SURPRISE! IT'S GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #585: MERRY CHRISTMAS

 I know I said I wouldn't be back until January, but fuck it. It's Christmas. The last of the holidays I care about. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be caring about it, too.

Usually Christmas is for our family to get together, and then we get to give each other presents. But as I mentioned around Thanksgiving, Grandma kept the family together. Since her death the family has kind of gone its separate ways. So I've spent today like it was just any other day. I did my usual Sunday rituals, and then I went downstairs to write for a while. Then I read for a while and did other stuff. Packed up more of my belongings. And now I'm writing this.

I was thinking of maybe visiting my brothers in Crystal Lake today, but they got back to me and told me they had bedbugs, so that's out. Too bad. Not only do I have their gifts for this year, but I also have their gifts from last year. I forgot to give them to them when they came for Grandma's funeral. I may or may not have been very, very drunk.

(OK, fine. I definitely was very, very drunk.)

But the thing is, I don't think I'll be getting anyone anything next year. My financial situation is definitely up in the air, and there is no way in hell I'll still be in this place by next Christmas. I'm still surprised that we haven't gotten our notice to leave yet. Perhaps even banks get a little nervous about kicking someone out of their home around Christmas time. They might even let us stay through the rest of winter. Who can get movers out in the winter, anyway? But come spring, I'm sure I'm out of here. That means my other brother and I will go our separate ways, too.

So what this GF comes down to is this. The sad fact of life is that with every Christmas, you're going to give less gifts than the year before. Most times that's because some people are no longer here. Hug your loved ones. Tell them that you love them. Cherish their presence. They might not be around next year.

I'll close out with the most horrible thing I heard this week. What with gas prices sky-high, we only have to be in the office at work once a week, on Mondays. So the office has been dead for the rest of the week, and it was even deader because those who usually were there were gone because of the winter storm. So it was just me and another coworker in the office on Friday. She sits on the other side of the wall from me, and we talked about our Christmases. For her it's a rough time of the year because her daughter was murdered the day after Christmas years ago. They found her on the 27th. A horrible fucking situation. I can't imagine how bad this time of year must be for her.

You really don't know what (or who) life will take from you over the course of the years. Take nothing for granted.

Merry Christmas.

CHRISTMAS BOOK SALE

 Christmas is the one and only holiday I care about anymore, and I have a deal for you. Good for today and today only. You must order by midnight tonight. Central time. I may be asleep by then, but as long as the time stamp is before midnight, then it's still good.

Five bucks for a book. Limit of one book per household. First come, first serve. No shipping. No strings attached. If you feel like leaving me an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads or even posting on social media about it? Cool. I'd be grateful. But the only price is five bucks. Good only in the US. Sorry, everywhere else, but shipping to you costs an arm, a leg, a firstborn child, etc. If you live in another country, I'll send you something digital for free. Not sure what I have, but I'll figure something out. In the US: Let me know what you want, and I'll send payment info to you. All books come signed. Let me know how you would like them signed.

Here are the books I have.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HIERONYMUS ALOYSIS ZIEGE

TALES OF UNSPEAKABLE TASTE

BLOOD

POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS

TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE

STRIP

GONZO RISING

NEW BOOK: IT CHANGES A MAN by John Bruni

 Check it out here!

COVER REVEAL: IT CHANGES A MAN

 It's Sunday morning. For whatever reason, Sunday mornings are usually really slow on the internet, at least here in America. I suspect it's because those who aren't in church are sleeping in. Whatever the case may be, I thought  I'd stealthily post the cover reveal for my new book, IT CHANGES A MAN. Meaning, I'm not posting any links to social media or my website. If you see it, you get a secret surprise that no one else gets. It's the unofficial part one of my forthcoming splatter SF series. If you're a reader of my Goodnight, Fuckers columns, then you know what I'm talking about.

I think the book will be out this week. Just in time for Christmas! Anyway, take a look at this glorious cover by Luke Spooner, who also did the cover for my book, POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS, as well as the forthcoming TRAIL OF BLOOD.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #584: WELP

 It was bound to happen eventually. I have officially run out of ideas for this column. It went on a little longer than it usually does. By now GF is on hiatus until the new year. But my numbers picked up drastically for some reason. Not sure why, but I had the number of readers I did in the old days. It's tapered off again, but I figured I should still continue going to be accommodating.

But I got to the end of my GF notebook of ideas, and they're all crossed off. It's time to take it easy as we head into 2023. I'm sure I'll be raring to rip in January again. Until then, is there anything you would want me to talk about in these things? Writing stuff? More stories about Gramps? I'm pretty sure I've gone through them all, but maybe I'll think of something.

All right. Time to close down for the year. Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #583: A SURPRISE FIELD TRIP

 So I was cleaning out a lot of my shit, still packing for whenever I move, and I found a pamphlet that brought me back to junior high. I'm fairly smart, but I'm not nearly as smart as people think I am. If I was, I would have majored in business instead of English and philosophy, two things guaranteed to get me nowhere in the world. I don't know. Maybe it's the glasses.

But people have always thought I was a lot smarter than I am, and this goes back to childhood. To the surprise field trip. A group of super smart kids got chosen to go on a field trip to learn about nuclear power and engineering and a whole lot of other science things that smart kids are totally into. Somehow, I ended up being one of those kids. And no one told me.

I remember being in the auditorium for some function or other, and some teachers pulled me out and asked me why I wasn't with the other kids on the bus. I had no idea what they were talking about. I did, however, know that going on a field trip was a lot better than this stupid auditorium shit. So I went with them.

Yeah, I learned a lot. I'm always paying attention to these kinds of things. I saw how important math is to building bridges and not just because each bridge built has to calculate a set amount of worker deaths that are acceptable. Yes, that's a thing. I got to fiddle around with a Giger Counter. I learned about how we're all radioactive, just not with the kind that kills us. (Well, unless you live near Chernobyl.) I learned how holographs work. It was pretty fun. Then we got back on the bus and went back to class and back to the usual boring shit kids are forced to sit through.

To this very day I have no idea how this happened. I'm still certain there was a mix up with paperwork, and my name wound up on the clipboard and some genius kid had to sit through another principal announcement about something that would have zero impact on our lives. I don't remember getting my mom to sign a permission slip, and I certainly didn't remember handing it in. An excuse to get out of school? That would have stuck in my head.

To be fair, I didn't often give mom the stuff my teachers said to give to her. If it was all that important, they would have mailed it to her like they did with report cards. Although I did find a paper recently warning our parents that there was a stranger lurking around the school grounds who had tried to abduct one of us. Whoops. Maybe there were a few important things I should have passed on.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #582: MEXICAN COKE

 

Mexican Coke is the best. Whenever I'm at a Mexican restaurant, especially Pancho's in Hoffman Estates, I can't stop myself from buying a bottle. I should absolutely not be drinking these things, so I try not to frequent places that sell it, but it's one of those necessary things. I don't drink caffeine except once or twice a week, and this is loaded with the stuff. And I'm diabetic, which really means I shouldn't be drinking this.

Because it doesn't have high fructose corn syrup like American Coke has. It has real sugar in it. Because HFCS is cheaper, Coke changed their recipe to contain it instead of sugar. But hey! It's the classic taste, right? Nothing different here, pal. Just like in your grandparents' youth.

Except our grandparents got to drink cocaine in their Cokes, so maybe they should lay off that classic taste nonsense.

I went to Pancho's last week, and my teeth are still humming, thinking about that Coke. My blood sugar still has not come down, no matter how much insulin I shoot up with. But goddam, it's a beautiful drink!