I cut off my arms and replaced them with autoloader shotguns, and now I blast your face into oblivion, little babies. Brainshot! Clickity-clack, faboom! Shaboom! Shabammy! CHOOM! Ahem. Do I really need to do these intros? I mean, probably not, right? You know what you’re getting by this point. It’s Painting With Shotguns. It’s nonsense. It’s an upended bucket of fish guts. It’s sea garbage. It’s flotsam. It’s jetsam.

It’s Flossie and the Jetsons.

Let’s just get right into this shit. This is gonna be a long one. A real John Holmes joint.

My Loverly Wife Hasn’t Smartened Up Yet

…and so, today I celebrate my fourth wedding anniversary. The wife hasn’t wisened up yet, you see. Well, maybe she has and she’s just waiting for the right time to pull the cord and release the chute? Regardless, here we are, four years later, and she still hasn’t left me. Or bludgeoned me with the back-side of a fire axe and then chopped me up and dissolved my constituent parts in a clawfoot tub.

She makes me laugh every day. She puts up with my nonsense. She lets me be who I am without reservation and complaint. Four years ago and four years from now and forty years from now I’d still make the same choice in marrying her.

She’s my best friend and, let’s be honest here, a hot piece of tail.

I love her.

I’m a lucky chump.

Happy anniversary, wifelady.

Or, to sing it: HAAAAAAAAPY ANNIVERSAAAAAAARY!

The Twitter Initiative: “The Twitnitiative”

So, it’s like this. For some reason, a number of people have chosen to follow me on Twitter despite my inane ponderings, dubious logic, and extreme profanity. In fact, almost 900 people now follow me there, which leads me to believe that the number of truly brain-diseased people in this world — like, we’re talking Charles Manson level of mental malfunction — is, at the bare minimum and not coincidentally, equal to 900 people.

I figure, hey, fuck it. It’s time to get to 1000 mind-addled followers. Or, in geekspeak, “two MilliWheatons.”

It’s like this.

I’m giving you, The Wide Open Internet, one month to get me to 1000 followers.

That’s June 20th, by the by.

If, by the “close of business” on that day I am at or have surpassed 1000 followers, then you, the Wide Open Internet, will win a “prize.”

I put that in quotes because, c’mon, it’s a bullshit prize. It’s frankly more punishment than reward, but hey, hell with it, it’s what I have to offer.

What I have to offer is this: if I get my 1000 followers, then in the subsequent month I will write one free Codpiece Johnson short story no shorter than 3,000 words. I will post that short story here but also make it available as a PDF to anybody who actually wants to harm their eyeballs on, say, an e-reader.

So, that’s the deal.

Get me 1000 followers by Sunday, June 20th, and you all get molested by a hot fresh load of Codpiece Johnson over the Intertubes.

If I don’t get 1000 followers by that day, hey, hell with you. No short story. No ticky, no laundry. I get to walk away responsibility-free. And I get to sob. Loudly. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

The Coffeemaker Is Dead, Long Live The Coffeemaker

You may have heard that my Mr. Coffee coffeemaker (in retro red!) is defunct. Well, realistically it’s not defunct. It just stopped brewing coffee at speeds considered “human,” instead deciding that it was brewing a hot cuppa joe for, say, a glacier. What was once under five minutes became a brew-time of over 15 minutes, and that shit is just not reasonable in the morning.

Thus, a new coffeemaker is in town.

I am now the owner of a Cuisinart DCC-1200.

Some recommended the Keurig. A bit expensive for me, and I’ll never ever use K-Cups because I am a raging coffee snob.

Some recommended grind-and-brew. That’d be great if it wasn’t for our minerally water, which makes cleaning anything a chore. You have to use a lot of soap, but then ironically, you leave a lot of soap behind because the hard water won’t clean that off. It’s totally awesome, which is another way of saying, I daily want to punch our water. And no, we don’t have a water softener for a multitude of reasons.

Some recommended a French press. We have one already. “But it’s delicious! And it’s easy! And it’s blarghity-snarg-fliggity-flargh.” Yeah, I know. Coffee made from a French press is delicious. But again, see earlier note: “hard water.” My French press is basically a greasy glass tube. Or, if I want it to be not greasy, it’s a soapy glass tube. (The greasy glass tube makes for tastier coffee, by the way, since it’s just oil from the beans, really. Still, doesn’t clean well. Sorry.)

Many other recommendations were heard by these passively-constructed ear-forms and eye-holes of mine, but a handful of people said “Cuisinart,” and then I looked at Consumer Reports, and they also said “Cuisinart.” And so it was writ.

I am now drinking my first cuppa the dark stuff from the new machine.

It’s some tasty biznatch. Very happy with it.

I take my coffee dark these days. No sugar, no milk.

How do you take your coffee?

Radish Recipe and Tom Kha Gai

Quick! Recipe time.

Cut up one… I dunno, “bundle” of radishes. A bushel? A basket? A tisket? A tasket? How do you measure goddamn radishes? Let’s make up a term. “One rabble of radishes.” There. Have that. For free.

Quarter those sumbitches. Into a big bowl with them. A mixing bowl, if you must know.

Then, cook up some diced greens. Me, I used Swiss chard. Do not saute the Swiss chard because it will retain too much of its bitterness. A quick boil — three to five minutes — will do it and give it the proper sweetness.

Dump them into an ice-bath. Pull them right back out.

Into the bowl they go. With the radishes. What bowl did you think I was talking about? Are you mule-kicked? I’m sorry, am I not going fast enough for you, ADD-face?

Criminy.

Then, I put some nuts in there.

Pause for laughter.

I glazed almonds using Alton Brown’s recipe except since I didn’t have those chiles I threw in some honey and sriracha to give it heat and sweetness. Oh, and I added some cashews to the mix, too.

I took maybe a half-cup of nuts (pause for laughter) and, yup, into the bowl.

I then had a New York strip steak from the day before and I sliced it thin. Really, just use your favorite steak, I don’t give a shit.

Yes, into the bowl.

Atop that, a mixture of:

3 TBsp Worcestershire sauce (aka anchovy sauce, in case you didn’t realize), 3 TBsp aged balsamic vinegar, and 3 TBsp of dark sesame oil.

Then bring it all together. Cold. Then eat the hell out of it. The crunch. The meat. The oil. The yummy-in-your-motherfucking-tummyness.

Oh! Also, yesterday I made some Tom Kha Gai using Andrew Zimmern’s recipe (video here, text here). Phenomenal. Or, to pun wantonly, Phnom(penh)menal. Man, that was a clumsy pun. I shouldn’t have tried. I’m sorry, Internets. I’m so sorry. Anyway, the coconut soup was really good, but having no good Asian markets within proximity, I did have to use some substitutions. No galangal, so I substituted ginger. No chili-tamarind sauce, so I used a little blob of red curry paste and a TBsp of sweet chili-garlic sauce. No lime leaves, so I used lime zest. And it came together very, very nicely.

Search Term Bingo!

Once again, it’s time to play search term bingo here at terribleminds.

Remember:

When coach puts you in you gotta go for the win.

Now, for a very long time, the war between Pauley Perrette (Abby from NCIS) and Avatar Porn has been a one-sided fight. Pauley was just an unstoppable pit bull in the ring, man, tearing Avatar Porn a new asshole every damn day. And then — a turnaround a couple weeks back! Pauley’s been flagging, man. Avatar Porn — perhaps with the release of the DVD — has rocketed to the fore, making quick work of our kinky Goth forensics expert.

I will keep you updated on the war, but if it keeps going like this, I’ll soon declare the war won, and “sexy blue goatcats” the clear winner. Though, “turtle penis” gets me a surprising number of hits per week. A dark horse?

Could be, rabbit. Could be.

But in the meantime, let’s get to some other searchables…

Get out your bingo cards, bitches.

Ready? Go.

“People don’t want energy meters”

Says you, jerkface. I want an energy meter. I need it to measure energy. Duh.

“Waking up with handprints on my arm is my house haunted?”

It sure fucking is. Get the hell out of that house. You are going to get raped by ghosts. That is not a joke. Don’t even look back. Just move out. Burn that place down. Salt the earth. What are you still doing here? This is some Maschine Zeit level horror, dude. Run!

“Is mustard made with ostrich poop?”

It is! Well — not the boring yellow stuff. But like, the really good mustard? The deli mustard? Yeah, that’s made with ostrich poop. Or emu poop if no ostriches are present. It’s an ancient recipe.

“My wife and a German shepherd fucking”

Your wife specifically? If you have to look on the Internet for those pictures — and, say, not your hard drive — then you have officially lost control of your privacy. Then again, if your wife is banging dogs my guess is you’ve lost a lot more than that. Good luck to you, sir. I’m not saying you should divorce her, but, man, c’mon. C’mon. C’mon.

“How to draw headless cupid”

That is very specific. I imagine you’re no fun on Valentine’s Day.

“fish barrel buckler St. Ives”

Wombat sneaker puddle St. Neutrogena!

“rooster with white foaming stuff coming from its eyes”

That’s how they make Sriracha, actually. Also, that rooster has ebola. Maybe get away from it.

“how I feel about your butthole”

I like that this brings emotion into it. It’s not just about sex. It’s about how someone feels. But, I gotta ask, when you say “your butthole,” do you mean my butthole? Or, like, the general “your butthole?” Because if you want to talk specifically about my rosebud, just email me. We don’t have to do this in public. Unless you’re going to sing hymns and paeans do it? Then hell’s yes we should make it public.

“What crawls up your leg and bites the inside of your asshole?”

This.

“Mortons steakhouse is not the kind of place you expect Lady Gaga to be”

This is also very specific. Did you see her there? Honestly, I’m amazed you’re trying to predict her behavior. That’s like trying to talk to a supernova or saddle Charles Manson for a pony ride. I don’t expect anything from her, because… she’s a moonbat, I think. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her anywhere. Underwater volcano base? Dirty pay toilet? My coffee mug? A Tibetan whorehouse?

“chris abducts hobos and pays them to tickle his balls”

Damn, also very specific. Do you know this Chris person? I dunno if this is a really bad deal for the hobos, though. I mean, it’s not prostitution, exactly. It’s certainly not bumfights. I think this is probably okay. In fact, it puts the notion into my head that you could probably abduct hobos and pay them for all kinds of services rendered. Sure, the “abduction” part is a bit sketchy, but they’re hobos. I think it’s okay. Morally and legally. Let’s do it.!

“I crave pineapples what does that mean?”

It means you’re going to die. Soon.

“depressed goat”

How sad. You should cheer him up. Pay a hobo to tickle his balls.

“anti-puppy”

Does this mean you don’t like puppies? Or are you looking for an antithetical creature — y’know, the way Anti-Christ is, well, antithetical to Christ? In that case, I’d assume the anti-puppy would be an old cat. Right? Like, the young doggy could battle the elderly cat on the Fields of Megiddo. Choose your side now. Unless you really just don’t like puppies, in which case, I must assume that you’re the Anti-Christ. Because, fuck you for not liking puppies.

“fuck yeah beards!”

I second that emotion!

Anyway.

Finally, since my post on fanfiction I’ve been getting scads of search terms about fanfiction.

Diana Gabaldon. Omar from the Wire. Avatar the Last Airbender. The Fountainhead and Ayn Rand. And so much more.

News

Very quick news-flavored snidbits:

Who has two thumbs and is going to write an article for The Escapist? This guy.

Who has awesome news about the film that he can’t share exactly but is really awesome news anyway and you’re just going to have to suck up the ambiguity? Me again.

Who’s gonna be doing a guest post over at Clockworks? Mm-hmm, you guessed it.

Links

Yup. Poop Report dot com.

Best foodie recipe site ever? Food In My Beard. Damn yeah.

Music playlists for your emotions, or your task-at-hand. Want a writing playlist? Check out Stereomood.

Writer-types: Ten Ways To Write Skinny Sentences.

Great breakdown of the tea party movement psychology.

Justin Achilli knows what’s up: “Your Players’ Stories Are More Important Than Your Stories.”

My compatriot and old friend (king of the chip pile) Keith Karabin has a brand new website with cute little cartoony versions of his hirsute self. Check it out. Be advised, though: he puns. Also, he has enough loose hair to choke a horse. I’ve seen it happen. Three times. Three dead horses.

Happy birthday to Julie Summerell.

Finally, I’m thinking of ditching Facebook entirely and going to Gink. Check it out. Whaddya think?