Carl’s evil army dies a little more each week. Fast-moving doctors toppled the heart of Carl’s vicious empire and now the stragglers are huddled in their bunkers reading the tarot to make the simplest decisions and waiting for orders that aren’t likely to come. Perfectionist that I am, I’m not going to be happy until the last lonely soldier scratches out a suicide note with its nerve-chewed nails and gargles a muzzle full of lead.

My doctors are a hard-hitting unit of Inglourious Basterds that are willing to drop in and detonate at the slightest hint of an insurgency which is harsh and excessive, but come on — this isn’t 4-square in the schoolyard here.

For those of you that are rolling your eyes and thinking “Jesus, easy on the hooptedoodle, Simmermon”:

Now that my cancerous non-seminoma is out, the markers it releases in my blood have dropped dramatically, and continue to decline each week. My doctors refuse to take chemo off the table, which is smart both from a scientific and legalistic ass-covering perspective. I’m recovering pretty well from the actual surgical procedure, but it’s a three-steps-forward, one-step back kind of thing.

Some days I can walk fine and hang out a little bit. Other days the incision burns and everyone on earth is a complete barking bozo and everyone needs to just SHUT UP, JESUS CHRIST.

And then there’s this …
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Grey and foggy days used to terrify me. As a small child, I’d have full-blown panic attacks when I was in the woods or even tall grass with my family on an overcast, misty day. I was sure that a rotting arm would punch its way up through the dirt and grab my ankle. Or worse, the undead would snatch my family and spare me, leaving me in the world utterly alone.

I spent a lot of time alone in the car reading X-Men comics in those years, on the grey fall days when my mom and dad would want to get out into the country as a family and get some fresh air in the country.

“Fuck togetherness, there’s zombies out there,” I’d think, huddling down onto the floor of the car after my mom got tired of pleading me to come outside.

For some reason, the zombies were out to torture me and me only. I knew my family would be safe if I wasn’t with them — the undead would just lie there and let them pass unmolested, leave them to move around like the rest of the earth’s walking meat. As the Chosen One, sworn enemy of the non-living, I had a responsibility to protect my family and sometimes it got a little lonely.

Then “The Day After” came out and the whole game changed.
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