GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #409: I SPOKE TOO SOON

 Earlier today I mentioned on social media that my Pharmacy War ended with a pyrrhic victory. I would get my meds, but I would have to get them from fucking CVS. Well, I spoke too soon. The war isn't over yet. Why? Because I still haven't gotten my meds.

To ensure that CVS would have my meds, I called into my doctor's office and requested that all of my medications, especially my two 'Beetus prescriptions because I'm out of those, be sent to CVS going forward, and I would be stopping by after work because I've gone without Glimepride for three days and Metformin for one day. Guess who didn't have my meds.

Right.

And now I find myself with nothing further I can do. I'm at the mercy of my new doctor. I swear to fuck, when I finally die it will probably be because of red tape bullshit like this. Just watch. Tomorrow morning I will wake up in the midst of a fucking stroke. Or maybe I won't wake up.

This is taking a toll on me. I like my usual pharmacy. I walk in and they know me. They know why I'm there, and they keep products that I prefer in stock. It's a nice place with friendly people. When I walk in there, I know exactly what I'm going to get.

But this new insurance plan that demands I get my meds from CVS? It can suck my dick. I don't want to go to a megacorporation for my medications, but if I had to, I certainly wouldn't choose CVS. I'd probably go with Walgreen's. That's just a gun-to-the-head situation. CVS is awful. Every time I've ever been in one my skin crawls. Also, aisles are labeled very poorly. At least Walgreen's has well-labeled aisles and they all look more or less the same, so navigating their stores is easy.

This fucking blows. It would be nice if I could spend one fucking day where I don't have to think about my own mortality. With all the doctors visits and now this fucking mess, that's making it nearly fucking impossible. I'm angry all the time because of this shit. Here I was, thinking I'd mellowed out in my old age, and then 2020 broke down my door and clubbed me with its giant four-foot long cock. And then his little brother 2021 arrived with a five-foot cock destined for my face.

I can only assume 2022 will have a six-foot cock.

And in case I didn't say fuck enough in this column, here's one more: FUCK.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #408: MY LITERARY ESTATE

 I've had my literary estate for close to a decade, and much to my shock and horror, the older I get, the more I change it. You'd think that would be a straightforward thing, but it keeps changing, and I have to continue to get trusted friends to witness me signing these things. There are three groups that I switch out on that task so they don't get annoyed with doing this all the time.

Is that weird? That my literary estate keeps changing? I don't know, honestly. And it's not about the people involved. It's just that the circumstances of my life keep changing drastically often. It's so bad that I recently rewrote everything, but before I got anyone to witness my signatures, I had to change it again. I did some editing when I got home from work tonight. I'm a bit concerned that I'll have to change it again before *this* one gets signed. What the fuck?

It's also my changing attitudes. I used to think that if a work was close to being finished, it would be nice if, after my death, someone else finished it. I'm no longer of that opinion. When I'm dead there will be an entry on three (3) thumb drives (I used to think a redundancy plan was enough, but now I need two, just in case) called IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH which will contain the only things I want out in the world. Finished things. I used to think Harlan Ellison was crazy for wanting all his unfinished work to be burned after his death. But then again, think about how many works are finished posthumously by other authors, and think about how a majority of them suck. Or even worse, a publisher decides to continue publishing works under a dead author's name but written by someone else entirely. I'm not into that.

I wouldn't necessarily say burn my unfinished work. I'm just asking to not have it finished. I'd rather not have my name co-opted, either. I doubt anyone wants to take advantage of someone so low on the totem pole as me, but I can't help but think of Bob Ross. Who would want someone to do that to them? Not me.

Ultimately I think the executor of my literary estate will not have much to do. I'd rather it be that way. It's a hell of a thing to put on someone else, and I don't want to be a burden when I'm not even alive anymore. The big things are taking care of the completed works in that folder I mentioned. Also, posting my last words on Facebook and Twitter.

And yeah. I wrote one final Goodnight, Fuckers to be posted after my death. You know my love of all things Gunsmoke. Every week James Arness, the guy who played Matt Dillon, US Marshal, would write a letter to his fans which was posted on his website. But as he got up in years, he knew he wouldn't be around much longer, so he wrote one last letter to his fans. When he passed, his wife posted it. I teared up while reading it.

Maybe it'll have that kind of effect on you. I hope so. If I die before you, you'll find out all about it.

So yeah. Goodnight, fuckers. As my grandfather used to say, "Sweet dreams, pleasant dreams and all that kinda gas."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #407: CLAUSTROPHOBIA

 So yesterday I had to get an MRI. It's not my first, but this time was extremely awkward because I only needed my arm done. To anyone who has never suffered through one of these things, you have to stay still for 30 minutes. When they were doing my torso years ago, that was fine. I could easily make it.

But for my arm? I had to hold a specific pose for that half-hour, and it was not comfortable. At first I tried to be on my side, which is a lot more comfortable, with my head leaning on the barrier they put around my arm from elbow to wrist. Then they tried putting me in the machine. My shoulders are too broad. They couldn't fit me.

So they asked me to be on my stomach. Not very comfortable. My head still had to lean on the barrier, which gave me a headache for the rest of the day. My arm also started screaming in pain about 5 minutes into the test. And when they got me out, my arm ached from shoulder to fingertips for the rest of the day. It hurt a lot more than the tennis elbow I initially went in for. I doubted the whole time that this was worth it.

But the main concern for the technician? "Are you claustrophobic?"

I'm not. And even though they had to stuff my six-one frame into this small thing, I never felt claustrophobic. I was just in agony, that's all.

The only time I've ever felt claustrophobic was a few years back. I went to pick up a friend of mine, and she didn't want to go, after all. She wanted to stay in bed with the covers over her head. That's fine. I planned to go back into the living room to read while she caught up on sleep, but she demanded that I stay. I really didn't want to. I'm not good at resting while I could be doing stuff. But she insisted, and I relented. We held each other under the blankets. They had to be over our heads. That was the rule.

I started panicking. I didn't feel good in that situation. I had a hard time breathing. My heart rate was so high I'm surprised it didn't keep her awake. I had to get out of there as soon as possible. The blankets weighed me down, and it made me feel like I was too big for a small set of clothes. I might have lasted twenty minutes before I just had to get out.

I tried my best to not bother her by leaving, but I couldn't have escaped without her finding out. That did wake her up, but only enough for her to grunt her displeasure.

But ordinary claustrophobia? Not me. I spent all my time in the MRI desperately wanting to move my arm if only to stop the pain for a little bit. If I moved, though, it would have all been for naught.

If I can get through the rest of my life without needing an MRI on an arm, I would be very happy.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #406: COOL SHIT

 Remember ages ago when I used to post a Cool Shit column every Thursday talking about all the awesome comic books I read the day before? I miss doing those, but they took up a lot of my time. I'm not going to do those ever again. That's what The Best Comic Book of the Week is for.

But every once in a while I get an itch, and I gotta scratch it.

As with those Cool Shit columns, there are spoilers. Tread lightly.

Yesterday I named Marjorie Finnegan, Temporal Criminal #5 as The Best Comic Book of the Week. I'm glad that Garth Ennis still has the ability to offend me, because this issue is deeply offensive, especially the abortion scene. I am definitely pro-abortion, but this took it a bit too far. The villain of this book is the most evil dude in history, and I can't help but think of him as Jesse Custer's evil twin brother. He even kind of looks like Jesse. I'm not sure if that was intentional. Probably not. But this guy was born a genius. He had coherent thought in the womb, and much to his surprise, there is a fetal twin. But the twin is just a regular person. Not a great conversationalist in the womb. When the mother tries to get an abortion, it surprises this dude and he manages to put his twin brother in front of him in order to save his own life.

So yeah. That's pretty fucked up. And there are other fucked up things in this book, which earned the title I mentioned earlier.

But the other books I read last night were really fucking good.

Stillwater # 10 had some seriously fucked up things in it. If you don't know, the idea of Stillwater is that it's a small shitsplat of a town where people who are born there live forever, and they don't age. Unless they leave. If they die in the outside world, then they're dead. If they age and come back, they will stop aging upon their return. So naturally there are a lot of kids in town who are middle-aged, and one of them murders someone in an adult body, which was pretty surprising.

And That Texas Blood keeps getting darker and crazier. I'm glad to see that the private investigator was heavily influenced by Kolchak. It makes a lot of sense, all things considered. I'm glad I'm finally caught up. The back matter is great, too. It feels natural, unlike what Alan Moore usually does. Moore is cumbersome with his extras. Condon's work is easy on the eyes, and straight to the point.

And then there is GI Joe #286. That's the one from the 'Eighties that Larry Hama took up writing again a few years ago. This issue answers a great question: how did Snake Eyes meet Storm Shadow? And I love the answer, especially when the unthinkable happens: SNAKE EYES TALKS. OK, he doesn't say much, and it's not as profound as something Silent Bob might say, but still. It genuinely surprised me.

So yeah. While a lot of weeks are dry, this one was pretty fruitful with great comic books.

PS: I saw someone bring up Matt Damon in the letters column for Stillwater, which made me laugh my ass off. It was something I first thought of when I saw the trailer for the movie, and I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #405: THE DEVIL'S TRUE TASK

 OK, now I'll write the one I meant to yesterday. Just in case you didn't know, I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in the God/devil shit. Not a bit. But! I like to think about the nature of the devil. It's fun. It's also why I enjoy the show, Lucifer, so much. To be honest, I'm not a fan of the comic book it's based on. I mean, I liked the character when he was in The Sandman, but when he got his own book? Not quite so interesting. I even tried again when they rebooted the series. Still not interesting.

Which is why me enjoying the show surprised me quite a bit. I think a lot of the heavy lifting is done by the sheer charm and wit of Tom Ellis, the actor who plays Lucifer Morningstar. All the characters are great, though.

So I was watching an episode during the final season when something occurred to me. I planned to write this column then, when I still hadn't seen the series finale. I watched it last night after doing the 404 Not Found column, and I'm glad to see that my hunch was correct, but my thinking brought it a step further.

If you haven't seen the final season, step lightly. Here there be spoilers. You might want to skip out on the rest of this one starting now.

In case you're unfamiliar, per the show's rules you are not damned to Hell for your actions. You send yourself there because of your own guilt. The episode in question details what happens when Lucifer has to help someone he hates, and that person is in Hell.  This made me think that maybe the devil's true task is to help those in Hell heal, to overcome their guilt in order to help them finally enter Heaven. Maybe he has to do that for everyone in Hell.

Much to my surprise, this is exactly how the show ends. Lucifer is a therapist to the denizens of Hell. But here's where my thinking goes further. Why did Lucifer present the fruit to Eve? I think it's because he didn't learn his lesson the first time, when he tried to help save the angels from their father's tyranny. So he saw humans getting set up for the same suffering, and in an attempt to save them, he offered them Knowledge of Good and Evil.

I interpret that to mean that Lucifer, from that point forward, is responsible for humanity. Therefore, it is his penance to save everyone. He must go from person to person in Hell and help them recognize how they went wrong, and then to teach them how to let it go and become right for Heaven. And he has to do that for everyone. Only when Hell is empty will he finally be able to be forgiven by his father, and then he will be allowed to return home into the loving arms of his family.

See? It's fun to think about these things. Also, it's kind of a beautiful sentiment and an answer to why God would damn his supposedly beloved children to Hell.

Maybe the devil does have some sympathy coming to him.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #404: NOT FOUND

 

Yeah, technically this isn't a real Goodnight, Fuckers. I write and post these before I go to bed, but I'm not going to bed after I post this one. I had an excellent idea for a pleasantly thoughtful column tonight, but that has been superseded by bullshit.

I can't talk about said bullshit. Even if I could, it would be of interest only to those in the same industry as me, auto glass. And even then, they probably wouldn't want to hear it, either.

Something pissed me off today, and it's been a long time since something got through to me this badly. Usually when I leave the office, I don't think about it until I have to be up the next morning. But this bad, demoralizing experience continues to haunt me. I couldn't enjoy listening to music on the way home. I couldn't concentrate enough to read or do any of the things I usually do when I get home.

So instead of reading my musings on a particular episode of Lucifer, tonight you're reading this (unless you saw the image above on the link and decided not to click on it, which would be funny). As for me, I'm unplugging from the world to scrape this horror from my memory.

The sad thing is, when I get into the office tomorrow, I'm sure I'll have to relive the whole fucking thing. The day was actually a good day, but it was that last call of the shift. The one where I figured I could get through the next five minutes so I could get out of there. The one that made me stay almost 45 minutes late. It was so grim that I'm still pissed off right now.

So yeah. Radio silence for the rest of the night. Goodnight and . . .

If you recognize this, then you know the rest of the line.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #403: A WRITER OR AN AUTHOR

 Relax. Don't worry. I'm not going to say some stupid bullshit about what it takes to be an author versus a writer. Anyone who does that is full of shit. Whatever works for you is the real answer. The difference between feeling like an author or a writer is something that applies to me alone.

It's easy to feel like a writer. You sit down and write (or edit, or fucking hell, put together a synopsis), and that's it. I've felt like a writer for as long as I can remember. During the plague it was pretty easy to feel that. But I missed feeling like an author.

I got to experience that again for the first time in, what? Two years? Going to Printers Row this year was a lot of fun. I missed that kind of thing. Selling books. Signing books. Meeting readers. That's the shit that makes me feel like an author, and these were hard things to come by during these Covid Years. More importantly, I missed doing live readings.

Feeling like an author is difficult. I can't rely on just myself for that. I need the participation of others in order to get into that head space. And goddam! That felt good.

I really want to do more shows in 2022. I hope that we can put this plague behind us and have fun in public spaces full of people again. That would be nice. I'd like to do Days of the Dead again, for example. I'm still not back on board with comic book conventions. That would take a lot. But horror cons? I miss the hell out of those. And one day I'd like to table at Scares That Care. I'm pretty sure that won't happen next year, but maybe 2023? Who knows?

That would be pretty fucking cool.

Oh yeah, and sorry for almost creating a cult during and after the live reading of my story, "Butt Club," from Tales of Unspeakable Taste.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #402: MY DESCENT INTO DECREPITUDE CONTINUES

So I got even more bad news yesterday with a tiny sprinkling of good news. Because that's what happens every time I see a doctor. Any doctor.

But this wasn't just any doctor. He was the last person to see the big toe on my right foot attached to the rest of me. Because he was holding the scalpel that would remove said big toe. So I knew the news would be bad.

My bad foot is collapsing. The more it collapses, the closer it comes to being amputated, and they would be cutting just below my left knee. He looked at the bottom of my foot with a great deal of concern, and I started wondering if I'd be able to leave his office with both feet still attached. That would suck, especially since the hole in that foot healed so nicely.

"I'm going to look at the x-rays," he said. When he came back, he had that sprinkle of good news. "It's not too bad. Yet. If your foot gets hot and turns red, go to the ER."

Well. Okay then.

Then he wanted to admire his work on my right foot. "I don't know who performed that amputation, but he did a great job," he said.

I tried to smile. Not that it would have showed under my mask, anyway.

But he was very concerned with the toe next to my stump. I'd been having problems with it, but for a while it was covered on the tip by a shell of dead skin. It seemed to have healed, and it was giving me no problems.

"That's bad," he said. "Let me trim that up for you."

It's a good thing I have very little feeling in my toes because he took a scalpel and some surgical scissors to that toe, carving away the dead skin. "Ah. There's an open sore here. It's small, but it's not too bad. If you hadn't come in, it might have gotten to the bone. Then you'd have eight toes."

Fucking great.

"Oop. You're bleeding a little bit." He used gauze to wipe it up, and then he bandaged it up and advised me to keep an eye on it. Keep changing the bandage. Use the leftover antibiotic ointment from the incident with the hole in my foot.

"And hey. Bleeding is good news. If it bleeds, it can heal."

I'm pretty sure that's not the lesson I learned from Predator.

Then he lowered me down from the elevated chair, and I saw that I'd bled so much there was a puddle on the floor that a nurse had to sanitize. It reminded me of when a surgeon had to "open you up a little" when I had an abscess. When I looked at that guy's work, he'd unzipped the inside of my thigh. I could have fit all of my fingers in the slit he made there.

So I've been watching that toe. Every time I finally get it to stop bleeding, a couple of hours later I discover it's started bleeding again. But hey. If it bleeds, we can kill it. No, wait. I got that wrong.

Anyway, I'm sure if I live long enough (and that's never a guarantee), I'll be Johnny Eight Toes. Or hell. Maybe I'll get the other foot cut off and I'll be Johnny Three Toes. It has a certain ring to it, but I don't think I'd like going through life like that.

FUCK.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #401: VILLA PARK'S SLEAZE STRIP

So if you head west down North Ave. from Rt. 83, you'll reach a block that is probably ground zero of all crime in the suburbs, and it's about to get grimier.

You'll see Strat's, which looks like a very nice place, and it is. They have a decent burger, and the decor is straight out of the 'Fifties. But they have these car shows where macho bullshit reigns supreme. Every youth with a hotrod thinks he's James Dean on PCP, so they get a lot of fights there. They sometimes got so bad that Strat's stopped serving beer, hoping to cut down on the violence. It worked. A little. I remember being there for one of them, and when all the cops showed up, it made me very nervous about having a flask on me. Luckily for me my driver's license was suspended at the time because I didn't blow when arrested for DUI (and years after I got my license back, I was found not guilty). As such, I'd taken a taxi, so I got the fuck out of Dodge while the gettin' was good.

Then you'll see the OTB bar. Because gambling and alcohol go so well together, as anyone who has been to Vegas will attest. I haven't gone in there often, but when I have been there, there has been violence.

And then my favorite place on this sleaze strip: the best no-tell in the area, the Brer Rabbit Motel. I cannot tell you how many sordid nights I spent in this place, usually drunk and covered in the stink of sex. If you're looking for drugs or prostitutes, this is the place for you. If you get to your room after registering without someone asking if you want crack or meth, you probably look like a cop.

And you know what? I'll up the ante on this place. I'm sure many people have died there, through their own excesses or someone else's taste for death, but I know for sure that at least one murder happened there. It was a while back, and I'm too lazy and high to look up names right now, but there were a couple of guys who used to live there. They liked to dig up corpses and fuck them and leave them dismembered somewhere. Then they moved on to the living. They kidnapped a young woman and brought her to this motel, where they raped and tortured and killed her. If memory serves correctly, they dumped the body out behind the place. One grim detail remains prominent in my mind, though. They cut off one of her breasts and played Soggy Biscuit with it. If you don't know what that game is, it's when a bunch of dudes get together and jerk off onto a biscuit (UK) or cookie (US) or some kind of food. Whoever cums on it last has to eat it.

How's that for a fuckin' image? I hope you weren't eating anything while reading this one tonight. Reader discretion is advised . . .

But now there's a new addition to this sleaze strip. I just noticed it today. It's not open yet, and I think it is a tremendously horrible idea to open this place at that specific location.

The new business? A gun range. I'm not sure if they sell guns, too, but I'll bet they do.

Yeah, things have always been weird on that block between Villa and Ardmore, and I suspect it's going to get a lot weirder soon.

"I don't know how many years on this earth I have left, but I'm gonna get real weird with it."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #400: THE TIME I LIVED WORLD WAR II

 Wow. 400 fucking columns. That's outstanding. How the hell did that happen? It feels like I just celebrated doing 300 of these things.

All right. Let's get into it, then.

One more quick word. I wrote this last night, but as I was rereading it before posting, I saw that it's unusually angry for me. It's weird because I was high at the time, and it's supposed to be impossible to be furious when high. Well, that's how bad it was. I decided I would cut most of it out, and if we're all supremely lucky, we'll never have to read that version. So here's the better (I hope) version. By the time you're done, I suspect you might know why I got so fucking pissed off, but it's better to just cut that shit out.

We're going back in time. Not to the 1940's, but to the early 1990's. I think I was in seventh grade, although I might be wrong on that. What I know for sure was that I was at Sandburg Junior High, and a school-wide project was launched. We were going to pretend we were living WWII. It was to teach the importance of civic duty, I believe, and it actually worked in my case. Not right away, naturally. But during these plague years, I think often on this exercise.

First and foremost, all of us boys were relegated to the draft. Sadly, we weren't going to pretend to fight a war. That might have actually been cool. Instead we were just going to Boot Camp. Fuck that shit. I worked very quickly to get myself designated as 4F right away. This is something I would have done in real life, anyway. I've never been a fan of physical exertion, and I certainly had no intentions of being a leg-breaker for the Uncle Sam. I know that wasn't actually at stake, but again, I would have done the same thing in real life. While everyone else was forced to run laps and do push ups and sit ups (this was before the idea of the crunch was introduced into Physical Education), I dined on snacks of the age and got to watch Dumbo.

This is kinda funny, considering I actually am 4F now. If, for some reason, the draft was reinstated and they wanted middle-aged men to kill some motherfuckers, they would still turn me down due to the bad leg.

But it wasn't all fun and games being stuck at home while the boys went off to battle the Hun. (And yeah, that's more WWI than WWII, but they still used the term in the 'Forties.) As in real life, we also had our ration stamps. We had to sacrifice at home so our soldiers could do the best they could. Sacrifice was an important part of the war effort in those days. The government dictated how much of a certain food you could buy. For example. Did anyone argue the point?

Not at school. And for the most part, not in real life, either.

Could you imagine Americans having to go through that shit today? How many people would complain? If I had a Venn Diagram of those who would complain about having to use ration stamps and those who complain about Covid restrictions? I'm pretty sure I'd be looking at a perfect circle.

I guess people just don't give a shit about the common good anymore. Sacrifice is for the cucks, right? And there's another word I just can't stand. And this is the part I'm rewriting per the notes at the beginning. There are about 2,000 words that follow this sentence that I'm about to cut for my personal greater good. I'm getting heated up again, and I'm high yet again, so I'm just stopping right now.

There were also some funny comments about spellcheck, but it's connected too deeply to the anger. I was tempted to leave them in, but fuck it. Sorry..

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #399: DID I DIE?

 There are sometimes that I think I died, and I'm in the afterlife. And what a shitty afterlife that is. For example, I occasionally wonder if I died when I was in the hospital in January 2020 after I lost my job and went on the drinking binge to end all drinking binges, the one when I went in for pancreatitis and wound up getting stuck there for two weeks going through severe alcohol withdrawals. When 2020 kept getting worse and worse, I figured yeah, I'd died in the hospital. This is just some fever dream of the brain. I just have to wait for the electric impulses to end, and I'll be gone for good.

Not too long ago, I was fucked up on pills in an attempt to get some sleep. I hadn't gotten any the previous night, so I needed to make sure I zonked out in the morning. I was in the twilight between high as fuck and actual sleep, and I looked up at the ceiling. There was a golden door there, and I thought, holy shit, I really did die. Now it's time to get out of here.

After I thought about it I realized it was actually something reflected up at my ceiling from the backyard. It looked like a door, but there was no knob or anything. I giggled to myself and sleep finally took me.

It reminded me of when I was in the hospital before the worst of the DT's hit. Whenever I'm in the hospital, for whatever reason, the bed is positioned directly under a reflective light so if I want to look up and see how pathetic I appear, it's nice and easy to do that. I was a lumpen form in a hospital bed, bloated and ugly like how the scandal sheets get pictures of celebrities when they're not looking their best.

But this time I saw an Old West street with horses and tumbleweeds and gunslingers and everything. And there was a very pretty woman who beckoned to me, holding out her hand like she could pull me through the light and into her world. Intellectually, I knew it was a hallucination. But goddam, it was a good one. I wouldn't have minded then and there lifting up a hand to leave this fucking place.

Instead I called for the nurse so I could get my next morphine shot.

How's that for a fuckin' dark GF column. I'm not even in a bad mood right now. It's just something I thought about while eating lunch today. Gotta watch out for those ceiling doors into other worlds . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #398: ARE YOU SIRIUS?

 I got my car back today. Looks prettier than ever. I know it's common to name a car after a woman, but this one's name is the Dude. There's a lot of years on him, and he likes to take it real easy. He's also a hybrid, so he's thinking environmentally. But that's just, like, my opinion, man. The Dude looks better than ever now.

I've been driving a rental for the past week or so. It was a nice vehicle, but it just wasn't the same. The one thing that I really enjoyed about it, though, was the Sirius/XM radio. I missed listening to Sirius/XM. It's usually where I get the newest music, and for the past few months I've been driving a vehicle where my only options are terrestrial radio (and that's just a bummer) or CDs. So I've been wearing my CDs down on all my trips until the front of my car fell off.

I really enjoyed getting back to satellite radio. I usually listen to Octane, Lithium, Liquid Metal, Ozzy's Boneyard and a few others. It was nice to check in once again. I found it very enjoyable, even the bands that I don't particularly care for.

So if this horrible nightmare was worth something, it was that. I'll miss satellite again for a while.

My plan is to get a new car probably next year. Hopefully next year. I'm saving up for a giant down payment because I'm bankrupt, so no one is going to want to set me up with a car loan. That's one of the reasons I had to buy the Dude in the first place. I had $8K as my budget at the time, payment from my insurance for my totaled car, and I came in under at the used car dealership.

I know I'm not going to get a top of the line new car when I have the money. But I'm going to get a new car, not used. I'm shooting for a model that's been on the lot for a couple of years and the dealer wants to get rid of it to make room for newer vehicles. When I get that car, which will probably be a Honda Civic, I hope that it has a Sirius/XM radio in there.

I'm not going to retire the CDs, but it'll be nice to let them have a rest.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #397: PRESCHOOL BOXING

 Remember that story about a preschool teacher who started a Fight Club with the kids they were supposed to be watching? Yeah, that was pretty fucking horrible, and the title of this GF column might seem misleading because I'm going to talk about my time in preschool. Back when I first put on a pair of boxing gloves.

I took it up again while I was in junior high, and I wasn't very good at it, which is probably why I didn't continue. But those preschool boxing days were kinda fun.

I'll not mention the name of the preschool, and I won't mention the names of the two people who ran it. For all I know, they're no longer with us, but I'll just keep that info to myself. Not that they did anything bad. Far from it, in my opinion.

I don't know if they were husband and wife, or even if they were together or what. But I do remember that she was very nice, and he was a lot of fun. Especially when he broke out the boxing gloves. What he would do was, he would teach us how to put them on, and then he let us whale on him with everything we had. Which, you know, wasn't much. Was I even five years old yet? Probably not.

My mom dropped me off and would go four doors down to work as a clerk at the 7-Eleven. Or was it the bar in the next parking lot over? She did both jobs, but I don't remember which one it was in those days. I then had the guy help me with my gloves, and he'd let me throw punch after punch at his face. He goofed off a lot and made funny faces, pretending to be in pain, but he couldn't hide the ridiculous grin slightly turning up the corners of his mouth.

"That all you got?" he'd ask.

I'd hit him with everything I had, and every once in a while a delighted laugh would escape him.

That's probably one of those things people would frown upon today, like cooking with lard or letting your kid hang out on the ledge beneath the back window of your car. I mean, obviously you shouldn't do those things. One's a great way to have a heart attack, and the other is a surefire way to get your kid killed. Probably you, too, since you weren't wearing a seat belt back then.

But still. It's weird to think about the things we used to do decades ago.

The place where the preschool was is now inhabited by a karate dojo for kids. Which makes me laugh, kind of.