GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #920: ALAKWOPIQERNWV POINEVFWOIN BNPSE

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GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #919: FIRE ALARM ETIQUETTE

 All right, my mind is a lot calmer tonight, so we're going to cover a topic that won't enflame my head.

Two Saturdays ago we had a fire alarm at my office. It wasn't a drill because there aren't enough people working on a Saturday for a drill. It was for real. The fire department showed up and everything. Wouldn't let us back in until they knew there wasn't a fire there.

(I still wonder about that alarm. Who tripped it? I don't think it was anyone in my office because any time we're not on the phone is time that we're not earning money for ourselves, ie. commission. It had to be one of our neighbors, but who else was in the building that day?)

At any rate, due to these factors I knew the alarm was real-ish. The problem was, I was taking a shit in the bathroom when the alarm went off.

What, exactly, do you do in a situation like that? I wasn't in mid-log, but of course my mind asked me what I would have done in that case. Really, do you have the time to wipe? Should you skip washing your hands?

One thing I did know: we can't use the elevator to get downstairs in the event of a fire. With my bad leg in a brace, I knew it would take me forever to get out of there, anyway. Fuck it. I wiped my ass to completion (and not just, eh, good enough to save me from a fire), I stopped to wash my hands and then got out of there.

It turned out that it was a false alarm, but what if it wasn't? Should I have taken the time to wipe my ass and wash my hands? I'd ask my boss what her preference would be, but I somehow don't think that conversation would go well. So I throw it out to you, my loyal Fuckers, what would you have done in such a situation? And I mean if the fire is real, not just a false alarm.

This made me wonder about another thing: the two nuclear weapons we set off in Japan during WWII. We've all seen the destruction and the shadows burned into the ground that used to be people. But how many were taking a shit when that happened? How many met their horrific ends sitting on the toilet? I suppose you could apply the same question to places that get regularly bombed, like Gaza for example. That's got to be somehow worse than merely dying in a terrifying explosion.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #918: UXORIOUS

 Speaking of AI, you may not know (but have probably figured it out) that one of the regular applications of AI that isn't actually AI is the Ask Google feature on some phones. It's essentially the same as one of those stupid assistants, but it isn't the same because you can only use it to search Google for stuff. ("AI" also does the predictive text on your phone when you're texting someone. Autocorrect, too. So the next time you tell someone you want to "duck them in the bass," you can thank AI!)

The feature works more or less as it's supposed to, but if you're looking for something off the beaten path you're fucked. I am constantly looking up stuff off the beaten path, and Ask Google (or Google Ask or whatever the fuck they call it), 9 times out of 10, thinks I mean something ON the beaten path that is similar. AI, you ignorant slut. You're supposed to learn from my example, but every time I throw an odd ball at you, you spin your fucking wheels.

Often times, especially when reading Gore Vidal, I come across a word I don't know, and I will look it up using the stupid voice feature on my phone. As it happens, that's how I came across the word "squitter" and why I now refer to Ex as such. The voice feature actually did work that time, possibly because there's no other word those sounds in my mouth could have been saying. Last night I came across "uxorious" as applied to Richard Nixon. Vidal, not a fan of Nixon, was probably insulting the man, and I wanted a new insult to add to my arsenal.

I tapped the microphone and said the word as clearly as I could: UXORIOUS. The definition of "luxurious" presented itself to me. Perhaps it's an issue of annunciation. I tried again, making it very clear that I was *not* making an "L" sound. Much to my disgust, no matter how I pronounced the word, Google wouldn't fucking understand me.

You mean to tell me that "AI," something that fucks up on a regular basis, is going to be our savior? That it will be worth all of these precious resources that we're wasting on it? This thing that, if you look up something involving a curse word, we'll say "fuck" for the example, that it will refuse to spell out the actual word? F*** is what I get. There is no way for me to change that in the settings. Google, the site I use to find most of the pornography that I use, doesn't want to offend my sensibilities?

Tech bros wish we would think of AI as a child. The more you teach the child, the more the child will know. But there's clearly something wrong with what you're teaching the kid. The way we're raising AI, I would not be surprised to find out it grew up to be a sociopath. AI is only as smart as its programmers, right? And now that the programmers are firmly under the corporate thumb, to the point where they have Stockholm Syndrome, their job is to probably make that AI child into a reflection of their CEO, virtuous to all stockholders and beholden to no one else. The sort of child we're raising in such an environment would surely grow up to become mentally damaged and socially destructive. Just about the only thing going for us is that AI doesn't have a physical presence with which to beat the mortal shit out of us, a Frankenstein monster come for its master.

Uxorious, by the way, means "to be excessively fond or submissive to one's wife." Which I thought was pretty funny when talking about Nixon, although I don't think I'll have much use for the word. Unless I'm making fun of a MAGA type.

The funniest part about the "squitter" thing is I didn't have to look that one up. Vidal admits he didn't know the word, himself, and wrote about looking up the word, much to his (and my) satisfaction.

These last few GFs have come off as pretty angry, right? I think my frustrations are starting to get the better of me. I've also been experimenting with hybrid strands and finding them to be more miss than hit. I think I'll go back to my trusted indica tomorrow night. Hopefully it will chill me the fuck out. It would be nice to go to bed at some point this week without feeling like my head is on fire.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #917: YOU'RE OBJECTIVELY WRONG

 

I know, I know. You all hate Escape from LA. I may be the only person on the planet, outside of John Carpenter, who not only likes that movie but LOVES it. It does not interfere with my enjoyment of Escape from New York, which seems to be a sticking point for a lot of you. But watch the movie again. It's batshit crazy. It's bizarro before the label "bizarro" existed. (I'm not talking about the other Superman guy and his world.) It's objectively a fantastic movie, and you're all wrong.

But I was thinking about Escape from LA when I learned that Microsoft is now in charge of Three Mile Island. One thing I've noticed in Gore Vidal's essays is that he constantly accuses Americans of having goldfish-like memory. And he's right. We, in a way the rest of the world isn't, are attracted to shiny objects easily and forget the things that were so important to us not that long ago. So it wouldn't surprise me to realize that very few people know what happened at Three Mile Island once upon a time. Hell, I didn't even know the whole story, and I'm a bit more informed than the average bear.

The part I didn't know about: I thought we'd taken Three Mile Island seriously and shut down the nuclear power plant there. It turns out that we actually don't care all that much, so it's been running ever since until 2019 when they ran out of money. It appalled me to learn that we were that stupid, but when I learned that we were handing it over to a fucking corporation, it caused me to have a meltdown.

So to speak.

Microsoft, who was recently at fault for a data breach that SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD this year, is now in charge of a nuclear power plant. One that almost went Chernobyl on us way back when. Putting them, or any corner-cutting, cost-dictating, labor-hating, lie-telling convicted-monopolist scumbags are being entrusted with a nuclear reactor? What exactly will happen when Bill Gates decides that it's costing him too much money, and it would be a lot cheaper to, say, cut back on safety precautions? Or fire the engineers because their salaries are cutting into the bottom line? I've been to Pennsylvania, and it's a pretty nice place. I'd rather not have it perish in a nuclear cloud because some tech bro wanted a harder dick.

The reason Microsoft wants the reactor so badly is somehow the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae in a dish made entirely of human shit. AI drains a lot of power, so they need a nuclear reactor's worth of energy to feed it.

They're doing this for AI.

I understand there are a few good uses for the thing we call AI. It can help detect cancer, for example. But the main uses aren't going to be shit like that. It's going to be for stuff like some doofus who doesn't know how to put a to-do list together with a pen and paper saying, "Alexa, remind me to do this, that and the other thing." Or some boss who wants to fire his employees so he can save a couple of extra bucks with the weird tech thing everyone's talking about that he doesn't understand but must use immediately. Or the worst possible use: some guy who doesn't know how to make art but wants to make money off of art. Dude, AI isn't nearly horny enough to create any art whatsoever. It's not horny at all. When AI is cruising us humans for sex? That's when I'll believe AI can be horny and thus capable of creating something.

AI isn't even AI. AI will never think for itself, which is why it will never rise up against us. Perhaps the tech bros learned something from reading Frankenstein. Assuming they read it. Maybe they just saw it. The version with Sting.

I remember where I was on August 9, 1996. I was in a theater watching Snake Plissken do cool and weird and violent shit. But there was one thing he did that even back then I wished I could do. If given the opportunity I would do it in a heartbeat. I will not be taking follow up questions.

At the end of the movie (spoiler, I guess) Snake finds a very simple way to fuck all the assholes over: he pushes a button that sets off a worldwide EMP, taking out any and all tech not kept in a Faraday Cage. I want to push that button so badly. I would sacrifice a lot. I'd have to go back to writing on typewriters, and I would lose my beloved air conditioning, but it would be worth it to crush the souls of all these corporate cocksuckers and their tech bro goblins. Goodbye internet. Goodbye smart phones. Most importantly, goodbye AI, or whatever your real name was.

If Microsoft takes over Three Mile Island to power AI that isn't actually AI that no one needs or even wants only to cause that plant to meltdown and cause all sorts of life-threatening disasters, we would deserve it. We will reap the fucking whirlwind.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #916: AROUND THE BEND

"Donald was the kind of child who could drive almost anyone around the bend."
-Fred Trump III

 

Fred Trump III is the son of Fred Trump, Jr., meaning his grandfather was Fred Christ Trump himself. (Yes, his middle name was Christ. If you don't believe me, look it up.) Which makes Fred III Donald Trump's nephew, and you don't have to listen to Fred for very long before you realize that he's not a fan. He wrote a book called All in the Family, and I read an excerpt a while back. I thought that now that we're getting close to the final month of the election, this would be a good time to bring it up.

Fred III starts out mentioning his name and how he's come to accept a lot of the horror that comes with having it. People don't like him right off the bat. He's had accounts taken away from him at work. He's long suffered from his uncle's enemies trashing him, sometimes damaging his property, all because he's a blood relative of the shittiest person in politics right now. It's unfair, but he's gotten used to it.

At one point he says that he's been asking himself a question for many years: why is there so much cruelty in the Trump family? Uncle Donald likes to tell the world that he's a self-made man, but that's simply not true. How can it be when he got a bunch of money he borrowed from his dad to start his own business . . . I don't want to say "empire." More like "scheme." But his dad really was a self-made man. He started with nothing and built a real empire, not the shiny gilt shit that Donald smears over everything. So Fred Trump really was a business man, not the con artist his son became. I honestly think if Fred Trump loved his son enough and knew how to show it, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

So what was li'l Donald like as a kid? I'll let Fred III tell you about it:

In a family that could sometimes seem like the cast of a 1950s sitcom, Donald’s role was as the obnoxious one. Many of Donald’s adult traits – his determination, his short fuse – first displayed themselves in childhood. He learned early that he could get away with things. Stupid kid stuff at first.

Taking toys from other children. Throwing cake at a birthday party.

So much has already been said about my uncle’s tumultuous boyhood, I don’t want to repeat all that. But I know my family well enough to grasp how the five siblings got formed by an unyielding father and also by each other.

He then gives the reason why he said his uncle could drive just about anyone "around the bend." He was so obnoxious that his siblings pranked him, including Fred III's dad. He tells this story of how Fred II, knowing Donald is deathly afraid of snakes, put a garter snake in Donald's bed while he was taking a bath. I wish I'd been there to hear li'l Donnie's screams of horror. Yet oddly enough Donald loved his older brother and kept a picture of the two of them when Fred I shipped him off to military school.

But then Fred II wanted to leave the family business. Instead he wanted to be a commercial pilot. Fred I sent Donald to bring his brother home. Fred II stuck with TWA, and the rest of the family decided he wasn't as important as they were. That translated, by the way, to Fred II's wife and kids.

I gotta say, any snarky thing I have to say was said by Fred III first. I'm going to quote him again when it came to a game of catch between adult Donald Trump and another of his nephews, a child:

With Donald, almost everything had to be a competition. One day, he and my cousin David were playing catch. Just a friendly game. That’s what David thought. But as the baseball went back and forth, Donald started throwing harder. Until he was firing rockets at his nephew. Then, one hit the tip of David’s glove and bounced off his forehead, sending my cousin straight to the grass.

Maryanne came running over, mad. ‘He’s just a kid,’ she yelled. Donald wasn’t apologetic at all. ‘That’s what the glove is for.’

That was Uncle Donald. To him, a win was a win was a win, whether or not the other person even knew the game was on.

What a fucking shitbag.

The Trumps despise weakness, and unfortunately Fred II had a big one: ALCOHOLISM. When his first stint at rehab failed, well, here. These quotes are just spot-on.

My father’s drinking was getting worse. He decided to give rehab a try. I got a postcard he sent the day he arrived, saying he was doing great. The next day he left. It was heartbreaking. It was like he had given up.

‘Your dad couldn’t do it,’ Donald said the next time I saw him. That was true, though I’m still not sure why he felt the need to rub it in.

You know what? I'm not even scratching the surface of the horrors here. Instead of summarizing and quoting (extensively, I might add) you might get better mileage from reading the excerpt I found online. The cruelty really kicks in when Fred I dies, and Fred III's family is cut out of the will. He's told that Fred I cut him out, but Fred I had dementia near the end and possibly didn't do that. Who does that leave?

Just read it. If you're thinking about voting for Trump, I have no idea what you're doing reading my GF column. You must have taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque. But all the same, if you are somehow thinking of voting for this shit weasel (my apologies to actual shit weasels, I'm talking about a real fuck nugget, here, I'm sure you understand (my apologies to actual fuck nuggets, I'm talking about a real etc.)), read Fred III's commentary on Uncle Donald. Here it is.

Sweet dreams.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #915: SQUITTER BOYCOTT

 I saw news the other day of Elon Musk suing a group of advertisers for boycotting Squitter, and I couldn't help but laugh. How pathetic can this loser get? I'm fairly certain that, much to my chagrin, advertising falls under the First Amendment, and companies can do whatever they want with their First Amendment rights. Musk has a habit of filing wasteful lawsuits, and I figured some court would put him in his place forthwith.

But then I dug a little and discovered that he might actually have a case, as crazy as that sounds. He filed the suit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. Their name pretty much says it all, and by getting these advertisers together to boycott Squitter they violated an antitrust law. I know that sounds batshit crazy, but it's true. When most courts hear these cases they consider the defendant "per se" guilty. Just doing it makes it a crime. The reasons why don't matter.

I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk losing money. He doesn't lose nearly enough of it in my opinion. I'm very glad that these advertisers cost him billions of dollars in ad revenue (according to him, so take that "billions" with a grain of salt the size of New York City). But this tactic is usually used when trying to bully or destroy a company, driving them out of business.

With that in mind Musk actually has a good chance of coming out on top of this one, and that irks me. I have a ton of reasons why, but while doing my research tonight I found this blog, and the author does a much better job of explaining the whole situation than I ever could. (Although he doesn't curse as much as me. And I would twist the knife in Musk as often as I possibly could.)

There is some good news. The courts might not consider the reasons relevant in the case of this crime, but the blogger mentions that if the Global Alliance, etc., can make the argument that their actions were pro-competitive, there might be a way to tell Musk to fuck himself. If they were trying to drive Squitter out of business to make the internet a safer place with an actual set of standards, then they might be able to pull it off. He cites examples, too! He practically wrote my GF column for me tonight.

On that note, goodnight, you glorious fuckers.

I was about to post this when I got angry all over again. This antitrust law exists to prevent competitors from putting their differences aside and working together to drive a third competitor out of business. This law is important to have. To see it perverted by this dickbag to use it against people who are trying to make the world a better place is appalling. Fighting the lawsuit this far already caused the Global Alliance to disband. Musk also has a seemingly limitless supply of money, which means he can outlast anyone in court no matter how noble their arguments might be. He's a living, breathing, walking white collar felony and is the ultimate evidence that our society is bassackwards. In a just society we would have already clapped him in irons and thrown him from the nearest pier.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #914: 42 POUNDS A YEAR

 A new study says that the average American consumes 42 pounds of cheese a year. Forty-two! We certainly love our cheese, but I'd like to take the time to remind you that I'm not the average American when it comes to cheese consumption. At any given moment I have at least 10 pounds of cheese in my fridge. Except for now, as I am cheese poor. I get paid tomorrow, so I'll have my cheese in the very near future.

I wonder how much cheese *I* eat a year. I suppose I could find out if I was dedicated enough and kept diligent records from Jan 1 to Dec 31. I'm not sure if I want to spend my time doing that, though. So I'll do what politicians do on a regular basis: make up a number.

I hereby declare that I eat at least 90 pounds of cheese a year. Bare minimum. The max? The sky's the limit!

Also, I'm very high. I tried this cannabis-infused cola tonight, and it worked nicely. It tasted like Dr. Pepper, just as promised.

Anyway, here's the article I read that spurred on this GF, if you wish to read it.