testicles

Originally uploaded by ai pohaku

My friend Rob and I have this ongoing juvenile argument.

He loves to ask people:

Which is better, having one testicle, or having three?

He’d rather have one, he says, because

I’d rather be a little sad than a lot creepy.

I disagree. I’d rather be strange than pitiful, myself. But it turns out I might not have much of a choice.

A few weeks ago, I was doing a bit of a self-test — got to do these things once you’re in your ’30s — and I discovered that one of my testicles was the approximate size and weight of a Cadbury Creme Egg. I made an appointment with a GP who gave it a perfunctory juggle, shrugged, and put me on antibiotics for a week.

It didn’t work. I got referred to a specialist who I went to see today. He ran some ultrasounds, then frowned and called up NYU, sent me across town for an emergency sonogram.

“That can’t be good,” I thought as I got into the cab. But it was all moving too fast for me to think about it.

So there’s this mass growing in the center of one of my nuts, making it all big and really hard. It feels like I could pound nails with the thing. Or really surprise someone in my Muay Thai class. But instead of being useful it’s consumed a lot of the healthy tissue in there and needs to come out.

As the doctor says, if it’s benign, it’s a problem because it could keep growing. If it’s malignant — out it comes, too. The procedure’s called a Radical Orchiectomy, and it’s about as fun as it sounds.

Luckily it doesn’t seem to have spread anywhere, and it’s been caught early. This is one of the few truly curable cancers in the world. Lance Armstrong let his go WAY further than mine, and he’s fine.

But still. Ain’t THAT a bitch. I’m going to lose one of my testicles, sooner rather than later. And I’m not even going to get to lose it to a hungry octopus, or at the tip of a pirate’s saber, or some other cool way. Just to one of the most common, curable cancers in the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m getting a second, third, opinion. And I feel lucky that this isn’t gonna take me out. Or at least not for long. Reproductive health and hormones should still be ticking right along. That’s why we have two of these things, apparently.

But I’m reeling, feeling betrayed by my body and mourning the loss of a body part already. I know it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I mean, SHIT.

So tomorrow’s going to be more doctor’s appointments and blood work, just to be sure. I’m told that I can get a prosthetic testicle put in during surgery if I want one. Not sure what to do about that one just yet. Does it even matter? Or, more importantly: does it cost much extra to get two prosthetics in addition to the real one?

**Update** I just had an idea. I wonder if I could get a musket ball from the Civil War encased in silicone and put in there instead. That could be really cool — keep a little Virginia with me at all times.

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Speaking of otherworldly creatures, check out these Golden Age Mexican lobby cards:

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This is the story that I would have told last night at The Moth for the theme “Making Peace.” I don’t think I’ve run it here before. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

I’d been dating this girl who was confident and cool with beautiful tattoos, so gorgeous she’d make a whole room turn and feel ugly whenever she walked in the door. I’d just lost a pile of weight and was giddy with the sudden attention — giddy enough to miss the warning signs and get my newly narrowed ass dumped in about three weeks. I had no idea why, didn’t see it coming at all.

I lived in tired little termite buffet painted the color of dingy Band-Aids. A small community of grizzled vagrants in electric wheelchairs would commune around a trash fire in the alley behind my house most afternoons, drinking Thunderbird. Sometime around twilight most nights, one guy with a blurry swastika tattooed on his forehead would rev up out into the road, barreling upstream against one-way traffic. I had decorated the interior of the place myself — carpeted the entire house in Astroturf, green for the living room, the stairs, and upstairs hallway, my bedroom in neon blue with a giant American flag for a bedspread. Waking up each morning was like a Lego funeral at sea.

All the furniture in the downstairs was inflatable — a couch and two easy chairs. There was a sculpture on the front porch that I’d made myself out of several deer carcasses and a giant head covered in glowing white war paint.

In hindsight, I may have been dumped for aesthetic reasons.

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This is the Jesus Lizard performing their classic jam “Nub,” live in 1994.

The song itself is a hellish deep-fried crotch-grinder made even more frantic by the band playing it at double- speed. In the end here, Duane Denison and David Yow double-team a meddling audience member who makes the horrific mistake of fucking with Duane’s amp, earning a mid-song beatdown. David Sims and Mac McNeilly never miss a beat.

The Jesus Lizard were one of the few authentically scary bands that I’ve ever seen. When all four members locked into their respective grooves, they opened a mildly Satanic portal to a moist, sweaty hell. Imagine teleporting into a dark wooden shack in the middle of the desert at noontime. There is a shirtless, sweating man drinking heavily at a knife-scarred table who looks you deep in the eye and cackles as he offers you a beer. Nothing actually happens, but it could get very, very bad at any moment.

That’s pretty much what the Jesus Lizard felt like in concert, plus a very real fear of being trampled or accidentally touching the singer’s exposed penis. It was easier to do than you might think.

I can’t even say that shows like that were even fun, in a traditional sense of the word. They were just so magnetic and powerful that you had to go, just to see what was going to happen. I always came out a little different, changed.

I worry that those days are gone. Now when I see live music (less and less with each year), I love it but get a little bored. I don’t feel the thrill and terror that I used to get. Sometimes I worry that it’s me, being too adult and jaded. Other times I worry that it’s the music itself, that we are in a wash of pissweak derivative bands that really actually can’t hold a candle to the jams of days long dead.

I happened to run into Ian Mackaye (yes, that one) at a gallery opening in D.C. for Suzie Horgan’s book a few months ago, and I asked him about this phenomenon. His bands basically triggered TWO major revolutions in American rock music, I figure he should know a thing or two about it. This is what he said, reconstructed in its essence from my memory:

It’s all in your head. Trust me, music is safe and kids are still doing incredible things. It’s just that you, at this point in your life are unaware of it. Take a look at this picture, for example

He walked me over to this photo:

If you, in your life now, happened to walk past this you’d just think it was a bunch of kids in a parking lot. You wouldn’t have known that it was historic hardcore, or thought anything other than some kids hanging out. this stuff is all around us, all the time, little groups of people forming communities and trying out new ideas. Good, new ideas happen in small groups and the word doesn’t always get out very well — but the results can be so incredible if you’re right at the middle of it all.

On a grand, humanist scale, I am completely relieved: weird music is safe, rock is still scary and shows are still dangerous. Just in different ways. But I’m really sad, too — because while music is wild and life is still weird, it’s harder and harder every day for me to walk into that little room in the desert and cackle over beer with the sweaty man.

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A robotic anti-aircraft cannon went haywire in South Africa last week, killing nine soldiers and severely injuring fourteen more. The gun was part of a training exercise using live ammunition and was part of a row of eight identical guns aimed northward at ground targets positioned 1.5 and 2 kilometers away. Each gun is capable of firing up to 20 explosive shells in one-eighth of a second.From Capetown’s Mail& Guardian Online, Via Wired’s Danger Room:

“As all guns commenced firing, the gun on the far right … had a stoppage. This is something that happens from time to time. Technicians repaired this gun, while all the other guns continued firing. This is a very normal drill.

“As they continued firing, after the gun was fixed, it swung completely to the left, and one barrel fired off a burst of 15 to 20 shots in one-eighth of a second. The … gun immediately to the left was hit.

“This fatal burst then killed or injured members of all the guns to the left. The effect was therefore that all of those killed or injured [were hit] from the right and lost right hands, or right legs, or lost their lives.”

He confirmed the total number killed was nine, and 15 injured.

Lekota said the eight guns had been used the day before, “and each one had successfully fired between 500 and 800 rounds each”.

He further explained the guns could be set on either “manual or electric firing mode”. On the day, they had all been set on manual. This meant they were sighted on the target, and the barrel then clamped into position “so that the barrel should not move from side to side”.

“When firing in electric mode, safety boundaries are computerised and the barrels are not clamped, but move within the boundaries set in advance.”

You can read more about the story on Danger Room here.

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We’ve all had annoying co-workers. A couple jobs back I worked in an office with a woman that used to ramble on and on, LOUDLY, into her phone about all kinds of crap — medications, family problems, her “cycle.” I used to fantasize about leaping over the cubicle wall and just elbow-dropping her, pro-wrestling style.

We’ve all had that dream, I think.

This guy lives it:

It’s almost definitely fake. As one YouTube commenter points out, security cameras don’t record sound. Probably fake, but real enough to be awesome.

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