Zombie Lapdance

My food-frakking deputy Julia has been sending me interesting bicycle links of late. For instance, I know a guy who went to the bike activist convention in Copenhagen. He’s not in this documentary about the convention, but it’s an interesting look at a utopian vision that apparently works. But we can never have a bicycle-dominant transportation paradigm in America because most Americans are too fat to even lift one leg over the center bar.

The other interesting link is this robotic tandem bicycle partner.

I think I would have a heart attack if I was biking around on my tandem while being constantly chased by a terminator.

Sprinkles!

Another visitor to the porchlight. She’s as beautiful as a snow-leopard.

I haven’t blogged about all the little projects I engage in, because not all of them are successful. But I’ve decided to break the "Matthew Is So Awesome" narrative, and tell you about my failures.

For the past year or so I had been using this $20 mp3 player that I got off eBay. It had a few problems, which I fixed, and then one day I pulled out the USB cable and the whole plug came with it.

Not willing to waste twenty bucks, I decided that I would solder the USB cable directly to the motherboard. So I dragged out the multimeter, and using a magnifying glass and jumper wires with sewing needles clenched on the end as probes, I sussed out the connections.

To make sure I had them right, I used jumper wires to connect the motherboard to the USB cable, and fired up the laptop and MP3 player together. And it worked! I could use the jumper wires to access the flash memory onboard the MP3 player.

Then I tried to solder the connections, and as soon as all those tiny, hairlike wires got hot, they fell off the circuit board, leaving no visible connection at all. So, yup. Had to get a new one. But the new MP3 player only cost $12 and has more features, so who’s complaining?

In a similar appliance repair failure, the LCD screen on my cellphone stopped working, so I ordered a new one off eBay. Cost me seven bucks.

But it came with a little extractor doohickey, which was pretty cool.

But it still didn’t work. So I had to get a new phone.

Then I made this plastic-encased LED light.

But soon after the plastic hardened, most of the LEDs stopped working. It still kinda works though.

My most brilliant stupid idea recently was to turn all the used plastic grocery bags in my closet into rope. You see, most rope is made by twisting fibers together, and then twisting two strands of twisted fiber together in an opposite direction of the original twist. That way the untwisting of the two twists lock together. Makes sense, right?

So I strung some of the bags together.

And I used my cordless drill to do the twisting.

And technically it worked.

But now I have slightly less than three feet of extremely ugly rope.

I have vague plans of making sandals entirely out of recycled plastic, using this as the straps, but that’s most likely only going to compound the ugliness.

A little while ago, I released the Helmut Finch mythos into the public domain. This was a response to the frequent call for more Helmut Finch stories that follow anyone hearing the Pseudopod performance of "Hometown Horrible."

So the question has arisen, what makes a story a Helmut Finch mythos story, and not just an homage to Lovecraft? (The original story is frequently interpreted as a Lovecraft homage, although that is not entirely correct, Lovecraftian flare is just how I write by default.)

For one thing, a Helmut Finch story could be a fleshing-out of the story synopsis presented in "Hometown Horrible." So automatically a story about the Candy Dog or the Cornstalk Witch would be a Helmut Finch mythos story.

But if the Helmut Finch story didn’t start from those ideas, which is a very intriguing prospect, then where does the story come from? Period piece writing and a strong emphasis on the horror of memetic themes is a good start.

But I think the best signifier of a Helmut Finch story would be offhand references to Wisconsin. Now you might be thinking, surely one would have to be a longtime resident of Wisconsin, or at least have visited it once or twice to make cagey references.

Sadly, this is not the case. Wisconsin is the most banal of all states. If you want to give your story a little Wisconsin color, just make a reference to some of the weird town names like Sheboygan or Beloit. Or maybe have your characters drinking a Wisconsin beer like Leinenkugel’s or Berghoff while eating cheese curds. And if you’re extra good at research, include some strangely detailed knowledge of dairy pricing.

It’s time once again to descend into the world of tube-meat. This installment of the Hotdog Round-up features four very interesting contenders, and none is more interesting than the Kobe Dog from StrEat.

Streat, or strEAT, or strEat, is the restaurant that opened in the space of my old workplace, the Red River Texas French Bread. The strEAT gimmick is they serve street food from the global culture. Streat was open only for a couple of weeks when I showed up, and they were still getting their act together. The group I was with ordered a wide range of their food, and everything had something a little off. The Bahn Mi was on a heavy sourdough loaf, the calamari crepe was soggy and runny, and the falafels were black, hard balls (although the owner insisted that was how they were supposed to look). In the case of my Kobe Dog, the bun was old and stale. As for the rest of it, the meat was passable, but the toppings of shredded cabbage and Japanese barbecue sauce take the award for weird condiments.
StrEat Kobe Dog – Grade B minus

As I walked up to the Diamond Shamrock on Airport Boulevard, intending to buy a delicious gas station hotdog, I could see through the window that a guy was cleaning the hotdog rotisserie. He had a dirty, wadded up piece of paper towel that he used to rub between the hotdog rollers. He had the most serious expression as he scrubbed. And whenever he came to a part of the rotisserie occupied by hotdogs, he picked them up by the tips of his bare fingers and moved them to a newly scrubbed section. So I decided instead to eat a hotdog that was still in its factory package.

The Super Chili Cheese Dogs heated well in the microwave, the succulent red chili grease soaking into the buns the way sweetened milk infuses a tres leches cake with moist flavor. The meat had that crisp technicolor taste you can only find through the miracles of chemistry. The cheese garnish unites the trilogy of meat-chili-bun with a stretchy lattice of quasi-dairy goo.
Diamond Shamrock Pre-packaged Chilidog – Grade B

Sandy’s (if it were "Sandies" that would have totally different conotations) has been serving the Zilker Park/Barton Springs community for years by giving them summer food the way it was intended – wrapped in carboard on a picnic table stained with grackle poo.

This unassuming chilidog is exactly what you would expect from a roadside burger stand. The meat is off-the-shelf normal. It tastes like pig and salt. The chili no doubt came from a can and has been sitting in a warmer or refrigerator tupperware until the occasion of need. The diced onions were probably prepped by the morning crew, and the bun was produced by a factory, wrapped tightly, and delivered in a timely manner. It is in short a masterful synthesis of the available elements.
Sandy’s Chilidog – Grade B plus

We’re counting down to the next issue of Space Squid. This will be issue number 9, due out for Armadillocon in late August.

As of this moment I have cut off the submissions that we will be considering for #9. So if you send something in, and should it pass through the first round of reading, then you can expect we won’t give you a final verdict on whether or not we’ll consider it for #10 until after August. I’m not trying to scare you away from submitting, this is probably your best shot at acceptance, when we’re all aglow with the joy of small press. Just keep in mind that it might take a little longer than usual.

The slushpile is empty as of this moment. If you haven’t at least received a hold request from us, then something is horribly wrong and you need to send me a ping immediately.

There’s still about eight stories that are on hold and up for final perusal by the Space Squid editorial board. However it shakes down, we’ve got some really good material. I’m happy that we took a year to get this issue out. It’s ensured that we have nothing but the best fiction available.

Contracts and illustration assignments go out in the next week or so (unless I’m a horrible slacker as I usually am).

Kudos go to our assistant editor Elle, who made this grand issue come together by reading a vast amount of slush. We’ve had about 340 submissions over the past year, roughly one a day. Ten of them came from one guy (Mr. Brown, you’re ready to pop, I swear). A considerate review of these stories would not have been possible without Elle’s help, so thanks.

And then the possum got scared and ran straight inside a bucket. I swear, possums are the Mr.Beans of the animal kingdom.

Another step on this blog’s sad descent into an animal photo forum.

I stepped out of a party in Hyde Park to fetch some Dr.Pepper, and on the way back I ran into this boa.

At least I think it was a boa. There was a team of dudes organized on the spot to usher it across the street. I would not recommend walking your pet hamster in the vicinity of the Elisabet Ney Museum for a while.

Here’s some glamor shots of a moth I found near the porchlight.

This BBC link showed up on one of my Space Squid google alerts. This animal is called a sea devil.

And here is its predator, the sea angel.

Marine biology. Is any other science quite so Lovecraftian? Consider this quote: "Sea angels don’t have eyes, but use chemical senses to detect their prey. When one senses a potential victim it moves fast and raises its tentacles."

Every now and then I discover a stunning cultural difference between Texas and Wisconsin. For instance, there are a number of Texans who have never heard the song "Roll Out the Barrel" (aka the Beer Barrel Polka).
I can’t imagine living in a world without polka standards, so it shocked me that 60% of the Texans I asked have never heard of Roll Out the Barrel, nor do they know how to dance the polka.

Of course the other 40% when asked if they know "Roll Out the Barrel" start singing it. So there’s hope for Texas.

No polkaing yet.