fucking with hadge cuck

Hey, whoa, no. You don’t fuck with Hadge Cuck. You go stomping on his hill barrow and that big ass motherfucker will come out and beat your shitcan to death with his club, a club he made from ox bones and dragon cocks. Hadge Cuck bested Gilgamesh in a game of mighty kickball. Hadge Cuck breathes the breath of a thousand cigar-smoking ravens. What’s the old rhyme? “Hadge Cuck come, Hadge Cuck crush, Hadge Cuck punch your bones to mush!” Repeat after me: DO NOT FUCK WITH HADGE CUCK.

what is the no 1 things all writers need

A helper monkey. A little capuchin monkey that sits in a wastebasket near your desk and whenever you need something, you just ring that little ding-a-ling bell. “Monkey! Get me a cappucino! Monkey! Get me whiskey for my cappucino! Monkey! Deliver unto me my naughty magazines!”

don’t worry my dad has a beard

Well, thank god for that. I was worried there for a minute. I was all like, “Oh my god, the economy is really wobbly and houses are being foreclosed upon and our freedoms are being stripped away from us a little bit every day and Israel might attack Iran and someone’s inventing a weaponized bird-flu right now and for some reason that new TV show with Rob Schneider is really popular and that means the Mayans were right,” but then you come along and remind me that your dad has a beard. We’re all good here. Whew.

my beard makes me fat

No, that wreath of Krispy Kreme donuts you inhaled made you fat. Your beard just makes you awesome.

enema beard

Officially my new pirate name. “Yarrr, olde Cap’n Enemabeard hid his treasure of Tampax Pearl reward points somewhere here on this dirty New Jersey beach, yarrrr! Get to searchin’ ye scurvy helper monkeys!”

i’m on google at best buy lolololol

First up, you’re an idiot. Second up, you’re an idiot. Third up, who gives a shit? Fourth up, multiple LOL’s strung together is fucking stupid. What does it mean? “I’m laughing out loud out loud out loud out loud?” For the record, I think we’re all done with “LOL.” It’s over. You’re not really laughing out loud. You’re laughing on the Internet and, frankly, probably not even smiling. This goes double to all you yahoos who choose to insert “LOL” after every sentence whether or not it’s worthy of humor. “I installed a new ceiling fan today lol. I need to express my chihuahua’s anal glands lol. My mom has face cancer lol.” Stop it. Just stop it. Someone pry the “L” and “O” keys from your keyboard. Dingbat.

wendig slept with my religion

I did no such thing. Unless you mean that fling with Zoroastrianism? Yeah, we hooked up. We did some handsy stuff, some mouth stuff, but I wouldn’t call it “sleeping with.” Dang, are you Zoroastrian? Sorry.

where does chuck wendig live?

Well, that’s not a terrifying search term at all. Here, I’ll answer this for you: I live on the moon. Me and Newt Gingrich. He’s on the dark side. Me on the light. Every thousand years we battle. Now stop looking.

chuck wemdog

First time I’ve heard that one. I’ve seen Chuck Wending Winding Wedding — I’ve even seen Wangdang. Seriously. But never “Wemdog.” If you see my at a convention or something, run toward me with a high-five at the ready and then stick out your tongue and go, “WASSUUUUP WEMDOOOOOG!” And then as you get within the proper distance I will kick you in the kneecap and push you into a potted plant using your own momentum. Because I’m actually a ninja. Please don’t tell anybody. This blog isn’t public, right?

frisky dimplebuns

Hey! This was my nickname back at Kilimanjaro base camp. Those wacky sherpas. Chasing each other around and playing a funny game of grab-ass, shoving snow down everybody’s pants! Ha ha ha! What fun.

5 words you should use in every story

Here goes. Ready?

“Breeches.”

“Titmouse.”

“Byzantine.”

“Chapstick.”

And, “Rosewater.”

how to congratulate a published author

A gift basket. This gift basket should feature:

a) seven tiny bottles of whiskey

b) seven other tiny bottles of whiskey

c) chocolate of some ilk

d) an index card that reads: YOU’RE #1 IN THE AMAZON RANKING OF MY HEART

e) a bookmark shaped like a chihuahua

f) a fancy pen

g) a six-pack of five-hour-energy drink

h) an orange

i) an index card that reads: GET BACK TO WORK YOU FUCKING MONKEY

dolly parton baboons

She does have huge “baboons,” yes. I will now refer to a lady’s chesty bounty as “blouse baboons.” Men, you are not exempt. Your dangle-rods will now be called, “pants-dwelling proboscis monkeys.”

Please update all records.

i want to put meth in my butthole

I guess that’s one way to do it. Is the normal meth high not strong enough for you that you need to go shoving it up your no-no tunnel? You’re pretty hardcore. “Hey, man, you got any crystal?” “I SHOVED IT ALL UP MY POOPER HA HA HA HA HA” *vacuums the entire state of Ohio, then dies*

elk semen macaroni and cheese

Oh, hey, thanks, now I’m going to be scraping vomit out of my keyboard for a month. (Is that corn? Why is there always corn?) Maybe this is coming up on a future episode of Fear Factor. I read an interview with the woman who drank donkey semen on that episode that mysteriously fled the NBC schedule, and it was about as obvious an interview as you could get. “Uhh, it was really gross and I kept throwing up and it tasted kind of grassy and semeny and it was hot and flies kept landing on it between sips.” Yeah, uhhh, you just drank donkey semen. On television. For an episode that might not even air. And now you’re telling us all about it. What did you think it was going to taste like? A caramel macchiato?

This should be our Darwin test. We should administer this test to everybody. “I will give you one hundred dollars if you drink this cup of hot, fly-specked donkey semen.”

Anybody who reaches for the glass receives a crisp hundred-dollar-bill and then is dropped through a trap-door into a pit filled with starving grizzly bears who have been trained to use machetes.

“lord of the rings” “he ejaculated”

I kind of wish those were reversed. “He ejaculated Lord of the Rings.”

“Nnnggh, nnngh, nnnnnnnggggh.”

*squee*

“Hey, look, Boromir!”

I made this for you, Internet:

shotguns + robotics

Two great tastes that taste great together. Also, this is what the Mayans were talking about. At the end of their prophecies, all the pictographs end in a picture of a robot holding a shotgun.

aliens and carbohydrates

Two great tastes that — eh, maybe not so much. If you wanna lose weight, you need to cut out carbohydrates, but eat more aliens. Oh, these Alpha Centaurians? Delicious! They’re filled with pudding!

we both know you’re not in outer fucking space

I like to imagine that this is the voicemail left on a husband’s phone by his betrayed wife. “We both know you’re not in outer fucking space, Dave. That’s right. I found out you’re not a secret astronaut with the Newt Gingrich Take Back The Moon program. Guess what? Your mother told me. You’re just a plumber from Secaucus. I know you’re not in space — you’re over that slut Debbie’s house again, aren’t you? She smells like a mall perfume counter, Dave. I’m just… I’m just disgusted by you. You know what? You can go to the moon, you sonofabitch.” Click. Divorce. Done. MARRIAGE LOST.

evolution is obsolete piss like a monkey

Is this the tactic that the Creationists are taking now? I don’t think that makes much sense at all.

ask a shotgun

Do not ask for advice from a shotgun. He has the same answer to every question.

“What stocks should I buy?” BOOM.

“What qualities make for a good mate?” BANG!

“I just found out my husband Dave isn’t really an astronaut. What do I do?” KACHOOM.

what do fish have to do with anything?

Nothing, probably. Fuck ‘em. Just get rid of those assholes. Stinking up all our oceans with their fish poop.

piranha eats its own feces poops

See? Fish poop. Though I guess the piranha should be rewarded for eating his own mess. Maybe if we humans were so brave as the piranha we wouldn’t have to ruin the planet with our corrosive toilet industry. Did you know that for every toilet that we make, seven bald eagles explode? I read that.

good beginnings with dairy goats

MY FAVORITE PBS PROGRAM EVER.

i can see purple pulsating purple

I will take whatever toxic gourd juice you’re drinking, please. Two cups.

One for me, one for my imaginary pal, Mister Tinklepants.

rabbit stew gives me diarrhea

Where did you find this rabbit stew, exactly? “I was out walking around and I was just kicking up pieces of cardboard and knocking around a few old soup cans and next thing I know this hobo comes out of the sewer grate and hands me a bubbly frothy pot of rabbit stew! It was delicious, but gave me the trots something fierce.” You shouldn’t be wolfing down rabbit stew of dubious age and origin, dummy.

crotch crutch

Dang, if you need a crutch for your crotch, color me impressed. You must have a tremendous wang. Like, the size of a rifle case. And I can see how you’d break a dick that size. You probably get — no pun intended — cocky with a schwanz like that. You’re out there breaking boards to impress the ladies, or using it as a bat during slow-pitch softball. Eventually you’re going to bust that sucker in half and, sure enough, need a crutch. Good for you, huge-dicked dude. Way to swing for the fences.

does your ass feels offended

No, but my silky nipples do.

story boobs battle challenge crush milk

This is actually what they called “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” in Malaysia.

save a hundred lives and you’re a nurse

I thought it was harder — or maybe easier? — than that.

old photo of a pterodactyl

Taken by what? A caveman Polaroid?

ugh whiskey always ruins my night

Then you’re doing it wrong.

people with fruit for heads in a circle

I guess I need another cup of that toxic gourd juice, because I’m not seeing that, yet.

things you do not say aloud

Pick any part of this blog post and that’s a good place to start.

“Hey, y’all! Sorry, I didn’t realize that deep-fried butter-stuffed meatballs with a pina-colada-pork-cracklings-crunch exterior dipped in a whiskey-chocolate Dr. Pepper dipping sauce would or could ever give someone like me the diabetes! Oops, y’all! Sorry. Please enjoy my new Paula Deen whipped-cream flavored insulin poppers. And don’t forget to watch my new Food Network show: Paula Deen’s Savannah-Style Down-Home Diabetes Pancreas-Palooza. Starring my four sons, Bobby, Jamie, Baconface and Chondroid Lipoma.”

Dear Paula Deen,

You’re kind of an asshole.

Listen, it’s not that you get on your show and write your little cookbooks and tell people how to basically make like, Butter Salad or Cookie-Dough-Stuffed-Thanksgiving Turkeys or, I dunno, Sugar-Crammed Sugar-Balls (coincidentally my nickname when I attended the Culinary Institute of America, and by “attended” I mean “hung out by the dumpster eating hot gourmet garbage”). This is America. You’re free to eat and cook however you feel is most appropriate, and instruct your audience to do the same.

On the one hand, you maybe should’ve warned people — like with a pack of cigarettes, a casual, “Hi, y’all, if you go ahead and make my scrumptious French-Fried French Toast with Spackled Goose Grease your heart may explode in your chest” may have been welcome. On the other hand, you know what? We’re supposed to be a smart country. If you’re sitting there telling us how to roll up a pumpkin pie and then barbecue it before slathering it with foie gras and whipped marshmallow frosting, I think we’re all educated enough to know that maybe what you’re selling us is not exactly diet food.

We knew your food wasn’t health food.

You knew your food wasn’t health food.

And now you have diabetes.

Or, more to the point, you’ve had diabetes for three fucking years.

To clarify, that means for three years — over a thousand days — you have been shilling your Microwaved Pork Roll Munchiladas and your Bacon-Gorged Jabba Rolls and your Powdered Sugar South Carolina Soul Food Gummi-Bear Casserole and not once have you said, “Hey y’all, by the way, I totally have diabetes, which is a plague amongst Americans, a plague that for many could’ve been avoided if you chose to avoid making foods like my Lady’s Brunch Burger, a hamburger topped with fried eggs and bacon and shoved unmercifully between two pillowy glazed doughnut buttocks.”

That’s where you get me. That’s what chaps my rosebud, Paula. That you knew you had diabetes and refused to tell anyone. Not even because you didn’t feel like you wanted to out your own medical condition but because, let’s be honest, you didn’t want to lose any money associated with the way you suggest people eat. Not money from your shows, from your cookbooks, from your appearances or your ad revenue.

No, instead you waited to tell people until –

Wait for it.

Waaaait for it.

– until you replaced any potential lost income with a fucking Novo Nordisk pharmaceutical deal. Essentially saying, “Hey, my lifestyle actively causes diabetes, but I didn’t want to tell any of you that while you were still paying me to tell you to eat human infants rolled in Cocoa Puffs and sausage fat, and now by waiting three years and announcing a deal with Big Pharma I’m basically telling you that you can live how you want and eat what you want and by god it’s not going to impact the way any of us do anything because Thank the Baby Jesus for mah diabeedus medication!”

(Next up on her show: Deep-Fried Baby Jesus topped with Pork Jimmies!)

Like Anthony Bourdain said yesterday on Twitter:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

You know what Paula really said? Quote for quote?

“I don’t want to spend my life not having good food going into my pie hole. That hole was made for pies.” Now, I’m all for silly statements regarding pies and holes, because, c’mon. Fuck yeah, pie. But here she is, a three-year-diabetic, basically telling you, “Well, just because I have diabetes doesn’t mean I have to change the way I eat.” Yes! Yes it does! That’s the whole fucking point!

That’s the message you should be telling people! Gah! Fuck!

Further, on the subject of why she waited three years, she says: “I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest. I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn’t armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God’s time.” Oh. Ohhh. Announcing the diabetes thing late is… God’s fault?

God didn’t give you permission until now? We’re on his time for this kind of shit, are we?

You didn’t wait because of God. Don’t blame this on him. I’m sure he’s up there sitting on his throne made of Dixie cups and human bones and he’s just shaking his head and making frowny-faces.

“BOO, PAULA, BOO,” he’s saying. “YOU HAVE DIABETES BECAUSE YOU FREEBASED HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. YOU DIDN’T TELL THE HUMAN MOO-HERD BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T WANT TO LOSE ANY ENDORSEMENTS OR GET BOOTED OFF YOUR SHOW. DON’T BLAME ME FOR THIS ONE, YOU PLUMP SNOW-HAIRED SHE-DEVIL. BOOOOOO!”

Man, sometimes it’s fun to write in all caps.

Anyway, Paula Deen, you’re kind of an asshole.

I’m sorry about your diabetes, but, y’know, maybe you should’ve told people sooner.

I hope God takes some of your toes. Just a few of them. As penance.

Feel better!

Love,

Little Chucky Wendig, Age Eight-and-a-Half

P.S., please read this great piece by Andrew Zimmern.

P.P.S. Okay, fine, no, I don’t want God or any other invisible space being to remove her toes.

P.P.P.S. What about just a pinky toe?

P.P.P.P.S. OKAY FINE SORRY JEEZ

Now, IFC is weird in our house: Verizon makes it a subscription-only channel and we do not subscribe. And yet, somehow we can still see it? I don’t know. I blame techno-djinn. As should we all.

IFC has been very good with the making-funny, given that there is where I also discovered Whitest Kids U Know (streaming on Netflix, and the Dinosaur Rap is necessary viewing).

Anyway, point being, I’m a bit late to the game here, but Sweet Jeebus, Portlandia is some funny shit. I’m not particularly aware of Portland culture, but it matters little — the show walks this bizarre line where it first puts hipster culture on a pedestal and then pelts it with Pabst Blue Ribbon cans until it falls off and breaks. On Saturday Night Live, I generally can’t stand Fred Armisen — and yet, here, he’s allowed to, I dunno, become his comedy self and go Full Tilt Weird with it. And it works. By god, it fucking works. (Oh, and his comedic partner in crime is, somewhat mysteriously, Carrie Brownstein from totally rad grr-grrl band, Sleater-Kinney. So, there’s that.)

If you don’t have IFC, Portlandia still streams on Netflix.

In the meantime, I leave you with this:

Christmas came and Christmas went, and in the wake of Santa Jesus we found the flotsam and jetsam of a child’s joy –what I’m saying is, our living room exploded and gave birth to a metric ass-ton of baby toys.

And now, over a week later, I’m left rocking back and forth. In the corner. Covered in a shellacking of dried saliva and carpet fibers, my fingers burned with battery acid as they tried desperately — and failed with equal desperation — to pluck AA batteries from their plastic cradles. My vision flits in and out. My muscles twitch with myoclonic spasms. I… hear things.

I hear the heretical hymns and blasphemous songs of a thousand insane toys.

I hear them when I wake.

I hear them when I sleep.

I no longer can distinguish between day and night, between up and down.

I have gone mad.

* * *

As it was the child’s first Christmas, that meant that everyone felt inclined to Go Big Or Go Home in terms of providing the tiny human with gifted amusement. That includes us, of course — we, too, procured for him a bounty of entertainment even though he’s got the attention span of an epileptic cricket and frankly is capable of achieving maximum delight from Tupperware containers, paper towels, or his own wriggling feet.

That said, buying toys for a new child is everybody’s right, and I’d dare not rob anyone of that pleasure.

The bounty included such plastic idols of childish wonder as:

Blocks; balls; some kind of baby-sized faux-laptop; Elmo; a talking puppy; an electronic plastic “book;” a learning station that features such disparate items as a phone and a book and a piano and, I dunno, an autopsy station or something; a thing that might be best described as a “musical lawnmower;” another set of blocks; rings; wibbly-wobbly bean-shaped things; and so forth.

This is all wonderful and we are of course thankful to have these things.

It’s just…

You need to understand:

These things all make noise.

They all make noise.

THEY ALL MAKE NOISE.

The blocks squeak! The balls rattle! The puppy barks and talks about his ear and his feet and his paw and tells the baby he loves him! The book sings songs and barks and meows and baa’s and bleeps and blorps! Everything is a cacophony of saxophones and ABCs and 123s and and bings and dings and ringing phones and chimes and rhymes and timing tones and next thing you know your ears are bleeding and you’ve developed this tic and you smell the stink of burning flowers before you fugue out and stab the mailman.

* * *

The toys, they are impatient.

And they reward impatience, reveling in it.

B-Dub, he likes to crawl around and lay resplendent amongst his booty, flailing his limbs so that his hand punches one toy and his leg kicks another and then he’ll flop up and over like a breaching whale and crash his head into another toy.  Each punch-kick-headbutt elicits a brand new sound. But the sounds will gladly interrupt other sounds — just as one is beginning to dig into a chorus of the ABCs or Hey Diddle Diddle, the baby hits another button and then another sound or song begins. And trust me, these things are All Buttons. Every little widget and hinge and plastic nubbin does something — every tiny insubstantial movement or event sets off a chain reaction of musical bedlam. If the baby just breathes near one of them it’s suddenly lighting up like a fucking rocket booster and singing some song about a happy froggy.

It sings the song of madness. Our house sounds like this:

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the –

BAAAAA!

Bing!

A B C D E F –

Meow! Meow! Meow!

*guitar riff*

I Love You!

Mary had a little –

Ruff ruff!

Foot!

Hey diddle –

Yellow foot!

*saxophone smooth jazz*

It’s learning time!

It’s learning –

It’s learn –

Ruff ruff!

And meanwhile it’s all lights and vibrations and suddenly I’m starting to stroke out and wonder, “Sweet Christ on a Crumbly Cracker, is this why kids have ADD?” Then I wipe the nosebleed and pass out.

* * *

If you leave the toys alone long enough, they get… angry.

They’re like the toys from Toy Story: they demand to be played with. Each toy addicted to play, fun-junkies who just can’t get enough, man. The toy phone will ring, tell you it has a call. The book will beg to be opened, beg to be played with, hungry for storytime. The puppy wants the baby to know: I love you, baby who I just met yesterday, baby who’s name I don’t know, baby who punches me and bites me and who later ignores me, I love you so much I’d kill for you.

You turn the puppy off and he goes silent.

But even the slightest vibration returns him to life.

You sneeze two rooms away and the puppy’s back.

I love you, you hear.

The toy, talking to nobody.

It’s a trap, you think.

* * *

One rhyme:

“Ring around the rosie / The doggy chase the kitty / Husha, husha / We all fall down.”

What the fuck is that?

What happened to the pocket full of goddamn posies?

Rosie and Kitty don’t rhyme!

…or maybe they do.

Maybe I’ve just lost my mind.

*blubber whimper sob*

* * *

A B C D E F G H I

Meow

Ring around the rosie

Ding ding ding

Riiiiiing riiiiing

Open! Close!

Ruff Ruff

Ear! Blue ear!

Elmo sleepy.

Up! Down!

IA IA CTHULHU FTHNAGN

I AM THE SONG THE WORLD SINGS WHEN IT DIES

KALI MA KALI MA KALI MA SHAKTI DE

THE ANGELS WENT SCREAMING INTO MOLTEN PLASTIC AS THE DEVIL LAUGHED

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA

It’s learning time!

Ruff ruff!

* * *

All the while, as the chorus of mirth and madness plays on, the baby is hyper-crawling his way toward anything that’s not actually a toy. For all the bounty that exists, he’s happy trying to eat a ball of lint or head-butt the couch. Or, best of all, track down the actual dog, a dog who he perhaps loves more than anything in this world. I’m sure as my wife and I slowly descend into the caverns of lunacy, the boy will discover our drool-slick bodies supine on the floor and he will find great amusement in playing with our twitching fingers, our slackened jaws, our tightly-curled toesy-woesies.

And the toys will sing an electronic dirge to mark our mind-death.

Let us begin.

invisible porn ambush

That’s the name of my new techno-mustache Harry Connick Jr. tribute band! Or something.

Okay, though, let’s — reluctantly – remove the word “ambush” from the equation for a minute. Invisible porn. Is that a thing? Can it even be a thing? Like, you have that saying — “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s around to see it, does it still turn into seven cats who determine the fate of the universe?” I think that’s the saying. Whatever. Point being, if the porn is invisible, does it remain pornographic?

If I cannot see the porn, how can it be porn?

Man, this really bakes my noodle. Invisible porn ambush.

It’s probably something Grant Morrison does to people.

is nathan fillion into bdsm

I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a healthy contingent of fangirls and fanboys who pray to all the heretic gods that he is. Though, to be clear, Nathan Fillion has too strong a jaw to be concealed by a mere gimp mask. You’d probably need like, a welder’s helmet or something.

i am a monkey and you can be so awesome

NO, you-who-are-a-monkey, it’s you who’s awesome. High-five, monkey!

exposition about tigers getting effed

Tiger-effing? Can we all just be adult here and call it “tiger-fucking?”

The act of tiger-fucking is present and active — that’s not exposition. And, as such, I now feel that all popular novels should contain at least some portion — between 10 and 57% of the total manuscript — devoted to the very act of fucking tigers. Though, one supposes you could write exposition based on the act. Like, say, the history of tiger-fucking? Or a dull and listless explanation of the mechanics behind tiger-fucking? (“After you remove the tranquilizer dart from behind the tiger’s ear, lift up the big cat’s tail and…”) Ennh. See? This is why exposition sucks. It takes all the magic out of tiger-fucking.

do you want more eggs you greedy murderer

I just want to go up and yell this at people. “DO YOU WANT MORE EGGS, YOU GREEDY MURDERER?”

I’m sure I’ll discover in the days to come that this is some new tagline for a PETA ad campaign where they equate “People who eat chicken eggs” with serial killers like Ted Bundy. Because if ever there’s a bastion of people with a steady-handed grip on the handlebars of rationality, it’s PETA. Hey, sidenote, did you know that PETA kills dogs? Good times!

why don’t you go ahead and go die movie

Yeah, MOVIE. Why don’t you go ahead and die? With your dumb opening credits? And your stupid ending credits? And your producer! C’mon! PSHH PFFT. Why can’t you just be a book already? You better just suck it, movie. You better go and eat a bag of shit and take a big ol’ dirty dirt-nap. You goddamn movie. With your CGI robosaurs. Your sad devotion to that ancient three-act religion has — *glurk! choking!*

the latest way of fucking

The latest? Like, the really latest-latest? Okay, here it is — hot off the FAX machine. I haven’t tried this out yet, so I don’t know if it works, but hey — you asked for it, pal.

This should work for fuckers and fuckees of all sexual orientations.

The latest way of fucking is to take your sexual partner, right? You lay him or her down on a bed of warm fettuccine noodles. Butter them up with duck fat. Then you cast a magical spell over both of your hands until they become psychic hell-squid. Then you lay down upon your partner and let the squid’s psychic tentacles invade all orifices — this should hyper-charge all of your gnostic particles and trigger a universal synaptic orgasm in the both of you.

This sexual move is called “Tentacles Steal The Happy Gonads.”

Though, on the street I think they just call it “Squidfucking, With Fettuccine.”

hound riders of penney’s pubic hair

Uhhh. Wh… Wha…

See, every time I do a Search Term Bingo, I get one entry that just… leaves me flummoxed. I don’t have a joke. I don’t have a comment. I got nothing. I just look at it and it’s like a hungry abyss, it keeps pulling at me and pulling at me, daring me to try to understand why the fuck anyone would enter that into a search engine. I have to imagine some very intense hallucinogens were involved. Just an educated guess.

tacowhores

Count me among their number. And our number is legion.

TACOWHORES.

This Christmas, on ABC Family.

cures for lung butter

You need some lung toast. That’ll give the lung butter something to do.

Mmm. Delicious.

*crunch crunch crunch*

*cough cough cough*

*crunch crunch crunch*

lady gaga flashes her lady bits

I wanted to include this because this has been the #1 search term here at li’l ol’ terribleminds on and off for weeks. I for one am happy to live in a world where Lady Gaga can show off all her weird womanly portions.

ass sex ass

This is a palindrome.

That is, if the definition of a palindrome is the word “sex” sandwiched by “ass” and “ass.”

Which it’s probably not.

But it should be.

It should be.

slef published books are terrible

Yes, slef-published books are uniformly awful. But that’s to be expected. The Slef are a horrible race — sludgy, grotesque beings. All of them, made of boogers and dog hair. Now, self-publishing — well, okay, that has some hits and some misses, I’ll grant you. But Slef-publishing, ugh. Their books are made of ants. Their poems sung through throats filled with septic run-off. Horrible horrible beings, the Slef.

what wines do writers drink

Ones pressed from the grapes of shame.

blackbirds by chunk wendig

GODDAMN YOU CHUNK WENDIG. That fuckin’ guy is always beating me to the punch with books. Double Dead by — yep, you guessed it, CHUNK WENDIG. Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey by — uh-huh, uh-huh, CHUNK WENDIG. 250 Things You Should Know About Masturbating On Public Transit by — oh, wait, that’s by some guy named Richard Wipe? Never mind. Point is, Chunk Wendig is always out there. Cock-blocking my every literary effort. He’s my otherworldly doppelganger. One day he and I shall do battle for dominance over the Wendig literary empire.

you look really good today

Aww, thanks! How sweet of you to say.

I’ve been working out. My skin has a healthy shine from the bacon grease applique I put on every morning. And my clothes have that mottled “a baby just vomited on them” look. All the rage in Prague!

motherfucking breakfast slush

New, from Nabisco! “Hey, man, what are you eating?” “MOTHERFUCKING BREAKFAST SLUSH, SON.”

Contains 11 nonessential toxic metals and 47 pieces of pulverized plastic packaging. Now comes in new autumn flavors: “Moldering fungi.” “Catshit In A Pumpkin.” And don’t forget, “MAPLE SADNESS.”

how do you know if your a writer

You know how to differentiate “your” from “you’re,” dipshit. That’s how.

virgin riding horse pony of orgasm

This needs to be a velvet black light panting hanging on my office wall. I don’t know what a “horse pony of orgasm” is, truthfully, and I don’t care. Whatever it is, it must be sublime.

Somebody out there? One of you artmonkeys? Draw this. Now. Please? Please.

Actually, I probably need an artist to illustrate a number of STB entries.

im a fucking unicorn no im a table

Well, make up your mind, shapeshifter. Shit or get off the pot. Unicorn? Or table? I mean, sheesh.

behave like a screenwriter

Pro-tip: it involves lots of crying, tons of whisky, and an inflatable narwhal.

Don’t ask about the narwhal.

If you join the Writer’s Guild, you’ll see.

They will make you see.

return of the vagina turtle scorpion

Ehh, this one was pretty good, but not as good as the first one. The original Vagina Turtle Scorpion, from 1974, was a fucking classic, man. A classic. None of that CGI shit. They made the Vagina Turtle Scorpion out of a scale model. Ben Burtt did the sound effects for the creature’s Doom Scream by throwing a bunch of hamsters into a garbage disposal. Controversial at the time. Do you remember the scene where the Vagina Turtle Scorpion — who by now you think is totally dead after his battle with the Screeching Dong Mongrel — rises up out of the desert sands and like, flies up and grapples that dirigible and punctures it with his hell-stinger? It was all, FLOOSH BOOM KAFOOZLE, and all the fiery shitty bits rained down on the ground. That was incredible. It affected a generation of nerds and cinephiles.

The new one just isn’t as good.

And the third one — The Vagina Turtle’s Lament In 3-D — totally sucks super-dick.

iam afraid of seeing someone on webcams

Like, anyone? Or someone in particular?

Maybe that little girl from THE RING. I’m scared to see her pretty much anywhere.

loosen your sfinkter

Holy crap-bunnies, that is the best spelling of “sphincter” I have ever seen. HERE COMES SFINKTER! *accompanied by wicked guitar lick* I want that to be a seriously non-rad late 1980′s hair-metal band.

strain all urine

All the urine? Human? Mammal? Avian? What are you hoping to achieve? The world’s largest collection of kidney stones? I guess that’s an admirable goal. Weirdo.

dingo with umlauts

Isn’t this the lead single by that new band, Sfinkter?

Elmo.

Fuuuuuckin’ Elmo.

By this point, the Baby Formerly And Still Actually Known As “B-Dub” is four months old. He’s a smiley, gurgly, farty beast. He grabs his feet. He shoves everything into his mouth. With his mouth he chews, he chews hard, his gums crushing my index finger daily. (Yes, he’s probably starting to teethe already.) He sleeps, but not much. He’s awake frequently. He’s very alert. He now laughs. That’s a delightful sound whose gravity is inescapable: we will do anything to make the baby laugh. Smack self in crotch with hammer? Drive car through a K-Mart? Kill so many nuns their bodies stack like firewood? Whatever you need, B-Dub. Just laugh for us. Just laugh.

I recognize already the danger of this path: a path many parents have gone down, a path where they work against good sense to keep their own children happy — no matter how little it helps them or the aforementioned children. There they walk, pandering to teenagers or adult children in order to win their friendship. Desperate and pleading and chasing the dragon just the same. Just love me, angry teenager. Just love me. And also, stop throwing food from the refrigerator at my head. Unless that makes you happy! Does that make you happy, angry teenager? What do you need? A sandwich? A dirt bike? A Taser? A hobo I purchased from the hobo black market? OH MY GOD I NEED YOUR APPROVAL

I can quit any time.

After all, our kid is a mere four months old and if I could bottle that laugh, you would buy it.

Here, listen:

Laughing Baby from Chuck Wendig on Vimeo.

See? You’d buy it. Right now.

Point being, we are happy to have an amused four-month-old rather than the occasionally epically cranky four-month-old. And one of the things that amuses Baby B-Dub is when we put on Sesame Street.

I grew up with Sesame Street. Loved it as a kid, and pretty much love it even still. This is Jim Henson we’re talking about. These are Muppets. Who doesn’t love Muppets? Al Qaeda. That’s who doesn’t love Muppets.

I understand the prevailing wisdom that says very young children shouldn’t watch television, and for the most part, Baby B-Dub faces us while we watch the Tube of the Boob. But we let him watch Sesame Street. I was pleased to turn it on and discover that it has not gone the way of other programming, which is to say, flashy ADD can’t-hold-an-image-for-more-than-a-few-picoseconds. Hell, watching some of Sesame Street I’m reminded of how ADD I’ve become. I watched one the other day that had Snuffleupagus suffering with a sneezing problem and by the end I was checking my watch. “Let’s wrap this shit up,” I’m saying.

B-Dub, though, he’s rapt. He’ll brighten when Big Bird comes on. He’ll talk to Abby the whatever-the-fuck-she-is. Fairy? She’s a fairy, right? Hell, soon as that new guy Murray shows up, B-Dub’s in. He’s invested.

And then, of course, Elmo shows.

It’s inevitable. It happens every episode. And the baby loves it. Elmo is a bright spot in a dark day, Elmo is a dollop of red whimsy, a giddy supernova, a blob of ketchup on a really great hamburger.

That is, it’s all those things for him. For the baby.

For me, Elmo is a fly inside my ear. He’s a broken fingernail, a bearded psychopath who won’t leave my TV.

Part of it is… part of it’s the laugh. This is like, a… a Joker-tormenting-the-Batman laugh. I tried to mimic the noise of Elmo’s laugh with my own mouth and I woke up two days later just outside of Carson City, Nevada, covered in scorpions and cradling some guy’s severed foot. Dead toes on my dry tongue.

Elmo’s mouth is the mouth of madness.

I try to get my head around Elmo and I feel woozy. I mean, okay, Elmo’s kind of like, a little kid, right? He represents the children watching. He’s playful and weird and frankly, a little bit stupid. (But that’s okay because he’s always learning. I guess. I dunno. Shut up.) So, why is it that Elmo lives alone? Who let Elmo have a house? Is he renting? Did he take advantage of a down market and buy a place? Are kids allowed to buy houses on Sesame Street? Jesus Christmas. No wonder we’re in the middle of an economic crisis. We let monster toddlers procure real estate. Great lesson, there. Someone call Tim Geithner.

Another great lesson: Elmo speaks in third person.

“Elmo this,” and “Elmo that.” Who does that? “Elmo’s fur is dyed with the blood of a hundred other Muppets!” Elmo cries. Then giggles as invisible hands tickle him.

Yes, please, Elmo, teach my son to refer to himself in the third person.

And why is Elmo asking a baby about anything? Every segment of Elmo’s World generally orbits a specific topic: doctors, bugs, cats, merkins, Lemon Pledge, torture porn, the methamphetamine epidemic, lasagna, whatever. Every part of the segment goes toward exploring the topic. Which is fine, in theory. Elmo sings a song, which is essentially Elmo just yammering the topic’s name over and over again, often set to a Christmas carol. Elmo talks to his fish, Dorothy, who often imagines Elmo in weird get-ups (Elmo is a caterpillar! Elmo is Rapunzel! Elmo is a cranky dominatrix!).

And then, inevitably, Elmo talks to a baby. He doesn’t refer to this baby by name. He just calls it “baby.”

“Hi, baby! What do you think about D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, baby?”

In response, the baby gurgles and spits up and tries to eat Elmo’s proboscis.

And then Elmo laughs: “Ha ha ha, you’re so stupid, baby. Babies don’t know about early silent films that were also used as recruitment tools for the Klu Klux Klan! You’re just a baby! Ha ha ha!”

Why? Why? Why do you ask a baby, Elmo? That baby doesn’t know jack shit. That baby never knows jack shit. You’re not helping anybody. And frankly, you’re embarrassing that poor baby. You know what happens to the babies that end up on the Elmo’s World segment? They get put up for adoption. Or sometimes they get turned into cat food. That’s true! I read it somewhere. The parents are so ashamed of their stupid babies — stupidity exposed by that sinister fiend, Elmo — that they have little choice but to go on without them.

I think I read it in Newsweek.

Anyway.

None of that, none of it, worries me more than –

Yes, you guessed it.

Mister Noodle.

Or Mister Noodle’s brother, Mister Noodle.

Or any of the foul miscreants from the dread Noodle clan.

Here’s the thing.

I’m pretty sure Mister Noodle is a kid-toucher. I know he’s a weirdo. He’s definitely an idiot.

But I think he’s got a thing for kids.

And given the fact that Elmo appears to be a kid, this adds a whole creepy vibe to the Elmo-Mister Noodle relationship. Let’s break it down a little bit and you can see what I’m talking about.

Every segment, Elmo opens his window (which for some reason is a struggle and the window resists Elmo’s attempts — possibly because the window has Elmo’s best interests at heart, which is good, because Elmo is a three-year-old who lives on his own because his parents probably died in a house fire that Elmo himself set). When Elmo opens his window… there stands Mister Noodle.

Mister Noodle waits for Elmo to do this. He hangs out outside Elmo’s window. All the time!

Staring. Lingering. Waiting.

Just the other day I watched one where the window opened and, as always, Mister Noodle stood right outside the window. But here’s the kicker, and this is not a joke: he was touching his crotch. Seriously! Not kidding! His left hand was hovering over his crotch. As if he had been interrupted. As if, had Elmo waited only 30 seconds longer, we would’ve caught Mister Noodle with his, erm, “mister noodle” out.

This segment-within-a-segment always goes the same way. Elmo asks Mister Noodle to expound upon the current topic du jour, and Mister Noodle spectacularly botches any implementation of said topic. If the topic is about brushing your teeth, Mister Noodle will shove a toothbrush up into his brain (don’t worry, there’s not much going on up there). If the topic is about dogs, Mister Noodle will try to leash and walk a hot dog. If the topic is about molecular microbiology, Mister Noodle will concoct a devastating flu plague that eradicates the Muppet population (the “Fozzy Flu,” they call it).

Then, some disembodied child’s voice — not Elmo’s — castigates Mister Noodle for dicking it up again. “No, Mister Noodle, we don’t eat 9-volt batteries. Silly Mister Noodle.”

Finally, Mister Noodle comes closer and…

… well, he frequently touches Elmo.

Like, one episode was about doctors. And Mister Noodle was fucking around with a stethoscope. When he finally learned how to use it, he walked to the window and used it on Elmo. Fine in theory, but it’s the way he uses it. He lingers on Elmo’s chest. He slowly draws the stethoscope’s head down and circles it there like he’s trying to do more than just hear this Muppet’s dubious heartbeat.

But here’s the really creepy example.

One segment was about “skin.”

Yes. Skin.

A serial killer topic if ever there was one. I’m just glad Elmo eschewed singing the “skinning a hooker” song.

Anyway, so around rolls the Mister Noodle sketch and of course Mister Noodle has to lean inside Elmo’s window with his blank eyes and his creepy mustache. And then Elmo says, “Slip me some skin!” which already is a red flag, because here I think Mister Noodle is going to go all Buffalo Bill and open a suitcase filled with tanned human flesh, but what happens instead is worse. Mister Noodle slowly, tenderly drags his fingers up Elmo’s wormy puppet arms — seriously, it’s like, a sensual touch — before finally caressing Elmo’s hairy palms. Then — then! — it’s time for “back-scratches.” Which look like backrubs. Because there’s nothing like teaching your small children to give and receive backrubs from weird adult neighbors. And the backrubs are, again, sensual. These aren’t manly backrubs. They’re not silly. They’re blissful, erotic massages. Mister Noodle seriously actually embraces Elmo and pulls him close.

Eventually that segment ends with Elmo singing the “skin” song, which is Elmo saying SKIN SKIN SKIN over and over again set to the tune of “Jingle Bells,” and then a book floats nearby, a book that I am led to believe is bound in some kind of skin, and Mister Noodle dances outside, high on Muppet-touching.

My child is eventually going to go to school and there they will tell him about “Stranger Danger” and then he’ll come home and watch Elmo get caressed by this mutant who may not even be Elmo’s neighbor. For all I know, Mister Noodle just lives in the bushes, having escaped some kind of… facility. Does Elmo run? Does Elmo say no, then go, then tell? No. Instead Elmo lets Mister Noodle kiss his neck while Elmo munches away on M&Ms that smell like weird chemicals. Good job, Sesame Street. Nice work there.

So, that’s what I see as the “Elmo Problem.”

Anybody else? Just me?

I’m doomed, aren’t I?

I will now make love to your mouth.

Uhh.

Let’s try that again:

Let my meat make love to your mouth.

Hrm.

Okay, forget all that, what I’m trying to say is, I’m going to give you now three recipes, and these three recipes will comprise your dinner at some point this week. Trust me, you’ll do it. You’ll do it, and you’ll like it. You’ll like it so much, you will give me money. And a gift basket. A gift basket of hookers. Because that’s how good these recipes are. Are you ready to receive my culinary insight? My gastronomical penetrations?

My meat in your mouth?

Step One: Pulled Pork From Pork Butt

Contrary to its name, pork butt — or “Boston Butt” — is not actually the ass-end of the pig. It’s the shoulder. They called it that because they used to store and ship it in barrels called “butts.” Either that, or they thought it was funny. “HA HA HA you’re eating butt,” those randy old New Englanders would say. And then they’d say “pahk the cah in the gah-rage wicked smaht” and “go sox” before throwing tea into a harbor.

Anyway. You’re going to need a big round rumpy-pumpy of pork butt.

Select a pork butt that is around three or four pounds.

Take it. Coat it first with a lacquering of olive oil.

Then coat it with a liberal smattering of:

a) kosher salt

b) chili powder

If you’re so inclined, wrap it up in Saran Wrap. Which, for the record, I am incapable of using. Because seriously, fuck Saran Wrap. The way they package that stuff is for assholes. Foil? I love foil. The cutting teeth of the foil box work as designed. Pull foil, tear down, riiiiip, blammo. Piece of foil. But the cling wrap shit, the teeth are on the opposite side. So you have to tear upwards. And the boxes aren’t sturdy enough for this. They bend and warp and the teeth aren’t sharp enough and the wrap resists, it resists as if it has a mind of its own. By the time I’m done putting Saran Wrap over something so simple as a mixing bowl, I’ve pulled out half the supply of cling wrap and it’s all bunched up over the top and it’s lost any semblance of static cling. I might as well cover that mixing bowl with one of my son’s diapers.

Of course, my wife wields cling wrap like a ninja. She walks over — riiiiiiip — then places then cling film over the bowl like she received training in a Shaolin kitchen somewhere. Lesson: she’s either been training with Buddhist kung-fu cooks or I’m a total dipshit. I’m leaning toward the “kung-fu kitchen” theory.

What I’m saying is, give the pork butt time to absorb the salty chili-ey goodness.

Now go to your grill. Turn that bitch on, then prep for indirect heat. Make sure the grill hangs around 300 degrees. If you have the ability to utilize smoke, that’s your call — for this recipe, I did not. Oh, and if any charcoal purists come over here and try to tell me you can’t do this on a gas grill, I will have my Shaolin wife come karate chop you in your gonads. A good gas grill will serve you well. Like a hound. A hound made of propane and metal and melting fat who breathes fire and chars animal-flesh.

You could probably do this in the oven, by the way. Same deal — 300 degrees.

But seriously: the grill does this better. I’m not fucking around. Don’t think that I am.

Anyway.

Get your pork butt HA HA HA HA HA butt. Just shut up. Shut up and go get it. Take it. Put it on the grill — indirect! not over flame! — and then close that bad bitch up.

Come back in five hours.

Step Two: The Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

This is not a red pepper coulis, exactly, but fuck it, you can call it that and I won’t tell. I won’t sick the gourmand police on you. Foodies will not descend from helicopters to punch you in the mouth.

You’re going to need some things for this.

You’re going to need one sweet onion.

You’ll need one large or two smaller tomatoes.

Then you’re going to need a fuckload of sweet peppers. (A fuckload is equal to one pound.)

Red, yellow, orange, whatever. I like the little guys, but your mileage may vary.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Chop coarsely. Curse while doing so. Call someone’s mother a “whore-biscuit” or “canker-nipples.” While disparaging someone’s mother, also be sure to remove the seeds from the tomato and the peppers because, ew. Who wants to eat a bunch of seeds? Squirrels, that’s who. And I assume you’re not a squirrel. If you are, and you’re all up in my blog chewing the wiring and depositing your foul little squirrel pellets in the programming, I will shoot you with my .410, which is my squirrel-killing gun. And it’s also my chicken-killing gun, just in case you’re one of those. Because chickens are dickheads.

Put all this stuff in a roasting pan over foil, get it good and lubed up with olive oil, and then liberally sprinkle with some salt and some Herbs de Provence. Yes, seriously. Hush up and do it, for Chrissakes.

Put in oven for one hour, or until you start to see the peppers darken around the edges.

While cooking, stand around, smelling that smell. Mmm. So good. Rub yourself. Just a little bit. Not to be gross or weird or anything. Gentle circles. Mmm. Yeah. So nice.

Ding. Hour’s up.

Veggies out of the oven, let ‘em cool, then pop ‘em in a mixing bowl.

Get your immersion blender, penetrate the sauce with your whirring doom-stick, and blend the shit out of those veggies. Metaphorically. The veggies should contain no actual shit. If it does, then you need to check yourself. You need to say, “What’s wrong with me? Why did I put feces in my food? Why did I sabotage myself again? I’m not a success. I’m my own worst enemy. This is why my wife left me.”

When you blend, you don’t need to blend it to a complete slurry. I like it with some pieces of pepper still floating around. Give it a little texture. Your call, though. You do what you like. It’s your sauce.

Now, add to this sauce two things:

a) 1/4 cup of creme fraiche (or sour cream if you’re, y’know, a hillbilly)

b) 1 TBsp of softened cream cheese.

Stir. No need to blend. Just stir. Not with your finger. Or your penis. Put that away. You should really see somebody about that. Always sticking your extremities into moist foods.

Cool in fridge until meat is meatified.

Step Three: Corn Done Two Ways

This is like a Choose Your Own Adventure game where every adventure ends in corn-a-licious delights rather than, say, getting eaten by Snarveling Moon Beasts or some nonsense like that.

Get four ears of corn.

Cook ‘em however makes you happy. Boil them for 8 minutes, grill them for 15 minutes, char them, whatever works for you. Just make a decision and cook the fucking corn already.

Then: de-corn the cob. Or un-cob the corn. I dunno. Cut the corn off the cob. Serrated knife FTW.

Option #1: CORN SALSA. Take the cut corn and put it in a mixing bowl and add in there: salt, pepper, one diced tomato, a de-seeded and chopped jalapeno, some melted butter, and the juice of one lime.

You could, quite seriously, add a splash of tequila in there. “Margarita Corn Salsa.” Awesome.

Option #2: CREAMED CORN. Chop up one small sweet onion or a handful of shallots and put ‘em in a skillet to soften them in butter — dice up a couple-few cloves of garlic in there, too. Throw the corn in there after about five or ten minutes (when onion is beyond translucent and nice and soft). Milk the cob, too. (Pork pulled from pig butt? Milk the cob? Meat in mouth? No wonder they call it food porn.) By milking the cob, I mean, scrape your knife down the cut cobs and get the rest of that “corn juice” out of there. Into this goes salt, pepper, and whatever herbs you have laying around. Oregano and parsley are nice here. But you could go with those Herbs de Provence, again, since you’re lazy and you already have them within reach of your greasy hands. Then mix in there two TBsps of creme fraiche again. Or sour cream. You pedestrian.

Sticking The Landing

Remove pork from grill. It will be crispy on the outside and unctuous on the inside. Pull it apart with your mind. Barring an unforeseen lack of psychic powers: tongs and fork.

Slap the pork on buns. (Butt? Buns? Goddamnit.)

Glob a dollop of that roasted red pepper sauce on there.

Put some Corn Your Own Adventure on the side.

EAT LIKE A FUCKING CHAMPION. Snarl and pound the table in delight.

Don’t forget to order me my gift basket.

Everyday from Chuck Wendig on Vimeo.

I generally give my Sundays over to writing the Mon / Tues / Weds blogs posts for this here website you have found yourself visiting. That’s the normal thing. The plan. The schtick. This Sunday, however, I was forced to give my day toward sitting around in the dark.

Listening to trees groan, shatter, and collapse in the woods.

Listening to branches hurled at our house.

Watching the waters rise at the road, making it impassable.

Oh, Hurricane Irene. You silly bitch.

Anyway! Point being, this week might be a bit lighter on the ol’ blogposts than usual. Oh, you’ll still get your content. You shivering addicts, you. Don’t worry, baby birds. Daddy will regurgitate into your mouths.

Right! Speaking of baby birds, as you can see, I give you: my first home video.

I can smell the excitement wafting off you like cat pee soaked long into an old carpet. Home video. The name alone conjures confetti, cake, bacon, and a small armada of temple slaves here to do your bidding.

Here at terribleminds I talk a lot about our new son, He-Who-Is-Nicknamed “B-Dub,” and this time I thought maybe I’d show you him in motion. From Then until Now. I apologize in advance for the diabetes and cavities this will cause you. He’s very high on the Glycemic Index, this baby. Just too sweet. Whatever. You’re going to deal with it and you’re going to watch it and if you’re a dude you’re going to grow ovaries.

Also: this is my first experiment with iMovie. Took me a bit to get the hang of the program — which isn’t hard, but remember I’ve never used a Mac before — so, feel free to deposit iMovie tips in the comments.

Please to enjoy.

Were you to take a freeze frame snapshot of my current writerly existence, you would find a still image of much juggling. No, not bowling pins, chainsaws, and rat terriers but rather a flurry of writing projects — and, as it turns out, a goodly portion of those projects are in fact novels.

BLACKBIRDS is at the publisher. I just finished the first draft of something with a codename POPCORN. I’m in the midst of doing a final editing pass on DOUBLE DEAD. I’ve got word count down on MOCKINGBIRD. I’ve got a bucket of notes on a little something-something called THE BLUE BLAZES. I’ve got the first novella in my Atlanta Burns series done with the second in the conception phase.

All this fails to mention the dozen-plus novels existing across various outlines and synopses.

Fuck turtles.

It’s novels, all the way down.

And so I thought, for those of you looking to write novels, that this was a good place to pause and have a look around. Let us gander at the wondrous miracle that is the birth and life of the common novel.

1. Crash Of Cymbals

An idea falls from the sky. A burning nugget of possibility tumbling out of the bleak black nowhere like a meteor. It slams into your brain. “A goblin love story! Wacky hijinks with two space detectives! The presidential campaign and political ambitions of the common Corsican nuthatch!” The idea blooms swift, like a rose in super-fast-forward. “This will be my opus,” you think. “A big advance. Book awards. Respect.”

2. Sinister Plotting

You plot and scheme to whatever level grants you solace. Maybe you write a 400-page “story bible” for a 350-page novel, a treatment so thick you could bludgeon a Cape buffalo with its weight. Maybe you just write a single index card in thick black Sharpie featuring some cryptic phrase that only makes sense to you as the storyteller: “CHRISTMAS SKELETON FAILS THE LSAT.” Hell, maybe it’s all in your head.

3. The Cold Vacuum Of Space

The blank page. Tabula rasa. Endless possibility. A million-billion ways to jump with the first sentence, first paragraph, first page. A finger hovers over the keyboard; it swiftly retracts as if stung. No. Yes? No. It’s like standing on the wing of an airplane in mid-flight. The wind. The empty air.

4. Hyperventilating

Panic attack. “Oh, Christ, I can’t do this. What do I do? The first page has to grab them. It has to grab them by pubes and perineum. The first sentence alone has to fucking sing. I don’t know what to do. What to say. I can’t feel my legs. Am I dying? Is it hot in here? Cold? My lips are numb. I can feel my teeth. Is this a palsy? Did I have a stroke? OH GOD WHAT IF I FUCK THIS PAGE UP.” Cue lots of sobbing and twitching.

5. The Eagle Has Landed

Swift is the realization that the first page doesn’t have to be perfect; it merely has to be functional. And suddenly, it’s like uncorking a bottle. A bottle which contained a rambunctious demon. Time to write.

6. The Tango Of Mirth And Shame

Day by day, a roller coaster. A whirling dance. Some days it’s 4,000 words that unmoors from your heart and soul the way a glacial shelf will suddenly shudder, crack and fall. Other days you barely carve off 1,000 words, and each word feels like a tooth ripped from the jaws of a snarling poodle/alligator hybrid (new on SyFy, THE GATORDOODLE). Some days you’re high on your own stink, huffing your word-fumes in a brown paper bag. Other days all you get is a swirling hate vortex living in the space between your heart and your gut, threatening to eat both. On Tuesday you’re king of the castle. On Wednesday you’re a fraud and a fool who will be found out. This way, that way, this way, that way…

7. Lost In The Woods

Late middle of the book. Everything’s come undone. You feel unfettered. You’re a lone pair of underpants hanging on the line, flapping in the wind. Where to go next? Does any of this make sense? It’s all coming apart. You’ve no sense of things. No grasp of placement. The character seem like strangers. The plot seems foolish. You can’t find the thread, can’t see the throughline. Is this a swamp? Where are your pants?

8. The Nattering Of Goblins And Crows

A chorus of goblins and their crow-faced consorts stand just behind you, whispering new ideas in your ear. They smell your confusion. “Don’t write that,” they say. “Write this.” And they parade before you a cackling Conga line of shiny new novels. It’s a ruse. A trap. They’re the sirens drawing you away from your current work and toward the crushing rocks of ruined productivity.

9. Beethoven’s Ode To Joy

You see the light. You find the path. You karate-kick the sirens in the face, stab the goblins, shoo their crows — you’ve found your way. Possibility and potential once more reveal themselves. Churn forward.

10. The Water Breaks, The Baby Is Coming

Writing the ending is you, duct-taped to a mining cart as it speeds down through the underdark, faster, faster, you can’t stop it now if you wanted to, it is what it is, the ending shall be what the ending shall be, you’ve lined up all the dominoes, they fall as they must, the hand-brake is broken, you emerge. The ending is written. The manuscript broadcasts its inchoate existence to the world.

11. Bliss

Oh my God. It’s done. It’s done. Ha ha! Ha ha ha! HA HA HA HA HA! Eeeee! Woo!

12. Ennui

Oh my God. It’s… it’s not done. Is it? This was just the first lap. It’s all uphill from here. Oh. Oh, no.

13. Overwhelming Dread

The realization hits like a nail from a nail gun: you’ve got a lot more work to do. The boulder must be pushed up the rock again. And again. And again. Your book is a boat anchor whose chain is wrapped around your ankle. It weighs you down. It’s a brick. A bludgeoning brick. Bricks and boat anchors and boulders, oh my. Dread assails you. Fatigue nibbles at your marrow like an army of tiny chipmunks.

14. Exile

Fuck that novel, you say. You piss on it and shove it in a drawer. You can’t stand to look at it anymore lest you kneel and sing a technicolor hymn to the porcelain god. Fuck that novel right in its wordhole.

15. Wake Up In Tijuana And Realize It’s Time To Go Home

It’s been weeks. Maybe months. You’ve been whoring it up with short stories, blog posts, social media, Facebook games, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, a fifth of vodka, and a drilldo named “Mister Sprinkles.” You stumble back into the house, and there it is. It’s escaped the drawer. The pee stains have dried to a crisp sepia crinkle. You pick it up. You reconcile. Your exile is complete.

16. Second Draft

You’ve got a meat cleaver, a micro-torch, and a jar full of maggots hungry to eat dead flesh. The second draft commences. Repeat after me: to fix something, I must first break it.

17. Third Draft

The third draft is there to fix the mistakes of the second. The second draft went the wrong way. Somehow the second draft just fucked things up worse. You walked the maze again and this time the minotaur didn’t just eat you, he sat you down for a long talk about a time-share. Then he made you do his taxes. Then he made love to you. Then he killed you. The third draft now has to walk the maze again. Beware of minotaurs.

18. Seventh-Fifth Draft

OH MY GOD SO MANY DRAFTS. You didn’t know writing a novel might need this much tweaking. What the novel is now looks nothing like what the novel was then. Same characters, same idea, same story. Roughly. But so much else is different. Every pass a new tweak. Writing, plot, theme, plot, new character, plot, writing. Dizzy-making. Still. By the end, you stand atop the hill next to the boulder. You suddenly realize: it didn’t roll down this time. You made it to the top. You and your boulder friend. From Sisyphean to Herculean. From impossible to improbable. From victim to hero. Holy fucking shit.

19. The Reader’s Report

Don’t get too excited. The reader has to weigh in. Maybe more than one reader. Stuff you were sure worked didn’t. Stuff you were sure didn’t work did. Up is down. Cat is dog. CRAP MORE DRAFTS.

20. The Editor’s Cocked Eyebrow

Don’t put that rage boner back in your pants. Because now a proper editor is going to look at it. Someone with a real critical eye. Someone who knows things the readers don’t. Someone who’s done this before. This is the forensics pass. Where the editors shines a UV light over the whole of the manuscript and shows you all the hidden blood spots, jizz drops, and other uninvited fluids.

21. Draft #3000

You’ve run the gauntlet. You’ve carried the novel through a hundred doorways ringed with fire. The work has been forged and reforged. Purified and refined. It is as good as you can make it. It is time.

22. The Novel Goes Off To War

Go forth, little novel. Duct taped to the novel are all your hopes and dreams. The novel flies far and wide. Agents big and small. Publishers big and small. Or maybe you do it yourself — get the cover together, format the book, and send the book to one of the many e-book marketplaces. The book must dance for its dinner, sing for its supper, suck dick for its dessert.

23. The Passing Of One Geologic Epoch

Nothing moves fast. Takes forever to hear back from an agent, then hear back from a publisher. These are books. Not Chicken McNuggets. It takes time to write them, and it also takes time to digest them. Even putting the book “out there” yourself isn’t fast. And the response isn’t overnight. Everything is slow. It is the forming of stalagmites and stalactites — one mineral drip at a time. A game of inches.

24. Conquest Or Castigation

YAY! You got published! Or BOO, you didn’t. Or maybe you got published and didn’t sell. Or maybe you got an agent but no publication. Or maybe you’re a bestselling author with a Rolls Royce literally cobbled together from rare first edition novels. You came and conquered, or you arrived and were promptly crushed by Hannibal’s elephants. Or you fell somewhere in the middle, in the hoary zone of the midlist. Or maybe you’re almost there, if only you’ll do three or four (thousand) more drafts…

25. Reflection

You look back over the last seventeen years — the length of time it took to get all this done — and ask yourself, was it worth it? Was it really truly worth it? Will you ever do this again? You can think you won’t. But you will. Of course you will. This is who you are. This is what you do. You couldn’t stop if you wanted to. You are writer. So get back to work, will you? This life cycle won’t live itself.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Okay, you know how Muggles don’t get what it’s like being a wizard? And how crazy people don’t know what it’s like being sane and sane people don’t know what it’s like being crazy?

Those who are not writers do not know what it’s like to be a writer. Ask someone who is not infected with the Authorial Virus (Types A through G) what a writer does and you’ll probably get a blank stare. Then that person will noodle it and shrug and say, “He sits up there in his room with his My Little Ponies, pooping fairy tales out of his fingertips for ten minutes. Then he masturbates and talks to people on Twitter.”

Masturbate? Well, fine. Everybody’s got a lunch hour, and it doesn’t take me 60 minutes to eat a damn sandwich. Nothing wrong with exploring my own body with various textures and food products. As for Twitter? Hey, you go and mill around the water cooler like a bunch of thirsty water bison, and I go and mill around Twitter like a digital version of the same.

But I do not defecate fairy tales out of my fingertips. If only the act of writing was quite so simple as all that.

(And, by the way, leave my ponies out of it. They didn’t do anything to you.)

Point being, it’s time to take this big callused toe of mine and drag it across the sand. There, then, is the line. On this side is me, the penmonkey. On that side is you, the… I dunno. Pen-muggle. Shut up.

What I’m trying to say is, this is what it means to be a writer. Got people in your life who just don’t grok the trials and tribulations of the everyday word-chucker? Show them this.

I Swear On The Life Of Word Jesus, It’s Actually Work

This one sucks because you know what? I get it. I’ve tried explaining to people what I do, and at no point does it sound like work. “Uhh, well, I wake up at 6AM and I get my coffee and then I get in front of the computer and I… make stuff up… and then I try to convince people to buy the things I just… made up.” It sounds like the world’s biggest scam and explains why so many people want to be writers.

I might as well have said, “I sit out in a sunlit meadow and play Candyland with a bunch of puppies.”

Let’s just clear this one up right now:

Writing is work. It’s not back-breaking labor, no — though, by now I probably do have scoliosis (and a Deep-Vein Thrombosis whose clot-bullet will probably detonate in my brain) — but it is mind-breaking just the same. I can sit here for hours metaphorically head-butting the computer monitor until this story — or article, or blog-post, or sex-toy instruction manual — bleeds out across the screen. And then I have to keep fucking with it, keep hacking it apart and juicing my skull-meats until it all makes sense. Everything else is emails and spreadsheets and outlines and porn and shame and homelessness.

Am I doing work on par with fire fighters or soldiers? Fuuuuu-huuuu-huuuck no. But neither are you, Mister Cubicle Monkey. Or you, Target clerk. So. You know. Hush up.

All I’m saying is, no, I don’t need a “real job” because I already have one.

I Promise You, We’re Actually Accomplishing Something

Someone might ask, “Oh, what do you write?”

So, you tell them.

“Can I read it somewhere?”

You tell them, no, you can’t. It hasn’t sold yet. Or it’s in production. Or it’s headed toward publication. Or you have an agent but no publication. Or it’ll post to the web in three months. Or it’ll hit shelves in a year.

Or, or, or.

And then you get that look. The nod. The polite smile.

What they’re saying is:

“You go up into your room, you hide yourself away for hours every day, hunkering down over your computer until your spine crackles and your fingers buckle from carpal tunnel, and you stare at that screen and write word after word after word, and you have… nothing to show for it? Nothing at all?”

Well. Uhh. Sorta.

Just the same, it makes us want to kick you in the snack drawer.

The Two Reactions

I tell someone I’m a writer, I get one of the following two reactions. Ready? Here goes.

Number One: “Oh. A writer. Uh-huh. Well, that’s great.” They blink and offer a kind of dismissive or incredulous smile, as if I just told them I was a cowboy or a space marine. Occasionally there exists a follow-up question. “So, you write, like, what? Books?” And that word — books — is enunciated as if it’s a mythical creature, like they’re asking me if I spend all day tracking Bigfoot by his scat patterns. Another follow-up question is, “Like Stephen King?” (Or, insert some other famous writer — possibly the only writer this person has ever heard of.) Yes. Just like Stephen King. I write horror novels about Maine and sometimes stop to roll around in big piles of cash.

Subtext to this is: That’s precious. A writer! Adorable. So, what’s your real job, again? Some thick-headed dick-mops actually possess enough gall to ask that question. “Yeah, but what do you do for money?”

Number Two: “OH NO WAY A WRITER?” Their eyes light up. Their mouth slackens. They act like they’re encountering… I dunno, a celebrity, or someone who broke through the fence and now runs free with the other ponies. “It must be so great,” they might say, as if it’s really awesome not being sure where your money will come from next or how you’re going to pay for that appendectomy you’ve technically needed for the last four years.

That one has some follow-ups, too. First, again, “Oh, like Stephen King?”

Second is, “OMG I’M A WRITER TOO.” They almost never are. My neighbor hit me with that one when we lived at our last house. Regaling me of tales of her One Novel that she never actually finished because She Has To Wait For Just The Right Mood. “My kids always know when inspiration has struck because I have to pull over to the side of the road and get in the zone and just start writing.” Yeah, because that’s how it works. I pay my mortgage with one unfinished novel. Turns out, you can bank inspiration and collect interest. That’s how I’m going to pay for my appendectomy! With the sweet wampum of inspirado.

Do any other careers earn this reaction? “OMG I’M AN ACCOUNTANT TOO. I sit at home and budget out how much money I have for weed and Doritos. And when inspiration strikes, I balance my checkbook.”

“OMG I’M A CHEF TOO, I just microwaved a can of Beefaroni.”

“OMG I’M AN ASTRONAUT TOO I totally just climbed a tree and looked at the moon.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like the second reaction over the first, but both are dismissive and misinformed.

Know this, non-writers: no, we’re not special, but we’re also not big dough-brained children, either. Put us somewhere in the middle between “jobless trilobite” and “second coming of Stephen King.”

We Try Very Hard To Be Normal

When writers dwell in their element — usually meaning with other writers or other creative-types — you can sense it. The freak flag flies up the pole. The whiskey comes out. The inappropriate jokes fly.

We laugh. We cry. We commiserate.

But when we’re amongst the, ehhh, ahem, pen-muggles, sometimes it feels like walking on unsteady ground. Like we’re going to be found out. Like eventually they’re going to snap their fingers and say, “Ahh, right, right. You just sit around in your underwear and tell stories to yourself, don’t you? I get it now.” Because that’s the vibe you get from some people. From family, from acquaintances, from those nearby.

“A writer lives there,” they may say in hushed whisper.

I’ve had this with other neighbors. You meet them for the first time, they say, “Oh, I sell cars, what do you do?” And you tell them. And the inevitable question is, “Oh, what do you write?” And the answer is, well, uhh, I write about vampires and zombies and goblins and psychic girls and corn-punks and monkey sex and I have a blog where I curse a lot and I also write games and books and…

By that point, they’re probably pulling their children closer. Hugging them to their hip. Just in case I decide to go all vampire-zombie-goblin on them. Just in case I’m some kind of serial killer.

And I want to say I’m not, but it’d be a half-hearted denial. After all, in my mind and on the page I’m constantly thinking of ways to torment and eventually execute characters. Which leads to…

Weird Shit Goes Through Our Head In A Swiftly-Moving, Never-Stopping Stream

I am ever lost in the fog of my own imagination. I don’t mean to suggest that this is what it takes to be a writer — after all, that fog of imagination is about as tangible and real as a pegasus fart. Just the same, I remain lost there for six minutes out of every ten, the grinder constantly turning, the gear-teeth chewing my mind-meat into usable ground brain-beef.

I need you to know that, non-writer, so when you ask me a question — “Would you like fries with that? Do you want us to change your brake pads? Did you take out the trash? Did you realize that the house is presently on fire?” — it explains the unfocused gaze, the faint moving of the lips where no sound comes out, the chewing of the inner cheek. It’s not just me being an idiot. I’m merely thinking of how to properly execute an invasion of New York City from the Hollow Earth, or trying to imagine the best way for a character to escape an undying serial killer, or pondering what happens when true love turns to bitter rage on a distant Saturnian mining colony.

It’s why my response to your question is usually a mumbled, “Wuzza?”

This is why writers must try very hard to live strong external lives.

Otherwise, we’d turtle inward, living only the myriad lives inside our own heads.

Here, Then, Is Your Soapbox

Sound off, authorial types. Let’s say you’re talking to a non-writer. What do you want them to know about being you? About being a writer with all your crazy writer ways? Scream it so the cheap seats can hear.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF