NOW ANNOUCING SHIT POEMS NUMBER TWO!

 SHIT POEMS 

NUMBER 2 

 

 

BY JOHN BRUNI 

 

YES! It is finally upon us! I have just completed SHIT POEMS NUMBER TWO! And if you buy my new book, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HIERONYMUS ALOYSIS ZIEGE, you will get a copy of this for free! If you've already bought the book, you can send me a copy of the receipt and your mailing address, and I'll send you a copy of this for free. Limited to 30 copies, so first come, first serve. All of these will be signed.

If you haven't bought the book yet, you can do so here. I expect to have a bunch of copies of it myself soon, so you can buy directly from me, and I'll sign them. And if you're in Chicago for Printers Row on Sept. 10-11, I'll have copies of ZIEGE and SHIT POEMS NUMBER TWO.

And yes, there is a bunch more Nic Cage poems in this one, including one for THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, which I think you'll like.

You can contact me in the comments below, or if you're on my Twitter or Facebook, you can get me there. Or, if all else fails, you can send an email to tabardinnedgewoodent@yahoo.com.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #502: THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE

I'll bet a hundred years from now we will still have new Twilight Zone shows.

 

While I was recovering from my second toe amputation I took it upon myself to watch every single episode of the new Jordan Peele Twilight Zone, and I fucking loved it. Not every episode was good, but some of them I would put up against almost any original TZ episode from the 'Sixties. I say that as someone who saw every episode of the original. Every episode (sadly) of the one with Forest Whitaker hosting. And I've seen a few of the episodes from the 'Eighties version because it's not out on DVD and no one cares to stream it.

(Side note: one of the 'Eighties ones was about JFK surviving that day in TX and how horrible the world turns out because of it. I'm almost certain Stephen King ripped it off for 11/22/63.)

So the new series. These things inevitably feel the need to remake an original episode. This one chose "Nightmare at 20000 Feet," cunningly retitled "Nightmare at 30000 Feet." This one has a special place in my heart because it guest stars Dan Carlin, the host of my favorite podcast of all time, Hardcore History. I liked the way it was updated so that instead of seeing a gremlin on the wing, the protagonist finds an mp3 player with a podcast on it about the doom of that very flight. It fucks with the guy until he's Shatner-crazy so that even though he's not aware of it, he's making the podcast become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also stars Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley as a stranger sympathetic to the main character's needs. And it never ceases to amaze me that this actor voices Mickey Mouse, especially considering how foul-mouthed he was on Silicon Valley. The ending of this episode made me laugh a lot, but I won't spoil it here.

"Six Degrees of Freedom" is a powerful episode that would lay waste to maybe half of the originals. A group of astronauts on their way to Mars discover that while they're in space the earth has been destroyed. They no longer have a home, and they are the first humans to go to Mars, so there is no terraforming or anything. The tension can't merely be cut with a knife. The tension would take that fucking knife and cut YOU.

I also enjoyed "Blurryman," but I suspect many of you would find that kinda cheesy mostly because of the reveal in the end. I dug it a lot, and it brings a writer back from the dead, so that's super cool. Again, no spoilers here.

But hands down, my absolute favorite is "Try, Try." Often a show will do a Groundhog Day episode, and this is certainly TZ's version of that. But no one ever asks, what if you are part of someone else's Groundhog Day? What if that person is obsessed with you? What things has this person done to you that you don't remember because the world resets every day? This episode asks those questions and more, and I'm delighted with the answers.

I'm pissed off that they ended the show after two seasons. That was a quality program, and I would have loved more episodes. Fucking . . . fucking shit. If you have Paramount+, I highly recommend you watch it. And don't forget the new Star Trek shows, which are awesome. And check out Strange Angel, while you're at it. It's the true and very weird story of Jack Parsons, a pioneering rocket engineer who, in his spare time, was involved in a sex cult. The show didn't get this far, but in real life he was scammed by L. Ron Hubbard, who took him for a couple thousand dollars, a boat and Parsons's wife. I don't know how people like that con artist. Hubbard was a good writer but not that good.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #501: MY GOODREADS REVIEW OF GORE VIDAL'S JULIAN

Emperor Julian, who called churches "charnel houses."

 Sorry. Busy night. I've run out of time to talk about something of greater length. So instead of business as usual, here is my Goodreads review of JULIAN by Gore Vidal.

Wow. Where to start? I guess I'll begin here. I'm an atheist, but gun to my head? I'd rather worship Mithras than the Christian God. Almost every single problem in the world can be traced back to Constantine's conversion to Christianity and his insistence on making it the official religion of the Roman Empire. And Vidal has a few theories about the history of Jesus Christ, especially after he was crucified, and how Christianity, in its efforts to control human behavior, has stolen from the various religions it sought to destroy. Case in point, very few Christians today wonder about that Christmas tree they put up every year. I wonder how many of them know it's because Christianity stole it from the Wiccans they plowed under with their powerful god machine.

Julian, Constantine's nephew, was the last non-Christian emperor of Rome, and he fought to keep the Christians (he called them Galileans, which I think I'm going to adopt in my speech) from destroying the gods he loved and cherished. I see a lot of comparisons to Marcus Aurelius in this book, which is good because I was thinking the same thing. While Julian might have been somewhat gullible (ie. his delight in the mentorship of Maximus), I think his heart was in the right place. He didn't outlaw Christ worship, but he did his best to discourage it. Like Genghis Khan after him, he allowed others the right to worship whatever god they wish. But he didn't want a state religion.

Nor did the Founding Fathers of America, but we can see how that worked out. Nothing ever really changes when it comes to the acquisition of power among politicians and oligarchs. There are a lot of things I could see in the book reflecting what is going on even now in today's world. Not just the era in which Vidal wrote this, but in Julian's world and our own right now. Because the garbage we're suffering now is not new. Even in Julian's time it was not new. It's been business as usual for about 2000 years. At least.

If only Julian had been successful! Even now there are scumbags bent on trying to eliminate the separation of church and state in my country. These are the same scumbags who declare how sacred the Second Amendment is in one breath and belittle the religious part of the First Amendment with the next. Money is not the coin of the realm. It is power, and the way to get power is to be so hypocritical that it challenges the very essence of the word. It's kind of like William Shatner. He's such a prolific sellout that he has transcended the very idea of selling out.

But Julian failed. He fell victim to the classics, hubris and greed. And as history teaches (and as such, I don't consider this a spoiler), Julian died under mysterious circumstances during a skirmish while heading back to Roman territory after an attempt to overthrow Persia. I did a little research after finishing this book, and no one seems to know who really killed Julian. Vidal has a theory, though, and this I do consider a spoiler. When the identity of the killer is revealed, it's actually pretty gut wrenching. The reasoning behind the killing is even more horrifying. And how the killer feels about his victim is even more astonishing.

Yeah, I know. This is more of a rant than a book review. If that's what you're looking for, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's like it was tailor-made specifically for me. I highly recommend it.

GOONIGHT, FUCKERS #500: HOW I BECAME AN ALCOHOLIC (AND MY PLANS FOR THE FUTURE)

 Five motherfucking hundred. That's a lot of columns. Usually I talk about Gramps or something important from my past (or simply the past) for these big numbers, but I decided to go with something else this time. Since I got out of detox, this subject has been on my mind.

Quick note: I cheated a little. I knew this was going to be long, and I was going to be super high when I'm supposed to be writing this, so I chipped away at it over the weekend. I shouldn't break my GF rules, but this one can't be avoided.

When you're in the hospital for alcohol related health issues, they always send a shrink to talk to you about it. I've had a few interesting people talk to me. For example, there was one woman who bought my books so she could get into my head. It didn't work out, but I appreciated the thought. There was the super Italian guy named Sonny (no shit) who cursed up a storm and agreed with me that AA is not the way to go. He's the one who got me into detox, by the way.

And then there was this one older woman who seemed like she might have been a dream. I don't know what it was. She had an ephemeral quality to her. Or maybe it was the fact that I was on Dilaudid at the time. But she asked me a question no one up to that point had asked me. How did I become an alcoholic?

I know exactly how that happened. You may or may not believe this, but I didn't start drinking as an adult until I turned 21. When I was a kid and we ran out of Coke, Mom would give me beer instead, but it wasn't my decision until 21. I started out as a social drinker who sometimes got crazy at house parties. I didn't otherwise drink to excess very often. I drank on Fridays and Saturdays for the most part. Then came the period in my life where we all went out to a different bar each night, but I wasn't out of control. Not yet.

Fast forward to my thirties, when I developed a sudden and horrible pain in my head. These headaches were ruthless. I was in constant pain every waking moment of my life, and I went to doctors who had no idea what was wrong with me. I probably got blasted with enough radiation to make Chernobyl nervous. No solutions.

I did figure out that alcohol did an excellent job of dulling the pain. Whiskey, specifically. As soon as I got home from work I'd plug a handle into my mouth and glug it down every night of the week. This went on for a while until a doctor got the bright idea to send me to a dentist.

Turns out, I had a chipped molar. It was so bad the nerve was exposed, and that had caused all that agony. The dentist filled it in, and it worked for a while, but then it got bad again. I got a root canal, and that helped again. Eventually I lost the tooth, but one thing I did not lose was my everyday habit of drinking copious amounts of whiskey.

That went on for years until 2020, when I went into the hospital for pancreatitis and inadvertently went into alcohol withdrawal for the first time in my life. I think I've written about that here before, so I'll skip past that. Eventually I got back to drinking at a reasonable level, aided with newly-legalized cannabis.

But then I needed to lose another toe. That upped my drinking a bit. Not too bad. But while I was recovering from the toe, my grandmother died, and my drinking skyrocketed. And then my impending homelessness became a reality, and suddenly I was downing a handle of whiskey every night, and when I got up the next morning I started drinking immediately. I tried not to be sober for any moment from that point on.

I knew even then I had to cut back drastically. When I tried, though, I started getting the shakes, and I knew I was physically addicted again. So when the shakes kicked in, I started drinking again to keep the hallucinations at bay.

After a few phone calls with friends, all of them knowing how bad off I was because I was a rambling psycho, I decided to call Sonny to get into detox. An excellent decision. I punched in his phone number, and my finger hovered over the green button. I almost didn't call him. But I did, and now I'm 24 days from my last drink. Almost a month. Holy shit.

Here's the thing I didn't expect: this shit is super easy. Once I got through the physical addiction, the rest has been a breeze. After all the horror stories I've heard--and still continue to hear due to the meetings--I thought I'd relapse again and again and need to go back to detox a few more times and so on and so forth. Sure, I have a crave every once in a while, but I just don't give in to it. It's simple. It's easy.

Now I listen to the stories of other alcoholics, and while I can relate to doing stupid shit and having horrible shit happen to you while being drunk, I can't really identify with all the relapses, etc. Maybe I'm being overconfident. I've thought several times that maybe I'm not a real alcoholic. Because here's the thing. When I was in detox I decided that I was going to drink on my birthday. I was going to get wasted and then I wouldn't have anything else to drink until my next birthday.

Much to my shock, I didn't drink on my birthday. I don't know why. I passed liquor stores on my way to other places that day, but it never occurred to me to go in and get the fifth of Wild Turkey 101 I was planning to get.

So my plans for the future. You're not going to see me at AA meetings, and I'm not going to be going through the steps. I recognize that it works for others, but I can't get past Step Two. I think it's a stupid fucking step for me. I'm an atheist, and while I believe in higher powers, I would never give myself over to them. For example, the ocean is a higher power than I am, but I would never worship it. I would never pray to it. I would never let it take over my life like a higher power is supposed to be. So I'll be skipping the steps. Also, if I went to AA, they would require me to stop taking edibles, and I wouldn't be able to have sex for, what is it? A month? Not that I'm getting laid right now, but if the opportunity arose (so to speak), I'd like to keep that option on the table.

If you're curious, the meetings I go to currently are not AA. They have a few things similar with AA, but they don't require the 12 Steps. Your only obligation is to yourself, to stay away from the booze, and if at all possible, tell stories about yourself that might help others in the group.

Eventually I plan to be a social drinker again. Not anytime soon, mind you. I'm still working out this whole not-drinking thing, and when I make that plunge I want to be confident in my abilities to stick to my plan. That being, if I'm going out to lunch or dinner with a friend or friends, I'll have a couple of Guinnesses. No more smuggling airplane bottles of whiskey into movies. No more drinking at home by myself. No more getting wasted at house parties or bars.

But I do plan to drink to excess on my birthday. And I'm thinking about allowing myself a floating holiday. But that's it.

It will take baby steps. I know I can do it if I put my mind to it. I just have to make sure I'm ready first. And who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind. I'd say 95% of the time I don't think about alcohol until I go to my meetings. I really didn't expect that.

OK, I think I've gone on long enough. Goodnight, you lovely fuckers, you.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #499: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY HAIR

 When I was a kid my mom forced a bowl haircut on me. Like many kids cursed with this fuckin' thing, I did not like it. But I had to deal with it. As I got older, and I was under Grandma's watch instead of Mom's, I dared to ask if I could change my hairdo. A barber had told my mom that I had a few parts in my hair, so I could do whatever I wanted to do with it.

I chose to have it combed back with a part in the middle of my head. To my surprise Grandma let me do it that way.

And it has been my haircut ever since then. Until, for some reason unbeknownst to me, now.

Within the last couple of weeks my hair has decided it no longer wants to be parted in the middle. I'm used to my hair having a mind of its own. I swear, I comb my hair every morning before I leave for work, and it stays that way until I step outside. Then it does whatever it pleases.

And now, at the age of 44, after decades of not changing, my hair wants to be parted from the left side of my head. I've tried fighting it several ways, but there is nothing I can do about it. My hair has spoken. So it is written, so it is done.

Dammit.

Hey, next GF is going to be #500. Holy shit. Tune in on Monday to see whatever the fuck I'm going to do with this.