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So I mention the fact that I just re-watched Flashdance to Kirkbride. Not only that but it then “What a Feeling” was on the radio today in some kind of evil Flashdance attack. So I head banged a little to it, whatever, and told Kirkbride. He sends back this image that he whipped up:

Well his first comment on the image when confronted about it was: “I couldn’t match your super sunlight face with Beal’s beautiful olive skin, but it gets the point across near majestically.” And now you see why I love Kirkbride. But I realized that spurred on by this image I needed to write a new version of Flashdance, starring me. So here it is:

I’m a welder by day. Fuckers. But by night? I dance to the rhythm. The rhythm that is gonna get you. Fucking count on it. It’ll get you with a .45 between the shoulder blades and leave you cold on the ground like a fucking cheap ass whore after a long hard night of pissing off her pimp. Don’t EVER fuck with the rhythm, bitches.

And don’t think I can’t dance.

I can dance like Sammy Davis being dope-slapped by the hand of God. I can dance like Patrick Swayze, if he wasn’t white and was sorta maybe hip. Hells yes, I can dance, motherfuckers. That’s why I make the big bucks.

Do I strip? No. I dance. I dance interpretive dances, German based mostly, sometimes stylized takes on the Eddas and Sagas of Norway. It depends on how much time I have to do my make-up. Last week I recaptured the spirit of 1940 cartooning using only red face paint, a potato sack and Flock of Seagulls hit Telecommunication. I can dance, bitches. I can dance.

Still, I am also a welder. I weld things. Metal things. I weld them to other metal things and the welding makes them stick. Sometimes I cut them apart. It’s not easy work, the cutting and the sticking and the hot and the metal. But I do it. I’m a welder. I weld.

The other week I started to date my boss. Sure it’s wrong and kind of creepy, but who cares? I felt like it. She saw me dance. Then she saw me weld. Now we’re dating. Do the math yourself. While we were talking I mentioned that I always wanted to dance professionally. Not the way I dance now, no, that would make a lick or two of sense. No I wanted to dance ballet. A type of dance I show no real aptitude for, have no training in and don’t really get. But I think it’s pretty. So I decided I want to do it. Fuck you, I can do it if I want. Except, you know, I couldn’t.

Those bastards want training, they want someone who knows what they’re doing! Fuck them and their stupid school. I went to the club that night and did an impressionary take of Beowolf wearing a mermaid outfit to show Grendel’s isolation, all set to The Weather Girls It’s Raining Men. Fuck them.

My boss bought me an audition anyway. That bitch used her shit right and got me set-up. So of course I threw my whiskey at her, punched her lights out and left her. Fucking bitch, who does she think she is waving money around to solve my problems. I’ll show her, I’ll show them all. I’ll go to their audition, the one I hate, that I only made because of that bitch’s money and I’ll… well, they’ll see. They’ll all fucking see.

I showed up. I danced. Hell, I took my welding torch in, too, and I welded some stuff. I showed off my leg warmers and I downed some whiskey. Then I held up a match and blew fire at those motherfuckers. I set them on fire. Judge that, assholes.

When the screaming died they started to tap their feet to my musical choice, Wham!’s Wham Rap. Fuck right they did. One of them was slow, off-beat, I welded his foot. The rest got the message. They let me in. I’m gonna learn ballet. Like no other son of a bitch on Earth, I’m gonna be a dancer. A dancer like you’ve never seen.

Fuck yeah.

I just got some spam with the following subject line:

Longer sperm robot killing free!
I didn’t bother to read the email. I already know that story. Let me explain…

See, once upon a time I worked as a Mad Scientist. It happens, you need to pay the bills and find yourself building death rays. It wasn’t really great work, long hours crappy pay, no good lair to speak of. But I kept at it. And I considered getting into the robot business. Robots sell. They can be a bitch to work out, but if you get it right you can do great things.

Just remember everyone tends to want Cylon eyes and Dalek voices, add the capacity to go up and down stairs, a gun and a laser or two and you have a sale.

I wanted more than that.

So I built a sperm robot. What was the thing for? Well it was a normal looking robot, Cylon eyes and Dalek voice, a gun in the foot and laser ears, but it could also shout “Sperm!” when attacking and then kinda wiggle its hips around as if it was trying to spawn upstream. You would be surprised, or maybe not, how disturbing that was. I figured it would take a lot of people off guard and allow for better killing numbers.

Well, I was wrong. No one wanted one. They were all too freaked out by the idea. So I retrofitted it with a segmented torso, to enhance the undulating swimming motion. The longer sperm robot was born. I was impressed, my customers less so.

Worse yet, they talked about it endlessly. If they wanted to buy a fucking lava gun they would manage to work in “and no longer sperm robot, ok?” every time. Fuckers. It cost me business. It got ugly. I couldn’t even afford henchmen, after a while.

So I ran some ads. I dropped the price. I tried to give them away. I contacted a firm that promised email marketing. They sent out that mail. Well, that pissed me off. First I make a robot that kills my career and then I become known as a spammer? Well fuck. I killed them all, the only time the LSR-4590 was ever used in combat. The undulation was fantastically creepy, for the record.

In the end I destroyed the robots, gave up the gig and got a job doing “normal” things for a change. But today, to get my own mail back like that? Just brings it all back, man. Fucking robots.

(I actually did just get spam with that subject line, I just couldn’t ignore it. Forgive me. Some things beg to be written)

How do you end Superman II without spinning the world or a mind-wipe kiss? Like this:

Danny wears his Sunday best
Jesse’s tired he needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Joey’s sighing in his sleep
That Tanner’s got a date to keep
He can’t hang around

Full House, in the middle of our street
Full House, in the middle of our …

Full House it has a crowd
There’s always something happening
And it’s usually quite loud
Our dads are so house-proud
Nothing ever slows ‘em down
And some Olsens are allowed

Full House, in the middle of our street
Full House, in the middle of our …

Just to fill space, I bring you some book news:

You can pre-order Strange Angel book 3: Revelations now. It should be out any minute now, or so I’m told. You can order it by clicking on the cover (which is not, I just learned, the final cover) below.

(Click to order!)
You can, of course, order the first two books in the series while you are waiting for book 3 to come out. See how cool that is? Again, click covers below to order.

But that’s not all. Nope, as of today you can pre-order another anthology I’m in, right from the publisher. They decided to open pre-orders at a discount from the publisher because, hey, why not.

Bad-Ass Fairies, hey I don’t name these anthologies, is a collection of… well… fairy stories I guess. Keith DeCandido is in it, as are James Chambers, Patrick Thomas and Vincent Collins. The stories are wide and various in subject matter. I mean, I know that mine is basically an anime future based comedy noir piece, with a cybernetic fairy assassin in the lead. Come on. Can you pass that up? Don’t answer that. Just click the cover above and order it.

Anyway. there you go. Stuff you can order.

For those who pre-ordered SA3 way back when (as in the entire series) expect mail soon from me.

Well the title sure gives that away, doesn’t it?

I got a call today from the specialist: Fezzik’s bowels were, at least in one spot if not over an area, disintegrating, basically. The walls were weakened enough he was going to go into septic shock after not too long. Which left us with a choice. Which left me with a choice, I should say.

More surgery. The risk here is, opening up a patient who is already very weak and not doing great means his chances are greatly diminished to start. If it worked, however, he would then have to go into chemo right away as well. Which means a patient who is trying to recover from dual surgeries going into a treatment that reduces immune systems badly. Chances decrease with every inch of this.

At best, at best it would have been a road fraught with pain, discomfort and other things that aren’t really great.

That was choice one. Choice two was euthanasia.

There is a quality of life versus quantity issue. There is a line to be crossed after which I would be going out of my way to be selfish and cruel to him. Could I have kept him alive, a weak, unhappy shell of himself that I could pet and dote on as best I could, and kept him hanging on by threads of various size and shape? Possibly. Maybe. At the outside for a few more months, maybe as much as a year. Maybe at the very very very outside a few years.

Or I could end his pain now and not clutch too happy to a situation he obviously was no longer fighting against.

I talked it over with some friends. I talked with his primary vet and the specialist. None of them even tried to influence my choice, but to give me facts and let me talk it out. I made the best choice for him that I could. I was agreed with, at all points. It might be the hardest choice I have ever made.

When I went to see him tonight he wasn’t himself. We, yes I had someone there with me, held him and thought he was already drugged. That’s how bad off he was. He still recognized us, he was still my big dumb baby of a lump of cat, but he also really wasn’t. He hasn’t been himself in full for a while, and he never would be again no matter how hard I fought against it. He’d lost too much and all the future held for him was more loss. He wasn’t happy. He had given up.

So he was held and cried over at length and then held and petted while they gave him some drugs. And then he died. And he was petted and held even then. And I didn’t want to let him go, but to be fucking honest he had let go a while before this. All I was doing was letting him go with some form of peace, as close to me as could be managed. I’d like to think that was as much for me as for him. I don’t know.

It’s just so empty here. And yeah there’s part of me that nags and feels like “I killed him” “I should’ve done more” “I could’ve done more” but that’s all untrue. I did as much as possible for him, and sometimes a bit more if I could find a way to. I did the right thing and I know that. Doesn’t mean it feels that way. Doesn’t mean it ever will, but it’s a bit early to pull shit that emo.

I just miss him. That won’t go away. I hope.

Also, just FYI – I may not answer my phone or email for a while. Nothing personal.

So Fezzik stopped eating again and turned very wobbly. He ate some last night but it didn’t help and then today he pretty much flat out refused to eat at all, until force fed. Which is still refusing to eat, mind you, but also still eating. Right.

So when he stood up and then just fell over, kinda hard, it was decided that he should go to the emergency room right the hell away. Yes, the Animal Hospital on 62nd has an emergency room, open 24hrs.

So he got taken down there, thanks to the help of some friends, and they took a long look at him, some x-rays a mini-ultrasound and so on. They think the lymphoma may have spread to his neural stem. It may have been a mini-stroke. No one knows. It just seems like he might be kinda blind and have lost most of the sensation in his face.

Then again he could just have been freaked out.

Are we having fun yet?

Right this second we don’t know much. they admitted him in for a night or two so they could feed him and get him back up to speed in terms of water and food and all that jazz. The appointment I had for Thursday to see some specialists will basically happen tomorrow, instead. So throughout tomorrow I will get updates. And we’ll see.

If it goes well and was just some spastic disorientation and assorted issues but nothing major he will come home and have started chemo and all the fun involved with that. If it’s more serious… we’ll see where we go from here.

It’s a big unknown and I have some folks over to hang out a while but this place is gonna be creepy and quiet again tonight and I was so happy he was doing better, ya know? But setbacks happen, and hopefully that’s all this is, a setback.

So I was thinking about writing a self-help book called Unfuck Your Own Shit. Not that I’m an expert at being sane, wise or smart but I’ve had shit, it’s been fucked and I’ve unfucked it. Not all of it. No human gets that. I’ve just worked on enough to know I need to always be working on it. That’s kinda what being a human being is, sometimes: working to unfuck your own shit so that you can become a better person all the time.

Not stronger. Better. Stronger doesn’t always mean better. I can become a stronger person by subjecting myself to torture for a month. It won’t make me a better person, but it’ll make me stronger for having survived. But then again, so what? No, becoming a better person tends to make you stronger along with it.

So. Unfuck Your Own Shit. Well I was thinking about an outline…

Step 1: Name your shit. Naming the things wrong with you, giving words and phrases to your behavior will let you recognize it and become familiar with it. Once you are on speaking terms with your own problems you can address them directly.

Step 2: Find the core of your shit. Things don’t happen for no reason. Maybe you were dropped on the head as a child and now you have a thing about hats. Maybe you were secretly in love with Smurfette and now you have self-destructive tendencies that make you fall for really short women. Perhaps your family life, like everyone else’s, wasn’t perfect and it fucked you up and you can find the threads there.

Step 3: Don’t place blame. Look, you know what helped you down the road to fucking up your shit, that’s great. Chances are you can’t change it. So you could blame it and point fingers and scream “Seeeee Smurfette is why!” all you want but that won’t actually, you know, fix anything. It’ll just make you feel better and make everyone else wonder when you’ll stop screaming about the Smurfs, you sick fuck.

Step 4: Accept. So, all right, you are a fucked up dude. So is everyone else. That doesn’t excuse it, but it can help wash away the lump of “I’m so fucked up and so alone in being fucked up and no one understands me.” Go cry, emo kid. Come back when you’re ready to sack up and face your own demons. They exist. They have power over you. They are real. Got it? Good.

Step 5: Adjust. Once you know that you get so hard when you see a clown with blue hair (damn you Grandma and your long luxurious legs) that you might just split your pants and then, once you get that hard, you start punching people in fear and shame… well. Well, well, well. Stop it. By now you should have realized the behavior, come to terms with it, and now it is time to stop hitting people just because you weren’t comfortable with yourself.

Step 6: Be smarter than me. See, I can lay shit out for you all day but really the idea here is to springboard off of it. Not to take me at face value and follow everything to the letter. Find the flaws. Adjust. Enhance. Make it your own, so long as it works. And by works I mean “yields results without harming others and without needing you to be a dick about it”. See, you’re on your way to being a better person already!

Step 7: Bask. You get two days of this.

Step 8: Goto 1. Seriously. the process doesn’t stop. So you unfucked some of your shit, you want a fucking prize? Congratz, you are marginally better off than you were when you started this. Now go back to the beginning and start over because I promise you – you have more shit to deal with. That’s part of being human. So go cope with it and grow and try to become a better person. Why not? you got something better to do with your life?

Shit, it isn’t an all the time, every second kind of thing. But if you don’t improve yourself why should anyone else? Why should they care about you if you just sit there and expect people to come to you regardless? Why should you be respected if you can’t be bothered to fix yourself? No, seriously. Why should anyone give a fuck about you if you can’t be bothered to fix your own shit? Who should fix it for you?

Which isn’t to say “therapy is bullshit” at all, either, for the record and before someone else says it. Some people benefit from assistance. Some people don’t. How you fix your shit is yours to work out, really. The steps are the same, partner in crime along for the ride at a hefty fee per hour or not. Whatever it takes though, emotionally we’re sharks.

We stop growing and we die.

So you know how Gerald Butler (of 300 fame) has been picked to play Snake Plissken in the remake of Escape from N.Y.?

Well I thought about that. And I decided I had a better movie in mind:

(sorry my photoshop skills ain’t exactly mad skillz, yo)