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Upsetting Day: Semenology
Author: Seanbaby
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How many ways are there to celebrate America? Let’s see, there’s Nebraska. Scottie Pippen. Masters of the Universe Evil Pit of Gruesome Goo Playset. Pigeons. Actually, let me check my local library. It’s possible someone wrote a book about this and I can save myself a lot of hard work. Oh! Here we go! Perfect:
Gregory J.P. Godek is one things. A romance author, and a romance author. So when I saw he wrote a book about America, I thought “Finally, someone learned how to fuck this great nation.” This is not that. This is something so much less. Maybe less than anything has ever been. 1001 Ways to Celebrate America is -25% of an idea. It’s something a below average goldfish would think from a can of lead paint.
Instead of clips, I chose to scan entire pages. I really wanted you to see the emptiness of Godek’s thoughts on America. I also worried you might not believe it was real. There are twelve more words in this sentence than there are on the opening page of this book. And, sure, the words so far are fine. They’re not his, or profound in any way, but they do communicate the book’s real intent: filling space at any cost. To Greg Godek, there is no difference between good and bad writing– only numbers checked off and numbers not checked off. He writes like he just Quantum Leaped into a bridesmaid giving a wedding toast.
What are we in the brainstorming meeting for the book we’re fucking reading? This isn’t how you celebrate America. This is how you publish the unedited notes of a middle school president’s concession speech. This sounds like a Tesla commercial after a racial scandal.
This goddamn moron, this soulless piece of trash, has only written 20 words so far, 13 if you don’t count repeats, and he is already rearranging them. It’s page three. Greg Godek has run out of ideas on the third page of his America book. Fuck his desperate, coughing, childlike brain. He thinks the completion of the assignment itself is the goal of a writer, that the simple act of saying 1001 vaguely American things is a victory. But is it? Are there readers out there going, “Nine hundred ninety-nine, one thousand, one thousand and… by god, he did it! He really did it!” I’d argue no. I’d argue fuck no. These are dumb answers to a quiz a fool gave himself for no possible audience, and the subtext of each thought seems to be “Um, technically that one counts!!”
Sure, random quotes from the miscellaneous. You’re welcome, America. I’ve read Godek’s other books, so I knew it was going to eventually be grandpa trying to remember things, but he got there so fast. He skipped right past hula hoops and REO Speedwagon to get to “noises the TV makes.”
Have you heard of holidays? Because if you haven’t, buckle the fuck up. They happen every year, and if you think they all have normal-colored eggs, egg again. What are we reading, and who is it for? These sound like memory implants a clone would reject before it thrashed free of its pod. Best-selling author Greg Godek wrote a baby book with no pictures for the elderly.
Say something, anything, about something, Godek. You set out to list famous things and failed to connect them with any thread of context. There’s nothing to give or take from this. There’s not even a discussion to be raised. After reading this someone could say, “What about the 17th largest pancake?” and Godek would have to say, “Yes! Precisely!” Or maybe he would say, “No, no, big foods don’t belong on this list of six paintings, historical events, landmarks, or spaceships.” It wouldn’t matter either way, because these aren’t ideas. This is fluid dripping from the ears of a basic bitch killed with a hammer.
So after seven pages of almost pornographic emptiness, pages 8 and 9 are hugs. I think Godek is really going through something. Maybe we’d better stop to try to figure it out. Did he write this while being strangled? Did he only recently hear about America? I think I could be the man to solve this. Because like anyone could if they had 75 cents and a GoodWill nearby, I own all of Greg Godek’s books. Here, look, I took this photo in my home:
See, in 1991, Greg wrote 1001 Ways To Be Romantic. It was a hit! Unfortunately, it was not a good book, he wasn’t a good writer, and he never had another inspiration. So he updated and reissued the book a few times, wrote a “sequel,” wrote another “sequel,” wrote a parody, chopped it into parts to make smaller books, and adapted it into coupons several times. By my count, 1001 Ways to Celebrate America was Godek’s 22nd book, and it is, without question or exaggeration, only the second thing he’s ever written.
In the year 2001, Greg was running out of idea. For a full decade, he had been taking words from his inexplicably successful book and shoving them around, polishing the pizza grease on his obvious and square dating advice. And then a smaller tragedy happened. Someone flew a plane into a building. Because, yes, 1001 Ways to Celebrate America was a shameless attempt to cash in on September 11th.
Greg Godek dedicated this book, this assortment of loose thoughts from a saccharine fuck, to the victims of 9/11. He had only 1,001 things to give them, and one of them was “Make a wish on the wishbone at Thanksgiving.” Which reminds me of something I recently heard: this is a loose assortment of thoughts from a saccharine fuck. Is that because it was rushed? How soon after the towers fell was this published?
Two thousand and one!? That means that while a nation mourned, Godek pitched, wrote, edited, and printed this book in under 111 days. That’s fast. Air traffic controllers leapt into action with less urgency than Greg Godek on 9/11. His first through fifth stages of grief were wondering how the situation could make him money, which I guess is pretty American. And maybe I’m being too hard on him. Three and a half months is a decent amount of time. It’s not like he published his 9/11 book in…
… holy fucking shit, OCTOBER OF 2001? How!? Godek had to have already been working on those Easter egg tips (“Color eggs at Easter.” if you don’t remember) while they were still watching the towers burn. Debris was falling from the sky and he was hunched over the keyboard saying, “Hug your Mom. Okay, think, Greg, think. What else, what else… Hug your… that’s it! Dad!”
When he told his wife he’d already finished the first 100 pages of his 9/11 book, her response was, “A second plane has hit the tower.”
Let’s keep reading this gift he lovingly, thoughtfully gave to the survivors.
“Captain Ahab,” said Greg Godek to the shell-shocked survivors of September 11th. His words came as a comfort, a resource in short supply. “Marilyn Monroe. Mae West,” he concluded, for some reason. America had lost so much. We were attacked in our home by an enemy wielding terror as a weapon, but this brave romance author refused to give up. He said seven celebrities or politicians or fictional characters, in no particular order. Our wounded nation could not have asked for a more noble savior.
“The basic idea of cookies,” said Greg Godek over the course of an entire page of his 9/11 book. “There’s no fucking way that’s true,” your mind might respond. Yet it is. All of it. He summarized the process of making and enjoying cookies, and enjoying was three of the four steps.
It’s easy to dismiss this book as a senile man jotting down the last of his memories, but look again. It’s not quite even that. He’s asking the reader to do that. To all the victims of the horrific bombings of the World Trade Center, know this: Americans can name George Jetson’s dog, Archie Bunker’s wife, Charlie’s Angels. By the way, there’s no answer key. If you’re a 9/11 survivor who doesn’t know the name of George Jetson’s dog, add this page to your suffering.
What’s frustrating is that I don’t mind nostalgia, or evoking shared memories. There are a lot of ways to say “think about Batman” where I will agree with you. But this sucks so hard. Godek is talking like he’s on a date with 1971’s dumbest 14-year-old. He didn’t come up with a cute framing device or any kind of trivia game. This is a rat scientist who got confused by his own maze. Greg might as well be begging his reader to remember things for him.
Yeah, like that, Godek. Certainly these moments in our great history deserve a place of honor here, across from the sentence, “A talking horse.” It’s frustrating because Gregory is almost stumbling into punchlines. Deliriously recalling bloody military battles in the same breath you sort of remember the Brady Bunch is so close to funny. And yet it’s also so far past absurd there’s no parody for it. I could say, “Remember the Holocaust, Tiananmen’s Square, and laughing along with Gilligan,” but why? That’s almost exactly what he already said!
It’s important not to take nuanced work like this out of context so here is Gregory Godek’s Way to Celebrate America, Number 180ish, in its entirety: General Robert E. Lee.. “Fruit Loops, car tires, breakfast cereal,” he no doubt considered instead. I think he made the right call.
What’s this? What good will a list of celebrity couples from the 1960s do me? What am I, the opening comic for a child magician in a hospice?
“Proms.
Pom-poms.”
You can’t improve on perfection. Hate him or hate him, sometimes Godek is right.
It’s crazy this man is a romance author, because this is what you’d say if you were a wizard casting a spell to seal all the world’s vaginas. This is a script Dan Aykroyd would call, “Exactly what I needed to show off my comedic range.” Read this out loud. There is no one in your life who loves you enough to not shoot you in the head before you get to “And awayyyy we go!”
Again, there’s never been any published work so close to nothing as this. You can’t say less than the names of 19 baseball players. Like, if you said the names of 18 baseball players I’d call it a tie.
This is a test you’d give your students if you taught a course on Not Indulging Every Little Fleeting Thought. You’d ask them “A list of abbreviated organizations… is that anything?” and fail everyone who said higher than maybe. A big part of talent comes from knowing when an idea is bad before it’s fully executed. Any competent writer would have seen this concept as a dead end. But to not see how fucking worthless it is afterwards, after you’re sitting there looking at a tower of random letters? That’s what makes Godek special. He was proud of this. Gregory J.P. Godek kept his name on this book. He thought his name helped.
And yet maybe there was a part of Godek that knew what he was doing was wrong. Because this page makes no sense if you’re a grieving 9/11 survivor hoping to learn new ways to celebrate America. But it does make sense if you’re an exploitative piece of shit’s subconscious crying out from the space between old sitcom memories.
He’s done. Godek is spent. This is the background noise of a boomer brain when they forget to bring a magazine to the toilet. He has been so utterly and completely defeated by the challenge of “say 1000 things, dumbshit.”
I’m in a relatively unique position to understand Godek’s struggle since I spent a decade at a website that specialized in generating massive amounts of lists. But I did not know there was a stage of the writing process like this. This is more raw than anything I’ve ever jotted down. For instance, a real line from my notes file is “that dinosaur cop movie had to sue Whoopi Goldberg to be in it, other movies where similar happened?” and without touching a word, I’d put the value of that up against any of these lists Godek fully edited and published to honor the 9/11 dead.
I think we can all appreciate the nimble and creative mind of Gregory Godek who somehow thought of the movie Groundhog Day while he was talking about Groundhog Day, but look at his glorious tip for 9/11 survivors celebrating Valentine’s Day. He suggests being romantic, great Valentine’s Day advice, and then plugs his other book. Which is, oh no, it’s another situation with no analogy. Because this is like sneaking in an advertisement while you’re in the middle of exploiting September 11th for profit. I don’t know where to go from there. I’d have to say something beyond ridiculous like, “That’s like telling someone to read Mein Kampf in a Gregory Godek book.” And I would never. That would be cartoonish nonsense; a hack joke beneath my contempt.
Oh f-fuck.
Sure, hug Mickey Mo– no. No. How did that happen? Did I somehow conjure that? I refuse to believe we live in a universe where a bestselling author wrote a book about the 1001 ways to celebrate America and one of them was, word-for-word, “Read Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.” How did reading Mein Kampf even crack the top– I mean, were there no contenders who could push Hitler into 1002nd place? Like, off the top of my head, sunflower seeds, rustic fencing, read Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler. Huh. I guess it always finds a way in.
I’m almost positive the hardest, most time-consuming part of Greg’s creative process was figuring out how to look up “songs with U.S.A. in their title” on the 2001 world wide web.
He’s checking his AOL keywords for more America songs? This is a sick mind dry heaving. It might as well say, ★Shapes I saw while being dragged from a motorcycle in the USA: triangle, chickens, blue, Read Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler..
I don’t know how to describe this. Is a list “eclectic” when it’s only five things long? Is his brain really out, entirely fucking out, of things? I’m making fun of him, but I honestly don’t know what he’s trying for here. I don’t know what links these people or what he left off this list. Maybe Pizza Hut? A lawn dart injury? Why did he stop? I can’t imagine what ideas he would reconsider if he left Hitler in.
Jesus Christ, the ABCs of America? Godek has stopped his list of random things to write a smaller list of random things. I’m going to add the concept of alphabetized lists to the casualties suffered in the terror attacks of September 11th. Let’s jump ahea– oh my god. No.
That monster. He did it again 44 pages later. Which would be a lot in a different book, but you’ve seen what Godek pages look like. I skipped him naming shirt colors and remembering I Dream of Jeannie. That’s ten minutes of work, at most. Which means smoke was still rising over the devastated New York City skyline while Godek was polishing the line “Enjoy freedom” in his second “ABCs of America” list that day. You know what might be fun? Let’s see how this creative genius handled the alphabet’s tough later letters.
Ha ha for the letter Y he went with “Yup!” which is, of course, short for “Yup! We celebrate being American!” Ha ha ha what a goddamn fucking stupid fuck. Greg Godek is the Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler of books.
I’m about to make it worse.
This is not the first and second time Greg Godek has been writing a big, dumb list only to stop and make a small, dumb list based on the English alphabet. He first did it before back in 1991 in 1001 Ways to Be Romantic:
This one wasn’t so bad. It’s a nice tight list of romantic words like Panties and Pizza. Also, Quebec, Quiche. Restful. All the words you need for romance. And including only Sex for the letter “S” is as close to cute as we’ve ever seen Godek be. It shows restraint. It had to have been tough to resist putting in Salad and Signed Copy of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.
You might see where this tangent is going, but Godek did this alphabet shit again in his followup book, 1001 MORE Ways to Be Romantic:
In this book, his “ABC” section spanned numbers 1465-1490 because each letter counts as its own entry. A. B.old C.hoice! D.ogshit E.thics, F.ucking G.odek. H.a I.‘m J.ust K.idding. L.et’s M.ein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.
His worst version of the idea came in 10,000 Ways to Say I Love You, which is a hilariously impossible number for an author who, after pizza and Hitler, knows less than 400 things.
On number 7966, SEVEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX, Godek took this concept, the kind of poem a tiny child would write, and turned it into a coupon! But not a fully realized coupon! It’s a coupon you, the reader, gets to come up with based on your lover’s… favorite letter? I can’t be reading this right. Oh, good. Here’s a nice normal one from The Portable Romantic:
Again, he makes you do most of the work but he still counts it as 3 entries because he gave you A through C. I don’t know what any of this means in relation to his tribute to 9/11. I don’t know why I’m documenting it. There’s no need for it. We all understood this man was intellectually and creatively bankrupt. But there’s something fascinating about a man whose eyeballs turn to dollar signs when there’s a terror attack and who shouts “eureka!” whenever he remembers the alphabet. Anyway, here’s an unrelated clipping from his book, Romantic Essentials.
Sorry, that’s the same one as– no, this is the right clipping. It was Godek who accidentally copied three entire entries of his other book. Oh well, everyone makes mistaKampf, by Adolf Hitler. By this point Godek knows we know he’s the ABC guy and he’s not embarrassed. For him, being a tired cliche is a time saver. In the next entries, instead of typing out complicated instructions on how to do the alphabet at home, he simply says, “A-to-Z Romantic Gifts: I think you know what to do!” followed by just the worst goddamn examples of gift ideas:
You get it. Buy her 26 gifts. Aretha Franklin albums, Baileys Irish Creme. . . etc. If she figures out what you’ve done, and she won’t because she’d probably alphabetize those items under “F” and “I“, she won’t know why you did it! You insufferable maniac!
When Godek was writing his book Romantic Mischief, he had another brilliant idea: the alphabet!
It’s 90% identical to one from the last two books.
I don’t know if “C–Come closer, my honey bun!” is better than the previous version, “Come closer– never leave me!” It doesn’t matter because any reasonable woman would C.all the police and C.ut your dick off. You’re welcome for the C.omedy.
Oh, look. He did it again in the same book. We need to keep this moving, so I’m going to skip to everyone’s favorite, the pizza and sex part.
Okay, this is a little different. Godek has been making changes, tinkering with his love advice. In this revised version, he’s removed the pizza and added… socks. Why? That’s plainly worse, Godek. You went from fucking on pizza to dry sex in socks.
Now hold on, I know this is a tangent within a tangent, but I’m going to look something up.
This is the index from 1001 Ways to Be Romantic. Godek didn’t include one in 1001 Ways to Celebrate America because when your book is only a list of things, an index is nothing more than the whole book again. But back to my point– you can see what young Godek thought was important. Pizza(!) appeared on four pages and was categorized with an exclamation point. And you’re reading that correctly– six of his other romantic tips were Playboy magazine. That’s more than pizza! This was a horny, hungry man ready to take on the world.
Now let’s see what happened when he went back and made his revisions:
Later editions only mention pizza twice. That’s barely more than section “Play,” subsection “it again, Sam.” I don’t know what I’m trying to prove. That he once stood for something? Definitely not. That he used to have more pizza and masturbation in his life? I guess. I can’t believe this discount Hallmark card of a man created a work so awful I’m sitting before you saying, “His earlier stuff was better.” For instance, in 2001’s 1001 Ways to Celebrate America, he’s still going with this bullshit:
Yes, America gets mentioned sometimes in music, Greg! I swear this fucker writes like the dumbest team member on a Family Feud episode that never existed.
What? Okay, so Andy Rooney was the old man who told viewers of 60 Minutes that paper clips were better than staples and if you ask him, trains should be horses. Maybe Godek means Mickey Rooney? Either way, if Andy OR Mickey Rooney crack your top ten of all-time comedians, you died of misery-related causes over 85 years ago. What the shit is this book, Gregory?
As a writer, there’s something about ending each of these boomer memory fragments with a period that feels obscene. It’s like Godek is counting “Bob Hope.” not only as one of the 1001 Ways to Celebrate America, but as a complete sentence. This is going to sound racist, but I hate it more than the Confederate generals and Hitlers.
Greg wants us to “Learn about Native American cultures.”? And then, in a totally separate entry, “Honor them.”? To Godek, to a mind like his, what could that mean? Respectfully look them up in an Encyclopedia? Reenact an entire Cherokee Corn Mother ceremony? Indigenous artifact museum heist? “Honor them.” isn’t enough to be helpful. If you’re an Applebee’s waiter with a name tag I will spend 50% more words thanking you for a refill on my water than Greg Godek said about honoring Native American cultures.
Greg, buddy.
It’s fair to joke about this list of things no longer being true because of senility and natural causes, yet I think it’s more important to remember this is how Godek honored 9/11. We were all sharing this horrible emotional trauma, and this pizza fucker thought it would help to say, “Americans . . . can sing the theme song to ‘The Brady Bunch.'” Though I guess… I guess he’s right. Yeah. Yeah! Americans can sing the theme song to “The Brady Bunch!” Better luck next time, terror!
Oh damn it, I thought it was over. That would have been a good ending. But Godek couldn’t wrap his book up without listing the nine players or coaches of basketball. America salutes you, basketball men Greg remembers!
This is new. Up until now there had been no editorializing, only judgment-free lists. Godek was like, “Remember peanut butter. Enjoy a Qur’an. Give Hitler a shot.” And now, after 232 pages, he’s got opinions? Four of them? And one of them is “Twinkies are a dubious achievement?” What!? I don’t know, I guess anything is better than watching an old man struggle to remember every last song that name drops the country.
God damn it, Godek.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Zach and Eva.
Kill everyone, like Jesus would. Hi, I only got sixteen words into this book’s title before I started writing about it, so I’m not sure what to expect. Let’s explore 2014’s GOD & GUNS Why I am Not a Pacifist Defend Your Family! Kill Attackers in Christian Love together.
It’s obviously self-published by an eager gun owner named Greg Perry. The thesis of Greg’s book is tough to explain. He is a man of principled reason, again obviously, and he’s concerned about the rise in pacifism in Christian communities. His idea? For everyone, from individuals to the state, to kill more people. It’s not a new idea. In fact, most historians would call it “retro,” but its simplicity is clouded by Greg’s insanity, personality disorders, and terrible writing. For instance, let’s look at the back cover. Try to guess how many sentences it takes for Greg’s Christian murder manifesto to turn into entry-level misogyny.
Three! Three sentences! We don’t even know what we’re dealing with yet, and Greg has already blamed it on pacifism, Satan, pacifism, and women. If I’m being honest, I almost understand the sentiment. When you take away punching and add women, everything gets more complicated. But if I’m being even more honest, this man is nuts. Maybe things will make more sense next paragraph?
No, this is madness. This is an unfiltered look inside the mind of a man broken by an old church argument we’ll never hear the other side of. It looks like Greg wrote this to debunk the idea you can stop a wife murderer with Bible quotes, which is not something most people would have considered. Who told him this was a thing that happens? Is he maybe beefing with an episode of VeggieTales?
Greg dares you to read on, if you have enough hair on your chest! Oh shit, Greg!
So, okay, that was incoherent and stupid, but we all know a Greg. He’s a beef commercial man’s man who has opinions on the age of consent you simply aren’t brave enough to agree with. Greg is someone a Hooters waitress calls, “Oh, god damnit, this guy.” And I didn’t even have to look up his author photo to know it was the Discord avatar of an officer warning you if you miss another raid you’ll have to find a new World of Warcraft clan. Cowards! The frail! This is your last chance to leave! We are opening GOD & GUNS Why I am Not a Pacifist Defend Your Family! Kill Attackers in Christian Love!
Oh no, this is trash. Trash for ladies. I was hoping for violent incel, but this is a nerd moving words around on needlepoint art. “Swords into ploughshares? Maybe if you’re a little baby, Isaiah! Us real men do swords AND ploughshares!!” I’m not even sure how to respond to this. If you said this to me I think I would just pull you into two parts and throw them in opposite directions. Greg, this is how you opened your book? You’re splitting hairs on a Bible quote and calling it masculinity? The next page had better be instructions on how to kick your ass.
Oh my god, it really is. What a canny intelligence Greg has.
This is worrying because I think… I think this paragraph means Greg is going to be doing klutzy, impenetrable sarcasm in his book about when it’s okay to murder people. One of the complications with Christian gunman books is you never know whether the author is stupid because they’re dishonest or stupid because they’re stupid. Anyway, this page had his email, a link to a dead website called RightNerve.com, and an apology that he can’t get Google+ to work and isn’t sure if he printed the right link. It’s pathetic, but in a beautiful way, like a Fox News grandpa opening his plumage.
Holy shit. What are you doing here, Greg?
Why is he talking like this? Did Greg write this book for one very particular enemy? This is so belligerent, and for what? To make fun of the dummy Christian book consumer gun owner pacifist who forgot what Bibles were? This intended reader will never exist. I think Greg may have lost an argument with himself in the shower, and now he thinks the entire outside world is the strawman who made a fool of him.
Speaking of delusions, maybe I did this? I always thought one of my books would know I bought it ironically and try to defeat me. This could be that day.
This is a crazy way for a writer to talk to their reader. Especially around a topic like this. It’s absurd to think you could persuade anyone with abuse and insincerity. The relationship between author and audience can’t be adversarial, it needs to be massaged like your tense shoulders. You glance back and our eyes meet for a moment too long… a moment long enough to carry a silent understanding. Our mouths collide before our bodies and you nudely gasp, “I don’t even know you!” But you do. I’m Sean, and we’re in this article together. Our worlds become penetration, murder and misogyny are bad, and most of this Jesus shit is pointless. That’s how you start a real argument, Greg.
Greg probably thinks he’s doing a bit, but he’s been speaking to a singular, extremely unlikely reader for several pages now. We all kind of tailor our imaginary enemies to our skill level, and it’s revealing that Greg Perry is facing off against a vaguely Christian blob that can’t do any verbs. And I’d say his fantasy has reached its natural conclusion– the blob is watching its wife get killed by penises and offering only its loving support. Ha. You thought that would work, blob? Greg gently disagrees, you dumb blob.
It’s really quite a book. Great job, Greg. Anyway, that was Chapter One. We learned what a Bible is and saw our wife get sex killed. So what the fuck are we doing here? Why did you have us get our Bible out, Greg, if asking God for less wife murder is a stupid tactic that doesn’t work?
Name one type of Bible, fool. “C-Carlos?” you guess. Wrong. Greg is fucking dominating you with his Bible knowledge. All he had to do was start two consecutive chapters with imaginary arguments against a reader who barely knows Carlos Bible. “Hold on, wait,” you sputter. “You’re telling me that Carlos guy was named after a book?” Not really, idiot. Sounds like Greg was right to take this tone with you.
So, Greg, when you asked “What kind of book is the Bible?” the answer you were expecting was, “It’s a battle manual.” Buddy, you typed this where people can see it. And then instead of explaining how that makes any sense, you explained the Bible like one might to a puppet that just came to life. I think maybe you need to take a deep breath and try to figure out what in the goddamn fuck you’re doing, Greg.
So far, the only thing we’ve learned is three ways to categorize our Bible and a couple things not to do when a gang of cannibals is eating our wife. And yet Greg is already getting defensive that people are going to misunderstand him. He’s not promoting violence, you see. He’s just interpreting his religion’s scripture as a “battle manual” and hoping to one day shoot someone, anyone. I don’t think he needs to be so insecure, though. This next section about brandishing your gun proves him to be a very smart and reasonable man:
I don’t think Greg has law enforcement or counter terrorism training, or even a passing interest in the subjects, so his advice on de-escalating a hostage situation is more of a cute guess than anything else. He’s like a dumb guy, who knows nothing, some might say. But this situation is taking place in his imagination. If he’s telling us that only showing a gun to our wife’s attacker will make things worse, fine. We have to believe him. We choose A: Shoot gun at murderer.
I don’t think I disagree with Greg. I’m also a power tool chest hair big man, which means I don’t really care if family attackers get shot by vigilantes. Have fun, make ear necklaces, Tim Allen sounds. What’s concerning is that in a world of limitless maniacs and infinite paranoid delusions, Greg has decided the solution is quickdraw murder and nothing else. Most people could come up with a few ideas that don’t get attacker brains on your family, but Greg has considered only the one where he gets to shoot the guy having sex with his wife. I don’t know what it means. You’d need a trained psychologist to untangle such a notably specific and unflinching fantasy.
Greg advises us through another scenario involving a beer mob carrying baseball bats. In this case, you and your wife run away. There’s simply too many to shoot. Unfortunately, while he was losing hypothetical battles to his impotent fears at his word processor, a process he referred to as “working on some recent edits to this ever-improving volume,” he saw news coverage of a mass shooting. Greg doesn’t have a full understanding of what happened, either because he’s responding to incomplete initial reports or he was taken in by some weird media spin, but he heard the shooter asked his victims if they were Christian. So he did what any aspiring intruder killer with a tiny imagination would do: he solved it with karate hindsight. He explains how an unarmed guy with a 1-1 record against his wife’s imaginary murderers would have saved the day:
Ha ha his big idea is to zigzag around? And if that doesn’t work, “run away”? Or you could, and this is only for advanced tough guys, “kill the murderer.” The things you don’t want to do are, one, answer any murderer questions about your religion, and two, get murdered, end of list. I’m serious. Greg started a list of things not to do in the horrific shooting that already happened, only came up with two, and one of them was to not get murdered. There truly may not be a dumber, less necessary thing to say about any subject. People died and this little bitch’s sage wisdom is functionally identical to the instincts of anything plant or above.
I guess while the mood is light, Greg takes a hilarious jab at liberal 2-year-olds for not getting spanked enough. I don’t know why this is in the same chapter as his “ideas” for surviving a mass shooter. Maybe because it’s another ill-advised list where he was very stupid and stopped at two? Maybe because his brain is a disorganized collection of right wing bitterness and images of his wife being taken by madmen? Let’s keep reading and find out.
“I found the best church! Everyone thinks dinosaur bones are a lie buried in Arizona by Satan and also has a secret gun! In a split second any one of us, using the judgment I just described, could decide who deserves to be killed!” From the way Greg typed, I thought he was navigating the mean streets of some inner city, but the only gunmen he’s faced are two grandmothers who are probably quite pleasant until you bring up the topic of mixed marriages. With the comfort of all these guns, why is Greg so afraid all the time? Who in this small, tight knit community keeps attacking Greg’s family?
Greg opens Chapter Five hard, DESTROYING any hypothetical reader stupid enough to bring up God’s famous, sacred, unmistakable commandment against killing. The last chapter was about how much he loves hidden guns and spanking other people’s kids, so I don’t know why he’s suddenly screaming about the only Bible quote we know and why it’s wrong. I almost feel bad for Greg, because whatever this conflict is, he’s not winning it. He seems sort of confused about the idea of ideas in general. Like, it takes such a huge amount of intellectual dishonesty to pretend “THOU SHALT NOT KILL” includes mildew, so you can’t use it to set up a punchline or an argument. And Greg was so proud of it he repeated the bit until he got to AIDS. I’d normally make some wild analogy here, but this is like Jerry Seinfeld asking what the deal is with cancer over and over as it slowly kills him, which is the literal opposite of a joke, Greg.
Oh no. I knew Greg was a piece of shit, but I didn’t know he was a “God demands the death penalty for homosexuality” piece of shit. Or is he? He’s bad at explaining himself, so this may be another dumb thing his confused reader foolishly thinks? I’d better stop reading his stupid ass book and look him up.
…
Yeah, he’s homophobic and racist, but it’s… okay, I have to be delicate about this. I’ll start by showing you what the first half of Greg Perry’s writing career looked like:
It was aggressively normal. For years, Greg wrote dull computer textbooks for everyone from beginners to beginners. And maybe because there was no market demand for a 75th Visual Basic manual, or maybe because something conk-like happened to his skull, but along the way Greg went from “computer” author to “hggblggblggghg!” author. Here’s what the second half of Greg Perry’s writing career looked like:
One day Greg became a miserable right wing grifter and couldn’t wait to show you how! This is the bookshelf of someone who does two things: lose every penny they have and ruin Thanksgiving. And here’s where things get complicated. Greg was featured on an episode of Penn & Teller: Bulls…! about the tyranny of handicapped parking spaces. Greg came on the show to argue we should do away with them along with the American Disability Act, and yeah, of course he did. He’s a butthole. But he’s a butthole who was born with only one leg and three fingers. So what do we do now? On the one hand we’ve solved the mystery of why no one ever bullied these personality traits out of him, but on the other, he’s made roasting him problematic. I do not like feeling sympathy for the murder dweeb who agreed to be in this shot where he shakes his head in disgust at a parking spot wasted on the nowhere-to-be-found handicapped:
Greg is possibly worse on camera than he is in print. He makes childlike arguments about how the American Disability Act takes away bootstraps from lazy, greedy disabled people, and we need to let the free market decide how accessible businesses should be. And maybe there are unintended consequences of all good intentions, but I don’t think Greg has thought this through. I’ll go ahead and speed run this debate and say that if you let them, Wal-Mart would absolutely replace their wheelchair ramps with slavery. I only brought it up because I wanted to make the point that even in his area of expertise, Greg is an idiot psychopa– oh my god, holy shit fuck I just realized something…
Remember earlier when Greg’s brilliant idea to survive an execution was to move side-to-side and dodge the bullets? I thought it was dumb advice from someone who has never been in that kind of situation, but it’s even worse because… how do I put this? It’s also from someone who has never moved side-to-side? Brockway, be sure to delete that; maybe all this.
I’m still worried I’m on the wrong side of history, so here’s a shot of Greg’s twitter feed proudly denying climate change with no context for one (1) like. And that came two days after he posted a Chuck Norris meme in 2024 to attack the general concept of women.
I know it’s not enough to square things. I called a disabled man a little bitch. Hear me out, though. I hate having to do this, and this sentence is going to quickly accelerate beyond your darkest conceivable expectations, but as of press time, Greg’s latest post is a retweet of Rob Schneider enthusiastically retweeting Russell Brand kneeling before Tucker Carlson.
It’s too much. It’s a brilliant artist including all of humanity’s worst traits in one image. It’s a hacky, overwritten joke about the shittiest thing possible. I shouldn’t have looked Greg up. It was a mistake, and I apologize. Let’s get back to his book, hopefully with Greg saying something so horrible I can keep making fun of him.
Oh thank God, this is awful. A truly repugnant, hateful display. I appreciate it, Greg.
It’s Chapter Eight and Greg is still arguing with a man whose family has been kidnapped yet refuses to take any action other than Bible quotes. His advice is to stop being nice! It’s a trait of child molesters! Sorry, I must have misunderstood something. No. No, Greg’s opening argument for why you shouldn’t be nice is because it’s what child molesters do. Well, okay. I can’t move out of checkmate. There’s a reason Greg has written more than one book on how to win arguments.
Whatever pacifist Greg is fighting with has long since lost the argument and their family, but Greg is still going. Drunk on adrenaline, Greg gets extremely lost in some Sword of the Lord metaphor, but he does so intentionally. It’s in service of a killer Kleenex of the Lord joke you walked right into you fucking pacifist. Oh, is that what you wish it was called, widdle pacifist? You had no chance. Greg urges you to graduate Kindergarten, fucker. It’s pretty adorable how Greg set out to, no bullshit, advocate for more cruelty and murder and still writes insults like he’s the seventh grouchiest Muppet Baby.
Oh my fucking God, Greg “found” a second guy who refuses to rescue his wife with anything other than Bible quotes. Greg, I’ll make you a deal. If this person exists, your “Facebook friend” who sent you the suspiciously exact strawman argument you’ve been fighting for eight chapters, you can shoot anyone you want. As a representative of reality, I hereby condone it.
Let’s see if we can unpack all these layers of fantasy. Greg made up a guy with a bad plan Greg refused to believe he would do, then gave him the benefit of the doubt in order to prove not that it would fail, but that it would be a real turn off for his kidnapped wife. And not to be a dick, but on top of all that, there’s at least a small chance God wasn’t up there to begin with. What I mean is, we’re way too many “let’s say”s from where we started. If anyone is really this desperate to not shoot their family’s attacker, a sixth nested hypothetical isn’t going to convince them. The only thing you and your “Facebook friend” will ever agree on is that everyone’s wife will hate this.
Now this is going to sound crazy, but after this rambling magical nonsense, Greg makes a monster comeback and finishes his argument with a knockout:
Hell yeah. Greg says you should never pray at a bullet because even if Jesus hears, he will watch your stupid kidnapped wife die. This should be impossible to prove, but he does! Greg cites the eleven times Our Lord and Savior Christ let His own disciples die horrible deaths. And your wife isn’t even a fucking apostle, Greg’s Facebook Friend. So this plan you have? This plan everyone has? Of jumping in front of a gun and reciting the Bible? Consider it destroyed, for the third time this book, by Greg “Regular Parking Only” Perry.
We have shattered against the might of Greg. All we pacifists can do now is hope Greg doesn’t gloat.
Damn it, he gloated.
But at least it’s over. He got it out of his system. Greg moves on to the Parable of the Drowning Man, a story about a guy refusing rescue attempts because he’s sure God will send help, only to die and find out those boats and helicopters were the way God sent help. It’s a classic, and you can tell it as a joke if you want. Or, like Greg, you can tell it and retell it with your wife’s sexual assault for an entire book. But again, at least it’s over. Greg has explained how all these lewd criminal acts represented the Parable of the Drowning Man and we can move on to something el–
God damn it, Greg.
We understand Jesus will never help our wife, and maybe even wants to watch her die badly, but prayer has to have some effect on the bullets, right? Uh oh, what did I say? I’ve lost my mind, right? There’s no way I’m setting up a chapter Greg wrote about the logistical issues of praying at bullets, right?
So Greg wrote a chapter about how even if God was listening to prayers, they wouldn’t get delivered in time to outrun a bullet. I don’t know all the rules on cantrips or casting cleric spells as a ritual, but Greg does. He’s done the math and “attackers can kill your youngest child faster than you can utter a prayer.” That should take care of any Bible quoters still on the fence. Right? You’re not… still thinking of praying at your gunman are you? Ugh, fine. Greg will offer you one last argument.
Have you considered prayer will only anger your attacker, who probably works for The Devil? Greg is frustrated he has to think of everything for you. Do you even like your wife? Because to Greg it seems like you almost want her to die. Again, I’m not a psychologist. I’m just a man reading a book about a guy having an argument with himself where no matter what anyone does, his wife gets killed, his wife gets killed. His wife gets killed. One last time, I cannot make any kind of diagnosis from all the times his wife, his wife gets killed.
Maybe a sports metaphor will help.
Consider your wife and kids getting kidnapped like a baseball game. Every time one of you gets beaten to death with a bat, that’s a run for Satan. Greg isn’t sure where he was going with this, but you and God lost by 10. And most of it was sex crime.
I know the book just got awesome, but someone should tell Greg’s wife she really is in danger.
You’ve noticed by now Greg is a sophist, which means being right is less important to him than saying a cute little thing. So when he’s doing his side of the gun control debate, his argument is a bumper sticker about shooting liberals. These kinds of things aren’t persuasive and they’re a little embarrassing, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Or does he?
I’ve watched this man’s imaginary family get pornographically ripped apart at least ten times this book, but the most shocking part came here:
Not only does Greg know he’s a sophist, he loves it. He dedicated an entire chapter of his book to these witless catchphrases, these melonless Gallagher observations. Greg is a successful author on at least his 50th book. He’s trying to navigate the ethics and morality of unsanctioned executions, and he is publishing, word-for-word, the same content as 2007’s most forgotten Myspace aunt.
Let’s see one of the random wit and wisdoms surrounding these issues:
Oh. It’s the one from earlier, but this time he says it’s wrong? You should never shoot your government b-because the government is evil? I don’t know, man. Look, Greg’s not a smart person. But in fairness, let me show you a good one. Pacifists may have to watch their families die over and over, but it’s nothing compared to the sting of this perfect insult:
Fucking boom. You pacifist sons of bitches. The name for your group sounds kind of mean if you add two hyphens and get generous with your interpretation of “pass.” It’s over. Once again you sat back and watched your life get destroyed by a maniac. Except there’s one last thing… your final boss. Greg has not forgotten Gandhi. Remember him!? Your real god!!??
The Gandhi section goes on for a while, and it’s intense. Greg fucking hates Gandhi. The things he says about him aren’t entirely accurate, but by the time any pacifist fact-checks it, at least two of their latest families will have been murdered.
So that was GOD & GUNS Why I am Not a Pacifist Defend Your Family! Kill Attackers in Christian Love. I’m not sure how to end this, so I’ll say it in a way Greg might appreciate. So, Greg, it’s time for the epilogue. What’s that? You never learned that (simple) word? Oops, try Spanish for ‘egg,’ if that’s not too complicated for your stinky brain (if you have one). Mayhaps you’re finally done giving condescending lectures? To, um, imaginary enemies too specific to be relatable and too stupid to exist? You’re an idiot if you’re not.
Oops! Wait, what’s that? You’re not? Wow. Fuck you? Greg.
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