GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #910: THE MOOCH

 I've got a soft spot for the Mooch, Anthony Scaramucci. Of all the clowns and con artists Trump hired during his tenure as president, the Mooch is the only one I miss. Politics should be full of curse words. Every politician's speech should have at least a dozen "fucks" in it, and the Mooch was a foul-mouthed son of a biscuit. My favorite was when he said that he wasn't trying to suck his own cock, not like Steve Bannon. That's a very apt description of Bannon, the best I've ever heard. I wish the Mooch would turn his profanity to the rest of the Trump assholes.

Make no mistake. The Mooch is still a terrible person. There's a reason Trump hired him, after all. But now the Mooch is living off of trashing his former boss. I think that's a fine endeavor. And I like that he claims Trump knew all about Project 2025 and, in fact, put 85 people into the project. Now Trump "disowned" them because the Project wasn't polling very well. Heh.

"I know how this man thinks," the Mooch said. And it looks like he has a pretty good point. Usually I try to analyze quotes from news articles here, but I think I'm just going to copy and paste this one. It's just too good not to:

Scaramucci discussed the possibility of Trump quitting the race. Citing party insiders, including senators whom he is in touch with, he said they signaled that they tolerated Trump because they wanted to stay in power. They apparently feel Trump is not their cup of tea because of the way he handles himself.

“Some of these people have suggested to me, particularly political insiders, he does not want to go to jail,” Scaramucci said, adding that the number one reason for him to run is to get the Supreme Court to give him broader immunity against his court cases.

if he drops in the poll number, he could figure out a way to cut a deal, said Scaramucci. The businessman doesn’t think his former boss will receive a pardon but thinks he could go to the governors of New York and Georgia and ask that his sentence be commuted.

Scaramucci said Trump could cite health issues as the reason and designate someone like Nikki Haley or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“There’s a pass for him if he drops in the polls and the predictive markets shoot up and he starts to panic. There’s a pass for him to get out of the race, blame it on a health issue, cut a deal and avoid jail,” he said.

Wow. Holy fucking shit. I always figured Trump was the sort of man to roll the dice and see what happens. That's how he's survived so far. But the Mooch makes a very good point about Trump wanting to avoid jail. That's a pretty good way to avoid getting sent to the slammer.

The Mooch had one more thing to add. He posted on Squitter: "Trump psychologically is coming to grips with losing this election. He is growing darker as a result of it." I hope that's true. Nothing would please me greater than to have him scream, Cobra Commander-style, "RETREAT!" while fleeing and throwing Rudy at us as a distraction so he can get away. I can easily see him pulling a Greg Stillson at the end of The Dead Zone. Very easily.

I doubt that Trump and his pack of hench-weirdos are going to go away anytime soon, but if the Mooch is right, and he could very well be, then I look forward to thinking about Trump only when we get his obituary.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #909: PRESERVE ELMHURST

 A while back I started noticing these green signs all over my hometown. They say, in white lettering, PRESERVE ELMHURST. I wondered what they meant by that. For much of my adult life I have watched the Elmhurst I knew and loved be torn down only to be replaced by soulless McMansions and corporate designed fabrications. They couldn't possibly mean that, could they? I mean, why bring it up now when Elmhurst has been . . . what's the opposite of decimated? And I mean that by the classical definition, as in, to destroy one's forces by one-tenth. Because the one-tenth in this case is the Elmhurst that remains.

And then the ugliness reared its head. And in this day and age you have to wonder. Do they mean, keep Elmhurst white? Elmhurst is mostly a nice place to live, but there's been quite a bit of racism in the past. Or maybe they want to keep Elmhurst hetero? Maybe they have a dislike of pronouns? When white people start talking about protecting heritage . . . you see where this is going.

For some reason it kept slipping my mind, but I finally had the chance to look into it today. Much to my relief it is not any of that nonsense from the previous paragraph. It is, puzzlingly, the thing from the first paragraph. Preserve Elmhurst, I suspect, is too little too late. It was started by the teardown of a nearly 100-year-old house. I get that. I want historic things to be preserved, too. But the fact of the matter is, Elmhurst has never been interested in preserving anything (except maybe the Glos Mansion), and there is no reason to develop such an interest now. The people who run the city want Downtown Elmhurst to be Chicago, Jr., and the rest of the city to be Hyde Park. They're not going to let some century-old house stand in the way of commerce and making sure it's impossible to live in Elmhurst without at least earning a six-figure salary.

Maybe if we started this twenty-five years ago, we could have had a chance. It's too late now. Too much money has been spent to go back. One thing I do know, though: Elmhurst's excess will eventually catch up to it, and a lot of those McMansions are gonna wind up empty. The ones that don't burn down for the insurance, that is.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #908: IS IT TIME AGAIN?

 This morning I went into the fridge to get my usual Monster energy drink. I realized I only had two left, just enough to get me through the rest of my work week. I've been toying with the idea of quitting caffeine again, and now would be a good opportunity to try again, but I'm not entirely sure.

Printers Row was a little difficult for me this year. Maybe it's just me getting older, or maybe it's the horrible fucking year of shit I've had, but the lit fest wore me out this year. For the first time ever I didn't feel like going for the second day. Caffeine helped me survive. I should have been thrumming with energy, but I felt low and tired and exhausted.

In October I'll be at Authorcon IV. It's the first con I've done in a long time. Back in the day I was always high energy, but I was also drunk all the time. If the effect of Printers Row was that bad, I'm not sure how I'll survive an actual 3-day convention without caffeine.

By the way, just so we're on the same page, a while ago I mentioned that I was going to try to quit Caffeine Free Diet Coke. I did! Instead of getting a couple of 12 packs every week, I now only get myself a Coke Zero for Wednesday nights and a regular Coke for Saturday nights. Just regular bottles, not a liter or anything. That's pretty astounding, all things considered.

I wondered if maybe I could quit caffeine and then just charge back into it full force in October, but that doesn't sound like a good idea. I think I'm just going to hold off for now and give it a shot when I come back home.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #907: ALL RIGHT, LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN

 OK, so last night I was fried from a lousy day. Work sucked as it always does after a Printers Row weekend, but it was extra awful yesterday. I had my worst Monday performance ever at my square job. I didn't even get half of my quota. So by the time I was ready to write GF I was more than a little frustrated.

The main source of my frustration, though, was my topic. I'd planned on calling it BIBLICAL PROPHECIES . . . EXPLAINED! I was going to take a bunch of so-called prophecies from the Bible and explain them for what they really are: BULLSHIT. I was then going to go into detail on the prophecies which *supposedly* came true and then debunk those. Which is easy. Oftentimes these prophecies are written after the fact. But it's the Bible, so it doesn't necessarily *need* to be beholden to facts. That's a lot of research, and the terms of my search weren't great. It took me a while to get that info, and then I realized that, while this is indeed a bit, there is one argument any nitwit could make to defeat my tongue-in-cheek column. Because the "well, actually . . ." crowd doesn't care. Per their interests, jokes must be 100% accurate. If not, they will peck it to death like homicidal hummingbirds. Did you know that Gore Vidal's LINCOLN was trashed by, not literary critics, but historians? Despite the fact that the words "a novel" are in bold on the cover? Historians should think twice before evaluating art professionally, and pedants have no business critiquing jokes.

All the same if I said--even jokingly--that Bible prophecies did *not* come true, all someone would have to say is one word: YET.

They don't see that as batshit crazy. They view it as having faith. The Book of Revelation is insane. I think Hunter S. Thompson called the author a "king-hell dope fiend," and that sounds spot on. But let's set that aside for the moment. This book depicts how we will go through a bunch of horrible shit before Jesus is allowed his kingdom, and we all live happily ever after. Except for the losers in Hell, of course.

History is a set of agreed-upon facts, so it's impossible to say what really happened in Biblical times. A lot of Bibles put Jesus' quotes in red or some similar way of setting his Truth apart from merely "the truth." Which implies that what Jesus says--even though we have no way of knowing for sure he said those things--is more important than what the rest of the Bible says.

If that is the case, the events of Revelation should have happened before the last apostle died. Witness Matthew 16:28:

"Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

Keep in mind, Matthew never met Jesus. Of the four gospel authors, only John knew Jesus. So how does Matthew know what Jesus said? He was told? Ever play telephone? Perhaps he had a time machine. Or maybe he was doing a cover version of John's gospel?

The Bible is a book written by madmen, curated by power-hungry bureaucrats. Which means there is NO FUCKING POSSIBLE WAY to confirm the truth of the more mundane passages of the Bible. (Meaning, the stuff that might have actually happened, not the weird parable shit.) So if the faithful want to say the prophecies haven't come true YET, then let's not just nitpick. Let's go whole hog and dismiss the Bible as a poorly written fantasy novel.

But I much prefer jokes. So . . .

BIBLICAL PROPHECIES . . . EXPLAINED! It's all bullshit. Surprise!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #906: HERE'S AN ANNOYING THING

 I thought of writing about Printers Row tonight, but that's what my newsletter is for. News. Instead, here is a horrifying and annoying revelation I had this evening when I got home from work.

I don't have much stuff left over in my GF notebook, and almost all of it requires a good deal of research. What the fuck? Why am I giving myself homework to write these things? That's not fun, especially for something that is designed to be written just before bed, so it's short enough for someone to get through it before they, also, go to bed.

I had an idea for tonight's column, and I found myself sitting down for a half an hour without having written Word One of this thing, looking around online for things I needed to talk about for the topic. I even found a use for some old notes I'd written to myself a few months ago. But holy fuck, it suddenly became more trouble than it was worth. I'm starting to wonder if I should write the ones with research needs earlier in the day, or maybe chip away at it as I find more info to use.

The thing that aggravated me the most, though, is that nearly all of these ideas are better suited toward the end of this election cycle as a last minute reminder to be wary of who you're voting for. Fuckssake, this year we had a guy with a dead worm in his brain running for president. Thank fuck he dropped out, and I hope that Cabinet position continues to elude him.

I'm going to think about this more tomorrow. I hope. It's gonna suck if I write five of these this week, and they're all about *not* writing a column . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS BREAK

 It just occurred to me that not everyone who reads my GF columns also reads my newsletter. In case you missed it yesterday, I'm taking a break from writing this week, and that includes GF. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the meantime I'm preparing for Printers Row this upcoming weekend. If you're in Chicago, come say hi.