2008 has not been a good year for me, medically.

Ever caught your pinky toe on the corner of a wall? Yeah, I caught the three smallest toes on my left foot on the wall, trying to side-step the cat with an armload of laundry. I screamed a series of unintelligible guttural sounds, and spent the night with ice on my foot. But what are you gonna do? They can’t do anything for a broken toe…

Turns out they can do something when you sprain your foot and damage your ligaments, though! Which I found out when I couldn’t walk on it this morning and gimply limped to an ER. I got a really sexy walking cast boot out of it.

I am so ready for 2009.

So here is something you will rarely ever witness from me.

I….

I lack the words….

I lack the vocabulary to tell you how UTTERLY AMAZING The Dark Knight is.

It is not a perfect film. I have issues with the quick editing, for example. And we were sitting very close to the speakers, so the music would occasionally drown things out. But I will tell you the following, non-spoilerish things:

1) Heath Ledger DESERVES an Oscar and a place amongst the pantheon of Greatest Film Villains. I honestly forgot who I was watching during this movie. He simply IS the Joker.

2) The cinematography is mind blowing.

3) While I don’t follow the comics regularly, I have read the “major” ones of the last 25 years. This goes beyond them. This makes The Dark Knight even darker.

4) This sets a bar so high I am embarrassed for Watchmen and The Wolverine Movie.

5) I will, from now on, rate movies on The Heath Ledger Scale. 1 - 10 Heath Ledgers, The Dark Knight being 10 Heath Ledgers.

6) I spent the entire 2.5 hour movie tense. Muscularly tense. It took an hour for my back to relax.

7) Brian wondered if the air conditioning was too high. Why is the theater so cold?

8 ) And then he realized he was sweating.

9) $^&(@^*(!

10) Seriously, go see it. In theaters. As soon as possible.

I am so bad about keeping people updated. I know this. I’m working on it.

And so I bring you a drama-laden update! What’s been going on? Let’s go back to May…

The day before my birthday, my sister asked me to take her to the ER. She thought she’d turned her ankle a week before, but now her foot was killing her, and she couldn’t stand on it. So I do my sisterly duty, and we discover her foot is broken. Broken. And she walked on it for a week.

The next day I took her to the orthopedist to get it cast, and then the following day we went out with my friends and much merriment was had, until Erik’s gut of steel failed him and there was puke. He sent me a note to lament the lack of a “Sorry I chucked on your birthday” Hallmark sentiment.

Around this same time, I started going to the gym three times a week, and eating right. I was feeling great, waking up early, and even my shoulder stopped hurting.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Suddenly, I couldn’t get out of bed. And I’m crying randomly. And eating pizza. I’m not happy about this, but clearly, I am being punished for something. I’d felt like my anti-depressants weren’t working as well as they were before, and I already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled, but it was like hitting a wall.

Turns out, when you change your body chemistry by being healthy, it some times makes the happy drugs stop working. I saw the doctor today, though, and he doesn’t think I am depressed. He thinks I am bipolar. My “manic” side would be described as “everything is fine” and my “depression” side would be described as “pizza.” Pizza punishment.

I’m not sure how I feel about this turn of diagnoses, whether “this makes so much sense” or “well, great” or what. But, I put my limited faith in the science of medicine, and I am fore-swearing pizza.

I’m also trying not to be too down, because I am completely psyched to be seeing this in IMAX on Sunday:

Soooooooo shinyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

I’m also going to work hard this weekend on updating everything I should have been updating but have not. Goals. It’s important to have goals!

Oh, and Megan’s foot is fine and cast-less now. My step-mom’s appendix was not so lucky, though, going KABLOOEY in her belly at the end of June. She says you need to be careful what you wish for, since the week before her appendix went gangrenous she had been saying “Man, I wish I could have a whole month off of work.” Whenever anyone would listen!

Last week, I had an adventure. And it started with a phone call.

[Brian] You HAVE to come out. I demand you come out!
[Me] Meh… I’m not really in the mood. I’m washing my hair and this show about serial killers who –
[Brian] You don’t understand! The Furry convention is in town!
[Me] … I’ll be there in 10 minutes.

And thus I spent my evening in a downtown bar called August Henry’s. I’ve been there before, but not like this. You see, it was karaoke night.

I spent my evening in a bar. A bar filled with furries. A bar filled with furries singing karaoke.

I could not make this up if you paid me money.

So, OK, normal downtown bar, now overtaken by furries. Some wearing tails. Some wearing ears. Some wearing tails, ears, and dog collars. One chick dressed as a bat. Anyway, this was not my first time around furries, as –

Allow me to interject, me. Why the FUCK is the furry convention always held in Pittsburgh? Because it is. Google Anthrocon. I dare you. Despite your wildest wishes, it is not, in fact, a convention for Anthropologists. Regardless, every year, Pittsburgh, for some utterly horrific Sodom-and-Gomorrah reason, gets the furry con.

Anyway, this is not my first time. While I have never seen the furry convention before (by dent of my not-paying-attention Super Power), I have seen grown men, in public, wearing a tail for no earthly reason. Usually at PAPA. However, this is my first time being around them at what… I must assume?… is their some-what-natural habitat.

Now then: Karaoke. I have sung in the Sydney Opera House. I have never been drunk enough to subject myself to the humiliation of karaoke. This makes me special. Also special? The guy with the tail and collar who changed “99 Red Balloons” to “69ing Gay Raccoons.” Not so funny? Doing the entire oeuvre of pop/rock music consisting of any mention of any animal. I think if I heard one more off key rendition of “Hungry Like The Wolf” I could have slaughtered the entire bar and gotten off with a fine. A $50 fine.

Oh, but I am being sidetracked! Because, you see, shortly after my arrival, the bar, filled with furries, was then filled double, by MEN GETTING OUT OF THE PIRATES/YANKEES GAME. So, 1 bar, drunk furries singing, drunk baseball fans demanding more drinks.

And me.

And then, after 11, came the “normal” karaoke group. One of them asked me why all the furries smell. I answered “Musk.”

So now the bar is at triple capacity. And, right on cue, at 11:40PM, come the full fursuit crowd. During a rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle.”

I seriously felt like I was in a surrealist film.

We leave the bar around 12:30, to head elsewhere, and Brian, a gay man (mind you) says “They’re all so friendly! I love the furry movement!” Another of our group reminds him about the two “foxes” who proclaimed they’d demanded litterboxes in their hotel rooms. “But why are they so nice?” Brian asked.

“Because,” I said. “This is their pride parade, Brian. This is the one weekend out of the year where they get to wear their suits out in public, and loudly and proudly proclaim ‘I am an amorphous animal of some type with a huge human penis!’ Surely, as a gay man, you can understand that.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I suppose.”

“I –” I stopped short in awe of the scene unfolding. As we rounded a corner, a literal parade of 50 fursuits came at us.

“I just don’t understand why they pick Pittsburgh.”