GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1076: OUR SECRET

 If you're reading this, it's our secret. Shhhhhhh. I'm testing something. To quote a great man:

As you were. Goodnight, you lovely fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1075: A CLOSED MIND

 It's a little surprising how easily an open mind can snap shut like a trap. You might not even notice it happen. And then one day you find yourself in an argument, and someone accuses you of having a closed mind, and after you think about it, you realize holy shit. They're right.

When I was a kid I swore I'd never grow up to be like an adult in a horror movie. You know what I mean. The guy who won't believe the kids that there's a monster on a killing spree. Usually it's a cop or a parent, but it could be anyone.

I wanted to be more like Gary Busey in Silver Bullet. He didn't necessarily believe Corey Haim, but he played along and got the surprise of his life. Because he did this and was thus prepared, he survived the fight (unlike, say, John Vernon in Killer Klowns from Outer Space).

(Spoiler, I guess.)

But the thing about getting older is, the more years that pass, the more you think you know everything, especially when it comes to what you believe to be impossible. Because you've gone through so much, you think you know what reality is like, and your mind closes to anything that can't fit into your worldview.

This is something I'm prone to, and I'm also an obstinate son of a bitch. I give no ground when I think I know something. Do you know how long it took me to recognize this about myself, despite everyone I've ever argued with telling me about it to my face? Forty fucking years. Unfortunately getting your mind stuck in this state makes you more likely to make knee-jerk reactions.

I recently mentioned in this space that not responding with a knee-jerk reaction is the key to a saner life. It's also the key to a better understanding of the universe, the key to having an open mind.

The Trump Administration specializes in causing knee-jerk reactions. This is what they want. They want people freaking out and saying angry things, and we easily fall into their trap. People I know for a fact who would never threaten someone's safety or lives routinely wish death on Trump or anyone in his Cabinet of Douchebags and Sychophants. Sometimes this extends to anyone wearing a MAGA hat regardless of their ability to influence those around them.

The reason they want you to do that to them is so they can point at you and say, "See? They're monsters. They think we're subhuman. They want us dead." They don't even have to incite violence at that point. Once that idea is in the MAGA head, the job is done. Any crime they commit against those who wish them dead is an act of self-defense in their eyes.

Knee-jerk reaction = falling into their trap. So the next time these assholes make you angry, stop. Think. What do they want me to feel? How do they want me to act on those feelings? And who benefits from how I act? However you respond, remain calm. Don't panic. You have to take this tool out of their toolbox because it's cheap and stupid, but more importantly it is efficient.

The MAGAs have been sold a bill of goods. They think the left wants them dead because [place reason of the week here]. When you respond to Trump with violent rhetoric, you're giving him exactly what he wants. The key to getting that prick out of office is in his followers. Almost everyone has turned their backs on him. All he has left is the very small group of loyalists who won't believe anything you say, anyway. The Iran . . . adventure? . . . is a major nail in his coffin. All appearances to the contrary, he's on the ropes. He knows he's fucked if the midterms don't go his way. He flat-out begged his followers to vote Republican or "I'll get impeached." And if that happens, he'll have nothing to fall back on but the dementia act I think he's trying to run on us so he can avoid prison time when this is over. He stole everything else from Reagan. Why not steal the whole "I don't recall" thing?

Nearly everyone now sees the man behind the curtain for what he really is, but there are still people who hang on his every word. Please. Stop giving him ammunition to use against us. Because when he's gone, those diehards will still be around. If the spell finally breaks for them, we want them back in the fold. Because this is America, and despite the last ten years or more? We are all in this together. We don't have to like each other, but we do have to get along.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1074: A SPECIAL REPORT

 I can't believe it. I achieved something I didn't think I'd live to see. Remember, I thought I'd be dead by now. This means I have a chance. I actually have a chance!

When I finished reading The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, I finished the second (of three) notebook of my reading list. The third is only half full, and since I haven't been able to afford many new books lately, I'm not adding much to it.

I might actually finish my reading list before I die. Holy shit, that's huge!

When I was a kid I put together a list of all the books I owned. That was the first page and a half of the list. I was able to add to my personal collection thanks to several factors. The Hillside Public Library usually had a good rack of used paperbacks you could get for fifty cents each. Then there was the Book Exchange in Berkley, my favorite used bookstore of all time. You could get used hardcovers there for a couple of bucks each, and paperbacks were usually a quarter. And then there was the single biggest contributor to my collection: the annual Elmhurst Public Library sales. They'd give you a paper grocery bag, and you could fill it to the brim with as many books as you possibly could, and you'd pay five bucks for the bag. Every year I'd go home with five or six bags.

When I got my first job (at the Elmhurst Public Library, by the way), I only had two expenses: my student loans and books, except now I could afford to get books at actual stores like Borders. And when I got my first big boy office job? Think of all the books I got in those days before I had real life expenses like rent and groceries, etc. By then I realized I'd never live to finish my list, and I didn't even have two full notebooks yet.

But now I have a new problem. I'm having sight issues. I'm not going blind, per se, but I have huge floaters in both eyes, and they're so big it's next to impossible to blink them out of the way. I'm starting to have difficulty in reading because of them. The only cure for floaters is to have a procedure done where, when they're finished, you have to lie face down in bed for two weeks with your eyes covered up. I can't afford to do that, money- and time-wise. If I do that, I will lose my home.

So now it's just not a matter of living long enough to finish that last notebook. I also have to read it all before I go blind. This victory, though, has given me hope. I might actually succeed at doing this. And I've thought about what I would do if I ever finished the list. For the first time since I was a kid, I'd just go to the library and pick a book off the shelf. Or a bookstore, if we still have those in the future. It was always a pipe dream, but now that I have a chance?

Wish me luck.

In case you were wondering, the first book on my list was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. The copy I had back then was an old hardcover from the 1930's that I picked up from my stepfather (and it had Twain's real name on it for some reason), but now I have a replica of the first edition, and if you didn't know it, nearly all of Twain's books originally came with woodcut illustrations. For some reason, scholarly versions of the text leave those pictures out. They're pretty amazing. You should read the books as the author intended, with those pictures.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1073: DIMITSANA

 

As you know, I've been going through the family pictures before figuring out who should get them. I've saved pictures of people I don't know for last so I can do some detective work to find out who they were. This picture, among about a dozen others, was in an envelope addressed to Gramps in handwriting I now know belonged to his sister, Helen. She and a few relatives went to Greece in the 'Eighties, to Dimitsana in particular.

Gramps and his two sisters were first generation Americans. Their parents came to America in the 'Twenties (and I have their dad and theo's naturalization papers!), and they referred to Gramps as "their American son." Dimitsana is where they were from.

And that house above? Take a look at the back of the photo:

The John in question is Gramps. I was named after him. How many people have a picture of their great-grandfather's childhood home? And to find out that it's 300 years old? Holy shit. I also have his death certificate, so I know my great-great-grandfather was named Zaharis Kyriakopoulos. (No mother is listed.)

That leg of my family comes from a mountain town with more buildings that look like that one. In fact, here's another picture:

And here's the back:

Not sure who Dave is. All I know is, Dave's not here. Not a lot of people live in Dimitsana. Not even 800 souls populate the town, and Kyriakopoulos is a common name there. I almost certainly have blood relatives still living there. There were times when I was a kid when I thought, wouldn't it be weird to go to, say, Greece and look up the Kopoulos family? (I didn't know they shortened the name until I found the papers back in 2022.) Or maybe go back to Ireland and look up the Dunnes? (I actually did go to Ireland only to discover Dunne is one of the most common names in the country.) And then, because I know the least amount about the Bruni family, wouldn't it be nice to go to Italy and look them up?

(Three of my four grandparents were 100% one nationality. Grandma had a lot of diversity in her background, so I can't really pick a country to go back to for her family.)

Now that I've seen The White Lotus? Maybe not. I think that's probably the most realistic way something like that would go down. But it's nice to think about.

I've gone down some interesting paths looking up my family history. I'm pretty good with Mom's side. I come from families with names like Cota, Friend, Noanes, Demeroukas and so on. I just wish I'd thought to ask all the questions I have now back when Grandma and Gramps were still alive. My aunt is the only one older than me on that side of the family, and I've found she unfortunately doesn't have all the answers I'm looking for, just some of them.

Is anyone else at all curious about where they came from? Have you done research without resorting to stuff like Ancestry, etc.? So far I've done a lot of detective work without it, and I've done pretty good, but I'm reaching the brick wall point in my research. Any thoughts on what to do without sending my DNA off to a corporation that is most likely to use it in ways I couldn't possibly imagine?

And now I have an added bonus mystery, this one from Grandma's side of the family. I was under the impression all my life that the one great-grandparent I'd come closest to meeting was Grandma's mom. The reason I had that impression was because Grandma told me, herself. I found something today which she might not have been aware of. I asked my aunt, "When did Grandma's dad die?" She said she didn't know and didn't think Grandma knew, either.

The thing I found? Grandma's mom's death certificate. On it she is listed as married, not widowed. I learned lately that Grandma's parents separated early in her life. I know her dad didn't go too far because I found a picture of him with Grandma's sister sitting in his lap at the 50th anniversary of Grandma's maternal grandparents. That was back in the 'Fifties, and her mom would die in February 1978.

Because next to that MARRIED space on her mom's death certificate? It says she was survived by her spouse!

It is possible that he and I lived on this planet at the same time. I have tried everything to find out what happened to him, and I've come up with nothing. The internet has no idea whatever happened to Harold McKinley Cota, Sr. All I can find is Harry, Grandma's brother. So yeah, any suggestions?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1072: BILLY THE KID

 

I recently got MGM+ again because FROM has a new season. I'm all caught up now. and I'm canceling after the season finale. But they also have BILLY THE KID, and I just watched the final season. (I also noticed they have the show, 12 MONKEYS. I lost cable before the final season aired, so I'm finally getting to watch that. I'll probably write about that experience at some point soon, because it's a little bizarre for me.)

When I first started watching BILLY THE KID, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was written by Michael Hirst. I love his historical shows, like The Tudors and Vikings. Now that he's turned his attention to one of my favorite western outlaws? I was all in.

And I watched as it did its best to distance itself from the Young Guns movies. I can't tell you how much I love those two flicks. But because they're such an important part of the legend, this show needs to steer the boat its own way.

Hirst obviously loves history, but he's not beholden to it. If it comes down to a decision between what really happened (or at least the agreed upon facts) and what makes more sense for the story, he will always go with the latter, never the former. So you can't watch his stuff and expect an accurate history lesson, but he gets the spirit of history rather than the letter.

So the whole time I watched this show, my biggest question was, is he going to go the Brushy Bill route? If you don't know, back in the 'Fifties, an old man named Brushy Bill Roberts claimed to be Billy the Kid, that Pat Garrett hadn't killed him, and that he'd been keeping a low profile for decades. He had a lot of scars that line up with injuries Billy the Kid was known to have had. There were still a few Old West outlaws alive at the time, and when they trotted Brushy Bill out in front of them, they more or less agreed: this really was Billy the Kid. But in an age where DNA testing didn't exist, and the actual location of Billy the Kid's corpse was unknown, it couldn't be definitively proved.

Here there be spoilers. If you're going to watch the show, you'd best stop here. If you've seen it, or you don't give a fuck, please continue.

After Pat Garrett shoots Billy and leaves, Billy still breathes, and a friend rushes to get him out of there. I thought, YES! They're doing Brushy Bill! Because I believe that he really was Billy the Kid. I think that's legitimately part of the story.

But Hirst actually *doesn't* do Brushy Bill. He takes a much bigger swing at history. Like, I'm talking a Babe Ruth kind of swing.

Because later, after Billy is nursed back to health, HE GOES BACK TO GET REVENGE ON PAT GARRETT. He flat out guns Garrett down, and that's it.

Holy fuck, that is huge. It then occurred to me that I actually didn't know how Pat Garrett died. I never had much interest in the guy, although I tend to agree with Young Guns 2, that Garrett was in on Billy faking his death. So I looked it up, and Garrett died under mysterious circumstances, much like the real life Johnny Ringo. In fact, it's very similar to the swing Tombstone takes when it suggests that Doc Holliday killed Johnny Ringo. I've read up on the subject, and the popular belief is that he committed suicide. I think that's the case. But we don't know for sure, just like we don't know who actually killed Garrett.

Could it have been Billy the Kid? If you believe the Brushy Bill story, like I do, then it's within the realm of possibility.

But then Hirst follows it with Billy going up against Thomas Catron, the local politician that was hellbent on eliminating Billy and his Regulators. In the series finale he shoots Catron in the head, which simply did not happen. Catron went on to become a US Senator and died in 1921. But that is par for the Hirst course. It made for a good ending to the series, something that ties up all the loose threads but wasn't necessarily true.

I'm certain that, if he went on for another episode, he would have depicted Brushy Bill. In the end Billy literally--and I mean LITERALLY, not figuratively as many people use that word today--rides off into the sunset with his wife and kid.

That last episode was good. It wrapped up everything. But I don't think it was great, which is also par for the Hirst course EXCEPT FOR THE TUDORS. That show had a final episode that was awe-inspiringly beautiful, one of those moments that takes your breath away. The only reasonable response is to stare in astonishment and silence.

BILLY THE KID was a lot of fun. I'd recommend it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1071: FUCKED NEW WORLD

 

Can we please leave the horny spam to actual human beings instead of AI? I got the email above not too long ago. In case you can't read it, it's from Strong Dick, and the subject is SLAUGHTER HER PUSSY TILL SHE LOSES HER VOICE. What in the actual fuck?

I can't imagine that was written by a human being. When it comes to sex, one of the last verbs that would ever occur to me, if at all, would be "slaughter." But to "slaughter" someone's "pussy" until they're no longer capable of speaking? Number one: why would you want that? And two: why would you want to do that to someone?

At least when some financial prisoner in a call center half a world away sends me an email, I know it will be the usual. "Hey sexy" or "get hard with rhino horns" or "wanna fuck?" and so on. I almost said TEN BUCK PHONE FUCK, but that's not necessarily a spam email. It's more like an ad in a porno magazine.

And while I'm on the subject, porn sites need to stop with the AI advertising. It's creepy as fuck, looking in their fake eyes desperately trying to not look fake. I want to go back to the game that will make me cum in five seconds, or the lonely housewife in my area. At least I know that's a human being trying to take advantage of me instead of an AI trying to get me all horned up.

I get it. A lot of people are lonely. But there's no way anyone is falling for this shit, right? Right?

RIGHT?!

Wouldn't it be creepy if an AI left a thirst trap comment on this post?

UPDATE!

The day after I posted this GF, I got two more spam emails trying to horn me up. Can you figure out which one, based on the criteria mentioned above, I actually appreciated?

In case you can't read it, the one from Addison says, "She wants it now: Buy a beer, take a cock in my mouth!" The one from Emery says, "Fuck her till she screams." I'll give you a moment to think about it. Meet me at the bottom in ten seconds . . .

I did not appreciate Emery because I think he's AI trying to horn me up. I'm guessing it's trying to sell me boner pills. I'm guessing AI thinks fucking someone until they scream is something living, breathing people want. I *did* appreciate Madison, because I'm certain that's an actual human being trying to take advantage of me, like in the good ol' days. The weird phrasing is probably due to mistranslation. The smaller print refers to a meter as a "metre," and I think this person is trying to say, "Buy me a beer, and I'll blow you." Thank you, Addison. A+ for effort. Keep fighting the good fight. Don't let AI take your job.

Now there's more?

So . . . is your name Allison or Delilah? And my name is supposed to make you blush? John's probably not going to do it, but if I was named Alligator Fuckhouse?

Who is begging for my monster? Also, I have a monster? And she wants my monster to ruin her holes (or, for the more civilized, her pussy)? As for FUCK MY PUSSY TONIGHT, your pussy is boiling over? Surely you don't have boiling water--or anything else--in there, right? And I'm not sure if I can lend you my fucking. I don't like to let people borrow that. Sorry.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1070: NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS

 I am 100% certain there are sentient beings living throughout the universe. Existence is a pretty fucking big place, and if the Big Bang is correct, it's still going at approximately 45 miles per second. Go ahead, look it up if you don't believe me. I find it difficult to believe that our planet is the big show. We haven't even gotten beyond the moon, for crying out loud. So no, I don't think we're very consequential in the big picture.

Have these beings visited us? I don't know. There are some great theories that I love, but I don't buy into them. All jokes aside, there aren't good reasons to visit us. I'm going to use the word "alien" from here on out because it's easier. That in mind, any alien with the technology to visit us would need a good reason, and we don't have any. It's laughable that they would come for our resources, and yes, that is rich coming from the author of And Jesus Came Back, in which aliens invade for our resources. The same resources that have not helped us get beyond the moon? What is that to someone who has traveled across how much space?

I like the Annunaki theory because it states that our very existence is to serve these godlike beings from another world. It's essentially what my favorite Star franchise is all about. (That being -gate.) But why waste their resources to come here simply to bend us to their will. And what, exactly, would we be doing for them that they couldn't just handle wherever they come from?

But what if aliens did invade? That's been a concern in some circles of late, with Spielberg's Disclosure Day coming out, possibly to be accompanied by Trump's real life version of it. Would they be here to be friends or foes?

I think they'd be indifferent, but what if they did invade? Do you think your state will survive?

I read this article a while ago, and you should give it a glance. It'll tell you the odds of your state making it through an alien invasion. The first reaction to this kind of thing is, does my state make it? Illinois isn't in the top 10. Out of 100? That's all right, but out of 50? What the hell? Is this just an excuse to talk shit about my home state? I can do that. I can do that all I want, but fuck whoever put this list and/or study together. What do you mean, Alaska's in the top 10 and the Land of Lincoln can go fuck itself?

But that's a kneejerk reaction. The secret to living a reasonably sane life is to ignore those reactions. Almost everyone in America can't do that. It's impossible.

And I think that's why articles like this exist. What other purpose does it serve but to bait people into engagement, which translates all too readily to putting them at each others throats?

I read a lot of articles. One of the things that pisses me off is when I discover, after I've already clicked on a link, that it was "written" by AI. But that is nothing compared to the disdain I have for actual living people who write articles with the express purpose of farming people's attention, never caring that it pits people against each other. I chose this article because it's fairly innocuous, so it's easy to poke fun of it. But this is the kind of shit that happens in articles about real stuff all the time.

All in the name of keeping us so busy with each other that we never notice the Leland Gaunt pulling the strings and wiring us against each other.

If something in the media makes you feel rage, especially if it's pointing that rage at a person or a group of people, feel free to call bullshit on it. Because that's what it is.

This Public Service Announcement is brought to you by the helplessness I feel in an unjust world that will never be just.

The thing that really irritates me about that article is that it assumes each individual state is fighting the invasion on their own. No matter how bad things get, there's no way the states in any given area wouldn't unite somehow to face the invasion together. I feel like there's a name for this . . .

And not just that. What about the rest of the world? Are they sitting on their thumbs? I kind of doubt it.

The likeliest outcome of an invasion is us serving our new alien overlords. Just in case we don't already do that.

No, that's it. I'm done.