Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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Tag: hahaha (page 4 of 6)

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June 22, 2011 / 33 Comments

Search Term Bingo Stole My Dingo

Time again for SEARCH TERM BINGO, little babies. If you don’t know how this works, here it is: people discover this website via some of the strangest search terms one could imagine. I pluck these search terms out of obscurity and dissect them for gits and shiggles.

Let us begin.

ejaculation cordoruys

This is my favorite new Hipster Beard Ironic PBR Shop Teacher Eyeglasses band out of Portland.

dont do that, chuck

*pops thumb out of the lion’s butt*

*douses flaming hatchet in pail of angel spit*

*wheels the stripper cake back into the moving truck*

Fine. Fine. I won’t do that. Now you’ve ruined everything. I had something really great planned. Now nobody gets to see it. This is why we can’t have nice things.

ghost story amish melonhead

Oh! The tale of the spirit of the Amish Melonhead! Young Ezekiel Stolzfus, with his head the size of a rain-swelled cantaloupe, was out playing one day with an unadorned wooden block as his toy, a block he named “Old Esau Blockface,” and so rapt was he in his playing with his lump of wood that he failed to notice the horse and buggy rocketing toward him at a clip of five, maybe six miles-per-hour. The horse hooves clomped over Ezekial’s body and the buggy wheel ran over his face but still he did not die. Nay, what killed him was that his favorite toy, Old Esau Blockface, bounced away and fell into a rain gully and was swept away. Young Ezekiel then died of a broken heart, and now it’s said he haunts the old Creamery Road. You know his ghost is coming when you hear the sound of stomping horse feet.

Some folks say they see a glowing shape in the darkness. A shape holding an unadorned block of wood.

*crash of thunder*

how did ancient babies sleep

Ah. Yes. The ancient babies. The “olde babbies,” as it were. The ancient babies slept inside the coal-warmed corpses of white stags, sucking on river pebbles, their fists clenched around the puffy gloved fingers of the alien astronauts who founded the first civilization in Catal Hayuk. The ancient babies were protected by dire wolves. They dreamed of spearing pterodactyls. They slept well, the ancient babies. We’ve lost that, I think. We’ve really lost something special. I blame Phineas and Ferb. Whatever they are.

foreign fucking vowels!

Yeah! You damn foreign vowels! Stealing jobs from American vowels! With your goddamned Nazi umlauts! I saw a good old-fashioned American ‘u’ on the side of the highway the other day. Not just panhandling, ohhh no. Offering to suck dicks for money. I mean, he’s got the right shape for it, I’ll grant him this, but there’s no dignity in that. This is the end of the American Empire. Or should I say, ÃmërÎcæn Èmpírę?

i have lice

Well don’t bring that shit around here, pal. I got enough problems without inviting lice up in this place. I’m having a hard time getting rid of the bedbugs and the chlamydia. Now I gotta worry about lice?

many people die from frozen feces

Great, now you’ve given me something new to worry about. How many people? HOW MANY? I’m going to be walking around all day thinking my feces is going to freeze inside my body. Or that someone’s going to make a bullet out of frozen feces and shoot it into my tender doughy body! (If I don’t die from the trauma, I will die from some kind of out-of-control poop amoebas.) People everywhere! Dying from frozen feces!

It’s not worth going outside the house anymore.

things to know as a writter

The first thing would be how to spell “writer.”

a big dick should suck itself

I’ve said this many a time. A guy’s gonna have a big bullhorn, a super schwanz, a mega-magic-wand, a muscled baby’s arm, then that thing should be like a snake biting its own tail — it should jolly well suck itself. Get that on some t-shirts. On bumper stickers. On dasher, on dancer, on thrasher and prancer! … no, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Just go along with it. Don’t ask questions. Shut it.

cant get my dick inside a pussy so is castration a good idea?

Yes. If you can’t get your manhood inside a lady’s baby-maker, then your only recourse is to pop that bad-boy onto the tree stump and take a camping hatchet to it. Or you could go the chemical castration route. Don’t pay an expert, by the way. Chemical castration is like social media — any self-proclaimed “experts” are just Snake Oil salesmen. You want to chemically castrate youself? A can of Raid wasp-killer spray. Hose your big dog down with that for about, ohhh, seven cans or so. Done. Boom. No more swimmers. Your balls as dry and inert as the Salton Sea.

crowdsourced diapers

Crowdsourcing is plainly the future. It takes a village, and all that.

Here’s what I propose: a bunch of you people come over — say, a dozen of you — and each of you will form your hands into a giant bowl, and you shall then place this hand-woven bowl beneath my child’s pooper, and so when he makes yellow rain or squeezes out some newborn “caramel sauce,” you all catch it in your hands. Boom. Crowdsourced diapers. The future is here. High-five, Internet!

harmless animals that can crawl into your genitals

Any animal that crawls into my genitals is not harmless. Let’s get that straight right now. An animal that crawls around my genitals — like, say, a fuzzy koala, a sloth baby, or a slow loris — is a whole other story.

how long will my new beard hurt?

UNTIL YOU STOP RESISTING IT.

i am seeing dead birds

Then you should take them off your desk. They’ve been there for, what, a week now?

i have made an alien what could i make for a body (creativly)

Wh… uhhh. Eh? I don’t… ennh?

Seriously, no idea what you’re asking. Just make the whole thing out of mashed potatoes.

what is i love you in baby language?

The baby says GOO-ga, then pees in your eye. That’s “I love you.” Note, however, if the eye-pee is accompanied by goo-GA, instead — that means, “I will destroy you, giant human.” With babies, it’s all about intonation. And the target of their spraying urine stream. You might need to find a baby whisperer to help you. You can hire one on CraigsList. Or so I’ve heard.

i really wanna be with you, love ponies

This is my favorite Judy Blume book.

ima forage for an orange while i look at the corpse of a whore

This is my favorite e.e. cummings poem.

it only hurts when i laugh fire gas

HAHAHAHA *blorch*

*fire jets from mouth*

OW GODDAMNIT OW

Yes, one imagines it would hurt when you laugh “fire gas.”

knife-wielding baboons

How’d you know what my next novel is going to be about? GET OUT OF MY MIND, INTERNET.

kodiak bear reading poems

This would be the best single-serving Tumblr site ever. Someone get on this. The Kodiak bear should begin by reading, “To An Athlete Dying Young,” by A.E. Housman. Then, he should follow-up with e.e. cumming’s “forage for an orange.” Poetry is so beautiful, especially when read by a man-eating bear.

monkey DNA flowers

Ahh, the sophomore album by the Ejaculation Corduroys. If I’m being honest: disappointing.

tits on a lawn mower

Once again the Internet turns me on to the hot new lingo paraded about by youths in America. “Tits on a lawn mower, dude! I just did a gnarly 360-degree wallaby pube-laser on my hover-board!”

Of course, it also reminds me that the world would be a better place if lawn-mowers did have big, luscious breasts dangling there. Men would never not mow the lawn. They’d be out there all day, just mowing and mowing. “Nancy, what’s Dave doing out there?” “He said he thinks he ‘missed a spot,’ but you ask me, he’s just out there fondling the tittles on that there Husqvarna.”

we’re gonna smoke that motherfuckin christmas tree

Every year in this country, more and more kids get hooked on smoking these motherfucking Christmas trees. Huffing pine-tar. Crumbling up delicate ornaments into their candy cane pipes and cooking it down with a candle that smells like egg-nog or mulled cider. “Chasing the Reindeer,” they call it. That first high, you catch the reindeer and just bang the jingle right out of that reindeer’s bells — but after that, the reindeer is ever elusive, running faster and further with every high. That’s not a metaphor, either. Every time you smoke a motherfucking Christmas tree, you get to pork one of Santa’s reindeers. True story.

what celebrities say about emu meat

Brad Pitt says, “It’s emu-licious!”

Meg Ryan says, “Emu meat destroyed my lips but I don’t care because I will shank a motherfucker for some emu meat!”

Jim Varney says nothing. BECAUSE JIM VARNEY IS DEAD.

Let’s all have a moment of silence.

Of course, I joke, but soon I’ll find out that a rash of American celebrities are doing Japenese “emu meat” commercials or something. Goddamn celebrities. Goddamn Japan. Ruining the fun.

what to do when your body produces too much turmeric or cumin

I harvest the turmeric from my nipples and scrape the cumin as it accumulates like pollen on my thighs. Then I make some kick-ass emu-meat tacos. Why? What the hell do you do with all those bodily spices?

what do a witch’s tittys look like?

Termite mounds.

why do murder mysteries cause women to masturbate?

You find out, you let me know. Every time I’m at the airport, though, whoo-dang. Ladies sitting at the gates reading some sweet-ass murder mysteries, sitting there and doing the old “murdering the little man in the canoe,” if you know what I mean. Something about the delicate combination of death and mystery just gets the women-folk all juicy-goosey.

In other news: what the fuck are you talking about?

my wife will not listen to my advice about the baby

That’s because your advice is terrible. C’mon, seriously? “Swaddle him with bungee cord. Let him nurse on the nose of this dead possum I found — he needs the bacteria to strengthen his physio… bio… babylogical system. If he gets cold at night we’ll just kill a pony and let him sleep inside the animal’s warm guts. What? Han Solo did it with a Taun-Taun. It’s how the ancient babies slept. That shit works, hombre!” And also, why are you calling your wife ‘hombre?’ You might want to think long and hard about that.

sometimes you just have to fuck the demons out

Please don’t touch me.

June 13, 2011 / 63 Comments

Transmissions From Baby-Town: Love In The Time Of Diaper-Changing

Nobody tells you the truth. Every parent upends buckets of advice upon the new parent’s head, because, not for nothing, they’ve accumulated knowledge both good and bad that they feel is best to share. But what they never tell you as you’re building a crib or painting a nursery or buying a small desert island comprising a hundred boxes of Pampers Swaddlers is this:

“You’re building the walls of your own prison. And the baby, the baby is the warden. Oh, he’s a cherub-cheeked warden, all right. He’s cute. Chipmunk cheeks packing love and adorability the way real chipmunks store acorns. But don’t misunderstand. He’ll run you ragged. He’ll punish you when you least expect it. And you can’t predict it. Can’t understand it. Because what we got here… is a failure to communicate.”

* * *

The way this kid eats and destroys our sleep, he should be a goddamn Batman villain.

The Catnap Killer. Doctor Hypnos. Mister Dozer.

The Sinister Sandboy.

* * *

Seems right now he’s maybe going through a growth spurt. That’s what all the Internet forums say. Of course, all the Internet forums say we’re probably three days away from accidentally smothering our child with crib bumpers or improbably infecting him with some kind of Baby Smallpox. The Internet is rarely a place to find sanity, but even still: most concur that three weeks is the time of a growth spurt, but right now it just feels like the only thing that’s growing is the child’s propensity to be a tiny pink dictator.

(And remember, the root word of “dictator” is “dick.”)

Yesterday it’s like someone stuck a crank in his back and just kept on winding it.

Cranky, cranky, cranky.

Oh, the tears.

The screams.

The lobster-faced apoplexy.

He wants to eat. All the time. GIVE ME THE BOOB, tiny dictator cries. He pounds the teat the way a frothing professor pounds his lectern. He grabs for it with witch nails. He draws it close in his taloned grip.

You know he’s hungry. Because he’ll try to eat anything. He shark-bites his own fists. He’ll gum my thumb. He’ll even try to eat my beard. Which is not recommended in any of the baby books. Especially since I save food in my beard like a diligent hobo should.

It’s every hour. The storm of cluster feeding.

With each lightning strike, the baby descends once more to feed.

The lone piranha must eat enough for his whole concatenation.

* * *

We’re supplementing. With formula. Doctor’s orders. He wasn’t gaining enough weight, she said. I mean, he wasn’t some tiny peanut, either, some little kewpie doll. But of course he didn’t conform to somebody’s magical chart that says ALL BABIES ARE LIKE THIS ALWAYS FOREVER AND EVER. Those that don’t conform to the Chart of Truth must submit for re-education immediately. She scares us with the comment, “We don’t want him to have a failure to thrive.” A failure to thrive sounds like the next thing to, y’know, death. “This is our child: the limp weed that clings to life but never flourishes. Don’t hug him too closely. He may crumble like an over-baked cookie.”

With formula, he did gain weight and gain length. (And not all of it in his penis. BA-DUM-BUM. I’m here all week. Don’t forget to try the swordfish. And the vodka.)

Even still, after two weeks of gaining, the doc still wants us to supplement.

Then we wonder: maybe she’s a shill for the formula companies. She goes home and goes into her bedroom and rolls around on all that sweet-ass Similac money. Big Formula sends her kids to school.

You look online — remember: never a good idea — breastfeeding advocates will make it very clear that supplementing is a death sentence. That we can now expect our child to be a rubicund, languid fatty sitting on a throne made of Happy Meals, his body lubricated by the grease of French Fries, his toddler diabetes running rampant through him like a wildfire. I’m surprised nobody’s linked it to autism yet. That’s another fun one. In the baby world, everything causes autism. Mercury. HFCS. Plastic toys. Chinese nipples. Funny looks from Mom. Dog hair. Oaken cribs. Rain on Tuesdays.

So, we straddle worlds between breast milk and formula.

Pariahs to both.

* * *

Formula makes him gassy. Where before his poop smelled like buttered popcorn drizzled with caramel (no, really), now it smells more like, well, poop. He’s gassy like an old man is gassy. After eating Brussel sprouts. And his own poop. I don’t even know how the tiny human can be this gassy. I couldn’t let that much air out of a balloon. Formula helps to defeat a child’s protective defense. A baby’s breast-fed effluence smells pleasant so we don’t decide, “You know what? This kid stinks, I’m going to go throw him in a river somewhere.” Formula removes that protection. It’s good we don’t have a river nearby.

* * *

I kid, of course. I would never throw my child in a river.

I would put him in a box labeled FREE KITTENS.

Or maybe that’s not exotic enough.

FREE PANDA.

Much better.

* * *

Oh, wait — look! A website that suggests both formula and breastfeeding could cause autism.

*punches the Internet*

* * *

We are, like most parents, deeply concerned about SIDS. Everything is SIDS this, SIDS that. Everything “causes” SIDS. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. No crib bumpers. No toys. No crib sheet. If you don’t appease the beast with the ritual sleeping configuration, it shall steal into your home at the stroke of midnight and steal thine child’s breath, and it shall use the stolen breath as a perfume for his own shadowy daughters.

Or something.

Don’t let him sleep in bed. Don’t let him sleep in the car seat. Don’t let him sleep duct-taped to the ceiling. Don’t let him sleep in a lion’s mouth. (Well who else is going to clean the lion’s teeth?)

They say, no sleep positioners. Of course, our nurse tells us to feel free to prop him up with rolled up blankets — a no-no in SIDSlandia — and in propping him up we’re stopping him from rolling over and, y’know, contracting SIDS. So in attempting to defeat the demon we are simultaneously inviting the demon into our home. SIDS if you do. SIDS if you don’t.

Some people say that our baby shouldn’t be able to roll over yet.

They don’t know our baby. The kid is like a tumbling boulder chasing after Indiana Jones.

They say, well, then, swaddle him. Swaddle him up tight.

They still don’t know our baby. Our baby is fucking Houdini. He’s not supposed to be able to get his arms free? Fuck you, he can get his arms free. He flexes his body, wriggling and writhing, until finally one hand sneaks out the top like a worm popping out of an apple. And with one free it’s not long before the other is free, too — a pair of Devil’s hands undoing all our good work. And inviting the SIDS angel with a come-hither finger.

This is one time when the Internet actually helped lessen my fear. I decided to actually look up SIDS, and it’s not what everyone seems to think it is. It’s very rare. It’s a diagnosis of exclusion. It also necessitates that other factors be in play beyond merely, “Oh, shit, I let my baby sleep on his tummy and OH GOD THE SHADOW MAN CAME AT NIGHT AND STOLE HIS ESSENCE.”

I’m not saying you shouldn’t protect against it, but it feels like I’m shouting at the tides.

* * *

We have people over who want to see him, and nine times out of ten he’s in a coma when they get here. Sure. Fine. Nice. That’s when he sleeps. I say to them, he’s like the tigers at the zoo. You go to the zoo you want to see the tigers doing all kinds of bitchin’ tiger shit. Chasing goats. Eating Himalayan explorers. Playing with a massive ball of yarn. Watching funny cat videos on the Internet.

But when you get there, all they’re doing is sleeping on a rock.

B-Dub is like that. When you get here to the Baby Zoo, he’s gone. Oblivious to the world.

Dull as a saucer of cold milk.

* * *

Just moments ago, his reward for a long cluster feeding session was to throw up on his mother.

I suspect this will be a theme for the next 18 years.

“Thanks for the car keys, Dad. To pay you back I stole your Laphroaig Scotch. Dude, that stuff tastes like the burned pubes of a swamp hag. Also, I threw up in the glove compartment. See ya!” VROOOM.

* * *

I say all this but the reality is, it’s worth it. All the spit-up and screaming and arcs of golden urine and sleeplessness and madness. All of it does little to defeat his puckish smiles, his big eyes, his searching tiny fingers, his waggling monkey toes, his look he gets when he sleeps where he laughs like he’s remembering a joke he heard (“remember when I was coming out of the womb? yeah, good times”), his discovery of his feet, his coos and burbles, his gurgles and coyote yips, his funny faces, his Daddy look where he cocks one eyebrow and looks at you like you’ve lost your goddamn mind, his squirms and wiggles and flails.

All of it, the sheer measure of adorability.

Like a baby seal, we cannot club him.

* * *

“I said, what we have here is a failure to communic OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO CUTE I WANT TO PINCH YOUR CHEEKS AND PUT BUTTER ON THEM AND EAT THEM UP NOM NOM NOM.”

I guess we’re keeping him.

May 19, 2011 / 18 Comments

Search Term Bingo, Starring Johnny Depp As “Pony Boy”

Ahhh, there we go. The totally absurd search terms are coming in hot and heavy once again.

And so it is that I emerge out of shadow and slap you in the face with a wet sack of Search Term Bingo. If you don’t know the drill, here it is: I comb through the search terms people use to find this blog, and I cherry-pick the weirdest of those search terms and… well, madness ensues. Please to enjoy.

what happens if i accidentally breathe water

You might suffer a funny little side effect called “death by drowning,” dipshit. What do you think this is, THE ABYSS? You cannot breathe water. You cannot aspirate a cheeseburger. It’s oxygen or nothing, buddy.

you jizz hamsters pony boy

The lack of punctuation here is killing me.

“You! Jizz Hamsters! Pony boy!”

“You jizz hamsters, pony boy.”

“You. Jizz. Hamsters. Pony. Boy.”

“You jizz hamster’s pony, boy.”

OMG SO MANY OPTIONS.

I’m going to go with the second option, because it feels like an insult strung up in future slang. Some cyber-hacker anti-corporate teen robo-courier from the future flips the middle finger to some jackhole in a jet-car that just cut him off in traffic and he’s all like, “You jizz hamsters, pony boy!” And passersby gasp. So, remember, anybody gets in your way, call them a pony boy and tell them they jizz hamsters.

Which, come to think of it, sounds really painful.

x-ray of gun in mans anus

Such a shame. I misread this the first time, instead reading it as, “X-Ray Gun In Man’s Anus.” And I was like, whooooa, an X-Ray gun? I want one! Even if it’s been up some dude’s keister, I want it.

“I’ve got an X-Ray gun!”

“Why does it smell like that?”

“Uhhh. Nothing. Stop smelling my X-Ray gun, dick.”

sniggering mtv teen

I now know what I will yell at people when I am an old man and they come onto my lawn. “Get off my grass, you sniggering MTV teens! With your hair! And your clothes! And all that sniggering! Go back to MTV! Go diddle yourself to the Lady Goo-Gas of the world you little prevert!”

But my eyes will be so bad, I’ll probably just be yelling at a whitetail deer. The doe will blink at me, flick her tail, then go back to eating some clover. “QUIT YOUR DAMN SNIGGERING!”

still waiting on tribulations

Aren’t we all?

Won’t have to wait much longer, what with Saturday being the end of the world and all that. Or, at least, the Rapture. Like I said on Twitter last week, I hope when the Rapture comes it takes away all those assholes who believe in the Rapture. Then we can totally have a big orgy. Melzer’s bringing the Chex Mix. We still need someone to bring the ginger ale, the blow-up donkey, and the industrial lubricant.

Sign up by the door. Let me know what you’re bringing.

carla gugino’s thighs

This is one of the search terms that gets people here with some frequency. It’s this, search terms about Pauley Perrette, “beard maintenance,” “turtle penis,” and “albinos of ghost mountain.”

Seriously, together those search terms account for dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of views per day.

Also: Carla Gugino’s Thighs. Band, or album?

Biography, or autobiography?

CIA Codename, or Native American Ritual Dance?

giant rotating nipple ships from outer space

Sold. Here’s a bucket of money. Go make this into a movie.

websites for people who like use meth

I was pleased to learn that terribleminds was named one of the Top 101 Websites For Writers by Writer’s Digest, but I am now truly geeked to learn that we have been named one of the Top 101 Websites For Folks Who Tweak The Fuck Out On Tubloads Of Crystal Meth. That has always been my goal here: to entertain those most jovial citizens, those with meth-scabs and tweaker-teeth, those who live in moldy trailers and smell like cat pee, those who vacuum for days just because they can, those who will stab you in the face with a rusty garden trowel just to get a box of Sudafed so they can cook up more of that sweet-ass crank.

I’d like to thank my parents. My wife. And God.

*kisses award, points to the heavens, grabs crotch*

when will my beard come in?

I dunno. When did you order it?

sucks his own clit

Nudge, nudge.

Might want to take an anatomy class. Or just Google, “Do dudes have clitorises?”

You know, on second thought, don’t Google that. Just take my answer — “no they do not” — and walk away.

omg baby comming out through vagina

This search term makes it sound like it’s some kind of holy-shit biological surprise. Well, where the hell did you think it was going to come out? Her nose? Did you think she was having some kind of butt baby? They don’t deliver them via UPS, for Chrissakes. Newsflash: babies come out of a woman’s hoo-hah. Any Obi-Gyn Kenobi will tell you that shit. Just call around. “OMG!” Shut up.

the whiskey dragon

Dibs. Dibs! DIBS. I called it. This is the name of my next novel. “The Whiskey Dragon.”

Come to think of it, I want this name for so many things. I want to buy a pub and call it that. “Come on down, have a pint and a shot at the Whiskey Dragon!” Would make a good name for my computer, too. And my car. And my penis. And my first-born son. “This is my spawn, Whiskey-Dragon Wendig.” Nobody will fuck with that kid. What bully’s going to be like, “Let’s go beat up Whiskey-Dragon!” You know that’s a bad idea. Because, c’mon. Whiskey-Dragon.

I also envision a dragon that, instead of breathing fire or ice, it breathes whiskey.

Thank you, Search Term Bingo. Thank you.

some stupid monkey for miranda

Yeah! Fucking Miranda. She’s always like, “Rah rah rah, whine whine whine, I want a monkey!” Well, fine. Fine, Miranda, fine. Here’s a stupid monkey for you. I found him in a dumpster humping a a cardboard box filled with old lettuce. You can have him! He’s just some stupid monkey. He’s probably going to end up biting half your face off because that’s all these stupid monkeys do. People get them and they dress them up in pink dresses or powder blue tuxedos and they’re all like, “This is my son! I love him so much!” and then the monkey bites out their eye and poops in the hole. But whatever. Whatever, Miranda.

You wanted a stupid monkey. You got a stupid monkey.

I hate you so bad, Miranda.

my wife has a sweet ass

I’m happy for you, but why did you need to Google that?

will beanie babies make a comeback

For the love of Jim Nabors, I hope so. I have a metric poop-load of these goddamn things.  I got the little fucking bears, I got the dogs and the cats and a pink lizard and a dumb little dolphin and a goddamn… I dunno what he is, some kind of fucking crustacean or some shit? Whole room full of these sonofabitches. It’s like — this, this is why the economy shit the bed. Forget real estate. Forget the tech boom. The Beanie Baby Bubble is real. It affected millions when that zit popped. These babies were going for a mint. A mint. You could walk onto a car lot, throw down a gym-bag full of these fuzzy little fuckers and walk out of there with a previously owned Lamborghini Diablo. But now you can’t give these things away. They’re worth negative money. If you even show a Beanie Baby to someone, you have to them pay them two dollars. Seriously. I’m not messing around. There was some nonsense about AIG insuring Beanie Babies, and then I think the Ty Warner company like, bet against the Beanie Baby market, which meant they were betting against the Beanie Baby collectors at the same time they were making money off the Beanie Baby sales?

It’s sick. It’s a sickness. This is what caused the Recession. Beanie Baby whores. All of them.

bingo boobs

This blog is no longer called terribleminds.

It shall hereby be known as Bingo Boobs.

And it’s the name of my first-born daughter. My son, Whiskey-Dragon. My daughter, Bingo Boobs.

what food can you put on your breasts?

If you’re laying down, probably most foods, right? Not that I’d recommend slopping a whole Christmas ham on there or whatever, but I’m just saying — you could. You totally could.

Standing up, well, it depends not so much on the size of the breasts as how much weight they can support? Like, do they function as shelves? Try experimenting with various foods. Okay, cotton candy, easy. Some lunchmeat slices, not too much trouble. Go bigger. Loaf of bread. Canned peas. Beef tenderloin. Jug of milk. Dead goat. My advice to you is: dream big. Don’t stop believing.

is it bad to suck back in snot

That’s what killed Elvis.

frothy eye cockerel

New cocktail name? Or a rad new sex move? You tell me.

which face beard can shoot

It depends which beard can do laser. Often, the left face beard is the face beard with the laser installed, and usually — usually, but not always — the right face beard has a force field built in. But that’s not a guarantee. It depends on which company makes the face beard. Microsoft? Google? Weyland-Yutani? Leave me your serial number, your registration code, your birthdate, your social security number, and your favorite color, and we’ll get this whole thing figured out nice and quick. Thanks for calling! Have a great day.

unicorn nipples

I demand that this be a new cookie.

Okay, Internets, here’s your task: drop into the comments below and describe for me what a cookie called a “unicorn nipple” should look like. Bonus points if you include a recipe, real or imagined.

May 16, 2011 / 25 Comments

Ten More Ways To Support Authors You Love

This past week, I caught an article that ping-ponged around the Intersphere where author Jody Hedlund explains — nicely and wisely — ten ways to support authors you love.

It’s a great post. Hedlund lists a lot of strong ways that speak toward what I was saying a few weeks back (“The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors“). Even still, I thought, “Surely that can’t be it, right? Readers and fans don’t need to stop there. Writers are needy little sumbitches. Yes, good, leave a review. Sure, okay, get the local library to stock the book. All great ideas. But the author is a fragile orchid under glass. The author needs special attention.”

And so, I thought, let’s add some options to that list.

Thus I give unto you:

Ten more ways to support the authors you love.

Beginning now.

1. Backrubs And Sponge Baths

Writers have all the posture of Gollum after a tequila bender. We’re basically cave crickets. Blind. Pale. Bent over. Covered in the excrement of the bats that dangle above us. This is not conducive to producing good writing. Science Fact: ideas start in the brain, then travel down the spine (via Monorail, like at Disney World) and are then carried out to our dominant arm and hand where we take the idea and write it down. This is science. This is medical truth. If we’re all hunched over like some kind of Scoliosis Monster (one of Jim Henson’s less-popular Muppets), then the Monorail crashes. The idea is left bleating like a lost llama, unable to reach our hand.

We need backrubs, people. Shoulders. Neck. Deep-tissue. Hot rocks. Happy endings. And a sponge bath wouldn’t hurt, either. Someone needs to wash the Dorito powder out of our hair. It’s not a good look.

If you don’t want to be the giver of the massage, no worries. Hook us up with a gift certificate to the nearest shady Asian Massage Parlor. I’m sure Groupon has a deal going.

2. Lay Gifts At Our Feet

Have you ever met a writer? Sure you have. They’re the guys sitting in subways ranting at you about “reptile overlords” and trying to get you to drop some change in their quivering palms. We’re not wealthy people. The latest average advance on a novel is $17 and a pack of Virginia Slims cigarettes.

We need your support. So buy us stuff, for Chrissakes. Shower us with presents.

A nice casserole, maybe? (We’re surely hungry.) Some warm socks so our toes don’t freeze (and get eaten by rats)? Printer ink? (We like to huff it.) New MacBook? (Cult of Apple!) A pony? (Like I said: hungry.)

3. Build A Fan Page

Authors like to know they have fans out there — not just readers, but full-on fanatics who tilt their ears so that they may hear our every brilliant whisper. Build us a fan page to show your love and, more importantly, ceaseless devotion. I’m not just talking about, say, a page on Facebook. That’s nice and all, but c’mon, really? That’s amateur karaoke right there. No, we’d like something… bigger. Buy a web address. Get a host. Put up a whole sycophantic Tiger Beat spread of us online. Pay the hosting fees. Hire a web designer. And for Sid and Marty Krofft’s sake, get some Flash animation up in that bizzotch.

Flash animation is all the rage. It’s like, boom, intro cartoon. Violins. A phat breakbeat. A chorus of angel MCs slinging a rap about how awesome we are. The sun rises. Becomes our head. Our mouth opens. Rays of word power shine out. Destroy the world. Then we eat the stars. Finally, the whole thing morphs into an advertisement announcing our latest book, movie, blog post, pamphlet, or tweet.

4. Take Over Bookstore Displays

You go into… well, I was going to say Borders, but you go into a Borders you’ll be attacked by troglodytes and killed for your meat. Those are dead zones, now. Let’s go with Barnes & Noble. You go into a B&N and there, all around you, are book displays offering the hottest new releases of the world’s most mediocre authors. Dan Brown’s The Giuseppe Conundrum. Nicholas Sparks’ Song In A Bottle To Remember. Snooki’s Hot Homunculus Nights. The book displays are like idols built for blind, idiot gods.

Those authors don’t need book displays, though. When Mitch Albom releases The Five People You Pee On In Hell, people know it’s out. They’re coming there to buy it. They don’t need a special display.

You know who needs those displays? Your favorite mid-list authors, that’s who. Go to the store. When nobody’s looking, clear out the latest “someone-who’s-not-Tom-Clancy-wrote-a-book-with-Tom-Clancy’s-name-on-it” book. Hide them in the self-help section. Then take your favorite author’s books and re-fill the display. With some markers, duct tape and construction paper you can complete the advertisement.

Your favored author will thank you.

5. Become An Enabler

Writers need writer juice. If it’s before 9am, we need coffee. If it’s after 9am, we need liquor. If it’s after 9pm, we need pulverized Ambien stirred around a glass of lemonade (aka “Daddy’s Special Tonic”).

So for the sake of bibliophiles everywhere, buy us a cup of coffee. Get us a drink. Slide us a kilo of snow-white Columbian nose candy. Procure for us a phial of rare dodo’s blood.

Enable us. Only then can we write the words you want us to write.

And when that goes awry…

6. Now You’re An Addiction Counselor

When you find us slumbering in a sleeping bag filled with our own vomit, it might be time to get us off the “stuff.” We might need someone to sit with us as we detox. We’re definitely going to need someone to empty the bucket. It won’t empty itself. (Well, it might, like if our leg spasms and we kick it over.) Who else is going to help us navigate the ever-trembling line between hallucination and reality? Who will scrape the milky remnants of our dodo’s blood high as it exudes from our pores?

Oh, and when we get back on our feet, all cleaned up and loving Jesus, you’re going to need to buy our lame duck never-as-good-as-it-used-to-be-when-we-were-tripping-balls-on-dodo-blood books.

7. Be Like Annie Wilkes

We should be writing.

We’re probably not writing.

Whatever we’re doing, it’s the wrong thing. You know how George R.R. Martin’s not our bitch? Well, maybe he could use to be somebody’s bitch is all I’m saying. Authors need motivation.

And that’s where you come in. Ever read Stephen King’s Misery? Then you’ve got the right idea. Call us a dirty birdy. Cut off our thumb, pop it on a cake. Chop off a foot and hobble us like an escaped miner.

8. Get Your Wallets Out

I heard an apocryphal bit of data that suggests authors rarely sell a thousand copies of each book. You sell a thousand, that’s a good sign. So, help an author out, and buy a thousand copies. Be a pal.

If our book is, mm, say, ten bucks, then it’s no thing for you to buy a thousand copies, right? What, you don’t have a spare ten thousand clams hanging around? Were you gonna buy a boat or something? Ohh, must be nice. Mister Boat-Buyer over here doesn’t want to support literacy. You’re out there on the frothy churn-capped tides, guzzling Pernod Fils and getting sexual favors from mermaids. Meanwhile, we’re eating Chef Boyaredee out of a can.

A can that will soon become our only toilet.

Way to go. Way to destroy an author’s dreams just because you won’t shell out ten grand. WHATEVS.

9. The Cult Of Personality

It’s one thing to toss us a kind word. Maybe say something nice about our books. Our hair. Our creamy, majestic thighs. It’s another thing entirely to recruit cult members to live in a compound in the woods, a “church” where you worship the center of your religion: us. That’s right. Time to get serious. You want to do something really special for your favorite author? Two words: Jones. Town. That ended well, right? I’ll admit I kind of faded out by the end of that story, but I’m sure it involved them all sipping Kool-Aid in the jungle and singing campfire songs. So nice!

Point is, we need your love. We need your adoration. We need you to build hollow wooden effigies of us, trap our enemies inside, and burn the whole thing on a sacrificial pyre.

Don’t be afraid to get inventive. Pyramid schemes. Mind-control drugs. Book clubs.

10. Pre-Order The Book

Okay, fine, fine, here’s a real one that Hedlund didn’t cover: pre-order the author’s books (says the author with a book on pre-order). I’ll just be lazy and repeat what I wrote last month:

“Why pre-order, you might be asking? Pre-ordering is good for the publisher and great for the writer. The publisher gets an idea of preliminary demand and can produce accordingly. The writer also gets a boost — your pre-orders send a signal to the publisher that, hey, this writer is worth holding on to. So, we author-types appreciate your commitment.”

And there you have it.

Ten more ways to rain adoration and adulation upon your favorite authors.

If you have more ideas, toss ’em into the comments.

May 10, 2011 / 50 Comments

Where Writers Get Their Ideas

It is the question that plagues us: “Where do you get your ideas?”

What a strange, stupid question. Isn’t it? The very query seems to suggest that we receive all our ideas from some external source. People ask you that question, you just want to reply, “Uh, I don’t know, my fucking brain? Where did you ‘get’ that dipshit question?” Then you want to kick them in the colon and shove them down an escalator. Well. Maybe that’s just me.

Still, most of the time, we’re polite, and we stammer through some made-up answer that still lends writing the veneer of magic others feel it deserves. You may find yourself at times stymied on how to approach this question and offer an answer that satisfies the interrogator, and so here, today, I intend to do you a service. I have listed a handful of answers to this question that you may borrow and utilize in your own daily life. Hell, use them in interviews. You have my permission. (Or, add your own in the comments!)

So, here goes. Where do writers get their ideas? Select your favorites. Trade them with friends.

Shady Men In Trenchcoats

“I got a guy. What? You don’t have a guy? You need a guy. An idea guy. Here, you can use my guy. He roams, this guy, roves all over the city, but you’ll find him. You call this number. Sounds like a Korean laundry service. Tell him what you’re looking for on the answering machine. Then you’ll get a call back, and he’ll tell you where to meet him. The pier. The warehouse. The gator farm. The dildo shop. I gotta warn you, though: this guy, the idea guy? He’s not cheap. I mean, you can get the shitty leads for just pennies. He’ll sell you Rio Rancho for a quarter. But if you want the premium leads? The real ideas? You want the Glengarry ideas? Well. Then it’s fuck or walk, am I right?”

Navel-Gazing

“I get my ideas from –”

*showcasing hands orbit your belly button like you’re Vanna White profiling a shiny toaster*

“That’s right. I get them from my belly button. The omphalos, friend. You think they come from up here –” *taps temple* “– but it comes from down here.” *pops thumb into belly button, swirls it around* “All day long, man, it’s like, it’s like ideas just stick to you. They’re coming at you from all directions. Like pollen on the wind. And eventually, they work their way into your belly button and collect there. The flotsam and jetsam of good stories. Stick your finger in. Scoop out an idea. Here, I’ll do it now:”

*wriggles index finger in greasy belly button*

“Oh! Oh, look: SPACE PIRATE.”

*another dip into the ol’ belly hole*

“Here’s another: FALLS IN LOVE WITH.”

*pop*

“ROBOT JESUS. See? See that? That’s an idea, my friend. Space Pirate falls in love with Robot Jesus. It’s like Romeo and Juliet all over again. I smell a bestseller. I also smell dryer lint.”

Down In The Dark

“I procure my ideas from the goblin-folk. They mine them down in the crusty underlayers of the hidden hollow earth, chipping them free from the rock walls with pick-axes made from the bones of forgotten writers. They’re a feisty lot, what with their dread widgets and malefic gew-gaws, but it’s worth the price.”

WTF?

“I get them from the Macy’s perfume counter.”

Uh-Oh

“I kill people, bash their heads open with rocks, then eat their brains.”

Sweet N’ Sexy

“All my ideas are the products of an unholy union between myself and a willing unicorn sex partner. After three months the unicorn gives birth to my little squalling idea babies.”

Ciphers And Codes

“TIME Magazine. Pick an issue. Any issue. Turn to page 34. Rotate the page. Look at it in a mirror. Spray yourself in the eyes with a blast of refrigerator-chilled Windex. No! Don’t blink away the tears. Stare through the tears. Read the last paragraph on the page that you can see. Write it down. Then reverse all the letters. Take this code and run it through a ROT 13 cipher generator. The resultant response is the idea. Use it wisely. Oh, also, flush your eyes with cold water. If the burning persists, call a doctor.”

WTF? (Part Two)

“Otters.”

Magpies

“I steal that shit from other writers. I read their books and then I’m just like, ‘Yeah, awesome, a girl develops crazy psychic powers at a Prom, boom, done, thank you, Mister Stevie King, whatever, asshole.'”

Creepy

“I get them from you when you’re sleeping.”

Ideas Lasting More Than Four Hours

“Seriously? You really want to know? Boner pills. That’s right. You swallow a fistful of dick pills, you start to see some really crazy shit behind your eyelids. Even better if you’re goofed up on Ambien to begin with. All writers do this. How do you think Mark Twain got the idea for Dracula? Ambien and dick pills. They teach you that when you get your MFA in Creative Writing. But I’m giving you this pro-tip for free because that’s the kind of stand-up dude that I am. By the way, got any boner pills? I’m Jonesing over here.”

This Is The Future

“I have a robot. I give him poker chips and infant blood. He gives me ideas.”

Not Very Nice

“I get them from your mom’s vagina! Boo-yay!”

Social Media Guru

“Twitter.”

Aw, How Quaint

“A jaunty fennec fox in a monocle and a hat made of an old sousaphone comes to my house every Tuesday. He brings me a bottle of milk, a cassingle of Prince’s Batdance, and one new idea written on a fortune cookie fortune. Then he leaves again on his mechanical pony.”

May The Force Be With You

“George Lucas and I have kinda of a partnership thing worked out. I inject bacon fat into his neck-meat, and he e-mails me all his leftover ideas. We signed a collaboration agreement. It’s all good.”

WTF? (Part Three)

“A head shop in Des Moines.”

Or, The Truth

“We don’t steal our ideas from the gods. We don’t receive them from magical transmissions. We don’t earn them as badges on Foursquare. We see things in the world — in our friends, in our loved ones, in the forests and oceans, in magazines and books, in ourselves — and our brains set to work on these things behind the scenes like a dog whittling away a cow femur with his ever-gnawing teeth. The whole damn universe is our frequency and our brain is the antenna. Our ideas aren’t externally-driven. The process is an internal one. No Muse. No idea factory. No lightning strike from above. The same place you get your ideas — whether it’s an idea to have lasagna for lunch or to masturbate to The Barefoot Contessa — is the same place we get ours. We get them from our own crazy minds, man. That’s it. It’s not that exciting, but that’s really it.”

May 9, 2011 / 36 Comments

A Letter To My Womb-Ensconced Son

I figured that, while my son remains firmly lodged in the wife’s uterine grotto, this was a good time to write him a letter for when he’s born — especially since, when he’s born, I won’t have time to write this letter, I’ll only have time to wash the poop out of my hair. We are now just about at “full-term” (though we’re likely to have a handful of weeks remaining where he stubbornly hides out and refuses to emerge).  So, here we are: a letter to my as-yet-unborn son. Please to enjoy.

Dear Son:

Hello, boy. Welcome to the world.

I am your landlord overlord ski instructor father. You will be seeing a lot of me, and so it behooves us both to find clarity in terms of our relationship. Do you agree? (Pee in my mouth once for yes, twice for no.)

I’d like immediately to express my sincerest apologies because, as it turns out, I am clueless as to how to be a father. I don’t just mean how to be a good father, but rather, how to be a father at all. One supposes that since the title is earned by dint of breeding and not necessarily by habit or by skill, I guess being a father is no more the sum of being a human piping tube whereupon I… erm, frosted your mother’s, uhhh, cupcakes and made a soft, spongy-headed cupcake baby like yourself (we’ll get into the specifics of sexual reproduction when you’re a little bit older, like, say, when you’re around 24 or so). That said, being a father is an entirely different enterprise then Being A Father, and it’s this latter identifier that gives me trouble.

Consider: I can barely take care of myself. If I did not have your mother present, one could make a safe bet that I’d be found on a ratty couch out in the woods, my hair a nest for nuthatches, my body encrusted in the debris and feces of nature. I’d be trying to play XBOX by plugging a controller into the puckered knothole on an oak tree. I’d be surviving on a diet of acorns and venison ordure, which is just a fancy of way of saying “deer poop.” (This is one skill I may be able to offer you, the skill of making things sound much better than they are. I am a writer, after all, or as your friends’ parents will call it, a “marginally-employed drunken vagrant.” We are also talented liars, and so you should expect that at least 33% of the things that come out of my mouth are utter bullshit, usually said in response to answer a question I have no idea how to answer. I will never lie to be malicious. Rather, I will lie to shellac over my ineptitude.)

The point being, I am a woefully clueless human being, and so you will come to me at times looking for answers, and because I’m kind of a dick, I’m going to pretend I have the answers rather than highlighting my own deep uncertainty. You’re going to ask things like, “Daddy, what are clouds?” or “Where do puppies come from?” or “How do I navigate the terrors of a solipsistic universe?” And, instead of being honest with you, I’m just going to make stuff up. “Clouds are unicorn farts,” I might say. “Puppies are made when human babies are stolen from their cribs and taken to the moon to be turned into werewolves.” “Because bees, that’s why.” I will pray that these answers satisfy you. Sorry if they don’t.

Actually, in thinking about it, there exists an unholy armada of things for which I should apologize.

Here they are, in no particular order.

One: I am terribly clumsy. It’s a good bet that I will drop you. So, wear a helmet.

Two: I have all the patience of an ant on a sugar rush. This, combined with my general lack of manly skills, will ensure that all your Some Assembly Required toys will in the future be put together by a liberal swaddling of duct tape and super-glue. In fact, it is safe to assume that all your toys will lie embedded in a big wad of tape with only meager hints of proper “toy shape.” This should explain your stroller, by the way.

Three: I cannot promise I’m going to be very good at assuaging your childhood fears. “Daddy, I think there’s a monster outside my window.” “Holy crap, I know, right? There’s monsters everywhere, kid. Did you see this image of the chupacabra I found on the Internet? That’s crazy, right? Not nearly as crazy as serial killers, though. Those dudes will sneak into your room and steal you away into the night so that they can use your bones to build their Scarecrow Gods. By the way, have I told you about skin cancer yet? Here, look at this mole. Does it look like skin cancer? It feels like skin cancer. I think I’m dying.”

Four: We live in a world where terrible things exist. Like, for instance, jeggings. Sorry about that.

Five: You’re going to find a lot of pressure exerted upon you to “be a man.” Nobody knows what being a man really involves except for the biological factor of likely owning and operating your own penis. Beyond that, it’s all a big hazy fog of nobody-really-knows. It isn’t about carpentry or karate, it isn’t about deer hunting or banging bar sluts. It might have something to do honor and loyalty and being a stand-up dude. It definitely has something to do with peeing in the snow while standing up. Like I said: hazy. Worry less about being a good man and worry more about being a good person.

Six: I’m probably going to make you watch a lot of Star Wars. But maybe not the prequels? I dunno. Do you really want to watch a movie that talks a lot about “trade federations?” Besides, the protagonist of the first three movies spoils the really cool reveal in Empire Strikes Back (if I recall, it has something to do with Bruce Willis being both alive and dead at the same time). Further, the protagonist of the prequels is a total douche. He ends up being a wife-abuser and a child-murderer, which puts him somewhere on par with Freddy Kruger from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. So when the time comes where we’re supposed to believe that Darth Vader has some good in him, you’re suddenly all like, “Yeah, but that guy was a real asshole, and I’m suddenly having a hard time getting on board this whole ‘redemptive path’ thing — maybe Luke should’ve just lightsabered that guy in the head and washed his hands of the whole affair.” Plus, then Luke makes out with his sister? Wow, yeah, I dunno, maybe we’re not going to watch Star Wars after all. Too complex. Here, read some James Joyce instead.

Seven: No, really, I’m going to make you read James Joyce.

I’m sure I’ll find other things for which to apologize. Keep an eye out.

All that being said, this feels like a good time to let you know of my Blueprint For Fatherhood, which is to say, the designs I have for you, my son. Some parents have great, often vicarious aspirations for their children: “He shall be a doctor.” “He will be a powerful litigator.” “He will marry a woman with good breeding hips and a kick-ass dowry.”

My aspirations are admittedly meager in comparison.

These are my aspirations for you.

First, that you are not eaten by squirrels. I figure that, as a father, my first task is to keep small woodland creatures from trying to eat you. They will constantly be trying to eat you. I am the thin bearded line between life and death by squirrel-nibblings.

Second, that you grow up and become a functional human being who can exist amongst others without pooping up the metaphorical hot tub that is our society.

Third, that you are not a drug addict. Or a Republican.

I’m just kidding. You can be a drug addict and we’ll still love you.

Fourth, that you love books. And also, that you love stories in general.

Fifth, that you become a famous anthropologist, just because it’d be really cool for me to tell other parents, “That’s my son, the famous anthropologist.” To be clear, I might tell them this anyway. So, you don’t actually have to become a famous anthropologist. In fact, we might just make that your first name. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Famous Anthropologist Wendig.” Nickname: Famanthro.

Sixth, that you’re not a jerk. The world is home to too many jerks.

Seventh, that regardless of all of the above, you’re a healthy and happy little human. Or, if you don’t end up being human, that you’re a happy and healthy robot, Sasquatch, demigod, or dryad.

Oh, and eighth, that you don’t end up being a writer. Because those guys are fucking crazy.

To recap:

I don’t know what I’m doing, I will lie to you, but I will protect you from squirrels.

In return, you will be a famous anthropologist who reads books and isn’t a jerk.

One day I hope that you look back upon this letter and realize that, despite the face of confidence I put forth, I actually don’t know anything about anything and that it’s okay that you don’t necessarily know anything about anything either, especially when the time comes to have a child of your own. I also hope you think back to those first moments, days, even years of your life, and this letter helps to explain the competing looks upon my face of Pants-Shitting Terror and Blissful Wonderment. Because I must say, I am eagerly looking forward to meeting you, my son, even though your first instinct will probably be to poop in my hair. In fact, that will probably also be your instinct through much of your life, especially when you become a dread teenager. It’s okay. You can poop in my hair and laugh about it. It’s part of our contract, I suppose.

I expect to meet you soon. Likely in the next month or so. Even though I do not yet know you, you are my emergent progeny, my heir to der Wendighaus, my cherubic spawn.

I love you, son.

Peace in the Middle East.

Love,

Your Father

P.S. If you happen to be a girl, that’s okay, too, though you might have some explaining to do in regards to the so-called “turtle shot.” What was that thing, then? The Loch Ness Monster? Regardless, your nickname will still be Famanthro, so don’t think you’re wiggling out of that.

P.P.S. Your mother is awesome. We’ll defer to her judgment in times of confusion.

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