GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #939: HOW WOULD YOU DO?

 This election is almost over. Thank fuck. Next week Harris will win, and this goddam cycle will be over. We'll have to make our peace with Trump whining about another rigged election for the next four years (unless we luck out and he has a heart attack), but we've dealt with that before. That should be nothing new, and he'll be easy to ignore.

The last couple of GFs were pretty intense, so let's take it down a few notches. Instead, let's find out how you would do running for president. Well, not really. Financial Times came up with an election game that's kind of silly. The rules are stupid, and the game isn't representative of the actual process, so it's not going to answer the question in the title tonight. But if you're bored, why not give it a shot?

Here you go. I scored 162,000-ish out of 191,000-ish. Not great, in other words, even though I won a lot of those battleground states. I'm pretty sure you've got to get a perfect score if you're going to win, but that's not likely.

Good luck. Don't take any guff from the swine.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #938: A LAUNDRY LIST OF LOSERS

 In most countries the best and brightest go into politics. Here in the US they go into business. To quote Gore Vidal, "Why be a senator when you can buy Congress?" No, our politics attract the dumbest and the dullest. Take a look at who gets elected. They're all fuckin' stupid. They're dedicated to agendas for immediate change, but they're not capable of thinking far enough ahead. They don't think of the consequences for their actions. They only care that they did something. Let history figure out if it was good, just so long as they're remembered. But their worst feature is their devotion to traditional family values. (One man, several wives and a bunch of concubines?) They can't adapt to change.

Pop quiz, hotshot. Who was the last *great* president we had?

Biden? The jury's out still, but I'm doubtful. Trump? Don't make me laugh. Obama? He was mediocre and business as usual. Bush II? He was a nightmare. Clinton? He's a horrible person, but he was a good president. Not great, though. Bush I? He was the embodiment of a facepalm. Reagan? He was an actively shitty president who sold us out to our corporate overlords, but because he knew how to deliver a line (when will Hollywood stay out of politics?), so no one noticed. Because of him we have the current housing crisis, which is actually a *money* crisis, but . . . not now. Focus.

Carter? He was ineffectual. Ford? He was ho-hum. Nixon? He was a great *politician* but a godawful president. LBJ? He endorsed the American Nightmare(TM). JFK? He could have been our worst president. He wanted to escalate in Vietnam, not deescalate as most think. A lot of people would put him at #1 with a bullet. Him or Lincoln. Instead JFK was pretty but useless. Ike? He was more motivated to golf than to govern. Truman? He fucked us so royally that it took us 40 years to unfuck it, and we technically didn't do it on our own. Special thanks to the Soviet Union for being polite enough to economically collapse, thus letting us win the Cold War.

FDR? Yes. Now we're talking. He was the last great president. He gave us the American Empire even if his successors squandered it for literally nothing. RIP America's Greatness (1945-1950). He was such a great president that he essentially became our dictator. Not our first. That would be Lincoln. (A story for another day!)

Despite this laundry list of losers, we somehow think our presidents know best, that if they weren't smart they wouldn't be in charge. Given 45's excessive stupidity, this is a disturbing thing. Because Trump is worse than ignorant. He is *willfully* ignorant. He's the opposite of Tyrion Lannister: he does not drink and he does not know things.

We all know the quote about those who don't remember history and what they're condemned to do, but what if you *never* knew history, so it's impossible to remember it?

Remember when he said that the Founding Fathers won the Revolution by seizing the airports? That wasn't an isolated incident. The reason he was impeached the first time was because he sought Ukraine's help in finding dirt on Joe Biden's son in exchange for military aid. Col. Alexander Vindman was present for that conversation, and it was he who reported his concerns to the NSC, hence us knowing about it. He told us about a few things that Trump didn't understand about history. Apparently Trump didn't know about WWII:

Retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman mocked the former president on Thursday for what he saw as the Republican’s limited historical knowledge, after Trump seemed to describe just learning about WWII history during a recent campaign stop.

Here's a few other things he has trouble with. He just learned Lincoln was a Republican. He thought Canada burned the White House down and even asked Justin Trudeau about it. And, well, here's a good quote from, of all things, Business Insider:

Merkel explained to Trump at the G20 summit that she participated in antinuclear protests in East Germany in the 1980s and that her colleagues in West Germany opposed stationing US missiles in Europe, the book says. The German leader "patiently and even humorously laid out all of this and how the risk of a US-Soviet nuclear war had been the all-encompassing topic of her youth," Hill writes.

Trump's conversation with Merkel "was the first time" he had "ever listened to the Europeans' perspective on the 1980s and heard why US-Russian arms-control negotiations were important to them as well," the book adds. "It was clear that none of this had ever occurred to him before," it says.

But what I truly like is this quote from John Kelly:

"He leaned over to me and whispered, 'The problem is the president doesn't know any of this,'" Kelly said, according to Hill's book. "He doesn't know any history at all, even some of the basics on the US."

I understand that I'm an oddball. I am not a historian, but whereas most of my fellow Americans have an aversion to the topic, I'm drawn to it. We must not have a president ignorant of history. We had Trump for four years, and we lucked out. He didn't fuck anything up beyond repair. But if he gets his second term, all bets are off. What's he going to do, run for reelection? If he "won" three times, why not go for FDR's record of 4? Or perhaps he can beat it with 5? Could he resist such temptation?

I know this seems petty compared to the other awful shit he's done, but history is more important than most realize. It tells us how we got into this mess, which is helpful when trying to find a way *out* of this mess.

A US president *needs* to know history. Don't put this clown back in the Oval Office.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #937: THE FUCKERY OF RELIGION IN POLITICS

 

I was born in 1978, and Ronald Reagan was the first US president I was aware of. I didn't get interested in politics until Dukakis got his ass kicked by Bush I (shouldn't have gotten into that tank, buddy) in 1988. Gramps was particularly hurt by that one. He really wanted to see a Greek in the Oval Office. His anguish over that election started me down this path.

For me the religious right has always been running the Republican party. It's hard for me to imagine otherwise. As it turns out Barry Goldwater was right. The Christians* took over the Republican party during Reagan's administration, and they've royally fucked conservatives since. All the same, it's crazy that this happened not just in living memory but MY living memory. These horny-for-the-apocalypse nutbags are, as Goldwater suggested, impossible to deal with. "It's my way or the highway" is their way of life. Even worse, most of our laws are "sin laws," ie. these things are illegal because they're sins.

But we've had those laws for a while, which suggests that Christianity had a much heavier hand in law making than one would think, but now they have the Republican party in their mitts, so clearing those laws off the books, as I wish to do, would be impossible. Not "near" impossible. IMPOSSIBLE.

I'm an atheist. Sin does not apply to me. However, if I wanted to suck a dude's dick, that would be illegal in 18 states. Granted, there's a 2003 Supreme Court ruling negating those laws, so I probably wouldn't do serious prison time for sucking cock, but it's times like these that I think about the recent Roe v Wade decision. How easy would it be for them today to throw these sin crimes back to the states? I would do time for SINNING. That may be cause for celebration across the country, but I personally find that unthinkable.

The best argument for kicking the religious right out of the Republican party (as they are not willing to compromise, they don't belong there) is the separation of church and state. If you're wondering where that's canonized for the American people (well, oligarchs, but that's a story for another day), it's in the First Amendment. It says that Congress can't establish an official religion in the US. The direct quote comes from Thomas Jefferson:

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

But the religious right will insist that the Founding Fathers were Christians, therefore the United States is a Christian country. A lot of the Fathers were, indeed, Christian, but not all of them. Aaron Burr, for example, was a self-avowed atheist. (Burr is a Father, whether you like it or not. Plus he did us the great service of killing Hamilton.) Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were mostly reticent on the subject, but there are a few clues. Jefferson claimed to be a Deist, but that doesn't mean he was a Christian. He rejected their beliefs, favoring reason instead of revelation. Franklin claimed also to be a Deist, valuing morals over doctrine. Regardless, those Fathers who were Christians thought the separation of church and state was necessary. That's a huge thing. If they could control themselves, why can't their modern day counterparts?

Look at who the Republicans hate the most. (Setting aside the words "Democrat" and "liberal"  and other party identifiers for the moment.) These fuckers are looking at the LGBTQ+ community as the worst offenders in the land. Man having sex with man? Man changing sex to woman? Man having sex with any gender and not just his own or the "opposite"? None of these things must come to pass, as far as the religious right is concerned, but let's also throw in anyone who isn't white, too. God help them if they're not US citizens.

I get the Ham thing leading to slavery, hence America's built in racism, but I can't think of a commandment for the life of me requiring the faithful to be US citizens. I can't even find a reference to the United States in the Mediocre Book. How many people today believe that Jesus was a US citizen? And a Republican to boot! A *white* Republican! The only kind God approves of.

Reagan was an evangelical, meaning he believed in all that Judgment Day nonsense. He had a vested interest in forcing Armageddon's hand. There is some evidence showing that he would totally be cool with fast tracking the End Times, and he could have easily done this. He didn't, for some reason. Maybe self control got the better of him? But do we really want someone who looks forward to the apocalypse to have the nuclear codes? Especially now that we're on the brink of World War III?

The religious right has been rabid about defending their own freedoms while doing their level best to deny the freedoms of others. Isn't there a commandment telling them to love their neighbors? They don't think that "neighbors" only means people living next to them, do they? Or are they mixing up the definitions of love and hate?

Perhaps they should read their own Bible. This passage from I John might help:

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." I John 4:20

But more importantly it's impossible to maintain the millennia-long existence of those rules, hence our need to not have them on our books. Here's James SA Corey on the nature of tradition. From Mercy of the Gods:

"Preservation is irrational because it glorifies what cannot be. The universe is in constant change from the smallest measures to the greatest. To cling to one state of being over any others is foolish and futile and doomed."

Gore Vidal says that America was great for precisely five years. They're probably not the five you're thinking of. (Stay tuned tomorrow night for more on that!) But tradition can only be maintained by keeping oneself stupid. That's a strange attitude to have. Pretty good for authority figures, though. Stupid people are easy to govern.

Is that what Trump really means by "Make America Great Again"?

*DISCLAIMER: I don't have a problem with Christians or any religion. People have the right to worship as they see fit. Whatever brings you peace in this fucked up world of fuck. My problem begins when someone uses their religion as a weapon against others. Those are the people I'm talking about in this GF. It's a good thing I don't like to suck dick, because . . . well, just keep reading. It'll make sense shortly.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #936: SOMETHING TO RESEARCH

 As I've been cleaning out my house, I've been making discoveries here and there. Finding artifacts from 100+ years ago, for instance. Discovering that Grandma, who I have never seen read anything other than a newspaper, not only had a subscription to Woman's Day in the 'Eighties, she also had a few books! And it seems that she had authors she liked! The things I found most were pictures of people I did not recognize. I was able to surmise who some of them were (and confirmed I was right 75% of the time via my aunt, the only person older than me on my mom's side), but a lot of them are a mystery to me. I put these pictures aside, planning one day to find out who they were. If they were my ancestors, it would be useful information to have. I know what my great-grandparents looked like, and there are a few pictures in there that might be of my great-great-grandparents. I've been scouring their faces, trying to find a trace of something that would eventually become one of my features.

But yesterday I unearthed a box that said it was full of unused Christmas cards. Sure enough, that's what comprised the top layer. But as I dug deeper I discovered the receiving end of a correspondence my grandmother had with someone named Bessie. I have a sneaking suspicion it's her sister. I found further evidence of another Bessie, who I believe to be my grandma's aunt. But that's just me glancing through these letters. There are other letters, and it's helpful when they are addressed to, say, Aunt Shirley and Uncle John. I can easily figure out who they are. But the ones from the prolific Bessie are addressed to Shirley and John. Never John and Shirley, so I have to think she's a blood relative of Grandma's, or a close friend. But if she's named after the other Bessie, that's probably an indication of relation. And then there's another letter from someone named Barb simply addressed to Shirl. I only ever heard Gramps call her that. He also called her Squirrley when he was feeling playful.

I love a good mystery, and this one is pretty tantalizing for me. I've been gathering pieces of the puzzle and putting them with the pictures. One day, when I actually have leisure time (hahahahaha), I'm going to go through the mountain of evidence and solve this mystery (or series of mysteries, more like).

I know my dad's side of the family pretty well. I can't tell you how many aunts and uncles I have on that side, much less how many legions of cousins I have. My mom's side is shrouded with mystery. I have never met anyone from Gramps's family or Grandma's family. Never. I know the two of them. I know my mom and my aunt. I know my three brothers on this side, and I know my two cousins and their families. Nothing beyond that. I just know what my grandparents told me, and I recall them talking about their siblings occasionally, and when I was a kid they even traveled to visit said siblings. Every once in a while one of them would die, and they'd go to a funeral, but I was never along for these trips. I wonder why.

I know a few things about Gramps's family, but I know virtually nothing about Grandma's. I know her mom is buried next to her, that she died shortly before I was born. I know her family history is a mishmash of a bunch of stuff, but she was mostly English and German. I know Grandma's maiden name was Cota, and that her mom's maiden name was Friend (this last part gleaned from her birth certificate, another of my interesting finds). And that's it.

You all know how much I love to research, but it's a rarity that I'm doing research on, well, myself. The Bruni family has tons of lore, but the Cota and Kopoulos families? I didn't find out until two years ago that Gramps's name was Americanized. The actual name is Kyreakopoulos. That changed when his parents and uncle came to America.

(Funny side note. On Gramps's birth certificate, it says his dad's name was Nicholas Kyriakopoulos. I thought that was the actual name until I came upon his uncle's work ID and saw, in his handwriting, Kyreakopoulos. I've decided, Watson, what with my superhuman and brilliant sense of deduction (powered, I assure you, by a seven-per-cent solution), that I should trust Gramps's Uncle George over whoever filled out the birth certificate at the hospital.)

It suddenly occurs to me that I probably have two vast families related to me, and I have no idea who any of them are. Then again, how much do I know about my Grandma Laurette's parents? Or my Grandpa Lon's? My stepmom is big into genealogy, or at least she used to be. It was a hobby of hers at least the last time I was in Vegas, but that was almost a decade ago. I'll bet she has some info. Come to think of it, she's my second stepmom. I wonder whatever happened to my first. I know why she and Dad got divorced, but I only knew her when I was a child. It's possible she's still alive. I'd be curious to track her down sometime.

It's something to research, and I'm always happy when I have something to research.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #935: KILL LIST

 

Imagine you get a call from a phone number you don't recognize. It's verified, so it's probably not a scam. Since you're not me (I never answer phone calls I don't recognize), you probably answer it. The person on the other line tells you that someone is trying to kill you.

What do you do?

The person calling you is named Carl Miller, and he's a journalist turned podcaster. He uncovered a dark website where you can pay a hitman to kill someone for you. For a pretty hefty fee. And the people who made requests weren't shy about handing over tens of thousands of dollars for this murder service. (Or is it Murdr? Our modern times have felt it necessary to wage war on the letter "e." Tumblr, Flickr, Scribd, Grindr, Crumbl, etc.)

A few years back a hacker got into the webpage and discovered an Excel spreadsheet with 175 targets on it. The people who request such services have to do their own research, so they add everything they can to that spreadsheet, not just the targets' names. The hitman needs photos, addresses, jobsites, writing samples, routines, etc., so if you want someone dead, you have to be serious about researching that person. The hitman takes only Bitcoin. And often times there are questions from the customers. To quote: 

“How much bitcoin should I pay?” “Tell me the execution time in advance – I can’t be there.” “I would just like this person to be shot and killed. Where, how and what with does not bother me at all.” You get the idea.

It's pretty startling that it's so easy to kill someone without getting your hands dirty. There's just one problem for these murderous muses: the hitman doesn't exist. This guy, Yura, just takes your money and puts you off. When you ask why it hasn't been done yet, he's got a great list of excuses, as described here: 

“In each case,” said Miller, “the hitmen got lost, they flew to the wrong place, they lost their gun, a new gun had to be acquired — in every case Yura was trying to get more money out of the user, saying things like, ‘We did not know the target is being protected, therefore we need a military-trained assassin, which will cost another $15,000’.

“As soon as people complained about the site not delivering murders, he would dump the brand and set up a new one, like a snake shedding its skin.” Yura even set up a hitman-for-hire “comparison” website, on which he warned users about scam sites and recommended others — namely, his — that he claimed achieved consistent results.

Yura is a sly man. Ultimately, when a paid-for hit doesn't happen, what is the customer going to do? Turn Yura over to the Better Business Bureau? It's an effective way to get tons of money pretty quickly.

But that's where the fun ends and where the true horror begins. What do you think someone who has paid a lot of money for a murder is going to do when said murder doesn't happen? That's 175 people who are gravely in danger. So Miller did the reasonable thing and started contacting people on the kill list and warning them that someone is out to murder them.

Say you get that call. What do you do?

So far Miller's actions have led to 32 convictions and have sent people to prison for a cumulative 150 years. Not bad for a journalist. See? Journalists are still important to our society.

If you want to get into some of the details on this news story, check out this article. It's one of the three I used in putting this column together. If, that is, you want some pretty sinister examples of the kill list and its failure to live up to its customers' expectations. It'll make you wonder if you've ever pissed off someone enough to seriously have you killed . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #934: A DAY SOAKED IN YOUTH

 Today was the perfect type of day. A sunny day, but also a cool day. You can feel the chill against you, but you can also feel the heat of sunshine on your face, vanquishing it in an instant. Your body feels flush, luxuriant. It's a day soaked in youth.

It brings me back to the end of high school and the beginning of college. I was in shape and attractive enough that gay dudes would hit on me. I had the world ahead of me. I just had to get through the drudgery of school, and then the real world could begin. Get that backup job, but put everything I've got into writing. If I keep getting rejects, well, then, uh, fuck. I'm just not trying hard enough. So I tried harder. Always harder.

It's the kind of day that I would spend in the wilderness. I walked everywhere back in those days, never taking a ginger step because I had two perfectly good and healthy legs, all ten toes present and accounted for. I walked difficult trails at forest preserves for fun. If I was lucky I had a lady friend with me. It didn't happen often, but it did happen more frequently than my high school self would have thought. A cool and sunny day was a lot more fun when you had a warm hand in yours. Or even better if you found a particularly abandoned stretch of forest . . .

The leaves finally changed color and sacrificed their lives for my aesthetic enjoyment. There was a crunch in my step today as I made my way through the parking lot to get my last haircut until spring. As I walked back to the car I felt the cold breath of our mother on my freshly exposed neck, and I traveled in time once again to those days when the crunch of the leaves beneath your feet was fresh and new. Even though at the ripe old age of nineteen you're an old hand. A very old hand, indeed. I already knew the secrets of the world. What else could I possibly need to know?

Never aware that while innocence might be the winged cherub in midflight, experience is a Neanderthal with a big club. It always lurks in the shadows, waiting for the moment to beat some dark and terrible knowledge into you, something that eradicates some previously cherished piece of piece of you.

I came back home, and just as I was about to go back inside I turned back to the world and felt the warmth, the chill. The stuffy house behind me waited, old and decrepit while the sprightly new day danced in the glow of forgotten ecstasy newly discovered.

To quote a great man, "The world has moved on. O Discordia!"

Nostalgia twists the knife, and you feel an ugly disgust with your past self. That motherfucker'd better appreciate what he has. He has a lot more than he thinks. Knowing, having lived it, that the motherfucker in question did not appreciate what he had. He didn't until he started to lose those things. The second rule of Thermodynamics.

The grief for a world lost to time sinks its fangs in, and you suddenly hate the world around you. You want it to perish because goddammit, this can't be the way things are supposed to be. Nothing works, and everything is getting worse. My sacred world was destroyed to pave the way for this ghastly monstrosity?!?!?!?! And then the manifesto starts writing itself. What I would do if they put me in charge . . .

You can't let that happen. You just have to remember that this is the way of the universe. The kids living today will mourn these days when they are adults. And their kids will do the same, as will their kids and so on. The wheel turns. The pendulum swings. What goes around, comes around. We have so many clichés for this, I think, because we have ALL noticed this trend whether we admit to it or not, and we're trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole in our attempt to make sense of it all.

I went back inside, into the stuffy house and away from the youthful vigor of the day. I wanted to go out for a walk and cursed my bad foot, knowing that my days of even going around the block are over. To quote another great man, "So it goes."

There is one thing I'm truly grateful for: humanity's ability to remember so powerfully. It wasn't a thought or an image or a sound that sent me back in time. It was a *feeling* so perfect it can't ever be replicated by the machines we're desperately training for . . . what, exactly? But I could feel the world so strongly in myself that it overwhelmed me. For a moment while I was crossing the parking lot I saw an old Cadillac, and there was no one around looking at their phones. No other cars. No sounds from the present that would seem alien in the past, and I was there. 1999. A world far from perfect, but a world I at least found acceptable. I didn't feel torn apart by everything like I do today. My mind has never been a peaceful place, but there were times when it was a lot less of a storm. The waters were manageable.

But we have those memories, and we have ways to be teleported to them. And that is one of my favorite parts about being alive.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #933: VERTIGO DIED, LONG LIVE VERTIGO

 

I've told the story so many times you're probably sick of it, but for some of my newer readers (welcome!), when I was a kid I did not like superhero comics. They were all right, but I was more interested in GI Joe and Transformers comics. When they ended Transformers I felt betrayed and gave up on comics. Fast forward to my senior year in high school when my friend, CJ (who since has worked for Universal, I believe, as a model and is currently a stand-up comedian), put the trade of Evil Ernie: Youth Gone Wild into my hands, and suddenly I was back into comics. I have every Chaos! Comic ever (except for the fake ones Dynamite made), but my favorite publisher in those days was DC's imprint, Vertigo. Preacher was the second comic CJ put into my hands, and from there I took off with a heavy interest in the things Vertigo published.

Then Vertigo died, and DC tried doing Black Label books for adult readers, but the problem was, the Black Label books were all superhero books, and I still, to this very day, dislike superhero comics. There are exceptions, like Watchmen (and I don't know what the rest of the world is talking about, but as far as I'm concerned Watchmen ended in the 'Eighties) and The Boys. I gleefully own the Azzarello Batman Black Label book where they showed Batman's batdick (which they edited out of subsequent reprints), but that's where my enjoyment of the Black Label stuff ends.

Lo! and behold! DC is bringing Vertigo back! I thought that was great news, even if the titles they revealed don't look all that great. One is a DC reprint, which does not speak highly of this great return.

Remember yesterday when I posted a link to Mark Millar interviewing Garth Ennis? It's super long, and I posted it only for those interested in what anyone else would consider a slog. Hidden in that interview, however, is Garth Ennis's assessment of why Vertigo was initially killed.

If you don't know, DC is owned by Warner Bros. Warner, ever hungry for more comic book movies, wanted to raid DC's back issues for movie ideas. Some Warner exec stumbled upon these great books being published by Vertigo and wanted to make movies out of them. Except for one problem: DC actually doesn't own the rights to those books. They are creator owned. That generation of comics writers actually listened to Alan Moore and insisted on owning their own stories.

Someone explained this to the exec, who then responded, "Then why are we publishing these books? Fuck 'em. Get rid of the imprint." And so Vertigo died.

Which makes utter sense. I found myself talking with my comics guys about this today when a fellow customer mentioned that they were reviving Vertigo. Before I could even think, these words were out of my mouth: "I'll bet they're not going to be creator owned."

That first title, as I said, is a reprint of a DC book. DC books are definitely owned by DC. The second title is a continuation of that first title. Things aren't looking good, folks. I'm going to keep my eye out for other books they announce. If they, too, are not creator owned, then resurrecting Vertigo will be a waste of everyone's time.

There's a reason I don't read DC or Marvel books. I think they suck. I have zero interest in Batman beating the shit out of the mentally ill. I have zero interest in the teenage jerk off fantasies that Spider-Man embodies. I have even less interest in two-fisted battles across the galaxy. I parodied that nonsense with the war at the end of And Jesus Came Back. I have a character using the Empire State Building as a club, for fuckssake.

There are exceptions of course. For the last few months I've read a Marvel book, but it was Get Fury. Neither Nick Fury nor Frank Castle are superheroes, though. It ended recently, so I'm back to reading zero Marvel books. I'm also reading a DC book, but it's Hellblazer: Dead in America, and I've been following John Constantine's adventures for two decades plus. That may have ended today, though. What we got in issue ten could be an ending or a to-be-continued. Hard to say.

I'll be interested in seeing *who* wants to work with the new Vertigo. I don't think I'm going to see any of the usual creatives I follow, but if I do, then maybe I'm wrong in my assessment. More likely I'll see their names attached to Image projects, though. Time will tell.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #932: WHAT'S THE NAME FOR IT?

 There's this thing that's been happening lately where a prospective hire gets interviewed for a job, knocks it out of the park, and then on the first day of their new job, someone completely different shows up claiming to be the person who was interviewed. Unsurprisingly at a lot of corporations they get away with it because who checks on these things? But bosses are starting to notice. Now that they've noticed, they're starting to investigate and find others who were doing the same thing.

I'm just sad that the bosses are figuring it out and firing these people. One would think that in a capitalist society, the guy who works the hardest, even if it includes cheating (sometimes *especially* if it includes cheating), is the guy who should get the job, right?  Then again, I'm still murky on the rules of capitalism. I believe that drug dealers are the greatest capitalists alive, and all that gets them is prison time.

Regardless, I scanned the news articles I read about this phenomenon, and it strikes me that there isn't a word for this practice. Not even for convenience's sake. Well, this is probably a new thing. No one's gotten around to it yet.

Except I searched a little more and found out this goes back to the Covid era, 2021 to be specific. After four years of this happening, we should have a word for it. I thought about this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long, trying to think of something clever. Nothing has yet to present itself, so I'm going to recommend that we call this process the "interdupe." It is to be encouraged. The bosses no longer give a fuck about reading our resumes. Why should we make things easy on them? Corporations take so much from us. Fuck 'em. Let's take something back. It galls me to link to Buzzfeed, but they describe some methods you might want to think about using yourself, so here it is.

A word of advice? When you're looking for an interduper, try to find someone who at least resembles you. The bosses aren't *that* stupid.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #931: NOW I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE GOD!

 

Earlier this evening, after more than a week of not eating solid food, I had a meal. A real meal. A cheeseburger, to be precise. After days and days of gnawing hunger I felt like God. For the first time in a long time I felt full instead of the somewhat warm feeling I get with "eating" broth.

Each bite of that cheeseburger was a snapshot in time. Shuffle them and watch it vanish. I nearly felt like filming me eating this thing, bite by sensuous bite, making orgasmic moans to anyone who cared to approach my car while I ate. I got mustard in my beard, but I had more important things to think about: getting this burger inside of me. My mouth felt like one big smear as I chomped down, able to identify each ingredient on its own in the mishmash of bolus in my mouth. The onions. The pickles. Oh my. OH MY.

I chewed every bit to sludge, and I sucked at every juice I found. I pressed the burger to the roof of my mouth to get every ounce of flavor out of it. Take a can of Coke and go back to the Dark Ages. Give that Coke to a peasant. Watch the sheer joy on that peasant's face. That's what I felt today in that McDonald's parking lot. Yes, it was a McDonald's burger, and it was ambrosia shipped direct from Mt. Olympus. By the time I'd swallowed the last of it and wiped my sodden face, I realized I now knew what a foodgasm feels like.

And it was fucking great.

I ate more later, and it was great, but it wasn't quite the same. All in all, I'm just glad that I can eat stuff again.

BOOK SALE

 OK, the post-convention book sale is over. This is what I have available and the prices for each book. I have an asterisk next to the ones that I have in very limited quantities. For shipping, please add $3 for the first book and a dollar for each additional. If I can physically put these books in your hand, we can skip that part. US only. Sorry, everyone else. To make it up to you, let me know, and I'll send you something digital for free.

AND JESUS CAME BACK: $10

BEERS WITH HANK (a tribute anthology for Charles Bukowski)*: $11

BLOOD: $11

THE DOCTOR . . . IS IN (a tribute anthology for Hunter S. Thompson)*: $10

EYE CUTTER: $10

GONZO RISING (a follow up to that tribute to HST)*: $10

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HIERONYMOUS ALOYSIS ZIEGE: $10

POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS: $11

STRIP*: $12

TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE: $10

TALES OF UNSPEAKABLE TASTE: $11

TRAIL OF BLOOD: $12

THESE BEAMS DON'T MELT*: $5. I didn't write this one. My friend, Rosie, did. She gifted me about 30 of them way back when, all signed, to see if they would sell. This is the last one. I may not ever get another one. If you're getting this one on its own, just $1 for shipping should be good.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #930: THE LAST LINCOLN

 

Yeah, I know. That's a lot of small print. It's pretty clear if you zoom in on it. You don't need to if you don't want to. The only interesting part is the larger pull quote. But the headline was correct, on December 24, 1985 the last descendant of Abraham Lincoln died.

It's kind of weird when you think about it. Nearly a quarter of the human race alive right now is descended from Charlemagne. In 2003 it came out that 16M people alive had descended from Genghis Khan. I'm sure there's some overlap, but soon you'll be able to point to just a handful of major historical figures and say we all descended directly from them.

And then you get Lincoln. Beckwith was his great-grandson. One of the most influential people in our history, and his line got wiped out in just a few generations. Gone. To think nothing of Alexander the Great, whose only child had been murdered.

Not that I'm comparing myself to the aforementioned people, but my line ends with me. Probably for the best, all things considered. My mom's line has a few other chances. I have three brothers on that side. They have yet to reproduce (probably also for the best), but they have their whole lives (I hope) before them. My dad's line is going to be in good hands, I think. I have a brother and sister on that side, and my brother has already introduced the next generation.

Such is life, and life is such.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #929: NOTE TO SELF

 

This is going to be more of a note to self than a GF, but I'm putting this here for a reason.

Once upon a time I went to Washington, DC. I was a kid, so I didn't really benefit from it. Some parts looked really cool, but as a city it was kinda run down. I remember seeing the Heart of Dar . . . er, the White House from outside the gate. We were going to take a tour, but they shut down for the day for some reason I no longer recall. (I'm almost certain Reagan was in the White House at the time, but I could be misremembering. It could have been Bush I, but I don't think so.) I also went to the top of the Washington Monument, which was pretty cool. I saw the Jefferson Memorial from afar, and I wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial, but we didn't have the time. Ditto for Arlington.

I've never really cared to go back to Washington, but you never know what the future brings. And here's where you come in.

Now that I know which cemetery Gore Vidal is in, I'd kind of like to see it someday. So on the off chance that I wind up in Washington, and on the off chance that I forget to look Vidal up, I'm going to need someone to remind me of this GF. Please and thank you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #928: JUST ONE MORE THING

 I have just one more thing to say about the medical stuff and the hospital, and then I'm done on the subject for a while.

I said that morphine was my only comfort while I was in the hospital, but that's not entirely true. There is always a moment when I finally come out of my poor-me phase and get up the courage to stay awake. That's when I have to figure out how I'm going to get through the day without going batshit fucking crazy, because there's nothing really to do in the hospital. I read whenever I could, but I went without books that first day because I didn't have any of them until much later. But there is one thing that everyone does there: turn on the TV.

I dislike about 90% of the stuff on TV because I find it all unwatchable dreck. Reality shows and cooking shows and game shows and sitcoms and ugh. Not interested. But they get AMC and FX in the hospital, and they're usually good for something. In fact, I almost accidentally watched an episode of Negan's Friend, Daryl Dixon. I had to turn away because I'm waiting for it to be finished before I get AMC+ for a month to get that and the second season of Interview with the Vampire.

But if all else fails, there's Comedy Central and the 99% certainty that they're running an Office marathon.

They also have Turner Classics, and every once in a while I catch something really interesting there, like The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart. This time I got to catch the last 30 minutes of the first movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, Wings. I've always been curious, and it was a pretty easy movie to follow. It centered around two WWI flying aces who are the bestest of friends. So much so that at first I thought that there might be something between the lines there. I figured, it's a silent picture. Probably not. But then one of them gets mortally wounded and is dying, and the other is clutching him tightly, saying what they have to say to each other before it's too late, their faces inches away from each other. And then, just as the one guy dies, he kisses the other. It wasn't a mere friendly kiss, but it wasn't exactly a snogfest, either. Holy shit, that's pretty good for its time. But then the guy who survived goes back to the States and marries his girl back home for a happy ending. What a rollercoaster that was!

That was at night when they usually show the silent pictures. During the day I lucked out with a Dirty Jobs marathon. I usually hate this kind of shit, but it truly is fascinating what a lot of people have to do so us surface dwellers don't have to even know about it. It helps that Mike Rowe goes into every dirty job with the same attitude I would: tell a lot of jokes, self-deprecating if possible, and hope for the best. I watched him check Canadian geese for Avian flu. By catching the goose, hiding its head behind its wing, rolling it up and sticking a Q-tip into its butthole. I didn't get to see if he had to castrate the lamb with his teeth because that's when I got my morphine shot, but I watched him watch the guy who usually does this job, uh, do it.

And of course I ran out of other stuff, so it was back to ol' reliable, The Office. It was early in the show, too, so Michael Scott was at his most Michael Scott-ish. (Insert Michael Scott doing his Sean Connery impression.)

All right. That's all out of my system for now. I'll have something completely different tomorrow. A political rant? A history lesson? A true life story? Who knows? But it won't be about my foot or the hospital. Oh! And to make sure my numbering lines up, again I'll be posting on Saturday night. And, provided I haven't died in a horrible glazing accident, I'll have Sunday morning's newsletter for you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #927: THE FOOT

 It occurred to me that I've never posted pictures of my bad foot. This is going to be a little disgusting, so if feet gross you out, you might want to skip this one. My feet are exceptionally gross.

I'm sure you can tell which of my feet is the bad one even though my good one has fewer toes. You will also be able to surmise that I will never be the object of affection for a foot fetishist. I show that for comparison. Let's remove the bandage.

Look at that horrible lump I've been walking on for years. Now you see why I get around on a leg brace, which is designed to make the heel of my foot take the brunt of my weight when walking. None of the weight goes on the first half of my foot, which is possibly how I got by so long without losing said foot.

We're about to get really gross now, because here's that hole in my foot.

Yeeeeeeeeeikes. You can see why it's so reluctant to close itself. That patch of dead skin it's on is really difficult to heal. I can see new skin through the hole, but it might never reach the surface because of this patch, which can't be removed without a full amputation.

OK, one more picture, and then I'm done.

In case you were wondering, my dead toe is the second from the bottom. It doesn't look too bad for a dead digit, but you can tell it's a little different from the other toes if you look closely. If, for some insane reason, you wish to do so.

Now that you're more familiar with my feet than you ever cared to be, nighty-night. Or, as Gramps used to say, "Good night, sleep tight, pleasant dreams and all that kinda gas." Except he pronounced it "gazz."

Here's something I've never told anyone before. At least, I don't think I have. There's a great big patch of my thirties that can't be accounted for. But my mom used to say the same thing to me every night while tucking me in as a child: "Bonsoir, mon ami. Je'taime, John Paul Bruni." She was a rabid Francofile.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #926: LIQUID VICODIN

 

You might remember from last night that I mentioned having a liquid opioid for pain since I can't take pills. I took the recommended dose, and I'm impressed. It's vicodin, in case you were wondering.

It surprised me by not taking effect quickly. I assumed that since it was liquid it would work faster. I remember thinking, maybe I should take more, but the doctor told me this is highly addictive, and he confirmed that I do, indeed, have enough to addict me. I doubted it at the time, but he also gave me Naloxone just in case of OD. Maybe he wasn't fucking around, after all. He hedged his bets. So I left it as is.

When it hit, it hit pretty hard. I've had many opioids throughout my life, and of those available to the public with a prescription? This is easily the best. The next step up, in my experience, is getting a morphine injection, which the public would have to be in the hospital to get. It killed my pain, but the rush is fairly intense. I'm not going to fuck around with this. It's potent, and I already want more of it. In fact, I may keep this aside for when I get another bout of my sickness. I have a sneaking suspicion this might stop such a bout.

I took another dose this morning because my guts were still troublesome, and it was a sensation I very much enjoyed, so I'm going to see if I can muscle through the rest of this pain. It should be gone by now, but I'm guessing the torn esophagus had something to do with it. I also have liquid Tylenol, which may work better for now.

But it's good to know I have this stuff in my back pocket.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #925: THE HORRORS PERSIST

 Printers Row: Please don't make me get sick before I go. Authorcon IV: Please don't make me get sick before I go (or even while I'm there). Last Wednesday: Shit, I think I picked up a cold from the con. Friday: OH FUCK IT'S MY SICKNESS NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

After about seven hours of puking my guts out every 15 minutes and constant pain, I decided to admit defeat and finally go to the ER, where they went through the usual rounds. They haven't hospitalized me for this illness for a while, so I didn't expect them to keep me overnight. But after they sent me for a CT scan (the first of two) the ER doc came back and said, rather cheerfully, "Your scan looks great! Except you tore a hole in your esophagus from puking too hard!"

Well shit. Thanks for that. They thought air was getting through the hole, but no water. They decided to admit me. No food. No water. I can't even let water get close to my mouth. I was hungry, and my tongue scratched like sandpaper across the roof of my mouth. My throat ached, begging for anything. I'd have taken a hot load from John Holmes himself if that was all that was available. My only comfort was morphine, and they were not stingy with it.

(They took mercy on me and got me a cup of water with a sponge to swab my mouth. I couldn't drink it, though.)

But as they were asking the usual questions, and the nurses were fretting about me as they always do, they asked about my leg brace. I then found myself explaining that I have a hole in my foot from stepping on broken glass a couple of months ago. I got it all out, and my podiatrist x-rayed me to confirm that. But now they were worried about it again. They sent me for an MRI, and wouldn't you know it? There wasn't any broken glass, but there *was* a lot wrong with my foot. They didn't scan the heel or ankle, so I still have to do that to learn the final verdict, but they told me about how I've been walking on bone shards for who knows how long? Also, one of my toes died. The bone near the base is just about detached, and I know when that happened. I started working out again, but while doing leg exercises, I heard a pop in that foot. I can't feel anything there, so I took it very seriously and quit working my legs. Now it would seem that lifting weights is also out. I must keep as much pressure off my foot as possible for the rest of my life. I shouldn't even be walking on it, apparently.

The hole itself is doing all right, though. Not great, but not as bad as the rest of my foot. My podiatrist made it sound like I might be losing my foot this week. He's already taken two of my toes (on my other foot, so if I lose the bad one I'll be down to three toes). I know he's hungry for the rest of them. (I wrote a story about the first amputation. I have yet to collect "Welcome to Middle-Age NOW GIVE ME YOUR TOE!", but you can read it here if you wish.)

He had a vacation coming up, so he left me in the hands of his colleague. She looked at the MRI and then at my bad foot and determined that nothing could be determined at this time. But she said it looked stable, and that the other MRI would be needed, but this isn't an emergency situation. It will be somewhere down the line (hopefully three days after the time of my death; wish in one hand . . .), but for now she saw no reason to keep me for the foot. That made me optimistic for the first time in this whole ordeal.

This morning they had me swallow a bunch of barium and took x-rays of it moving through my body. There is no air leak anymore, thank fuck, but I can't have anything solid to eat until next Monday. Clear liquids only in all that time. That sucks, as I am still very hungry, but that first clear liquid "meal" was fucking great. Drinking water again felt great, and I've been instructed to drink a lot of it so the barium doesn't come back and haunt me.

They let me go earlier tonight with a list of doctors to set up appointments with and all of my meds changed from pills to liquids. Shockingly enough I've been given LIQUID FUCKING OPIOIDS. That is what I'll be taking shortly.

The cause of the illness was alcohol. After ignoring medical advice for a decade, I finally quit drinking. I went a year without suffering from this sickness, but it started again in January this year. The docs think it's something called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. Cannabis builds up in your body and must be purged or I'll get sick. It's a little convenient that they're trying to take another drug away from me, but I've been assured I don't have to quit. I just can't ingest weed in any form, flower, edible or even the excellent infused ginger ale I had with me in St. Louis, every day. They've recommended once a week.

For a while there I was pretty sure that my streak was about to end. It's been two years and ninety-two days since my last drink. That was probably my best streak ever, even when I was on the Sobriety Clock during the Tabard Inn days. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm certain I'll drink again. My job is to make sure that day gets put so far off into the future that I might die before it comes. In the hospital I knew that whatever they advised about my foot, I'd ignore it for as long as I possibly could. Then, the day before the amputation, I'd load up on a month's work of whiskey for when I got home after. I'm sure my tolerance has gone remarkably down, and my liver and pancreas are probably in the best shape of my life since I was in college.

We'll have to see how everything goes. For the record, when this year started out I weighed 265. Not my heaviest. That was 306 (and I still managed to get lucky, so not altogether bad). The lowest I've weighed as an adult was in college at 205. My weight is now at 206.

For now I've suffered enough. I'm going to try out this opioid because despite what I told the docs before I left tonight, I still *do* have pain. I lied because I wanted to get the hell out of there. On the pain scale, I'd say I'm at a seven right now. Technically you need to be eight before they give you opioids. All the same, it will be great to get a good night's sleep tonight. This has gone on long enough, so I won't repeat myself on the horrors of trying to sleep in a hospital. For now, goodnight ye kind fuckers, ye.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #924: FAMILY VACATION

 When I was a kid, Gramps would take me and Grandma and my cousin, Erik, on a family vacation. We usually drove down to Springfield, IL, because it was easy. Once we went to Washington, DC, and I remember not being very impressed with our nation's capital. We were going to the White House for a tour, but it was locked down for some reason I no longer recall.

But one year Gramps decided that he would take us to St. Louis to see the Arch. Grandma didn't want to go up because she had many fears, and heights was one of them. Gramps, Erik and I got into the most annoying elevator in the world (you can probably guess as to why). We got to the top, and Erik and I leaned out so we could look out the windows. Gramps didn't have many fears, but every once in a while he got nervous. He was afraid we would fall through I don't know how many feet of steel to our deaths below, so he grabbed the backs of our belts.

That same year he decided to take us to Hannibal, MO, home of Mark Twain because he knew I loved Mark Twain. For the time it was still a little boy's love of adventure. I had yet to get to some of the more interesting of his works. I recently read that after the US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Filipinos just because we could that Mark Twain said we should replace the stars and stripes with a skull and crossbones. Perhaps you see the appeal to me.

Fast forward a few decades, and I'm driving to St. Louis as an adult. I first knew we were getting close because the Arch is so big it's impossible to miss. It's so much bigger than I remembered it to be. Aren't childhood memories the other way around? Things are supposed to be smaller than you remember.

Like the Mississippi River. I remember it being a lot wider, but we drove over the bridge pretty quickly. It seemed reminiscent of the Des Plaines River when you're heading south down 83. The Mississippi didn't seem all that impressive. Maybe when I was a kid we crossed it elsewhere. I don't know.

I thought briefly about going to Hannibal as an adult, but there was no way I had enough time. Not if I wanted to get back home before midnight. I also thought about maybe visiting one of my publishers. Don Noble lives in that area, and it's been ages since I've seen him. Again, I didn't have enough time.

Which is weird because the drive felt a lot shorter than I expected. The trip didn't feel long at all. I picked up my road partner about an hour from home, but after that it didn't feel like three hours. It felt like two, tops. The drive home felt more or less the same. We stopped at Bob Evans, something I haven't done since I was a kid. It was pretty good.

I haven't made up my mind about doing more shows yet. For more on that, tune in to this week's newsletter. But looking at the map I've decided that the farthest I can go in any direction is probably St. Louis, Indianapolis, Madison and Davenport. My aunt lives across the Mississippi from Davenport, so I might even have a place to stay if I go that way. I won't have to rely on a hotel.

We'll see.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #923: CAFFEINE FREE DIET COKE

 Last week, in preparation for St. Louis, I decided to allow myself to drink Caffeine Free Diet Coke again. I've been eating dinner with water instead, so going back to cola was interesting for me. The problem is, when I started doing that again, I started waking up in the middle of the night again.

For the longest time I've been sleeping nearly through the night. I tend to wake up maybe fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off. But when I went back to the cola, I would wake up at two. Or three. Or four. And I'd try to go back to sleep, but I couldn't.

I got back home, so I'm back to drinking water at night. Somehow I have yet to sleep through the night. That irritates me. Getting a good night's sleep was doing wonders for me. It maybe even saved my sickness from coming back. It's possible that's why it's been a while since an attack.

I'm sick today, so we're keeping this one short. It's a cold, which I rarely get. I wonder if that's the trade off when it comes to my recurrent stomach problems. I get stuck with those, but I rarely get a cold. I think I'd rather get the colds.

Maybe it's a sign that the usual sickness is going away for a while. That would be nice. If I can make it to the end of the year without puking my guts out, I'll trust myself with more conventions next year.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #922: COOKIES

 The wicked get no rest, and neither do the depraved, so when I had last week off *from* Goodnight, Fuckers, I still did research *for* Goodnight, Fuckers. I shan't tell you the topic yet, as I will be using it possibly this week, but something interesting happened while I was looking something up. I found a link, and it took me to a website where I was confronted with the usual cookies ultimatum.

Except . . . it *wasn't* an ultimatum. It requested that I accept all cookies, and it explained what the cookies were meant to do, and it gave me the option to continue without accepting the cookies. Wait, that can't be right. If I come across a cookies statement, I back out of the website. I do *not* want their surveillance on my computer. Which is funny, because I accept that the NSA is spying on us, but I don't really care about that. If they found something interesting about me, they wouldn't just use it. They'd sock it away in case I someday become a terrorist or some such nonsense. But I very much care about corporations, our country's true owners, spying on us. Corporations . . . wait, I'm going to put this in all caps so there's no misunderstanding. CORPORATIONS HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPY ON US.

But this one website said I could skip the cookies? I could continue anyway?

Then it hit me. I'm not on an American website, am I? Nope! I'm not! Because the EU has much better privacy laws than we, the supposedly greatest country in the universe, do. The last privacy law we got was in 1988 when a pack of Congressassholes passed the law to prevent video store clerks from ratting them out to the press. That was pre-internet, and everything has changed. We don't just need a new privacy law. We're OWED IT.

I chose to skip the cookies, and I enjoyed reading a website that didn't try to fuck me over. I shit you not, it was euphoric.

But we're going to have to scare the shit out of these Congressassholes again. That means we're going to have to find out, say, which porn sites they use and publish them. That is an illegal act because the Congressassholes aren't stupid. But we need to incentivize them.

Which reminds me, since I have you all here, I have a solution to the AI problem. It will be very illegal, but it will also be very effective. If someone were to create a deepfake of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham fucking each others' brains out, I'm pretty sure we'll get those anti-AI laws.

If I may borrow a line from one of my characters, it's "something to consider."

GOODNIGHT,FUCKERS #921: HOME AGAIN

 As much as I loved doing Authorcon IV in St. Louis this weekend, it was good to get home and sleep in my own bed last night. It was also good to brazenly smoke weed in my bedroom instead of finding someplace to do that around the hotel. It was a stressful weekend, so I was glad I had today off from work. I had plenty of time to not only put my life back in order but to also relax and let my heart rate get back to normal. Or, at least, normal for me.

I'll probably talk about the show more for my newsletter. I try to put all writing stuff in that instead of here. For tonight I'm just happy that I'm no longer turned up to 11, which pretty much started Friday morning when I took the last of my shit to the car until last night when I finally got home. I'll get into something more substantial tomorrow night. In the meantime, if you missed the news earlier, I have my post convention sale going on. Prices will revert back to usual on Sunday night, so if you want to take advantage, now's the time. I'm also going to try to not be so angry in these. My frustrations kept getting the better of me lately, and these are supposed to be at least funny-ish, not these harrowing grim doom and gloom explorations that I'm starting to get used to.

So let's meet back here tomorrow night and talk about something . . . interesting. Interesting in the Chinese proverb type of way, probably, but who knows? We'll see.