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.)

__________________________

*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?

NEW BOOK: DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE? by John Bruni

 

Would you look at that beautiful cover? In related news, I have a new book out! DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE? is now available!

From the back cover:

"Do you believe in the power of love?" This is the question that faces Nelson Jeffries, a man in desperate need of money. His answer leads him to Ania, a Polish immigrant studying to be a nurse. Her visa is about to expire, and she absolutely cannot go home. She offers him a deal: marry her in exchange for five thousand dollars. It's just a business agreement, he keeps telling himself, except he can't help but fall in love with Ania. At first it seems like the feeling is mutual. It's too bad she's not who she claims to be . . .

John Bruni, author of And Jesus Came Back and Dong of Frankenstein, returns to hardboiled fiction in what he likes to call a "screwball romance crime novel," as if Howard Hawks had directed a film based on a Richard Laymon book.

Get your copy today!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1090: AI SLOP 4 LIFE!

 So you've decided to suck up to AI companies. Life is hard for human beings. It's so much easier to surrender your agency to a machine.

Thinking is hard! You don't want to put yourself through that. Besides, the techbros have our best interests at heart. That's why they get up every morning, to make life easier for us NPCs. They would never let AI give you bad advice.

Of course, they're also CEOs and other lower forms of life, so they hate humanity and wish to be the only examples of it despite being cold-blooded dead-eyed lizard fucks (see Thiel, Peter). It's obvious that they want people to stop doing work and to rely on their Plagiarism God Machines (TM) to handle everything.

Yay! No more work? You mean, no more red tape and Sunday scaries and commutes and asshole customers? That sounds like a utopia to me!

Except . . . how will you survive without a job? Your home costs money. You have expenses. How will you afford groceries after the workforce is eliminated in favor of AI?

I'm sure the techbros have a plan. They don't have to share it with us. They're altruists. I know we live in a pretend capitalist society, and universal income goes against our make-believe system, but that's what government is for! To take care of citizens who can't take care of themselves. And they're about to take care of every single one of us! It's like we're one big happy family!

What's that? How will the government pay for all of our lives? Why do you ask? The government has unlimited coffers! They'll never run out of money! Of course, we won't get as much as we used to, so we'll have to tighten our collective belts. Nothing is perfect, but hey, I'm sure the corporate overlords will show mercy and lower their prices so even the poorest of us can afford to live.

OH! That's what you meant? I'm not sure how Uncle Sam can afford universal income if there's no incoming tax money. I suppose they could tax the billionaires, but that's unthinkable. Do I look like a miracle worker?

Look, just trust us. Everything will be fine. It will all work out in the end.

Would Elon Musk lie to you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1089: STATE OF ANXIETY

 Not too long ago I overheard a conversation in the waiting room at the doctor's office. An older couple were talking about how everyone had anxiety today. Anxiety here, anxiety there. We're all living in a state of anxiety. It wasn't like that when we were kids. What is going on with this shit?

My first thought was, back when you were kids, admitting to anxiety was not just frowned upon, it was practically forbidden. While there is a lot of truth to that, I've since come up with another theory.

Constant surveillance. When I was a kid, there was a reasonable expectation that, when you left your house, you would not be recorded anywhere. I mean, there were cameras, sure. If you went to the bank or a gas station or a liquor store or any other place that was likely to get robbed, you would undoubtedly see a camera. But outside of those places? To say nothing of the fact that we didn't have cell phones yet, much less cell phones with cameras, so if someone was trying to record images of you, you'd see the giant Camcorder, so not even your fellow citizens could film you unnoticed.

But now cameras are everywhere. Everyone you see could potentially be recording you with cell phones or even with their eye glasses. There are cameras in cars, in door bells, even in your fucking household appliances.

Human beings are social creatures, our modern day behavior notwithstanding. It's important to be accepted by the tribe, and because there are cameras everywhere, a lot of people are trying to be on their best behavior because no one wants to get caught looking bad on camera. Like, that kind of video gets posted to social media, and then that person's life is over. Or, less drastically, someone doing something stupid, like picking your nose and eating the findings. They've been cast out of the tribe.

With stakes that high, why not stay the fuck home? Interact with people? Are you nuts?!

And now the cameras have gotten even worse. They're not just satisfied to steal our images. Now they're reading your license plate. Or they're scanning the data on your car's computer. Your digital footprint is more like a fingerprint. The police can ID you just from a Flock camera scanning your phone, so if a Flock camera busts you speeding, they don't need your face on camera. They know your phone was in the vehicle, so you were undoubtedly driving. Good luck getting out of that ticket.

I believe this is a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights. The Flock cameras aren't police cameras. It's the corporation, Flock, that is in charge of them. But instead of getting a warrant to go after you, the cops can just submit a request from Flock, and they have no reason not to give them that info. In fact, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

But we live in a society where corporations and law enforcement are indistinguishable; therefore, it's a violation of the Bill of Rights.

"You can't fight City Hall," you say.

But you can. I have an excellent idea to get rid of the surveillance state we currently live in, and it wouldn't break a single law. Guaranteed to work! But that's for another day. Stay tuned.

Follow me for more tips on how to kill anxiety and rescue our personal freedom! I'll teach you my easy-peasy two-birds-one-stone solution!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1088: CHANNEL SURFING

 A loooooooooong time back I wrote a GF about how I'm among the last people who know who Laurel and Hardy were. Same for George Burns and Milton Berle and everyone else from back then who are about to pass into obscurity.

At the time I wrote it I thought this was a fucking crime, but now that I'm pushing fifty? I believe it's just the way she goes, to quote a great philosopher.

Young people today don't know a lot of the stuff I know, or even have the same frame of reference, and it's not just pop culture things. They have no idea what it was like to drive in a car that didn't have seatbelts and did have ashtrays.

But kids today will never know what it's like to watch broadcast TV. That's the craziest thing of all to me. They stream everything. They have no idea what channel surfing is. They will never understand the annoyance of discovering jack shit on the tube. That's not just a surface difference in time periods--that's a completely different way of life.

I generally think my readers here are around my age, so I don't think anyone from Gen Z is reading this. But if you are, I have something that might give you somewhat of an idea of what it was like. And for my fellow middle-agers . . . BEHOLD! A walk down memory lane.

I was a child in the 'Eighties, so that one scratched my nostalgic itch. But I'm a curious guy, so of course I looked at the other decades. It's fun.

It worried me a little that whoever put this website together might have used AI because I couldn't figure out how else they would do it, but I read more about the project, and it seems like they did it some other way. And if you think they're missing things, you can even make suggestions.

I'm glad this exists, but I don't know if I'd sit down and watch it for longer than a few minutes. Anytime you want to escape the modern world? Here's a way to do that.

Enjoy!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1087: THE FUTURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

 The laundry room where I live recently swapped out their old washers and dryers for new models. I later learned they did this because they were selling the complex and wanted to get a better price, but that's not today's gripe. The old machines used cards for payment. The new ones require an app.

Because the future is not your friend, I ran into a terrible problem yesterday. I filled up the washer with my clothes and put the liquid detergent (DO NOT USE POWDER!!! says the taped note at the top of each unit) into the tray, and then went on the app to get it started so I could get my reading in for the day.

The app gave me a spinning wheel. Oh no.

I logged out and back in with the same result. Uninstalled and reinstalled and ditto. Called the customer service number. Lo! and behold! The app was down across the country. Did they have an ETA for when service would be restored? Nope!

I ordinarily do laundry on Wednesday, but since I was in Dixon I had to do it yesterday. Luckily I'd taken today off for a three day weekend, or my laundry might not have gotten done, and my coworkers would have to deal with me wearing the same stuff for a few days in a row. I checked the app before I went to bed last night, and it was still down.

So if this were any other week, I'd have been fucked. This turned out to be a mild annoyance, but then I turned my thoughts to the more egregious things the future has in store for us.

Picture, if you will, losing your sight and then having it restored by a chip in your head. You get used to it, but then you experience your first outage. While you're driving. And you're approaching the school crosswalk at lunchtime.

Or, more likely, you didn't pay your bill, so Elon Musk remotely bricks your device. While you're driving.

So yeah. Keep "updating" everything so you have to do it on a goddam app. And another thing! Those dang kids with their dirt bikes messed up the courtyard grass and HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! Hmpf. Some people. OH GODDAMMIT, THOSE KIDS ARE BACK!

*sigh* Yeah, I know. All the same, I stand by it.

It meaning the whole app thing, not the thing about the dirt bikes. Although the dirt bikes are a real thing, and there really is a bunch of grooves in the grass outside my window. I found myself staring at it with disgust the other day and realized, oh shit. It's happening. I'm officially getting old.

I'll be 48 in a few hours. My physical therapist once pointed out that I'm pushing 50. I thought I was kind of borderline on that phrase, but now there's no denying it. I'm pushing 50.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1086: READING LINEAGE

 If you were to ask me for the best word to describe myself, I'd choose "reader." I do not remember a time when I was not constantly reading. My mom told me my first word was not mama (much to her chagrin) but book.

I've often wondered why reading is so important to me. I suspect it was because both Mom and Dad were voracious readers. Dad didn't read around me because he only had me for an occasional weekend, so he had other things he wanted to do with me. But I saw Mom read all the time, and she encouraged me to do the same.

But how did they become such readers?

Dad is easy. His mom was a teacher. There's no way she didn't get him reading. In case Mom and Dad failed me, Grandma Laurette sent me a steady stream of books, all on history, dinosaurs or Ireland. In fact, one day I told her I was having trouble finding a particular book. She said she'd been using this great online bookstore, and they always had hard-to-find stuff. I didn't want to go online. I hadn't embraced the internet yet.

She did not live long enough to see her grandson's books for sale on that very website, which was called Amazon.

Mom didn't live long enough to read my first book. Dad read a few of my books, and it made me proud to know he liked them.*

But Mom's parents were not readers. Though Grandma loved crosswords, I never, in all my life, saw her pick up a book. As for Gramps, he only ever read the newspaper until the last ten years of his life. He started reading the books in my bedroom while I was at work. Believe it or not, his favorites were both by Richard Laymon: Island and Body Rides. But that wouldn't have helped Mom become a reader when she was a kid.

I suspect it was her grandmother, Grandma's mom. As I went through Grandma's books near the end of my time in Elmhurst, I discovered that they were her mom's books, instead. She lived with my grandparents and Mom and died when Mom was pregnant with me. My great-grandma liked to read hefty novels, LIT-rit-chure.

Now I suspect there might have been someone else, too. Gramps's cousin wrote many letters to him, and one of them contained a photocopy of a family picture from Greece. I'll talk about that at some point, but the accompanying letter mentions Gramps's dad and uncles. Apparently they were all readers. She mentioned that my great-grandpa liked to hang out at the library all the time.

I mentioned this to my aunt yesterday, and she said that she was always apprehensive around Gramps's mom as a kid. My great-grandma couldn't speak English, so my aunt couldn't understand what she was saying. I learned from my research into the family stuff that she couldn't read or write in any language, so knowing that her husband, my great-grandpa, was a reader surprised and delighted me.

So. How did he become a reader, then? I don't think I'll ever find out. I know only one thing about his father and nothing about his mother. Sure, I could find out their dates of birth or maybe what they died of, but what are the odds that I'll ever find out something anecdotal about them? And if I did, say, find a letter from one relative to another talking about what a reader my great-great-grandpa was? How would I read it? It's all Greek to me . . .

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*Yeah, I heard that. You know what you can do with your comments about his bias?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1085: FIND YOUR FUN

 I always talk about how the world is currently the tire fire to end all tire fires, and I'm not the only one. I'm not in the habit of pointing out the obvious, but I say it because I'm always trying to remind people to find their fun. Fun isn't going to knock on your door and present itself, wearing its Sunday's finest and giving you a firm and vigorous handshake. Unless you're into that sort of thing. I don't judge.

You have to go out and find it. Or, if you don't want to go out, you can make it at home.

But I like to go out. Today my aunt invited me to lunch. She lives about as far west as you can get in Illinois without being in Iowa, so our mid-point is Dixon, the hometown of Ronald Reagan. I imagine that's why they call I-88 the Reagan tollway. I drove past his childhood home, and I'm sure it didn't look that nice when he lived there.

I mention it because it was a 45 minute drive through beautiful land on a lovely day. For the first time in weeks, it wasn't hot as balls out, so I could drive with the windows down, the wind making my hair dance like one of those inflatable things you see at dealerships.* I felt good, so I turned up the music and enjoyed the trip. And for just a bit, I could ignore the Great American Tire Fire (TM).

Fun shouldn't be a project, but when you find it, you should enjoy it, no matter how little it might be. I'm sure a lot of people are reading this and thinking, that is your idea of fun? It's not capital F fun, but sure, I had fun. It lightened my spirits.

Sometimes that's all it takes. Speeding down 88 at 100 mph through farmland as far as the eye can see.

Added bonus: when I got home I discovered a shipment of Tang from my friends, Alicia and Chris Stamps. It wasn't just a container of Tang. They got me TWO GIANT CANISTERS!

This is only a little shorter than my thigh, and I'm a tall dude.

Also! I won a Goodreads giveaway! That always cheers me up. All in all, it was a good day.

So yeah, sometimes fun really does show up at your door. But it doesn't happen a lot, so make sure you seek it out.

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*Yes, I'm sure it's called something. Also, I am high and do not wish to look it up. You can always write your own blog about these things.**

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**Yes, you can call your blog Goodnight, Fuckers 2: Electric Bugaloo. You're welcome.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1084: PLAYBOY 3

 I have a shit-ton more excerpts from my Playboy collection that might be of interest to us now, in the modern world, as opposed to, say, 20+ years ago when I first got them. So here's a few interesting images:

You can probably guess that was written by Hunter S. Thompson. It was a letter to Hef celebrating the 50th anniversary of the magazine, but it might as well have been written 5 minutes ago. Nothing has changed. Or maybe we're currently living in the future he predicted . . . ?

Alfred Kinsey is a subject of fascination for me. If you've never read TC Boyle's The Inner Circle, I highly recommend it. But good luck scrubbing these pigfucking stats from your brain.

That is a lie from a lying liar. Not one year later he was running for Congress, so . . .

My Favorite Playmate is usually a pretty boring feature, but every once in a while a celebrity says something so outlandish I can't help but laugh. All the same, he didn't choose Nicole Narain?

That's a pretty good author photo of Irvine Welsh. It encompasses his subject matter and tone very well.

Nine. The answer to Edward Bunker's question is nine.

The Beef's got some serious problems. When you're going to Harvey Weinstein for advice, for example, it might be a good idea to keep your mouth shut and your head down instead of doing a Playboy interview.

Speaking of Tarantino, I forgot that he did this. He also did one for Django Unchained.

Any guesses as to who is telling this story? I'll put the answer at the end of this.

I bring this up because this is possibly the worst timed bit in US comedy history. This was published just a couple of months before 9/11. *pulls collar* In case you couldn't tell, this was written by George Carlin.

Ah jeez.

Speaking of Silent Bob, Kevin Smith also did the 20Q feature. That Michael Jackson idea is absolutely insane. Considering *that scandal* I'm glad it didn't happen, because HOLY SHIT.

Tarantino says something here that I identify with 100%. I've read so many books that I'm bored with the things that many people find enthralling. That's why I write outlandish things. The reason I do that is because I hate boredom, and if I ever bore someone with something I've written, I would consider that a crime against humanity. Every book has slow parts, but I try to make them at least interesting.

I used to be a Ron Jeremy fan. Ever see Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy? I thought he was funny in a cornball sense ("How big is my dick? Three inches . . . from the floor!"), and I was fascinated with the fact that he came from such a high pedigree (look up who his parents were). I even learned how to detail my pubic hair from him (shave the shaft and balls bare, trim the bush until it matches the rest of your body hair). But . . .

Knowing what we know now? Define "boink," please. 

Well. He turned out to be a huge piece of shit. Also, if you looked at that and thought, uhhhh, pandering? It has an interesting legal definition. The hell with it. Don't look that up. You need some sleep.

That ended on an ugly note, but I'll have more for you in a bit. Donald Trump and Mark Cuban did the big interview, and I'm probably going to dedicate a night to a compare/contrast of the two and what they said. I've got a long way to go before I'm through with my collection, so who knows how many more editions I'll have for you? To be continued . . .

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I almost forgot: It was Denis Leary. That's right, Dean Martin called Denis Leary a pussy. I have two words for you, oh-KAY?! That's fucking funny.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1083: FOUR YEARS

My first author photo.

Whenever I talk with a friend I haven't heard from in a while, as I did recently, they inevitably say something along the lines of how they thought for sure my drinking was going to kill me. There are a lot of people out there surprised by the fact that I'm still alive. I am one of those people. As of today it's been four years since my last drink.

It's been four looooooooong years. I thought maybe I'd still drink for special occasions, like my birthday and Christmas and so on. In fact, I lied my ass off so I could get out of detox and get something to drink in time for my birthday. I planned to buy a fifth of Wild Turkey 101, but when I went to the liquor store, I drove right past without stopping. I still have no idea why. All the same, that special occasions plan would have failed. That was my SOP for maybe a year back in the early 2010s, and I strained to find ways to qualify stuff as a "special occasion."

I miss the whole thing. I miss hanging out in bars and bullshitting with my fellow drinkers. I miss the fucked up adventures boozing used to bring. I even miss hangovers, the price to pay for greatness.

Who knows? Maybe I'll take it up again. There are a few things that might force my hand, like losing my bad foot or getting fired. Or maybe I'll live to one hundred and figure, fuck it. What's the worst that could happen?

Probably not, though.

I beat my alcoholism without AA, and that makes me proud. I think of all the court ordered AA people get stuck with and think, that sounds like a First Amendment violation. AA claims to be a non-religious organization, but they're lying. It pleases me that I beat this without the industry standard. All I needed to do was beat the physical addiction. The rest of it was a breeze.

I'm not condemning AA. It didn't work for me because Step Two sounds like a great excuse to blame my problems on something other than myself. Make no mistake, I am to blame for going down this path. But they do help people, so if you need help, give them a try. Or you can do what I did and go to RCA (Recovery Centers of America). From what I understand, they have locations across the country. I personally went to the one in St. Charles, which is pretty nice. It costs, yes, but if you have medical coverage, you'll be OK.

There is an added benefit to writing about this stuff here, and that's you lovely fuckers. I typically don't give a fuck what people in general think of me, but for some reason I do in this case. I think of all the people who congratulate me, and I realize I'd let them down if I started boozing it up again. That disappointment is one of the things that prevents me from drinking on shitty days, so thank you.

Have I done anniversary posts every year? I'm too lazy to check, but I suspect I have. Maybe I'll do one for five years, but after that? I won't bring it up again until the 10 year anniversary.

Unless I've been killed in a horrific car accident. I probably won't post if that happens.

Anyway, goodnight fuckers.

For many years I had that author photo on my business card, too. A friend of mine said, "You have a picture of you drinking on your business card?" I nodded, proud, and said, "Of course." Bliss in ignorance? No, bliss in stupidity.

Special thanks to Alicia and Chris Stamps, who always remember my anniversary.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1082: 12 MONKEYS

 

I remember when I saw the movie, 12 Monkeys, in the theater on opening night. It was a perfect time travel flick, and it made sense 100% of the, uh, time, which is unusual for such fare. If you want to impress friends with movie trivia, did you know that one of the two writers of this movie also wrote Unforgiven?

Anyway, when they announced a TV series was being made out of it, I had to wonder how. How could they stretch that story out over the course of a season, much less more than one? They did a pretty good job of it, and the show went off in a lot of crazy and unexpected directions.

But I lost Syfy before I could watch the final season. My provider dropped the channel for whatever reasons, and ever since I've wondered how they ended the show. When I gave up cable for streaming, I always kept an eye out, hoping someone would eventually have it.

And now, while watching the new season of From and the final season of Billy the Kid, I discovered MGM+ had it. At first I thought, I remember enough of the show. I can probably just plunge myself back into it with nothing more than the previously-on walkthrough.

That was a terrible idea. I'd forgotten so much about the first few seasons that I really should have started from the beginning, but I didn't have time for that. I'm not going to pay for another month just so I can do that. The problem is, I am a completely different person from the guy who watched those first seasons. Number one among the changes: I no longer drink three-quarters of a handle every night. No wonder my memories were hazy. I was probably blacked out when I watched a majority of 12 Monkeys.

Cumulatively I'm missing about a decade's worth of my life. It's not like I turned 30 and boom, the next thing I know, I'm 40. There are bits and pieces I recall, but booze effectively erased a lot of that decade. It's more like 33 to 43, maybe 44.

So picking up the show again after so much time was surreal to me. The time travel show sort of . . . sent me back in time. I had the sensation of being that person again for the first three episodes to the point where I reached for my drink once and recoiled in horror at it *not* being whiskey.

As for the show itself, I managed to get back into the correct mindframe when that feeling of time travel faded, and I understood the story again. I recalled more until I realized there was a plot twist I'd been waiting for when I watched back in the day. The twist did, indeed, come but it was not the twist I expected. Related, sure, but different nonetheless. I won't say what it was, in case you planned on watching at some point, but I thought Cole would somehow turn out to be his own father--like a test tube baby, not the other way--hence his importance as a paradox to the story. I was close, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The actual twist is pretty sweet, though, and you should give it a shot.

In fact, the whole show is just great. If you have MGM+, check it out.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1081: A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY

 We recently, as a nation, celebrated a most historical birthday. I can't believe such a concept has survived for this long. It really is astonishing, when you think about all the years that have passed since this grand notion found its feet and started to walk, then run. When I think about the whole thing, I stand mute in awe.

I am, of course, referring to Goodnight, Fuckers. Believe it or not, as of today I've been writing these things for twelve years. In another year it will be allowed to watch the PG-13 classic, My Stepmother is an Alien. Happy birthday, GF!

Twelve years ago I began this thing without warning. Usually if I start to do something, I at least introduce the concept so everyone knows what to expect. Nope. I charged in with something exceptionally personal that I should absolutely never have shared with anyone under any circumstances.

Don't click on this. Seriously, don't. If you must know, I'll TL;DR it for ya: I developed early as a child, and when I was writing one of my Hardy Boys rip-offs on my mom's piano bench, I had an orgasm. I wasn't doing anything other than writing. It just sort of happened. There. See? Don't click that link. There are more details if you do.

I never quite intended GF to become what it did. I thought I was mapping out who I was in case any future archaeologist wanted to know. That kind of stuff still happens, but I never intended the political stuff and the history lessons and the oh-look-at-this-weird-shit profiles to be more than just points of interest instead of the whole point.

All in all, I'm proud of all that stuff. I'm glad this is how it worked out. Not all 1,081 of these things are good--can't all be zingers--but twelve years of purposely spilling my brain on the internet is pretty good, all things considered.

And GF cannot be killed. I've tried to stop on several occasions, but it's more stubborn than *I* am, and that is saying a fuck-ton. So I guess I'll still be writing these for the rest of my life.

Brace yourselves. To quote Frank Reynolds(ish):

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1080: PLAYBOY 2

 I've gathered a few more images for my ongoing revisit of Playboy magazine. I've been going through my collection, saving the issues that are important to me, rereading about what life was like in the early 2000s. So here's more of what I've found.

President Creep doing what he does.

Looks like this was a new article published posthumously. And no, wrong Robert Crane. That one died a long time ago.

Ah jeez.

I wonder if Vidal would still say that if he was alive today.

Vidal really knew how to charm our corporate overlords.

"MADLY IN LOVE WITH BATMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I like to think that Elvis would have appreciated having Nic Cage as a son-in-law. He probably knew, too. After all, Elvis is probably still alive . . .

Jim Carrey is going to turn 90 in 2052. I'll obviously be gone by then, so someone planning to live that long: please check back on this. And then have your kids check back on him when he turns 120, please and thank you.

This is how I first read Chuck Palahniuk's infamous story, "Guts."

Speaking of the Joker . . .

OK, I think that's enough for now. I'll get back to this again some other time. I did find quite a few doozies including the Donald Trump interview . . .