GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #849: ONE YEAR AND 321 DAYS

 It has been a year and 321 days since my last drink. Looks like I might actually make two years!

But drinking is a bit of a phantom limb for me, and as I've lost two toes, I'm more familiar with the concept than most. I think the pain comes from my toe stumps remembering what it was like to be separated from their toes, not that I have ghost toes that are in pain.

I miss drinking a lot. Well, I miss, a lot, the act of drinking, and I miss the act of drinking a lot. I have no drive to drink. I don't sweat when I think about it. I'm long past the physical addiction. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to drink again, but defeating the urge is an every day thing. Whenever a character in a movie or on a show I'm watching takes a drink, I wish I could, too. When I'm doing something that I used to drink while doing? Oh yeah. Like when I was packing up my things before I went to detox. Now I realize that the boxes are too big and too heavy. I knew a moving company would be able to figure it out, but that might not be happening, so I find myself in this situation where I'm repacking everything into smaller boxes for portability by someone who doesn't move boxes for a living. I've been doing this every day off I've had for a couple of weeks, and I really, really miss being able to drink while I worked.

I also used to edit my books while drinking. Drinking and writing did not mix for me, but drinking and editing worked out pretty well. Eye Cutter is the first full length book I've edited without booze. It felt weird this time around, but I don't think there was much of a difference.

Before I went to detox I looked at alcoholics who had gone decades without a drink, and I'd think, OK. You got it figured out. You're probably not an alcoholic anymore. Now that I have a better understanding, it's kind of crazy to think if I had that much time under my belt, that I'd still be thinking about doing shots. Or sipping scotch with a cigar. Or even having some beer while doing work around the house.

Weird, but seemingly true.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #848: LIP CRUMBS

 For as long as I've been alive I've had this habit, and I'm not sure how it started or how I can stop it, but if I'm eating something that has some kind of season dusting, then I like to press my lips down onto it and get the crumbs stuck there so I can lick them off when I'm done eating the rest of it.

That's weird, right? The reason I do that is because it tastes great, but it's a bad habit, and since I sometimes do it in public, I've been trying to stop that.

Pizza Hut breadsticks are perfect for this kind of thing. They leave a nice thick layer of seasoning for me to lick away. Blue Diamond also does Smokehouse Almonds, and they're great for this, too. Sometimes potato chips can do it, depending on how heavily they've been dusted. I can usually count on Jay's Open Pit Barbecue chips for that. Or whatever they're calling the flavor now. Bugles are great, too.

But I've been trying to stop doing that, like I've been trying to stop twirling my hair when I'm stressed. I was about to say I beat alcoholism, but that's kind of daily thing. You have to beat it every day,. It's not a one time thing. But getting this many days under my belt? Easier than beating this lip crumbs thing.

It's been a while since I confessed something weird. Tonight seemed perfect for it. Goodnight, fellow weird fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #847: PRESIDENTIAL AGONY

 The primary season is almost over, and thank fuck for that. Because there are some things more agonizing than presidential election cycles, but there aren't many of them. We didn't always do things this way. It used to be lot different, and slowly over the years we got stuck with this awful system that still needs to be fixed. But we're 200+ years into this thing. If someone was going to fix it, it would have been fixed by now.

But when America was in its infancy we had a different method. State delegates would choose electors (thus birthing the Electoral College, sadly, which is one of the things we really need to get rid of), and those electors would look at who is running and make their votes. The guy with the most votes is the president. The guy with the second most votes is the vice president. The rest of the lot can go kick rocks. That worked pretty well for the first election. In case you didn't know, George Washington was elected president UNANIMOUSLY. The one and only president to have been elected in such a fashion. But once he left office and political parties formed, a lot of flies got in the ointment.

I've talked about the Jefferson vs. Burr election before and how we have an amendment to the Constitution because of it. (And that Burr should have been our third president.) But that was the breaking point for the system. The votes for president and vice president would be separate from here on out, and Congressional caucuses decided who the candidates were.

About twenty years later it changed again. People wanted powerful state leaders to have more say in elections. So the state leaders of each party got together to choose the candidates, and we lived by this rule for a long, long time.

We really adopted primaries during the 1952 race. Politicians had to press the flesh of, not citizens, but industry and political leaders. They were the ones who would choose the candidates, and each person running had to suck the requisite amount of dick to get the nomination. You know the old joke about how candidates are selected in dark smoke filled rooms? There's a basis in fact for that. That's the way we've done it almost since the country began. 

And then came March 31, 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson made the following announcement to the American public: "I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes. Accordingly I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

First of all, the idea that a president would not want to get involved in partisan divisions is absolutely batshit crazy. But I have long held that whoever sits in that Oval Office is the president for ALL Americans, not just the Americans who voted for him. So, according to the job description, the president needs to serve all Americans. You can see most presidents doing that EXCEPT for one. I think you know who I'm talking about. So LBJ wasn't crazy when he said those things. He was doing his job. But can you imagine a president today saying something like that? Never mind taking himself out of the race, but not catering to just his voters? That's pretty impressive.

An incumbent president is always the nominee because they're very difficult to defeat. Imagine the Democratic Party's horror when they realized they had a sudden vacuum and needed to fill it with a candidate ASAP.

Which is why the voters now decide the candidates with primaries and conventions and such. Which is why we have to pay attention during the primaries, no matter how much we want to ignore the dog and pony show. We already know the big boys, but with a new candidate you have to catch them early before they become . . . candidate-y? They're more likely to fuck up in the early days than after they've had the chance to become seasoned.

But we don't have to worry about that this time out. Biden and Trump is the rematch fuckin' nobody asked for, but it's what we're stuck with. I don't say that I hate people often, because hate is a strong word, but I hate, loathe, despise, etc. Donald Trump. I don't like Biden, either. I think he's a business as usual politician whose only saving grace is his ability to beat a loathsome toad who once squatted in the Oval Office.

Gun to the head? I guess I'd have to go with Biden if only to deny that cum-gargling dumpster fire another term in office.

So yeah. Things used to be different and not quite so agonizing, but we have more power than we did way back when. It would be nice to not have the Electoral College. Why would you want to choose the people who will choose the president? Doesn't that sound like bullshit to you?

I don't know why I waste time with asking that question. We all hate the Electoral College, but we refuse to do anything about it because it's something we've always done. Tradition can eat my sack, balls and shaft.

To quote a great man . . .

"Well, what'll I do now? Go to sleep? Pull the pud? We need new pornos! Well, guess I'm still writing."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #846: DREAM SCENARIO

 

When I first saw the trailer for Dream Scenario I expected batshit crazy Nic Cage doing all sorts of batshit crazy things. When I saw the movie I was surprised by how sedate it is considering the concept and the star. What threw me off, though, is that a lot of people involved said this film was about cancel culture. When people start bitching about cancel culture, I tune out. They are usually fools, but almost all of them are to the right, politically speaking, and the right is the king of canceling stuff. If you think that's unfair of me to say, ask a drag queen how they feel about it. Or someone who has written a book about their LGBTQ+ experiences. So I prepared myself to not like this movie because of that.

Nic Cage plays an ineffectual man who is more of an observer in his own life than a participant. Things get weird when people start talking about how they've seen him in their dreams. He does nothing. He just observes. At first it's a little odd, but as more and more people say it, the crazier it gets. Yet it never gets into batshit territory until the end, and even then the batshit crazy stuff is NOT coming from Nic Cage.

There's a scene in which a woman who saw Nic Cage in her dreams invites him over so he can reenact his role in her dream. It turns very sexual for him, and he creams his jeans. I think this is the turning point for him, because after this scene people start getting terrified of him. Apparently he's no longer doing nothing in people's dreams. Now he's doing unspeakable things to these people, and when they see him in real life they can't stand to be in the same room with him. It gets to the point where his job is on the line and his family wants nothing to do with him, all because of their dreams.

And that's what, at first, stuck in my craw about the cancel culture explanation. Because there is no such thing. There *is* suffering the consequences of your actions. That is definitely a thing. And it's because of this that the explanation didn't make sense to me. Those who complain about cancel culture always, every single time, miss a crucial detail: the key part of so-called cancel culture is someone *doing something* to get canceled. As far as I could tell in the film, Nic Cage didn't actually do anything. It's the equivalent of your partner getting mad at you for something you did in their dream.

And then comes the ending, and here there be spoilers. It turns out that the batshit crazy thing is that a company has built a device that allows you to go into other peoples' dreams. This is after Nic Cage's experience. They built these things because of him. He can go into other people's dreams naturally. He just wasn't aware of himself doing that. Which means, yes, he actually did do all of those things he was accused of doing in those dreams. Every person he tortured and raped? He really did do those things. He just didn't know he was doing it to people.

That's where the message makes more sense, but the morality of something like this is never explored, which seems like something the filmmakers should want to do. And I think perhaps that's why this movie was released and disappeared so quickly. The next logical step is ignored, so the rest of the movie doesn't really serve much of a purpose.

I don't know much about the director of the film. There's not a lot about him online, so I can only speculate that he made the movie to wallow in self-prescribed cancel culture. It's the only thing that makes sense. Why else did he not want to go any further into the story idea? Because it's a great analogy for someone who was "canceled" and doesn't understand why. People like that aren't typically introspective, so they probably wouldn't care to explore what they think of their own morality versus what their actions reveal about their actual morality. I enjoyed the movie up until that reveal in the end about the device. Now I'm just baffled.

Anyone else see Dream Scenario? Your thoughts?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #845: IMMORTALITY

"Most Vanquished, Most Victorious"

 

I got to have a day off of work today thanks to the holiday. So I got to experience a weekend again. Time off without needing to go to the ER. Etc. It means I also got to watch Route 66 two days in a row.

I have no kids. Probably. Every once in a while someone asks me about how I'm going to achieve immortality. "I won't?" I usually say. Because there is no such thing. But people seem to be insistent that reproduction is a means of immortality. It doesn't make sense to me, but okay.

It wasn't until I watched this episode of Route 66 with Royal Dano on it that I finally felt vindicated. Finally! Someone else who thinks the same thing!

There's this guy whose son has died. But his son impregnated a Native American woman before he died. This guy hates his son's wife simply because of her race, which makes things a little weird when he gets super protective about the child she's going to birth. He couldn't possibly care less about her, but his grandchild? That kid is going to be raised as one of his family because family is more important than anything else. (Unless one marries into the family, I guess.)

Royal Dano plays a doctor who finally gets sick of the whole fucking thing. He shouts at the guy, "You think that's your immortality? Generations forget!"

Ain't that the fucking truth. I'm a good case in point because I don't know anything about my family before the lives of my grandparents. I've never met a single great-grandparent, although I came close to meeting Grandma's mom. She died a few months before I was born. My second cousin lucked out and met Grandma and Gramps when they were still alive. He will have memories of his great-grandparents. But in all honesty, can anyone say that they knew anyone beyond their great-grandparents? It would be a very fucked up situation if they did.

Regardless, by that logic, if I had kids, and they had kids, and their kids had kids, would those kids know a single fucking thing about me? I'll bet they would have my brown eyes. Because they were Mom's. And Gramps's before her. All my Illinois siblings have the same eyes. I'll bet they also have a birthmark on the bottom of one of their feet. We all have it. Sometimes it's on the left foot, sometimes the right, but we all have it. They might even have other traits of mine.

But is that immortality? Not just no but fuck no.

There is one exception: celebrities or people who are otherwise famous. I would hesitate to call Abraham Lincoln, for example, a celebrity. But how many people reading this can say that about themselves?

Exactly. I'll bet Brad Pitt's great-great-great grandkids will boast about being his descendants. But my great-great-great grandkids? Right.

It makes a little more sense that one would live as long as the final person who remembers one. I get that. But that's still not immortality. But if I have any advice to give you tonight, it's this: be the reason that someone grows old and rants and raves at the nursing home staff so long that they have to wonder what the fuck made them this way.

Just kidding. Don't do that.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #844: ONE INTO MANY

 Whoa. What the fuck? A GF column on Saturday? Yeah, because fuck it. I need to get the count back to where it should be, and I know you're tired of me sounding like Ahab on that one, but clearly doing just two over the course of a week wasn't working out. Fuck my writing hiatus. I'm going to write more, goddammit. Fuck my sickness. Fuck my left eye. Fuck my missing blood. Fuck the menagerie of health issues. Time to do more instead of less. So you'll get another one of these next Saturday, too, and I'll be caught up.

Also, I'm cheating a little. On Saturday nights I get super high, so as you're reading this I'm probably passed out or just about ready to pass out. I wrote this earlier tonight.

So. I talk to at least 100 people a day. More often than not it's closer to 130. Today was only 101, but that's OK. Saturdays are always slow. But they're filled with people, just like every other day of the week, who know how to take one question and turn it into many.

I'm not talking about someone asking a question, getting an answer and asking a follow up, etc. I understand that a lot of motherfuckers out there talk to just fucking talk. And of my 101 today, I'd estimate that covers about 80.

What I mean is, I'll be talking to someone who has a "quick question." I think I've covered that here before. In my experience, of everyone who has said to me they have a quick question, only 0.0000001% of them actually do have a quick question. But what I'm talking about tonight is, someone calls in. They ask a question that has a very easy answer. I'll open my mouth to begin giving the very easy answer when they decide, no, they want to ask another question while they're asking that question. And come to think of it, they'll think of another question to ask, and before you know it they've asked a half-dozen questions without taking a fucking breath, and now they've finally stopped talking, and no matter what I do I'll pick the wrong question to answer. If I go in order, they'll interrupt and ask for the answer of one of the others. If I start with the freshest question, they'll interrupt and ask about the first one again.

Do they actually want the answers to these questions? They're usually easy answers. If they had the presence of mind to realize that they had just asked a question and should probably wait for me to answer it, then they would get their answers. And here's the kicker: they don't have to ask any questions outside of, "How much for a windshield for such and such a car?" For example. *I* will ask the questions, and I will answer every single question you have before you ask it. Just trust the process. I've been doing this for a long time. 99.999999% of the time, I've heard whatever it is you're about to say. It has to be something really outlandish for me to have not heard it before. Chances are, any question you can think of, I'll answer without you needing to ask it. I got my scripts down pat after, say, a year of working there. And that's being generous to me.

I don't mean to pick on our customers, as I've encountered these kinds of people in my regular life, too, but it's the easiest to talk about when we're talking about said customers. It's just that I can't get my head around why someone would ask a question, not wait for an answer, and then ask a bunch of other questions. Are they that way with the people in their lives? Do they conduct themselves thusly to their kids? To their parents? To their spouses? I suspect they wouldn't. Their loved ones would have definitely said something by now.

The world may never know . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #843: BAD DAY

 I got out of bed this morning at 6:15, and I've regretted it since. I should have just stayed there and turned my alarm off, because every single fucking thing that could have gone wrong today *did* go wrong today. I was running late on everything. I'm always early, so I was still on time for it all, but still. That was a bad sign.

The worst of it was being overcharged for something. I can't tell if it was the bank's fault or the post office, but I mailed something yesterday for $4.13. Imagine my surprise when I logged into my bank account and saw I'd been charged $41.03 instead. Obviously it's a typo, but it's a pretty expensive typo. I tried calling the post office, but surprise! It is impossible to get ahold of someone there. It's all automated, and there isn't an option for representative. So I called my bank, but I can't dispute the charge until it goes through. The problem is, when it goes through, I'll be below $0.00, so they're going to charge me a ridiculously high fee.

So on lunch I thought I'd speed home, get my receipt and go to the post office, but of all days there was a major accident at North and York. Nothing was getting through, and all the side streets were backed the fuck up. If I could get back to work and go the other way, I could take 83 instead, but by the time I managed to get back to work, I ran out of lunch time. So I'm fucking stuck with this for now.

Another thing was, I got a call from the company that does our short term disability, but I was busy fighting traffic to get back to work, so I didn't answer it. The VM says I'm getting fucking dropped?!?!?!?!?! What the everloving fucking fuck is going on today?!

There was a lot of other stuff, but it wouldn't make much sense without a bunch of background, which I don't feel like going into right now. And now I can't pay my insurance bill without some serious fucking around. That'll be great.

I'm going to smoke a metric shit-ton of weed right now. I hope when I wake up tomorrow I'll be a lot less mad. Or maybe I'll skip today's mistake and just stay in goddam bed.