GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #849: ONE YEAR AND 321 DAYS

 It has been a year and 321 days since my last drink. Looks like I might actually make two years!

But drinking is a bit of a phantom limb for me, and as I've lost two toes, I'm more familiar with the concept than most. I think the pain comes from my toe stumps remembering what it was like to be separated from their toes, not that I have ghost toes that are in pain.

I miss drinking a lot. Well, I miss, a lot, the act of drinking, and I miss the act of drinking a lot. I have no drive to drink. I don't sweat when I think about it. I'm long past the physical addiction. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to drink again, but defeating the urge is an every day thing. Whenever a character in a movie or on a show I'm watching takes a drink, I wish I could, too. When I'm doing something that I used to drink while doing? Oh yeah. Like when I was packing up my things before I went to detox. Now I realize that the boxes are too big and too heavy. I knew a moving company would be able to figure it out, but that might not be happening, so I find myself in this situation where I'm repacking everything into smaller boxes for portability by someone who doesn't move boxes for a living. I've been doing this every day off I've had for a couple of weeks, and I really, really miss being able to drink while I worked.

I also used to edit my books while drinking. Drinking and writing did not mix for me, but drinking and editing worked out pretty well. Eye Cutter is the first full length book I've edited without booze. It felt weird this time around, but I don't think there was much of a difference.

Before I went to detox I looked at alcoholics who had gone decades without a drink, and I'd think, OK. You got it figured out. You're probably not an alcoholic anymore. Now that I have a better understanding, it's kind of crazy to think if I had that much time under my belt, that I'd still be thinking about doing shots. Or sipping scotch with a cigar. Or even having some beer while doing work around the house.

Weird, but seemingly true.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #848: LIP CRUMBS

 For as long as I've been alive I've had this habit, and I'm not sure how it started or how I can stop it, but if I'm eating something that has some kind of season dusting, then I like to press my lips down onto it and get the crumbs stuck there so I can lick them off when I'm done eating the rest of it.

That's weird, right? The reason I do that is because it tastes great, but it's a bad habit, and since I sometimes do it in public, I've been trying to stop that.

Pizza Hut breadsticks are perfect for this kind of thing. They leave a nice thick layer of seasoning for me to lick away. Blue Diamond also does Smokehouse Almonds, and they're great for this, too. Sometimes potato chips can do it, depending on how heavily they've been dusted. I can usually count on Jay's Open Pit Barbecue chips for that. Or whatever they're calling the flavor now. Bugles are great, too.

But I've been trying to stop doing that, like I've been trying to stop twirling my hair when I'm stressed. I was about to say I beat alcoholism, but that's kind of daily thing. You have to beat it every day,. It's not a one time thing. But getting this many days under my belt? Easier than beating this lip crumbs thing.

It's been a while since I confessed something weird. Tonight seemed perfect for it. Goodnight, fellow weird fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #847: PRESIDENTIAL AGONY

 The primary season is almost over, and thank fuck for that. Because there are some things more agonizing than presidential election cycles, but there aren't many of them. We didn't always do things this way. It used to be lot different, and slowly over the years we got stuck with this awful system that still needs to be fixed. But we're 200+ years into this thing. If someone was going to fix it, it would have been fixed by now.

But when America was in its infancy we had a different method. State delegates would choose electors (thus birthing the Electoral College, sadly, which is one of the things we really need to get rid of), and those electors would look at who is running and make their votes. The guy with the most votes is the president. The guy with the second most votes is the vice president. The rest of the lot can go kick rocks. That worked pretty well for the first election. In case you didn't know, George Washington was elected president UNANIMOUSLY. The one and only president to have been elected in such a fashion. But once he left office and political parties formed, a lot of flies got in the ointment.

I've talked about the Jefferson vs. Burr election before and how we have an amendment to the Constitution because of it. (And that Burr should have been our third president.) But that was the breaking point for the system. The votes for president and vice president would be separate from here on out, and Congressional caucuses decided who the candidates were.

About twenty years later it changed again. People wanted powerful state leaders to have more say in elections. So the state leaders of each party got together to choose the candidates, and we lived by this rule for a long, long time.

We really adopted primaries during the 1952 race. Politicians had to press the flesh of, not citizens, but industry and political leaders. They were the ones who would choose the candidates, and each person running had to suck the requisite amount of dick to get the nomination. You know the old joke about how candidates are selected in dark smoke filled rooms? There's a basis in fact for that. That's the way we've done it almost since the country began. 

And then came March 31, 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson made the following announcement to the American public: "I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes. Accordingly I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

First of all, the idea that a president would not want to get involved in partisan divisions is absolutely batshit crazy. But I have long held that whoever sits in that Oval Office is the president for ALL Americans, not just the Americans who voted for him. So, according to the job description, the president needs to serve all Americans. You can see most presidents doing that EXCEPT for one. I think you know who I'm talking about. So LBJ wasn't crazy when he said those things. He was doing his job. But can you imagine a president today saying something like that? Never mind taking himself out of the race, but not catering to just his voters? That's pretty impressive.

An incumbent president is always the nominee because they're very difficult to defeat. Imagine the Democratic Party's horror when they realized they had a sudden vacuum and needed to fill it with a candidate ASAP.

Which is why the voters now decide the candidates with primaries and conventions and such. Which is why we have to pay attention during the primaries, no matter how much we want to ignore the dog and pony show. We already know the big boys, but with a new candidate you have to catch them early before they become . . . candidate-y? They're more likely to fuck up in the early days than after they've had the chance to become seasoned.

But we don't have to worry about that this time out. Biden and Trump is the rematch fuckin' nobody asked for, but it's what we're stuck with. I don't say that I hate people often, because hate is a strong word, but I hate, loathe, despise, etc. Donald Trump. I don't like Biden, either. I think he's a business as usual politician whose only saving grace is his ability to beat a loathsome toad who once squatted in the Oval Office.

Gun to the head? I guess I'd have to go with Biden if only to deny that cum-gargling dumpster fire another term in office.

So yeah. Things used to be different and not quite so agonizing, but we have more power than we did way back when. It would be nice to not have the Electoral College. Why would you want to choose the people who will choose the president? Doesn't that sound like bullshit to you?

I don't know why I waste time with asking that question. We all hate the Electoral College, but we refuse to do anything about it because it's something we've always done. Tradition can eat my sack, balls and shaft.

To quote a great man . . .

"Well, what'll I do now? Go to sleep? Pull the pud? We need new pornos! Well, guess I'm still writing."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #846: DREAM SCENARIO

 

When I first saw the trailer for Dream Scenario I expected batshit crazy Nic Cage doing all sorts of batshit crazy things. When I saw the movie I was surprised by how sedate it is considering the concept and the star. What threw me off, though, is that a lot of people involved said this film was about cancel culture. When people start bitching about cancel culture, I tune out. They are usually fools, but almost all of them are to the right, politically speaking, and the right is the king of canceling stuff. If you think that's unfair of me to say, ask a drag queen how they feel about it. Or someone who has written a book about their LGBTQ+ experiences. So I prepared myself to not like this movie because of that.

Nic Cage plays an ineffectual man who is more of an observer in his own life than a participant. Things get weird when people start talking about how they've seen him in their dreams. He does nothing. He just observes. At first it's a little odd, but as more and more people say it, the crazier it gets. Yet it never gets into batshit territory until the end, and even then the batshit crazy stuff is NOT coming from Nic Cage.

There's a scene in which a woman who saw Nic Cage in her dreams invites him over so he can reenact his role in her dream. It turns very sexual for him, and he creams his jeans. I think this is the turning point for him, because after this scene people start getting terrified of him. Apparently he's no longer doing nothing in people's dreams. Now he's doing unspeakable things to these people, and when they see him in real life they can't stand to be in the same room with him. It gets to the point where his job is on the line and his family wants nothing to do with him, all because of their dreams.

And that's what, at first, stuck in my craw about the cancel culture explanation. Because there is no such thing. There *is* suffering the consequences of your actions. That is definitely a thing. And it's because of this that the explanation didn't make sense to me. Those who complain about cancel culture always, every single time, miss a crucial detail: the key part of so-called cancel culture is someone *doing something* to get canceled. As far as I could tell in the film, Nic Cage didn't actually do anything. It's the equivalent of your partner getting mad at you for something you did in their dream.

And then comes the ending, and here there be spoilers. It turns out that the batshit crazy thing is that a company has built a device that allows you to go into other peoples' dreams. This is after Nic Cage's experience. They built these things because of him. He can go into other people's dreams naturally. He just wasn't aware of himself doing that. Which means, yes, he actually did do all of those things he was accused of doing in those dreams. Every person he tortured and raped? He really did do those things. He just didn't know he was doing it to people.

That's where the message makes more sense, but the morality of something like this is never explored, which seems like something the filmmakers should want to do. And I think perhaps that's why this movie was released and disappeared so quickly. The next logical step is ignored, so the rest of the movie doesn't really serve much of a purpose.

I don't know much about the director of the film. There's not a lot about him online, so I can only speculate that he made the movie to wallow in self-prescribed cancel culture. It's the only thing that makes sense. Why else did he not want to go any further into the story idea? Because it's a great analogy for someone who was "canceled" and doesn't understand why. People like that aren't typically introspective, so they probably wouldn't care to explore what they think of their own morality versus what their actions reveal about their actual morality. I enjoyed the movie up until that reveal in the end about the device. Now I'm just baffled.

Anyone else see Dream Scenario? Your thoughts?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #845: IMMORTALITY

"Most Vanquished, Most Victorious"

 

I got to have a day off of work today thanks to the holiday. So I got to experience a weekend again. Time off without needing to go to the ER. Etc. It means I also got to watch Route 66 two days in a row.

I have no kids. Probably. Every once in a while someone asks me about how I'm going to achieve immortality. "I won't?" I usually say. Because there is no such thing. But people seem to be insistent that reproduction is a means of immortality. It doesn't make sense to me, but okay.

It wasn't until I watched this episode of Route 66 with Royal Dano on it that I finally felt vindicated. Finally! Someone else who thinks the same thing!

There's this guy whose son has died. But his son impregnated a Native American woman before he died. This guy hates his son's wife simply because of her race, which makes things a little weird when he gets super protective about the child she's going to birth. He couldn't possibly care less about her, but his grandchild? That kid is going to be raised as one of his family because family is more important than anything else. (Unless one marries into the family, I guess.)

Royal Dano plays a doctor who finally gets sick of the whole fucking thing. He shouts at the guy, "You think that's your immortality? Generations forget!"

Ain't that the fucking truth. I'm a good case in point because I don't know anything about my family before the lives of my grandparents. I've never met a single great-grandparent, although I came close to meeting Grandma's mom. She died a few months before I was born. My second cousin lucked out and met Grandma and Gramps when they were still alive. He will have memories of his great-grandparents. But in all honesty, can anyone say that they knew anyone beyond their great-grandparents? It would be a very fucked up situation if they did.

Regardless, by that logic, if I had kids, and they had kids, and their kids had kids, would those kids know a single fucking thing about me? I'll bet they would have my brown eyes. Because they were Mom's. And Gramps's before her. All my Illinois siblings have the same eyes. I'll bet they also have a birthmark on the bottom of one of their feet. We all have it. Sometimes it's on the left foot, sometimes the right, but we all have it. They might even have other traits of mine.

But is that immortality? Not just no but fuck no.

There is one exception: celebrities or people who are otherwise famous. I would hesitate to call Abraham Lincoln, for example, a celebrity. But how many people reading this can say that about themselves?

Exactly. I'll bet Brad Pitt's great-great-great grandkids will boast about being his descendants. But my great-great-great grandkids? Right.

It makes a little more sense that one would live as long as the final person who remembers one. I get that. But that's still not immortality. But if I have any advice to give you tonight, it's this: be the reason that someone grows old and rants and raves at the nursing home staff so long that they have to wonder what the fuck made them this way.

Just kidding. Don't do that.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #844: ONE INTO MANY

 Whoa. What the fuck? A GF column on Saturday? Yeah, because fuck it. I need to get the count back to where it should be, and I know you're tired of me sounding like Ahab on that one, but clearly doing just two over the course of a week wasn't working out. Fuck my writing hiatus. I'm going to write more, goddammit. Fuck my sickness. Fuck my left eye. Fuck my missing blood. Fuck the menagerie of health issues. Time to do more instead of less. So you'll get another one of these next Saturday, too, and I'll be caught up.

Also, I'm cheating a little. On Saturday nights I get super high, so as you're reading this I'm probably passed out or just about ready to pass out. I wrote this earlier tonight.

So. I talk to at least 100 people a day. More often than not it's closer to 130. Today was only 101, but that's OK. Saturdays are always slow. But they're filled with people, just like every other day of the week, who know how to take one question and turn it into many.

I'm not talking about someone asking a question, getting an answer and asking a follow up, etc. I understand that a lot of motherfuckers out there talk to just fucking talk. And of my 101 today, I'd estimate that covers about 80.

What I mean is, I'll be talking to someone who has a "quick question." I think I've covered that here before. In my experience, of everyone who has said to me they have a quick question, only 0.0000001% of them actually do have a quick question. But what I'm talking about tonight is, someone calls in. They ask a question that has a very easy answer. I'll open my mouth to begin giving the very easy answer when they decide, no, they want to ask another question while they're asking that question. And come to think of it, they'll think of another question to ask, and before you know it they've asked a half-dozen questions without taking a fucking breath, and now they've finally stopped talking, and no matter what I do I'll pick the wrong question to answer. If I go in order, they'll interrupt and ask for the answer of one of the others. If I start with the freshest question, they'll interrupt and ask about the first one again.

Do they actually want the answers to these questions? They're usually easy answers. If they had the presence of mind to realize that they had just asked a question and should probably wait for me to answer it, then they would get their answers. And here's the kicker: they don't have to ask any questions outside of, "How much for a windshield for such and such a car?" For example. *I* will ask the questions, and I will answer every single question you have before you ask it. Just trust the process. I've been doing this for a long time. 99.999999% of the time, I've heard whatever it is you're about to say. It has to be something really outlandish for me to have not heard it before. Chances are, any question you can think of, I'll answer without you needing to ask it. I got my scripts down pat after, say, a year of working there. And that's being generous to me.

I don't mean to pick on our customers, as I've encountered these kinds of people in my regular life, too, but it's the easiest to talk about when we're talking about said customers. It's just that I can't get my head around why someone would ask a question, not wait for an answer, and then ask a bunch of other questions. Are they that way with the people in their lives? Do they conduct themselves thusly to their kids? To their parents? To their spouses? I suspect they wouldn't. Their loved ones would have definitely said something by now.

The world may never know . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #843: BAD DAY

 I got out of bed this morning at 6:15, and I've regretted it since. I should have just stayed there and turned my alarm off, because every single fucking thing that could have gone wrong today *did* go wrong today. I was running late on everything. I'm always early, so I was still on time for it all, but still. That was a bad sign.

The worst of it was being overcharged for something. I can't tell if it was the bank's fault or the post office, but I mailed something yesterday for $4.13. Imagine my surprise when I logged into my bank account and saw I'd been charged $41.03 instead. Obviously it's a typo, but it's a pretty expensive typo. I tried calling the post office, but surprise! It is impossible to get ahold of someone there. It's all automated, and there isn't an option for representative. So I called my bank, but I can't dispute the charge until it goes through. The problem is, when it goes through, I'll be below $0.00, so they're going to charge me a ridiculously high fee.

So on lunch I thought I'd speed home, get my receipt and go to the post office, but of all days there was a major accident at North and York. Nothing was getting through, and all the side streets were backed the fuck up. If I could get back to work and go the other way, I could take 83 instead, but by the time I managed to get back to work, I ran out of lunch time. So I'm fucking stuck with this for now.

Another thing was, I got a call from the company that does our short term disability, but I was busy fighting traffic to get back to work, so I didn't answer it. The VM says I'm getting fucking dropped?!?!?!?!?! What the everloving fucking fuck is going on today?!

There was a lot of other stuff, but it wouldn't make much sense without a bunch of background, which I don't feel like going into right now. And now I can't pay my insurance bill without some serious fucking around. That'll be great.

I'm going to smoke a metric shit-ton of weed right now. I hope when I wake up tomorrow I'll be a lot less mad. Or maybe I'll skip today's mistake and just stay in goddam bed.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #842: COMICS I'M READING (UPDATE)

 It's been a while since I did a rundown of all the comics I read monthly. I'm glad to say it's no longer a handful. It's an actual list again. So here we go!

The Blood Brothers Mother

From the amazing team of Azzarello and Risso. It's a western that shows a lot of promise. We're only one issue in so far, and it's fuckin' huge. It's more of a magazine than a comic book.

The Expanse: Dragon Tooth

I'm a huge fan of The Expanse, in book, show or comics form. This miniseries takes place during the time jump between books 6 and 7 by James SA Corey. Too bad this one is ending soon. Only one issue to go.

Get Fury

The Punisher hunting down Nick Fury in Vietnam? Written by Garth Ennis? Of course I'm in. It's the only Marvel book I currently read. I don't anticipate reading another when this is over.

GI Joe (Larry Hama)

Yeah, I know this book has gone through several publishers over the years, but technically it's the same run of the comic I read as a kid, written by the same guy, Larry Hama. I love how crazy this series gets sometimes. Because it's GI Joe, a lot of people forget about crazy shit like Serpentor being made from the DNA of ancient rulers, or Dr. Mindbender's zombie bomb. Hama, who fought in Vietnam, knows what he's doing and knows how to bring the lunacy to a fever pitch. I know eventually this series will end, and it will be a sad day, indeed.

The Goon

The Goon is back! This is a book that goes through a lot of different publications, and I'm glad we have a new series that left off with the previous one. It's an oddball mix of ridiculous violence and old-timey stuff. One of my favorites is Frankie, and when he screams "KNIFE TO THE EYE!" he means it.

Hellblazer: Dead in America

For the longest time it seemed that DC had given up on John Constantine, but it's good to see he's back, and once again he's haunting America. This time he's alive, but his body is rotting. He has to find a way to get back to normal, and he has a very Scottish friend he met at a pub and a deaf-mute who turns out to be his son as companions. He's also armed with a single grain of sand from Dream's bag. I felt betrayed when DC ended the original Vertigo book so Constantine could rejoin the DCU and rub shoulders with superheroes. This is a return to the original series. It feels like Constantine never truly left us. This is the only DC book I read, and I'm pretty sure I won't read another when this ends.

James Bond 007

Whoever put Garth Ennis in charge of James Bond must be out of their mind, but he's proven to be damned good at it. Like Warren Ellis before him, Ennis seems to understand Bond in ways that the movies never really show. It's closer to the books, and I'm glad for that. And then there's . . .

Jimmy's Little Bastards

. . . the book James Bond would be if Garth Ennis was allowed to run rampant. Aftershock, the publisher, declared bankruptcy last year, but it seems like the final book in this series is still somehow going to be released. It's been delayed forever, but it's being solicited in November. I'm glad. I'd hate to have an Ennis series without an ending.

Jupiter's Legacy: Requiem

Here's another book that was supposed to come out a long time ago but hasn't. Yet the internet is insistent that this book is still happening. However, probably due to the Netflix show's failure, this is no longer the second half of a miniseries. This is going to be one big volume and is probably the epilogue to Mark Millar's huge Big Game crossover.

Saga

Saga is on hiatus right now. They like to get a bunch of issues in and then take a break, which is kind of annoying, but the wait is always worth it. This is top-shelf storytelling from Brian K. Vaughan, who gave us Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina. He's really, really good at writing heartbreaking endings. Ex Machina's tore my heart out when I read it. So I can only assume Saga will end in tragedy. And it looks like we're closer to the ending than expected.

That Texas Blood

This book is also on hiatus because the creators wanted to do a miniseries western for a little while set in the same universe. The Enfield Gang Massacre was fucking great, but I can't wait to see what they do with the main series next.

Torpedo 1972

Risso working without Azzarello seems a little weird, but this li'l book is quirky and wrong in so many ways. It seems like a parody of gangster stories, except there's a lot of very uncomfortable violence in it. It's like a joke in which people die. Weird, but I like it.

Transformers (Skybound)

Why would I not read a Transformers book? This one is particularly good because Skybound decided to tear it all down and build it up from the ground. No history with the comics is necessary to know what's going on. It's great. The Energon Universe is fucking great, and I hope it keeps going for a while.

Underheist

This is a book from David Lapham, who gave us the classic crime comic, Stray Bullets. This one is also a crime book, as you can probably guess from the title, but it's a *horror* crime book. And that's supercool. I doubt the book will last long, but so far, so good.

Void Rivals

I gotta be honest, I only love a handful of Robert Kirkman books. Battle Pope, obviously, and The Walking Dead. And yes, Invincible. But outside that? I haven't liked what I've read. But Void Rivals is fucking great. You don't have to read it to get what's going on in the Energon Universe, but it helps. It's good to see where a lot of this is starting, and it's good to know the EU has Quintessons . . .

And that's it. I'll try to keep you updated in the future on my pull list. Until next time . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #841: ADVERTISERS SUCK BUT . . .

 Before we begin today I wanted to let you know that for nearly ten years I worked for a teleconferencing company named Conference Plus. I was there when Arkadin bought them out. I was gone before NTT bought them out. In my time there, as a conference operator and a tech support rep, I have dealt with a lot of extraordinarily rich people. I find it odd that we (meaning, Americans) worship the ground they walk on because almost all of them didn't have any common sense. Which is a polite way of saying they're fucking idiots. But they're smart about one thing. One very important thing.

Rich people love to spend other people's money. The golden rule is, never spend your own. Make someone else pay for things.

This lesson is important to the topic we're about to discuss. And yes, this is old news. I have a stockpile of GF ideas that are on the old side, but goddammit, I'm going to get to them all because even if they are outdated, they're interesting to me. I make it a habit of never--NEVER--writing about something that doesn't interest me.

A while back Dana White was on Theo Von's podcast in which they talked about RFK Jr's presidential run. This was back when Kennedy was still a Democrat. Von had RFK Jr on, and the comedian's advertisers demanded that the episode be taken down. White asked why, and Von didn't seem to have an answer. However, he did supply White with the name of one sponsor: Peleton. White's response: "Peleton sells stationary bikes, and they've got a problem with Robert Fucking Kennedy. Fuck you, Peleton."

He then went to throw all UFC's Peleton bikes in the trash. He said, "This is America. You can fucking have whoever you want on your podcast. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do."

Hold that thought. Around the same time Elon Musk, the Boy Who Would Be Crap, was being interviewed live onstage at some event or other, and he was asked about the advertising boycott at Ex. He'd made some anti-Semitic comments, so his advertisers essentially pulled out of the deal. Even he admits it was a stupid thing to do, but the boycott had an odd effect on him: not only did it enrage him, it also made him do one of those stupid things you do when you're called out for being stupid and don't want to admit it: he made himself into the victim. He initially said, "I hope they stop. Don't advertise. If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear?" And then he admitted that the boycott would destroy Ex. "It's going to kill the company. That is what everybody on Earth will know. We'll be gone, and it will be because of the advertiser boycott."

My hatred of advertising is well documented in these GF columns. At best I think they're annoying. At worst they are evil attempts at mind control. And there is a small part of me that likes both White and Musk just a little for their reactions. But advertising is a necessary evil.

As much as I hate advertising and advertisers, they pay for a lot of shit. These fuckers are never broke. They never scramble for money. Because all that money they're pumping into advertising should probably be put to better use, like paying their employees well. I seriously have no idea why McDonald's still advertises. Is there a single goddam American roaming the country who *doesn't* know about McDonald's? But they pay for things. TV shows, movies, music, just about every form of entertainment is paid for by advertisers. If they thought sponsoring books would help, I'm sure they'd be all over that.

But White is wrong. Because the advertisers *do* pay for everything, they actually *can* tell you who you can or can't have on the podcast they are paying for. You can have anyone you want on. You can do whatever you want to do. But you can't do those things and still expect to be sponsored by Peleton.

All that social media you enjoy? From Facebook to Ex to Instagram to even goddam MySpace, the reason you don't pay for anything is because the advertisers are paying for it. Each time you post something, it's because an advertiser allowed you to do so.

Let's get back to Musk. When I heard him tell his advertisers to go fuck himself, I desperately hoped the rest of the advertisers would also jump ship. I eagerly awaited the self-destruction of Ex mostly because he bought it so he could look like a free speech warrior. He's not. The only person who should have free speech, according to Musk, is Musk himself. Everyone else can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I wanted to see the ego he'd pumped up with his ridiculous purchase of Twitter deflate like a hot air balloon dropping from the sky. Because I knew that without advertisers, he'd be forced to dip into his own money, and that breaks the golden rule as stated above. So in my head it turned into a question of how he'd lose: would he embrace his self-proclaimed victimhood and let Ex die naturally, or would he pump billions of his own money into something so broken that it can't be fixed? I expected the former but hoped for the latter.

Because you would think that advertisers, who are used to ruling the roost as those who pay for everything, would band together and squash Elon Musk and Dana White (and probably Theo Von, too) like bugs and then move on to the next thing. But that didn't happen.

What happened instead was what I like to call the Lindell Effect. Meaning, a morally bankrupt advertiser would take up the slack left by the others until other likeminded advertisers can join and therefore make Ex profitable. Goddammit.

Holy fuck, I never thought I'd be on the side of the advertisers. We're mortal enemies. But I guess there are some people worse than advertisers.

If you want to look at it another way, it comes back to journalism. It usually comes back to journalism. Who is the real person with power at a newspaper? Certainly not the journalist. The writer always gets the short end of the stick. And it's not the editor. It's not the publisher either, although you're closer. It's advertisers. An advertiser will pull their life-sustaining ads from a newspaper if they see reporting that they don't like, even if it is solid journalism. Who do you think gets fired in a case like that? Not the publisher or editor, I'll tell you that. But regardless, the newspapers know not to fuck with the advertisers. Then again, they're on life support right now, anyway. They can't afford to lose a single advertiser. I wonder if I'll live long enough to see a world with no physical newspapers . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #840: THE MAYBERRY MINUTEMEN

 

When you're in the hospital, you're at the mercy of the TV gods. I'm kind of surprised I didn't get any M*A*S*H in. I almost always do. And no Gunsmoke, either. Very odd. But thankfully the hospital gets a few good channels: TVLand, Comedy Central, AMC and FX. I was usually stuck with The Office, which I've seen a million times and is somehow still good, but not even Comedy Central can show it 24/7.

So I lucked out with some Andy on TVLand. It may come as a surprise to a lot of people, but I like The Andy Griffith Show. Well, let me rephrase. I like all but the final season of tAGS, the one without Don Knotts. For some reason unfathomable to me, that last season focused on all the morality lessons everyone remembers the show for. Before that season, the morals were kind of fucked. Like, never tell anyone the truth if it's going to hurt their feelings. That's a major theme with those early seasons. Maybe they needed to lean on something else since Barney was no longer in Mayberry. I give Don Knotts a lot of grief, but he really was good as Barney. Better than good, supreme. He did such a good job that I'm sure there are people to this day who think he wasn't acting, that he really is like that, Mr. Furley not withstanding.

Anyway, one of my favorite episodes came on while I was in the hospital, the one where the kids have a new teacher. She does things a little different from the old teacher, and it's driving Opie crazy. At breakfast he tells his dad that history homework is too hard for him, and Andy makes the mistake of saying that he never had a head for history. He says that as long as Opie does the best he can honestly do, then he'd be proud of his son regardless of the outcome.

At this point Barney can't wait to tell everyone that he was an A++++++ history student. When Andy tests him on the Emancipation Proclamation, Barney does everything he can do to get out of answering the question EXCEPT answering it.

Regardless, Opie ignores the part about doing his best and misinterprets what Andy actually told him. When he's called on by the teacher the next day, he digs in his heels and tells her that his dad said he didn't have to do his history homework. A few other boys in class join his cause, which understandably angers the teacher. She then goes to visit Andy at his office and reads him the Riot Act.

Andy doesn't even attempt to try to explain what actually happened. Instead he feels lower than whale shit and then tricks the boys into becoming avid history fans.

I'm sure by now you've figured out why this episode appeals to me so much. Unlike Barney I'm not going to tell you I was an A+++++ history student. I got Bs and Cs in school. But I love the fuck out of history. So much crazy shit has happened over the course of known history (to say nothing of delicious speculation as to what happened during the time when history is lost to us!) I find it impossible to believe that people don't think history is interesting. Why isn't the entire country made up of people like Andy's Mayberry Minutemen?

The fault is with school, unfortunately. Teachers do a difficult enough job without me piling more shit on them, but the way history is taught is atrocious. Historical figures are just that. They're not people. They never lived and breathed because we're not supposed to understand them as people. But before they were a bunch of words in stolid history books, they *were* people. People who picked their noses. Who didn't know everything. Who sometimes did the best they could and sometimes did the worst they could on purpose.

I remember I was in college reading a Graham Swift novel for a postmodernism class when I saw him do the history/his story thing. That was the first time I'd seen that, and it opened up the world to me. History should be taught like a STORY, not a series of names and dates and acts to be memorized. When Andy convinces the kids that history is actually fun, he describes it as a story with characters and plot. That gets the kids' engines running, and the next thing their teacher knows, they're fighting each other over who gets to explain the founding of Jamestown.

There's another thing teachers do that gets in the way, but I'm not going to get too much into it. I already said my piece, but the other thing is that American institutions want history to be taught ideally. What I mean is, they want America's kids to grow up to be productive members of society, and it's helpful if they just believe a bunch of comfortable lies instead of learning what may have actually happened. You already know my opinion of that kind of thing. The most common example being, hey, Thomas Jefferson! What a genius! Can you imagine what this country would be like without his guidance? And he was the third president of the country! Completely ignoring that the man who said all men are created equal owned slaves and fathered at least one child with a slave. Just knowing that is enough to fuck a lot of people up. So perhaps we shouldn't introduce the idea that the sex might not have been consensual, at least until they get their head around that first part.

Most of what I learned about history is stuff I had to unlearn because it was bullshit stuffed into my head in an attempt to make me into an obedient taxpayer. If you want to see an example of how history *should* be taught, check out Hardcore History. But you knew I'd say that. You've been reading these things for quite a while.

Goodnight, you lovely fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #839: OH, THAT'S WHAT'S NEXT

 For the last couple of weeks, I haven't been feeling well. I've been lightheaded, and my sight glitched every morning like a bad internet connection. I now know why.

I was hoping it would go away, but on Thursday I couldn't take it anymore. I went to the ER to be told, much to my surprise, that I'm anemic. I was missing a whopping 58% of my blood. FIFTY FUCKING EIGHT PERCENT! More than half of my blood was gone. Where?

The #1 suspect was my GI tract. They said it happens often, people bleeding into their stomachs without knowing it. But they scoped me, and ta-da! No blood. There's the outside chance that I have a tumor in my intestines, but it's unlikely because I just had a colonoscopy, and they would have seen it growing there. They were at a total loss, so they decided to keep me a couple of days.

During that time I got a couple of blood transfusions, and by the time I left they said my blood content (weird talking about my blood content and not my blood ALCOHOL content) was stable. That thing with my vision glitching? That was due to a bunch of my iron missing, so in addition to the transfusions they also pumped me chock full of iron, and my vision no longer glitches. I still have those fucking floaters driving me crazy in my left eye, but at least I know I'm not going blind now.

Although if I had continued hoping everything would go away? I'd possibly be dead by now, and the local forensics team would be tearing their hair out trying to figure out where my blood went. Perhaps they would even get desperate enough to entertain the idea of a vampire. I'd rather be spared the suggestion that maybe a dead horror author with no blood in him should be a vampiric mystery, so we'll skip it.

Of course my back chose this particular moment to bring back my usual pain. Maybe it was sleeping in a different bed, but my back was screaming when I woke up that first day. Morphine helped, and I'm back on opioids because of this fuckin' thing. But sweet unholy fuck, now that I remember what being in the hospital is like? I'd rather not do it again. For a while there I was romanticizing it a little. Isn't it nice to do nothing all day and have people do stuff for you? It is, but it's also a trap. So I no longer have to think about that shit.

Here's what I am thinking about, though: who did the transfusion blood come from? I'm grateful, don't get me wrong, but whose blood do I have running in my veins now? The unpoetic answer is, yours, stupid. It's your blood now. But did the transfusions come from the same person? Who was that person? Why did they donate their blood? Etc. Also, it's a little silly to think about, but I've gone through 45 years of life without knowing my blood type. I know it now: B+. Be positive, man. I'm trying.

So what happened to my blood? It's not as tantalizing a mystery as you would think. I read the discharge papers, and there are plenty of avenues for me to explore. I'm sure one of them will let me know what happened to my blood. When that day comes, I'll let you know.

Dammit! It's not a vampire!

The mystery I'm more interested in is, why do I have such shit luck? My life was going all right about a year ago. Maybe not great, but it wasn't driving me crazy. I am officially fucking batty over all my goddam problems. I'm paranoid. I'm not sleeping well. I'm irritable. And I'm fucking furious and impotent to do anything about it.

Speaking of impotence, here's a thing you might find funny. Well, some of you might. For the last couple of weeks I haven't been able to jerk off. I thought it was a combination of getting old and the 'Beetus. However, while I was getting the transfusions, my dick stood right up, reporting for duty, SIR! Only after letting my mind wander a little did I realize, oh, that's why I couldn't get a hard on. I didn't have enough blood in me to get it up. Now I do, and surprise!

You'll be proud of me for not jerking off in my hospital room. But to be fair, I had other things on my mind at the time.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #838: THE HOLDER

 

So on 4/20 I decided that since I was getting a hefty discount at the dispensary, I'd experiment a little. I'd try brands I ordinarily didn't get. Kaviar is a pretty popular brand. Their strain, Cornbread, is pretty expensive at $33 per preroll, but I got a pretty sweet price for it.

I got home and opened the tube to discover something very weird. No wonder they charged so much! There's a holder on the end. Like a cigarette holder, but clear. You can see it in the picture above. Kinda. I thought that was stupid and was about to yank it off the joint, but I was afraid I might destroy my precious cannabis. So fuck it. I tried the holder.

And now I can never go back.

That holder is so fucking sweet. It maximizes the amount of smoke you inhale, so it gets you higher, and it gets you higher faster. It's such a gamechanger that I kept it and used it on any and all prerolls I bought.

And then I did something stupid. I saw my ashtray had overflowed, so I decided to empty it into the toilet. Since the holder is clear, I didn't see it, and I fuckin' flushed the thing. I didn't realize it until hours later, when I opened a new preroll and looked around for my holder. Goddammit.

But I recently got my medical card, so I no longer pay taxes on cannabis. So I got a couple more Cornbread prerolls just for the holder. (I got a third so one of my friends could have a holder, too. We smoked the joint not too long ago and then went to Superdawg, which is an excellent experience to have. Being high and eating a Supercheesie is great. Extra cheese, of course.)

I'm not gonna fuck this up again. I will never keep the holders in the ashtray together, just in case I repeat my stupid move. Because these holders are fucking great. They really are. I *high*ly recommend getting one if you like to indulge. I swear, you'll never go back.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #837: ACAB, REVISITED

Because there's no such thing.

 

It's been a while since I wrote my ACAB piece, and I read another news article that makes me want to revisit it. I love stories that make cops look like the buffoons they are, but more importantly I value them because they're stories about cops FAILING TO MURDER SOMEONE. Any story where the intended murder victim of a police officer survives? I'm a happy guy.

Enter Gary Porter. He was already wanted on a felony charge, so imagine the pleasure of the police when they found him passed out in a chicken coop. (Chicken coop? I hear you ask. This happens in Maine. There's not much there aside from chicken coops and Stephen King monsters.)

So they found a suspect passed out in a chicken coop. One might think that being found in such a position would require a mental physician to evaluate you, and that was the plan. They arrested him and brought him back to the station, where he woke up, and the madness began.

While the cop stepped around the vehicle to get the suspect out, Porter, who may possibly be Captain Jack Sparrow in real life, managed to get the cuffs out from behind his back, got behind the wheel and drove away.

The articles all say that he then led them on a merry chase through rural Maine, but let's be real. All of Maine is rural. They could have been anywhere in the state. The point is, 11 cops and 5 law enforcement agencies got involved. All because of this guy they found passed out in a chicken coop. They set a trap for him. You know those things in the movies they deploy on the road when trying to destroy a fleeing suspect's tires? They did that to him, and he crashed into a ditch.

But wait! There's more! Captain Jack--er, Porter, got out of the car, still handcuffed and wearing a hospital robe, apparently, and GOT INTO ANOTHER COP CAR AND SPED OFF. The whole time those 11 cops were shooting at him. At this point it is worth mentioning that Porter IS NOT ARMED. So the cops naturally decided to empty their guns at an unarmed man who belongs in a mental institute. Murdering suspects is their go-to tactic, which is why I'm so happy when their victims escape BEING MURDERED.

Too bad he crashed again not too far away. The cops, as is their wont, emptied their guns into the vehicle. Miraculously Porter was only shot once, and it doesn't seem like it was that serious. It sounds like he was treated and released by the hospital in the same day. A spokesperson for the Maine State Police said, "Officers confronted Porter, and gunfire was exchanged." Funny word, that, "exchanged." If gunfire is being "exchanged," it means two parties are shooting at each other. Nice attempt to cover your ass, Maine. Nice try.

Interestingly enough, according to court records the reason they were looking for Porter was because things had not gone well in court due to him mumbling and falling asleep. The reason for that was his medication. So this guy, zoned out on medication, handcuffed and wearing nothing but a hospital gown made dunces out of 11 fucking cops. Not surprisingly, they went on "administrative leave." Which I'm sure translates to "get paid to stay at home." Cops are good at failing but not really failing. It turns out that this real-life Benny Hill skit is "the largest number of police officers to discharge their guns in a single incident in recent memory in [Maine]." That's fairly close to Vermont. Could it be that Super Troopers is based on a true story?

Indeed . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #836: WHAT NEXT?

 It used to be that every morning I would wake up and wonder which part of me will hurt the worst. It's a common thing for middle-aged men (or middle-aged anyone, I suppose), but my deck is very much stacked against me. More than with most people.

Thanks to those spinal injections I've been pain free in my usual spots. My *new* problem is shit just going wrong on me. Like the sudden return of the sickness that usually sends me to the ER puking and in pain. Or when my dentist said there's something weird about my implant, as it is doing something that should be impossible. It looks like its losing bone where the implant joins with the jaw. Or the thing with my eye where I have a bunch of really big floaters in my vision. It looks like a cloud of flies are constantly around my head. If I close one eye, most of them disappear . . . unless I lightly close it, in which case I can still see them swimming against the back of my eyelid.

My eyes are doing something new now. Every day I wake up it's like my vision is glitching. I can see, but any light is so blinding that I can't see clearly. Waves run over my vision, usually in time with my pulse. If I close my eyes I have retinal burns that look like inkblots. It goes away after I've been up and about for maybe 15 minutes, and sometimes if the sun is really bright out, one of my eyes closes involuntarily.

So it's fun being me.

You know what I need? A fucking Lazarus Pit. Anyone got one of those around? Or is it just Ra's al Ghul? I don't care about immortality all that much. I think I've lived long enough as it is. It's the quality of my life that I care about. I think about Dean Winchester going to Hell, then getting dragged out by Castiel. Dean marvels at his remade body, in particular his fingers. They're no longer crooked from punching people and monsters. I want to be that way. Without the hellish torture, of course. Unless maybe that makes it worth it?

I like my scars. Scars really do tell a life story. But everything else? It would be nice to wake up and not have my eyes go crazy on me. It would be nice to be able to confidently eat something in public without fear of it coming back later and sending me to the ER. It would be great to feel my feet again. And it would be nice to have all ten toes again.

So I guess I have to wonder what the fuck is next to go wrong for my body. Maybe those injections will wear off, and I'll be in constant pain again. That would be peachy keen. Something to look forward to . . .