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:
I’ve been staring at the screen for days trying to write this and I don’t have any idea what to say. The newspapers have it easy here — they just have to report the facts about strangers. Writing a memorial for the twelve year old sister of a good friend, that’s hard.
When that little girl’s been murdered and the whole thing’s been all over the Washington Post already, it gets even harder.
The father of 12-year-old Marisol Caceres was arrested in her killing and jailed without bond yesterday as more grim details emerged about the girl’s strangulation Tuesday in her family’s Northeast Washington apartment.
I’m just putting this here for the strangers, and I really, really hope Jose and Marisol’s family understand that I’m only repeating this so that strangers understand the story. I’m going to let the Post do the heavy lifting here and just explain my angle …
Not only was he the most thoughtful, intelligent, precocious and wise 19-year-olds I’d ever met — he may have been one of the wisest human beings I’d ever met. Once he opened up to me a little, he was this busted fire hydrant of knowledge about philosophy, classical music, video games and maybe jazz, too. The only organ bigger than Jose’s mind is his heart. I remember a lot of late nights at our friend Danielle’s place, him telling me about growing up in Columbia Heights while I made us dinner. He was telling me about his apartment when he just trailed off and gaped at the burritos I was putting together.
“You just like, made that right here, man?” he asked. “Can you teach me how?”
I think that may have been one of the most fulfilling nights of my life. We saw each other a lot over the next year, talking about all kinds of stuff — his girlfriend, his dog, school, and his family. He loved his little sister so, so much.
From the Washington Post’s article about Marisol’s memorial:
“She was open to new friendships and always creating new ones,” her family said in a statement. “She always found a way to make us laugh. She was the youngest of the family yet she was, in many ways, the oldest because of her demeanor. She lived her life vividly by visiting museums, taking up martial arts, and sharing new thoughts and interests.”
She liked soccer, too.
She always took very good care of her little nephew.
She loved her dog, Moe, and her pet birds.
She liked video games and movies.
She never hesitated to share her cosmetology techniques.
And she was always a princess on Halloween.
I never met Marisol, personally. I saw her waving to Jose from across the street, heard him talking about her a lot. It’s hard for me to memorialize someone I never knew directly. But I’ll say this: I saw her effect on Jose, and I could feel his love for her just pour out of him when he told me how smart she was, how kind and giving she was even as such a little girl. Jose and his family had it tougher than most of us can imagine for a very long time, and they had a lot of reasons to be cynical. But when they looked at Marisol they felt pure love and a tremendous, giddy hope.
Now Marisol’s gone, and I’m all the way up here in New York. I have no idea what else I can do. So I’m doing this:
Marisol’s family needs money now. They need it badly. Her mother does not receive generous bereavement benefits. Cell phone bills still need to be paid, laundry needs to be done, and people still need to eat. And above all else: they have to move as soon as possible. Imagine having to come home to that same apartment every night.
***UPDATE***According to my friend Danielle at YARG, the family has since found housing. This does not at all change their need for money, mind you, but they do at least have a new place to sleep and try to rebuild their lives.***
I’ve never asked for donations on here before, and it’s going to be a long, long time before I do it again. But this is really, really important, and every little bit helps. It’s so easy to spend money — five bucks to download the new Radiohead album, thirty bucks on dinner and drinks — and this is so much more important than pretty much anything we could spend money on. I’ve seen users on Reddit buy thousands of dollars worth of flowers for Helen Thomas, seen the Web bail a woman out of credit card debt and help a guy trade a paper clip up to a brand new house. Those are cute stories, and they say something important about the power of crowds and commerce online. But this is a grieving, devastated family that needs real help.
If you’re reading this at work, you can afford to double what you spent on lunch and drop it into the family’s Paypal account. If you’re reading this in a coffee shop, double your check and donate it. Don’t let me stop you from dropping in more, all I’m saying is that doesn’t need to be much — and please pass this on.
Link to this post if you want, or write me through the “Contact Us” page up there and I’ll send you the code for the donations button above. The Web’s an incredible, weird place that can really do some good. If you don’t do it for them, do it for me. And if you have a problem with me, fine, whatever, just please do your part to help this family out.
Jose’s family will be accepting donations through Darling Andrade’s (Jose’s sister) PayPal Account. We chose this method because it is safe, secure, and makes the funds be available to the family immediately. To make a donation, click this button:
Paypal online isn’t comfortable for everyone, and that’s fine. If you would prefer to make your donation in cash or by check — or just want to send a card to express condolences — mail to:
YARG
Attn: Jose Andrade
1419 V St NW
Washington, DC 20009
The family would also be grateful for donations of food. Please the executive director of YARG at danielle@yargdc.org if you are able to prepare food for Jose and his family. She’ll help you coordinate the best way to deliver food to the family, as they will be in different locations throughout the week. Meals are best if they require as little preparation as possible, i.e. meals that can just be reheated or eaten cold.
Jose left this in the comments, and it really sums it up for me:
My family is going through a very difficult time.. and has it becomes clear whose responsible for this hideous act.. strange feelings arise and we have to deal with them in a peaceful and intelligent ways.
All kinds of dorky hobbies are out of the closet now that the geeks have inherited the earth. Sci-fi’s a big enterprise now (har har) … now that “Lost” and computer programming is big business, all the nerds like me are out of the closet and partying in the light, blinking while our eyes adjust to the brightness of the pop-culture spotlight.
Loving comic books was once an express ticket to a lonely lifetime in Mom’s basement. Now they’re big, big blockbusting big business. I dated an actual human woman once who took me to see “300″ and “Spiderman 3.” It was her idea. Here in New York, a grown man can wear a Batman t-shirt out in public without shame. It’s a beautiful thing.
Now that all us nerds are out basking in uncloseted comfort, we owe something to the rest of the world. We shouldn’t forget what it was like to be punished for something as simple as liking things the rest of the world didn’t get. We got to be respectful, got to be patient with strangers’ weird obsessions. Even when it’s really, really tough to get.
Seeing a guy on a unicycle just breaks my heart. I imagine him in a completely empty apartment, empty save for a pile of burger wrappers and dust bunnies … and a unicycle lying in the middle of the floor. He says aloud, “Well, that’s it. Everything’s gone, all of it. The worst is over, but one thing’s for sure: I’l never get laid again. Might as well learn to love this unicycle …” Heartbreaking. But it’s not my place to judge.
A Segway — that’s the unicycle 2.0. It’s even more pathetic than a unicycle because it doesn’t even require any physical skills to operate. Cops that ride Segways around might as well be on My LIttle Pony big wheels for all the respect they inspire. But I digress.
On one level it’s pretty easy to keep an open mind. Live and let live and just work for the weekend, and it’s all gonna be cool.
However, ferret lovers exist on an entirely different level altogether. Ferrets are kinda cute, I’ll give them that. But so are subway rats. Ferrets are long rats, plain and simple. And there’s something about die-hard ferret lovers that really, really creeps me out:
I keep watching this thing, over and over, and I’m trying to stop judging, trying to get beyond to a higher place. But man, NOTHING’S gonna make that okay.
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 …
Usually the initials MF are used to neuter my favorite expletive — but I’m pretty into those letters when they refer to a gallery on the Lower East Side that’s either named after Martina and Frank or Monster Face. Last Saturday’s opening at the MF Gallery was no slouch, either … it was the MF Gallery’s fifth annual toy show, full of cuddly monsters and blood-stained plush from artists including Suckadelic, Jenny Harada, Diana Schoenbrun and MF Toys.
I got there early, got some pics and checked out. The place filled up like a subway car, and fast. Most of the stuff there was priced to move, and I liked a lot of the work.
I was deep in the horse latitudes of the afternoon, fighting off lunchtime burrito coma and trying not to spend money online. It had been quiet for hours when Rob banged his hand on the card table that serves as our shared desk in the mutually understood signal for “take out your headphones.”
Dude, this is serious,
he said.
Would you rather have one testicle or three?
I thought about it for a second.
Three, I guess,
I responded.
See, everyone always says that! I’d go with one. I’d rather be a little sad than creepy and freakish.
He makes a good point. But I’ve always had this irrational fear of being chased over a chainlink fence in a junkyard while wearing a pair of Umbros — getting torn open and leaving something behind. As an innate packrat, I like the idea of having a spare handy.
At its essence, the issue is this: would you rather be pitiful or terrifying? What about you guys? Which would you rather have — or encounter?
Lightly pulsating beneath the skin of your forehead, Descartes’ third eye, the pineal gland. Properly titillated by sonic vibrations from a machine built by a mad scientist, this seemingly superfluous organ can awaken, offering a glimpse of the ectoplasmic horrors of the world beyond our five senses. Needless to say, once your third eye opens? You start eating brains. And they can make you very sick.
From Beyond is another incredibly gory Stuart Gordon H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that came out in the early 80’s, shortly after the release of Re-Animator. It’s never quite gotten the same love, but it shares many of the timeless qualities of that horror sci-fi classic: Lovecraftian monsters, lots of gore, Jeffery Combs and Barbara Crampton’s exposed breasts.
I hate to be the one to point this out here, but if someone’s eating brains out of the trash can, they’re probably already very, very sick.
Happy Halloween, people. When you were trick-or-treating, which did you like better: getting like, two lovingly handmade cookies from the old lady up the street, or going to that one guy’s house who let you shovel fistfuls of high-quality mass-produced candy into your pillowcase?
In this instance, “high quality mass-produced” is a euphemism for Reese’s products.
So rather than like, write something original that nobody wants, I’ll be shovelling pre-made awesomeness into your eyeballs all day today.
Starting here: every single murder from every single Friday the 13th movie, compressed into roughly seven minutes:
