ermagerd!

and speaking of crass commercialism...

iron maiden has their own beer...

mötörhead has their own booze.

we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

—the bastard

there is something inherently wrong…

…with vegan jerky

i mean seriously.

jerky is supposed to be made of meat.

not… um… vegan… stuff

unless of course it's made of real vegans

in whichcase, someone at my store is getting arrested.

this is the sort of thing that only an affluent society could spawn.

vegan fair that maybe looks and maybe tastes like the food they foreswear for ethical reasons.

hell… these ethical reasons wouldn't exist if there wasn't enough to eat in this country.

in the northwest territory, they eat raw freshly killed seal because that's what's for dinner up there.

there is no disaffected teenage Inuit saying, "ah hay ma. I don't eat seal. that shit is unethical and cruel to the seal."

you know why, because there is no fucking vegan seal substitute.

that said, if you wanna be an ethical vegan, the bastard can direct you to a dosa shoppe. but if you are going to buy vegan meat substitutes, you're fooling yourself.

meat meat meat meat meat meat MEAT.

that is all

—the bastard

this weak in anime

well i have NO IDEA who else would.

the bastard just got finished watching 50 episodes of depressing dirge fest tegami bachi letter bee and i initially liked it except for it's

depressing

full of unresolved story lines

and the protagonist cries his ASS off in every episode.

i mean seriously, the bastard likes sad but this kid cried so often in fifty episodes that i had become desensitized to the depressing story line of a world that exists with no daylight save for an artificial sun that subsist on the souls of the living.

so if you'd like to get depressed, have a watch

—the bastard

…on winging it

the bastard has some generous friends at the office.

and once in a great while some wild game falls into his lap.

sometimes it's just being in the right time and place for it too.

this time around, I had some pheasant I needed to get out of the freezer before it became a thing. which would then become a thing wasted.

and the bastard hates wasting things.

so when I found a recipe for pheasant banh mi in the "other" magazine's February issue I decide this was how the pheasant going to get done.

truth to tell it was more prep than cooking.


took some meats. don't get squeamish on me jerks. meaT isn't something that comes in a styrofoam container all the time.


added a jalapeño but I would have preferred a scotch bonnet.

zip zip zip. scare the crap out of the baby with the sheer screaming power of the food processor

make patties.

30 minutes at 300° and it's all good in the hood.

I also hooked up a sriacha mayonnaise to go with. 3-5 tablespoons to a half cuppa mayo.


and boom goes the dynamite. turns out that this bird while short on meat was the gift that kept on giving in the portion department.

on a side note, i've been keeping up with Sherman since the korilla truck day and I think I'm going to be picking his brain about food things asian with game. might be an inneretsing endeavor

the bastard is thinking about venison bulgoggi now. tah

—the bastard

…on travesties

OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD!

WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!? WHY?!?

—the bastard

…on the other shoe

stomach viruses are a real bitch.

the baby had one all week.

now the wife has it.

so the bastard is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

any minute now, the sword of damacles will drop on me.

and with it bring the kind of business that will make a man believe in a god.

and pray to it for death.

so I did what comes natural to any jackass who's waiting to get sick.

I hopped two trains and a bus to get my car looked at because it's over 1500 miles due for maintenance.

can you folk in the back of the room see the idiot up front?

bleeargh

—the bastard

pebble…

photo by Yuko_t

the bastard woke up this morning to news of the quake and subsequent tsunami I. japan and I was of course concerned.

I made sure to check in with the people I know who are there and the people in my life who have family there and fortunately they are all right ( however, I'm still waiting on my friend in osaka) and that was a relief.

but what struck me was the tsunami.

the meteorological map of the sheer enormity of a wave that covers a hemisphere…

that hit japan with 13 foot waves last night…

that hit Hawaii with 6 foot waves at 11am…

that hit San Francisco at 11:15 am…

and traveled until there was nowhere else left to go.

it was like the analogy of dropping a pebble in a pool and watching the ripples travel until they lose momentum.

except it's more like a jove's fist and the appropriate end result.

it is both amazing and horrifying at once.

I thought about this conversation I had with a friend or relative,

I don't recall as I may have been tired or drunk or both.

but there is a large chunk of the canary islands that sticks out in the ocean like a great cantilever that if it dropped into the ocean.

not if, but when actually.

if it dropped in, it would send 8 foot waves straight to new york.

and it shook me to the core for a moment.

—the bastard

this just in...

...special obvious edition

it

frikkin'

came

down

hahd, last night.

—the bastard

deplorable...

you know,

the bastard remembers back in small times,

he used to go up to the wendys on braddock avenue with sherman.

and it was good.

flash forward: 

last night i was watching the news, and there was a huge brawl at the wendy's of my youth.

and it made the bastard wonder, "what the fuck is wrong with my old hood?"

it's terrible when one sees this as the likely outcome for the old hood. 

every once in a while, one has to get off the highway on the way to the rents because of traffic. 

and if this was after school let out, it was a real shit show. 

thugs all the way round.

it's sad to see you're old neighborhood slowly go to hell.

—the bastard

dearest fhills…

…up yours



now don't cry baby.

it's not all your fault.

but the bastard has to tell you off.

you see,



all I wanted to do after a long drive in the shit was to park and go back home.

but no,

I had to dig a snow bank out of my way.

it's not your fault baby. the bastard is just tired.

shoveling tons of wet snow can do that to a man.

—the bastard

buried alive

you know…


it's times like this that the bastard finds the need to call bullshit on the global warming…er…climate change…er…moving the goal post movement.

although it is pretty, my block is buried and subsequently, my car.

but it'll still be pretty until I get a ticket for being unable to move the car.

then my hate will be great.



now to the digging of the snow. and me without my shovel.

—the bastard

ghost circles…

so it's gonna be a rough landing you see.

flying into a rain storm in the dirty souf isn't the bastard's idea of a grand evening out.

but here we are bouncing round Atlanta.

doing ghost circles in the rain.

one doesn't really entertain the notion of it all going south but I know that if it did…

then I did alright this time around on this rock.

happy fucking landings shiteyes.

—the bastard

leg two…

…electric boogaloo

much to the bastard's delight, the connecting flight to Tucson put me at a window seat who's windows I promptly closed.

this added up to a delightful nap until we were up in the air.

however, the bastard's peaceful repast was interrupted by the elbows of a man who reminded me of Robert loggia and john locke's love child.

and his elbowing was the passive aggressive variety.

the only respite being when he would lean in to make out with his nightmare hippy trophy wife.

I mean what the hell?!

who wears thick wool socks with a skirt?!?

WTF!?

WTFF?!?

anyways, I decided to go on walkabout before resuming my cartoons.

I'm sure more elbow fun awaits me' back in my chair.

—the bastard

hey professor…

…how many bottles of seltzer does it take to fill a 45 gallon fish tank?

well young jerkface, it takes a bunch of bites of seltzer to fill a 45 gallon tank.

you see this is what it takes to deliver a concept from start to finish.

we talk about submersing a bunch of water filters into a tank in order to have a snazzy photo for our water filter test.

we draw it out.

and then we buy a fuck ton of seltzer.

the things we do for art.

—the bastard

…on experiments

you know,

if just ain't a holiday weekend unless the bastard drives all the way up from south jersey,

to drive my car to the garage in queens,

to take the subway to Williamsburg to dine with the chairman.

sometimes it's just a thing.

how can you make the most of your city's resources to get somewhere?

so armed with google maps, I look into how to get to the Brooklyn man cave via mas transit while I walk towards it.

and it tells me that the train arrives at 4:55

and surprisingly, it does.

well god DAM e-train.

look at you.

I may still have time to buy Italian bread and beer.

whoda thunk.

—the bastard

snowpocalypse now

the bastard is a he won't believe until he sees it sort of guy.

unless it has to do with me getting my goddam rocket pack.

i still believe it's coming.

that said, when i heard that it was gonna snow.

and it seemed to miss us last two times (ish).

and i told my ladyfriend that i'll believe it when i see it.

and when i woke up this morning,

feeling old,

and there it is.

all over the place. and now i have to go to a photoshoot in connecticutt.

in all of this shit.

the horror.

the

horror.

—the bastard

...on stampedes

the bastard has seen the difference between mythology and reality today.

no i'm not talking about our president's cracked halo.

i'm talking about the simple shit.

made myth.

then made real ,

and not nearly as impressive as the myth.

you see, up until this morning, the bastard had an elephant living upstairs from me.

an elephant in high heel shoes.

KLOMP, KLOMP, KLOMP,

she stomps around her apartment as if she's doing jumping jacks in heels.

KLOMP, KLOMP, KLOMP,

as she does laps around her 455 square foot box.

CRASH, JANGLE, JANGLE,

as she lifts her entire closet off the ground and empties it onto the floor spreading what only sounds like a metric ton of wire hangers jangling all along the ground.

or broken glass

or a jar of loose change.

night after night, i hear her over my headphones while i watch tv on my laptop at 1 in the morning.

even when she takes off her shoes, she sounds like she's hammering nails into the floor.

she must have been enormous, or had concrete shoes, or just plain had heavy feet.

as the bastard walked out of his apartment this morning, upon closing the door, after hearing the tell tale galoomping out the door and the sound of a fire door being slammed 1 floor above as my door closed 1 floor down, i rushed to the elevator to see if i could fit into the car with this behemoth only to find a little girl standing there listening to her iphone before she goes to work.

i must have been mistaken.

ground floor, i do the right thing and let her leave the car first

and

CLACK, CLACK, CLACK,

she stomps right out of the building, leaving potholes all along 24th street, as if you leave a trail for her to get home by later.

it was kind of disappointing and it made sense in a way. i think i might have to leave a note asking her to take off her shoes after 11pm as she stomps like a wooly mammoth but, she sounds just as lound sans footwear.

oh well, that's apartment living for you.

—the bastard

...on tossing it

the bastard was walking on third. picking up some stuff for the apartment.

last night's dinner was disastrous. i just can't do my ladyfriend's recipes as well as she does.

just can't.

so user out to do what I know. marinating the HELL out of things and then cooking it. side of cous cous.

yeah cous cous. got a problem jerk?

anyway someone dashed this mac to the street and I wondered how it got this way.

did someone toss it out of frustration?

did someone lean against it by accident sending it to the jagged rocks below? you see, there are jagged rocks on third.

or my favorite. did someone toss it at someone in a fight? the bastard was kind of hoping for this.

—the bastard

...on postponing the universe

the bastard had business in the fhills yesterday.

so after waking up at the crack of noon, the bastard set out in his lil blue pill towards the williamsburg bridge.

traffic on grant street.

asshole in an acura decides that the rules don't apply to him.

goes around everyone by heading into the wrong lane.

he's a danger to us all, i think.

underdog by kasabian queues up on the stereo.

tooling along the nonsense i end up next to him and i have to move in.

he doesn't want that.

so the bastard makes it happen. somewhere in my caffeinated chest, predatory behavior ensues.

he goes around the crowd again and i give him the finger.

flashback: a man who owns a restaurant near my office passed some advice along to a friend of mine. he says to him, "give your problems away to the universe".

it's a very hindu phrase.

the bastard like this phrase. it makes it easy to make your problems less stressy. make the rigors of the day less, well, rigorous. makes your problems less...yours.

give your problems away to the universe.

OK flash forward: fuck that noise.

threatened, jerkinatruck makes a right from the left turn lane. he feels caught up in his own road rage. missed his turn.

the bald man in the little car is shaking his fist at me.

he must be a nazi.

but, actually, i'm not. you're just a dick. and a crappy driver to boot.

chase ended, the bastard makes his right, left, right, to get on the willy bee.

and there he is.

and now he's maneuvering to get in front of me for what would appear to be the "sake" of it.

i laugh.

he's ridiculous.

i make my right to the inner lanes.

jerkinatruck makes his right into the outer lanes making a mess of his chase.

he's caught, i'm not.

sailing over the bridge at 80, i stick out my hand and wave at him in the distance as he becomes part of the intenet and i become a scary story he tells at the dinner table later.

bastard: 1

jerkinatruck: 0

i'll give my anger away to the universe tomorrow. petty victories feel too good this time. what can i say, i'm petty.

—the bastard

...on nagging

the bastard is a little concerned about his brain lately.

I'm forgetting too much.

there was a time when my short term memory problems were the stuff of humor amongst my friends.

but,

it's starting to turn into near misses that may harm me greater than being made fun of for forgetting what I had for lunch today.

we were at a tiki party today. that's hawaiian for adults dress up in flowery shirts to drink.

it was good times.

when we got home, I had to park the car.

quick sidebar: due to my weekends being busier than usual with a baby on the way, the bastard hasn't been able to take the car back to queens so coupled with that and a new area to park that is kind of grief free by manhattan standards, I've been parking on this side of the river for close to a month.

anyway, I drop my ladyfriend off at the door and go park the car which was between these two large trucks. after I get two blocks away, i get the nagging feeling that I didn't lock the door. i get back and decide that since someone else moved, I take their spot as the bastard didn't relish the notion of pissing off two people that needed to get out of what was an awful spot with me and the middle.

happy with my new choice I walk away

two blocks from my apartment I get that nagging feeling again. and I shrug it off.

it persists, so i walk back to the car to realize I left the damn window rolled down. I don't recall doing this but, I must have.

I'm very uncomfortable with these little holes in my short term memory now.

—the bastard