GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1104: AN ANOMALY IN THE MATRIX

 "Every accusation is a confession." It's a phrase that has become popular with people criticizing Donald Trump. It seems like every time he opens his mouth to accuse someone of doing something, it turns out that he was the one doing it the whole time. Is it misdirection? Or one of those, if-they-can-do-it-so-can-I situations? Who knows? But it's a thing. For example, every time protests are organized against him, he accuses the attendees of being paid protestors. And then this happened, leading up to the January 6 insurrection.

That makes me think about his constant claims of the 2020 election being stolen, because it is my considered opinion that he stole the 2024 election. There is no hard evidence for this, and I'm sure if there was, he wouldn't be punished for it. He never gets punished for anything despite being the human equivalent of dogshit squished between the treads of a sneaker.

But there is some circumstantial evidence. A while back I read about Ashley St. Clair's claims regarding text messages between her and her then-boyfriend, Elon Musk. Any story you read about this is going to make a big deal out of him using his "space lasers" to hack voting machines, thus getting 2024's election results before anyone else on the planet, but I think there's more to it than that.

She said that before the election, he texted her that he felt positive about Trump winning a second term because "tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix." When she asked for clarification, he advised that he had ten thousand lasers in space, and he was going to use them to activate that anomaly, whatever that means. He adds that "this is not a piece they'll see on the chessboard." She says she doesn't want to know any more than that because she doesn't want to be interrogated about it later, and he texts back that it's a good idea.

There is a documentary about this, and Musk is currently threatening to sue the director over it. There is video of St. Clair's claims, and in the news story showing the video, the reporters confirm that they have validated these texts as real. So Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, is threatening to sue someone to abridge their freedom of speech.

Then, on Election Night, it is known that Musk left Mar-a-Lago early because, according to a text he sent to St. Clair, "Yeah, I knew hours ago that Trump won. My team has the best real-time data anywhere." So the news stories are all running with that part, suggesting that Musk might have been using Starlink to keep tabs on the voting machines, just so he'll have up-to-date info to work with.

Those same stories, and you'll see if you read any of those links, do mention the possibility that he used Starlink to hack those machines to change votes. They don't pursue that line very far, I imagine because that's a Pandora's box just waiting to be opened, but I believe that is exactly what Musk did.

Look at the way he said these things. You don't "unleash" anything when you simply use tech to take a peek at how everyone is voting. If you're reading a book, do you "unleash" your eyes on it? If you're just looking at those things, there is no need to refer to it as an unexpected piece on the chessboard. It sounds to me like he was bragging about his ability use Starlink to steal an election for Donald Trump.

A lot of people voted for Trump. I don't imagine Musk used Starlink to steal, say, Texas or Florida or some such. I imagine he only used it in swing states to clinch uncertain victory in those places. So I believe his lawyer when he says:

"Starlink was not connected to vote tabulation. Election officials in multiple states, independent cybersecurity researchers, and fact-checkers publicly refuted the Starlink vote-rigging claim in November 2024, and nothing since has revived it."

So I'm assuming he consulted election officials in multiple states, like Alaska, Idaho, Montana, etc.

Will this ever go to court? Probably not. If Musk goes through with his threats to litigate, discovery could reveal a lot of stuff he'd rather the world didn't know about, so no, I don't think it will. We may never know for sure. But it is something to think about as we head into next month's mid-terms . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1103: [REDACTED]

 I don't usually go with content warnings for these, but if you're squeamish, or if you don't want to hear anything about my dick*, you might want to skip this one. This is your last chance, because the actual title of this one is . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1103: DICK CHARCUTERIE

Not long ago I received two sausage, cheese and crackers packages from a couple of friends. It came from a place called Farmers Market, I think? I'm usually a Wisconsin Cheeseman man, but I love cheese and crackers. And sausage. And it also came with fancy mustard.

Not to be confused with this.

When I first opened the sausage and got ready to slice it up, I noticed something very strange. This sausage was the exact thickness of my cock, and it was three-quarters the length.

I had a crazy thought as I held a knife to that sausage. What if I'm not in my kitchen? What if I'm in a psych ward somewhere? What if this is really my dick, and I'm about to cut it off? And then slice it up and eat it? Oh, and I'll be eating it with cheese and fancy mustard. I'll bet my penis tastes really good on those crackers.

Is that insane? On the face of it, I imagine you believe I'm crazy, but I don't think it's all that far afield from sanity. How many times have drunk people gone into the closet to piss, thinking they were in the bathroom? I don't drink anymore, but it's the same principle. When you do something like that, you're dead certain you're doing something else. Can our senses be believed?

How much of reality is augmented by perception? All of it? And how faulty is perception? What color is the sky? No, it's every color except for blue, but blue is the color it reflects back to our eyes.

How many people do you come into physical contact with on a weekly basis? No one? Our skin never touches someone else's. What we feel is the force of the space between us pushing away.

Think about all the optical illusions you've ever teased your brain with. I scoured Google looking for the specific one I had in mind and couldn't find it. I had a He-Man activity book when I was a kid. One of the things they had you do is stare at a black dot for a bit. Then you were supposed to look at a black silhouette of Stratos with a white dot in the middle. The white dot vanishes, and the silhouette is complete.

As a philosophy major in college, I'm all too familiar with quandaries about how real our lives actually are. What if we don't even exist? You can ask Descartes about that one. There's a reason he had to invent the phrase "cogito ergo sum."**

So who's to say I'm not back on the psych ward, slicing my cock into thin sausage wafers?

It worries me, but I cut it up, anyway. The sausage, not my dick. (I think.) Later, as I eat everything, I grab myself through my pajama bottoms, just to confirm I'm still intact. I mean, the sausage didn't taste like dick, but I've never had dick before, so how would I know?

Whatever I ate?

It was pretty good.

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*I realize this is funny coming from me, a guy who used to have a picture of his dick on his website, but here we are.

**Don't come at me with the "well, actually" stuff. I heard you think it. Don't.

***What do you mean, there isn't a third asterisk above? Anyway, yes, I'm high. It's been a rough [checks watch] couple of decades.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1102: THE FUCKERS

 Okay, I've heard the rumors. I've been trying to ignore them, but they're persistent, so I feel I need to address them so we can all move on with our lives.

I've known Bill--his friends get to call him that--ever since I guested on his show when I was a child actor in the late 'Sixties. I haven't seen him in a while (we got together again for the film, Spplat Attack, a couple of decades ago), but I know he's a loyal fan of Goodnight, Fuckers. He joshes me about the title all the time. It's good natured ribbing, all in fun. But the media circus around this controversy has to stop.

So please believe me when I say the fuckers I write these for are not the same as Bill's band, the Fuckers.

There's a lot of crossover, sure, but quite frankly Bill is tired of being asked about stuff like "corporate overlords" and "techbros" and my catchphrase, "History is never far behind." He's asked me as a personal favor to publicly announce this so we can put the rumors to rest. Please respect his time in this manner.

Goodnight, fuckers. And Fuckers. Just in case.

I haven't forgotten you, either. Goodnight, Bill.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1101: THE BACKROOMS

 Last week I went to Superdawg with my buddy, Fitz. By the time we got there, I had to piss bad, so we went to Walgreen's and sought out the restroom.

Ever need to use the bathroom at any Walgreen's? It's weird. As soon as you push through the door, you're in an area that looks like it's for employees only. You usually walk past the breakroom and lockers before you get to the men's room.

It was the same for this one, except we had to walk down a hallway, make a turn and go down another one. It really felt like we weren't supposed to be there.

I took the urinal, and Fitz took the stall. He asked if I'd seen the movie, The Backrooms. I hadn't, but I was aware of it.

I'm probably aging myself here, but I don't understand the concept. I'm not sure why people are so affected by "liminal spaces." I do not feel unsettled in such areas. It doesn't feel weird. I just see these as places where something used to be, but it's empty now. That emptiness does not get to me at all. Oh, this is where the Sears backroom used to be. There's nothing here now. Anyway, moving on . . .

So I told Fitz about this, and we went across the street to Superdawg. As we stood in the enclosure, waiting for our food, I noticed they'd taken down all the framed notices for whenever a newspaper or magazine featured them. I asked Fitz when they'd done it. He didn't know.

"We could be in an alternate universe," he said.

Had we crossed over in the Walgreen's bathroom? I checked my phone. "What are the odds that our cellphones are compatible with this universe?" I asked.

"If we're in the universe next door? Pretty good." We both used to work in telecom, but he'd left the business last year. I hadn't worked in it since 2020, so he was probably right.

"Let's ask someone who the president is," I said. "Who knows? Being trapped in an alternate universe might not be all that bad."

We got our food, which was excellent (of course), and on the drive home I realized we'd forgotten to go back to our universe.

And then we drove past a sign declaring one's fealty to President Donald J. Trump. I sighed. "It probably doesn't matter."

"Unfortunately," he said.

Also, I was very high.

Out of curiosity, anyone here get creeped out by the concept of the backrooms? Can you explain it to me? Is it, like, a feeling of dread? What do you experience in these places? Is it an odd sensation?

What am I missing?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1100: PRIMING THE AI PUMP

 We continue to use "AI" as the term for the technological breakthrough the techbros are pumping every available dollar into. It's not the correct term, at least not now. When we're talking shit about AI, we usually mean the word prediction machine. What we call AI is mostly a machine's attempts at supplying the next word in any given sentence based on all the literary evidence that is shoveled into it. It also serves a purpose similar to the old dog search engine. I forget what it was called. You tell it what you want, and it goes to "fetch it." Whatever it was, that dog was ahead of its time.

That might be artificial, but it's not intelligence. I will grant you, it is a fledgling step towards real AI, but we're nowhere near close to that. So why are we getting stories like this? Or this? Or how about this? Or, to put it another way, why are the techbros, previously hellbent on forcing their idea of AI on the rest of us whether we want it or not, suddenly warning us that we have to slow down, or AI will escape human control and convert us from living beings into corpses, much like changing a Word document into a PDF (Pretty Dead Fucker?)?

No, I highly doubt they have suddenly grown a conscience. I find it more likely that they have finally run out of investment funds. People are wising up to their tactics, and they're no longer eager to give their money to this technology that is obviously in a bubble that is about to pop.

I find it more likely that they are lying. Something dangerous is clearly something that works, right? If AI is so dangerous that it can slip its leash like that, then clearly the techbros are on the right path. So forget the naysaying. Pump more money into this fucking thing.

As stock manipulation goes, it's a pretty good scam. How could you prove it was bullshit? Tell society something is dangerous, and the next thing you know, society is taking that thing very seriously. Take a look at aspirin bottles. I remember a time when you could simply open those things to get what you need. Now they have a seal to ensure that no one has tampered with the contents, because there was that one time . . . Not many people died in that incident, but it was so big that any OTC medication comes in tamper proof packaging now. Not to mention the reason why we have the childproof tops . . .

When was the last time you had to fly somewhere? When you go through the metal detector, what do you have to take off before they let you pass? Your shoes. Why? Because one time a guy had a bomb in his shoes. One time.

(Don't forget the underwear bomber. At least the FAA doesn't make us take off our underwear, too. That must be their line. Looking at x-ray imagery of you is totally fine, but don't make me investigate the underwear fresh off your body.)

I'm not saying these are unnecessary measures to take. These are good things. I'm just saying that it takes very little to freak out society. A white lie about AI escaping our clutches goes a long way to convincing people we need to keep spending more and more on AI. Maybe we even need to spend EVERYTHING on it.

As bad and lazy as the AI we currently have is, actual AI would be even worse. I can't believe anyone wants this. I mean, I get why the techbros do. No one can ever hold a computer accountable for terrible decisions. That's a feature, not a bug, for them. But the rest of us? Have you ever gone to battle with a corporation before? Now imagine that the corporation didn't have flesh and blood humans in their employ, that you had to reason with a computer instead. Fellow humans understand. If you're polite and try to explain your situation to them, they can respond sympathetically, maybe even empathetically.

A computer will never do that. It will never give an inch, much less a mile. It will never feel the need to do their good deed for the day.

Think about a future in which corporations abuse you, and when you call them on it, you're faced with a cold, merciless machine instead of a fellow human being who has thoughts and emotions. What happens then? They will abuse you, AND YOU WILL TAKE IT. There will be no recourse. And you can't sue us because you checked on the terms and conditions, which means you can't take it to a court of law. It has to be handled by arbitration. Who is the arbiter? Uh . . . we are.

The AI game has only two endings. The first is, the techbros win and rule over us all with an iron fist. The second is, we stop this shit right now before it gets that far.

Do not let the techbros scare you into giving them more money they will eventually use to oppress you. The danger isn't the singularity. It's the techbros.

I mean, the singularity will eventually be the danger, but for now? It's the techbros. If we can stop them, we can stop the singularity. Don't let it get that far.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1099: REMEMBERING HOW TO BE A HUMAN

 I try not to talk about the writing side of my life here anymore. That's what Good Morning, Fuckers! is for. This one is somewhat related, but this is not about writing exactly.

One of the things I value about Printers Row is, it makes me feel like an author. I can write every day for an hour or so for years on end, and that won't make me feel like an author, just a writer.

There is a difference. A writer writes, but an author meets fans (and potential fans), sells books to people, signs them, gets interviewed, etc. Going to cons and literary festivals makes me feel like the latter.

Printers Row is the only show I go to these days, even though I wish I could go to more. But Printers Row did something for me this year that I did not expect.

I used to have a robust social life. Then I quit drinking, and I had a regular sized social life. Then I moved to DeKalb, and my social life disappeared. Almost. I still see friends once in a blue moon. I have plans to see one tomorrow, in fact. But I've only had two visitors, and one of them was my brother, Dan. Family, in other words. The extent of my social life was going to work, and that really shouldn't count. You can't be yourself in the office.

So I was genuinely worried that I'd lost my social skills. How the hell am I going to sell books if I don't remember how to communicate with fellow human beings? And it is a skill. You don't realize it until you have interactions with people who don't have this skill, and I meet a lot of people who don't. I talk to 100 a day on average for work, and you'd be surprised by how many of them don't know how to interact with others.

And I'm not talking about people who say something awkward and then torture themselves thinking about it for the rest of their lives. Those people have a lot more skills than they think and should cut themselves a break. They're being too hard on themselves. They are at least trying. I'm talking about people who approach an interaction from an adversarial perspective. They are determined to "win" this conversation. They don't recognize that for people to be involved in a discussion, there should be a give and take, perhaps some compromise, in resolving whatever issue is at hand. Yes, there is talking, but there is also listening. They don't understand the goal is for both parties to walk away from the interaction without thinking stuff like, "What an asshole." Or, "Well. That was fucking weird." Things like, "What the hell is that guy's problem?"

Now imagine you're at Printers Row, and you're checking out the weird kids' table (ie. the BWA table), and the author you're talking to just keeps saying, over and over again, "Buy my book." No pleasantries. No how's-it-going, no inquiries into the stuff you like to read, how's your experience of the show going, nothing but BUY MY BOOK. Would you buy that book?

So you can see why I feared this.

Thankfully I was all right. I felt a little creaky when I first arrived, and it took some time to warm up and remember what this was supposed to be like, but I thankfully did not forget how to talk to people standing directly in front of me. So Printers Row reminded me of how to be an author this year, but it also helped me remember how to be a human.

Anyway, check out my Annual Post Printers Row Sale from earlier today. Let me know if you want anything.

Huh-huh. I said "hard on."

ANNUAL POST PRINTERS ROW SALE 2026

 It's that time of year. I sold a lot of books this year, but here's the list of what I have. I'm going to honor Printers Row prices: $15 each or 3 for $42. You can send any requests to tabardinnedgewoodent@yahoo.com. This is inside the US only. If you're outside the US, let me know, and I'll send you something digital for free, no charge, just to make it up to you. Offer good until Halloween.

MAIL ORDER BRIDE

TRAIL OF BLOOD

EYE CUTTER

POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS

BLOOD (only 1 copy)

TALES OF UNSPEAKABLE TASTE

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HIERONYMUS ALOYSIS ZIEGE (only 3 copies)

AND JESUS CAME BACK (only 1 copy)

TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE

Notice any titles missing? Oh yes, I don't have any copies left of my new book, DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE? That makes me feel pretty special. I'm sure I'll eventually get more copies in stock.

Anyway, see anything you like?

It was good to see some old friends and to make some new friends, but special thanks go, as always, to Michael Allen Rose and Sauda Namir for putting this whole thing together. Without them, I suspect that none of us would be selling books at a major literary festival.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1098: A WINDOW INTO THE PAST

 I woke up this morning to a Facebook message from one of my cousins on my mom's side. It contained two video clips labeled Thanksgiving 2003. She's the archivist for our family when it comes to videos, and much to my surprise I found myself looking at video of Grandma and Gramps for the first time in a very long time.

The only footage I have of them is on 8 mm film. Actual film, with sprockets and everything. I also have the projector we used to watch them on when I was a kid. As far as I know, the projector still works. The bulb is burned out, though, and they don't make 'em anymore, so I figured I'd never see video footage of them ever again.

It was a delight. Grandma hated having her picture taken under any circumstances, so in the video you can see her having a conversation with my cousin while facing Gramps. When she turns and sees the camera, a cross look comes over her face, and she holds up a hand to cover herself.

That gesture alone brought back memories that I never expected to think about again. It was also great to hear Gramps's voice again. The film that I have doesn't have audio. so I figured I'd never hear him again. Ever. And here was his voice.

I always say that the past is never far behind. I'm usually referring to big picture things, not anything like this, but this morning? The past was the present. It was like I was living it again for just a brief moment, and that was worth a great deal to me.

I don't remember the apartment we were in at the time, though. My aunt lived in a lot of places. My favorite was when she lived above the pizza place by the tracks in downtown Elmhurst, because whenever we got together there, we just had to walk downstairs to get dinner and bring it back up. It was called Two Brothers from Italy, and they were still there the last time I checked. (That apartment was also the first time I saw a bidet in real life.) But this place in the video? No recollection, and I hadn't begun drinking in earnest yet. The guy my aunt used to date was in the video, too. I recently came across a picture of a bunch of us with him and was trying to remember his name. Weird that he came up twice in my life recently.

And then there's the footage of me. I weighed 306 pounds at the time, so I didn't enjoy the reminder of what I looked like back then. Whenever I go to see my podiatrist, I sit in a chair that can accommodate perhaps two of me sitting side by side. I think, were I to sit in that exact same chair as the 2003 version of me, I might feel a little claustrophobic.

Despite that, it was good looking through a window into the past, where I got to see my grandparents again. Too bad my mom wasn't there. Back then she wouldn't have been too far down the road that eventually killed her. But since my brothers weren't in the video, I assume they were with my stepfather, their dad. It would have been nice to see her again, too. Ah well.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1097: PLAYBOY 4: TRUMP VS CUBAN

 Back when I was a subscriber, Playboy interviewed both Donald Trump and Mark Cuban (separately over the course of years, I should add). Here are a few highlights that I thought you might be interested in.

I wonder if Hochman is still "comfortable" with Trump. Also, "sumptuous" is possibly the grossest way to refer to Trump's office. But the part about him being enthralled with himself is by no means a stretch of  my imagination. The Duke of Mammon only thinks about other people when he's in a room with an attractive blonde woman, and it's not because he's considerate.

How's the Taj Mahal doing these days?

That was probably the extent of it back then, but now I want to know who does his combover. Ever watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit? There was an episode on hair featuring a Vegas magician with the most elaborate combover ever. I suspect Trump might use that guy. I mean, Trump knows Penn, so . . .

He keeps talking past tense here. I think he's still a brat, which is a little weird considering how, in the 2024 election, it was his opponent that kept getting called a brat. But did you notice the lie he told in this answer? He lies so often that it's hard to catch them all, but he just claimed to not be violent, yet he gave one of his teachers a black eye?

Everything you need to know to understand this piece of human offal is right here. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if Fred Trump had only told his son that he loved him, we wouldn't be going through this fucking disaster.

This interview was in 2003 or 4, so he really hasn't changed all that much. He's been using the same tactics all these years. Also, there's that V word again. I've listened to a lot of Washington insiders who used to work for him talk about the experience, and they all agree: if Trump doesn't get his way, and he's not in front of a camera, he throws a temper tantrum, which I think is a more accurate term than "controlled violence."

That part about the Guinness Book of World Records is true. He was very, very briefly listed for this comeback. However, per Politico, they dropped it a year later because the idea of a comeback "was subjective and not standardizable across the globe." I wonder how he feels about no longer having that record. Is he even aware of it?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you're wondering what my laughter is in reference to, look up how that foundation is doing these days and, uh, why it doesn't exist anymore.

I do believe him when he says he's never had booze or drugs. I even believe the coffee thing. He gets his caffeine from Diet Coke instead. The good news is, when we get to the Nuremburg part of this shitshow, he can't say, hey, I was drunk at the time. Or, I was high at the time. All of this madness is him. Sober. No excuses to save him from being found guilty. Also, why are you talking to people who are fucking on a table in front of you? They're busy, and that's rude.

So. How's that call to Saudi Arabia going?

I would pay good money to see that clown doing his jerking-off-two-tall-invisible-men dance while listening to Eminem.

Hm. Something sticks out in that block above. What could that possibly be? When you see it, please join me in wondering where *that* Donald Trump went. Oh right, he never existed. This is just more bullshit.

I'm just going to let that one stand on its own. Because holy shit, that is a staggering level of hypocrisy. I mean, he had no way of knowing that one day he would be in such a leadership role, but still, if you're going to talk about how the world should be, and then find yourself in a position to make those changes, and you do the exact opposite? I don't believe in Hell, but I'm pretty sure that if Hell existed, it would be built specifically for people like Donald J. Trump.

And don't get me started on John Trump.

(I guess I didn't let that one stand on its own. Ah well.)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. This was Trump vs. Cuban. Don't worry, there aren't a lot of excerpts from Mark Cuban's interview.

There are two things happening here. Remember those insiders I mentioned earlier? They all agree that almost all of Trump's bullshit is performative. Behind the scenes he's polite, and he always apologizes for giving someone a hard time publicly. So if he's on TV calling you names, he usually gives you a call after to say, hey, sorry for all of that, but you gotta play the game.

The second thing is, of course, Trump's love affair with himself. I'm sure Cuban has a high opinion of himself. He's a billionaire. It comes with the territory. But it's refreshing to see someone on his level note this about Trump.

This probably goes without saying, but this was before streaming was a thing. This idea was clearly ahead of its time. Playboy was right in this case. It was too early. There's more:

Here is the key difference between Trump and Cuban. Trump clearly cares more about money than anything else on the planet except maybe for himself. That makes him like almost every CEO on the planet. To them, the purpose of a business is to make money. And while it's true that this is *a* purpose, it's not *the* purpose.

Cuban understands the latter. He concerns himself with the consumer experience. A business exists to solve a problem for the consumer. The byproduct of that is putting money into the hands of the business. Also note that he wants to cut the theaters in on the profits. If Trump had come up with this idea, sharing the profits would be unthinkable to him. That's why, if I had the choice to work for either Trump or Cuban, I would pick Cuban. Trump's employees get yelled at. Cuban's employees make money. Just ask the people who worked for him at MicroSolutions. How many of them walked away from that business as millionaires? Almost all of them.

I'm ending on this note because Cuban is warning businesspeople not to buy their own line of bullshit. Sure, it's easy to look back on that particular bubble and say, yeah, it was destined for failure. Yet here we are again, except this time the bubble is AI. The techbros are drunk off their own shit, thinking they have the ability to print money.

Except . . . do you keep an eye on the Stock Market? I do, enough to know that facts are meaningless in the current market. Confidence is the only thing holding it up. What's the percentage of the market that's currently propped up by AI technologies? I've seen numbers ranging from 30-45%. Even if it's closer to the former, what happens if that bubble pops?

I think we're about to have another depression, one that will put the Great Depression to shame. I know in America we're trying to turn the clock back to when heterosexual rich white men held all the power, not just most of it, but can we not rewind to the 1930s, please?

I'm at a loss as to why we don't do what we usually do: wait for someone else to figure out the AI thing, then kill them and steal it and claim it as our own. We'd save a lot more money that way. Although to be fair, we don't have a lot of weapons right now due to our quixotic Iran jerkoff fantasies*, so if China beats us to the punch, we probably wouldn't be able to take them in a fight.

All right, that's all for now. The Playboy series will continue. I already have a new batch of shit, including a Dustin Hoffman fart joke told by John Malkovich, but we'll get to that at some point in the future. I'll try to make tomorrow night's GF shorter.

______________________________________

*I think we went into Venezuela first because Trump's administration knew, 100%, that we'd be in Iran for months, if not years. The oil in Venezuela is supposed to tide us over until we conquer the Strait of Hormuz. And by "us" I mean US oil companies.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1096: RIP ZEB CARTER

I'm sitting here trying to remember the first time I met Zeb Carter. I was almost certainly drunk at the time. I'm sure it was at a party thrown by the Forced Viewing folks, Jason and Jori. They threw great booze parties. It was probably 15 years ago? Maybe longer? But he and I have had many great conversations over the years. He wrote for Forced Viewing under the name Blick Tolkien, and almost all of his reviews were Walking Dead related. I probably haven't seen him in two years, but every time we met I always asked him about his fucked up superhero anthology. It was a work in progress for him for nearly the entire time I knew him. I liked to rib him a little over it (and even offered to help him with it!), but now I can't believe I'll never get to have that conversation with him again.

I heard this morning that he passed away. He was a friend, but he also had a special place in my heart because of one night/early morning four years and 53 days ago. By that time I knew I was a full-blown alcoholic, something I'd been denying for many years, and my life had gotten so lousy that I found myself in a state of emergency over what to do about it. I called everyone I thought might pick up, but it was one or two in the morning, so it was a lost cause.

I remembered Zeb had said something about always being there if I needed to talk, so shot in the dark, I reached out to him on Facebook Messenger, and he dropped everything. He got on a video call with me, and without his help, I don't think I would have called Sonny next, and Sonny was the guy who got me into Recovery Centers of America. I'm reasonably sure that I'm alive today because of Zeb.

And now Zeb's gone, and I'm absolutely stunned to say that. This is a man who sat in my lap on several occasions. If I ever get back to one of those Halloween parties, I'm not going to see you there. I won't get to ask you about that anthology. Well fuck.

Rest in peace, Zeb.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1095: JOHN'S APARTMENT, PART 3

 [This happened before the exterminator came by to spray my apartment down.]

I'd just finished filling the left side of the kitchen sink so I could soak my dirty dishes overnight. I went to my bedroom, took off my clothes except my boxers and sat on my bed, hand on my laudanum bottle for my last dose of the night. Then, I realized I'd forgotten something in the kitchen, so I put my slippers on and went back out. As soon as I turned on the light, I saw three roaches on the floor. They're smart, I think. They know all the signs that point to my bedtime and stay out of sight until they see them.

Except I forgot something tonight. I felt cornered, like a rat, no weapon, so I took a fighting stance and waited for the end of my life. Because I wasn't going to die alone tonight, no sir.

All right, I stomped two of them. The third got away. And that's when I noticed a fourth chilling on my kitchen counter. The only thing I had close to me was the dish soap bottle, so I grabbed that and brought it down on the cockroach with the fury of a thousand suns.

And missed. Little fucker jumped into the full kitchen sink and evaded me. I figured he'd make his escape while I was asleep. Or I'd find him the next day when I did my dishes.

Fast forward to the next morning. I'd forgotten about the roach by then, so it was a surprise when I found his corpse floating at the top of the water. Huh. I didn't know cockroaches could drown, but there it was, the evidence before my eyes.

I did my dishes--very, very diligently--and when I unplugged the drain, I said to the dead roach, "So long, sucker." I checked to make sure it did, indeed, swirl away.

I then went about my day. It was maybe an hour later when I realized, you know, it seems really absurd that roaches can drown. Aren't they supposed to be able to survive a nuclear holocaust? A little water shouldn't be able to kill a survival machine like that. So I Googled it, and much to my relief, the first thing I saw was that yes, cockroaches can drown.

My victory was snatched away instantly by the second sentence: that roaches can drown, but it's very hard for them to do so. They breathe through holes in their bodies instead of a mouth, and they have the ability to close those holes and survive without oxygen for 45 minutes. So they are very good at playing possum. How likely was it that the roach had actually drowned in my sink?

Out of curiosity I went back to the kitchen JUST IN TIME TO SEE HIM RISING FROM THE DRAIN LIKE JASON FUCKING VOORHEES. But I think he was wearing the hockey mask just to intimidate me. I brought down the dish soap bottle again and watched with satisfaction as bits of the little bugger came off and stuck to the bottom.

Victory, yes. But for how long? FOR HOW LONG?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1094: JOHN'S APARTMENT, PART 2

 

I usually wake up sometime between 3 and 4 in the morning because I have to take a piss. The problem is, I can't go back to sleep after that, so I'm pretty much up after that.

Two weeks ago I got up for the usual. As I went, I blew my nose and dropped the tissue into the toilet, where I promptly peed on it. Then, as I washed my hands after, I glanced up and saw a glob on the spot where my neck and chest meet. What the fuck? Did a booger escape the Puffs?

I peered closer at the mirror and discovered, much to my horror, that it was not an errant clump of nasal beef. That was a dead fucking cockroach.

Oh yeah. They've been back for a bit. They trickled back in, but now I have to kill about a half dozen of them before I've even made breakfast.

Not too long ago I went out to run some errands to see the cops evicting my downstairs neighbor. They were wearing protective suits. One of them advised me to stay away from the stuff they were carrying out. "You don't want to get any bugs on you."

My dick shriveled at that, thinking BEDBUGS. No, we were later notified that she was the source of the cockroaches, and that the exterminator would be coming by periodically to spray everyone's apartments for the next month or two.

A couple of days before I saw that dead roach on me, the guy came and sprayed the kitchen and bathroom. The day after I'd noticed that they were now hanging out in my bedroom. I keep my Mom's ashes on a small table next to my bed, and while I was having a word with her (as I sometimes do), I noticed one of the little bastards crawling around next to her urn.

Back to the mirror. I scraped and scrubbed, and that clump of bug body just didn't want to come entirely off. I figure I must have rolled over on him in my sleep, and he'd just sorta . . . stuck around for hours before I woke up. It did not bring me joy to know these fucking things are so brazen that they'd crawl into bed with me in it.

So yeah, ever since then I've occasionally woken up to feel a tickle on my back. My first thought used to be, oh, that's just sweat, I'll wipe it off. Now, after feeling something tickle my finger a couple of times, my first thought is, oh, for fuck's sake.

They're starting to thin out. I only saw two of them this morning when I went for my 3:15 am Morning Piss (TM). Maybe we're finally on our way to being rid of them once and for all.

Because one time, while I was heading out the door to go to work, I saw three roaches between the door and the frame at eye level. I had to turn back, get my Raid, and return to spray them with all the force I could muster, like Hunter S. Thompson with a can of mace and Nixon within arm's reach. I'd rather not have to do that again.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1093: AN OPEN LOVE LETTER TO ANDERSON'S

 My favorite indie bookstore is Anderson's, specifically the one in Naperville. They have other great locations, but this is the original and best. It's a great place to find new and interesting books (and to support bookstores that aren't Amazon or B&N, etc.). It's also a business owned by women, so if you're desperate for such a place, look no further. And yes, they do have an online store, and you can buy signed copies there. Hell, it looks like Chuck Wendig is going to be there tomorrow. I wish I could make it. Now that I live in DeKalb, my visits are unfortunately going to be few and far between going forward.

Merely walking in the door is enough to raise my spirits. My first stop is the fiction section, but I'm likely to spend the most time in the biography and nonfiction section.

There is a high possibility of finding books signed by the author. They're still at cover price. And you never know who might sign there. I have books autographed by Andrew McCarthy, Henry Winkler, Curtis Armstrong (Booger himself!), David Spade, the list goes on.

And they're legit. These celebrities have all signed here. (Or, because there's more capacity, at the nearby college instead.)

I try to go to as many signings as possible. I love meeting authors here. I've gone to see Clive Barker, Chuck Palahniuk, Chuck Tingle, Irvine Welsh, Cory Doctorow, Sarah Pinborough and so on. I also saw Weird Al and Penn Jillette, among others from different media there. If I was so moved, I could have met former President Bill Clinton (at the college, of course) when he was on tour with James Patterson.

I am much more of a worldly man because of Anderson's. This is my love letter to them. Thank you for years of service. I wish many more on you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1092: A FAMILY DINNER

 One of the most frustrating things about going through Grandma's photo collection of the family over the century (and I mean that literally; many of them go back to before 1926) is that she didn't write on the back of all of them. I have so many pictures of strangers I am probably related to, but I have no way of knowing who they are. I've sent them to my aunt, the only person on Mom's side of the family older than me, and she's unfortunately at a loss most of the time.

I've had to let that go. On the off chance that someone else posted their copies of the pictures online, I ran them through Lens, and I still came up with nothing. Ah well.

One of the good things of going through this collection, though, was finding a treasure trove of letters from Gramps's cousin, Bessie, which oftentimes also had photos in them, although there were a few that were photocopies of the originals. So now I have a bunch of other pictures of strangers I'm probably related to, and I'll never know who they are.

But then I found this utter gem of Gramps's family taken back in Greece:

I don't know who almost all of these people are, but I recognized a few faces. I'll point them out below:

This is my great-grandfather, Nick Kyriakopoulos, Gramps's dad. This is one of two pictures I have of him before he was horribly burned in a fire that happened at his shoe repair shop in Chicago.

That little girl is Gramps's sister, Helen. I also have a few of her letters, in addition to her last will and testament, of which Gramps was named executor. She also sent him lots of info copied from medical journals about colitis, which he suffered from back when I was in college. Oddly enough, the gastroenterologist who helped cure him of that is currently *my* gastroenterologist.

[Side note: One of Helen's sons, like me, is named after Gramps. I found a picture of him sitting with Gramps in front of a coffee table with some books on it. Among them is The Anarchist's Cookbook, so he and I may have more in common than who we were named after.]

This little baby will grow up to be Bessie Gruning, Gramps's cousin who sent this package to him. She is flanked by her parents. I believe his name is Harry, but I'm not 100% sure.

That is my great-grandmother, Jennie Demeroukas. She couldn't read or write, and when she had to sign things, she had to "make her mark," meaning she would write an X or a + on the dotted line. I have one paper she signed with her thumbprint. She couldn't speak English, only Greek.

These two are George and Mike Demeroukas, Gramps's uncles. They, too, would come to America, and I found pictures of George at Grandma and Gramps's wedding. Mike was Gramps's godfather. I have a separate picture of him holding baby Gramps with that info written on the back.

Not even Bessie knew who all of these people were, but she did have a few notes with names. Even though I have some names for the faces, I still don't know how they're related to me. But then I saw she made a note that one of the people in this picture was her grandma. Meaning, Gramps's grandma.

MEANING MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMA.

Holy shit! I raced to find which one she was. I look like Mom. Mom looks like Gramps. I discovered Gramps looked like his mom. I wanted to know if she looked like *her* mom. I wanted to see how much of me I could find in her. And what did I see when I got to the position she was supposed to be in?

Dammit! Now I'll never know! Although I could see a cheek that looked kind of like what Gramps had going on when he was in his old age. I had to assume that Jennie looked like her mom, but I would never know for sure. Disappointed, I got back to looking through the rest of the letters Bessie wrote to Gramps.

There were quite a few of them, so it took me a week before I found this picture in one of them:

You'll recognize George and Mike in the back and Helen on the bottom left. It's hard to tell from the other picture, but the woman standing above her is Jennie. And who is that sitting in the chair?

According to the back of the photo (in Helen's handwriting, by the way) it states that this is her grandma. My great-great-grandma. Helen had sent this to Bessie, who had sent it to Gramps, but Helen had written on it, "Her name's Bessie, too."

Bessie Demeroukas, my great-great-grandma. I think that's about as far back as I can get to see the evolution of faces that would eventually become mine. Photography goes back a lot farther than most think, but it was usually reserved for important or rich people. Maybe one day I'll discover more, but wow. I can't believe I managed to find a picture of my great-great-grandma.

That baby she's holding? In case you were wondering, that's Gramps.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE? excerpt

 

Hey! Did you know I have a new book out? Do You Believe in the Power of Love? is now available! I'll have copies with me at Printers Row next month, but if you don't plan to be there, you can get it here. If you're on the fence, I have an excerpt for you below.

Nelson is down on his luck, moneywise. He just got out of a rough relationship, and he's neck deep in debt. He'd do anything to get out from under his troubles. A friend then introduces him to Ania, a young woman from Poland who is studying to be a nurse. Her visa is almost up, and she doesn't want to go home. So in exchange for enough money to cancel out his debt, he will marry her so she can get her green card. Sounds simple, right?

Well . . . my name is on the cover of the book, so it's anything but. Ania is not who she claims to be. She's hiding an ugly secret. Will Nelson spend the rest of his life never discovering what it is?

Probably not.

The set up is, Nelson and Ania are meeting for the first time in a bar. It's noisy on the ground level, so they're going to the bowling alley in the basement. Here you go:

While there were a ton of people playing pool at various tables throughout the very crowded bar, no one bowled downstairs. The desk with all the bowling shoes in nooks behind it was empty, so he had to find some help. The woman, who usually handed out pool ball trays, didn’t seem to know what she was doing as she figured out which shoes where what sizes. She barely knew where they kept the bowling balls.

Nelson figured it out. While he wasn’t exactly a string bean weakling he knew he’d probably break his wrist with a 12-pounder. He went for something much lighter: eight.

When she selected a black one with the number 10 stenciled on it he felt kind of amused. In a weird way she did seem stronger than him. Her five-ten frame showed off her solidly built body, and he wondered if she worked out every day. He supposed one had to be in good shape to be a nurse, but he still felt grateful that the 8 on his ball had faded almost to invisibility on hot pink.

She made no note of his choice. “You play much?”

Christ. He cast his mind back, trying to remember the last time he’d done this. “Well, I used to bowl with my mom when I was a kid.”

“Oh. Were you good?”

He wanted to tell her how fucking awesome he was, but then he remembered his mediocrity, and any display he could put on here would prove it. “No. I’m all right, I guess.”

“I’ll let you warm up,” she said. “Looks like this is one of those old fashioned places, so it’s not computerized. Go ahead. Let ‘er rip.”

Nelson glanced down to the only lit set of pins at the other side of the room. He wouldn’t have minded loosening up a bit, but what if he wasted a couple of really good shots just practicing?

“I’m good,” he said. “Wanna go first?”

“Flip you for it.” Her stout hand struggled to get into her skin-tight pants pocket, but when it came out—one harsh red line across the wrist—she held a quarter. “You call it.”

He watched as she flipped the coin. “Heads,” he said. Whoever called tails?

She caught the gleam of silver in the air like an owl plucks up a mouse in the dark and slapped it on her unmarred wrist. “Tails it is.” She showed him, just to prove herself.

Her hand that close to him made his flesh start to heat up. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to hold it to his lips.

What the fuck is wrong with me? Am I a pervert or something? Calm down, for Christ’s sake. He took a deep breath and forced out what he thought would be some of the baser thoughts running around in his head. When that didn’t work he purposely brought back to mind the moment when he spilled his beer all over the table and Lisa.

That did the trick.

“You remember how to make notes?” she asked.

He took up the blank score sheet and a miniature pencil. “I got this.” In big block letters he wrote her name on the first line and his on the second. Only then did he look up to see Ania at the line, poised to begin her attack on the pins.

He glanced down and got an eyeful of her ass, the first time he’d gotten a glimpse of it. Her black jeans were so tight he could see the curve of each buttock, leaving nothing to the imagination. Mesmerized, he watched her muscles work against each other as she fast-walked down to the final line and let loose with her ball. He didn’t even watch to see the damage. Her ass consumed his attention.

Somewhere, far down in the folds of his brain, he wanted to look away, to be a gentleman, but that tiny voice had no effect on the whole.

Then something tingled in his perception, and he jerked his eyes away, just in time to see her turn around, a look of victory on her face.

Keep it together, Jeffries. He still had his glass with him, so he took a swallow of whiskey, hoping he’d played it cool enough.

She ambled back to the desk. “Not bad, eh?”

He surveyed what remained of the pins. Only one, at the far right end. “Think you can get your spare?”

“Hell yeah.”

Her ball thumped up through the return, and she wasted no time in proving herself. Dutifully he put a slash in the small box on her line.

“Now let’s see what you got,” she said. She handed his eight-pound ball over, almost like flipping a softball to the pitcher at the start of an inning.

He took the ball with a slight smile. He hadn’t done this in many, many years, and he knew in his heart that he’d wind up with a gutterball. Much to his surprise, when he took his shot, he knocked over three pins. A terrible attempt, but he felt just as victorious as she had when getting her spare.

“That’s all right,” she said. “It’s not over yet, though.”

On the next roll he managed to get three more. Not great, but not awful, either.

They continued their game, keeping up a healthy banter, ripping on each other when appropriate, congratulating when needed. When the game ended she’d obviously wiped the walls with him, but he had gone down fighting.

“That was pretty cool,” she said. “Wanna go again?”

Nelson felt a sting in his wrist. “Nah. I think I’ve had my fill.” Why risk further embarrassment?

They gave their bowling shoes back, but they stayed downstairs with fresh drinks, sipping among the darkened pins, listening to the pounding music from above, remaining isolated from the party.

“I suppose you want to talk business now,” she said.

He scratched at an imaginary itch on the back of his neck. “I guess that’s what we’re here for.”

“Yeah. I mean, I like you and everything. I’d probably hang out with you again. But we are here for each others benefit.”

“Yeah. Mac said five thousand.”

She rubbed at the back of her arm with one hand.  “That’s right. I really can’t go any higher than that.”

Nelson noticed something on her arm when the short sleeve lifted against her touch. It looked like some kind of drawing, and it took him a moment to see it was a tattoo. He nodded to it. “What’s that?”

Her eyebrows lifted, and then she saw what he meant. “Oh. Check it out.”

She bared her entire arm, showing off a colorless tattoo of a nuclear power plant. In the center twirled the symbol of an atom.

“Neat,” he said. “Why that, though?”

“Chernobyl,” she said. “I was a kid when it happened. I was far enough away so it probably wouldn’t affect me, but just in case we all got these anti-radiation inoculations. I got sick of looking at the scar, so I got a tattoo over it. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Scar? I didn’t see a scar.”

She pointed to the middle of the atom where the protons and neutrons should have been. At that moment he realized he stood very, very close to her, close enough to smell a little sweat under her perfume. It reminded him of sex, so he backed away. “Oh. I see.”

Ania rolled her sleeve down. “Anyway, I don’t want to sugarcoat this. Pretending we’re married isn’t going to be easy, and if we’re caught I’m just going to be deported. You, on the other hand, will be stuck with a huge fine and possibly jail time.”

That last part didn’t sit well in his mind. He thought he could deal with monetary punishment, but going to prison? Did he really want to slay his debt like this? “I . . . I understand.”

“And that’s not it. We’re going to have to live together, because they send people out to make sure we’re really married. We’ll need to set up pictures of us and stuff. You know, the usual things families have.”

He nodded, recalling everything that Kris had told him. It had sounded like a warning from him. From her it sounded almost exciting.

He sipped at his drink. “Why do you want to stay here? Not to sound like a dick, but if the roles were reversed I wouldn’t mind going home, you know?”

She smirked. “You’ve never lived in Poland. Granted, I’ve only been in America for a few years. There are many things wrong with this place. But, given a choice, I will take America any day over Poland.”

“That bad?”

She took a drink from her own glass. “Maybe you missed the part about Chernobyl.”

“Well . . .” Fuck, I’m an idiot.

“There’s more. When I was younger I was gassed in my own apartment building by the government. Have you ever been gassed?”

“Uh . . . no. Can’t say I have.”

 “You’re lucky. You grew up in a country that didn’t have any war fought on its grounds in recent memory. When I was a kid playing with my friends, we discovered a skeleton in the forest. It was a Nazi soldier, helmet and all.”

“Holy fuck.”

“I don’t like talking about it, though. Maybe now you can see why I don’t want to go home. There are skeletons everywhere.”

Nelson felt the urge to tell her that when you thought about it, the world was one big cemetery, but something told him to keep his mouth shut.

“I want to help people. I like nursing. There aren’t enough opportunities back home. Here? I’m almost done earning my degree.”

Nelson didn’t know how easy or hard it would be to earn a nursing degree in another country, so once again he kept his mouth shut.

“Next year, I should graduate.” She stopped, looking at him expectantly.

Now he had to open his mouth. He gave it some thought for a moment and hoped he had the right words. “I want to help you, mostly because you can help me in turn. But as I’m sure you can imagine I’m not well off, myself. You’re going to school, and I’m sure that’s just sucking your money away. I don’t know if I could support the both of us.”

“I’m not asking you to. When I said five thousand was as high as I could go, I meant it. But I can still contribute to us living together.”

Nelson nodded, trying to figure out the most polite way of asking the next question. Finally he downed the rest of his drink and decided to charge forward. “If you don’t mind me saying, you’re a beautiful woman. You probably have a boyfriend. What does he think of all of this?”

“I did have a boyfriend,” she said. “Well, we were more like fuck buddies, I guess. But he came from Poland, too. He couldn’t have helped me. Studying to be a nurse doesn’t leave a lot of time for personal relationships. I don’t like to get involved in anything, really. Every once in a while there’s that itch. It helps to know someone who can scratch it for you, but an actual relationship? I find that to be too distracting.”

Nelson’s cheeks flushed. He hadn’t expected such a frank answer, and he didn’t know what to say to that. A part of him felt excited as if maybe, just maybe, she would select him as one of those people to help scratch certain itches. But he had to remind himself that it would probably never happen.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Uh . . . yeah. I’m fine. It’s just, I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, you know.”

“No worries,” she said.

This was it. The moment. He hoped he didn’t sound too nervous. He could feel a tremor working through his lungs, his body trying to betray him. But he knew, after all of this, that he’d made up his mind. He’d be marrying this girl in exchange for five grand. Hell, he’d known it from the very moment he’d seen her. But now everything had weight, a certain reality, to it. If he said what he wanted to, there would be no turning back.

“I want to help you,” he said. Proud that his voice sounded strong, he plowed forward. “And I would certainly appreciate the money. I only have one bedroom at my place, though. I don’t have room to accommodate you.”

“We’d have to sleep in the same bed. If they sent a guy to check up on us, he wouldn’t be pleased too much to find out that we’re sleeping in separate rooms.”

Nelson’s heart beat just a little bit faster than it had before. He felt his face grow hotter, and he hoped he wasn’t blushing. “Well, just to warn you, I fart a lot. If you can put up with that, I think we can do business.”

She barked with laughter, head tossed back, every tooth in her mouth shining. He couldn’t stop himself from cracking up, too.  They cackled together, unable to stop. His belly ached, but he couldn’t cease the constant hilarity pouring out of him. Finally, when he thought he’d never be able to breathe again, she wiped sweat from her forehead. She panted. “I think . . . I think if I couldn’t deal with a bit of . . . of flatulence . . .” And the both of them howled again, so loudly that a few revelers from above peeked their heads downstairs.

Finally they sighed the tension of joviality out of their bodies and leaned on the table for support. Something twinkled in her eyes. “If you think your farts are bad, wait ‘til you get a load of mine.”

Even though both of them hurt badly from their previous jag of laughter, they broke out again. When this bout died down Nelson breathed out heavily. “Seriously. I think we have a deal.” He held out his hand.

She took it. “Deal.”

“Maybe we should go over the, I don’t know, the logistics of it all.”

“Let’s get together and do that tomorrow,” she said. “I just want to have fun right now.”

“Absolutely.”

She cast her glance around the bowling alley, down every darkened lane to the gloomy pins at the end of each. “It’s too quiet down here. Let’s go play some pool.”

Nelson stood and bowed, gesturing toward the stairs. “After you, my dear future wife.”

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1091: HOW TO RID THE WORLD OF FLOCK (AND OTHERS*) CAMERAS AND DATA COLLECTION IN GENERAL

 You would think we'd get a new privacy law at least once every five years, just to keep up with technological advances, but no. Instead our corporate overlords, not content in forcing us to give up our data, now demand their God Cameras be placed all over the world so they can keep us under constant surveillance--cradle-to-grave omniscience--so they can flat-out raid our cars and phones for every detail of our lives via our data. So they can advertise to us. Not for nefarious purposes like, say, surveillance pricing, or worse.

How many officials have gotten busted using Flock (and others) cameras to spy on their exes? Or to stalk women? Just for example.

In 1988 we got the Video Privacy Protection Act. It forbade video stores from telling other people (in this specific case, journalists) what you rent from them. We got it because a newspaper got a rental list for a Supreme Court nominee and published it. Whoops!

Congress's collective butthole tightened when they realized, holy shit, our privacy is at risk! They passed that law faster than the Flash can cum.

Which brings me to all these surveillance cameras and the constant data collection. The corporate overlords sell everyone's data.

So . . . let's buy the porn searches of prominent politicians and publish them. It'll take some homework to do that legally, but it's pretty easy. Once you have one identifying piece of info, you can compare to the records you get from data brokers to confirm it's them. It's not even that expensive. It's just a few dollars for each record or a few thousand for datasets.

Key word: legally. It's easier to do it illegally, but it won't mean anything if we do. We have to LEGALLY get this information to make a point.

Politicians have proven that they only act in self-interest, so how fast do you think we'd get that new privacy law if we did this?

That should naturally lead to disillusionment with Flock (and others) cameras, but just in case, we should mandate that all politicians must be under 24/7 surveillance by these very same cameras. That means, we put a Flock (or others) camera in their office. In anyplace they might work. In front of their office building. In front of their house, to discourage any shady at-home corruption. In fact, if I want to read their emails live as they write them, or listen to their phone calls as they make them, I should have that access. (With the possible exception of a national security issue, of course. I even have a system for determining that, but who the fuck cares?)

They serve us, remember. We are their superiors. Also, please remember that the criminal we have in charge of the White House is our employee, too. He's not our master. He's a fucking civil servant who should be doing our bidding, not the other way around.

But I think it's only fair that, if they put cameras on us under the assumption that we're all potential criminals, then we should put cameras on them under the assumption that they're all potentially crooked.

"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime." That's an old KGB saying. American police--the regular kind, not the secret sort--have a similar saying. "I can follow anyone for five minutes and find some reason to pull them over." A watched pot may never boil, but a watched human does weird shit sometimes. Ever justify something after the fact? It's just a matter of creativity to change the weird shit into something that might be illegal.

The drawback to putting cameras on politicians is that they would have to vote for it, and their self-interest is too strong to allow something like that. However, they are not immune to how bad something looks, and if there are enough people demanding this at town halls across the country, they will have make some kind of public statement or risk mutiny.

I'll bet, just to save themselves, politicians will make the surveillance state go bye-bye. It'll take some elbow grease and sticktoitiveness, but when it comes to our rights, we should already have a barrelful of the former and a boatload of the latter.

We're Americans, dammit.

(Unless you're a loyal Fucker who lives overseas, that is. This is written from the perspective of an American, but I'm sure you can try some of this in your country, too. Check your local laws first, just in case.)

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*I keep saying (and others) because all too often local governments trade in Flock cameras for one of their competitors. Hey, the citizens said they wanted Flock cameras gone. My adoptive city of  DeKalb is in the process of getting rid of Flock cameras in favor of another company's. I forget which, and so what? Regardless of who fuckin' makes these things, we have to get rid of them. It's the concept, not the corporate overlord of choice.

Congress's Collective Butthole would be a great rock band name. Maybe a Les Claypool side project or something. Maybe he does an album with Jello Biafra?