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!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #581: SCREENWRITING

 For a while there I tried to break into Hollywood by writing screenplays. I got into the habit of reading them, which is kind of a chore. It takes a lot of the Hollywood magic out of things. But I had a good feel for it to the point where I maybe wrote five scripts on my own. One of them got roasted alive during the first year of Project Greenlight. The idea is, you have to review three other scripts when you submit your own. I read a few so-so scripts and one that was good. But every review I got back for mine was brutal. It was about a guy who finds out his abusive stepfather finally killed his mother, so he goes on a road trip with a friend to kill the old man. I thought it was pretty good, and I even turned it into a novel that no one wanted to publish. Ah well.

I've also helped friends make their own films. I was in a friend's movie as a shoplifter at a video store. I also helped the same friend with another movie, but I was a grip on that one. And then there was the time that a friend at the library was making a student film. He wanted me to be in it as a gunslinging sheriff type character. While we were filming it, though, he ran out of time and had to clock in for his shift. I wound up directing the rest of it and got, I think, the nicest shot in the movie.

But then there was Blood Diamond. My friend, Jesse, and I cowrote it. I'm terrible when it comes with collaborations. I don't know what it is. Every one I've worked on never made it to the finish line except whenever I worked with Jesse. He wrote the only serial I published in Tabard Inn. Anyway, he had everything lined up. Actors, special effects, locations, you name it. He just didn't have a script, so he asked me to write it with him. My memory is a bit shady at this point, but if I remember right it was about a Canadian ninja who has to face off against a mob boss with sorcerous abilities for . . . reasons? I probably have the script somewhere. It was pretty good. And we actually got to film some of it!

I remember it was Halloween night, and we gathered together to throw a party that would be part of the story. I played a couple of roles because I also had a mask that I could wear so I wouldn't be recognized again. We had an acrobat who could do flips and all kinds of crazy ninja moves. And I even got to meet two close friends that night. It was a lot of fun. Too bad the movie died that night. It could have been pretty cool. I would probably kill to have an opportunity to watch the footage we got, but I'm pretty sure no one has it anymore.

It's been a while since I worked on movies. Sometimes I miss it, but if there's anything more difficult to break into than publishing, it's movies. Maybe someday. I have this insane idea at the back of my head that maybe Jesse and I should novelize the script. I'll probably talk to him about it next time I see him. But indie film is a lot of fun. If you ever have the chance to do it, then do it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #580: MY COMICS HABIT

 My comics habit used to be out of control. I could easily spend thirty bucks a week on it, and that was an average week. Rarely did I spend less, and a few times I spent as much as sixty. I had to keep track of them all to make sure I didn't miss an issue, and I had a paper with titles on the front and back. Over the years I've gotten it down to one side of the page and very few titles at that.

I'm actually kinda surprised by how few comics I read now especially since I stopped with The Transformers books, and GI Joe just ended. Here is a list of the books I'm reading now.

AMERICAN JESUS

THE GOON (which is on hiatus more often than not)

JIMMY'S LITTLE BASTARDS

JUPITER'S LEGACY: REQUIEM (which is also on hiatus, but this is on purpose)

THE MAGIC ORDER (which only has one issue left)

MASKERADE (which only has one issue left)

QUICK STOPS

SAGA (another on hiatus by purpose, but it will be back in January)

STILLWATER

SPACE BASTARDS (which has been on what seems like a permanent hiatus but the creators swear will be back)

THAT TEXAS BLOOD

And that's it. No wonder it's becoming more and more common for me to have a week without The Best Comic Book of the Week. Remember when I used to do Cool Shit? I had to stop because it was eating up so much of my time, and that was why I started doing TBCBOTW. Now I don't think I could write it on a weekly basis because, well, what would I have to write about?

Technically Injection should probably be on the list, but even if Warren Ellis came back to writing it, I don't think I'd read it. Considering, you know. It's a shame. It was a good book, but I can't support that kind of behavior.

If you want to get real technical, Doktor Sleepless and Anna Mercury are both on the list, but there is no way in hell either one of those would ever come out, anyway. Whatever happened to Avatar Press? I'd heard some rumblings from several people, but I've been sworn to secrecy on some of that. I don't know if what I heard would be the reasons for them disappearing. Too bad. They used to be my favorite small comics press.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #579: THE COWARD'S WAY

Truer words, never spoken.

 

I don't consider myself a particularly fearful man. I don't think of myself as a coward. To the best of my memory I have only ever done one cowardly thing in my life, and that was because a friend made a horrible decision and I had to back said friend's play by doing something stupid. I'm no longer friends with that person, and I think about that moment often and don't like talking about it at all, so we'll leave it at that.

But I recently realized I may have done something else cowardly, and it bothers me.

A little background. I don't have any children (and I've been pretty fucking careful to ensure that never happened). I don't ever intend to have children. I'm probably too old for that by now, anyway. If I had a kid in nine months, I'd be in my sixties when that kid becomes a teenager. I don't want to be in my sixties chasing a shithead teenager around. That's strictly for the birds.

And for all my bluster about despising children, I kinda don't. Yeah, they're annoying and filthy and stupid and generally disgusting, but when it comes down to it I'd rather hang out with them than their awful adult counterparts. I kind of view them like Eric Northman in True Blood.

Why don't I have kids? First and foremost I'm a child myself. I'm the oldest eight year old boy I know. I'm irresponsible and I'm selfish. When you have kids, you're supposed to put them first, and I have absolutely no desire to do that.

But a major concern of mine was that I'd wind up just like my stepdad, a drunk who beats his wife and kids. Even before I became a teenager I could feel his hatred and rage in me. I still feel it to this day. Sure enough, I became a drunk. I've never intentionally hit a woman in my life. I accidentally slapped a girlfriend while rolling over in my sleep. It wasn't the impact that woke me up but the feeling of her face on my hand after. It wasn't forceful, and she didn't even wake up. I was just startled because I don't really sleep well around other people, and it kind of surprised me that someone else was in bed with me. It took me a moment to reorient myself and remember who she was.

And though I've wanted to many times, I've never struck a child. But I knew that was in me, and I didn't want to pass that down. Child Abuse: The Next Generation. I wanted to make sure that whatever thing that lived in my stepfather would die with me. And I think about how he got to be that way sometimes. I have a sneaking suspicion that his dad was a Nazi. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean, the guy fought in WWII for Hitler.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I considered the coward's way.

Not too long ago I watched what is possibly my favorite episode of Supernatural. It was about the life of Bobby Singer. This would probably be considered a spoiler for the show, so if you haven't watched it, maybe skip the rest of this.

The episode is called "Death's Door." In the previous episode Bobby is shot in the head. He's still alive in this episode, but he's struggling for what, at first, you think is his life. He's trapped in his memories, and he has to relive some of his deepest regrets in life. Before this episode you know him as the gruff and ornery surrogate father to the Winchesters. He's a no-nonsense kind of guy with more than a tinge of paranoia. He's also the most knowledgeable hunter the boys know. They go to him when they don't know what kind of monster they're facing.

But we learn more about what makes Bobby tick in this episode. You see, his Reaper has showed up to take him to the other side, but like I said he's struggling to succeed at something before that happens. He has to run and hide from the Reaper, and he learns the best way to do that is to find his worst memories and stick with them.

His absolute worst memory is of his father and why he doesn't have kids, either. His father beat his mom. He beat Bobby. Often. And li'l Bobby did what I'd always fantasized about when I was his age. He killed his abuser. Shot him in the head. And he swore to himself that the cycle of abuse would die with him.

And so he raised Dean and Sam as best as he could when their real father was hunting monsters. He didn't always raise them like John wanted. Sometimes he let them play hooky from target practice so they could play a little ball instead.

And Bobby realizes, in these moments before the Reaper catches up to him, that his deepest regret was not having kids. It had been the coward's way. You don't just avoid evil. You step in its path and fuck it up as best as you can. The truly heroic thing would have been to take a stand against the evil within himself and NOT LET IT WIN. To be the best father he could have ever been.

And he manages to do the one thing he was really struggling to do as he stood at Death's door. He helped the boys one last time and died.

Fear stands in our way a lot more often that we'd like to believe. We do something or we don't do something because doing the opposite scares us in ways we can't even comprehend. When I discover I'm afraid of something, I usually just do it anyway, but in this one case, where it might have mattered the most, I didn't.

And that's one of the regrets I may have to hide in when my Reaper comes for me.

IDJITS.

One more thing. Gramps had a saying. "'Balls!' said the Queen. 'If I had two I'd be king!'" This went back to his high school days, apparently. I was thinking about it earlier tonight and decided to look up where it came from. No one knows, like no one knows who came up with the song that says, "Milk, milk, lemonade, 'round the corner doody made." Or the one about what King Kong went to Hong Kong to do. But Gramps never told me there was a second part to that. The King responded by saying that it takes 12 inches to make a ruler.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #578: CREATIVE WRITING

 Earlier today I decided to upgrade my tiny notebooks in which I kept track of all of my story submissions over the years. I had some Office Depot points, so I got a couple of Moleskine notebooks for free. I'll be using those going forward.

But I've been using these things since high school, when I first learned that I could actually make money from writing stories. I'd taken a creative writing class with Mr. Langner. It was a class for seniors, but I took it as a sophomore. They let me in because they saw how serious I was about writing. There were fourteen of us, I think, including my friend Rob Tannahill's sister. At the end of the year Mr. Langner published a booklet with the work we'd created as a result of our time in that class.

He was the one who introduced me to Writer's Market, and up until the internet age I got that book every year and sent thousands of submissions out. He'd photocopied the SF/Fantasy/Horror section and put it in my greedy little hands.

Anyway, almost everyone wrote poems for that booklet. I wrote a story. A very long story, actually. Considering the subject matter, if I had done this as a student today, I'd be on the news as some kind of potential school shooter stopped by a forward thinking teacher. Even by the standards of 1994/95 it was pretty bad.

I'd written a story called "Serial Killer." And you don't have to imagine very much to figure out what it was about. There were a few grisly murders in that one to say nothing of the sexuality involved.

I still have a copy of that one. Two, actually. I'm pretty sure Rob gave me his sister's copy at some point in my life. I eventually expanded it into a novel length work, and it is the one and only novel I've ever written that a Big Five publishing house wanted to see in its entirety. This was back when there were more than five. In case you're wondering, an editor at Random House read my sample chapters and asked to see the rest of the book. I can't tell you how happy that made me feel. I had a chance at the big time!

And then they rejected me. They probably should have. If I remember correctly I was a freshman in college at the time. That book, by the way, will never see the light of day. It's pretty bad, and there's no amount of editing that can fix that.

To think of how different my life could have been!