What's it like, you ask, to be in a doctor's office and be told you have an 80% chance of being dead in two years? It sucks. It sucks the air from your lungs, the tears from your wife, and the images of a complacent old age with a passel of grand-babies running underfoot from your head.

But there are still certain things that suck more.

Movies? Well, perhaps that's a bit dramatic, but let me tell you something: some movies cause cancer. I can blame my stage 4 colon cancer (and the two tumors in my liver) on three particular movies.

Irreversible
When does art have the power to cause colon cells to mutate? When it's Gaspar Noe's thematic masterpiece Irreversible. From the opening kaleidescope of nausea - a precursor to the purgatory that is chemotherapy - to the final spasm of green, this movie is designed to cause cancer. The film is presented in segments of action, shown in reverse order, which further complements the theme of the irreversible effects of causality and hinting at the essence of time.

Make no mistake, this movie was tested scientifically to cause cancer. How many lab rats had to die from watching the unflinching rape scene? "Rape scene?" you ask, hopeful of an eyeful of Monica Bellucci's boobies. This powerful twenty minutes of fear, pain and degradation will churn your guts into a self-replicating mass of out-of-control cells, and not even register an errant nipple on the radar of your mind.  When will this torture end? Do you turn it off? You can't bring yourself to admit defeat in the face of blatant abuse and disgust. You are now Tina Turner with a trio of tenacious tumors.

With all that being said, the movie must be recognized as pure art, thematically whole. Not only is the storyline irreversible, but the viewer - you - have been irreversibly damaged. Ejecting the disc is just the beginning of your new, damaged self. You have been violated. You are now victimized, as surely as a rape victim. The cells in your colon know this and revolt. These tiny warriors are staging their insurrection, and the aftermath is irreversible. You have cancer, and the dream of taking your life for granted is shattered. Where are the artists striving to make a masterpiece from good, wholesome themes? Could there be a cure for cancer if humans weren't so fascinated by pain and torture mixed with sex? Gaspar Noe, the quintessential Frenchman puffing despondently on his cancer stick, will never stoop to such spiritual depths. Fascinated by death, Noe has inflicted a cancer upon humanity. And he planned it all along. “Life eez sheet, and zen you die.” Thanks, you bastard. All I wanted was a joyous spin through eighty or so orbits. Thanks for reminding me of all the pain there is in the world, 'cause you know? I almost forgot. Now I have cancer, and the spins make me want to throw up. I'm sure you're pleased, no matter how hard you deny it.

Freddy Got Fingered
How Tom Greene escaped Freddy Got Fingered with only the loss of one nut should give comfort to anyone afflicted with cancer. Unfortunately, some cancer patients don't get off Freddy's invasive finger so easily. This hodge-podge of vile non-sequitur and inane shenanigans doesn't have the brains to actually cause cancer, so much as exacerbate existing tumors. After all, prostate cancer is almost always curable, so who really needs such inept fingering? I'd give this terrible, offensive, pointless movie a more vicious thrashing, but just writing about it is bound to give the remaining tumors in my liver extra energy. Their insurrection is about to be resected in three short weeks, and they don't need the negativity Freddy Got Fingered feeds it any more than Mrs. Murphy's cow needed a pail of kerosene.

Xanadu
Which brings me to the most cancer-causing agent the other side of a flat-panel display. This movie derives its carcinogenic properties by emulating another cancer-causing agent - saccharine. Picture, if you can, condensing all the icky sweetness of your little sister's childhood into ninety minutes. Rainbows, unicorns, a Greek muse, a cartoon montage replete with twittering love birds - all these elements come together to create a musical of carcinogenic proportions. Gene Kelly slumming it in his old age with the quintessential femme-bot Olivia Newton John... their combined power mixed to create the perfect anti-chemotherapy concoction: Xanadu. Cancer is a sugar-feeder, after all, and the cotton candy that is Xanadu feeds it sugar by the shovelful. This is not the antithesis of Irreversible - it is not the unbridled joy of being alive. This is Irreversible's shadowy doppelganger. While Irreversible focuses on the irreversible effects of pain, Xanadu explores the acidity of overwrought sweetness.  This is chemical sweetness, like aspartame or sucralose, and it defies the entropy of your consciousness. It defies any mental division, just as those chemical sweeteners defy the breakdown of your digestion. There is no joy in Xanadu. There is nothing but the empty calories of the empty interface of the future and the past. This emptiness, like a vacuum in space and/or time, is now filled with the ever-expanding cancer.

Well, there you have it. The three movies that gave me cancer. Like eating a pound of steak, these movies will sit in your colon like a fat man on a dry water slide. Please, for the love of all those who love you, avoid these movies. Fiber up with some Kurosawa, some Gilliam, some Miyazaki. Flush these movies from your colon; poop  them from your mind. Go organic and let that artificial garbage rot on the shelves of Netflix. Life is short and shouldn't be thrown away on movies like this. Suicide is frowned upon by the patterns of the universe and God. Don't piss them off. Learn from my mistakes. You've been warned.