GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1051: THE THINGS I'LL MISS

 Starting Monday, I no longer have to be in the office in Elmhurst two days a week. We've hired so many new people that they ran out of desks, so they're letting us more tenured employees work from home every day of the week. That makes me very happy because it will save me time and money. Time in commuting, so I can sleep a little later, and money because HOLY SHIT gas is fucking expensive, and I have no choice but to use a toll road for my commute.

Well, that last part isn't strictly true. If I don't mind adding a half an hour to my drive time, I can take Roosevelt all the way. And if I don't have money for the tolls, I take Roosevelt, anyway. It's called the Lincoln Hwy out here, but it's 38. Half of that road is one lane in each direction, so it's not fun when you get behind a semi (or, shudder, a line of them). Also, if I'm taking 38 back home, that adds an extra 45 minutes, so . . .

I'll have very little reason to leave my apartment come Monday. It will also be the end of my social life, because work is where 100% of my social life exists right now. That's horrifying, I know. I used to go out nearly every night, or at least on weekends. I might even lose my face to face personal skills. I *do* have them, even with a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

When I was a kid I fantasized about being a hermit. Now I might actually get my wish. It would have been nice to enjoy a youthful solitude, but I was kind of hoping to have a compound by now. Above ground, below, I'm not picky. All I really wanted was a bunker to keep the world away, and enough time to read and write to my heart's content. Is that too much to ask?

One of the cool things about my commute was seeing the natural beauty of the area I live in. DeKalb is a city approximately the population of Elmhurst, but everything else around me is farmland as far as the eye can see. It's nice to drive by the horse ranches and know, hey, if I want to get fresh duck eggs, I can stop by this place over here. I love the rickety, skeletal barns and silos, the countryside boneyards, all of it. I enjoy driving over the Fox River in Geneva because if you look off the bridge in just the right way, you can see what it might have looked like 150 years ago.

I'll also miss listening to Hardcore History on my drive. Those episodes are super long, sometimes 4, 5 even 6 hours, so they're ideal for listening material. I'm almost caught up! Which is great because Dan Carlin is currently doing a series on Alexander the Great, but it's horrible because it takes him a very long time to come out with a new episode. So I'll be waiting months like everyone else for part four of Mania for Subjugation.

The wait, by the way, is ALWAYS worth it.

Working from home is a very good thing. It will solve a few of my problems (and I can put off getting a new backpack now, as the one I've used since my Call One days has a strap that's hanging by a thread), but I'll miss these things. They did, indeed, enrich my life.

The best part of not going to Elmhurst every day and back is, it will dramatically lower the possibility of me getting killed in a car wreck. I'm a speed demon, so the first half of my commute is spent blowing away the other drivers at 100+ mph. It would have only been a matter of time before something happened. I'm an okay driver, but I have one ability that has served me well over the years: I'm very good at predicting what other drivers are going to do. I'm almost as good at reacting to that knowledge swiftly and decisively. Going that fast, though? I'd rather not James Dean myself across 88. I hate driving on tollways, and it would gall me to die on one.

I'm pretty sure I'm destined to go out like the King, anyway. Did you know that one of my nicknames in high school was Elvis?

*clears throat*

Are you lonesome tonight?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #591: ELVIS

 Yesterday would have been Elvis's 88th birthday. Or actually was his birthday depending on what you believe. Personally I think an impersonator died on that Graceland toilet, and the real Elvis went down with JFK fighting a mummy at an old folks home in Texas. It costs me nothing to believe this, and it hurts no one, so there we go.

Anyway, let's put Elvis on hold for a moment. We'll get back to him.

Read this first. Then read the rest of this to the tune of this Megadeth song. (Not "Holy Wars . . . The Punishment Due," in case you're wondering before you click the link.)

That picture is from, I think, Halloween 1997. None of these people are CJ or Eric, but that's Rob with the innocent look of childlike wonder on his face, which was very uncharacteristic of him. Those are my hands on the right.

Yeah, our Call of Cthulhu games got pretty fucking wild. I remember the night of the mercy killings. I think the argument was actually over how bullets would impact a lesser Great Old One. 

On another night, during the dread campaign known as The Mask of Nyarlathotep, Rob got arrested. The cops were there because they thought there was a murder in progress. It was a hot summer night, and CJ didn't have air conditioning, so we took a break from the game and went up on the roof. Rob felt the need to tickle me so much that a struggle ensued (and yes, I'm very ticklish), and one of the neighbors thought two of us (Rob and CJ) were trying to throw the third (me) off the roof. She called the cops, and they sent out almost the entire force.

I remember us looking down at Fellow's Ct and seeing a shit-ton of cops, us wondering if they were there for us. We decided to go back down when we saw even more cops pulling up behind the building. They were definitely there for us. They followed us into the apartment, and they found CJ's booze collection on a window pane inside. CJ was 18 at the time, but they didn't arrest him because his dad's name was on the lease, so technically it was his dad's booze. Technically.

I remember we had Double Gulps from 7-Eleven, and one of the cops said, "What did you put in this?"

"Coke," CJ said.

"I'll bet."

"You wanna taste?" CJ asked.

The cop did not want a taste.

They let us go except for Rob because he had an outstanding warrant at the time. He might still have warrants in this state. It's hard to tell when it comes to him.

But my favorite night of gaming came when we were still in high school. Both of us. He left during his sophomore year, I think. I remember we were in his old room on the south of Elmhurst. I forget the specifics of the game, but I remembered it was a time travel campaign. He was playing a Southern character who wound up fighting some kind of monster at Graceland. His Southern character worshipped Elvis, and when he got to meet the King, he loved every minute.

Then Elvis said, "I'll be right back. Gotta take a dump."

And Rob, in his most earnest voice, screamed, "NO! ELVIS! DON'T!"

"Whatssa matter?" I said in my finest Elvis drawl. "It's jussa dump."

I cracked up just typing this.

Good God! Those were fun times. I have a stack of our dead investigators that is impressively thick. Many of them died when I ran The Mask of Nyarlathotep because I allowed the players as many investigators as they wanted. They chose an army. I knew the death count would be high, and it was. Very much so. The investigators won, but at what cost?

It's been a while since I gamed with anyone. Sadly I've fallen out of love with it, but maybe someday.

Maybe someday.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #514: CYCLES OF FAT

When I was a kid in elementary school I was in pretty good shape. Skinny. Athletic. I played baseball and was hell on an obstacle course. So how did I become the fat ass I am today?

My first fat began in junior high. It really started in fifth grade because I broke my leg and had to stay off of it for a while. It irritated me because we were having our last obstacle course that year, and I had to sit it out. I loved doing that shit, and when you leave elementary school, you no longer get to do obstacle courses. I also missed out on getting my Weblos badge from Cub Scouts, which I really enjoyed doing. I learned a lot as a young lad in uniform, and it sticks in my craw to this day that I never got my final badge. And there were a few other factors.

So I learned to accept my sedentary life to the point where I started kinda liking it. I got no more exercise, and because I sat around and ate like shit all the time, I put on some weight. I was pudgy in junior high. I continued my first fat through high school. I'd decided to eat nothing but McDonald's every night for five straight years. That did not do well for my physical wellbeing.

When I saw my graduation video I looked like Chris Farley. It horrified me, so I spent that summer, before going to college, on the fast track to lose weight. I started off at 245 lbs., and by the time I started college I was down to 205. I looked pretty fucking good back then. I still needed to lose a bit more weight, and my target was 200 even. I never got that low. The closest was about 202, maybe.

Through a set of awful circumstances, I began my second fat while finishing up college. I blew up to 306 lbs., and no one believed me when I said I weighed that much. If we had cell phones capable of taking pictures back then, I would have taken one of me on the scale. (And I would have had all ten toes!) I guess I carried it well. And hey, I still managed to get laid, so it must not have been all that bad.

I got back to yoga and exercise and jogging, and while I managed to get back down to 245, I've never been able to get lower than that. I'm currently on my third fat, and I'm usually anywhere between 250 and 270. Unless I've been in the hospital for my stomach issues. I've been able to get down to 235 in those moments, but they don't really count. When I can eat again, I shoot back up to 245.

Yesterday my endocrinologist told me that I'm 249 lbs. It's better than I expected. Getting out of detox, my food consumption has skyrocketed. I thought I was back up to 270. Still, I could lose some weight. Most definitely. I hope to fuck I don't wind up doing a fourth fat. Cannabis makes me very hungry, and I've been eating more than one dinner. I've got to stop doing that.

Because with my bad foot, I can't exercise anymore. I have to stay off it as much as possible, or I risk losing that foot. So if I start that fourth fat, I'm pretty sure that will be the way my corpse will look when I die. I'll be fat Elvis again.

Did I ever tell you that my nickname way back when was Elvis? Back then I had sideburns that somehow grew beyond my control and became muttonchops. I looked like fat Elvis when I was young. It would be horrible to be fat Elvis when I'm old.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #258: WOLVERINE

It all started when I was in my junior year of high school. I was hanging out on the roof of an apartment complex with Rob Tannahill, who went on to become my partner on The Cocaine! Bros. He said that I should grow sideburns. That would make me look cool. I was doubtful, but I listened to him. Sure enough, he was right. I'm a plain lookin' guy, and the sideburns made me a bit more appealing to look at.


But it slowly grew out of control. It got to the point that when my senior year pictures for the yearbook were taken, I looked like Wolverine. Yeah, this is a shitty photo, but it's fucking old, so yeah. Here we go:

Yeah.


I'm probably going to see LOGAN tomorrow. He was not an inspiration for my looks back in high school, no matter how contrary that might seem. Rob was the guy who did it, not Logan. But I really like the way Wolverine is portrayed by Hugh Jackman. I understand why comics fans hate it, but I don't care. I don't like X-Men comics. The movies are the way to go.


PS: My nickname was Elvis. I can see that, but in my opinion, I needed a little less conversation, a little more action, so . . .

HEY FUCKERS #3: MY YEAR-END TOP 10 LIST

Well, it's the end of the year, and as per usual, the internet is clogged with top ten lists. I'm certainly not going to add to the mess, so this isn't actually a top ten list. I guess this is just me fucking around while I'm at work. So . . . let's see here . . . I got it! How about a joke?

How do you circumcise a leper? Shake him! Get it? Eh? *cough*

OK. Um . . . How about a fun fact? Did you know that Elvis Presley's favorite amusement park ride was the bumper cars? Or that Cracker Jack is the number one buyer of popcorn in the world?

I guess you're not a better person for knowing those things, though. This knowledge is pretty useless.

Everyone can benefit from knowing about quantum physics, though. I'm not going to get into it, because I'm just a writer with a high school science education, but here's a pretty good place to learn about stuff like that.

Well, I guess I just wasted your time today with this one. I guess I wasn't thinking. I could wish you a happy new year, but--

OH! Don't you hate it when people say they're going to see you next year when they really mean, in all likelihood, that they'll see you in a few days, but they're only saying that because today is New Year's Eve and the next time they see you will be in the year 2015?

Ah, who gives a fuck? Half of the world complains about those people, and the other half are the actual people who do that. It's the same every year. Someone will say, "I'll see you next year," just as soon as they'll give you another useless top ten list.