Last May, I used this blog to announce to the world that I had developed a very sudden and statistically rare case of testicular cancer. I had surgery, had the thing removed. Which remains, to me, a totally unacceptable way to lose a testicle. Maybe at the tip of a pirate’s saber, or while wrangling a giant octopus deep under the ocean, those’d be okay. But a regular old organized cellular rebellion — fuck that.

I wrote a series of posts that talked about my condition, what I was facing, and how I was holding up. It seemed only natural to me at the time, the best way to keep friends and family posted while I was dealing with something I really didn’t want to talk about on the telephone any more than necessary. Folks commended me for my bravery, for my sense of black humor and optimism, and told me how well I seemed to be healing up.

And yeah, in a way I was healing up. But in this other way, I really, really, wasn’t.

As my body was healing up, my mind was slowly donning a space suit made out of 400 pounds of wet laundry that never dried up and never, ever came off. Food all tasted the same, and I’d find myself flying into sudden rages when individual air molecules struck my skin.

Every night I’d lie awake and just look at the dark air above my bed, watching the little glowing fireflies that live in my retinas while an enormous black bird whispered very, very destructive and completely logical things into my ear.

Actually, I have a story about that part, which you can see here — the audio’s a little problematic, but you should get the gist:

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It’s been a couple days now, and it keeps happening — and at the oddest times, too. Sometimes I can control it and sometimes I just let it happen, let the people on the subway stare. My breath hitches kinda funny, hiccups, and my throat and voicebox shake like a bus on a bumpy road. My eyes tear up every time and I’ve just sort of stopped wiping it away.

I can’t tell if I’m happy or sad when it happens, mostly I’m just swallowed up by the enormity of the feeling. It’s like being a particle of plankton and getting swallowed up by a gigantic, benevolent whale.

America elected Barack Obama to be the President of the United States on Tuesday night, and the emotional aftershocks just keep coming.

So along with the spontaneous, random sobs of joy and relief, I’m having this recurring hallucination. Or maybe it’s a daydream. But whatever.

Every time I see, hear, or imagine somebody doing something incredibly well, that person has Barack Obama’s head.

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I look like a meth addict — my face is in terrible shape, and my liver’s not doing much better — but my soul is happier and more fulfilled than a python at a day-care center.

I got a cigarette burn on my left cheek at 4:30 this morning at a crowded bar in Reykjavik, 2 hours of sleep and a terrific case of windburn and sunburn while snowmobiling on Langjokull Glacier, followed by a horrific shave from an overpriced vending machine razor. I’ll explain more later, but leave you with this photo for now:

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Here it is, half-past 2 pm on a workday and my fly is ALL the way down. Again. I can’t even remember the last time I went to the bathroom here at the office, but it was definitely before lunch. I can, however, remember the last time this happened.

Yesterday.

And definitely a time or two last week, too. It happens to the best of us, but still. At least twice a week since I started this job, I’ve looked down midway through the afternoon to see the zipper on my suit pants gaping open like a grey and hungry Venus Flytrap.

I have absolutely no explanation for this. I’ve been zipping up my pants for thirty-some years now, so it’s not likely that I’ve started forgetting that particular task. I’m not sure that it’s the pants, either. Honestly, I don’t know what it is. I’ve got two suits, one grey and one black — one for laundry days and Fridays, one for the other times — and zipper lightning strikes them both right in the crotch without honor or pity.

Still, it could be worse.

I was in the cafeteria yesterday assembling my lunch at the salad bar when I switched directions unexpectedly, mistaking tofu for chicken cubes and fixing it when I bumped into a woman in line behind me. I’d guess she was just past her first promotion in the marketing department for one of my company’s cooler media properties. She wore brilliant white pants, pants that perfectly matched two rows of blinding shiny Chiclets in her smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I made the same mistake yesterday. Enjoy your lunch!” she said, smiling, and turned to walk away, stopping to wave at some friends on her way to the elevators.

When she turned, I saw the copper-colored streak creeping up the back of her perfect white pants. It spread slowly, a Rorshach blot that every lady reads as her worst nightmare.

I was able to grab her just before she got on the elevator. “Uh, I think you’ve sat in something,” I said. “It’s urgent.”

She blushed and said “Oh God. Thank you so much,” backed her way onto the elevator and vanished. Then I noticed my zipper, right as a crowd of people came around the corner.

That’s how it goes. You think you’re so cool, so put together with your unassailable public armor on. Then it turns out you’re the king of a crumbled castle and everyone knows it but you.

There’s this guy in my neighborhood. He’s an older guy, maybe in his sixties — always dressed sharp in creased slacks, a guyabera and a fedora. He stands as tall as his posture will allow. Age is creeping in, but he’s ramrod-straight, always looks you in the eye when he says “hello.” And he always says “hello.” He’s got a really, really large fatty tumour on the side of his face.

Like this, but much bigger. I’d say the side of his face is at least a C-cup. But there he is, walking upright, looking people in the eye, taking that walk all the same.

We’ve all got flaws. Big ones, most of us. They’re like scars for the soul, the spirals that give our personalities their fingerprints. So what’s better, really … primping and preening up a big lie about how slick you are and having everyone else see the truth? Or just getting that tumour out in the sunshine and tanning that thing until you’re laughing in your coffin?

My fly’s still down, and it’s staying down. And when I get bored I’m going to feed that hungry flytrap bits of burger meat, just to see what happens.

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Listen: transdimensional travel already exists. It’s not as dramatic as ripping open a hole in the fabric of space-time and shaking hands with some lizard men on the other side, or painting a pentagram in infants’ blood on the floor of a church and conjuring up a smoldering slobbering demon.

I was walking back from a bar in Clinton Hill this summer, and even though I’d had a pretty good evening, I was feeling kinda sorry for myself. I’d just moved to New York and my work had dried up, my girlfriend had dropped me, and I was sharing a bedroom with another grown man. I’d had a decent dinner and a few drinks and was flagellating myself internally for spending money, any money at all, when my resources were at such a rapid dwindle.

A breeze kicked up and a piece of paper hit my foot. I picked it up and fell through a wormhole in my own reality to a serious realness congruent to, but utterly different than my own. The letter was from a guy in prison to a friend on the outside. Although technically written in English, the words were in a language I barely spoke.

You can see the letter itself here:

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Like any decent American, I am ashamed and embarrassed by my country.I spent decades thinking we were the good guys until Bush and crew came and ruined us, turned us into a bunch of heavy-handed fratboys with no consciences or consequences.

Except maybe not. I wasn’t around for Vietnam, but Kurt Vonngut, Jr. sure was, and his words on American torture in Vietnam are as true and heartbreaking today as they were when he wrote them 36 years ago. I first read the following piece in “Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons,” a marvelous collection of Vonnegut’s essays and speeches.

Originally published in the New York Times in 1971, “Torture and Blubber” mirrors my disgust with our country and a sadness for the entire human race — a disappointment I thought was new and mildly fashionable.

The piece is short and well worth your time — in its entirety after the jump …

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A grim sci-fi future is coming faster than we think, and it’s not going to be cool at all. I love dirty visions of a repressive robot-patrolled future when I’m watching them in air-conditioned comfort, but the painful reality of it is coming. I swear to you that every geek is going to snap his Robocop special edition in half with bitter, Mountain Dew flavored tears when the days of true Terminators come — and it’s going to happen in our lifetime, too.

From Wired’s Danger Room:

After years of development, three “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system” (SWORDS) robots have deployed to Iraq, armed with M249 machine guns. The ‘bots “haven’t fired their weapons yet,” Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, tells DANGER ROOM. “But that’ll be happening soon.”

Robots occupy exactly the same position in our culture now that personal computer did in the late 70’s, with this critical difference: they’re going to develop a LOT faster. We can share information and build communities better than ever before. Scientists, hobbyists and madmen are already standing on each others’ shoulders at light speed to create machines that think like us, act like us, and carry out our little desires — and it’s only going to speed up.

Wars propel technical innovation. Soldiers bring their tools home and adapt them into tools for the mass culture. Look at all the Humvees on the streets, the hunters hunting with M-16s, the camo cargo shorts that I’m wearing right now. These ‘bots, or the chips that power their metal guts at least, are going to make their way onto the streets and into homes by the time I’ve old enough to have grandkids.

And as you all should know by now, the Bush administration bent America over and helped themselves to the power to spy on us like never before over the weekend. From the Washington Post:

Many congressional Democrats wanted tighter restrictions on government surveillance, but yielded in the face of Bush’s veto threats and the impending August recess.

“This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., during the debate preceding the vote. “I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

I know it sounds paranoid, crazy even. I know this might brand me as a frothing blogger nut. But something tells me I’m right here. Think about it:

How long do you think it would take before Bush — or Giulani, or whoever they tell us we voted for — puts these things on the streets of New York to “protect us from terrorists?” How long before our phone conversations flag us as terrorists and these things are sent to the GPS coordinates that are in every cell call?

Imagine making a joke to against freedom to a friend in another country while you’re walking home from the subway — and having these things roll up on you. They can’t hear your argument, and there’s no human behind the armor to ease off the trigger.

Yeah, I’m a sci-fi nerd. But I like it best when it stays FICTION.

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