's Negan and Friends? But then it got really good and I started calling it The Adventures of Victor Strand in the Nuclear Zombie Apocalypse. And now it's going to be stupid again, so it's back to Where's Negan and Friends?

They really should have called Dead City Negan Lives, but what the hell. It will probably get bogged down by Maggie's bullshit, so I'm calling it Negan and Friend. The Daryl Dixon show? I won't bother. Maybe it will be Friend of Negan? Don't even ask me about the Rick and Michonne one. I have the least interest in that one unless Rick and Michonne die horribly in the first episode. It could be called Negan and Friends: Pee-Pee Pants City.

World Beyond? What's that?

PS:

PSS: This always makes me laugh.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #575: DEAD FISH

 When I first started my current job there was a fish tank at work. There were only two fish in it. One of them died months ago, but the other, a suckerfish, remained. After a while they got some new fish. Tiny ones. Mostly danios. A couple of them died over the months, and on Friday the suckerfish joined his friend in that fish tank in the sky.

But it wasn't removed from the tank until this morning. It had been in there for the weekend, and I had to wonder what that must have been like for the other fish. "Holy shit! Mike's dead! And he's, uh, sticking around, I guess. Maybe let's not swim too close to him." By the time I saw the fish today it had started to rot. It reminded me of Earl.

Over the years I've tried to keep things alive at my desk. I had Sea Monkeys at Conference Plus for many years, but I went on vacation once. I figured putting the office vegan in charge of keeping them alive would do just the trick, but she overfed them and killed all but three of them. I nursed those three back to health, and soon I had a tank full of the li'l fellas again. Until I went on vacation again, and another coworker knocked the tank over, killing them all.

I also had a spider plant that went with me from Conference Plus into the Arkadin years and then I took it to Call One with me. When I left Call One and entered into the Year of Fucking Not Working it died.

And then there was Earl. He was a little blue beta fish I had when I first started at Conference Plus. My friend who had referred me for the job got Earl for me as a cube-warming gift. She gave me food and stuff to clean the bowl, etc. And she said that these things were supposed to live for a long time with minimal effort on my part.

I did everything I was supposed to. I followed her instructions to a T. And you've probably already guessed what happened.

That's right. Soon Earl started swimming on his side. I'd tap the glass, and he'd straighten out, but eventually the day came when he didn't. I saw that he'd died late on a Friday. However, I had to be somewhere by 6:30 that night. I got out at 5, and it took me about an hour to drive from Schaumburg to Elmhurst. So yeah, I was in a hurry. I figured I'd give Earl his toilet funeral on Monday.

When I got back I saw that he'd rotted pretty quickly. He had moldy spots all over him, and his fins had fallen off. I took him to the bathroom and took him out of the bowl with his net. I wasn't about to just pour everything into the toilet. I wanted to keep the pebbles and the decoration for the next fish I planned on getting.

I took Earl to the toilet and flipped the net upside down. He did not fall out. I shook the net, and nothing happened. I flicked the back of the net, and he still stayed in there. It took a while, but he finally dropped out of the net and hit the rim on the way down. He left a blue Earl-shaped mark on the porcelain that was kind of disgusting. I wiped it off and flushed him.

And then I saw that there were blue drops on the tile behind me from the sink to the stall. I cleaned up the rest of Earl's remains and washed out the bowl.

But I didn't get another fish. I lost my heart for that kind of thing pretty quickly.

I currently have nothing alive on my desk except for the bugs that live in the office. There are many spiders and other things I can't identify. They have traps all around us, but the little fuckers still manage to get around. But I just don't have the heart to try to keep something else alive after all this time.

RIP Earl and that big suckerfish. His name might not be Mike. I don't know. I made that part up. But maybe Mike and Earl are together in the great beyond. Hopefully not in an office. If there's an office in the afterlife, then I'm probably going to be stuck there. I've spent the last 15 or so years hoping I don't die at work.

Poor bastards who do.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #574: LOW KEY THANKSGIVING

 This was the first Thanksgiving without Grandma. As a result it didn't feel like much of a Thanksgiving. She really kind of held the family together.

My aunt usually comes visiting from North Carolina, but she moved out to East Moline and decided not to come. My cousin and her husband and kid usually showed up, but this year they probably stuck to their own. My brothers in Crystal Lake haven't stopped by for a holiday in years. It was just me and my brother this year, and he slept through most of the day. I was left to my own devices.

I actually slept pretty late, myself. I'm usually up and out of bed by eight on my days off, but I slept to almost ten yesterday. I treated it like it was any other day off and did my usual shit. I didn't even eat turkey, but I made myself an excellent batch of spaghetti and meatballs. I'm really fucking good at that, and they were delicious.

So I'm pretty sure the time of family holidays are over for me. That's all right, I guess. Although it doesn't bode well for Christmas. I'm sure that's going to be another bummer.

I did miss drinking my usual handle of Wild Turkey 101, though. It was a rare Friday that I woke up with any memory of Thanksgiving, but I always enjoyed what I remembered.

GGMF to all who celebrated.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #573: FUCK BLACK FRIDAY

 I know I'm in the minority on this, but fuck Black Friday. If you've been around me for a while, this does not shock you. But I absolutely despise the naked greed of people who fight over stupid shit for a deal that really, in the big picture, isn't all that much of a deal. So here is my annual reminder to not give in to our corporate overlords. DO NOT GO OUT TOMORROW.

Do not camp out overnight at some store's doors. Do not give back all that money you make to the corporate scumbags you made it from. Do not resort to violence for stuff that you don't need. Don't do any of it.

And here's my entreaty to the corporate overlords: don't make your employees work on this day. Give them a fucking break. Let them stay home with their families. Let them take a day to do what they want to do, not what you want them to do.

I only ever worked retail one year during which Black Friday happened. Spoiler alert: I didn't work that day. Sears had a mandate, from the tippy top, that every employee must work Black Friday. I did not show up. I made it very clear to them that when they hired me, I could only work weekends. This was a supplemental job for my real job, where I made real money.

When I showed up for work the following Saturday the acting boss of the shoes department asked me why I wasn't there the day before. I told him exactly why. This isn't my real job, and if I lose it because fuck Black Friday, then so be it. I didn't tell him that I actually had the day off on Friday because, in case I haven't said it enough, fuck Black Friday.

I didn't get fired. I think it's because my boss felt doomed at that job, himself. Maybe he saw that I still had hope to escape the clutches of Sears. Now that Sears is gone I wonder what happened to him. It must have been a terrible day for him. I genuinely feel bad for him.

So yeah. Don't go out tomorrow. If enough of us stop doing this, Black Friday will stop being a thing. Let's make that happen.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #572: GI JOE #300

 

The final issue of GI Joe came out today. You may have noticed it wasn't The Best Comic Book of the Week. I have my reasons.

Back when I was a kid I read two comic books: The Transformers and GI Joe. Both series ended before their time, and now both have been finished decades later by IDW. I was very glad that both books came back, but the GI Joe one was better. It was great to see the adventures of these Joes in their neverending struggle against Cobra. Some months it dragged, but many months (especially recently) kicked ass.

I thought this might be the end of an era, and that was the plan going into this GF column for about a month now. But there is a reason why it wasn't the best this week. Because . . . well, I suspect it's not the end of the series. If you haven't read it, from this point on there are spoilers.

So the action continued heating up as Snake-Eyes, now "resurrected" by Dr. Mindbender and his lunatic experiments, sets about killing just about every bad guy on Cobra Island in the bowels of Cobra Casino. Meanwhile the other Joes are in a heated battle trying to save those who had been trapped during the resurrection of Serpentor in his new form, Serpentor Khan. And the battle keeps going and going, building into a fever pitch, and I genuinely had no idea how Larry Hama was going to tie up this entire story in just a few pages.

And then it became very obvious. Because the last panel says TO BE CONTINUED?

So yeah. If I had to guess, Hama still has a job. I'll bet he's working on the new Joe book for Robert Kirkman. This might be the last IDW Joe book, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Skybound's first Joe issue will be numbered 301.

I'm not complaining. This is a great story, and I'm glad I'll have more of it. But at the same time it was kind of a letdown that I didn't get the ending I was expecting. Then again, one of my rules is that you should never blame a piece of art for not being what you wanted it to be. So I guess that's on me.

I was originally going to call this The End of an Era. But I think I'll have to take my cue from Brian Pulido: The End is the Beginning . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #571: FOUR DAYS

 I used to look forward to this time of year. Since I started working office jobs in my late twenties, I have always gotten a miniature four day vacation when Thanksgiving rolls around. Four lovely days. Four days of sleeping in and forgetting that I was otherwise chained to a job that would forever haunt me. Four days of freedom. Of things I want to do instead of things I have to do.

I miss those years gone by. Well, in 2020 it didn't mean much to me because I was unemployed. In 2021 and now this year I work at a job that has very little concern for days off. We only get Thanksgiving Day off. That's it. And since it falls on a Thursday--my usual day off--it means nothing to me. Well, it means a little. I get holiday pay. But in all honesty I would rather have an extra day off, especially now since I don't have any vacation or PTO days and won't until 2023.

Maybe someday I'll know what that four day weekend feels like again. I have my doubts. But it would be nice.