Zombie Lapdance

Don’t forget that the Fabulous Taco Quiz is rounding down to its last few days. You need to put your entry in NOW! And trust me, you’ve got a good chance of winning a fabulous prize.

Now onto more immediate concerns: food.

If I were a twelve-year old, and they gave me the task of designing the perfect cookie, I would create these Confetti Bambolin.

A chocolate sugar cookie topped with a dollop of marshmallow and crusted with colored sprinkles.

I’ve meant to stop by Lammes candies for a while. It seems improbable that there could be a chocolate factory in Austin that I haven’t investigated, but such is the case. At their outlet store I found a Texas Chocolate bar and several Texas chocolate coins.

You can tell it’s a Texas coin because there’s an armadillo stamped on it.

Stopping by Phoenicia, the Mediterranean grocery store, got me some flatbread, some laban (a type of yogurt), and a meat product called mortadella.

This mortadella was of the sort of highly-processed meat that resembles extruded protein gel more than animal muscle. If you look carefully at the "meat" you can actually see a circular pattern of bubbles formed by the meat extrusion.

But I don’t want you to think this is a low-class meat product. It is very fancy, as you can tell by the label.

When my food-frakking deputy Julia doesn’t have a craving for chicken, she has a craving for Vietnamese food. So we made a trip to Tam Deli. For an appetizer we had a crepe stuffed with bean sprouts and pork. We weren’t sure what the lettuce leaves were for, but we wrapped it around pieces of crepe before dipping the whole wad in the bowls of fish sauce.

I also ordered a rice noodle dish. The slippery white mess stuck to the chopsticks.

During a visit to La Canaria I bought tostadas topped with carne guisada. Tostadas are somewhat like nachos, but there’s only a single huge chip.

Here’s a birthday present that I ate recently, lumpfish caviar. I savored each and every delicately aborted fishbaby.

I spilled some lumpfish eggs on the table, and when I tried to pick up the tiny balls with my short and stubby fingers, they popped like miniature ketchup packets, spraying a single black drop of fish-egg goop.

Here’s another kind of fish balls.

I dropped these in with my ramen. They tasted rubbery and smooth, retaining the roughly hexagonal shape they developed when frozen.

To celebrate reading Man Eating Bugs cover to cover, I took the risk that my shrimp allergy crossed over to insects and ate several pre-packaged crickets.

Ostensibly they were chile and lime flavored, but in reality they tasted like dry oat hulls. But luckily there was no vomiting!

Pennywort tea was also in my recent birthday package.

It tasted much like it looks: as if someone put a fistful of lawn clippings in a blender and added some sugar. Therefore I concluded that it was very healthy.

The aloe vera drink is also probably healthy, but it tasted much better, not at all like aloe vera salve.

It’s from that particular class of Asian canned drink that has weird textures. You can see the chewy bits floating in it.

I can’t believe we don’t have more chewy soft drinks in this country.

I’m busy with SXSW at the moment, so I have as little time for blogging as one might imagine, but I thought I would announce that I’ve been nominated for the James Awards, which is the yearly award for stories published within the vast Sam’s Dot Publishing empire.

Actually, I’ve been nominated twice for 2009. My story Prey Play, which was in Fifth Di…, and The Call of the Bailiff, which was published in The Book of Tentacles, were both selected by their respective editors as the best short story in that publication this year. Which is pretty damn flattering.

I was looking through the Sam’s Dot publication page, and I realized that I’ve had stories in two of their anthologies and in every regular publication with the exclusion of their kids’ magazine.

I guess I’m going to have to write some children stories to round out the score.

This is it. This is the contest to determine who will triumph and ascend to the awesome title of TACO MASTER.

You’ve seen the taco carts, you’ve seen the prizes, and you’ve seen the trophy.

Now it is time for the quiz itself.

Yaaaaaaay!!!!!!

Just had to get that out of my system. Okay. You ready?

Here’s how we’re going to do it. There are six primary meats, with two sample photos of each. There are two extra credit meats, with only one example of each.

I’ll give you a little hint to get you started. Most of the meats have previously appeared on the Food Frakker. They are also most likely not to be the same part of the same animal. You get extra points for using the Spanish name of the meat, but just giving me the common anatomical name works too.

To enter the contest, just register with RevSF forums (if you haven’t already) and send me a private message with your answers.

Here we go.

Meat number one:
St. Johns cart

Tacos Rodriguez on Airport

Meat number two:
La Canaria on Airport

Taqueria Selene on Sixth

Meat number three:
Tacos Selene on Sixth

Restaurant Guadalajara in Elgin

Meat number four:
Taco-Mex on Manor

Tacos Selene on Sixth

Meat number five:
St. Johns

Taco-Mex on Manor

Meat number six:
La Canaria on Airport

Taco-Mex on Manor

Extra credit part A:
La Mexicana on South First

Extra credit part B:
Tacos Selene on Sixth

I’m going to give the quiz a week, giving you time to research your answers, and then I will tabulate the answers and declare a winner.

May the greastest Taco Master win!!!

I’ve dilly-dallied long enough, it’s time to tell you what you might win for playing the Fabulous Taco Quiz, in addition to winning the TACO MASTER TROPHY.

These fabulous prizes should all be familiar to regular readers of this blog.

For instance, I will be giving away a rare copy of Alternative 3, a BBC spoof documentary about rich people starting a colony on Mars.

I also will give away Seduccion Mortal, a thrilling action movie starring el estrello mas macho, Jorge Luke.

Next on the list is a CD by Norm Sherman. Think of it as being like filking, but actually funny and fun to listen to.

And finally, I promised to put this up as a prize a long time ago, Derek J. Goodman’s Apocalypse Shift novel.

Did you know that Derek J. Goodman has been publishing additional Apocalypse Shift stories on his blog? You should check them out, whether you win this prize or not.

So the grand-prize winner and the runners up will get these prizes (in order of preference of the awesomeness of their quiz answers).

I should point out that the last time I did a quiz on this blog, the winner got absolutely none of the answers correct, and deliberately made up the silliest answer possible for each entry. You know why he won? Because he’s the only one who entered.

So even if you know nothing about tacos, trust me, you’re in the running for this quiz. All you have to do is register to become a user of the RevSF forum and blogs by clicking here. It’s easy and fun. And it’s the only way to become THE TACO MASTER!!!!!.

Just got the word from Innsmouth Free Press. I actually did win the best of issue 2. This award, which is incredibly flattering, is entirely undeserved, and I can only thank y’all and your tireless ballot-stuffing initiative.

Thank you.

We’ll get back to the fabulous Taco Quiz in a sec. But first I wanted to update you on my winner status.

Recently my writing was up for two different audience choice awards. "Hometown Horrible" was nominated for best Pseudopod story of 2009, and "Beneath the Red City" was eligible for best story for issue 2 of Innsmouth Free Press.

The voting for both these contests is at a close. I did not win either.

While it is true that "Hometown Horrible" tied for second place, I prefer to emphasize the tremendous room for improvement. I could throw around a lot of blame for these dual failures, but I will place the responsibility only on myself. For not properly motivating my fans to make me a winner.

I apologize for this failure to lead you to my success.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten that we’re about to have the fabulous Taco Quiz. I just need to whip up an entry detailing the prizes for the winner and the runners-up, then we’ll be ready to roll.

In the meantime, I thought I would report on my visit to Staple, the independent zine expo.

It seems incontrovertible that the expo is getting bigger every year. The tables sold out three months early, and they had exhibitors all the way out into the lobby. It also seems that the exhibitors are skewing toward a more professional end of the spectrum, and they are almost entirely comics-oriented.

I made certain to spend all the cash I had in my pocket, which wasn’t much, but here’s what I picked up.

There’s the expo program, which is typically a marvel of small press in and of itself. Then I also got a chapbook of short fiction from D.T. Fullen who’s a part of the Gold County Papermill collective. Immediately after I bought the chapbook I regretted not going back and buying out the rest of their selection. And finally, I got a comic from Round Rock-based Big Head Press. They have a lot of comics material on their website. I bet if one had an RSS reader, one could get plenty of awesome reading out of them.

I’m sure you’re already excited about the Taco Quiz and the possibility of winning a fabulous trophy and the enduring title of TACO MASTER.

As I explained yesterday, the format will involve correctly identifying the taco meat that I have pictured from a number of the premier taco establishments around Austin. Today, I would like to discuss the individual taco establishments and give you a link to find them should you decide to research their meat selection prior to the contest.

The first of the taco carts is La Canaria.

This taco cart can be identified by its bright yellow coloration, you know, like a canary. It’s not open as late as most carts, closing at an appallingly early 10pm some nights, but it is the only cart I’ve seen that offers both sopes and gorditas, both of which are fried from fresh masa at the time they are ordered.

The next taco cart is apparently unnamed and is one of two on St. Johns near the interstate.

This is near my house, and more than once I have biked past on my way home after a hard night of being out on the town, and I have stopped for some tacos, resplendent in their meaty goodness. Late at night there’s not much that is as welcoming as blinking lights wrapped around a taco window.

The name on the side of the cart is Tacos Selene, but usually we just call it the cart near the Liberty Bar.

Some people think that the East Side is cool because it has all the hipster bars and kids with the skinny pants and fixed-gear bikes. They’re dead wrong. It’s cool because of taco carts like this. This is a cart that exists for the night life. It’s rare to find it open while there’s light in the sky. It’s even rarer to find it closed before the sunrise. Maybe it’s a vampire cart? Do vampires all close on Tuesdays? This cart is also remarkable for serving a roasted onion with every taco order, a stunningly broad meat selection, and a creamy green sauce that is one of the most painfully hot (yet delicious) things anyone has ever served me.

You have to love a taco-shop that appears to be built out of the storage closet of a laundromat. That’s just one of the many things to love about the concisely named Taco-Mex.

Which would you prefer, a taco window, or a folding service? I prefer tacos.

Taqueria Rodriguez was once on Airport boulevard in front of a tejano club. It is no longer at that location. This only highlights the ephemeral nature of the taco cart.

If you see it anywhere, let me know. They were some nice folks, an entire family working out of an RV converted into making tacos. While you were eating your tacos, the kids might be sitting across from you doing their homework, or the dad might be playing soccer with his son in the parking lot. All at 9pm or later. Also, they served eggnog-flavored flan, which was awesome.

The final selection is from a taqueria in Elgin. Restaurant Guadalajara is also the motel-attached diner for the Sunset Inn. The weary traveler is unlikely to find a more comforting selection of delicious meat.

For a while now I’ve wanted to give something back to all the loyal Food Frakker readers. More importantly, I want to not only reward those who have diligently followed my exploration of culinary extremism, I want to single out the best reader and award them with a prize that will make everyone in the entire world jealous of their excellence.

That’s why I am going to hold a contest, a quiz to find out who knows the most about taco meat.

And the winner shall be known as THE TACO MASTER.

I was going to carve a sculpture of a taco, but that was a little ridiculous. So instead I have made a trophy using polyester casting resin and a dismembered pig. Which really captures the spirit of tacos better than anything else I can think of.

Also I put LEDs in there. First of all, you have to put LEDs in stuff, and second, you want the trophy to be shiny so your hippie friends are more amazed by it.

Casting resin is a wonder to work with. Stinky as heck, but you gotta love the versatility. You just make a mold, mix in some catalyst and some embedded objects, and the next thing you know you have an heirloom that will last longer than the human race itself.

So you’re asking yourself how you can become a winner and the greatest taco master of all time.

Well, here’s how it’s going to work. There’s going to be a couple more entries, detailing additional prizes you can win (which are also totally fabulous). Then I will go over the taco carts where I bought the sample tacos, and then I will post a series of photos detailing the different taco meats. Whoever can correctly identify the most taco meat becomes THE TACO MASTER.

But here’s the catch. If you want to compete for the glory of becoming the taco master, you have to register with the RevolutionSF forums and send me your entry as a personal message. So if you haven’t registered, now is your chance! Don’t let the opportunity to become a winner pass you by.