NEW BOOK: MYSTERY SEXUAL THEATER 69000 IS LIVE!

 Check it out here!

COVER REVEAL FOR MY UPCOMING SEX BOOK!

 

MAD SAM DESTEFANO: PRE-EMINENT CLOWN PRINCE OF THE CHICAGO OUTFIT

 [NOTE: This is not a new piece. I wrote this a long time ago when a friend was putting together a true crime podcast. That podcast never came to fruition, which is a shame, but I thought the piece I wrote for it was too interesting to not release into the wild. So here you go. Enjoy, if that's the correct word for it.]

“The mob was full of psychopaths and morons, and keeping order among them was a challenge to the mettle of any boss, be he an elderly don like Paul Ricca, or a power broker like Giancana. Nobody tested the patience and discipline of both men more than Sam DeStefano, a freelance juice-loan operator and terrorist who was the pre-eminent clown prince of the Chicago outfit, a buffoon with no equal . . . DeStefano through the years had somehow gained the favor of Ricca and Giancana, a standing that kept him alive. For nobody made more enemies, or talked louder, than DeStefano, the mad hatter.”

                        --William Brashler, The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana

 

Make no mistake. Samuel “Mad Sam” DeStefano was a scary guy. He carved out a neat little niche for himself as a loan shark by also ensuring that everyone knew he was a sociopath and a lunatic and very unpredictable. One minute you could be having a normal conversation with him, and the next you could have an ice pick in your throat. Or somewhere a lot less pleasant.

 

But where did such a killer come from? Oddly enough, he hails from Streator, IL, where he was one of seven children born to Samuel DeStefano, Sr., and Rosalie Brasco. Streator, now, is a farming community with a dab of city living. Back then it was just a farming community. Not a lot to do there. It’s not a surprise that the family picked up stakes and moved across the state to Herrin in coal country. What happened, then, to make them move to Little Italy in Chicago?

 

The Herrin Massacre, naturally. The miners were on strike, and at first things were amicable, but when the price of coal went up the owner hired scabs to take over. The union boys were upset over this, so they started to shoot at the scabs. The mine had armed guards, so they started killing the miners in retaliation. Add in some strike breakers, and you have more corpses. They even got the superintendent. Twenty of the scabs and strike breakers were killed compared to the three miners. Twenty-three men died over this labor dispute, and not all of them were merely shot. Some were brutally killed.

 

“The only way to free the county of strike breakers is to kill them all off and stop the breed.” Imagine being told that by a striking miner, and you’re a strike breaker. You’ve walked out under a white flag, and then you and your men are attacked. Brutalized. Murdered.

 

“Listen, don’t you go killing these fellows on a public highway. There are too many women and children and witnesses around to do that. Take them over in the woods and give it to them. Kill all you can.” Chilling words. But that’s what they did.

 

“Let’s see how fast you can run between here and Chicago, you damned gutter-bums!” One of the miners said this  as they set loose a bunch of strike breakers at a fence. Keep in mind, Herrin is closer to Springfield than Chicago. If you’re not from Illinois, that’s all the way across the state.

 

Some strike breakers were caught at the fence—a barbed wire fence—and shot. Some were shot trying to escape beyond the fence. One was captured and hanged from a tree. Three of his companions were shot just under his twisting soon-to-be corpse. Some of them were captured and stripped to their unmentionables and forced to crawl to the cemetery. The miners beat and shot and urinated on these men. Townspeople came to taunt these men, and anyone still alive at the end of the trek had their throats cut with a pocket knife. And not even death could stop the abuse. The miners spat on their corpses.

 

The rest of the country wasn’t happy with this. It horrified everyone outside of Herrin. Some compared it to how the Germans in WWI comported themselves with their POWs. President Harding supposedly said, “[It is a] shocking crime [of] barbarity, butchery, rot and madness.” If he didn’t say that, he probably should have.

 

Not a single miner did time for this crime. Arrests were made, but everyone was acquitted. The bodies were buried in unmarked graves, and it took us as long as 2013 to find them. There’s a monument to the dead there now, which eases the sensation of being brutally murdered, no doubt.

 

Mad Sam’s dad was one of those miners. It’s not clear that he took part in the massacre, but Sam wasn’t the only member of the family affected by this crime. His brother, Mario, was also a sadist. This part is speculation, but it seems pretty clear that Mad Sam’s sociopathy began here. Some of his crimes do, in fact, mirror what happened to the strike breakers.

 

The FBI thought of Mad Sam as the most vicious torturer/killer in the history of the US. The mob used him when they needed to send a sadistic message, but even they felt uneasy about using him. He did, after all, murder his own brother, Michael. Charles Crimaldi, a mobster who somehow survived to 2020, claimed Mad Sam was a Satan worshipper. How did it all begin?

 

The first record of him being arrested comes from 1926, but it was because he had escaped from a jail in Niles, so there was at least one crime he committed before that we didn’t know about. Shortly after he was handed back to Niles, his gang showed up threatening to kill anyone who stood in their way of freeing Mad Sam. It’s not clear if this worked, but not long after that Mad Sam got arrested again, this time for kidnapping a woman off the street, taking her to a garage, and—with six other men—sexually assaulting her. She was seventeen. Mad Sam was found guilty and sentenced to three years.

 

Just three years for the sexual assault of a minor.

 

When he got out he joined the Forty-Two Gang. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it was run by the infamous Sam Giancana, who went on to run the mob in Chicago for many decades. It was 1930, so they mostly got up to bootlegging, gambling, women, that kind of thing. Throw in some light robbery, and you get the idea. He was wounded during a grocery store heist. He had several bullet wounds when he showed up at the hospital, and he didn’t feel the need to explain them. It doesn’t seem that he got arrested for that one.

 

(It should be mentioned that by this time he married his girlfriend (Anita) and would have six kids by her. He was very abusive to all of them, especially his wife. For her disobedience, he would often rape her. His kids all went into hiding and refused to come back to the world until after his death.)

 

He did get caught for the next one. In 1933 he tried to rob a bank and got 40 years for it. Think about that. He robbed a bank and got 40 years. He raped a minor and got three years for that. The world had a different set of priorities then.

 

He didn’t serve his whole sentence. The governor inexplicably commuted it in 1944. Not that it mattered. He returned to prison in 1947 for, of all things, having fake sugar ration stamps. (Remember, this was just after WWII.)

 

While in Leavenworth he met Paul Ricca and Louis Campagna, who would help him get in with the mob. He was released the same year and got a job in waste management, like any good li’l mobster. He didn’t tell them about his criminal record, and when they discovered it they got upset but didn’t have him arrested.

 

And then his real life of crime began.

 

It turns out that he managed to steal that money from the bank job, and he used it to set himself up as a loan shark. He also became big in real estate, buying an apartment building which he used to squeeze money out of people. He used that money to bribe people from judges to alderman to anyone in between. He paid off cops to ignore crimes to the point where he used twenty grand to dismiss a Murder One charge. Assault cost $1,500, robbery $800. (Incidentally, he guaranteed acquittal. If it didn’t happen, he would pay for the appeals himself.)

 

What was the vig? 20-25%. That’s insane. But the mob loved it. But he didn’t want people to pay him back. He had a sound-proof basement where he would bring those who couldn’t make the cut where he could torture them to death. Even if the sum was small. Especially if the sum was small. He liked scaring people, and some mobsters claimed he foamed at the mouth while torturing people to death. More on that in a moment.

 

He would often give personalized gifts to people who borrowed from, engraved with his name, to prove to police that he couldn’t have killed them. He liked them. Why else would he give them gifts? The ploy seemed to have worked. He never did time for killing those people. He would also wear super thick glasses to make people think he couldn’t see without them. He could. He wanted people to underestimate him, and they did constantly. Until he killed them.

 

Giancana and other mobsters invested in Mad Sam’s business practices. They didn’t like him, but he made them a lot of money, so why not? Once he even attacked a Chicago Tribune journalist.

 

William Doherty was the writer in question. He wrote something bad about Sam in the paper, so Sam decided to chase him with a gun, threaten his family and then damage property at Doherty’s home.

 

And then there’s Leo Foreman, one of Sam’s collectors. He was technically a real estate agent, but you know how that goes. They had a major argument in Foreman’s office, and Foreman had Sam kicked out forcibly. Realizing with horror the grave mistake he’d just made, Foreman went into hiding. Crimaldi (what a great name for a criminal!) and the infamous Tony Spilotro reached out to Foreman claiming that Sam wanted to “let bygones be bygones” and wanted to see him. It’s kind of like being a prince in the Roman Empire and having the emperor recall you to Milan. Nothing good is going to come of it.

 

Foreman fell for it and was murdered at Sam’s brother, Mario’s, house. Sam’s men softened him up first with a vigorous beating and shooting him in a few non-vital places, and when Sam got to him, he used a hammer on Foreman. His knees, his head, his crotch, his ribs. He stabbed him with his beloved ice pick twenty times. By the time he shot Foreman in the head, Foreman probably took it as a blessing. The whole time he was killing Foreman, Sam kept telling him that he was a blood sacrifice to the devil. When he was done killing him, Sam said, “Look. He’s got a smile on his face. Looks like he was glad to die.”

 

And then there is Peter Cappelletti, yet another of Sam’s collectors. Somehow he messed up worse than Foreman. He ripped Sam off for twenty-five grand and fled to Wisconsin. Sam’s men had no problem finding him, and they brought him back home. Sam chained him to a radiator in the basement of a banquet hall and tortured him for three days. WHILE BANQUETS WERE STILL BEING HELD. But that was no problem. The place was owned by his brother, Mario. At one point he set Cappelletti on fire, and the poor man screamed for them to kill him, to put him out of his misery. “Please!” he cried. “I’m on fire!”

 

“Then we need to put the fire out,” Sam said. He had his men drag him out into the middle of a banquet, where Cappelletti’s family was having dinner. Mad Sam had planned it by inviting them there in the first place and treating them to a meal. He made the family urinate on him at the same time, just to put that fire out.

 

Not surprisingly, the family coughed up the dough.

 

If that’s not crazy enough, he tried to represent Vito Zaccagonini during his forgery trial. There is no evidence that Sam had any knowledge of the law outside of breaking it. He also represented himself several times. His tactics could be described as “shock and awe.” Or more like, “What the hell is this guy doing?” He liked to be brought into court in a wheelchair or on a stretcher. He once asked the jury, “Have you ever seen an elephant?” Then, without any pause, he changed his plea to guilty on the spot. He claimed that “something had come to light that I had not known before.” What was he on trial for? A mere disorderly conduct charge. They fined him a hundred bucks. How’s that for punishment? His courtroom antics at his own trials gained a lot of public attention, especially when he started showing up in his PJs. He liked to ramble his arguments through a bullhorn. There is actually footage of this if you look it up on YouTube.

His victims weren’t limited to people who owed him money. His brother, Michael, had a drugs and gambling problem, and the mob called Sam to get Michael out of their casino. He went out to the there and picked Michael up only to shoot him five times in the head. IN HIS OWN CAR. (Another variation of the story states that he stabbed his brother, probably with an ice pick.) He went to his other brother, Mario’s, place, where he stripped the body down, washed it, put it in another car and left it abandoned on a city street. He then had the nerve to call the police to tell them where Michael could be found.

 

He liked to go to pig farms to watch them at work for hours. He claimed he wanted to own a pig farm so he could feed them his victims Mason Verger-style. He also liked to tell a story, and Crimaldi confirmed it, that he once forced his wife to put a gun in her mouth. He told her to pull the trigger, and when she did, he laughed and told her he’d taken the bullets out. He thought it was an amusing anecdote that his mob buddies would enjoy.

 

Few, if any, did.

 

Famed FBI Agent William F. Roemer wrote a book about his adventures, and Sam played kind of a big role. He said this of Sam: “About this time I got to know Mad Sam DeStefano, the worst torture-murderer in the history of Chicago. He was a sadistic, arrogant, swaggering thug of the worst order, responsible for scores of killings, almost all by his own hands. I had a long series of confrontations with this beast, and looking back I must admit I enjoyed every one.” He visited Sam at his home many times in an attempt to turn him into an informant, and a lot of the time he said that Sam came downstairs in his pajamas with his penis hanging out like it was some kind of accident. Perhaps he did this for the same reason that Lyndon B. Johnson held press conferences while he defecated: intimidation. Roemer always had Sam’s coffee, and it had an odd taste to it. Sam claimed it was due to the “special Italian coffee beans.” Roemer later learned it was actually because Sam had been urinating into it. Roemer said he “could never drink coffee again.”

 

If you follow mob history in Chicago, you might know about a dirty cop by the name of Tommy Dorso. He helped Sam deal drugs back in the day, and he once said that Sam rolled around on the floor, mouth foaming, praying to Satan. “I’m your servant! Command me!” he would howl. Dorso himself said of Sam, “DeStefano is not normal. Mentally, physically or spiritually . . . and he knows it.” Crimaldi had this to add: “[Sam] was convinced that he was indeed Satan’s disciple. When he was in trouble or getting heat . . . he would drop to his knees and pray. The ritual was always preceded by a violent rage during which he would stomp the floor and swear endlessly. He seemed to lose contact with the world around him and his anger propelled him through a series of spasms into some private hell where only he and the devil could enter. On all fours he would smash his fists against the floor in frustration and rage. The drool would pour from his mouth in streams to form frothy puddles beneath his face. His gravelly voice would become a croak so guttural that his words were barely comprehensible. Once he had reached this state, he would pray to the devil.”

 

What would a guy like Mad Sam do in his leisure time, aside from visiting pig farms? One time he saw a Black man walking down the street and forced him into his car at gunpoint. He brought the stranger home (to Sam’s place, not the stranger’s) and forced poor Anita DeStefano to perform oral sex on this man. It destroyed him so badly that he actually fled from the house to the nearest precinct to report what had just happened. When the cops investigated and discovered that Mad Sam was behind the whole thing, nothing really happened to him. Even the police were scared of him.

 

An informant, possibly Crimaldi, also called Sam egomaniacal. His house had a lot of mirrors on the walls, and when he talked to people, he looked at his own reflection instead of at them. He would do the same while simply walking on his own. He could be laughing one moment and crying the next. He also claimed that if he hadn’t been “framed” for rape when he was younger, he could have been the President of the United States.

 

Also in his house, down in a soundproofed basement, he had a torture chamber. A wooden cabinet on the wall contained his favorite weapons: ice picks. He liked to shove them into eyes and crotches, and he did that often. Just ask a man named Artie Adler, who died in just such a way before Mad Sam dumped his body in a sewer drain. The cops found it because the sewer backed up, and sanitation had to unblock it. Since the crime had happened during the winter, Adler’s body was in a block of ice, preserved just like a wooly mammoth’s might be.

 

At one point after this killing, Roemer went to visit Sam, who came down in his PJs with his penis hanging out, as usual. This time Sam went to one of the many mirrors in his living room to hold and admire his penis while talking with Roemer. When Roemer accused Sam of killing Adler, Sam brought his whole family into the room. Sam screamed, “These two gentlemen are FBI agents. They have come out here to accuse me of killing Arthur Adler! I cry out to God up above! If I am guilty of killing Arthur Adler, may God come down, right now, and put cancer in the eyeballs . . . of you and you and you!” Pointing his finger to each of his family members.

 

In 1965 Mad Sam went back to prison, this time for conspiracy. Three to five years. In 1972 he went back to prison yet again, this time for threatening the life of none other than Crimaldi himself. In the very same year he was indicted yet again for illegal possession of firearms by a felon.

 

And then another indictment was handed down, this one for Foreman’s murder. He continued with his courtroom lunacy until finally, after all these years, Tony Accardo, the boss of the Chicago mob, decided that Mad Sam had gone too far. He gave Mad Sam’s own crew permission to whack him.

 

April 14, 1973. On the 1600 N. Sayre Ave. block. Mario Anthony DeStefano, the brother who hosted Foreman’s murder, invited his brother over. Sam went, not suspecting a thing. Never imagining that Spilotro would be there, too, and that Spilotro would shotgun him. He got Sam in the chest with one shot and tore his left arm off with the second. Mad Sam DeStefano died instantly.

 

Another variation of the story is that Mario and Spilotro arrived at Sam’s house, who let them into his garage, at which point Spilotro pulled the shotgun from under his coat. The first shot took off his right arm, and the second exploded his chest. One way or the other, he was finally, irrevocably, dead.

Not surprisingly, no one ever went to trial for it. Everyone in Chicago probably released a big sigh of relief knowing that Sam’s reign of terror was finally over. To quote an unnamed mobster, “[Sam] was sick. Crazy, sick, a sick dog, worse than you can ever think. We didn’t whack him a second too soon.”

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #785: NOSTALGIA FOR AN AGE THAT NEVER EXISTED

 Even though the song isn't really about the topic tonight, the title is apropos, so you might as well read this while listening to this.

As some of you might know, back in January 2020, I went to the ER suffering from another bout of pancreatitis, and they decided to hold onto me. While I was there I went into severe alcohol withdrawal, so they wound up keeping me for a couple of weeks while it ran its course through my system. I can't remember if I went into my hallucinations here before. When I went back to look I didn't find anything. Unless I wrote about it later.

Regardless, not too long ago I started feeling nostalgia for one of those hallucinations. I didn't know that was possible, but a few people told me that they were familiar with the sensation. It was the one in which I went to the middle of a wide open field, to a burger stand made entirely of plastic on the outside, including a bench where a plastic milkman sat. I got the feeling that I sat on that bench all the time when I was a kid. In the hallucination, I sat there again, and then I went inside, where it looked kind of like a neighborhood bar.

It was the last of my hallucinations before I came back to myself in my hospital room. When I came out of it, that hallucination made me feel like I'd rediscovered a forgotten piece of my childhood. It had been so vivid that I asked my grandmother about it when I got home. Because I could swear that me, her, Gramps and my cousin, Erik, used to walk there from the house we lived in back then. She was still a few months away from dementia, so her memory was still good. She had no recollection of this place.

It bothered me for a while because the memory of going there as a child was so real. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe it really was just a hallucination. Because this open field never existed. I reasoned that if it was within walking distance of that house, I'd remember where it was because I live maybe two blocks from there today. And there is nowhere that place could have been.

So I let it go until a few months ago when I remembered the hallucination, in particular the plastic milkman on the bench, and I felt nostalgia for it. Having nostalgia for something that never existed is a very weird feeling for me. I'm not given to nostalgia often these days, but to feel it for something I made up during alcohol withdrawal is just too fucking weird for me.

And then, last week, I dreamed of that place again. AND I FINALLY KNOW WHY I FELT LIKE THIS PLACE ACTUALLY EXISTED.

I may have talked about my dream world before. It's a close approximation of my neighborhood, but depending on the dream I'm having it can be very different. I went to that dream world where I found this burger stand again. I sat on the bench with the plastic milkman. I went inside and ordered food that I didn't get to eat because I woke up too soon.

And when I woke up I remembered where I'd known this place before. I'd dreamed about it when I was a child. The wide open field was on the opposite side of the train tracks. There's a neighborhood back there, but in my dream world there's just that field. And that burger stand. And I used to dream about it all the time back then. Weird that my mom never went with us, though. Or Erik's mom, for that matter. But we went there a lot, and then I grew up and forgot about this recurring dream until the alcohol withdrawal brought me back.

It took me almost four years to figure that out. I'm usually a lot quicker on the uptake, but the human brain is a strange place. I had a few other hallucinations, one of which I know for a fact came from my childhood. It makes me wonder about the others and where they might have come from.

_

OK, as I'm sure you suspected, this is the last GF column of the year. I usually take my writing vacation starting with Thanksgiving week, during which time I lay off writing so much. I have a few things to work on, but I'm not going to bust my ass over it. It's mostly editing stuff, anyway. I have one more newsletter for Sunday, and that'll be it from me for the rest of 2023. Unless I have news to share, and I might. If you follow the newsletter, you'll know why.

All right. I still have plenty of GF ideas for when I return, and I'm sure I'll have even more by then. I think I got to everything time sensitive. For now, at least. Anyway, I'll be back in January unless the universe pulls a Donnie Darko on me while I'm in bed. Until then, please remember to . . .

And party on, dudes!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #784: LUNATICS RUNNING THE ASYLUM

Or maybe the criminals running the courts.

 

Earlier this week the Supreme Court made an announcement that they now have a Code of Ethics. Who wrote this code? Oh yeah . . . about that. They did.

They tried to make it sound like they've always had this code because they borrowed it from the lower courts. For the lower courts, it's essential for a judge to recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest in a case they've been assigned. If they don't, there is a punishment. If the defendant appeals, then the appeals judge can look at the original judge, and if there's a conflict of interest, and that guy didn't recuse himself . . . yeah. The same goes for the appeals judge when the Supreme Court is looking at it. Except, who watches the Watchmen?

That's right. There is no way to enforce the rules when it comes to Supreme Court Justices. There is no higher court to hand down penalties or to reverse decisions. So their new code of ethics is a fifteen page waste of time.

But they're not worried about that. Why would they be?

The first analogy that came to mind is letting corporations make up their own regulations, and we all know how that worked out. Hence the need for strict corporate regulation. But that goes over a lot of people's heads sometimes. I have a better analogy, one that will be sure to cut to the quick for any law and order kind of person accidentally reading this.

You know who should make up the rules in prison? The prisoners. Get rid of the warden and the guards and everything else, and let them regulate themselves.

I'm not a big fan of prisons, but typing those words made even my butthole clench a little. Perhaps it's time to regulate these Justices. Clearly they can't do it on their own. Or we can continue to laugh at the joke. Too many people would envision themselves as the Joker in a case like this. Edgy people (almost always guys) see themselves as the jester cutting through the bullshit to make room for laughter, and the king can't ever punish the jester, can he?

I suspect these Joker wannabes are more along the lines of this guy, though:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #783: LONGPLAYER AND 100 YEARS

 

Did you know that on January 1, 2000, Jem Finer, a founding member of the Pogues, set in motion a song that will play for 1000 years? That's right, it is currently playing now and will not stop playing until December 31, 2999. It's called "Longplayer," and I might surprise you with my opinion on this one.

Because I think it's fucking stupid.

Obviously it's not a real song. If it was, it would have taken at least 1000 years to write it, and who has the time? So what Finer did was write the beginning of it, and then he turned the song over to an algorithm to make up the rest of it based on the beginning. It's not supposed to imitate or repeat itself, so the music is supposed to constantly change over the course of a millennium. 20 minutes and 20 seconds were composed before the algorithm took over, and it's played on a single instrument. That instrument is made of 234 pieces, so I guess that's where the variety comes in. Although it's mostly Tibetan bowls and gongs, so I'm not sure how much variety that gets you.

It is broadcast from a lighthouse, and there are a bunch of listening posts all over the UK, if you're interested in giving it a listen. I'm not. I mean, I guess I'd listen to the first 20 minutes and 20 seconds, but after that? I have no interest. The argument could be made that since no human being could live to hear the whole thing, that it's kind of poetic that it's in the language of robots, but I don't buy it.

Because it's a very human hubris, taking it for granted that we'll still be around in 1000 years. With the situation in Ukraine and the Gaza strip, hopes aren't high that we'll still be around in 100 years. Maybe not even next week, all things considered. Although it might not come to that. US military leadership isn't all that strong right now thanks to Sen. Tuberville holding up all those promotions. I think it would be pretty funny if we can't thrust ourselves dick first into WWIII because some pud in Congress doesn't want soldiers to get a free ride on abortions. But I'm pretty sure we're going in anyway, and if a certain fuckface gets elected, it won't be long before we ejaculate nukes all over the world . . . and then get some back for our troubles. So yeah, I don't think the song will play out as planned.

Hey, speaking of 100 years, this song reminds me of a Robert Rodriguez film that's not supposed to be released for a hundred years. It is, unsurprisingly, called 100 Years, and it stars John Malkovich. All I know is that it's an SF flick that was produced by . . . Remy Martin? The cognac people?

It's supposed to be in honor of their Louis XIII, which takes 100 years to make. Apparently Rodriguez thought he was making some kind of commercial for them, and then they told him they were going to seal it in a safe for a hundred years before releasing it on November 18, 2115. That safe is designed to not open until the date of the premiere. And that safe is fucking bulletproof. They're not fucking around. Invitations already went out to 1000 guests, including Malkovich and Rodriguez, but what are the odds that anyone is going to live long enough to cash those tickets in?

Those tickets, by the way, are made of metal so they won't get damaged and can easily be passed down to descendants who actually do stand a chance of seeing the film one day. This is slightly less stupid than "Longplayer," because the film was entirely made by actual people, but I still say it's kinda stupid because I think 1000 people in the future are going to be disappointed. Unless they're the kind of people who like Super Bowl commercials. I imagine that this would be like the ultimate Super Bowl commercial, but you know how I feel about advertising and advertisers. They didn't exist on the level they do now when Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, but if there was a modern version of it, these sons of bitches would have their own circle of Hell. Fairly close to Satan, too. Maybe not in his mouths with Judas and Cassius and Brutus, but close enough.

I get that we need to have a long view of the world if we're going to have a chance of civilization still being here when "Longplayer" ends, but this is not the shit we should be dedicating our resources to.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #782: INK BY THE BARREL

 

Mark Twain said that, and he was talking about journalists. I always bring my shit hammer of truth down on the lack of journalistic ethics these days, but tonight is about saying fuck you to the Man. Because there's a startling new trend going on in local communities when it comes to the press. The way those in power deal with reporters is by ticketing them or even arresting them, both things in clear violation of the First Amendment.

I'm not going to go too deeply into these stories. If you want to, here's one. Here's another. And this third one is what brought the whole thing to my attention. I'm going to talk about that a little because Calumet City isn't that far from me, and this reporter's editor had a few important things to say.

The Fourth Estate is important to any society that at the very least pretends to be democratic, like our own, because they're the ones whose job it is to call out the powerful for their bullshit. If you're throwing journalists in jail or even so much as vaguely threatening them, you are not just standing in the way of democracy, you are also supporting fascism. By being a fascist.

So yeah. People who ticket and jail and threaten journalists for doing their job are lower than whale shit. It's odd that it needs to be said, but it needs to be said. Here is what the Calumet City editor said about it:

“You get used to it a little bit on the national scale, but now we’re seeing it in very small municipalities with mayors, and that’s a disturbing trend and we need to call it out when we see it,” Pugh told The Associated Press. “A public official ought to know better than to basically use a police force to try to intimidate a reporter who’s just doing his job.”

Which warms the cockles of my heart, by the way. It means there are still journalists actually doing journalism instead of the clickbait and the rushed stories you see plastered all over the internet. If politicians are threatening to throw you in jail for telling the truth about them, you're living life correctly. They're the ones who are fucked.

If you remember nothing else that I've said in these GF columns, please remember that one.

PS: Every day should be a day to say fuck you to the Man. Please retain this for your records.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #781: BACK ORDER

 I had a bit of a rough time of it lately, and it's yet another reason I fucking hate that I'm forced to go to CVS for my medications.

Two weeks ago I got my usual notification that CVS was trying to renew my prescription for Novolog, which is the fast-acting insulin I take to keep me alive three times a day. I replied with YES and, just in case, I made the request to my endocrinologist, too. On Wednesday, as I was running low on my last pen, I checked back in with the MyChart app, and the insulin had been sent over to CVS. So I called CVS's automated system and was advised that the prescription was still being processed. I figured that meant I'd have it by the next day.

The next day comes, and no dice. This time I talked to a live person only to find out that Novolog is on a national back order. And these CVS fucks didn't tell me about it.

If I was still allowed to go to my local pharmacy instead, they would have absolutely told me about this and offered alternatives. But no, now that I had only three shots worth of insulin left, FUCKING NOW I'm being told that it's on back order. If there was something that literally helped keep you alive, and you were told at the 11th hour that it was on national back order even though they already knew this, how reasonably would you respond?

I told my endocrinologist, and she sent an alternative to CVS. Surprise! On Friday I learned that my insurance wouldn't cover it. So now I had to get another alternative, and thankfully this one was covered. The problem: I had to wait until Monday to get it. FUCK.

So over the weekend I had to get creative. At least, I thought, I wouldn't get any low blood sugar surprises during this time. So I figured out when to use my final dose, which I saved for Saturday night as I like to treat myself a little if I don't have to work the next day. And then I had to take a few guesses on how Toujeo, my long-acting insulin for nighttime injections, would work using it during waking hours instead.

To paraphrase a great Knight of the Round Table in modern times, I chose wisely. The only Toujeo injection I fucked up was the one this morning. I didn't use enough and was in the 200s when I got home from work. But I finally have my insulin pens.

So I made a pizza from scratch tonight. Why not live a little? Celebrate.

Fucking back order . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #780: FUCK THE DOOMED

 

I've been thinking about this a lot since this episode of Last Week Tonight aired about homeschooling. It's lengthy, but give it a watch. I think it might be more important than I originally thought.

We all know the real reason why politicians offer thoughts and prayers instead of meaningful help when it comes to school shootings. How many of them won their office with financial support from the NRA? But you'd think at the very least they would care about those kids getting gunned down. They can't all be that horrible, can they?

According to my theory, yes, they can be. Those politicians who don't give a fuck are mostly rightwing nutjobs who believe in God, country and family, supposedly in that order. Although they constantly put God and country on the same level, and family is kind of an afterthought. How many of these jerkoffs have been busted having affairs? Just for example. But they can't get it through their thick skulls that there *is* a separation of church and state whether they fucking like it or not, and they fucking well don't like it.

Since homeschooling isn't regulated much (or at all, really), that makes it a perfect way to indoctrinate their kids into their own way of thinking instead of just trusting it to the public schools. And homeschooling is a lot cheaper than Catholic school, which is where the rich rightwing scumbags send their kids.

Not many of them put their kids in public school, so why care about those who do? More to the point, why not make public school some kind of awful place that no one would want to send their kids to? So here's my theory, if you haven't figured it out yet. They want to make public schools useless and dangerous as a means of furthering their church = state agenda. Yes, make it so they can't teach kids books other than the Bible anymore. That will dumb down the children and ensure that they get nowhere in the world. And why not just turn psychos with guns loose at these schools? Make them so dangerous no one would want to go there only to learn from books that were banned a week previous, anyway.

I'm fairly certain these walking, breathing pieces of dogshit think that public school is evil and the very concept needs to be destroyed. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one, if not all, of them called public schools a socialist idea.

And they have no idea that the true evil can be found in their own mirror. Because fuck the doomed. Why not?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #779: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND THERE IT IS

 It didn't take the universe very long to self-correct itself. Now I'm back to my usual doom and gloom.

For the last month or so we haven't had heat in the house. It hasn't been too bad. Yes, it's cold, but it's not too bad. Yet. Even when it snowed on Halloween it was OK. I have a space heater in my bedroom, so when I'm there I'm nice and cozy, but when I'm in the bathroom or the kitchen, it's not that great. I got in the habit of skipping breakfast most days to avoid being in the kitchen for too long.

But winter is coming, and holy shit, I guess no one can really say that anymore without thinking of Game of Thrones. It's like when Spike said, "Who you gonna call?" on Buffy.

Anyway, cold weather is on its way, and there's no way we can get through the season without heat, so I called a guy today, and he confirmed for me what I've long suspected: the furnace is fucked. FUCKED. Somehow it got full of water, and a circuit board is fried, and of course a new one is going to cost a lot of fucking goddam money.

Thankfully there's a monthly payment plan, but at the same time I really don't want to deal with this. Chiefly among my reasons is the fact that I have no idea how long we're still going to be here. I could be paying for this fuckin' thing for no good reason at all if the bank decides to kick us out, say, in the spring. I'm getting bent over for this?

Goddammit. My brother mentioned there might be a warranty on the furnace. He says it's fairly new, but I don't remember us getting a new furnace a few years ago. I hope he's right. I don't really want to do this, but if I must, and I suspect I must, then I will.

So yes, doom and gloom. And I'm going to need some help. If you've ever been curious about my books, now's the time to buy. Check out my website for all the relevant links. And what the hell, I said I was going to stop editing stuff for other people, but do you need an editor? I'm flexible on prices. Let me know, and we can talk. Jesus God, maybe I should start an OnlyFans. Put on some hot pants and pick a corner on the Sleaze Strip . . .

If you buy Strip, Trail of Blood, Pavlov;s Bitches, 6669: Demon Porn, John Holmes Vampire Slayer, Dong of Frankenstein and Other Pornos You Can't Jerk It To, It Changes a Man and the Audible version of Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks, I will get paid the quickest. Next tier of swiftness is Tales of Questionable Taste, Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks, And Jesus Came Back and Blood. Coming in last are Tales of Unspeakable Taste and The Life and Times of Hieronymus Aloysis Ziege. If, you know, you're interested in knowing how fast you'd be able to help me.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #778: HOPE

 I don't live with a lot of hope. I find that hope almost always turns on you, and my philosophy is just to forget it. So I haven't felt it in a while. I go into everything with negative expectations, and I'm rarely disappointed.

So it's weird that I felt hope today. You know how I sometimes get low and talk about how unhappy I am at work? Yesterday I learned I might have an escape hatch. Today, after some close observation, I learned that the escape hatch is almost certain.

For half of my work day I sat in another department, watching how things go there, seeing the kinds of things they have to deal with. And I think I've found my next position at that job. It's not sales (finally), and there's nothing cutthroat about it. If this change happens I'll can stop being in attack mode all the fucking time. It'll be nice to go through one goddam workday without being burned out and watching out for knives with my back's name on them the whole time.

I will even get most of my Saturdays back, which means I CAN HAVE A WEEKEND AGAIN. For the first time since December 2019 I will know what a weekend feels like. The only thing is, they do rotating Saturdays, which means I'll have to work one a month. Considering the alternative, that's pretty fucking good.

Another possible drawback: I might have to work some days in Crystal Lake or Oswego, which are pretty far to go for me here in Elmhurst. For a second I thought I'd have to do that every day, but it looks like that just might be a once in a while kind of thing. I have a couple of brothers in Crystal Lake, and my second stepmom is in Oswego, so maybe that's not entirely bad.

My supervisor wants me to have the job. The supervisor I'd have wants me to have the job. We just have to clear it with the call center boss and the shop boss.

I've been floating on cloud nine all day, and I have not felt like that in many, many years. I feel like I've got a new lease on life, and I'm hoping with everything I've got that I get this new position. I've had a spectacularly bad run of luck for more than ten years at this point. It's Verrill luck. Always in, always bad. But this might just be the thing to finally turn all that shit around.

Fingers crossed.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #777: METHUSELAH

 

How long would you say fish live? When I was a kid I always had an aquarium, and I'd say the oldest fish I ever had only lasted a few years. Maybe three? Shortest lived were always carnival goldfish, of course, but I'd be shocked to learn any fish could live longer than ten years.

Then, every once in a while, you learn about a shark in the wild that has lived for hundreds of years. And then there's Methuselah, pictured above. She's an Australian lungfish, and she's probably around 93 years old, which makes her the oldest living aquarium fish. Because her species hasn't evolved in 100 million years, she's considered a "living fossil." Meaning, by studying her we can have some insight into prehistoric life.

For example, the species is generally considered to be the first to have developed a spine in history. And like the name suggests, they can breathe oxygen. One source says it's "the closest living relative to the first fish that crawled out of the sea." It might even be possible that we are descended from them, if that is the case.

I can't help but think about super religious people who still, to this day, are offended at the very idea that we evolved from monkeys. I always think about how they would react when they learned that monkeys possibly evolved from lungfish, and that all creatures (including us) evolved from bacteria.

Methuselah lives at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco and has been there since 1938. Kind of weird to think of it that way. When she arrived the US was in the middle of the worst depression in its history. Nazis were just getting revved up with jerkoff fantasies of world domination. Orson Welles did War of the Worlds that year. The minimum wage was born that year. Hell, that was the year the ballpoint pen was invented. Methuselah is older than the fucking ballpoint pen and the US minimum wage.

But then again, well, you know the unofficial motto of Goodnight, Fuckers. You gonna make me say it?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #776: TUTANKHAMEN AND EGYPTOLOGY

 Technically the entire name of the book is Biblical and Oriental Series: Tutankhamen and Egyptology. It was published in 1923 and is so difficult to find that not even Google will help me find an image of it. I found an entry on Amazon, but they don't have a copy and so they don't have a cover image. I'm too lazy, and it's too late for me to take a picture with my phone and import it to my laptop, so you'll have to pretend that I posted a picture of a book above this paragraph that is greenish blue and simply says the title and the word Mercer on it. Not sure if Mercer is the author or the publisher. Once again, Google foiled my GF research.

The reason I bring up this book is because it belongs to the Elmhurst Public Library, but for many decades between them purchasing it and now, it vanished. Someone checked it out in 1945 and just didn't return it. I'm sure the guy just forgot about it, and after time it became part of his own library because the book was just returned this summer with a note: "This book was recently discovered in my father's bookcase. With regrets for its long overdue status."

That's 78 fucking years late. I can't even imagine what the late fee would be. I worked there for almost 10 years, and in my time it was ten cents a day . . . until you reached a certain point that you went on a list. When we didn't have much to do, they had us call people on this list in an attempt to get the book (or movie or magazine or whatever) back. If we still didn't get it back, we just charged them for the book. If they came back to use the library again, they couldn't check anything else out until they either returned the book and paid the late fee or simply paid to replace the book. So something like this would not have happened during my time. I was thinking about calculating what that late fee might be for this book, but I don't have the date it was checked out, and I don't know the charge from back then or when the charges changed, etc. It would be an exercise in futility. But I am pretty curious. Almost curious enough to waste a reference librarian's time to find out. Earlier today I came pretty close to doing just that.

But 78 years isn't all that bad in the big picture. Here Google was very helpful because there are many instances of books being returned late all over the world, and sometimes a century or more has passed. Since I am curious as all fuck, I decided to find out what was the most overdue book in known history.

Unfortunately I couldn't find out what the title of the book was. All I know is that it's a history book, and it's written in German. It was borrowed from the Sidney Sussex College library in Cambridge back in 1667 or 1668 by Col. Robert Walpole. Not the first prime minster of Great Britain. No, this was Sir Robert Walpole's father. It was not returned until it was discovered in 1956! That makes it around 287 years overdue! The guy who found it was putting together a biography of Walpole, so I figure his descendants gave the author access to Walpole's library, where he found the book and realized, holy shit, this belongs to the college library! Weird to think that a guy doing research just stumbled upon something that was then enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The EPL eliminated late fees a few years back, so nothing is owed, but still. I wonder what they'll do with the book now. I doubt it's back in circulation. Perhaps they'll bring it to the historical museum at the Glos mansion. Which, by the way, was where the library started out life in a back room in 1916.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #775: MY STATEMENT ON WAR

 28.551 days. That comes out to 78.2-ish years. That's how long it's been since WWII ended. I guess we've forgotten what that kind of thing is like, because we're all chomping at the bit to start WWIII. And it will surely be an ignoble war. It's fairly ignoble in its gestation right now. So I thought I'd post my statement on any and all wars. Thankfully Hawkeye Pierce already said it back in the 'Seventies, so I'm just going to quote him:

Any and all wars. The noblest war in living memory was, indeed, WWII, and I am including that in my statement. How many innocent lives have already been lost in Russia vs. Ukraine? Hamas vs. Israel? And the death toll is only going to skyrocket because . . . I promised myself I wasn't going to rant. So I'm not. I'm going to leave it at that for now.

Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #774: WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD FOR MY BALLS

 People who work in hospitals clearly don't have a care in the world for my balls. I'm not going to think about the catheter and their lack of care for my dick because that's obvious, but my balls? They love throwing stuff on my balls.

Whenever I get an X-ray that might expose my balls to radiation, they toss--AND I MEAN TOSS--a lead sack on my balls. They're kind of heavy, and I always get that one split second of OH SHIT, waiting for the pain to start, my breath to vanish and my body to curl in on itself because that's all you get when you're kicked in the nuts. Just that split second. Thankfully the lead sack is not as bad as a kick to the jewels, but still.

And then there are the times I have to go in for a surgery or a procedure. When all I'm wearing is my gown and the blanket over me, they'll toss all sorts of stuff on my crotch. Never my chest or my belly. Always in the dick and balls region. And I'm talking about FUCKING NEEDLES. That's right, the IV needle they're about to put in my arm or have just taken out of my arm. And the nurses' fingers always find a way to hit one of my testicles when they're reaching for something. It's not enough to hurt like the aforementioned kick, but it's mighty uncomfortable, and it does take your breath away, at least for a few seconds. And they just love rooting through all the shit they just put on my balls. Like perhaps they lost one of the tubes or, even worse, the FUCKING NEEDLE. I think it's only a matter of time before someone goes to grab something and pinches my 'nads instead.

It would be nice if they just put the stuff next to me. I'm a wide load, but I don't take up the bed from edge to edge. Fuckin' hell.

No, Negan, no. It doesn't tickle my balls. More like a finger flick to my balls. If I'm going with a balls quote, though, I'd much prefer it be . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #773: SOMEONE CHECK AND SEE IF HELL FROZE OVER

Mitch McConnell, 2023 (colorized)

 I'm a little disappointed with today for two reasons. The first is, I've been disabused of the hope I feel knowing that Mitch McConnell's remaining life is short. I guess the two freezes he suffered recently weren't bad enough to incapacitate him because he's up to his ol' bullshit hardcore today.

Dick Durbin mentioned earlier this week that he was going to subpoena two billionaires and a judicial activist so they can look into several large gifts given to justices of the Supreme Court. Which is very important, by the way, considering the unconscionable graft committed by that bench. But McConnell has swooped in, saying that it's "inappropriate." Fellow scumbag Lindsey Graham added that he thinks there might be "constitutional issues" with such subpoenas. In other words, WE MUST NOT INVESTIGATE GRAFT ON THE SUPREME COURT. The billionaires might get their feelings hurt, and we wouldn't want that, now, would we?

The other reason? Oh yeah. This one gets a little tricky because, and I never thought I'd ever say this, but Josh Hawley said something I agree with.

Yes, now would be a good time to check and see if Hell is a winter wonderland.

Hawley introduced a bill called the Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act, which is exactly what it sounds like. In regards to corporate donations made to candidates, Hawley said, "I think it's warping our politics, and I see no reason for conservatives to defend it. It's wrong as a matter of the original meaning of the Constitution. It's bad for our elections. It's bad for our voters. And I just think on principle, we ought to be concerned."

Is this really Josh Hawley? As in, the fucking coward who helped foment an insurrection and then ran in sheer terror of said insurrection? I'm kind of surprised that something this intelligent came from that asshole.

He's right. Corporate meddling in our elections has led to the situation we're in right now. Corporations must be banned from politics. Period. End of sentence. No further notes.

So of course Mitch Fucking McConnell swooped down on that, too. He held a special meeting for those conservatives Hawley mentioned, including Hawley himself. McConnell forbade them from signing the bill, and then he read off a list of those politicians who won their offices with the corporate donations that Hawley is talking about. And then McConnell twisted the knife. Josh Hawley's name was on that list. $20M in corporate donations from McConnell's own personal super-PAC.

I don't know why Hawley decided to do this. It makes no sense for him unless he's willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the country, and from a coward like him, I find that very unlikely. Why did he choose now to grow a pair? Is he sick? Does he have a terminal illness, and this is the way he takes his suckass colleagues down with him?

I don't know. I'm confused, which is not my natural state. I'll just have to watch this unfold with the rest of you fuckers.

Dammit.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #772: FUCK CONTENT

 I've gone on this anti-content rant before--many times--and I wish I had the time to actually go back and find some of it to show as examples, but it's late and I'm on the edge of being too high. It disgusts me whenever someone refers to art as content. And now that I think about it, IP is another term that can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

I'm a huge Ed Brubaker fan. I've been reading his stuff since he did Scene of the Crime at Vertigo back in the 'Nineties. And his is one of the many newsletters I get, and in one he sent not too long ago he goes on a rant about referring to art as content or IP. It reminded me of me, so I thought I'd quote some of it.

I thought I'd open this time with how sick I am of the words 'content' and 'IP.'  They sound like scientific terms, like referring to a car as a "transportation device" or food as "processed nutrition." Which are both technically true, but you never see people actually calling them that like it's some cool industry jargon. 

Yet somehow in the last ten years, I've seen writers and filmmakers, some comics people even, start using the phrase IP regularly and not getting mocked for it. That lack of mocking was a mistake. IP is what the studios called what you did so they could say it was their property and go get a billion dollars from a bank. Banks don't like "comic characters" but "intellectual property" sounds like a real asset. 

And there we have it. Art is worthless, but IP and content are quantifiable things that corporations can make gobs of money off of. I get it. No one wants to take a chance on your art if it's not going to make money, but to reduce value to strictly financial terms is fucking horrible. No wonder the corporate greedheads have been fighting so hard to change the terminology. Art is something worth fighting over. Content doesn't sound like much of anything, does it?

And then he gets to this part:

You even hear about book publishers asking for media rights on novels sometimes now, after hundreds of years of them not doing that.

Aspiring writers, please take note. If a publisher says they're going to buy your book and also wants media rights like, say, for example, movie rights, then DON'T SIGN THAT CONTRACT. They're counting on you being overtaken by the thrill of getting a publishing contract that you won't think this is out of the ordinary. The only rights you should be selling them is the right to publish your book. The only way you should ever sign any other rights to them is to get your money's worth. Make it a price so high that they'll think you're crazy. My price is $100M. If they're willing to pay me that much money for the movie rights to a book, then they're welcome to it. But chances are, they won't. One of the good things about being an author is that you can sell OPTIONS to your work instead of the rights. Sometimes that's the gift that keeps on giving. I wish someone would option some of my books. They don't ever have to make the movie. I don't care. Because that, my good fuckers, is money for nothing. 

You'll have to get your chicks for free some other way, though.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #771: 1 YEAR AND 107 DAYS

 I've heard it for years. "If you really want to lose weight, quit drinking." And I said it time and again: "Drinking keeps me in reasonably trim shape." Note I didn't say "good" shape. Every goddam person I said this to said I was wrong. But guess who was actually wrong.

I weighed 242 pounds the night I had my last drink. Not great, but better than where I'm currently at. Now, a year and 107 days later, I weigh 276 pounds.

I also recall when I started consuming cannabis, trying to break away from booze, that everyone said that it would help me get into shape. I told them all it would make me fat. "Just get the edibles without sugar," I was told. Except people don't realize that the weight doesn't come from eating the fucking edible. It comes from eating EVERY FUCKING THING ELSE because the munchies are, indeed, real.

These days I can stick to one dinner, but that doesn't seem to matter because this weight is here to stay. I can't work out because of my bad leg. And no, I can't work out my upper body because of the pain in my hands. And dieting is out of the question. I've spent a lot of my life doing that, and I'm old enough that if I'm going to eat something, I want to enjoy it.

I'd really hoped the colonoscopy would help thin me out a bit. Considering all the liquid shit that passed out of me? I should have lost at least water weight. Nope, I didn't lose a single pound.

Booze kept me looking good. I'd tell people how much I weighed, and they'd be incredulous because I carry my weight really well. Even when I weighed 306 pounds. And I suppose I should get ready to weigh that much again, if the trend continues.

And I'm pretty sure it will. Getting old sucks. I don't recommend it. As your attorney I advise you to stop aging at 25.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #770: TOY CRIME STORY WRAP UP

 OK, after all that time, Toy Crime Story is over. I just posted the finale earlier tonight. When I first started posting these chapters I said I'd do a wrap up with a revelation I had recently about the work.

I wrote this one a few years back because I wanted to see if I could do a darker version of Toy Story. I wanted the kid to be murdered and the story would be about whodunit. I didn't realize one thing, however, until I reread the whole thing in preparation for posting it online.

I had no idea why I'd named the kid Joey and the dad Wally until a few months ago. I've mentioned it here before, but the first friend I ever had was a kid named Joey. His dad Wally was friends with my stepdad, which was how we met. I think it explains a lot about me that the first friend I ever had died when I was a child. Joey was chewing on a pencil and accidentally broke a piece off and choked on it. Wally tried to save his life but couldn't do it.

It's how I learned about death and that I would someday die. I asked what happens after death, and mom said, "You go in the ground, and the worms eat you."

Yeah, if you have kids, don't tell them that. It scarred me for life and probably helped make me the way I am today. Maybe that's not entirely bad, but I wasn't off to a good start.

So here I am, probably around my 40th birthday, writing a story about a kid named Joey who dies, and his dad Wally is powerless to save him. How did I not notice that at the time? I mean, I was drinking heavily back in those days. I could put away nearly an entire handle of cheap whiskey a night. But I don't think I was that booze-addled when I wrote this. I don't write while drunk.

Weird, right? Although as I look at Toy Crime Story now, I feel like I was exorcising something, but I have no idea what it was. I think about the Catacombs and Man-E-Faces and wonder if maybe the specter of death was trying to get out of my system, but that seems too obvious. To quote an asshole owl, "The world may never know."

No, not Close Encounters. UHF, pal.

TOY CRIME STORY EPILOGUE

 

FIRST EPILOGUE

That Christmas season, Wally and Mimi chose to get a divorce. They couldn’t stay in this place, and the memories of Joey were too strong. It grew to the point where they couldn’t stand to look at each other. They still loved each other, but the reminders were too strong. A divorce seemed to be the only solution.

It was very amiable, as much as it could be. They argued over nothing, and the lawyers breezed through it. They split the price of the house and after they packed everything up, they went their separate ways. They sent each other cards for the holidays and their birthdays, and every once in a while talked to each other on the phone, but they never saw each other again.

Wally couldn’t bear to hold on to the toys. He packed up the remaining ones. When he put Felix in the box, the cat seemed almost sad. The first movie he’d ever owned was a Felix the Cat cartoon on VHS. He felt tempted to hold on to this one, but he just couldn’t. He could see Joey reflected in Felix’s pitch black eyes.

He closed the box. It eventually wound up at Goodwill. In the back room, they deemed several of the toys were too dirty for kids, so they were tossed. Among them was Felix. His wives and kids found new homes, though.

They puzzled over the Donald Duck stuffed animal with a paper bag face. It was a topic of discussion over many lunches, but they tore the face off, and he wound up being a birthday present for a five year old.

Angel and Spike were in good condition, so they sold them as a pair to a thirty-one year old geek who never took them out of their boxes. Spike continued being a pain in Angel’s ass.

No one lived happily ever after.

SECOND EPILOGUE

Cat glided into the Catacombs, ecstatic over how everything ended. He couldn’t be more pleased with himself. His machinations worked out perfectly, just like always.

He went down the stairs, eager to fuck with the dead toys that Man-E-Faces watched over. He jaunted until he saw what remained of Man-E-Faces. He’d been torn limb from limb, his remains scattered on the cold stone. Cat stopped, tail twitching. Who could have beaten Death?

He eased down the steps until he saw that the dead toys were more plentiful. One of them, however, stood out from the rest.

Nightbeat.

He’d been put together hastily, but he was still Nightbeat. Cat should have seen this coming.

“Oh hello!” he said. “Nightbeat! How unexpected!”

“Cat,” Nightbeat said. “Enough with the pleasantries. You know why I’m here.”

“No, I assure you I don’t.” Backing away slightly.

“Come on. You can’t possibly think I would overlook what you did with Don Snowy and the goombas. You tore us apart.”

“Not I. You’ll have to prove it, detective. Beyond a reasonable doubt, naturally.”

“We’re beyond that,” Nightbeat said. “Waaaaay beyond that.”

“Oh my,” Cat said. He turned and ran.

And Nightbeat followed.

THE END

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #769: THE LAST POETRY OF CAPITALISM

 

It's been a while since I went to Anderson's in Naperville, so I thought I'd go down there today to get something. I snagged a copy of the book you see above because I think Werner Herzog is a fascinating man. A lot of people think he's very dry and intimidating and feel the need to take the piss out of him with memes like this:

And this:

To be fair, when you look at films of his like Nosferatu, The Vampyre, I can see why people would think that. Although when I look at something like Grizzy Man, I can't help but think that only someone with a massive sense of humor could make that one. And my theory bears out. Because, well, remember the time he showed up on The Mandalorian?

I'm not a big Simpsons guy, so I won't go too much into that, but yes, he was a voice on the Simpsons, too. If you watch him in interviews you'll see that he's actually a pretty funny guy. In fact, I encourage you to watch this interview by Seth Meyers, which is where I got the title of tonight's GF. Yes, that image on the cover of his book is of him standing on the ledge of not only an active volcano, but a volcano that was in the process of erupting. I don't know much about the hypnotizing thing, but I do know for a fact that he was shot during a live BBC interview. Granted, not by a bullet, but getting shot with an air rifle is still no picnic. And yes, apparently he wears paisley boxers.

But the reason I bring him up is because he managed to do something that I never thought possible. For one brief moment he made capitalism seem beautiful.  When he mentions the "last poetry of capitalism," he's talking about auctioneers. I've been told I speak pretty swiftly, but these guys are otherworldly with their ability to speak that fast. Remember the Micro Machines guy?

And what do they use this remarkable skill for? Selling shit. Not just selling shit, but getting people to buy shit for top dollar. Which is decidedly not beautiful, but at the same time Herzog made me feel this odd thrill about something I couldn't give two shits about ordinarily.

That's the power of a truly creative person. And to have it spoken in English by someone whose birth tongue is German? Herzog never ceases to amaze me and inspire me.

Perhaps I should finally read the other book I picked up by him, The Twilight World. I've always been interested in the Japanese soldiers who continued fighting WWII well into the 'Seventies, and here is Herzog's book about one of them. It is one of the few books I didn't pack up.

I'm reading too many right now. We'll see.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #768: PALIMPSEST

 

There's been an odd confluence of Gore Vidal going on with me right now. I've gotten into three conversations about him this week, so I thought maybe now would be a good time to bring this up.

You may recall that when I went to the psych ward the previous occupant of my room had left behind several books, and I'd picked up Empire by Gore Vidal. I was hooked immediately and went on to get the rest of his Narratives of the Empire series, and that sent me off looking for the rest of his work.

After having read quite a bit, I think Vidal is a fascinating author, and I very much enjoy his style. When I saw that he'd written an autobiography, I knew I had to get it. But when it comes to older books these days, I'm loath to get them the new way. It's so easy to go on Amazon or some such site to get them, and there's none of the thrill of the hunt. So a while back I decided I was going to find Palimpsest the old fashioned way: by hanging out in bookstores.

After a couple of years of searching, my efforts were finally rewarded last Thursday. I found it at the Half Price Books in Bloomingdale on Army Trail. And yes, I did feel that rush of success after a long search. I'd forgotten what that was like. It reminded me of the lengths I used to go to in getting rare movies back in the VHS era. Anyone else do that? Remember going through catalogs looking for your prize? Those weren't professionally printed back then. They were fucking mimeographed. Do you remember that shit?

The universe further rewarded me by putting another book next to Palimpsest.

I didn't know that his memoirs continued into another book, so now I have that one, too. To quote Denny Crane from Boston Legal, "Already my penis feels bigger."