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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During the time that I was in Royal Quiet Deluxe (chicken band), I was invited to a large dinner with the Reverend Al Sharpton. Everyone had to go around the table and describe who they were and what they did. I was neither an accomplished member of the community in Norfolk, nor was I African-American. Everyone else at the table was both. I just kinda ran with a description of the band.

It did not go well. At all. In fact, the evening rippled throughout my life for about ten years, causing tremendous embarassment in a comic book store this summer.

Here’s a video of me telling the story on stage at The Moth:

I think I’ve just about milked this chicken band thing for all it’s worth now …

You can see the companion to this story here:

Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band

A story by The Moth’s Jim O’Grady here:

Jim O’Grady on “Respect”

And a story by The Moth’s Juliet here:

Juliet Tells the Tale of ‘Mannequin Dan’

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It’s a tough time for Captain America. Advances in military technology have made a jacked-up dude with discus skills all but obsolete on the battlefield, the current U.S. administration is one that ol’ Steve Rogers might not be too stoked to shill for, and his rumored cameo in the Louis Leterrier / Ed Norton Incredible Hulk film was cut. And he was also assassinated last year, which will put anyone out of sorts. So until the upcoming Avengers movie gives Cap something worthwhile to do, we’re just going to assume that he’s sitting around his apartment in his robe and Al Gore post-2004 election beard, swigging the fire water and staring longingly at a picture of the Red Skull in front of the TV.

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Everything’s unwrapped, the champagne’s gone flat, and even the hangovers are over. While my holidays were full of warmth and good cheer and that uniquely Simmermon brand of stressed-out love, I’m glad to be entering that great grey yawn of real winter. Running around outside SUCKS until mid-April and when I have my daily panic that my life is slipping past, I can look out the window and feel fine about having a laptop strapped to my face. In the factory-blended oatmeal that is an East Coast winter, every numbing day that ends like all the rest is at least one day closer to spring.

My New Years’ was spent having cocktails and a home-cooked meal with my girlfriend, best friend, his wife, and their new baby. My New Years’ celebrations in years past have also involved copious amounts of booze, screaming and vomiting, but this years’ was different.

While the first decade or so of David Allen Browne’s life is going to be happy and full of love, he’s going to have no choice but to become grim, selfish and willfully ignorant in order to rebel against his hilarious, brilliant and loving parents once he hits puberty. Hopefully he’ll snap out of it before it’s time to take the SATs.

Christmas was different, too. I brought my girlfriend home, for one thing. It’s a big deal for me to bring somebody home for a number of reasons:

• My sister and I have pretty well inoculated our parents against cultural/racial hangups, accidental profanity, body art and punk-influenced fashion choices … all known causes of heart failure to conservative parents. My mom can even say “fuck” without making a face now. But my family can smell a bullshit heart from a running mile, and the false politeness that ensues is deeply embarrassing. Nobody makes it across the threshold of the Simmermon unless they’re top shelf for real.
• Also, my grandmother kind of hates anyone that me and my uncle have ever dated. She comes around eventually, but I can take no responsibility for any eye-rolling, interrupting, or ignoring until she does. Folks that can’t handle it don’t make the cut.
• The relationship must be about much more than the physical. As I mentioned before, my family can sniff out a bullshit heart. In a small house with two parents, a sister, two lively and curious dogs and a “no ring, no shared bedroom” policy, that physical side is going to have to take a little holiday of its own.

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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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Behind that adorable black face, behind those sweet mournful eyes lies the soul of an unapologetic shit-eater.

For real.

That is not a metaphor. She’s gone from stealing fruitcake and puking it under the tree last Christmas to full-blown coprophagia, gobbling it right up from between dead leaves on the ground at night. Cold and hard or piping hot and still steaming, she doesn’t care and she does it quick, too, too quick to catch sometimes. She just can’t help herself.

Layla’s my sister Jess’s dog, half-beagle and half lab with incurable separation anxiety. She was taken from her mother too young, and consequently has massive incurable anxiety. Jess has tried training camps, reading dog books, everything. Nothing works. Every time Jess is gone for a little while, Layla overindulges in something she shouldn’t: fruitcake, shoes, a purse, now fecal matter.

All training methods exhausted, my sister now just spoils the dog completely rotten, talking to her in a high, squealing voice, carrying her in her arms like a large infant and allowing the dog to “kiss” her directly on the lips.

A few weeks ago, Layla vomited a five-inch turd onto my parents’ living room carpet. My mom called Jess up immediately to report the news, saying only

“Your dog has vomited a massive turd onto the carpet. Yes, a turd. Go ahead and let her lick your lips again. As a concerned mother, I hope you’ve got good health insurance,”

and hung up.

Such was the climate of the household this Thanksgiving. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated with this new habit, this repugnant fetish for a newly repulsive creature that’s far too cute to kick.

Jess and I spent Thanksgiving day over at my aunt and uncle’s taking care of my grandparents. They moved in sometime last summer for a few weeks while my grandpa recuperated from an operation, and it’s become clear that they’re in no shape to live independently. My grandpa’s 88 years old with congestive heart failure, kidney failure and diabetes. He needs a walker to get around now and can’t lift his legs by himself.

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I don’t make a single dime off this blog, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pay off big-time. I don’t have ads or a large readership, but apparently my influence is enough that people are imitating things they see on here … something that might get them hurt or killed slowly through sheer fat absorption.

Take Bret Wallin, for example. He and literally hundreds of thousands of other people saw the post a little whole back about that ridiculous Franken-fast food pizza. And while some folks thought “yeah, I’d taste that,” Bret said “who’s got a Boboli crust” and MADE one. Actually, he made several:

My friends and I definitely tried our hand at making a couple McDonald’s pizzas. The first was exactly like the pictures you posted – each fast food kept to it’s own kind. The second, though, we chopped up the fries, nuggets, and burgers to spread out the toppings more traditionally.

A really fun time, for sure. We felt that the pickle was surprisingly one of the emergent tastes (as well as the ketchup and mustard to some degree). I first saw a link to your post (I think) on the site Kissing Suzy Kolber. I was visiting some old college friends and I knew right then – “we have to make that… we have to make it TONIGHT!”

And we did. Like I said, a great time. Most everybody felt fine except a couple guys had three slices. That sort of knocked them out for a little bit.

Understandably.

So wait. They made one of these things, ate it, then turned right around and made ANOTHER one. You know, to get it right.

This is why I use my fingers and eyes to make love to the Internet all day long.

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This is from my notebook, written on the subway this morning:

There is a man standing next to me reading a paperback. One of his hands is gripping a pole and the other is holding the book with the cover and pages folded back, the front and back covers mashed together in a horrific forced kiss.

This constitutes abuse in my book. It’s the book equivalent of a mother yanking a child’s arm outside a bus station bathroom.

It is all that I can do not to snatch the book out of this guy’s hands and show him the correct way to hold it: With one cover and chunk of pages per hand, the subway pole crooked in an elbow. Alternately, he could hold the book with ring, middle and index fingers along the spine for support, his thumb and pinkie holding the pages open.

But instead he does neither. He is a fat man riding a gasping sway-backed pony towards a great Golden Corral on the horizon, blindly bending the tool that takes him where he wants to be and screw the consequences.

Now he’s sitting next to me, this intellectual barbarian, still bending his book without even needing a free hand for the pole. What an asshole. This is a man who wipes his hands on the curtains, who hawks and spits into empty lockers and plucks roses made of frosting off uncut wedding cakes with his bare and grubby fingers.

Books are not to be treated this way. It’s an abuse. Some of you out there may be closet book-benders — and you may be thinking “Simmer down, Simmermon, paperbacks are meant to be folded. They can take it.”

You people better stay in your grotty little closet around me, is all I have to say. Is it right throw a cat across the room repeatedly just because he’ll probably land on his feet? Is it right to repeatedly tie an octopus’s arms in knots just because they’re soft and flexible?

A book is more than a content delivery mechanism. It’s not a single-use syringe that you just uncork, squeeze once and ditch. It’s more than a CD, more than the plastic fork that carries your lunch to your mouth. Maybe it’s just me, but I have fixations on certain editions, certain printings of my favorite books. And while I’m far from a book collector — I’m really, really hard on physical objects, actually — I think that books ought to be treated with a little dignity, regardless of how many hands you have free.

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My friend Richard sent me these photos tonight, saying

“I don’t know where these came from but they’re going around the
net. If you haven’t seen them already, I know you will enjoy them. Don’t ask questions, just marvel.”

And marvel I did. My God. Have a look – ingredients and buildup here, the shocking conclusion after the jump.

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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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