GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #972: THE THINGS YOU'LL NEVER KNOW

 Someone mentioned not too long ago that this new generation, Alpha (although Omega might be more appropriate), will never know a pre-internet age. I thought the same of Gen Z, but apparently that goes back to 1997. I suppose technically they lived before the internet became prevalent, so they don't count. Regardless, I got the point even though there didn't seem like much of one. It's one of those things old people say unhappily about the young. It's next to meaningless. I, for example, will never know what it's like to live in a pre-nuclear world. Which means next to nothing for me. So Gen Z will never know what it's like to rent a VHS from Blockbuster. So what? Because they don't have that experience, they have not lost out. We, on the other hand, have that experience, so *we* are the ones missing out.

But this got me thinking about other stuff, some good, some bad. A lot of our inventions are pretty new, big picture, and a lot of them you don't really think of as needing invention. I knew this kid in junior high, high school, college and we even worked together for a time at the library. I remember during a 6th grade presentation he told us that his dad or grandpa or someone invented the tiny ring that goes around the tops of milk gallons. Up to that point in my life, I'd just figured those things were always around, not needing someone to invent them. OK, maybe I wasn't all that bright at the age of 11, but when was the last time you thought about whoever invented the paperclip*?

I love air conditioning, which only dates back to less than a hundred years ago. The concept of cooling a place down is thousands of years old (the Ancient Romans regularly practiced this), but the invention itself? Pretty recent.

Soap is not quite as new. 2800 BC. Yet until recently, bathing was considered a luxury. It would be surprising if someone washed themselves more than once a month. Time travelers: remember to bring a clothespin for your noses. And who invented the clothespin, anyway?**

How about your cutlery? Knives have been around for millions of years (proudly puncturing people since 2.5 million years BC!), but spoons are fairly new by comparison. They were invented in 1000 BC. I find it hard to imagine they didn't have soup back then. Did they drink it straight from the bowl? Regardless, that's nothing compared to the fork, introduced in the 4th Century AD.

So Jesus had no idea what a fork was. Neither did Julius Caesar.

Could you imagine living in a world with no forks?

Maybe the cellphones and internet, etc. isn't that crazy for these Gen Alphas. They will never know what it is (legally) like to drive in the back of a pickup, but so what? You don't know what it's like to live in a world without cars and with the bikes with the one giant wheel, and your world didn't end.

Did it?

______________________________________________________-

*Johan Vaaler, 1901

**David M. Smith, 1853

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #971: THE PLAN

 I got bad news about my foot last week on Thursday. Things had been going really well. The surgery was a success. All infection has been killed or removed. I was healing pretty well. My new podiatrist (she has yet to cut any of my body parts off, unlike the other guy) told me that if things keep going well, then we'll be able to reconstruct my foot.

But when I saw her Thursday, she said, immediately after she greeted me, "You scare me." Meaning, she's afraid that my foot won't heal and she'll have to cut it off. This was news to me, but when she unwrapped the bandage, her fears were confirmed. She told me I'd popped every single one of my stitches. There were pieces of dead skin everywhere, some flapping around the edges of my heel like pieces of paper (with the same consistency). She cut all of that off, then got to the dead white skin around the clot of stitches. There was an open wound in my foot.

I didn't see it until I changed the bandage on Friday, and it looked like a piece of my foot was ripped out. You know how, if a golfer misses their target, there's a divot knocked out of the ground? It looks like someone knocked a divot out of my foot. I have to pack it and the hole on the blind side of my foot (so I have to pack that by touch), and then I have to put these surgical dressings around it, although now I've added very thick pads of gauze over the packed wounds, then the dressings over those. Then I wrap it in a gauze band and put an Ace bandage around it. It's not a lot of fun, especially shoving stuff into the wounds.

But once again I am faced with the possibility of losing my bad foot this year, which means I'm also facing the return of booze to my life.

There are two options. One sucks, and one sucks really, really badly. The latter is putting a cage around my foot that will have to be held in place with screws attached to my lower leg. It would be weight bearing, which must hurt like fucking crazy. There will be a wound vac attached to my foot, too. Not fun.

The other option is the one I'm going to try. I have to stay off my foot completely for a while. This is unfortunate because I enjoy taking showers, which I will not be able to do. It's back to sponge baths in the bathroom sink. I fucking hate to do that, but I'm stuck with it.

So here's the plan. I need to get a knee scooter. A while back I learned that fire stations lend out things like that and wheelchairs, etc., for free. I know because I borrowed a wheelchair back when I first broke this foot. I got responses from my VMs over the weekend today. Fire stations no longer provide this service. Motherfucking fuck.

I also put out word on social media, but no one responded except for my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill, who recommended a knee scooter from Costco. I still wanted it for free, as I have next to no money, but now that I know I can't get one for free, I had no choice but to buy one. It's not the same one from Costco, but I found one even cheaper from them, so I just ordered it.

I can't use a knee scooter in the house. I can only use it outside and at work. In the house (and other places a knee scooter might not fit), I will get around on crutches. The podiatrist told me that I can use the tip of the boot I wear on my bad foot now for leverage. Meaning, I can't put weight on the foot, but if I use the toe, I won't fall over. I have terrible balance, probably from the years I spent drinking as hard as possible without actually dying. I hoped my balance would return, but it has not.

But I can't use the crutches on stairs, so I can't use them to get up to my bedroom. I have also bought kneepads. If I can't get around with the other stuff, I'll crawl like a toddler. My knees are fragile in my old age, though, so the pads are necessary.

If I can do this, I desperately hope my foot will finally heal so I can get it reconstructed. That would be nice. I've been told this will take forever to heal, so I'm guessing I'll still be living like this at least until Christmas.

I'll begin when my knee scooter arrives. Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #970: INSPIRATIONAL FLAMES

 A while back I watched an episode of Route 66 in which one of the characters, not the boys but one of the guest stars, is talking about art and what it's like to create.

I tried my best to find which episode it was, but I'd watched it a while ago (Buz was still on the show!). I really hoped to get a clip from this one, but I just can't find it, and while I used to be good at Google, Google is no longer good at Google. Lost, it shall remain. I really hope I'm remembering the episode well enough, because the scrawl in my notebook doesn't have a lot of info.

Anyway, the character compares art to Moses seeing the burning bush in the Bible. At first I took it to mean that, once you experience a work of art that thrills you, whether it's a novel or a painting or a song or whatever, it gives you much the same sensation a prophet seeing a miracle would feel. And it's true. I usually liken it to my head blooming like a rose, but this is a pretty good analogy. Think about all the great art you've experienced and how it was so powerful it changed you, maybe even changed your perception of the world around you. Art is powerful stuff. No wonder the MAGAs are doing their best to destroy it.

But the more I thought about it, the more I think she meant the creation of art, and that analogy is even better. What does a prophet who has seen a burning bush do? They tell everyone about it. Artists have seen the burning bush. Now they must create work that expresses that feeling.

I've had revelatory ideas that stunned me many times over the course of my life. Believe it or not, Dong of Frankenstein was one of those ideas. (Don't judge my muse!) It makes a current run through my body, and I stiffen as the idea works its way through my brain. And then, unfortunately for a lot of people, I write about my vision until I have a book.

Writing is my only talent. The other artforms elude me. My drawings suck, I can't play any instrument more complicated than the mouth harp or cowbell (and I still have trouble with the cowbell), I'm no painter, don't even ask me about sculpting, etc. But my experience as a writer with the burning bush matches up easily with the character's statement. I have no choice but to believe that all the other arts and artists are the same way. It doesn't make sense otherwise.

And that brings me to AI. I used to say that, sure, AI can make art just like the Infinite Monkey Theorem can produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now I'm not so sure. Can AI ever experience the burning bush?

Exactly.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #969: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PROPHET?

Lincoln around the age he gave the Lyceum Address.

 

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln said that about the end of America. This was in response to a mob lynching a Black man in St. Louis, according to William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner in Springfield. Herndon, by the way, is an excellent first hand source of material about Lincoln. Historians have tried to smear him as a drunk, but he was the closest person to Lincoln before he was famous, and he was rather truthful about Honest Abe. The reason historians dislike him as a source is because he said that Lincoln got syphilis after an evening with a woman who was not a wife. Furthermore, Lincoln gave it to Mary Todd, which in all likelihood led to her demise and explain her odd behavior near the end. You can see the appeal in discrediting Herndon, but Lincoln was no saint. He was not even an abolitionist, as our schools teach us that he was.

But Lincoln was one of the best presidents regardless. He expands on his thought from the famed Lyceum Address:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

In short, only the United States can destroy the United States. And it's very interesting that he seems to suggest that a single person would be able to do it. Sorry for the long quote, but it's apropos, I think.

This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?--Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.--It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Lincoln was infuriated by the circumnavigation of law by mob. He begs us to cling to "cold, reasoning" laws rather than our passions. It's the only thing that will keep us together. It's the only thing that will save us.

This reminds me of something. What could that possibly be? Perhaps the roughshod way Trump and Musk have trampled the laws of this nation in the name of their own passion? (Dare I say Trump's Musky passion?) And what aren't we doing as citizens? We're not uniting with each other to frustrate their designs. We're letting them destroy our country without a fight.

I really like the paragraph I'm about to quote, especially Lincoln's word choice in one particular instance. Let's see if you can guess the word I mean:

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

I'm not entirely sure we should be looking to George Washington as Britain looks to King Arthur, but all the same I find that one particular word interesting. The Trump we have is certainly not awakening our Washington. The ravens may never leave his monument.

If you're wondering why the Democrats are doing jack shit, it's because they serve the same master as Trump, our corporate overlords. They know when to obey. Could you imagine even one of them making a speech like this? Make no mistake, a speech like this is 100% necessary today. I think if Schumer pulled his head out of his master's ass and said something like this, we might actually have a fight we can win on our hands.

But We the People are fucked. When we address for recourse, are the laws that benefit our corporate overlords and our corporate overlords alone going to help us? No. But they tell us we need to go through the system with our complaints, the system they own. That's just not going to work.

What does work? Bloody revolution is efficient. Also, playing dirty works wonders. Being unable to tell the truth is a prerequisite for being a politician, but the MAGAs are so flamboyant with their lies, it's actually kind of awe-inspiring. Bullshit has always been an artform, but they've perfected it nearly to the point of godhood. Joseph Goebbels was right: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." And Trump didn't have to repeat his lies all that much. I mean, he does anyway, just to hedge his bets, but the MAGAs fell for it the first time. The Democrats are already on board with excessive lies. They know their master's voice. Why not beat the MAGAs at their own game? You almost got JD Vance with the couch-fucking thing. Go on. Get creative. Stephen Miller slurps his own cum. Elon Musk is into adult babyism. Ted Cruz wants to fuck his mom.

That last one might not be a lie.

All my life politics has been fucking dirty except now? The Democrats are going to be the adults in the room? Since when are adults well behaved?

Lincoln was right. America will die not by another nation's hand but by suicide. We're watching it happen right now. I wonder who will be there to pick up the pieces? Certainly no one with mercy in their hearts for us.

If you're into adult babyism, I don't mean to kink shame. That's not my intent. To each their own. If I offended  you, I apologize.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #968: THE WORLD IS A FUCKIN' STRANGE PLACE

 It is. I know it's hard to remember that sometimes, since we're all stuck with our boring daily routines. It's maybe even hard to notice in the first place. So I always keep an open mind about the world itself. A lot of weird shit happens here.

Ordinarily I'd point to the platypus and exclaim my shock that such a creature really does exist. As it turns out, scientists 200 years ago thought the platypus was a hoax. Back then a lot of science hoaxes were tried. Like the Piltdown Man, for example. I can't help but quote from the article I read on platypuses:

[H]ere was somebody from a land on the other side of the world submitting a new take on the legendary chimera, an animal composed of distinct parts of other animals.

The creature — if indeed it was a real creature — possessed a duck’s bill, fur like a mole, an otter-like body and a beaver’s tail. Eventually, it would be determined that it also laid eggs in the manner of a bird or a reptile. But when its young hatched from those eggs, the creature produced milk to feed it — a mammalian trait.

Yeah, you’d be skeptical, too.

And they're not alone! When you think about it, giraffes are really fuckin' weird. So are elephants. We commonly accept weird shit so often that we don't recognize our planet as a weird fuckin' planet.

Do you know what a brinicle is? I didn't either until I researched the Antarctica Ice Finger of Death. Seriously, that's a real thing. Brinicles are ice shapes resembling a finger that grow beneath sea ice. To learn more than you ever cared to know about it, here's a quote from an article I read:

Unlike frozen fresh water, ice on ocean surface is composed of two elements. The ice crystal is relatively pure, as the water excludes most of the salt during the freezing process. The remaining salty water stays liquid due to its lowered freezing temperature, and creates highly saline brine channels within the porous ice block.

A brinicle is formed when this sea ice cracks and leaks out the saline water to the open oceans. As the brine is heavier than the water around it, it sinks to the ocean floor while freezing the relatively fresh water it comes into contact with. This process lets the brinicle grow downward.

What makes the Ice Finger of Death so special is that anything it touches freezes instantly, hence the "death" part of its name. Can you imagine something so cold that touching it not only kills you but also freezes you in seconds? It's a good thing you're not likely to stumble across something like this. Unless you like diving in the ocean, which I don't. I have a strict policy regarding the oceans: stay the fuck out of them.

But since we've been talking about Greenland this week, there's another interesting thing that happened there last year. Scientists noticed the earth making a strange noise, and it was trembling when it shouldn't have been. Our lovely mother did this for 9 days, which understandably made those scientists nervous, considering that climate change is currently helping us reap our whirlwind.

It turned out that there was a rockslide in Greenland, which caused a tsunami within a fjord. Which sounds impossible, but imagine you're a kid about to go into the bathtub. Your mom has filled the tub with soap and water, and then you jump in. The water sloshes back and forth in the tub, right?

That's what happened in the fjord. For nine fucking days. Nine days of massive amounts of water crashing against the high cliffs on each side of the fjord. And that's what caused the noise and the trembling.

What a weird fucking thing to happen, right? But this oddball event caused great concern among scientists for a few days.

Is that really any weirder than a fuckin' platypus?

Weird shit happens here all the time, and most people aren't curious enough to notice. It's too bad. This planet's strange tendencies have kept me at least somewhat entertained for most of my life. Try it sometime. Look for the weird. Really look for it. See what you find. Report back to me, because I want to know all about it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #967: WHAT IS DEATH?

1

 I've often talked about my beliefs regarding the afterlife here, but I have a theory as to what happens during the process of your death. NDE people talk about the tunnel, floating outside your body and even having your life flash before your eyes. Something certainly happens. Your body floods with endorphins to possibly ease your passage, but what do you experience?

I think it would be a lot like the world I lived in for two weeks while suffering alcohol withdrawals for the first time.

I did not know that was what had happened. Instead I found myself living these odd scenarios, which I believe I've discussed here before. They were dreamlike, but I didn't doubt it was reality at any time, much like in dreams. It felt weird but very real.

So I think that's what we go through when we die. Unless you get shot in the head. It's hard to produce endorphins when the brain that gives that order is sprayed out on a wall or on the sidewalk.

Obviously you won't live in that fantasy forever. The endorphins only last so long, so I think it will fade slowly until you rejoin the darkness you left when you were born.

It sounds kind of pleasant. Just don't live the kind of life where death might destroy your brain, that's all.

2

There's another option. I once mentioned my argument against the afterlife, which was, you now have eternity to do all the things you wanted to do. OK, fine. I've read all the books, seen all the movies, heard all the music, and I still have eternity left? There's only so much of that I go over again before I go crazy and want the afterlife to be over. It didn't make sense to me.

But I thought a little more about this, and what if that's what you need to get you ready to rejoin the primordial ooze and continue the cycle of life? What if the afterlife breaks you down so much it destroys you, drives you crazy, removes the very idea of you. And then it's, as Metallica once said, "Back to the front!"

I can see that, too. It's hard to fit an individual back into the building blocks of life without destroying what makes one individual. If that's true, the universe is even more heartless than I thought.

3

I didn't intend to tackle The Biggest Subject tonight, so I'm sure I'll return to the usual madness tomorrow night. Sleep tight.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #966: CAMP CENTURY

 

Americans really are assholes. We have 100% earned our reputation around the rest of the world as assholes. And rest assured, it's not because they're jealous of the shoddy and twisted republic that we have. The worst punishment I can imagine for the rest of the world would be to make them Americans and expose them to American institutions. They would revolt a lot faster than we, the rebellious-at-heart Americans, ever would. In case you haven't noticed, we're such assholes that we used the atomic bomb TWICE. And when another country is having an election, we always back the dictator instead of the people's choice. Then, of course, the genocide and slavery not just in our history but in our building blocks. There's a lot to hate.

But we're also lying to everyone all the time, even nations we have treaties with like, say, Denmark, the owners of Greenland. Back in 1959 we talked them into letting us build a nuclear reactor on their land. For science, of course. We also built a miniature village so people working there (about 200 of them) had a place to live. We called it Camp Century. But what we really did was, we tried to see if we could build a nuclear missile base there. Why Greenland? And why does Trump want Greenland so badly now? Well, about that:

From National Geographic

Pretty useful during a Cold War that could turn hot at any moment. And before you judge us too harshly, please remember that not very long after we convinced the Dutch to let us do this, the Soviets snuck a bunch of nuclear missiles into Cuba, hence the Cuban Missile Crisis. Having Greenland is also pretty useful if you intend to fuck over Putin at some point. Even Trump must know that the two of them can't coexist. I suspect that if he has his way and bends America to his will, Putin will be the next order of business. A little unexpected from him, considering his love of the Russian dictator, but a solid political move.

So what happened to Camp Century? We, uh, well . . . we kinda forgot about it. In 1965 we abandoned it. We told the Dutch that it was a more or less successful experiment, and we did learn a lot about building nuclear reactors in such climates as the Arctic. We even accidentally learned something interesting about Greenland while we were at Camp Century. We drilled all the way through the ice sheet covering Greenland. That ice has long been thought to be 2M years old, but we examined the ground and evidence we found and came to the conclusion that it was a mere 400K years since Greenland was uncovered by ice.

OK, maybe that wasn't all that exciting for you to learn, but big picture, it's pretty important to our understanding of the world. Which is besides the point, so let's get back to it.

What we really learned was that it was impossible to build a missile base there. The conditions were too unstable, so we packed up our shit and left under the assumption that whatever we left behind would be sealed away in ice forever. It sounds kind of stupid to us now to do that, but back then they didn't know about one little tiny thing that is a very large fucking thing now.

That thing they didn't know about? Climate change. Now the ice is melting, and we have rediscovered Camp Century. There's just one problem. We left behind a lot of stuff, including nuclear waste and PCBs, the dreaded forever chemicals. To say nothing of the 24M liters of untreated sewage.

So now Camp Century is a ticking time bomb. Don't worry, you probably won't be alive when it goes off, which is scheduled for 2135 or 2179, depending on which model of climate change you follow. Your grandkids might be alive for it, though. Imagine the sheer joy they'll experience when that waste is exposed to the air and shoved right into the Polar Jet Stream. How much damage could that shit do once dispersed in such a fashion? I imagine there won't be a lot of places in the northern hemisphere you could avoid it.

Yeah, I don't think Trump wants Greenland so he can clean up the US's previous mess, either. All the same, if he somehow figures out how to make a missile base work there, I wonder what Putin might try to sneak into Cuba? Hell, maybe Mexico is tired of the tariffs. Why not put a real threat at the border?

Fun in the end times . . .