GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #887: SICK AGAIN

 Dammit. It keeps happening to me. I'm still clueless as to why. I spent yesterday puking my guts out, praying for the pain to go away, Finally I went to the ER, where I was given the usual and allowed to rest for a bit. I got home feeling like shit, and I felt like shit through most of today. I think I'm OK now. I hope that my guts will stay where they belong, especially since I plan on getting a burger tomorrow for lunch with a friend.

I hate this. I really do. I quit drinking primarily so this illness would go away, and it did. For a year and a half. I'm sick of puking until my sides are splitting, my back screaming to not have to hover over the toilet like that. I'm sick of, after a bout like that, going back to my bed only to have to get up and do it again 15 minutes later. I hate that sleep is impossible in moments like this. It will keep me up for days if I don't go to the ER for my Zofran and morphine.

I guess it wasn't those pills I've been on for years, after all.

Every morning for the past week I've gotten up and puked. Then everything went back to normal, and I could go to work. It's just that yesterday, after I puked that first time, I got worse instead. I was starting to think it was my lot in life to puke in the mornings and get it over with before heading out into the world. I just want this bullshit to stop.

Maybe I should take up drinking again. At least that way there was something to blame my sickness on. And I do miss having that in my arsenal when it comes to pain. Instead of popping painkillers I could down some whiskey. Any time my teeth bothered me? I could take a mouthful of booze and swish it around in my mouth, and the pain would go away. I miss that.

I probably shouldn't take up drinking again. But think of this: after more than two years away from the bottle, my liver is probably in great shape!

OK, to keep up with my numbers, I'll post a GF on Saturday, too.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #798: I DID 9/11

 A while back, sometime in maybe 2011, I wrote an article asking the question, "What if Osama bin Laden didn't do 9/11?" And then I went into the reasons why he might have been a patsy and even wrote a little about his so-called confession. But honestly? I think it was my guilt. I didn't want someone taking the fall for the real perpetrator.

Because I did 9/11.

I didn't mean for it to happen that way. I certainly didn't want planes to crash into the WTC and the Pentagon. I never wanted 2,000-ish people to die that day.

I think I might have powers. There is some circumstantial evidence for this, just like there is for possibly dying in January 2020 and not noticing. Or accidentally winding up in a parallel universe. You know, stuff I'd never, never, never claim happened to me. Ever. Especially not in a column called Goodnight, Fuckers.

But I can kill people with my mind. Let me give you an example. When I was in high school one of my brothers liked to play with the kid who lived a couple of doors down. I forget what happened between the two of them, but the kid's dad marched over to my place (while I wasn't there), and screamed at my grandmother. He cursed at her. Shouted how my brother was not allowed over there anymore. He even called my grandma a cocksucker. Not conversationally, either. At the top of his lungs. Later, when she told me about it, she couldn't bring herself to say the "cock" part of cocksucker, but I got the idea. It burned me up. If I *had* been there, I would have pushed that fucker backwards off my porch, and if he looked like he was going to get up, I'd jump down the three steps and land with both feet on his balls. You're all not used to me being irrationally angry. I'm a very mellow middle-aged man now. But I was furious back then.

I wished, with all my might, that the piece of shit would die.

Two weeks later, he did.

This has happened a total of three times in my life, when I have wished someone was dead and they died no later than two weeks after. It can't be anyone, though. It has to be someone I know and who knows me. (Believe me, I've tried with a certain former president.) I have never wished someone I know dead and they didn't die swiftly thereafter. So it's a power I've sworn off of. Someone has to fuck me over really, really bad to get me to wish them dead.

What does this have to do with me doing 9/11?

I remember thinking about the state of the world in the year 2001, and I remember that even though we were in very, very good shape as a nation, every goddam motherfucker on the TV and radio bitched and moaned about nonissues. It was all bullshit, and I got sick and tired of hearing it. So I wished with all my might that they'd finally have something real to complain about.

The date of that wish was September 1, 2001.

I'd been thinking more along the lines of a financial crisis. Like, maybe another depression. Never in a thousand years would I have wanted something so bad that it changed the course of the world irrevocably, costing so many human lives not just on the day of, but in the seemingly endless war that resulted from the madness.

Fuck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #409: I SPOKE TOO SOON

 Earlier today I mentioned on social media that my Pharmacy War ended with a pyrrhic victory. I would get my meds, but I would have to get them from fucking CVS. Well, I spoke too soon. The war isn't over yet. Why? Because I still haven't gotten my meds.

To ensure that CVS would have my meds, I called into my doctor's office and requested that all of my medications, especially my two 'Beetus prescriptions because I'm out of those, be sent to CVS going forward, and I would be stopping by after work because I've gone without Glimepride for three days and Metformin for one day. Guess who didn't have my meds.

Right.

And now I find myself with nothing further I can do. I'm at the mercy of my new doctor. I swear to fuck, when I finally die it will probably be because of red tape bullshit like this. Just watch. Tomorrow morning I will wake up in the midst of a fucking stroke. Or maybe I won't wake up.

This is taking a toll on me. I like my usual pharmacy. I walk in and they know me. They know why I'm there, and they keep products that I prefer in stock. It's a nice place with friendly people. When I walk in there, I know exactly what I'm going to get.

But this new insurance plan that demands I get my meds from CVS? It can suck my dick. I don't want to go to a megacorporation for my medications, but if I had to, I certainly wouldn't choose CVS. I'd probably go with Walgreen's. That's just a gun-to-the-head situation. CVS is awful. Every time I've ever been in one my skin crawls. Also, aisles are labeled very poorly. At least Walgreen's has well-labeled aisles and they all look more or less the same, so navigating their stores is easy.

This fucking blows. It would be nice if I could spend one fucking day where I don't have to think about my own mortality. With all the doctors visits and now this fucking mess, that's making it nearly fucking impossible. I'm angry all the time because of this shit. Here I was, thinking I'd mellowed out in my old age, and then 2020 broke down my door and clubbed me with its giant four-foot long cock. And then his little brother 2021 arrived with a five-foot cock destined for my face.

I can only assume 2022 will have a six-foot cock.

And in case I didn't say fuck enough in this column, here's one more: FUCK.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #315: THE ART OF CURSING

 I don't know why I was thinking about this today, but for some reason it popped up in my head.

I was in junior high, what everyone calls middle school now. Maybe 6th or 7th grade, I don't remember. I just know it wasn't 8th grade. Anyway, I was in PE, and we were playing softball. In case you don't know my likes and dislikes, I dislike sports a great deal. If you're into it, good for you. It's just not for me.

As we played sportsball, I fucked up. Because, well, I didn't care. So fuck it. I don't remember what I said specifically, but I have a fairly good suspicion that I said, "Ah shoot."

I was in left field for a fairly good reason. No one really expected me to do anything because they understood, at least that much, that I didn't care. But there was a fellow student in center field who gave me shit. I remember very much what his name was, but I'm not going to mention it here. I'm fairly certain that he wouldn't want me to mention it here. Unless he's dead. I don't think he is, but at my age, it's possible. But he might have an important job, and his crime against me was nothing more than a mere inconvenience. So fuck it.

He said, "Bruni! What the fuck, man? Why would you say that? Say shit for fuck's sake!" And then he proceeded to give me an extended tutorial, in person, on how to effectively curse.

I didn't need it. I only said the safe version because I didn't need yet another detention. But what the hell? This guy didn't know me. He just knew what other people said about me. I'm very fuckin' good at cursing. He didn't know that. But he assumed.

So I had no choice but to fuck with him back. "Shhhhhhh-uh-iiiiiiiit?" I said.

"Say it with feeling, Bruni!"

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttt?"

"You're hopeless."

That was it. I just find it funny that this guy assumed that stupid shit about me. I was a quiet kid, but I knew my way around curse words. It is kind of an art, actually. If you curse, you need to mean it or someone is going to think you're an idiot. I curse with great gusto in person. For a great example on how cursing can be an art, I suggest looking up Dr. Dirty songs.

I wonder where that guy is now, now that I have books like POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS and DONG OF FRANKENSTEIN under my belt. I kind of don't want to know. I fear that he might think that he taught me how to curse, which is simply not true. I have very few skills. Writing is one. Cursing is another. I've been successfully cursing since I was seven. I'm proud of my abilities because I find myself in an odd situation. I can say just about anything I want to, and people won't hate me. They won't even confront me. They'll say, "That's just Bruni being Bruni."

Good thing I don't want to hurt anyone with my cursing. If I did, I would probably be president of the US right now.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #117: THE THINGS I CAN'T DO

Because of this oral surgery, here is a list of things I can't do, and it's driving me fucking nuts.


--I can't take a bite out of anything. This means that I have to cut up all of my food and ease each piece carefully into my mouth. This is what I did with pretzel sticks at the bar tonight, which made me feel pretty stupid.


--I can't eat chips because they are sharp and might tear my stitches.


--I can't eat fast food, because most of that shit is something I have to take a bite out of, and I don't feel like cutting up a Quesarito in my car, which I just detailed a couple of weeks ago.


--I can't drink out of a straw. I didn't think I'd care too much about that until I realized how often I drink out of a straw. From McDonald's Cokes to my water bottle at work. Fuck.


--I can't brush my lower front teeth, and I can't use mouthwash.


--I can't eat anything hot and/or spicy.


I can't do any of these things for a month, which fucking blows. I guess this would be the perfect time to break out that juicer and take it for a spin. I'll be doing that starting next week, since I'm going to see how long I can stomach the vile process of cutting cheeseburgers and pizza up.


Fuck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #63: BREAKING DOWN

Once upon a time, I was an invincible monster. I ate whatever the fuck I wanted to, I could out-drink anyone except the corpse of Jim Thompson, and I managed to do all of this while maintaining a decent weight and only ever getting sick once a year. Granted, that once was usually catastrophic, but it was only once a year.


Now I have to watch what I eat, I can't drink to excess and my weight has skyrocketed while I get sick more than once a year. What the fuck happened to me?


Many of you can point out that I'm not as young as I used to be. That might be true, but it's only been a few years. How can so many things go wrong in just two or three years circles around the sun?


I think it's something else. Someone said to me--I think it was Fitz, but I'm not certain--that my system is a lot like a transmission that hasn't been flushed in a long time. It might work perfectly, but once it's diagnosed and flushed, it goes to shit.


Everything was going fine for me up until the end of a relationship between me and a woman with Hep C.  Don't get me wrong, I took every precaution to not catch it. It's a blood disease, not an STD, although you can get it if the sex is kind of rough or you're fucking her on her period. (Okay, so the sex got rough a couple of times. And yes, I fucked her on her period once--the one time that the condom came off, of course.) When the relationship was over, I decided to go in for a check up, just to be sure I was clean. I think the gestation period of Hep C is three months, so I waited four, just to be sure, before I went in for a doctor's appointment.


He got back to me later with good news and bad news. The good news? I didn't have Hep C. Yay! The bad news? I was diabetic, I had hypertension and I had high cholesterol. Yikes.


Since my awareness of these problems, my body has been breaking down. I wound up with gingivitis and lost a tooth (for which I have an implant), my pancreas rebelled against me, I suffer from low blood sugar all the time, I'm getting sick waaay more than once a year (as evidenced by me missing work yesterday and today, hence this piece), I lost my gall bladder, I wound up getting an abscess right next to my dick, I get terrible headaches from a broken tooth which refuses to get fixed even though I had a root canal done on it and a variety of other things.


I'm sure I've had many of my problems for a long time, but what if I hadn't gotten it diagnosed? Is the power of the mind so strong that I would have gone on long after my health problems should have taken me out? Because I feel like that tranny that didn't have a problem until it was flushed out. I'm falling apart even when I'm behaving myself.


I always figured I'd die at a young age. Now? My premature death seems certain. No matter what I do, I just can't seem to fix myself. I've tried not living with all of my bad habits, but somehow I feel worse. My blood sugar gets so low that I'm in danger of falling into a coma. So clearly my body needs a few bad habits to stay alive. The only problem is figuring out which ones to keep.


Maybe if I hadn't gone to the doctor when I did, I would be the Terminator now.


Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckitty fuck fuck. Goodnight.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #52: THE VALUE OF DOING NOTHING

I am eternally grateful for today. Why? Not only did I get a day off from work, but I also had the opportunity to do ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING today. At first I wanted to see if I could spend the entire day in bed, but I did have a few unimportant things to do, which drove me from the comfort of my blankets. But still. I did ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING today.


No work. Very little reading. Most of my day was spent in front of the TV absorbing MAVERICK and 21 JUMP STREET (with a break for UNDER THE DOME, which has gotten better for the second season, but I wish they'd stop trying to be LOST).


I feel suddenly recharged. In fact, while wasting my day, I discovered that I finally know how I want to end this Jesus book that has been haunting me ever since I started writing it. Somehow, despite the fact that I did ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING today, I managed to get quite a bit done. Don't ask me to explain my very zen day. But it happened.


I'm always busy, and my thoughts race at a thousand billion miles per second. I had to force myself to do nothing today, and it completely rejuvenated me. Maybe if we spent more time relaxing instead of driving ourselves toward our own personal apocalypse every single day, this world would be a better place.


Did I miss getting my 2K words today? Yeah. In the long run, will it matter? Probably not. The idea horrified me, but the results made me very happy. Happy enough to completely fear tomorrow, which will bring me back to work, writing and all the things I managed to avoid today.


Fuck. Or yay. Either one. Probably both.

JOHN BARTH IS A BIG WHINER

[NOTE:  THIS WAS AN ENTRY INTO A QPBC FLASH FICTION CONTEST.  I WAS IN COLLEGE AT THE TIME, SO I WAS EXPOSED TO A BUNCH OF POST-MODERN BULLSHIT.  SOME OF YOU WILL GET THE JOKE, OTHERS WILL THINK I'M STUPID.  MAYBE BOTH.  BUT I GOT A CHUCKLE OUT OF IT.  SHIT, THIS INTRODUCTION IS LONGER THAN THE STORY.  I'LL SHUT UP NOW.]


The Quality Paperback Book Club says to write a story 55 words long.  Very difficult.  What should I do?  Stream of consciousness?  No.  I could go metafiction, but I don't want to be pretentious.  That's something John Barth would do, and he's a big whiner.  I'm too good for that.


Shit!  Piss!  Fuck!

SHIT ON TV by Dr. Jonah Chaos

Recently, the FCC reduced the Seven Words You Can't Say on Television to six.  You can now say "shit" on TV, and CHICAGO HOPE took advantage of this.

In Elmhurst, citizens are up in arms about this, going so far as to picket City Hall.  Mayor T--- M------- said at a press conference that he is indeed pissed off at the FCC, especially if it will win him votes in the upcoming election.  "What if children hear it on TV?" M-------- said.  "Fuck the FCC!  FCC stands for Fuckin' Cocks and Cunts!"

In fact, many children who overheard M--------'s speech have adopted his cry of, "Fuck the Fuckin' Cocks and Cunts!"  They shout it gleefully in the streets.

"Fuck those bastards!" said Thomas Finn, 8.  "How dare those cocksuckers expose us to the s-word!"

My question is, what's the problem?  There should be nation-wide celebrations.  One down, six to go.  As much as I despise the poison semen of Satan's crusty, wart-spotted, AIDS-infected cock (the mayor), I have no choice but to agree with him.  Fuck the FCC!  Not because they let "shit" slip by, but because they put so many regulations on TV in the first place.

Words are words.  Some may be powerful, some insulting, but is it wrong to say certain things just because they imply something dirty?  "Shit" describes something emitted from every human being.  It's perfectly normal to excrete a hunk of brown, stinking matter.  In fact, your bodies rely on the act of shitting.  Why, then, is the word "shit" considered immoral?

To "fuck" is for one being, be it male or female with a strap-on, to insert a cock-like object, be it dick or dildo, into the hole of another human being, male or female, cunt or asshole.  This act is also perfectly natural and quite pleasurable to boot.  In other words, not only do people do it, but people do it a lot.  Not only should it be allowed to say "fuck" on TV, it should also be allowed to fuck on TV, or at least have some sex scenes that show nudity besides some guy's wrinkled ass.

These are only two examples.  There are many more.  The question remains, then, why allow the existence of the FCC?  The argument that certain words are dirty does not hold.

The only possible answer is to lie to children, to maybe deter them from fucking by keeping them stupid.  Why keep them from fucking?  Teenage pregnancy, so-called decency, sexually transmitted diseases, and most importantly, fear.  God help them if these kids ever experience pleasure!

I implore you to stop lying to our future.  While you're at it, how about giving them some freedom, too?  Take age requirements off tobacco and alcohol.  It means nothing anyway, except to earn the city money when kids get fined for under-aged smoking or drinking.  To restrict something is to restrict thinking.  To restrict thinking is to restrict evolution.  To restrict evolution is to restrict intellectual growth.  Thus, to restrict kids from having a choice about anything is to reduce them to the level of morons.  Maybe if you start treating kids like intelligent human beings, with dignity, they might surprise you.

Think about it, if you're capable.