Zombie Lapdance

Space Squid has been chugging along for a a few years now, and it’s surprised me that no-one has really said anything about the way that there’s always a woman on the cover. I mean, sure, we’ve named them Squid Grrrls in order to muddy the feminist-theory waters, but I really didn’t expect anyone to be fooled.

So imagine my relief when finally, someone bothered to send us a letter about it. It reads:

Sorry, but if you used less predictable, sexist images on your cover, I would be more tempted to read it, as the content looks fun and interesting. If the mag is meant to be about imagination, then why does that not translate to the imagery too? You can have women but just–this is completely mainstream stereotyping and, sorry, it sucks.

Okay, being a party-pooper here. I know. And, no I’m not a frumpy jealous sixty-year old. Just someone who hates the way that leftfield publications like this play into mainstream pop culture crap.

But hey, you probably don’t give two hoots

All the best
Katie W.

So are the Space Squid covers sexist? Are they less sleazy than the actual contents (I was told the latest issue is "pervy", so maybe the cover is an appropriate warning). Are we being particularly worse than mainstream pop culture crap, or is Space Squid a patriarchal regression to a barbaric age of pulp sci-fi imagery that we ought to leave behind us?

In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that our Squid Grrrl this issue,

Ms. Ruby Joule, is a member (in good standing) of the Jigglewatts burlesque troupe.

For the Food Frakker, there’s nothing better than discovering a new taco meat. There’s a taco cart right next to the Saltillo Plaza train station on the East Side that has suadero.

It’s sort of like marinated chunks of steak or something. I think wistfully about this meat all the time.

There’s a taco van down on Airport and Manor that I’ve been visiting.

It has a pretty decent torta rico and that awesome creamy green sauce that you can get nowhere else other than sketchy taco carts.

There was a period of an entire week recently when I stopped by the Fiesta every day to see if they had any heads in stock. They didn’t, so I had to console myself by eating from their taco counter.



Everything was dry and tasteless and scooped out of luke-warm steam trays. But there was a hell of a lot of it. I ordered nachos and they were served in a cardboard tub with three ladles of processed nacho cheese, covered with two ladles of greasy meat, and topped with another ladle of cheese and a few handfuls of cilantro and onions.

Whenever I feel down, I indulge in the cuisine of my people. In this case, lefse. You can think of lefse as a sort of potato-based tortilla from Norway. It’s fried on an ungreased griddle.

And then typically rolled up with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

It’s hard to describe this Indian snack. Sort of like a buttery and sugary chow mein noodle.

At a stop at a country convenience store, I had one of their taquitos, a tube of greasy, cheesy goodness. Sort of like an eggroll stick, but without the pretense of healthiness.

I also made the pleasant discovery that they are now packing Butterfingers with caffeine!

Now I can eat my king-sized Butterfingers without the 42oz. Mountain Dew.

Smoked pork jowls. The name says it all.

Except the part about how pig jowls are the chewiest animal-part I have ever put in my mouth. I fried a little piece and chewed at it for literally twenty minutes without the piece breaking up or reducing in size, or even losing its taste. It was sort of like an eternal piece of bacon-flavored gum. Which wasn’t all that bad now that I think about it, except for the gristle stuck between my teeth that required an extra ten minutes of flossing. Stewing it for four hours softened it up measurably.

I’d like to point out that some more of my fiction has reached print, in this case my story "The Gaping Corpse" in Black Ink Horror issue #5. There are only 110 copies in existence, so it’s unlikely that you will ever run into this by accident.

Note that there’s a picture of a naked chick wrapped in a tentacle on the cover. Awesome!

"The Gaping Corpse" is at the tail end of my experimentation with writing modes. The whole thing is written in second-person singular imperative. Yeah, I know, every writer has to do that at least once.

You’re probably never going to hear me read this at a con (I’m already thinking about what I’m going to read at Armadillocon this August), because I use the "N-word" a couple times. I blame that exclusively on Joe Lansdale. I read "High Cotton" and I thought, gee, Lansdale sure makes the "N-word" seem like fun.

Yeah, I know, every writer has to use the "N-word" at least once. I promise it won’t happen again.

But if there’s any reason to pay the $10.75 (with shipping) for this anthology, it’s because "The Gaping Corpse" is the freshest re-conceptualizing of the vampire mythos you’re ever going to read. Vampires need to go back to being the awful dead things feeding on the vibrancy of the living. None of this "I’m immortal and I like to dress awesome" bullshit.

Here’s a glimpse of the fantastic illustration Paul J. Groendes did of the gaping corpse itself.

I haven’t read through the rest of the anthology yet, but it’s at a place of honor on top of the toilet tank, so it’s only a matter of time.

One story I have read, that I believe deserves special mention, is "The Question of Dominance" by Russell Jackson. This is a story about a group of vampires who take shelter in a cave, only to be ravaged by the eternal incarnation of viking berserkers. I love this story so much. I want to option this story and make the most kick-ass slasher film of all time. Jackson cogently answers the question we have all asked: If vampires are so powerful and they can infect humans at will, why aren’t they in charge already?

Because the motherfucking vikings are going to kick their motherfucking undead asses, that’s why.

The only change I would make to the movie, is to advertise it as "V.-v-V."

This is the second year in which I competed in the Grilled Cheese Invitational. Last year I entered in all three categories (which was a horrible mistake), and I won third place in the "honey pot" category.

This year I only entered in the "honey pot" dessert category, revamping my winning entry from the year before. Basically, I had so many obligations for that night (that was the night of the zombie simulation) that I could only commit for the fifteen minutes it took to process the 20 sample sandwiches of my "tiramisu surprise."

I won in the "spaz" category. Here’s what they have to say about the "spaz."

"What is a Spaz? You tell us! Essentially, the Spaz sandwich is the sandwich with the biggest Weird Factor. It could be a sandwich so lacking in style it’s a style in itself. Or it could be a sandwich high on concept, but lower than dirt on taste. Or maybe a sandwich clearly designed simply to annoy. It’s hard to define that elusive "Spaz" quality, but you’ll know it when you see it. Which one of the sammiches totally deserves that title? When you look at a sammich, does it scream SPAZ!? Award it here!"

So am I a winner? Hard to say. I’m pretty sure I annoyed them by stretching the "grilled" aspect to its full conceptual limit (and probably a bit further) by deep-frying the sandwich in butter and sugar. But people really enjoyed it. People came to tell me they thought it was the best thing they’ve eaten.

(Although that might be because I exercised my theory that you get a big boost to your ratings by giving the judging public a big portion. The lines are so long at this event that most people only get a couple of samples. If you stand in line for twenty minutes, you’re going to want more than a quarter-cut sandwich.)

I am a winner in the sense that someone spent a lot of time making the trophy a beautiful work of art. At one time it was a high school forensics trophy. Now it is the embodiment of spaz.

Often I am asked the question: "Hey, Matthew Bey, how is it that you have the time to edit two sci-fi publications, publish regularly, blog and podcast incessantly, and still work your crappy blue-collar job?"

There’s a simple answer to that: Drugs.

Drawing from the world culture of mild stimulants, I find that I am almost always buzzed and ready to do business. Here’s some of the highlights of my pharmaceutical frakking:

Canned coffee:

Who needs to go to all the trouble of brewing fresh coffee, when the Eastern beverage tradition brings us so many pre-canned varieties? They’re already milked up and sweetened, taking all the guesswork out of flavoring your cup o’ Joe.

Turkish Tea:

Cheap, bulky and sweet, nothing hits the spot like some piping-hot tea. It’s good to sip during those long afternoons at the laptop.

Mate:

Too Much Coffee Man magazine describes this as tasting like getting hit in the face with a sack of wet hay. And yes, I have my own mate straw or bombilla.

A German friend of mine says that this Argentinian drink is referred to the same way that we refer to quiche, as a shorthand for effeminate men. But it doesn’t keep me up the same way that coffee will, so it works well as an evening stimulant, for when I have something I want to get done before I go to sleep.

Supari:

This concoction of betel nut from India is pre-packaged and flavored with menthol and saccharine. The nuts themselves are as hard to chew as steak bones. A larger sampling of supari yields similar results, hard to chew and hardly any buzz.

Talking to the store clerk I got the impression that these supari pre-packages are meant more as breath freshener, sort of like these sugar-coated fennel and anise seeds:

Yeah, fuck you, Altoids. You’ve been replaced. Now my mouth smells like a Pakistani grocers.

Much more chewy, the sweet supari in the pouch stimulates all the symptoms associated with the betel nuts sold by the betel nut beauties of Taipei. Salivation and a goofy, almost imperceptible excitement, like smoking three American Spirits one after the other.

This is what I chew when I can barely stand up with fatigue, and I just want to lie down and watch Netflix instant viewing, but I know that there are really much more important things I ought to be doing.

You’re supposed to accentuate the buzz by adding lime to it, but it’s not the lime you’re thinking, it’s calcium oxide. You know, the principle ingredient of cement.

Personally, I’m not that eager for a buzz.

Regular followers of this blog know that Space Squid had the issue seven release party last Saturday at Frugal Media book store. The Frugal Media folks were kind enough to provide us with an awesome spread of cakes and beer.

Including a zombie cake!

The primary event of this Space Squid party was a zombie simulation using an actual head.

You know how in zombie movies people are smashing zombie heads left and right with anything they have at hand? I figured these movies were nothing but a lot of empty conjecture, so I created a simulation in order to bring zombie movies back to reality.

Here’s the results of the simulation experiment:

Conclusion Number One: Most people suck at braining things.
This is one area where the zombie movies are right on the mark. If given the opportunity to smack a head with a weapon, most people have terrible form, pathetic force, and wildly inaccurate aim.

I had intended to make a zombie armature that simulated the wobbly-headed, lurching gait of a zombie, but due to various time and safety constraints, I just made a perfectly immobile platform with a pig head strapped to the top. (It was calibrated to 5’6.5", the average height of an American adult).

Even with the head just sitting there, most people took three or more swings to land a solid brain blow.

The good news is that people learn quickly. Bad news is that zombies never forgive mistakes.

Conclusion Number Two: Samurai swords suck.
Two people showed up for the explicit purpose of putting their katanas to the test.

In the background you can see Austin writer and editor of the story blog "Infinite Windows," D. D. Tannenbaum, with the ninja sword handed down to him by his father.

In the foreground is Austin writer Lawrence Person, who is demonstrating that his samurai sword is so cheap that it actually has a plastic dragon on the handle.

In this photo we can clearly see Person miss the brain by a good half foot (demonstrating conclusion number one), managing to only slice a notch in the pig ear.

Here we see that the sword fares rather poorly after a better aimed hit. It has been bent noticeably straighter.

Sadly, D.D.’s significantly higher-quality sword experienced the exact same fate.

You know how in anime the katana cuts through entire houses and boulders with a neat diagonal line and then the top half slowly slides off? Total freaking fantasy.

Conclusion Number Three: The right tools for the job are tools.
Demonstrating the can-do spirit and tactical flexibility for which he is duly admired, Person changes from the crappy samurai sword and goes to the axe.

Which does a hell of a lot more damage.

You can actually see the brain:

Here is a long-time friend of Space Squid using a sledge hammer:

This was the last weapon in the simulation, and it made a meaty mess of our scientifically calibrated test head.

Although in support of conclusion number one, he reports that he missed with the first swing and nearly pulped his own foot.

The exception to this rule is the spade/shovel, which you would think would be really effective, but was actually not heavy enough, hard enough, nor sharp enough to do any damage at all.

Conclusion Number Four: Try out your home weapons first.
In this picture we see rising Austin writer and the author of Gordath Wood, Patrice Sarath (who incidentally has already posted to her own blog about the simulation). Her husband kindly put together a number of weapons explicitly for this simulation (although he promised us a spring-powered head-crusher which we have yet to see). The buzz-saw bladed maul looks like the wild post-apocalyptic weapon of my dreams.

But was largely ineffective.

The other weapon that Sarath brought, the nine-inch-nails board, fared much better. Here we see Austin writer, and contributor to the anthology Tales From the Secret City, Patrick Sullivan, carefully measuring his distance from the simulated head.

I don’t want to talk any trash, but I feel that for the record I need to point out that despite carefully setting up his swing, and despite being an experienced martial artist, Sullivan still missed the zombie head on his first try.

Second swing went better.

Although for the record I would like to point out that he did miss the pig’s brain. But only because it was significantly smaller than a human zombie brain. Just wanted to put that out there for the record.

Overall Summary:
This simulation throws into doubt America’s level of zombie preparedness. Considering how poorly we all fared against this completely stationary zombie, I fear that fast zombies would take us all out before we could fashion the next level of post-apocalyptic anti-zombie weapon.

And then once we finished with the zombie simulation, we all went inside and drew pictures.

Which wasn’t anywhere near as fun.

At last, the story of the censorship of Space Squid can be told.

So there we were, doing the standard last-minute struggle to get Space Squid ready by the announced release date. It had been a little more than six months since the last issue, and yet I hadn’t finalized the illustrators and the actual table of contents.

Which was pretty much normal.

The very day of going to print, returning Space Squid illustrator Chris Waltrip, the guy I turn to at the last minute to get the stuff done, came through for us with an illustration for K.C. Shaw’s racy alien porno story "Comparative Anatomy." (For some reason we have two stories this issue that deal directly with the subject of porn. Actually, that’s not that surprising for us.)

Waltrip’s illustration included a giant alien space penis.

"Huh," we thought. "That’s indeed a giant alien space penis."

And then we ran it.

Only after I had printed out four hundred copies did I remember that we live in Texas, a state with particularly flexible obscenity laws.

I pointed this out to everyone, and we all reacted with varying degrees of panic. Chris Waltrip was like, "Shit! I could get arrested!"

So we did another version with the giant alien space penis stretching off the side of the page, and yet another version with a sponsored censorship bar.

Yep, that’s the kind of zine Space Squid is. We’re always looking for ways to monetize our ad space.

The point is, if you’re one of the people who got a Space Squid with the anatomically correct illustration for "Comparative Anatomy," then you’ve got a potentially valuable rarity in your hands.

So please don’t get us arrested.

Next: The scientifical analysis of our zombie simulation (and the gorey mutilated pig head photos!) from the Issue Seven release party at Frugal Media!

Also, we get criticized for being insensitive! Finally!

We’re continuing our countdown to the release party this Saturday, so I thought that I would publish the official table of contents for this issue.

Tonight I should have the time to put together all the mailings and payments for the contributors, so look at this list and be jealous that these people are getting something awesome in the mail.

Issue Seven
Squid Grrrl: Ruby Joule
Print run: 1500
Notes: Back to black and white cover. There’s four versions(if you count the online PDF), three are censored, the other (print run about 400) is not. It’s pretty obvious which is which.

Stories:
"The Endorsement" by J.E. McCollum
"Objectivity" by Glenn Shaheen
"Human Bean" by Glenn Shaheen
"Unrequited Love Time Travel Revenge Fantasy" by William Peacock
"Bait" by Brian Beise
"God’s Bodyguard Talks to a Reporter" by Jeff Vande Zande
"Killipedes" by Jens Rushing
"Comparative Anatomy" by K.C. Shaw

Cartoons:
Paul Salamone
G.W. Thomas
Richard Cabeza
John Medaille
Dan Burt

Illustrators:
Chris Waltrip
Chris Friend

If you remember the Space Squid party invitation (don’t forget it’s this Saturday at Frugal Media), I promised everyone that there would be a zombie simulation with real heads. Well, this week I started to panic.

Usually Fiesta just has a bunch of sheep heads lying around in a pile with a sign that says "Cabeza $3.49 each." But they haven’t had any heads in stock all week. I know, I’ve gone in every day to check. Have you ever asked a nice Spanish-speaking lady if she has any heads? It’s not fun.

So this morning I made some calls, and it was suggested to me by my frequent Food Frakker deputy that I ought to try Longhorn Meat Market out there on E.MLK. If you squint carefully at the sign you can read the message: "rabbits are back".

And yes, they had heads.

The pork heads were significantly cheaper than the beef heads (but not quite as cheap as the Fiesta heads). So I only got two. This is the larger of the two:

I’m going to set that one on a zombie armature at five foot six and a half inches, the average height of an American adult.

I also got this piglet-sized head:

This one will go on a zombie armature of three feet eight inches, the average height of a six-year-old.

There’s been a little bit of confusion as to how the zombie simulation will work. If you bring in a zombie weapon (no projectiles or firearms or anything that’s likely to harm spectators) we will be more than happy to let you take a swing at the simulated zombie yourself. I have some eye protection you can use, then it’s just a matter of giving the video camera a short disclaimer about how you appreciate the risks involved in breaking zombies, and then you’re good to go.

Any questions? You can get the Space Squid email off the website.

I’ll go in to Fiesta the next couple of days incase sheep heads come in, but until then, the pig heads are quietly defrosting in my fridge where I hope the housemate won’t see them.

One more thing. I was thinking of giving the two heads names, but there’s so many literary allusions one could use, that I couldn’t pick one.

Suggestions anyone?

Can you spot the new copies of SPACE SQUID in the above photo? The answer is below.

I’m a member of the Austin writer’s group the Slugtribe. The group has a pretty healthy membership these days, with several members bringing in selections from very promising novels.

I brought in the newest issue of SPACE SQUID for their reading pleasure. They got the uncensored version (more on that later!) because I felt that as writers they were all mature enough to handle it.

I also made certain that they were all coming to the SPACE SQUID issue seven release party this Saturday at Frugal Media. Remember, the party is going to have a zombie simulation and improv fiction competitions!

Did you spot all the SPACE SQUID in the picture?