Category: The Ramble (page 198 of 478)

I live in a house with three people and one of those three people is a tiny person of meager age, and despite all that, I made a 9-lb ham on Easter Sunday. Which means that I presently have enough ham to fill a tote bag. I have all the ham. It is an endless tornado of ham. A HAMNADO. And this isn’t a Hamilton reference. I’m not being sly. I mean that I have a fucking shitload of proper once-pig in my refrigerator.

Leftovers from holidays present a challenge because most folks fall into the lazy pattern of making a set number of expected leftovers. With ham it’s, what? You might make ham salad. Or ham sandwiches. Maybe you stick some in an omelette. Or you make a ham hat. Or a ham shirt. Maybe you put a couple googly eyes on there and have a HAM-BASED PUPPET SHOW. Eventually, though, you get burned out on it. Monday rolled around — one day after I made the ham — and I was already like, fuck this ham. Fuck this ham sideways. Stick this ham back up the pig’s ass, because I am done with it. Ham is stupid. Why did I buy 47,000 lbs of ham? Why didn’t we just eat cereal for Easter? Cereal is delicious. You peel a couple Cadbury eggs, drop them into a bowl of Cheerios, and feast like fucking royalty. Ham? Why did I do that? Ugh.

So, I was trying to concoct something to do with the ham that was unexpected, while at the same time still utilizing a goodly portion of the ham. And I thought, okay, once in a blue moon I make chicken tetrazzini, which is a pasta dish from my youth that used cream of mushroom soup, which is to say, it’s super disgusting when you make it like that, but it’s super awesome when you make it with fresh ingredients. And I thought, I’ll make that. I’ll throw out this stupid ham and make chicken tetrazzini, instead. But I didn’t have chicken. All chickens had abandoned me.

I had ham. Of course. Shit.

So, HAM TETRAZZINI it was.

Here, now, is how I made this ham tetrazzini, aka, HAMTRAZZINI.

It was amazing.

So now, you will make it, too. You will take the tote bag full of ham leftovers that you possess, and you will combine them with awesome ingredients and you will then Paypal me a bunch of money for the huge favor I just did for you. You will tattoo my face on your body. You will tattoo my beard onto your face. You will thank me by forming a religion around me.

Let us begin.

Get an onion. One onion. Sweet. Medium-sized, which is to say, roughly the size of a baseball and not a softball. You are going to slice it thin, and then you’re gonna put it in a hot pan with a generous dollop (1-2 TBsp) of unsalted butter. Sprinkle a little salt on that bad boy. Cook the onions till they are soft and weak and pliable. Cook the onions till they unfailingly do what you ask them to do even if what you ask them to do is against their moral code.

Now, mushrooms.

Mushrooms are kinda fucking gross because they’re like nodules of fungus that grow up out of heady, poo-rich earth, and they’re doubly gross when they’re out of a can or in bad Chinese food. As a kid I hated mushrooms because I was pretty sure they were actually little human ears. Thing is, you gotta know how to handle mushrooms — that means buying good mushrooms, ones that aren’t slimy, ones that aren’t out of a can, ones that you didn’t buy from some guy who had the mushrooms in his foul-smelling trenchcoat. In this case, some white mushrooms. The basic 101 mushroom. I got like, a half-pound or something? Came out to about two cups, sliced. Slice them up, as noted. Then put them in with the onions. You might need another pad of butter in there, I dunno. You do what you like. This is your food. I’m not eating it.

Oh, shit, somewhere put a little garlic in there, too. I did like, three cloves, minced. You can do more if you really like garlic. My father used to eat whole cloves of garlic because my father was disgusting. He was convinced that it cured all kinds of diseases, including cancer, but of course he died from cancer so either he didn’t eat enough garlic or that shit just didn’t work. Either way, his breath could melt a garage door. He’d eat garlic cloves and also hot peppers right out of the garden. Pop a jalapeño into his mouth and just, chaw chaw chaw. If I did that, I’d create a volcanic channel of pure heartburn in my chest and then I’d crawl behind the couch, weeping. My father also chopped off his own finger and wrestled a whitetail buck to the ground so he could hog-tie it, whereas the toughest thing I can muster is opening a pickle jar without one of those jar-lid-opener-helper-flappy-things, so I’m clearly almost as tough as he is. Was. Whatever.

Enough about that. I’m way the fuck off track here.

While the ‘shrooms and onions are soaking up the butter (5-10 mins in the pan), get yourself a receptacle (bowl, jar, jockstrap) and mix into it: 1 cup of dry vermouth, 2 TBsp sherry vinegar, pinch of salt, 1 tsp thyme, whisk that shit around in the jockstrap, then pour it into the pan.

Simmer it until it reduces down to a magnificent slurry.

Now, get yourself a pot of water boiling. For pasta. Actually you probably already should’ve started this because, c’mon, boiling water for pasta is the slowest activity in the history of man. Well, actually, publishing a book might be just a hair slower, but whatever.

Time to talk ham.

#HAM4HAM

Sorry, Hamilton reference. I guess. I’ve never seen Hamilton. I’ve listened to some of it and I like it but I’m afraid to listen to more because if I don’t like it, then people will kill me. They will find me, and they will burn me as a heretic. And I’ll admit that I was profoundly disappointed to learn that Hamilton contains no actual ham. When people first started going gonzo for the show, I had no idea what it was. I Googled it and found the show, and thought, “A musical about American history, oh, ha ha ha it can’t be that,” and I continued to believe that surely, surely actual ham was involved. But it wasn’t. It goddamn wasn’t. Expectations? Dashed.

Anyway, you have two metric butt-tons of ham, so cube enough it of to fill three cups. Ham cups. That was my nickname back on the football team, by the way. “Ol’ Ham Cups” Wendig, they called me. “Go long, Ham Cups! Go long! Secure a goal tally for the home team, Ham Cups!”

Whatever. Cube your ham, you rube.

I will wait. And I will watch as you sensually chop ham.

Mmm. Yeah. Ham it up, you. Ham it hard. Cube it hot. Mmm.

OKAY HAM VOYEURISM OVER.

By now your shroomy onion goop should be good. Put it in bowl and set it aside to think about what it’s done. Let it simmer in its own juicy shame.

Take the same pan, and you’re going to make a roux, which is French for buttery flour clump. Put into the pan 4 TBsp of butter, let that melt, and whisk (great word, say it with me: whisk whisk whisk) into it 1/4c flour. Then let it get golden brown but not like, dark diarrhea brown.

Now it’s time for the wet stuff. Which sounds pornographic but isn’t.

Mix in:

1 cup of heavy cream.

3 cups of milk.

1 cup of chicken broth/stock.

(If you’re one of those cocky hipsters who laboriously makes his own stock, good for you, go groom your precious mustache. Me, I use this shit, because it’s really good, and also I am fundamentally lazy.)

Then, 1/4 tsp nutmeg.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Whisk periodically while periodically drinking whisky.

This yummy DAIRY CAULDRON should bubble for about ten minutes on low-med heat.

Cook your pasta. Really, I don’t give a shit what kind of pasta you use. I think tetrazzini uses linguine, but I had spaghetti, and I’m sure there’s some argument about what pasta goes best with what sauce but really, for me, who cares? Use what you like. Use pasta shaped like little Darth Vader faces, I don’t give a flamingo shit. Hell, maybe you don’t even use pasta. Maybe you just rice. Or Cheerios. Or driveway gravel. I don’t control what you do at your stovetop, reader.

Pasta done, drain and strain and lovingly caress it. Like it is the hair of a dead lover.

Dairy cauldron done bubbling, too. Good. Great. Yes.

Mix into the now-empty pasta pot: the dairy goop, the shroomy onion goop, the pasta, and mix ’em all together. Now mix in: one bag of frozen peas. Now mix in the cubed ham. Mix, mix, mix. Then pour in in: 3 TBsp more sherry vinegar. Sherry vinegar is an epic secret to a lot of great dishes. For years my chicken noodle soup was fairly mediocre until I learned to put in a splash of sherry vinegar right at the end and suddenly it became sublime. SHERRY VINEGAR ALSO GET YOU CRUNK. Okay, it doesn’t really. Just drink red wine or gin like a fancy grandma. I am a fancy grandma. Why aren’t you?

Now, get yourself a big-ass baking dish and set the oven to 425F.

Actually, you probably should’ve set the oven to 425F earlier.

But you didn’t, because you’re a jerk.

WHATEVER DO IT NOW.

Into the baking dish, pour your MILKY PASTA MAGMA.

Now it’s time to talk topping.

For my mileage, I don’t use breadcrumbs because I never ever have them. And I never feel like taking the time to make them so I’m always saying fuck these breadcrumbs and just going without. But I will note here you can do a couple nice substitutions for breadcrumbs:

a) potato chips, no seriously, this can be amazing

b) saltine crackers, also delicious

c) dandruff, but only if it’s really crunchy scalp-flake, and don’t forget beard dander, too

d) crickets, live or otherwise

e) grated LEGOs

Anyway.

Take 1.5c of fresh grated Parmesan cheese, and sprinkly-dinkle it over top the milky pasta magma in the baking dish. Then if you’re using the breadcrumb-or-substitute, use about 1/2 cup of it and sprinkle it over the top of the whole affair.

NOW BAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT

BOOM

Which is to say, 20-25 minutes in the scorching doom-cube that is your oven.

Now it’s done, it’ll be about 1000 degrees, and won’t cool down for approximately 7 hours, so just sit and stare at it until it finally chills out. And then when that’s done, it’s dinner time. It’s ham leftover dinner time. Take the pasta and shove it in your pasta hole. That is the round, largest hole in the center of your dumb face. Just grab it with your hands and cram it into the pasta hole until your cheeks are bulging like those of a greedy hamster.

Enjoy. Now send me money.

#HAM4CHUCK

I love Spring, and yet, Spring hasn’t quite sprung here — it did, and then it didn’t, and now it’s cold and gray and rainy. Which is normal, one supposes.

Just the same: gimme dat sweet sweet sunshine.

And since I don’t have flowers blooming all over, yet, I figured today’s macro would be best if it were a flower. SO HERE, INTERNET. I GOT YOU A FLOWER.

TAKE A GOOD LONG SNIFF.

IT’S FULL OF ANTHRAX AND BEES HA HA HA HA

okay no.

Let’s see. Do I have any updates?

You saw that Hyperion came out, and surely you went out and checked it out, right? I mean, it’s got carnival freaks and a clown who barfs bees and a tractor-trailer and — well, c’mon.

Also, The Force Awakens’ first issue now has a cover by Esad Ribic:

So, check that out. Comic should be fun.

Um, what else?

I’m no longer feeling quite like death. This pulled muscle from coughing SUCKS MIGHTILY, but the cough is diminished so hopefully the muscle will untangle itself and calm down. This time my go-’round with pneumonia only lasted two weeks before I felt fairly normal. Last time was a whole month, so this is better (though having the flu along for the ride and a flu-sick wife and pre-schooler was, um, not ideal).

You know Invasive — out in August — is totally preorderable, yeah? Since folks ask, I’ll say that Invasive is not a sequel to Zer0es — and yet, it takes place in the same universe, and it takes place after the events of Zer0es have occurred. One does not need to read one book to understand the other, but they have some light connections. (Connections that will only deepen as other books are revealed, but on that, I can say no more.)

I think that’s it.

Go forth and punch Monday in the teeth.

Let’s talk about my grandmother for a minute.

My grandmother — Gram — was the kind of person to go to a restaurant, enjoy all or part of her meal, and upon completion, try to pilfer everything that wasn’t nailed down. I don’t mean that she was a thief; she took things that were from the meal or were in some way meal-adjacent. She’d take the fuck out of some rolls, for one. If there was a basket of rolls, she would upend them into her purse like a sack of bread boulders. She’d take paper napkins. Plastic forks. She’d take salt — if she had any kind of receptacle, she would put salt into it.

She was also the type at home and at the grocery store to ask for bread ends, or the unwanted ends of meat and cheese from the deli counter, or day-old bakery products.

And as a kid, I had no idea what this was about. And adults didn’t really care to explain it because frequently adults just don’t explain shit to kids. (We take an opposite approach here at Ye Olde Wendighaus. We tell B-Dub pretty much everything, and he can choose to absorb that information or let it bounce off him like hail on roof shingles.) Of course, by now a lot of you have already figured out why my grandmother was like this:

She lived through the Great Depression.

Hoarding bread was not some mental glitch; she came from a time when bread and other essentials were scarce. Further, she gazed upon the bounty in the center of the table — a whole goddamn basket of the stuff she was once denied — and then must’ve wondered why exactly we didn’t all gorge on it. WE WERE LETTING PRECIOUS BREAD PRODUCTS GO TO WASTE. So, she saved them. As if they were shelter puppies. Shelter puppies you slather in butter and then eat.

Let’s fast-forward to, well, right now.

Right now, today, a movie has come out — and if you read the reviews from critics and audience members, you will learn that this is less a movie and more a war crime against cinema. Reviews greasy with precious, snarky schadenfreude (snarkenfreude?) confirm for us what we long suspected: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice breaks the Geneva convention and tortures its audiences for well over two hours with an incoherent, grim, babbling mess. It is reportedly not just a dumpster fire, but a dumpster full of diapers that are themselves full of the runny diarrhea from toddlers force-fed too much leafy green slurry and only then is the dumpster set on fire just before said dumpster is dropped from a helicopter onto an orphanage containing children who should have one day have become the best of us. Batman v. Superman is by many reports the worst thing ever. It is worse than an Adam Sandler comedy. It is worse than biting rats in a jockstrap. It is worse than nipple rot. It is worse than your Mom pegging your Dad on your childhood bed. It is worse than than the worst thing you can imagine right now.

And you don’t have to go see it.

The warnings are clear. People are standing at the edge of a precipice, waving torches, trying to get you to realize that the bridge is out. The river is rising. You can stop your car, turn around, and go home — you don’t have to drive your care full-speed ahead into the watery gorge.

Now, I think I know why it is that people feel the need to see this movie. It’s a many-tiered problem. First, it’s like my grandmother with the Great Depression (and yes, I realize I am straining this metaphor and totally dismissing what my grandmother went through ha ha ha oops sorry Gram just trying to make a NERD POINT here). For a long time we went without a bevy of great comic book movies. I mean, not entirely, of course, but growing up I think there was… what? Tim Burton’s Batman? Christopher Reeves as Superman? And that was it? Both great films in their own way, but the pickings were meager. Now, though, the pickings are far from slim. Superhero movies are like Starbucks — there’s one on every corner. Some of them are dogshit, but some of them are sublime, and they’re not just in the movie theaters. They’re on TV and Netflix and in video games and they’re even manifesting in this new technology called “comic books.” Comic book properties are like bread on the table — we have such a bounty I’m surprised they’re not bringing them to us free with other movies.

The other thing is, for a long time geeks have felt marginalized. Geek culture was geek culture precisely because it was not mainstream, but because it wasn’t mainstream we endured that warring feeling of a) knowing about the fun awesome geeky stuff while b) wanting also to be cool and mainstream and something-something Tiger Beat. Now, though, the script is flipped. GEEK IS COOL (which one could argue means it’s not even geeky anymore). The biggest properties and franchises out there have often been geeky things, but they have achieved a powerful saturation level. Batman Vs. Superman isn’t some niche pic. It’s a tentpole release. And not the “geek counterprogramming” release, either — it’s not the one genre film in a sea of manly action films and rom-coms. It’s thrust firmly in a year of new Star Wars and Civil War and X-Men and Warcraft and Suicide Squad.

The geek may not have inherited the Earth, but we damn sure inherited Hollywood.

So, this is a permission slip — you don’t have to go see Batman v. Superman. You aren’t obligated. There is no surfeit of good entertainment out there. This isn’t the meager crumb-scrabble of bread to feed your geek leanings for the next year. This is just a shitty hamburger on a table full of better hamburgers. You don’t even need to see it to be part of geek culture. This doesn’t look to be adding anything interesting to the conversation except the joyless snarkenfreude-flavored obligation of reviewers and fans who just want to take a clever winky snarling shit on something. (And hey, you do you. We all need those precious Internet Clicks to live.) If you want to see the movie, more power to you. Go forth. Enjoy. Hopefully Zack Snyder doesn’t just pop out of the screen every five minutes to spit in your eyes. I hear Wonder Woman is cool and Batfleck is pretty proper. But don’t go because you feel obligated.

Ain’t nobody got time for that. Or the money, actually, since going to the movies costs the approximate value of Detective Comics #1. Feel free to go do something else.

Maybe, I dunno, read a comic book…

Trapped by his Maker’s command to protect a mysterious box, Adem is forced to kill anyone who tries to steal it. When a young boy chances upon Adem’s temple, he resists temptation, intriguing the golem. As the boy and his sister convince Adem to leave the refuge of his temple, the group lands in a web of trouble.

Now Adem will do whatever necessary to keep his new young charges safe, even if it means risking all to get rid of the box. Their saving grace comes in the form of an angel who offers to set Adem free of the box’s magic by granting his greatest desire—making him human. But first, Adem must bring back the angel’s long-dead human love from the Underworld. 

* * *

Say yes. (And no.)

As a newbie author trying to get your start, say yes to as many opportunities as you (reasonably) can. Over the past several years while writing Mud, I’ve taken writing classes that turned into an amazing writer critique/support group, contributed guest posts for writing blogs, and helped out other writers online.

And ta-da—it sounds like common sense in retrospect, but it’s blown my mind to discover that now, these contacts have turned into people I have relationships with, and they’re all happy to help me spread the word about my book.

For advanced yes-sayers, the next step is to learn when to say no, too—protect the time you need to write and do your best at the opportunities you’re lucky enough to have already.

Touch your book every day.

Not literally. That’s weird. Stop it.

But really—do something to further your manuscript every single day. Writing a book is hot mess. There’s a lot of moving pieces of character development, plot arcs, worldbuilding, and more, all swooshing around and mixing together in half-developed blobs.

While writing Mud, I learned that it only took a couple days of missed writing time to totally lose my momentum. But when I touched it every day, even if it was just five minutes of jotting down notes on a loose scrap of paper, it kept my head in the game.

Edits: NOT the worst.

Every time I got into a round of edits, whether it be self-editing, feedback from my critique group, or notes from my editor, my first instinct was to put it off. It gave me that dark looming icky feeling, like a Dementor had just entered the room.

But then I’d bite the bullet and dive in, because it was inevitable and because I was just too busy for that procrastination shit. And you know what? It was never actually that bad. Smart feedback can even be a creative catalyst for new, better ideas.

It was never, not once, the miserable experience I expected it to be.

Not all edits are equal.

I have been incredibly lucky as a writer, in that many people were willing to take the time to give me thoughtful feedback on my novel.

But when many different people give you feedback, their opinions sometimes directly contradict each other. And even when they don’t contradict, not all of those outside opinions are right for you. It’s one thing to give each critic’s feedback respect and consideration. It’s a completely different thing to blindly follow every line of that feedback to a T.

As the writer, it’s your responsibility to determine what edits are right for your book … and which ones are not.

Support everyone around you the way you want to be supported.

I knew I’d need to rely on my family, friends, and extended network to help promote my book. But I’m finding that some of the close friends I thought were given advocates are really not, while others I’d never have expected to care at all are more excited than I’d expect my own mother to be, and are going out of their way to help me any way they can. It’s a truly amazing, humbling thing to see how excited people can get for some little thing I created.

The lesson I’m taking from this is that everyone else deserves that kind of support from me, too, when thier time comes. In fact, I wish I’d been going the extra mile for some of these people for years. I’ve lived, I’ve learned, and now I’ll do better.

* * *

E. J. Wenstrom is a fantasy and science fiction author living in Cape Canaveral, FL. When she’s not writing fiction, E. J. drinks coffee, runs, and has long conversations with her dog. Ray Bradbury is her hero.

E. J. Wenstrom: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest 

Mud: City Owl Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

I wrote a comic.

I mean, it’s not my first comic, really, but it is the first one where I don’t have the authorial support of fellow penmonkey Adam Christopher — who, quite honestly, is a whole lot better at this thing than I am. Hyperion #1 is my first foray into writing a comic all by my lonesome.

So, obviously, my great hope is that you go out and pick it up.

And then pay money for it.

And then rub it all over your body and take pictures.

…

I mean, “read it.”

Comics are a different animal for me — they’re some strange combination of television show and the novel. They possess the visual, episodic component of television. But they also possess an internal dimension and a POV like novels. It’s that, but it’s also not that, because snapshotting the perfect images to accompany the story is a special gift all its own, as is making sure those images are perfectly well-compressed in 20-ish pages with a proper hook out of the issue. It’s tricky business. I have no idea what I’m doing.

But, I’m figuring it out. Slowly! The good news is, the team behind the book is so great, they are very clearly propping me up and making me look not terrible. Nik Virella’s art floors me every time I get it in my inbox, and then you add colors by Romulo Fajardo, Jr. and it’s like, holy shithell. And Emanuela Lupacchino’s cover? Plus all the great editorial support from Katie Kubert, Alanna Smith, and Christina Harrington? I’m a lucky ducky.

Thanks too to folks like Jim Zub and Gail Simone and Ron Marz and people whose online presence is often chockablock with great comics-writing chatter and advice.

Go forth and procure cool comics.

You can nab Hyperion at your local comic book store, or at Comixology.

Other cool comics out today: Hellcat, Mirror, Cry Havoc. What else? What comics are you reading and digging these days, folks? Drop in the comments and gimme 20.

I’m slowly, slooooowly crawling out of the spongy lung-slurry and finding my way to the light. I’m back at the desk today doing some work (yesterday I worked from bed on the iPad — WORD on the iPad is surprisingly robust, by the way), and I thought, well, hell, I’ll go say hi at the blog with a macro photo.

That there is a simple enough object: a stack of LEGO squares. Looks like LEGO DNA.

What’s the health scoop? Well. I’m here dealing with not just pre-pneumonia, as was reported last week, but rather: both flu and pneumonia at one time, which is to say, FLUMONIA. (My new authorial pseudonym will be Flumonia Lungbees. I will use this new name to check into hotels and it will also be my Tinder handle. Don’t tell my wife.) I was coughing up blood, but my lung X-Rays say that’s fine, believe it or not. And the antibiotics have run me ragged. But I’ve got deadlines that will eat me if I do not appease them, so here I be.

Sad to see the nightmare unfolding in Brussels. I’d love it if we could all keep a cool head about it and wait for details to come in and not resort to vilifying Muslims or refugees and I sure hope that we don’t let Trump say anything, anything at all, oh, too late, never mind. We should really all come together as a country and disavow him. I’d say that white people should also disavow him, but he’s clearly one of Boehner’s own Orange People. Probably not even human.

Whatever.

Be well, Belgium. And Europe. And refugees. And everybody.

P.S. tomorrow Hyperion comes out so I might pop by to remind you.

P.P.S. *coughs on you*