GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #785: NOSTALGIA FOR AN AGE THAT NEVER EXISTED

 Even though the song isn't really about the topic tonight, the title is apropos, so you might as well read this while listening to this.

As some of you might know, back in January 2020, I went to the ER suffering from another bout of pancreatitis, and they decided to hold onto me. While I was there I went into severe alcohol withdrawal, so they wound up keeping me for a couple of weeks while it ran its course through my system. I can't remember if I went into my hallucinations here before. When I went back to look I didn't find anything. Unless I wrote about it later.

Regardless, not too long ago I started feeling nostalgia for one of those hallucinations. I didn't know that was possible, but a few people told me that they were familiar with the sensation. It was the one in which I went to the middle of a wide open field, to a burger stand made entirely of plastic on the outside, including a bench where a plastic milkman sat. I got the feeling that I sat on that bench all the time when I was a kid. In the hallucination, I sat there again, and then I went inside, where it looked kind of like a neighborhood bar.

It was the last of my hallucinations before I came back to myself in my hospital room. When I came out of it, that hallucination made me feel like I'd rediscovered a forgotten piece of my childhood. It had been so vivid that I asked my grandmother about it when I got home. Because I could swear that me, her, Gramps and my cousin, Erik, used to walk there from the house we lived in back then. She was still a few months away from dementia, so her memory was still good. She had no recollection of this place.

It bothered me for a while because the memory of going there as a child was so real. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe it really was just a hallucination. Because this open field never existed. I reasoned that if it was within walking distance of that house, I'd remember where it was because I live maybe two blocks from there today. And there is nowhere that place could have been.

So I let it go until a few months ago when I remembered the hallucination, in particular the plastic milkman on the bench, and I felt nostalgia for it. Having nostalgia for something that never existed is a very weird feeling for me. I'm not given to nostalgia often these days, but to feel it for something I made up during alcohol withdrawal is just too fucking weird for me.

And then, last week, I dreamed of that place again. AND I FINALLY KNOW WHY I FELT LIKE THIS PLACE ACTUALLY EXISTED.

I may have talked about my dream world before. It's a close approximation of my neighborhood, but depending on the dream I'm having it can be very different. I went to that dream world where I found this burger stand again. I sat on the bench with the plastic milkman. I went inside and ordered food that I didn't get to eat because I woke up too soon.

And when I woke up I remembered where I'd known this place before. I'd dreamed about it when I was a child. The wide open field was on the opposite side of the train tracks. There's a neighborhood back there, but in my dream world there's just that field. And that burger stand. And I used to dream about it all the time back then. Weird that my mom never went with us, though. Or Erik's mom, for that matter. But we went there a lot, and then I grew up and forgot about this recurring dream until the alcohol withdrawal brought me back.

It took me almost four years to figure that out. I'm usually a lot quicker on the uptake, but the human brain is a strange place. I had a few other hallucinations, one of which I know for a fact came from my childhood. It makes me wonder about the others and where they might have come from.

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OK, as I'm sure you suspected, this is the last GF column of the year. I usually take my writing vacation starting with Thanksgiving week, during which time I lay off writing so much. I have a few things to work on, but I'm not going to bust my ass over it. It's mostly editing stuff, anyway. I have one more newsletter for Sunday, and that'll be it from me for the rest of 2023. Unless I have news to share, and I might. If you follow the newsletter, you'll know why.

All right. I still have plenty of GF ideas for when I return, and I'm sure I'll have even more by then. I think I got to everything time sensitive. For now, at least. Anyway, I'll be back in January unless the universe pulls a Donnie Darko on me while I'm in bed. Until then, please remember to . . .

And party on, dudes!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #235: #VOTEBRUNIDANGER2016

For my entire life I have been unsettled by our government and the way it is run. Our system is fucked. It's unfair. It's garbage. Long time readers will remember this from years ago, when I complained about how rich white men make all the decisions in this country, and that's the way our system was designed from way back when, back when democracy meant practically nothing.


For the most part I still believe this. Our whole system, which is fucking ancient, needs to be retooled. This garbage makes no sense now. BUT! I've done a lot of thinking about this, and it sucks. I might have been wrong back then. Not about the rich white men doing shit. That's always been the case. No, I mean that maybe I was wrong about going with the popular vote.


In my youthful naivety I forgot about one thing: human beings are pieces of shit. The public should not be allowed to make important decisions. They are guided by one thing and one thing only: ME. Fuck everyone else. It's ME I'm concerned with. Fair enough. We all want to preserve our own way of life. But human beings, for the most part, can't be bothered with other ways of life. We're tribal. If something falls outside of our belief system we feel a moral obligation to fuck it to death with our mind dicks.


I feel more impotent than I've ever felt in my entire life. There's no sane way out of this. We can let America's id run rampant and get Trump into office, or we can let our superego let Clinton win the White House. But there's no way to make us all happy.


Fuck Trump. Fuck Clinton. Fuck all these other assholes who will never win but are still somehow on the ballot. Fuck this country. We need something new. Something different.


Do you realize how insane this year has been? This election? If it had happened 50 years ago, everyone would have been executed for the best of our nation. Trump and Clinton are sick dogs that need to be put down so we can actually do something creative with our country.


I'd say to vote for me and Danger Slater, but even that's a joke. I wouldn't know what to do with this shit show that 2016 is. But what the hell? If I was president I might sell more books. Same for Danger, who is an amazing writer. The dude is unstoppable.


Yeah, it would be funny. But it would be pointless. Fuck everybody.


What follows is a quote from the smartest person on Twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I take a lot of comfort in this quote, and I probably shouldn't. I love life, and I love our potential, but a philosophy professor once told me that he hates the word "potential." He said, holding his empty hand aloft, "Right now I'm holding a potential sandwich."


True. Enjoy the following words from a great astrophysicist. And try not to lose too much sleep. What we do here is meaningless. Our only purpose is to make life easier for each other. Don't hate. Love. In the end we're all dead. Let's make this journey as pleasant as possible. Fuckers.


In 5-billion yrs the Sun will expand & engulf our orbit as the charred ember that was once Earth vaporizes. Have a nice day.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #214: SOMEONE ELSE'S DAILY GOOD DEED

In past GF's I've talked about doing a daily good deed. I firmly believe that you should do one every day. But there's a group of people who do the same good deed every morning. The monotony would probably get to me, but these people are really good about it.


Every day I'm at the train station, waiting for my train to take me to the city, I hear them. A mother drives a car full of girls by the north side of the tracks, the side headed for Chicago, not Elburn, and they shout out the windows. They tell us all: "Have a good day! Have a good day! Have a good day!" They do this down the whole station so every commuter can hear them.


Is this something they decided to do for themselves? Or did their mother decide to teach them the value of helping others? I don't know. I lean toward the former. They sound so sincere when they do it. Every morning it's like the first time. It seems new to them every time.


I'm a fucking Grinch, but the sheer genuine feeling they give off makes even me smile. I'm my most miserable at that moment, and the fact that not just one person, but a group of people, decided to offer a daily good deed is pretty heartwarming. One of the homeless guys on the river makes me feel the same way. Whenever he's there he's got a lot of encouraging things to say to everyone. Some of it is preachy God shit, but his intentions are pure. I kind of like that he's there with a kind word. Maybe it's just for the money he gets out of it, but it's nice that he offers it for free. The dough is optional.


I can't stress it enough. Do a good deed every day. It doesn't have to be the same good deed every day, but do something. Coming from me it's selfish. I get a dopamine rush out of it. You probably will, too. But there's no harm in it so long as you're helping someone else. That's the important thing.


In the words of two of my favorite philosophers: