Death becomes her?

The recent underwater death of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin (Don't know who that is? Crikey!) has me pondering one of my favorite psychological issues: Mortality.

Irwin fell victim to one of those rules you pick up reading the kind of nonfiction I do: Water is dangerous.

A guy who wrestles crocodiles for a living gets killed by a stingray. By accident. This happens to almost nobody (unlike, say, those eaten by sharks).

So here's the thing, from my point of view, and I'm talking about life in general here, not the later Mr. Irwin.

I don't really care how I die. I'd like to die old, and in bed, and with a cute young blonde, but that's just a best-case scenario. I wouldn't mind dying a hero. Defending my family, saving a puppy, that sort of thing. There are, after all, decent ways to die.

The thing I really don't want to do is die in a way that makes people laugh at me after I'm gone.

You know the people this happens to. The Darwin Awards winners. The people who accidentally get crushed by the trees they're cutting down. The people who try to cross Interstates, drunk, at night and wearing black. And so forth.

There's one in the news every week. Somebody whose headline makes you laugh in the face of tragedy. ("Man killed by kitten," that sort of thing.) And I'm talking laughing at the victim, not with him. Because, after all, he can't laugh, he's dead.

You know, the late Civil War Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, whose long and illustrious military career was overshadowed by his last words: "Don't worry, men. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."

And speaking of last words, in the same vein, I don't want mine to be, to quote someone I know who didn't die, "Ow. Fuck."

How I spent my Labor Day weekend

My buddy Ed came down for the weekend and we did what we do best: Sit on our butts and relax.

We watched 11 movies in two and a half days. That's right, 11. And played some video games. And ate bad food. And actually left the house not once, but twice.

The playbill, as it were:

SATURDAY:
"The Boondock Saints"
"The Hills Have Eyes" (remake)
"Running Scared"
"V for Vendetta"
"Underworld: Evolution"

SUNDAY:
"Hostel"
"Hollywood Homicide"
"Wolf Creek"
"High Tension"
"The Relic"

MONDAY:
"Ghosts of Mars"

And the only reason we came up short of a dozen was I had to go to work. Not a bad weekend at all.

By-by-by, by-by!

When I work on my various projects, I've noticed I use a few different names. Perhaps you've noticed, too.

I was thinking about it, and for those wondering, here's the deal:

My journalistic byline is just my first and last name. I use that for all nonfiction/journalism pieces, including my freelance work.

But my freelance work often has nicknames, because most of it is Web-based, either for HorrorTalk (where I'm "The Hitman") or Raiderfans.net (where I'm "Ace," like here, short for "AceRimRat"), and those sites both sort of started out as forums with anonymous pseudonyms.

In fact, I still use my Hitman nickname on HorrorTalk without my name, but that's going to change with my next review, because everyone else is switching, or so it seems.

And then, for "Dead Hunt," I used my full name for the credits, first-middle-last. Why, I was asked?

Well, to differentiate my fiction-type work from my journalism-type work, really.

(The joke: The two Asian guys involved both use their full names, and not a one of them is an Asian name... Six names, nothing Asian whatsoever.)

But I digress. Point is, I like the idea of sort of separating the two.

The reason I bring it up - well, the reason I bring it up is because it was sort of on my mind, and the reason it's sort of on my mind is I'm working on a pair of other projects, and I was thinking about what to put on them.

One is a short fiction piece I'm submitting to a magazine. That was easy - full name, since it's my fiction work.

The other is a longer, freelance nonfiction project I'm discussing with a company. (No details to go into yet, it's still just a discussion.) I found myself wondering if I should use my journalistic byline or my non-journalistic byline. On one hand, it's a nonfiction piece, that leans me toward my journalism byline. But it's completely unlike anything I've done before, more or less - it's not a newspaper thing, or a magzine thing, or a Web journalism thing. And that leans me toward my more, um, "exotic" byline (if that's the right word).

Funny thing is, I don't use my middle name for anything. I use my middle initial on things like checks and credit cards, but I hardly ever use my middle name. I don't even much like it, though it's not that bad, and I do enjoy being named for my great-grandfather(s).

At least I have one, though. Neither of my parents does, which is probably why they gave me one.