GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #645: BURN OUT

 For the last few weeks I've been having a bit of difficulty writing, so I've been leaning on putting together that bible I was telling you about as well as editing on something else. It's unusual for me because writing always comes easy. I sit down and let it flow out of me. Sometimes I'll stop and ponder, but that doesn't happen very often.

Even the Zimventures kind of got clogged up on me. It took me a few days to figure out where that was going, and once I worked it out it came pretty easily. But there's a novella I'm working on that just won't come out of me. It's like having painful intestinal pressure where you're certain you need to shit, but nothing comes out no matter how much you strain.

Writing is usually easy because I meditate. I used to go out for long walks and get a lot of thinking done, but that's off the table now due to my bad leg. Now meditating takes the brunt, but even that's not working. I think the problem is, I didn't know what I was trying to say with the piece. I usually know that when I start a project, and if I don't, then it works itself out while I'm writing. And this one wasn't doing that.

Yesterday I figured out what I was trying to say, but the writing still didn't come easy then or today. I think I'm burned out. That's the only explanation. I write a lot, so maybe I need to take a step back for a little bit and let things simmer.

So that's what I'm going to do, and that includes Goodnight, Fuckers. I'm going to see if I can go a week without writing anything. I'll bet that recharges me. I'll bet that when I start writing again on the Monday after next, I'll be chomping at the bit. We shall see.

For now? Goodnight you sweet, sweet fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #644: FOOT PAIN

 So here's something horrible that happened to me yesterday morning. I woke up two hours earlier than my alarm was supposed to go off. I wasn't sure why. Then, suddenly, my bad foot flared up with pain. I'm not talking about the usual neuropathy that comes with being diabetic. That feels like a needle getting stuck in your foot for one second, two max, and then it goes away for weeks. It sucks, but it's fast.

No, this felt like someone had put a railroad spike into the heel of my foot and kept it there. Then it went away. I felt relief and tried to go back to sleep only to feel it again a couple of minutes later. And that cycle continued for the next half-hour.

My bad foot is fat. Even if you knew nothing about me, you would know there was something wrong with it. I tried looking at it, trying to see if it looked any different, but it was hard to say. I thought maybe putting pressure on it would help, so I stood up for a while and still felt the intermittent pain.

This was it. I was hoping that this day would be somewhere far into the future. Perhaps it would be scheduled for sometime after my impeding fatal heart attack, which was what I was really hoping for. But it seemed like this was the day that I would go to the ER, and the doctors would tell me they would have to amputate.

I sat there on the edge of my bed thinking about calling into work and then going to the ER. A part of me thought maybe I was mistaken. Or perhaps I could keep on keeping on and ignore the pain. Or better yet, I could start drinking again and banish the pain that way. Booze usually did the trick. If I ignored it, maybe the bad news would never find me.

Finally I came to a compromise. I would go about my day and see if the pain kept flaring up. If it interfered with my ability to work, I would tell my supervisors and then go to the ER.

When I went downstairs I felt something crackling in my foot. I hoped it was the usual shit and not something new and worse. I felt pain. Then I made breakfast, and I still felt the pain. I brushed my teeth. I took my first shit of the day. And by the time I got out to my car I realized I hadn't felt the pain for a bit. I waited for it to come back, and it didn't. I drove to work and made it through the rest of my day without the pain.

Maybe it was just a new version of diabetic neuropathy? I don't know. I'm just glad it stopped happening. I still haven't felt it as of this moment, and I hope it stays that way.

Because this pain fucking sucked.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #643: A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

Not sure who made this, but it's spot on.

 I used to think Elon Musk was interesting and goofy. That was about ten years ago, back when people could still think of him as Tony Stark. But he's definitely Lex Luthor. And he's bringing his evil schemes to Texas in a new way but with an old flavor.

This GF is to be read to this tune.

I will never understand why Americans who make very little money worship this fuckin' guy. John Steinbeck once said that Americans think of themselves as "temporarily inconvenienced millionaires," and that goes a long way toward explaining this baffling thing. Americans will constantly vote against their best interests because they believe, deep down in their hearts, that they will one day be rich.

The majority of those people are wrong. By majority, I don't think I'm being extreme when I say 99% of them. It's a great fantasy. Sometimes I think about what I'd do with a lot of money. I don't have extravagant tastes. I joke about buying a castle to have it sent to Elmhurst, or to have a pirate ship I could sail in Lake Michigan, but in reality I would spend it all on things I literally need to survive. And books. I would probably back a shit-ton of Kickstarters. And I would try to make the world a better place.

But some motherfuckers just want fast cars, a bunch of mansions and lots of sex they wouldn't be able to have if they didn't have money.

Elon Musk has more money than almost anyone else on the planet, and from what I can tell, the only thing he wants is more of it. And now he's building a town in Texas to help pave the way to even more riches.

He's already bought the land, and he intends to build affordable housing for all the employees he's going to have working for Boring, Tesla and SpaceX. On the surface that sounds noble, especially in this age of outlandish costs of living. But there's a darker side that the WSJ and Forbes and Fortune and other publications that cater to the super rich aren't willing to explore.

It sounds to me like a company town. A company town is a town where one company owns everything. Houses, schools, churches, stores, everything. People who live there all work for the company, so what happens is, they get paid by their employers, and then they spend that money paying rent and buying goods and services, which essentially cycles that money right back to their employers. In fact, some company towns don't pay in actual money. They pay in credits that can be exchanged for goods and services at the company store. It's a great scam, especially if you're in charge of everything.

That includes laws and regulations. What Musk is doing is setting himself up as the king of his little Texas fiefdom.

It's good to be the king.

Musk freely admits that he's fleeing California because it's the land of "overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation." Taxes are one thing that a fucking trillionaire shouldn't have to be concerned with, but I'll let that go. And there are maybe too many lawsuits in the world, and I'll bet a lot of them against trillionaires are legit. But I'll let that go, too. Overregulation, on the other hand, is an oxymoron. There's no such thing when it comes to shit like this.

Regulation of corporations is very, very important because it's been proven, time and time again, that if we leave them to regulate themselves, they make the world an even worse place than it already is. There is already a lot of concern about this from people who already live in the area Musk wants to build his company town.

Boring could have a lot of negative environmental impact on the area, in particular when it comes to ground water. This is especially horrifying now, considering the UN's recent announcement that if we don't fix our water problem fast, our world is going to be fucked beyond all hope.

But Texas politicians don't care about that kind of thing. They caught a whiff of Musk's musk, and now they're all horny for a huge payday. Overregulation? Pfft. Let's fast track this shit so we can earn a shit-ton of money while our constituents pay a higher price out of their own skins.

There are a lot of landowners down there who DON'T want Musk's company town. People who swear they're never going to sell to him. I admire their tenacity, but they don't stand a chance. How much you wanna bet that eminent domain gets used to take that land from them?

And then there are the poor bastards who are going to live in that town and get fleeced by this fuckin' prick. It sounds like a good deal until you realize that maybe you don't want to work for these companies. Or even worse, you get fired. What happens then? In regular America you get drunk for a week and feel sorry for yourself, and then you start looking for a new job. In Musk's company town you have 30 days to get out. Not only do you lose your job, but you also lose your home, your kids' schooling, your church (if you're the praying sort), YOUR WAY OF LIFE. Not such a good deal, after all, is it? Unless, of course, you're a sycophant. Sycophants would probably thrive here. They don't know what it's like to live without their lips stitched to their boss's ass, so they'll be OK as long as they toe the line.

If you're tired of hearing me talk about this, perhaps give this a read. I promise, it's super long and incredibly boring (heh), but it's worth reading. When you're done, I have a question for you.

Done? OK, here's my question. Did you notice something odd about that article? There's a phrase that reoccurs throughout the piece. Anytime the journalist reached out to someone on Musk's side, what happened?

They "didn't respond to requests for a comment." There's also mention of signing NDAs in there. This is not the behavior of people who have nothing to hide.

A lot of people are going to want to move to Musk's town, and I feel bad for them. They have no idea that they're really making a deal with the devil.

PS: Yes, I worked on this over the course of my day after getting out of work. I felt this was important to write about, and I planned on getting high. Too high to write this kind of thing. So once again I cheated on a GF, but I think it was worth it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #642: AN UNFORTUNATE FACT OF MY LIFE

 This weekend I had to say goodbye to a fast food restaurant that I enjoy a great deal. I don't think I mentioned it here, but a couple of months ago I said on social media that my White Castle had suddenly disappeared. That angered me a great deal because now, if I wanted the flesh of the chicken snake, I had to go to the other White Castle within comfortable driving distance. It's a bit of a longer drive, and the way is very annoying, and there is only one exit out of the place, and it's pointing in the wrong direction for me. I mean, I could make an illegal turn to get out of there, and ordinarily I would, but it's waaaaaaaay too busy at that hour. There is no way I could do it successfully.

I have a rule. If I go to a restaurant, and they get my order wrong three visits in a row, I never go back there again. NEVER. Once you're on my shit list, there is no getting off of it. I could be broke and hungry and desperate, but if they were in front of me offering free food, I wouldn't go there.

So on Saturday this White Castle made a spectacular fuck up of my order for the third visit in a row. It's an unfortunate fact of my life, but if I did not live up to my self-imposed rules, then it would be sheer madness. In many ways I'm not all that different from Adrian Monk. It's a blessing . . . and a curse.

This essentially means that it will be a very, very long time before I go to White Castle again. The next closest one takes 45 minutes to get there, and I'm not going all that way for dinner. Harold and Kumar had an easier time of getting to White Castle than I would in this case. It's not happening. So I pretty much gave up on White Castle over the weekend, and I'm not happy about it.

But such is life.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #641: OCTOBER SURPRISE

 I like to play "what if" with history a lot. Which is weird because I dislike 99% of any alternate history SF. One of the big what-if games is what if Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980? I know that we wouldn't be in the situation we are in right now. A lot of our country's problems predate that election by far, but then again, a lot of why our economy is currently fucked is because Reagan won that election. If Carter had won, we wouldn't dare consider corporations people, and money would certainly not have a First Amendment right. We wouldn't be run by oligarchs. The housing issue wouldn't entirely be resolved, but I can almost guarantee that the cost of rent wouldn't be as high as it is right now because we'd have regulations against corporations buying up rental properties and jacking up the prices beyond reason. Nothing can truly stop inflation, but we wouldn't be getting bled dry by it constantly. And so on.

You can't go back and change it. I have zero interest in the baby Hitler question because, first, who the fuck would kill a baby regardless of who it would grow up to be? And second, because if you somehow went back in time, I think you would fuck it up badly, and your failed attempt would cause baby Hitler to grow up and become the asshole Hitler that a lot of us know and despise (but not nearly enough of us, as I believe I've mentioned previously).

But we came pretty close to Reagan getting beaten in 1980, as I learned today. Read this. It's worth it.

Now, that doesn't really prove much. The evidence is circumstantial, a lot of it is based on hearsay, etc. If it was brought before a jury, they would probably not convict. BUT! There is a lot of coincidence here. A lot of what Barnes says makes sense to the point where it would seem to be the truth. I choose to believe it, not just because it fulfills a fantasy of mine (and it does), but also because it makes sense. It could be wrong, but I don't think it is.

Of course, nothing would ever stick to the Teflon President, but still. How fucking fucked up is it that at least one individual wanted Reagan to win so badly that he threw the game in Reagan's favor BY ENCOURAGING IRAN KEEP THE AMERICAN HOSTAGES LONGER. If that's true, that is a crime against humanity.

Let's say it didn't happen. Would we have still gotten Reagan in 1980? Maybe. Perhaps Carter couldn't have gotten the hostages home, anyway. We'll never know because we were never given a chance to find out. Imagine having the cards so monumentally stacked against you to the point where you're drummed out of the White House and considered a weak, ineffectual president for the rest of your life. All because you got a raw deal. There was a zero chance of you succeeding because of dickheads working on your opponent's behalf.

We could have gotten a much better world. Instead we were dealt an inside straight, and like idiots, we drew to it, only to wind up with jack shit.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #640: DEATH SAW

 

Yeah, yeah, I know. I was a weird kid. You don't have to remind me of my desire to swim in the literal filth of icky sticky poo land, for example. So I'm going to tell you about another odd desire I had when I was still in elementary school.

I wanted to be cut in half.

I can't even explain this one today, but I remember thinking about getting cut in half all the time. And not just like the the old magic trick, which was one of my favorites. Although I will say that I wanted a magician to do that to me. I knew it wouldn't be real, and I even knew how the trick was done, but I wanted it to be recorded so I could later watch myself being sawed in half and then wheeled around in two parts onstage.

But I wanted to be cut in half. Like, pit-and-the-pendulum style. While trying to fall asleep--and keep in mind, I was maybe eight years old at the time--I would envision myself tied to a giant stone slab with the pendulum swooping back and forth, inching closer and closer, until it zipped right through me. I would pull with my hands so that my bloody torso could lift into the air, spilling my intestines everywhere.

One of my favorite David Copperfield tricks was when he did Death Saw when I was about nine. It's great, and just to refresh my memory I watched it again this very minute. It's fun, even though you can tell how it was done. But when I first saw (heh) it as a kid, I didn't know that was going to happen. I'd never seen that trick done before *without* the box, and it thrilled me.

Nowadays I'm not all that excited to be cut in half. My body has enough problems without actually getting it cut into. But I still would kind of like a magician to do that to me onstage. Maybe someday.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #639: PAIN IN MY ASSHOLES

Verizon is pain in my assholes.

 

Once upon a time I had an unlimited data plan. In fact, I had a great price for it, too, because I used to work at Call One, which no longer exists, so I'm OK with talking about it. We had a deal with Verizon so that our employees got a great discount.

A few months ago I got a weird notification saying that I was almost out of data. What the fuck? That had to be a mistake. I have an unlimited plan. But I was drunk at the time, so I forgot about it until this month, when I got the same message and then another message saying that I was definitely out of data. I pondered this for a moment and realized that now that I have a new car, and the Sirius/XM app that I've been playing through the car's bluetooth, I'm probably using data like a motherfucker.

Yar knows all about using Data

So I got curious and called Verizon, asking what happened to my plan. Their records apparently don't go very far back, so according to this guy I had a limited plan since I got the new phone in 2022. I insisted that I hadn't changed my plan upon getting the new phone. He couldn't look far enough back.

I then remembered that during 2020, because of Covid and being unemployed, Verizon shut off my phone for nonpayment. I wondered if maybe that was what happened, that when they reinstated service, they downgraded my plan. Thinking back, I seem to recall that my monthly bill changed.

OK, that solves enough of the mystery for me. I needed to upgrade back to unlimited. I told the guy this, and he said he was going to do it. Suddenly I lost connection to this guy. Annoyed, I tried calling him back and got a message saying that I don't have a network.

Motherfucker. Verizon shut my goddam service off instead of upgrading. I couldn't call them back because, well, what phone would I be using? I don't have a landline anymore because when Grandma couldn't use the house phone anymore, my aunt had it shut off.

Well, why not go on the website? Everyone has a help chat these days, right? That would make sense. I got on my laptop and looked around, finding . . . NOTHING. What the fuck? A telecom company that DOESN'T have an online help chat? Were they deliberately trying to make things difficult for their customers?

*sigh* When all else fails, there's always Twitter, right? I got a swift response from them, but they said to DM them with my info. Surprise! I couldn't DM them. I don't know why, but it wouldn't go through. I suggested that they DM me, and they had the gall to tell me that I needed a wifi connection?

I didn't respond well.

I was pretty pissed because I didn't want to go to the store. When you go there, you have to check in and wait about an hour before anyone gets to you. Besides, I'd been out all day. I'd just gotten home, so naturally I was in just my boxers. I didn't want to get dressed again.

Luckily I recalled the Verizon app. After jumping through a few unnecessary hoops I found there is a help chat there. After wasting time with their AI bot (which is a redundant statement, in my opinion) I finally got a human being on the chat and resolved the issue. But holy fuck, did I waste a lot of time on this. Time that I really didn't have to waste on it. I had a lot more shit I had to do today, but I lost time to this fuckaroo.

So I guess my dumbass decided to waste even more of my time writing this. I probably should have just screamed into the void, but what the hell?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #638: DION

Dion probably smells like an unwiped butthole

 

Not too long ago I was advised that, much to my horror, Dion had come to Elmhurst, where I live, so he could talk with Chicago cops and lure them down to Florida with a sign on bonus of $5K. Imagine my disgust when I learned that he'd been at the Knights of Columbus hall which is less than five minutes from my house. If he'd farted, I would have smelled it and possibly felt the eldritch breeze.

There's a lot of gross shit that this Florida man is pulling in his home state, and you probably don't need me bringing it all up. The problem, though, is this dry rocky Vicodin turd of a human is planning on pushing through our society, giving us all anal fissures, into the White House in 2024. He actually has a shot because self-avowed freedom fighters refuse to see exactly how much Dion despises freedom.

We all know he's a book-banner, and you know how I feel about that, so I'm not going to delve too deeply into it except to say that his new book, by his own criteria for banning books, can be banned. He's so revolting that--and mark this in your calendar as this is a momentous occasion--I actually prefer Trump to this guy. Trump and Dion were cut from the same cloth, provided that you understand that without Trump, we would never have gotten Dion, but Dion goes even further than his master. As far as I can recall Trump never tried to ban books, probably because he can't read anything that doesn't have his name in it. He didn't even try to ban speech, like Dion is trying to do now.

Which brings me to why I'm writing this tonight. Have you heard of Florida Senate Bill 1316? If passed, any blogger (which is not defined, by the way, so it could apply to everything from newspaper articles to books to possibly even documentaries) who so much as mentions him or any of his cronies needs to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services.

To be fair, this applies only to "bloggers" being paid to write these things, so this post would not fall under that requirement. No one pays me to write Goodnight, Fuckers, although they probably should, if I don't say so myself. All the same, if you don't register and then keep reporting on your activities on the 10th of every month, then you get fined. That is a violation of the First Amendment. They would never do this to the Second, which I guess is proof that the keyboard is mightier than the gun.

The endgame seems to be controlling information that gets released, but after a little poking around I've seen some suggest that Dion's real endgame is to overturn New York Times v Sullivan, presumably so he could sue authors and publications for printing/posting things he doesn't like. And that list of things he doesn't like? That's pretty fucking long and discriminatory.

There's also another suggestion that this bill could be used to make journalists break their Golden Rule, that being that one should never reveal their sources. Who is going to whistleblow if the law requires journalists to reveal their sources? It sounds like someone wants to make sure those big corporate money transfers keep finding his account.

Let's not mince words. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a liberal. Although Republicans and conservatives are doing their absolute best to push me in that direction. Biden is not my guy. He is very much in the pocket of Corporate America, and that is why he really got elected. He really is a business-as-usual president. So no, I don't like him. But I can work with him because the alternative is soulcrushingly worse. I'm sure Dion will announce that he is running for president soon. He's going to run on a freedom platform. Freedom over everything else. And people will believe him because the way of the world has been words over actions for a long time and probably will remain the same for the rest of my life.

But words do not define a person. Their actions do. A lot of people will vote for him because they can't stand to live in a world run by Big Brother, and Dion is speaking their language.

The greatest trick Big Brother ever pulled was making people believe that he stands for freedom. A vote for Dion is a vote to put Big Brother in charge.

Just say no to Ron Dion DeSantis.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #637: TOE UPDATE

As you may recall I'm down to eight toes, and one of them recently was at risk of leaving me, too. I'd worn a hole in that toe, and it didn't want to heal. Sometimes it would build up a callus around it, but the hole was still there under that dead skin as my podiatrist would tell me every time he sanded it down. This is the exact same thing that happened to the second toe I lost, so you can understand my apprehension.

He eventually did a little minor surgery on the toe. He said he was "popping the tendon," which sounds horrifying and brutal, but it really wasn't. Because the toe was curled up, the callus kept building up, preventing the hole from healing. The surgery straightened the toe out. I can't really move it now, but at least it's no longer a problem.

Because the plug finally came off the hole. A bunch of dead skin came off the other night, showing that the hole was finally closed up. Not only that, but my toenail has started growing back. That is an excellent sign, so good that I'm not going to lose the toe. It's actually looking pretty good right now.

So who knows? Maybe when they put me in the ground I'll have all eight of my toes. Probably not. I'll bet that they take off my left foot before I shuffle off the mortal whatsis. Hopefully not, but with my luck?

Yeah.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #636: ADAS

 ADAS stands for Advanced Driving Assistance Systems. They're things like lane keep assist, forward collision alert, pedestrian avoidance, etc. They're fairly new in the grand scheme of things, and when I went to buy my new car I was hoping to not get any of these things because if I needed my windshield replaced, I would also need to get it recalibrated. Hondas usually need static or dual recals, and those are almost always done in shop and take super long to do.

But there weren't a lot of options, so now I have ADAS on my car.

It's a little amusing because I have forward collision alert. It makes a big light on your dashboard say BRAKE if it looks like you're going to crash into something. Mine is a bit sensitive. You know how you coast to the back of the vehicle in front of you at a red light? That, for some reason, kicks off the forward collision alert. I think that if I have my foot on the brake, and I'm already coming to a stop, maybe this alert shouldn't be going off. I couldn't possibly be going more than 5 mph, and that's giving myself a lot of credit.

Another funny thing I've noticed is how the traffic sign recognition works. It identifies the speed limit and displays it on my dashboard. But it's not foolproof. It can't tell the difference between regular speed limit and school zone speed limits, so even if it's 2 am near a school, it tells me the speed limit is 20, even though I know it's 35, for example.

And it seems to not be able to differentiate between speed limit signs and others. I was going down a street where I knew the limit was 45, but it told me that it was actually 90. I thought, what the fuck? And then I realized I was driving by the ramp to get onto I90. I was also driving on Higgins, where it's 45, but my car told me it was 70. It took me a little longer to figure this one out. Higgins is also known as Highway 72. So I guess the ADAS rounds down . . .

As far as I know I don't have pedestrian avoidance, but if I did, considering my experience with these others, I wouldn't rust that feature as far as I could throw this vehicle. I know no system is perfect, but this is kind of fucked up. There is no way I would trust my life to ADAS. I can't imagine the horror of being in a self-driving vehicle.

Maybe these things should be tested thoroughly before being rolled out to the general population . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #635: WATCH

 

So this Facebook memory showed up recently, and it didn't make me think about how much I used to drink. I have enough of those reminders around me at all times. It did make me think about how I used to wear a watch, and how I decided that I never would again. It's kind of silly, actually, wearing a watch. I know it's back in style, and the watches everyone wears now have a purpose deeper than telling time, but I'm just not going to go back to that.

It's kind of stupid that I ever did wear a watch. The world is full of clocks, and during my lifetime it always has been. Ah jeez, what time is it? Let me look at the wall in any room of my house or at work or at the store or wherever. Or the bottom corner of my computer screen. Or my night table. And if I wanted to get really crazy about it, there used to be a phone service you could call to get the time. (I just Googled it, and it's still a thing. Holy shit.) Yet I wore a watch all the time, much to my own displeasure. I'm a flop sweater, and having that watch on my wrist made me sweat even more. I can't tell you how many watchbands I went through because my sweat kept eroding them until they fell to pieces.

I thought I'd get around that by wearing a pocket watch instead. You know, on a chain. Holy shit, was that pretentious of me. That was also during the time that I took notes in college with a quill instead of a regular pen.

Look, watches for telling time are stupid, yet the human race loves wearing 'em. Remember back when everyone watched The Walking Dead? It was the hottest show on the planet, and yet I was the only person who ever mentioned Rick and the Governor wearing a watch. IN THE FUCKING ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.

See?

It's harder to see here, but look at that shit!

Why the fuck would you need a watch during the zombie apocalypse? Do you have somewhere to be? Pills to take? There are only two times of day that matter in the zombie apocalypse: day and night. That's it.

6:30 is the best time on a clock, hands down.
HANDS DOWN, CORAL!

I guess that's the long way of saying I will never wear a watch again.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #634: WELCOME BACK TO DEBT

 A couple of years ago I declared bankruptcy. I think I've gone over the reasons before, so I won't delve too deeply, but here's what my life looked like at the time. I'd been out of a job for more than a year. I'd been on the psych ward. I was drinking more than I ever had in my entire life up to that point (I started drinking even more a year later when Grandma died and I lost another toe). I owed thousands and thousands of dollars that I would never be able to pay back. I'd cashed in my 401K and was down to my last few dollars. So yeah, it had to happen.

My credit took quite a hit and is still recovering, but I remember thinking at the time that it was worth it to not have enormous debt hanging over my head. Over those two years I worked at rebuilding my credit to the point where I now have three credit cards again. I don't use them, but they're nice to have. Just in case. It was also good that I could start saving money for the first time in, what, fifteen years? I've been broke for a long time, and I knew, even then when my grandmother was still alive, that I would eventually have to leave this place. So I started saving for that and for something else.

Because around that time I got in a horrible car wreck that totaled my beloved 2012 Honda Civic. I was over a barrel because no one would help me finance getting a new car, and GEICO only paid me $8K for a car that was probably worth at least ten. I still have my suspicions that they rebuilt my car and sold it for $15K to some poor bastard.

So I had to pay for my 2010 Honda Civic Hybrid all at once. On the plus side it was nice to outright own a car and not worry about payments. On the negative side the previous owner had driven it pretty much into the ground. Both bumpers fell off this thing. The rear one came off the moment I switched my insurance over to this car, so GEICO really didn't want to pay for it. Thankfully I had a police officer as a witness, and that is probably the one and only time you'll hear me mutter that sentence. Months later the front one fell off. That one fell off twice, actually, and it was halfway off recently due to an incident in which I may have been drunk behind the wheel. I went up on a curb, and it destroyed the tire and blew out that side of the bumper.

And then there was the bad news I got the first time I brought it in for an oil change. The mechanic told me that there was significant rust on one of the axles which would cost a couple thousand to fix, and that GEICO was not very likely to pay for any of it. He said I probably had two years before it became a problem.

Then came that incident with the flood we got on the second day of Printers Row, and I think that sped up the process because I only got one more year out of it before it started making all sorts of horrible sounds.

I knew that the Civic Hybrid's days were numbered. I hoped beyond hope that I could get as much as possible for a trade in, but the longer I waited, the more of a problem that axle would become, and that would drive down the price to the point where they might just not give me anything. When I traded my Focus in years ago, that was their story, but Gramps was with me and helped me talk them up to $200. A pittance, sure, but it was something. I didn't want that to happen again.

The good news is that I built my credit back up enough that I could buy a new car. The bad news is that I am now under the weight of a crippling debt and will be so for the next five years. And this is not the best time for me to be doing that, especially with the prices of rent in this area.

But it had to be done.

That's the only thing I can tell myself that will take the noose of anxiety from around my neck. Holy shit, how the fuck am I going to pay almost $600 a month for this thing?

I wanted a thousand for the Hybrid, but I asked for two. The guy talked me down to one, so at least that went well. I am now the owner of a 2020 Honda Accord Sport. Only one previous owner, and it had been a leased vehicle, so everything is still tip-top. But holy fuck, this is going to be a nightmare.

I take solace in one thing: unless I'm in a car accident, I'm probably not going to have any problems with this car anytime soon.

Fuck. It was great to be free from debt while it lasted.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #633: 236

 It's my 236th day from booze, and I had a dream last night about drinking. I dreamed that I was at a party with a friend of mine, and someone said it was time for booze. That someone may or may not have been me.

So I grabbed a bottle of vodka and poured myself a huge glass of it. I should have known that I was dreaming at that point because I can't stand vodka. Vodka makes me do crazy things, usually after just one shot. I "remember" a time I tried to bang a hole through a friend's kitchen wall after a shot of vodka. The quotation marks are because I don't remember it. I was told about it the next day, and I believed it because my head was sore.

Anyway, in the dream I held up my glass and toasted my friend. "Here's to saying goodbye to 235 days!" I said.

He looked weird at me. "Dude, are you sure?"

"Hell yeah!' And I put the glass to my mouth. I felt the vodka splash on my lips. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't take a drink. I took the glass away and looked at it like it might be defective, then I tried it again with the same result.

Nope. I couldn't do it. It's weird because I remember, when I left detox, that I had every intention of drinking on my birthday and looked forward to it. And then I didn't do it. And now, even though there are times I'm tempted to drink, I don't do it because I have a part of me that's afraid to do it. I'm wondering if maybe my time in detox pulled a Ludovico type treatment on me.

I keep thinking I'm going to drink again one day, but maybe I won't. This dream makes me think I won't. If I can't make myself do it in a dream, there's no way in hell I can do it in real life, right?

There is still a list of things that I know will make me drink. One of them is probably going to happen soon. I guess I'll find out when that time comes.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #632: YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN

 

While packing my things I recently discovered my favorite Peanuts book, Sandlot Peanuts. It brought me back to my childhood because when I was a kid, still in elementary school, I didn't have a lot of friends, so I had to entertain myself. On rainy days when I couldn't go out and play I stayed in my bedroom reading my mom's Peanuts books from when she was a kid.

(And my dad's MAD paperbacks and Dennis the Menace books, but mostly the Peanuts books.)

I would lose myself in the adventures of good ol' Charlie Brown as the universe constantly shat upon him and his hopes and dreams. His failures on the pitching mound. Every time Lucy yanked the football away from him. And his sad pining for the little red-haired girl.

I also loved Snoopy's attempts at writing because even back then I knew I wanted to be a writer. But I also wanted to be a World War I flying ace, too. I figured I had just as good a shot at either one at the time. Although I probably would have been pretty lousy at dogfighting (so to speak) with the Red Baron. Fuck that guy. I don't even like his goddam pizza.

My cousin, Erik, reminded me of Linus because like Lucy's li'l brother, my cousin had a security blanket at that age. Then there was Schroder and his piano. Franklin and Pigpen and Marcie and Peppermint Patty and all of 'em. I loved their stories.

Incidentally, if you haven't heard this song, you probably should give it a listen.

Anyway, my favorite of the books was the book of baseball stories pictured above. I read that one more than any other book I had. It doesn't literally smell like rain, but holding it my hands now I can smell the rain that constantly poured whenever I pulled this book out as a kid. Goddam, those were good days.

If you loved Charlie Brown and company as a kid, you will probably like Weapon Brown as an adult. I suggest you look into that. It's a post apocalyptic version of Peanuts and just about every other comic strip that showed up side by side with Peanuts, from Popeye to, and I shit you not, The Boondocks. Check it out.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #631: BULLSHIT

THAT'S RIGHT, BULLSHIT.

 I posted the picture above because whenever I post links to these columns, the social media website usually chooses the first picture as part of the post, and I don't want the picture I had in mind to be the one showing. It's about a ChatGPT scam that is comprised of a staggering amount of bullshit, so I thought Penn & Teller would be a good picture to lead off with. Anyway, I've stripped the link to the YouTube video because I don't want to drive any traffic to it.

(Also, I'm cheating a little. Today was a rough day, and I want to be in a good mood--and high--for History of the World Part 2, so I wrote this earlier today. But I thought this was important to do today since it was brought to my attention only a few hours ago.)

MORE BULLSHIT.

ChatGPT was probably not meant to write books, so of course people are going to use it to write books. Students are already using it to write class papers, so why the fuck not? Let's put aside the question of whether or not a chatbot can produce art. It's not even the question we should be asking, anyway. Let's look at the realistic practice of this.

Can ChatGPT be used to write a book? Yes. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that it's a good book and sounds like it could have 100% come from a human. Let's say you take that book and format it for, say, Kindle and publish it, just like any other piece written by a human.

Can you really make that much money selling those ebooks?

Not just no, but fuck no. Unless you're already a big name author, but that's not why you want to click the link, right? If you already have a big name, then you wouldn't be wasting your time thinking about this.

The average price of a Kindle book is $9.50. That's a bit expensive, and I have my doubts about that (I'm pretty sure the reality is closer to $4.99), but let's accept that as fact for now. KDP, which you would be using because you're not getting published by a New York publishing house, states the average royalty rate is 60%. That means that for every book you sell, you get $5.70. Again, that's a little high end, but we'll go with it for now. How many books would you have to sell in one week to make $2500?

At this point I feel it's important to point out that math was my worst subject in school. I probably maintained a C- average throughout my academic life when it came to math. I'm simplifying things a bit for an approximate understanding, so when I say what I'm about to say next, know that it's not exact, but it's close. Very, very close. Close enough for my purposes here.

If you round up, you'll need to sell 439 ebooks to make $2500 in a week. And keep in mind, that is, in my opinion, the high end because most ebooks aren't that expensive, so you would probably have to sell even more. Who is going to spend that much for one ebook from an unknown author? But let's stick with $9.50. Is it possible to sell 439 ebooks in one week? Sure. It's also possible that I'll win the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, but that is not very likely. But let's say you have a lot of friends. Or your mom bought at least a hundred ebooks. I've been doing this long enough to know that your first week of sales is probably going to be your best week. After that your numbers will dribble off week by week until you're surprised if you sell one copy of your new book in a week.

Even if you somehow succeed at selling that many books in your first week, and the odds are astronomically against you, then there is no way you can keep up that level of sales, not enough to quit your day job. Unless you have ChatGPT cook you up another book next week. And the week after. And the following week. Etc. You'll reach a point where not even your mom is going to want to buy every book you put out, and that's assuming you're not telling her that ChatGPT is the actual author.

There is another thing to think about: cover art. If you're not looking to spend any money, then you're using KDP's cover creator, and I'm pretty sure no one buys anything with one of those covers. But if you're really trying to sell that many books in one week, you're going to need a cover artist. That can run you a few hundred dollars per book, which cuts into that $2500 that YouTube video is tempting you with. So now you'll have to sell more.

I didn't click on the link, either, so I'm not sure what the endgame is for that scam. I can only assume that they need human beings to format the books ChatGPT is going to spit out, and that the lion's share goes to whatever company is trying to tempt you with that bullshit. Which means that the $2500 is probably a fraction of a bigger number, so you'll need to sell a lot more than 439 copies to get what you want. Because they certainly won't want you to have 60% of any ChatGPT ebook you publish. The stuff before this paragraph is logically why you shouldn't click on that link. This paragraph is just me wondering how the fuck anyone could even think about taking part in it. It makes zero sense. Do people see the dollar sign and the number that follows and just get horny for it? I guess. But even if you think to yourself that you can do this without whatever bullshit company is advertising this bullshit plan, it still makes no sense.

It's baffling. It's absurd. It's crazy. And, of course, it's . . .

Indeed.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #630: HORRIBLE THOUGHTS FROM MY HEAD #1,000,072: IT SURVIVES

 

Imagine, if you will, a world so far into the future that our civilization doesn't exist anymore. No one even remembers it was here. Their archaeologists are digging to find out if there was life on earth before them, or whatever their futuristic name for this planet will be. They only find one artifact, and it's a hardcover copy of IT by Stephen King.

They don't realize it's fiction. They think it's our Bible, that we believed in this crazy creature from outer space that can make itself look like anything a person is afraid of, and that it was our devil figure to some weird turtle god. That our prophet was an ancient king by the name of Stephen, and he was versed in archaic ceremonies like something called the Ritual of Chud, which just doesn't sound possible unless we had extra mouths and tongues. Did we?

And then I wonder what they would think of That Scene. You know what I'm talking about.

Goddammit, my head is horrible sometimes.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #629: 1985 BUICK SKYHAWK

 

Quick note: there two spoilers for the ending of Supernatural in this one. I think it would be an absolute crime to spoil anything about that final episode, so if you haven't seen it, don't read this.

I'll give you a little more space just in case your eyes wandered.

OK, so last month when I gave my final thoughts on Supernatural it occurred to me that some of you might not know why that scene where Old Man Sam clutches the steering wheel of the Impala got to me so much. It also occurred to me that those who know me very well might not know either because, silly me, I told no one about it. Not a single soul.

Until now.

When Gramps got rid of the old 1978 Chevy Impala that he used to drive when I was a kid, he replaced it with a 1985 Buick Skyhawk almost like the one pictured above. The one you see has four doors, and the one we had only had two. I loved this car from the moment I saw it because it looked so futuristic with the sleek front end sloping down, unlike that Impala with the square front. Wind resistance would be a trifling matter for that Skyhawk. Also, it had windows you could roll up and down with a switch instead of a hand crank, and I'd never seen that before.

Time passed. When I was in high school Gramps decided to get a Century. I forget the year. Or maybe it was during my time in junior high. Instead of getting rid of the Skyhawk he held onto it for himself. Grandma drove the Century. And as I got out of high school and started college, he all but gave the Skyhawk to me. It was his, sure, but I drove it all the time. It might as well have had my name on the title.

I had a lot of adventures in that car, but eventually it started falling apart until finally the brakes went out (while I was on one of those adventures, actually), and it was dead.

I didn't want to let it go. I had dreams of restoring it one day to its former glory, which makes me probably the only person who ever thought that way about a Skyhawk. I figured Sam Raimi could keep his old beater around and put it in a bunch of movies, so why can't I hold onto this car?

Gramps got a Cavalier that I started driving around instead, and when I got a job out in Schaumburg, I needed my own car to get out there, so I got the first car I ever paid for, a piece of shit used 2006 Ford Focus that caused me no end of troubles. All this time, as my life progressed, that Skyhawk sat in my garage, and the more time I spent away from it, the less likely it became that I would ever restore it.

I'm a terrible brother. While I got the Focus, one of my brothers wound up with the Cavalier. Because I parked the Focus in the garage, and the Skyhawk was on the other side of the garage, I made my brother park his Cavalier on the apron outside, and he had to move that car every morning when I had to leave for work. All because of my obsession with that Skyhawk.

Finally Gramps had to pull rank on me to get rid of that Skyhawk. I didn't want to let it go, but he said, "Dodge, it's my car. Not yours. We have to get rid of it."

Faced with that inconvenient truth, I had no choice. We called Victory Auto Wreckers. If you're from the Chicago area, you know their commercial well. I gotta say, that commercial didn't exaggerate much when it showed the Victory guy handing over $80 for that car. We got $200 for the Skyhawk, and that was about, what, twenty years after that commercial was filmed? Adjusted for inflation, that seems about right.

But I got one last night with my Skyhawk. I went into the trunk and thought about what stuff I'd like to save. I found a bunch of old newspapers. A lot of string for when Gramps had to pick me up from somewhere and put my bike in the trunk. A hammer, which I brought back in the house. A set of bases, home plate and a pitching rubber from when my cousin and I played baseball with friends, as well as one of the baseballs we routinely used.

I opened the driver's door and looked inside, marveling at what a time capsule the inside was. It looked regal in there and surprisingly dust free. I breathed in the air and felt like I was in high school again. I saw the sheath for the passenger seatbelt and remembered when I accidentally dropped Grandma's keys down into it, and we were never able to recover them. I wondered if they were still down there. For a brief moment I considered prying the plastic off so I could take a look.

And then I got in the driver's seat. I adjusted the rearview mirror. I felt my body fall into the familiar pattern of sitting in that seat, something I hadn't done at that point for probably more than a decade.

And I put my hands on that steering wheel and closed my eyes. I felt like I was back in college, driving my friends around, going on all kinds of adventures, some that ended in glory and a few that ended in anger and tears. I was no longer my present self but my old self. Before a lot of the horrible shit that happened to me happened. The only really shitty thing that had happened earlier in my life was being physically abused by my stepfather. But in that moment, there were no psych wards, no alcohol addiction, no broken hearts, no pancreatitis, no health problems, no diabetes, no real tragedy. I might have been smarter than the average teenager, but I was still just a dumb kid back then, and it might have been why it felt so freeing.

For just that one moment I was surrounded by ghosts from the past. Or maybe I was the ghost.

The next day the guy from Victory showed up and dragged the Skyhawk out of the garage, leaving rotten rubber from the tires smeared on the floor and apron. I watched as it got loaded up onto the tow truck, and I still watched as the tow truck drove away. I could swear the Skyhawk was giving me a sad smile. Look above at the headlights and the grille. Those lights could have been eyes, the Buick logo could have been a button nose and the narrow grille could have been that smile. "So long kid. We had some great times together. Maybe we'll see each other again some day."

I can't bear to think about that Skyhawk in a junkyard, rusting away under the hot O'Hare sun. Or crunched up into a metal oblong. But I do know this: if Supernatural is right about the afterlife, when I get there that Skyhawk will be waiting for me. Just like the Impala for Dean.

I miss that Skyhawk unlike any other car I've driven. The others? I could take 'em or leave 'em. In the case of the Focus, I could fucking well leave it. But I wish I still had that Skyhawk.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #628: YOU TALKING TO ME?

Well, I'm the only one here.

 

Here's something that used to irritate me a lot. It bugged me when I'm reading something and a character starts talking to themselves. Who the hell does that? No one. I certainly don't. I thought maybe it was a holdover from old comic books that authors felt they needed to use. In old comics characters talk to themselves all the time so readers understand what they're thinking.

Well. About that.

I've discovered that the older I get, the more I talk to myself. I have no idea when this started or even how. But here I am at the ripe old age of 44 blabbering to no one but myself, and I don't even do it into a mirror. I just talk to myself.

What the fuck? I used to read stuff aloud because I used to make a living with my voice. Also, when editing I find that reading the manuscript out loud helps you discover if something flows or not. But I never used to talk to myself, not like this. Is this just going to get worse the older I get? Why didn't someone warn me about this? Or did they, and I just ignored them?

Fuck.