This is “veggie bacon.” Its ingredients are soy and disappointment.
The package portrayed it as “delicious,” which is precisely the kind of dangerous, calculated lie I’d expect from a jailed serial killer or Craigslist personal ads or the White House Press Secretary.
Alright, maybe I’m being too harsh. This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. It tastes better than it smells, so there’s that. (When I was frying it and noting its failure to sizzle, I recoiled from what I can only describe as a vague, radioactive-carrot odor.)
It just doesn’t taste like bacon. It maybe tastes like processed pork rinds. Seriously. They ought to call it “veggie pork rinds.”
Chilling in the Star City with a café mocha — courtesy of a super-cool writer pal. Thinking up some future stories. (Thank you, m’Dear.) No, I cannot close a Starbucks lid correctly — it’s why I’m always spilling coffee on myself.
Everyone is so extraordinarily nice in this town. People actually slow their cars to a stop to allow you to cross the street — even when they have the right of way! They even make eye contact, and smile and nod when they do it! Such a thing would be virtually unheard of in New York, which is basically Thunderdome when compared with Roanoke.
How can such vast numbers of people in this city be so polite? This city might be the eighth wonder of the world.
I need to learn to be a little more pleasant and sociable to match the spirit of humanity here. I can think of it as getting into “Roanoke-mode.”
“Willard” (1971) and its sequel, “Ben” (1972), were another pair of 1970’s movies that got plenty of airtime on 1980’s television. I read both books when I was a kid too.
First I picked up Stephen Gilbert’s Ratman’s Notebooks at a yard sale, because that’s how you found cool horror books during summer vacations when you were too young to drive. (Sometimes adults had few compunctions about what they sold to minors too. I bought a vampire book in gradeschool that was full of nude photos, for some reason, and that led to what I’m sure was an interesting conversation between my parents and the neighbor-proprietor down the street.)
Anyway, I absolutely loved Ratman’s Notebooks (despite its lamentable absence of nude photos) and I finished it in a day or two. The novelization of the “Ben” film by Gilbert A. Ralston was somewhat less impressive, but I still enjoyed it.
If you’re a comics fan, like I am, then it might occur you that “Willard” and his army of trained rats seem to inspire a villain in Batman’s rogue’s gallery — Ratcatcher. Ratcatcher has been a minor league villain since he debuted in DC Comics in 1988, but he’s a pretty neat bad guy when placed in the hands of the right writer.
I feel certain that anyone will recognize Ernest Borgnine in the first trailer below– his face and voice are impossible to confuse with those of another man. If the disaffected, spooky, eponymous Willard looks familiar to you, that’s none other than a young Bruce Davison. He’s a good actor who’s been in a lot of films, but I think a plurality of my friends will know him as Senator Kelly from the first two “X-Men” movies (2000, 2003).
You’ll note the presence of flamethrowers in the trailer for “Ben.” Flamethrowers were a staple of 70’s and 80’s horror films; it was just part of the zeitgeist. They were handy for heroes fighting any nigh-unstoppable nonhuman baddie — think of “The Swarm” (1978), “The Thing” (1982), “C.H.U.D.” (1984), “Aliens” (1986), and “The Blob” (1988), for example. Hell, 1980’s “The Exterminator” featured a vigilante using a flamethrower to kill criminals. It was a weird time.
I’m honored to share here that The Piker Press will feature four more of my poems in the coming months. “November, Blue Ridge Mountains, 1992” will appear on November 18. “As Silver as the Stars You Tried To Rival” will be published on December 16. “Lilac, Wine, Pomegranate, Black” will appear on January 13, and “Lie To Me, But Brightly” will be featured on February 10.
As always, I am grateful to Editor Sand Pilarski for allowing me to share my voice through The Piker Press!
I swear this spider was as long as my thumb. I could have put my shoe or maybe a quarter next to it for scale, but I don’t want to stick any part of my body near this thing, and I don’t want to subsidize its hellish agenda. (I did kinda zoom out so that you can compare it to the size of the curb.)
What does it eat?! Birds?! Why does it appear to have racing stripes?!
To quote the immortal Ellen Ripley, I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Update: someone is trying to persuade me that this is a “garden spider,” and that they are quite harmless. I’m not sure I buy that.
“Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” was a spoof of sci-fi/horror films that hit theaters in 1978, and broadcast television shortly after that. (The first video below is the film’s trailer; the second is its campy theme song.) I think I was a second grader when I saw the movie on TV, and I positively loved it. I still remember rolling around on the living room floor in peals of laughter. I talked about it for weeks — and to anybody who would listen. (If you think my social skills are lacking as an adult, you should have seen me in the second grade.)
I was surprised to learn recently that this film has a cult following. I’ve hardly heard about it since the close of the 1970’s — and I’ve known a lot of flick nuts.
It’s past midnight. I am actually nervously analyzing the President’s vocal and physical cues in all the most recent footage I can find of him to assess any symptoms of substance abuse and/or mental illness. I swear. I feel certain any of my friends who are not Republican would not find me paranoid for doing this.
I never thought I’d see the day.
I’m not just talking about longstanding mental disorders that many have long felt confident about pointing out — like narcissism. I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything acute about to present.
I feel like his rhetoric has always been goddam alarming and that of a wannabe dictator. But recent events show a sharp decline in his decision-making. (I realize that sounds like a massive understatement in light of his incredible troop withdrawal from northern Syria, and its consequences … maybe I’m just trying to be dispassionate here.)
People sometimes say that he slurs his words; I, in all honesty, have discerned that only once. (It was a while ago; I can’t remember where he was — maybe it was a CPAC speech?)
His body language today was different. He doesn’t look good. His face occasionally looks bloated to me, and today he seemed tired.
So much of what comes out of his mouth is crazy, but that’s been true from the start. So … maybe I should be less worried, given his “baseline?” That seems like false comfort.
I keep reminding myself that he’s 73 years old.
I am genuinely worried.
I’m sorry that this is such a rambling post … I guess this is just sort of a stream of consciousness tonight.
