That’s how I feel about this photo of King King attacking my office, below. I’ve got a McFarlane King Kong toy on my desk, and I just snapped it against the view of the skyline from my office window. Ran it through a couple apps on the phone, then finished it off in Photoshop, and we now have a visual representation of my whole thing: monster movies, screaming giant gorillas, low-res output and a lot of love.

It’s late and I’m screwing around instead of writing. I’m tired, too tired to get any meaningful writing done, but not so tired that I can’t sit here and stare at my lava lamp and wait for it to really start gooping around in earnest.

What I’m supposed to be doing is preparing a story for the “How I Learned” series, which I’ll be performing in at Happy Endings (302 Broome Street, Manhattan) this Wednesday, January 27th. The show’s at 8, doors are at 7, and there’s no charge. Happy Ending used to be a seedy massage parlour in Chinatown/Lower East Side, but now it’s a cool bar with pretty good drinks, most of which have names that are cheeky double entendres. I’ve found that if you get there early, it’s a good time. Stay too late and the Ed Hardy Army starts to creep in, though.

Don’t let the outside fool you — there’s no sign that says Happy Ending. If you get to a place that looks like the photo on this post, you’ve got it.

I can guarantee that I’ll be reading/telling a story. What it’ll be is eluding me right now …

Those nails aren’t acts of violence. They’re prayers for strength. It’s a holdover from a time when metal was precious and rare, valued for its strength and durability. So this could be a statue of a warrior, and each nail pounded into his spirit is a prayer that he stays strong, that he doesn’t flinch, and that he can take whatever gets hammered into him.

I like that a LOT. I don’t even know if it’s true in a literal sense, either. And I don’t even want to know. That’s how faith and myth get formed - you hear something that works for you and moves you in this way that you need to be moved. It’s something that confirms your sense of wonder and beauty, usually. And then it doesn’t even matter how it got into your head or why it’s supposed to be there. Your head and your heart don’t care, you make a pearl out of it all the same.

You never hear anyone singing Coldplay or Dave Matthews, is all I’m saying. I prefer it that way.

And don’t get me wrong here — sure, sometimes the phenomenon is a little annoying. But other times it is completely the most awesome thing that can happen to your whole week, a beautiful, off-kilter accident.

Like this guy that sat across from me on the J Train last weekend singing Chris Brown’s “Winner.” Check this thing out, it’s beautiful. I love how he doesn’t let his performance stop him from pouring himself a little sip of something from his thermos, then gets his soul stole by the music before the cup hits his lips … and caps it all off with a shameless crotch scratch. Also of note is how quickly the guy next to him stops giggling and starts ignoring the whole thing.

Don’t let me spoil it for you, though - check this out for yourself. It’s stuff like this that reminds me that the world is alive and beautiful and full of strange surprises …

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:

Note that at the end of that story, the bird does not fly away. I wrote that story maybe in August. And at some point during August, that bird began to help himself right into my mouth at night, forcing his big greasy feathers past my teeth and uvula until he could wriggle down and sit right onto my heart.

I used to fight it, used to literally lie there with my eyes shut and list everyone that has ever loved me by name like my own Lord’s Prayer against my own special monster, but the struggle just prolonged the inevitable. So I got to where I’d just open up and let that big black bird right in.

I’d get a couple hours’ sleep, but every morning I’d have this thought, before my eyes even slid past my dry, wrinkly eyeballs:

I got cancer, and one of my testicles was removed very suddenly. It was attached to the drain in my soul, just like a bathtub stopper is tied to a chain. All my passion drained out, and if it ever comes back it’s going to take a very, very long time.

Then I’d dress myself, slowly, and go to work.

Which I really shouldn’t have done. Right after the surgery, all I wanted to do was get back to normal, just get the train right back on the tracks and act like nothing had happened. Which I really, really shouldn’t have done.

I will always be grateful to my colleagues at work who gave me the space to be a complete and utter train wreck, and pretended right along with me that I was performing useful work. Instead of just kind of flicking an endless lap between Digg, Reddit, BoingBoing, Facebook and Metafilter. I was rolling around that office for a good five months like a marble in an empty bathtub, and for several of them I thought that bird had left me.

Instead, I turned into the bird. I wanted everyone to feel as pointless as I did, to understand that really, all we think we have is just a marble rolling around a bathtub and one day some giant invisible hand is gonna turn that shower on and wash all our fun right down the drain. I didn’t understand how anyone could look forward to anything.

Ever.

And I was crippled, too, by this paralyzing fear that I would lose my job. This job is the first stable job I’ve had with really, really good health insurance. And I needed every drop of it. I have to get CT scans once a month as a preventative measure - and those things cost about ten grand if you pay in cash. I also have to take artificial testosterone every day, for the rest of my natural-born life. And I’m of course taking antidepressants, too. I’m not just dragging home a sack of medicine once a month, either.

I’m seeing an endocrinologist, a urologist/oncologist, and a psychiatrist once a month. They take blood, they run tests, they run me through some very expensive machinery. And these guys, they don’t work cheap. All this is just to get me to feel normal. If this cancer comes back, they’ll catch that, too. I was pretty bitter about it for a while, but now I’ve just accepted it.

But if I didn’t have my job, didn’t have my health insurance, I’d be screwed. I’d be screwed, if I weren’t dead.

I’d be dead right now if I didn’t have some high-octane fancy-pants health insurance. And if I weren’t dead, I’d be bankrupt and homeless, living in my parents’ garage while they went bankrupt trying to take care of me.

And as far as I’m concerned, anyone that opposes health-care reform is pretty much okay with that. They’re okay with people bankrupting their entire families just to stay alive, and they’re okay with me and everyone like me having to live with that big black bird every day for the rest of their severely shortened lives.

I can’t talk about health care reform rationally, and I can’t consider compromise. I go from hearing the topic to cocking my fist in about fifteen seconds. Being gleeful about the fact that the first attempt to reform the system will get stonewalled is the sole province of ghoulish, gutless cuntbags.

For real. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already in my corner. If you’re not, shame on you. I don’t even want to know your side of it. Seriously. Just keep your mouth shut and think about it for a minute and realize that very, very bad things happen to people out of the blue, every single day. And it takes them the rest of their lives to recover, IF they recover. That’s bad enough. Losing their homes shouldn’t need to be a part of the equation.

So clearly I’ve still got some anger issues to work on. But apart from having a personal vendetta against the kind of gutless, narrowhearted cuntbags that would deny their countrymen adequate healthcare, I’m feeling a lot better.

Now when I wake up, I feel like any day could be a good day. I took a big fat break from writing and blogging and just focused on work and my girlfriend and getting my head back together. I spent a lot of time getting enough sleep and having dreams that were progressively less terrifying. Took a big old vacation and got some things rolling again at work. And now I have to admit, I’m getting better.

The day is never going to come where I’m a hundred percent sane and rational. That’s fine by me. I wasn’t like that before, being like that now would be weird and wrong. But most importantly, that big black bird isn’t sitting on my heart any more. And I don’t think I’m that bird anymore, either.

But I’m ready to stretch out and fly all the same.

This is an absolute oyster carnival!

Sexy like rooster socks.

Shine your shoes, gov? For a sixpence, mind.

The Leprechaun Flute has been passed down for thousands of years.

Engrish No. 1

According to a recent post in his Twitter feed (that’s @RyanAbegglen, if you’re inclined to follow), the man is experiencing a big fat, well-deserved bump in popularity on the Internets. I poked around and saw that BoingBoing and io9 both posted his stuff a few days ago, so I’m hoping to keep the momentum rolling.
Soak it in, pass it on, and maybe even buy a print from Ryan’s shop at Thumbtack Press. (Seriously, holiday shoppers — if one of these were to show up under my tree, I sure as hell wouldn’t be upset about it. Hint squared.)

Ryan Abegglen: All the flim that’s fit to flam

It was coming from some guy’s cell phone. I couldn’t tell whose at first. Then I saw a short, rotund man shoving people and shouting “make way, make way! Here come the KING!”

As soon as he got off the train he spun towards the rest of us and held his hands up in a regal Superman pose, allowing the strains of Donner’s super-score to wash over him. And then he announced it real, real loud, in case any one didn’t catch it:

“I AM the KING, baby. The king is HERE!”

You’ve got to admire that kind of self-esteem…

Somebody came along with a marker and edited the sign to say “Easy Credit For Homicides.” I know there’s some serious gang activity in South Williamsburg - the wave of gentrification hasn’t created nearly as high as it has on the North side - but man, I hope that particular credit market has locked up, too. I just signed a yearlong lease by the Marcy stop on the JMZ …

In early 2004 I was an assistant to a kangaroo shooter in the Australian Outback. Pretty much the only experience more bizarre and terrifying would be if I were to have worked with a kangaroo shooter at the National Zoo.

Before you go getting all fired up, remember that kangaroos are pests in Australia, and people eat their meat all the time. And meat does not just cheerfully lie itself down on the burger bun, either. Kangaroo meat is as free-range and organic as it gets, but you’ve still got to do a fair bit of old-fashioned killing to make it happen — and the process is disturbing, gory, and pretty hideous. Not unlike the rest of nature, the parts they don’t show you on the television programs.

But not a day goes by that I don’t think of that experience in some way or another. It taught me a lot. I learned to get tough, how to do some hard, hard work, and how to put aside all my pussified city liberal ideas and face the realities of the food chain.

I told this story at The Moth on October 22, 2009. I’d told it at the Moth last year, as well as at The Liar Show, Risk!, and Seth Lind’s Told. I’ve also told parts of this story to pretty much anyone that will sit still in my presence since early 2004. I think D.Billy, my co-blogger here, has seen me tell the thing each time, too.

I’ve pitched it to This American Life twice now, and had Ira Glass personally tell me to my face, that while he really likes the story as long as he is a broadcaster in the United States of America, it will not appear on his show. He was actually really nice about it - and he’s right. The story, in its original and best incarnation, has tons of appalling gore in it, the killing of defenseless baby kangaroos and uses the word “cunt” more times in ten minutes than most Americans have heard in their entire lives. And cutting that stuff out kinda neuters the whole enterprise.

If I’m this sick of telling this story, I can only imagine how tired my friends are of hearing it. And I’ve sure made a lot of hay off the experience on this blog.

Unless something tremendous happens, I feel like I can safely say that this story’s been done to death and put to bed here in New York City. It feels good to be all the way through this one and kinda wipe the slate clean for a batch of new stuff.

On the other hand, I’m about to go to Australia again for two weeks starting Saturday. And if I can claw my way in front of a microphone after a couple or six VBs, this thing might rise again. If any of you know of storytelling shows or reading series or something similar in Adelaide or Melbourne, please let me know. I’d love to try this or other stories in front of an Aussie audience.

Emmet is the physically densest mammal I have ever seen -he feels like he is made out of warm, bristle-covered cannonballs. He loves having the spot between his little piggy shoulder blades scratched.

I only ever see Emmet on misty, overcast mornings - the kind of mornings that really activate New York’s greyness, the ones that give this grey city some serious character and color. It’s like Emmet emerges from the city’s hazy, sleepy dream state. Nobody else is ever around to see him except for me, my girlfriend, and Emmet’s leash-holders.

We always talk about the South, me and Maggie and Emmet’s people. We talk about how great it is, what an amazing, rich and Gothic creepiness the South has and how we are so glad it runs through our blood. And how glad we are that we moved up here, too.

The South is a spectacular place to be from, but not always a good place to be at. Love the culture, hate the crippling willful ignorance, I say.

But enough gabbing. Here’s Emmet: