I didn’t drop an f-bomb, either!
Read all about it at Three Wicked Writers Plus Two
Jen goes to preschool
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Reading For A Cure!
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Today, I’m blogging at Reading For A Cure. Please take a moment to go check it out, and consider signing up for the reading challenge!
I Eat My Own Kind…
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Wanna make some trout? I know you do. Here’s my recipe for trout and roasted red skin potatoes.
You’re gonna need:
For the trout
2 tout fillets
Dill weed (LOL)
Black pepper
Olive oil
Aluminum foil
A shallow baking dish.
Some pliers
For the potatoes
A bag of redskin potatoes
Olive oil
Rosemary
1 garlic clove
A bowl
A cookie sheet
Make the potatoes first. They take the longest. Set your oven to good ole 350. Then get out your cutting board and start cutting up your washed red potatoes. Leave the skin on, cut them into chunks. Not too small, but smaller than a quarter of the spud, you dig? I didn’t have a ruler handy, but I figure they were probably 1″ x 1″ or so.
When they’re all chunked up nicely (we used to say that particularly long, unbroken paragraphs were “chunking up the page” in my critique group), put them in your mixing bowl Pour on the olive oil. Don’t go crazy here, you just want to be able to coat the potatoes you’ve got, not drown them. Mince up that garlic clove. Throw it in there, too. Sprinkle on the rosemary, fresh or from the cupboard, I don’t care, both work. Toss it like a salad, then spread the taters out on your cookie sheet. Throw them in the oven. You’re a superstar.
Take your trout fillets and lay them skin side down. Take your handy dandy pliers and run your finger down the fillet, feeling for pin bones. If you find one, grab that fucker with the pliers and pull it out. Do it like an eyebrow hair, pull in the direction of the growth. Try not to rip a bunch of fish off, too, you know. Save some for the oven.
After that part is done, get yourself a sheet of aluminum foil that is big enough for both fillets. Slap them on there and pour some olive oil on the fish, the foil, go crazy. Olive oil is good for you. Then season it with dill and pepper. Throw another piece of foil over the top and seal the edges together. Then put the packet in a shallow baking dish and put it in the oven.
The potatoes are done when you can stick a fork through them easily. The fish is done when when the flesh is flakey when you rake a fork over it. I don’t use timers when I cook, but I’d estimate 20 minutes. Check on it at 15, though.
You can either take the skin off the fish before you serve it or just let the eater do that his or herself. I, personally, like to take the skin off at my plate, because it feels like a primal celebration of the kill.
Serve some other veggies with that, too. Broccoli is always good.
Down here, everything knits…
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My grandmother is a treasure trove of crafting resources. If you need a certain type of fabric, she has it. If you’ve always wanted to latch-hook a rug, she’s got kits for that. She’s spent a lot of time at auctions, bidding on crafting lots, so occasionally she ends up with stuff she doesn’t need, like knitting stuff. She doesn’t knit, so she passes these things along to me, because I am also crafty.
This is how I came into possession of the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The February-March 1984 edition of Annie’s Pattern Club. Behold:
It’s nice to know that Pennywise has some hobbies to keep him busy. Seriously, the first time I looked at this cover, I didn’t see the fucking clown. In fact, the second time I looked at this cover, I didn’t see the fucking clown. Like clowns often do, he was lurking, waiting to unleash his horror when I least expected it. I picked this up, said, “Huh, that’s kind of a cute afghan there I OH MY GOD NO.”
You’ll notice that the cover promises a needle craft “surprise”. What is that surprise, you ask? Murder. The surprise is murder. By clown. Possibly with a knitting needle.
Sweet dreams.
Last night, I dreamt I was directing an episode of American Horror Story. I don’t know how I got the job. I’ve never worked in film or television in my entire life. But there I was, trying to fake my way through directing an episode of a hugely popular tv show.
At this point, I should mention that in my dream, American Horror Story was more of a reality show, meaning it is filmed in that actual, haunted house, and all the characters, living and ghost, are real, not actors. So, there’s an element of danger involved. The cast of characters from The Walking Dead are also involved, and the entire show is shot right on the very edge of the Israel-Palestine border, and we kept losing production assistants to border skirmishes. These skirmishes involved someone just stepping a foot over a big, black line painted on the ground, sitcom style, and the Israeli police would take them away for deportation back to America.
At one point, I realize I haven’t been directing the actors at all. I’ve been setting up the scene and trying to get all the ghosts to cooperate, and I don’t see anything wrong with the takes I’m rapidly putting away. In half a day we’ve filmed half the episode. And I know they’re going to realize that I don’t know what I’m doing. When Rick Grimes’s crying is too “feminine”, I tell my AD to make a note to dub it over in post. That sounds almost professional. I know what I’m doing!
I start talking to Jessica Lang, who is actually a crazy southern belle living in faded glory in the haunted house, and she’s concerned that the cinematographer is filming things “too dark.” I realize then that our cinematographer is the same guy who did The Godfather Part II. I realize we are fucked, no one will be able to see a damn thing on film. I go to talk to him, and am immediately attacked by the frankenbabycreature from American Horror Story.
There is no closure to this story.
At this Christmas season, a plea for sense and rationality to my fellow Christians…
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It’s that time of year again. The time of year when Facebook status updates turn from “Anyone want 2 naughty children?” and “My husband is my best friend. Repost if your husband is your best friend,” to “Some dumb bitch at Target had the nerve to say Happy Holidays to me, like I’m a goddamned Satan worshipper or a Jew or something. HOW VERY DARE THEY! CHRIST IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON!” and other such very, very tolerant Christian nonsense.
I’m a Catholic. Yes, I realize this means that to about 95% of the other Christian religions, I’m a godless Mary worshipper and not a Christian, but believe me, there is a lot of Jesus happening in our branch of Catholicism. So let me just make this plea, on behalf of all sane and rational Christians in the word. GUYS STOP ACTING LIKE WE’RE PERSECUTED.
From the annual “Happy Holidays is taking the Christ out of Christmas” explosion to the recent “Good for Lowe’s for pulling ads from that show that makes Muslims appear to be fellow humans” nonsense, I’ve just had it. At least twice a day I get emails or I see status updates on facebook that urge me to copy/paste if I’m not ashamed of Jesus. You know what? I’m not ashamed of Jesus. I’m just worried that someone might think I’m full on Shirley from Community.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=572p98cEExg&w=560&h=315]
I think my fellow Christians and I are missing a really big point. We don’t need our government to celebrate our holidays. We don’t need to see only Christian material on television. We need to do what Jesus wants us to do. We need to treat our fellow humans with respect. Early Christians, the ones who had to hide for fear of their lives, the ones who were killed for their beliefs, would want to fucking smack us for calling our offense at a cashier giving us vague holiday wishes “persecution”. Stop attaching Jesus’s name to things he couldn’t care less about, like whether or not a muslim family has a reality show or a nativity is on a courthouse lawn.
Also, Jesus wants us to save Community. And he wants The Talking Heads to start making music again. JESUS WANTS IT, DAVID BYRNE. JESUS WANTS IT.
I’m so excited and pleased to announce that I will be blogging every Wednesday over at threewickedwriters.blogspot.com. This is so exciting. I’ve always wanted to be a part of one of those group blogs, but never had the opportunity. It makes me feel like one of the cool kids.
In other news, I’ve been taking viewers on a guided tour of my Blood Ties series over on the youtube.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njBotjvIIS0&w=560&h=315]
That’s the first one. Visit my youtube channel (and subscribed!) to ride the rest of this train with flames on the side straight into Awesometown.
Half My Genes, 1000 Times Nicholas Sparks’s Ego, The Mercenary Journalism Of W.R. Hearst
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Let me share with you my son’s newspaper, The Neighborhood Tattler (he isn’t above lifting inspiration from Diary of A Wimpy Kid, okay? Besides, plagiarism is en vogue right now):
My son is going to be nine in like, twenty-nine days. He likes to write comic books, which, as noted above, usually borrow a lot in style and concept from Diary of A Wimpy Kid and Calvin and Hobbs. He’s just written his seventh comic book, and he needed an avenue in which to publicize it. On the first page, pictured above, the text reads:Opening
The new Bedroom Inc. comix book out!
Yes the Auther of the Bedroom Inc. has made his 7th comix book and is coming to you’r home Dec. 1st (if coming). “I just want to say that it take’s pride and work to make comix book’s” See comix, A3
Okay. So my kid? Is awesome. Not only has he written seven comic books, he’s also created his own publishing house, Bedroom Inc. It has a logo and everything. And his newspaper, that he created to publicize his comic book, has a comic section that begins on A3, and he knew that newspapers have an A3. That’s amazing.
The comic, “Captan Underpant’s and the atackk of the Evil mom from outer space,” is again, flavored with just a dash of borrowed work. The Evil Mom looks a bit like me, yells a bit like me, and was, I am certain, an original creation and not based on anyone, living or dead. There is a page with news about cub scouts and another about the school principal. Then, buried on the very back page, is what appears to be a book section:
The Neighborhood Tattler Daily New’s
Jeff Kinney’s 6th book is out oh I wonder if the 7th book is RIPPED PAGE’S hm. Well that’s the new’s for today! Tommaror’s diffrint.
I am impressed on so many levels here. Not only does he take great pains to point out that Jeff Kinney only has six books published, while on the front page he makes it clear that he has written and published seven (and let’s be honest, self-publishing is a booming market right now), he also relegates the story about Kinney’s book to the very last page of the newspaper and writes a pretty scathing review, even though I happen to know he enjoyed the book.
This is my son. This is why my son must be respected and feared. And this is why my son will one day have royalty checks bigger than Stephen Kings’.
Happy Heil-oween
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Very rarely do I share photos of my spawn on my blog. Not because I think someone might find them and kill them, but because I think some kiddie fiddling pervert out there might look at those pictures and masturbate to them. But I have to share the unintentional White Power odyssey of our Halloween.
When the kid were all costumed-up and ready to trick-or-treat, I implored my husband to take the children out to the front stoop and get a picture of them. I was imagining something like this:
See that? That is the classic Halloween photo. Joyless. Hands at their sides like they’re in a police line up. The agony of being made to pose for a photo, while up and down the street children caper happily, collecting up all the treats. But not you, Chippy. You’re going to stand on that stoop until we get a photo of you with your eyes open.
Confession time: this is from a second set of pictures. The first set…
This requires set up, in order to not look like a hate crime. If you are unfamiliar with Super Mario Bros. (or Aspergers, since that’s a large component to blame for this), Mario is usually posed like so:
So, being an expert on all things Mario, and dedicated to realism in cosplay (see also: Aspergers), my son decided he should replicate this pose for the photos:
Perhaps if he’d not been standing so rigidly to attention… maybe, it’s just the mustache. But it looked a lot less like this:
And a lot more like this:
Then, things got worse. You see, my daughter, who turns three today, is always looking to her older brother, perhaps misguidedly, to learn how to behave in crippling social situations, such as getting your photo taken.
So now, I have two children heil-ing on my front stoop, as my entire small town filters by, skipping our house, I might add, despite the fact that we were clearly giving out treats.When my husband, my lazy, lazy, husband, thought, “Ah, fuck it,” and brought them back inside, thank god I had the presence of mind to look at the pictures. There are eight of them. Eight photos in which, captured for posterity, my children are unintentionally giving a white power salute. Husband took the kids back outside and took pictures to my exact specifications: no hands in the air. No hands anywhere. Just keep your arms at your sides. Pretend you’re being booked for embezzlement.
Hope you all had a safe, happy, Halloween, totally unmarred by any reminder of the existence of Adolf Hitler.