Shields Up

Last night, Steven den Beste did me a big favor by posting a Metafilter link to my pirate stuff over on my other site. I posted this stuff because my work week has been destroyed and I didn't want to leave readers with nothing to look at. It's from the draft I was working on when my publisher canned the pirate book.

To say the Metafilter crowd didn't like the material would be an understatement. Maybe they have a point; it was unfinished work I put up as a stopgap. Maybe it was a mistake to work on an idea supplied by my publisher instead of inspiration. On the other hand, there are a lot of pretentious, stuffy assholes over there. I don't know much about Metafilter other than that.

Anyway, I knew my regular readers would rather see the work than not see it. And I appreciate Steven posting the link, regardless.

Evidently, not all of them hate it, because my mailing list has grown as a result of the link.

My policy for that site was to keep unpolished material off of it, but I was desperate this time. I have to get a boat ready for a long trip today, and I'll be spending at least two precious work days on the water this week. Maybe I'll take the pirate stuff down when regular activity resumes.

Once this trip is done, anyone trying to interrupt me while I work on my upcoming books will be shot in the doorway. This is never going to happen to me again, barring a hideous catastrophe that forces me away from the keyboard.

By the way, I didn't know until today that Steven had been having health problems. I don't know if he wants people talking about it in detail, but apparently things are sufficiently bad to interfere with his work in a big way. So say a prayer for him.

Posted by Steve H. at 9:37 AM | Permalink  

Avast, Bitches

You may recall that my agent and publisher wanted me to write a book about pirates last year. I generated a ton of material, but the publisher passed. It's obvious to me that the project is dead, so because I'm busy this week, I've decided to start publishing it on my other site for your enjoyment.

The first two chapters are up. Here's a link to the pirate page. More to follow next week.

If you like it, Stumble and Digg it and then submit it to Netscape. If someone else has already done that, add your vote. Buttons are already on my site.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:10 AM | Permalink  

Johnny Dipp, Exposed

Wrote a new chapter for the pirate book today. It's about famous pirates.

Excerpt:

Unfortunately, the most famous pirate of all time will probably turn out to be Jack Sparrow, the makeup-wearing hermaphrodite of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I may as well give you some background on him.

Born in San Francisco, Jack Sparrow got to know his first pirates while working as a towel boy in a waterfront bath house. He went on to get an associate’s degree in cosmetology and become wig master at a popular seaside cabaret, but he never stopped dreaming of the salt air and the sensation of hot rum-scented breath on the back of his neck.

Sparrow eventually joined a pirate crew, even though his family protested that it was crazy to take a position as a cabin boy at the age of 37. He saved his doubloons, and he earned extra income in the ship’s rec room, teaching shiatsu and modern dance. By the time he was 40, he was able to purchase his own ship, which he christened with his nickname for his Grenadian companion Renaldo: the Black Pearl.

Sparrow’s ship was stolen by his first mate while he was ashore in Manhattan, auditioning for the part of Linda Low in The Flower Drum Song. It was at this time that he realized his theft of some Aztec gold had left him cursed with a curious brand of immortality. He resolved to break the curse, but in the meantime, he made the most of his immunity to venereal disease.

You know the rest of the story.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:12 PM | Permalink  

This is Not a Chawade

I think the ninja chapter of the pirate book is going well. Here's a piece concerning Japanese ritual suicide.

If you kill yourself and your paper house happens to be in California, Sean Connery shows up at your cardboard door with Wesley Snipes, and Sean kicks the living bejeezus out of maybe seventy-five Yakuza thugs who jump out of the bushes. Even though Sean is like seventy pounds overweight, forty of which are his liver. And several ounces are his toupee.

During the filming of Rising Sun, Sean’s girdle exploded in a couple of fight scenes, killing a number of stunt men and shaming Steven Seagal into funding research to make his own girdle more lethal.

The Yakuza is the Japanese mafia. They’re a little like the American mafia, in that they’re total scumbags, but they come to work earlier, and they’re much more polite. I’m not too clear on how big the Yakuza is. I think they invented the compact disc, but in order to be sure, I’ll probably have to watch some more movies. It’s my understanding that there are a lot of hidden clues in the old cartoons Speed Racer and Astro Boy. Dan Brown needs to get to work on that right away, if he’s finished pulling ridiculous fables about the Bible out of his ass.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:03 AM | Permalink  

You Tell ME

Click the thumbnail below, and tell me. Do you ever wonder if Mrs. Muir did any drugs when she was pregnant with Chris?

Posted by Steve H. at 11:10 PM | Permalink  

Budget Pirating Can be Degrading

Working on the parrot chapter of the pirate book. Sample follows.

Don’t feel that even though you can’t afford a parrot, you absolutely have to have a pet of some sort on your shoulder. Because that kind of desperation can lead to really bad choices that will make you look truly stupid at a pirate dinner party or bris. You can’t really grasp the meaning of the phrase “fashion faux pas” until you see a man in a pirate suit, who has decorated his shoulder with an angry wiener dog. And it just sounds wrong when you say things like, “Polly want a Snausage?"

You definitely want to avoid monkeys. I know you saw one in a Johnny Dipp—I mean “Depp”—movie, but that was a stage monkey sitting on a massive Thorazine suppository held in with DuPont 5200 monkey-proof marine adhesive. Or a midget. With a smaller suppository and maybe less glue. Due to union rules.

Real monkeys spend the whole day accurately flinging substances most people would be afraid to touch even with nitrile hazmat gloves. If you don’t want to touch it, you definitely don’t want it flung in your face, rubbed in your hair, or pushed in your mouth during a prolonged yawn.

Posted by Steve H. at 4:42 PM | Permalink  

Kindly Surrender Your Doubloons to Captain Steve

I have to ask: just how big IS this Pirate thing?

I thought my editor and agent were high when they told me books about pirates would sell. I could not believe there were people nerdy enough to talk like pirates and--more horrible--dress like them. But goddamn...it looks like I was WAY wrong.

Dear little SondraK, the Internet's thonged sentinel of good taste, sent me this link this morning. Some nut on the Fark forum wants advice on making his cubicle look more like a pirate ship. And the other nuts are seriously trying to give him helpful advice. And by helpful advice, I don't mean obvious things like, "Get a vasectomy immediately." I mean they're telling him to put up black flags and so on.

Am I actually going to make MONEY from this insanity? Am I going to sell THIS before my wonderful cookbooks, which I poured my heart into?

By the way, I came up with a title for the book: Ship of Tools: a Guide to Suburban Piracy. I feel a little "iffy" about it, because "tool" is slang for "penis," but it sums up the way I feel about grown men who cavort in fake beards with plastic swords in their hands.

I can't believe these people really exist. Is it a refreshing sign that Americans are searching for their lost innocence, or is it a crippling epidemic of galloping dumbass?

If you want to see a truly heartbreaking case of pirate-nerd psychosis, check out this site, Jollyroger.com. "Ahoy there, mate," it says at the top of the page. It ought to say, "Ahoy there, orderly! Thicker straps!"

Supposedly, that site promotes reading "great books." I hope some of them are about abnormal psychology.

Is this fad for real? Can adults with jobs and drivers' licenses really be getting sucked into this bizarre nationwide session of wanton grab-ass?

I sure hope so. Being rich would be nice.

Yesterday I fantasized about stuff I want to buy if I make it as a writer. I want the balls-to-the-wall ergonomic office of all time, with a giant monitor and a reclining chair that massages me. Well, I got so excited I got on Ebay, and look what I found: a killer massage recliner for $600, DELIVERED!

Now, I realize it's from China, so God only knows what kind of parts they put in it. But think about it...what kind of parts do they put in "mainstream" vibrating recliners? Damned if I know. I don't think BMW makes one.

Female readers will yammer their strange, irrelevant objections, such as, "That thing is ass-ugly." This is the great thing about being a man. As long as my car looks good, everything else can go to hell. Actually, even the car doesn't have to look good, as long as it serves some other purpose. People buy Corvettes, and they look like shiny yellow suppositories. And every man needs a crappy pickup with bald tires.

The thing women fail to understand about a chair like this is that a man will buy it to escape from things that annoy him. Such as women.

You can also get a chair that vibrates and massages in time to music. You put a CD in a slot in the chair, and the next thing you know, you're listening to Bo Diddly sing "Who do You Love" while the chair does you like a lump of dough.

Jesus. Who NEEDS women? Put a couple of attachments on one of these things, and...

Let's not go there this early in the day.

Okay, let's. I mean, think about it. You're lying there in your amazing chair, which never talks or takes your money, and it's doing its mindblowing work, and you have your giant monitor on the ceiling with the midget porn going, and beside you, you have a kegerator containing a five-gallon keg of homebrewed wheat beer...all you need are ribs, corn on the cob, and a big pistol to shoot anyone who tries to rescue you.

In other words, my future now has a coherent blueprint.

I pray the pirate nerds keep it up until I can get this book published. After that, they are free to seek counseling and medication, because they will have served their purpose. I.e., to put money in my pocket at the cost of their self-respect.

Six hundred bucks...how many copies would I have to sell, anyway?

Posted by Steve H. at 10:27 AM | Permalink  

Proposal Done

This is the greatest day of my life. I finished the pirate book proposal and fired it off to my agent.

Maybe not THE happiest day. Definitely the happiest this week. Although I got drunk and had barbecue on Sunday, so maybe it's the second-happiest. But it's a pretty great day.

Now I'll have to be the bane of Chris Muir's existence, bugging him for illustrations. How do you draw a nude snorkeling pirate attempting to have carnal knowledge of a manatee?

His problem, not mine.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:38 PM | Permalink  

Stand by for a Gale

I'm still working on my chapter about pirate romance.

The sexual desperation of pirates and sailors is the reason for myths about mermaids. For centuries, historians and biologists have been telling us mermaid tales were created by lonely seamen who thought they were seeing lovely topless women in the water, but were actually staring at various types of sea cows.

It may be hard to believe that a person could mistake a sea cow, such as a dugong or manatee, for a topless woman. It makes more sense once you’ve seen the kind of women pirates managed to have sex with. For most pirates, switching to sex with sea cows was, at worst, a lateral move.

In some ways, sex with a sea cow was a step up. For example, sea cows don’t expect a lot of irritating extraneous conversation about where the relationship is going.

The down side of sex with sea cows, other than drowning and going to hell, is their terrifying flatulence. Ask anyone who hangs out at a marina. You really have to see it to believe it. But you can imagine the stupid explanations pirates came up with. “Arrrrhh, me sweety barks because she be glad to see me!”

In all seriousness, nothing farts quite as much as a manatee.

Posted by Steve H. at 2:07 PM | Permalink  

Pirate Sex!

Today I'm working on the romance chapter of the pirate book. If women didn't already have sufficient reason to form a mob and drag me through the streets naked, they surely will when the book comes out.

Sample:

I know women get all their ideas about life from women’s magazines and romance novels, so it may come as a surprise to them that pirates didn’t look like Fabio or have a soft, sensitive side that could be brought out by means of the usual female spine-breaking tools. But that’s the truth. When it came to sex, old-timey pirates were basically looking for anything concave that couldn’t buck them off. And they smelled and said mean things, and their idea of foreplay was flipping a doubloon to see who went next.

You’re mad, right? Fine. Shoot the messenger. Women always get mad when I tell them important truths they need to know. Like, “You’re fat.”

Posted by Steve H. at 12:42 PM | Permalink  

Are They Delivering Mail Today?

The magical extract of the sacred bean is doing its work and I almost feel like I can write. But first let me say I'm aware that it's Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Whoo hoo.

Okay, the celebration is over. Back to work.

Seriously, this is the dumbest holiday ever. I say that even though I hope to make money off of it.

Here's some useful information. Have you seen the annoying talking banner ads yet? They feature weird-looking chipmunk-cheeked female cartoon characters. They used to just follow your cursor around the page with their eyes. Now they talk. This morning I saw a working sample with a form for people to type words into.

I used to torment the cartoons by leaving the cursor in their eyes, right on top of the pupil. Now I can make them say filthy things. This morning I made the cartoon use the F word in a sentence. I wish I could capture the video, because it's hilarious. God help the bastards who invented the ad, if I get ahold of their code.

That's all. I feel better.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:31 AM | Permalink  

It's TODAY

I keep getting emails about Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I appreciate people keeping up with my projects and trying to keep me informed, but I think you should know, the book I'm working on pretty much shits on the TLAP concept. That's the aim. I guess that's mean, but a book reaffirming the notion would be superfluous, not to mention boring.

I really don't get TLAP. I haven't seen the website, unless maybe the page that sells the TLAP book is there. I saw the book's page. I haven't read the book. I don't plan to do so. I don't really need to read it. I'm afraid the whole business is sort of like Renaissance Fairs or SCA events, where gigantic nerds gather to prance around in medieval costumes made from authentic materials like polyester and vinyl. While carrying Blackberries. Surely that can't be right, though. Surely there aren't people who actually get together and dress like pirates and talk like idiots all day.

"Arrrhh, pull me finger!" "Ahoy, no dip! I can't have shellfish!" I just can't see it. Is that fun? Did I forget what fun was like, somewhere down the line? I don't think so. I've had fun, and it was never anything as sad and weird as that.

Apart from not wanting to read the book or website simply because it doesn't sound like my kind of thing, I don't want to be influenced. I want to write what I write and--maybe--THEN look at related works, to make sure I haven't repeated things they've already said.

I guess I'm going to be the pirate antichrist. Everyone else will be dorking around in funny hats and plastic swords, calling each other "matey," and I'll be on the sidelines, flinging boiling dung.

Maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing and people aren't that deranged. Maybe they don't make complete fools of themselves and make all their friends uncomfortable and scare their children. I guess I'll find out.

Anyway, YES, I know about TLAP. Thanks for the emails, but I know. I only wish I had had some idea that September 19th was TLAP Day, because I would never have mentioned the book and invited the flood of information. I can't wait for September 20th, when the weirdness will be over. When the 19th rolls around next year, do me a huge favor and do NOT invite me to your TLAP Day party. I am not going to dress up like a waiter in a cheesy seafood restaurant and come to your house with Marvin on my shoulder. And believe me, if I did, you would regret inviting me. Marv hates parties, and he would shit all over me, and I would refuse to talk like a pirate regardless of how drunk I got. And it would just be...awkward.

I may be a wet blanket, but I'm up-front about it.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:20 AM | Permalink  

Get That Bird Some Chocolate

It's turning out to be a tough morning.

First I got up and found an anonymous link to a Youtube video in my email, and I felt compelled to post it (see previous entry), and then when I sat down to write, Maynard sat behind me in his cage going "weeeeeEEEEeeeeEEEEEeeeeeEEEE" in a tiny, mournful voice, which meant I had to take him out and pound on him to make him feel loved.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that all parrots are women. Two days ago, Marv bit the pee out of my thumb because of some bizarre instinctual thing that makes him fiercely territorial before 9 a.m., and now Maynard is being needy and interfering with my work.

Women will yell at me for saying this (as always) but they have all sorts of insane hormonal and instinctual drives that kick in for no apparent reason and make them do things that even they themselves later disavow as crazy. Men, on the other hand, have something like five instincts. The food instinct, the beer instinct, the violence instinct, the sex instinct, and the laziness instinct. And they function at all times, very predictably.

I knew a girl who went nuts cleaning the house once a month, even when she was visiting other people. I figured she was just tidy, but she told me it was a hormonal thing a lot of women get, and she called it "nesting." The idea is that your ovaries tell you you're about to foal, so you try to get the burrow ready. I had never heard of it. But that's one great instinct. I wonder if they have one that makes them want to mow yards.

I wish some brave, honest person would put out a comprehensive list of insane female compulsions, saying when we should expect them and how to handle them. I think even women would find that useful.

Anyway, much like a woman, Marv has these weird drives that conflict with his other emotions and urges. In the morning, he craves attention desperately and wants to be handled. But if you stick your hand in the cage before 9 a.m., he may take it off. And then he's mad, but also upset that he's not being handled. So when he squawks for attention in the morning, I blast him with the water bottle and go back to work.

Will that work with women? It will probably buy you a DV beef and a ride to the crossbar hotel.

Cockatoos are like girls from Boston and New York. They demand constant reassurance. "No, you're not fat. Yes, your tits are fine. Yes, I love you. No, I don't mind that you call every fifteen minutes. Yes, I will drop the restraining order if you promise to let me sleep for eight straight hours."

I think that if we really want to get information from Al Qaeda prisoners, we should have Northeastern girls fall in love with them and then whine it out of them.

People who own wild-caught parrots are even worse off than I am. Birds that have lived in the wild have a ritual where they scream their lungs out at sunup and sundown. I have only seen it once, at a breeding facility with hard sheetrock walls and tile floors that reflected sound. I honestly thought the noise was going to make my eyes pop and run down my face.

Now Marv is giving me Grunts of Resentment. He sits on his food dish and looks at me and goes "Unk...unk...unk...unk..." with the "unks" about three seconds apart. I couldn't do what he wanted because of HIS craziness, and now he blames me. Hey, it's great that women never act like that, isn't it?

Shut up, guys.

I'm still working on the "Fight Like a Pirate" chapter. So far, it's mainly about the tremendous advantages of treachery and cowardice. I think mine may be the first really accurate book about pirates. They were assholes, and I point that out constantly. Maybe September 19 should be "Talk Like an Asshole Day." Either way, people would still end up impersonating Johnny Depp.

More coffee is needed. I feel ready to proceed. Damn the torpedoes.

Just to prevent confusion: that's not a reference to the video I posted earlier.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:35 AM | Permalink  

Mission Meets With Success

I am all done working today. I cranked out more pirate crap and finished a draft of a proposal for the cookbook, and I am pooped.

I talked to my agent and got some bizarre yet wonderful news. He thinks the pirate stuff is too good for the publisher that asked for it. Better than the Nigerian book. He wants to shop it around and try to get real money for it.

That's good and bad. It's good because, well, it's GOOD. But it's bad because the editor who suggested it will get stiffed on the deal. If it goes to another publisher and does really well, he'll get diddly shit. I don't like to see that happen, because he has been great about the Nigerian book, and he has been a joy to work with, apart from dropping that hideous title on me out of the blue.

One problem with publishing is that editors are hamstrung by their bosses. You can have an editor you really want to work with, which is important, and then find out that the money and support just aren't there. In the final analysis, a writer isn't a charity, so you generally have to go where the money is. But it would be nice to work with people I like and trust.

There is nothing worse than working with an idiot, and that's where I'm headed unless fate is extraordinarily kind to me. Almost all editors are complete pinheads. I got lucky this time, but if that happens twice in a row, it will be a miracle.

I can't believe the pirate thing is working out so well. I was afraid it didn't have legs, but once I indulged my innate insanity and went off on various tangents, the material started to flow.

I conned Chris Muir into doing illustrations, so even if you hate me, you'll want the book for his cartoons. Here are a couple of preliminary sketches.

I truly look forward to the one with the pirates celebrating the Sabbath by firing a midget out of a cannon.

It's amazing, the things you can turn into books.

Now I have to unwind with some fine Scotch and some excellent Norwegian midget porn. Enjoy the sketches.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:00 PM | Permalink  

This is Why Your Ancestors Died at Twelve

Today I'm working on the chapter on how to fight like a pirate. Because injuries were a big risk to pirates who weren't smart enough to attack their enemies from behind, preferably while asleep, I felt it would be good to reproduce some items from a medical manual which a ship's surgeon might have used while patching up wounded buccaneers.

As you might expect, samples follow.

Itemme the firste: Constipaytion. Physick the paytient withe nine quartts of best torpentine and advize him to refrayne from smoking in the privey until the lodgement has passed.

Itemme ye sixth: Dulle paynes of the forehead and temples. Amputaytion. Iffe the paytient is vaine, engayge a carpenter to prepare a false head of oake.

Itemme ye eighth: Venereal complaints. Foule discharges may be stemmed by dryving a heated copper rod up the paytient’s privey member. Advize the paytient to refrayne from further intimate contakt with citizens of France.

Be not vaine and expekt your paytients to recover, for recoverry is prufe certain of bewitchment. Take suche paytients as recover and immerse them in the neareste ponnde. Those that floate back to the surface and resume breathing shall you despatch anon with a hoe or, if hoe be not founde, a sturdy midgett mallet.

Posted by Steve H. at 2:14 PM | Permalink  

More Pirate Rules

I worked on the Pirate Code today. Here is part of the chapter:

The sample rules serve to highlight a problem with modern-day pirating, which is that wives and girlfriends think it’s incredibly stupid, and that they will make fun of you until you nearly consider shaving your chin beard and taking up golf.

Don’t give up so easy. Think about all the stupid things women do. I once had a woman drag me to a cat show. I figured it would be full of exhibits about things you could buy to get rid of cats. Like cat traps and cat zappers and catpaper. It turned out they were selling ridiculous items intended to bring cats pleasure and make them more comfortable in your house. How idiotic is that? Cat repellant. That’s what they need to sell. Anti-cat mines. Laser-guided surface-to-cat missiles. Electrical devices to attach to furniture, which send a thousand volts up a stream of cat urine and cause pleasing explosions.

Posted by Steve H. at 2:54 PM | Permalink  

Skipperrrr!!!

The publisher says they are aware of the Talk Like a Pirate book, and that they have checked it out and do not see it as direct competition. Fine and dandy. I am now working on a chapter about the Pirate Code.

You may not know this, but I found a copy of the original and authentic Pirate Code, and it's going to be in the book. Here are some sample articles for your edification.

IV. For the losse of limbes or other members in time of engagement, the following sumes shall be tendered. For an eye, two hundredd pieces of eight. Or one piece of sixteen hundredd. Plus two slaves. For an arme, one hundredd pieces of eight and one slave. For a legge, seventy-five pieces of eight and one poxy slave with bad knees. For a toe, ten pieces of eight and one poundde of cheese. Be it a greatte or innermost toe, also one serviceable midgett and two sackes of appropriate feed.

IX. The ship’s musicians may only be beaten betweene sets. However, the ship’s midgett may be smitten at wille, as fancy strykes. Use of staves or mallets shall in no wise be enjoyned.

X. Under no cyrcumstanses may the ship’s midgett be fyred from a cannon, except in obsservation of the holy Sabbath.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:29 PM | Permalink  

Pirating Other Pirates

I've been sitting here so far today, working on sample chapters for my cookbook proposal. It turned out to be a pretty small job. I'm surprised how well the writing holds up. I thought I was going to have to gut the book and rebuild, but the stuff I looked at today couldn't be changed much without hurting it. I fixed the introduction and three chapters, and I'm done.

Readers keep telling me about Talk Like a Pirate Day, because I'm working on the pirate book my publisher asked for. Like I've said in the past, I know absolutely nothing about it. It sounds unbelievably nerdy to me. But today a loyal reader pointed out that the Talk Like a Pirate people have their own pirate wannabee handbook, which sounds an awful lot (I would use the term "exactly") like what my publisher asked me to write.

Here's what publishers do, to keep from stepping on each other's toes too badly. They cooperate by posting announcements of their upcoming projects. For example, I was worried that someone else might have a Nigerian book out, and I asked about it, and they told me they had kept an eye on the announcements, and that no big publisher had anything in the works.

So far, I have just assumed that they were watching the pirate genre, too. But to be safe, I sent my editor a note asking if he knew about the existing pirate book, which is in its sixth printing.

I truly hope they're not going to ask me to read the other book. I'm sure it's wonderful, but it really doesn't sound like the kind of thing I want to spend two days poring over.

I like to think the publisher knows what it's doing, but they did come up with that horrifying title for my Nigerian book.

More

If it turns out my publisher was asleep at the wheel (or as we pirates like to call it, "helm"), I'll just put the stuff I've done so far up at Roller Coaster of Hate.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:22 AM | Permalink  

Give Him a Kiss and a Big Advance

By God, I have two fabulous pieces of news. First, the amazing homebrewed ale I stuck in the Hoglodeck fridge a month or so ago is still fresh and tasty. Second, the music DVD I recorded, which doesn't work in my awful Panasonic DVD player, works just fine in the Hoglodeck's cheapo Sony.

Imagine. I have something like 1600 tunes on one DVD, and the machine holds 5. I should be able to keep my entire classical and jazz collections on three or four disks. And if I turn on the TV, I can see the file structure and pick the albums I want to hear.

I should just lay out there drunk for the rest of my life.

I'm not just drinking by the pool because I'm a fat lazy slouch. Oh, no. I'm finishing Treasure Island. I sent preliminary samples of the pirate book to my editor, and while he said he hooted out loud and disturbed people while reading it, they would like something with a little more pirate info and not quite so much wacked-out bullshit.

That Long John was a son of a bitch, wasn't he? Served him right, being named after a doughnut. Or a pair of scratchy wool drawers.

I'll bet he couldn't cook chicken planks for shit.

I'm strongly considering coming up with my own chicken plank recipe. I love those things.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:11 PM | Permalink  

Arrrrhh

Couple of excerpts from the first draft of the Pirate Food chapter.

1.

Rob - One of the fun things about pirate life is scurvy, a disease caused by low levels of dietary vitamin C. This vitamin is essential to the development and maintenance of connective tissue, which holds our bodies together. When you run out, parts such as teeth tend to come loose and fall out. And your skin and flesh shrivel, and eventually you start to look the way Burt Reynolds started looking ten years ago. To avoid scurvy, pirates ate rob, a revolting gummy substance made by boiling down the juice of nasty little bitter limes. Pirates learned this practice from British sailors, who were called “limeys” because they ate rob. Prior to the existence of rob, British sailors were called by their more proper name, “fat syphilitic toothless illiterate sodomites.”

2.

Rum - Every pirate got a ration of rum, which makes a certain amount of sense, since rum is the cheapest, most vile distilled spirit other than antifreeze. Latin Americans are fond of rum, and except for the pina colada, they make the worst mixed drinks in the universe. That’s why every drink contains half a pound of sugar to help you choke it down. Many people don’t realize this, but Latin American bartenders inadvertently invented cough syrup.

Pirates had a mixed drink of their own. It was called “grog.” I know what you’re thinking. You’ve been to cheesy seaside restaurants that served drinks called grog, and they were full of ginger ale and lemon juice and paper umbrellas and fruit slices on little plastic swords and God knows what, so you think you know what grog is. Wrong, fool. Grog was rum mixed with water. Either old water containing tadpoles, or fresh water containing seagull dung. Pretty fancy, eh? But pirates liked it because if you drank enough of it, you forgot how miserable your life was, and with any luck, you would also die.

I baked the hardtack twice, and it's starting to resemble quartz. I'll bake it one more time and then get out the drill.

More

I took the hardtack out and checked it out. It was too hard to bite into, so I laid a knife on it and banged on the knife with a rolling pin. After a lot of banging and see-sawing, I finally managed to break a piece off. You can chew it if you're really careful. It tastes like a brick made out of flour.

After that, I decided to see just how tough it was, so I took it in the garage and nailed it to this piece of scrap lumber. It's on there pretty good. No sign of cracking.

I have a theory. I think they called it "hardtack" because it was so hard you could tack it to things.

I may give some to the birds and see if they know what to make of it.

This entry's midget content rating: 0 Miguelitos

Posted by Steve H. at 2:42 PM | Permalink  

Pirate Food in Works

I'm working on the pirate book. I decided it would be a good idea to make some hardtack and test its properties. So I made the dough and put it in the oven, and later on, I'm going to see if it will hold drywall screws.

I wasn't able to find enough weevils and maggots to make it authentic, but I think the recipe is close enough for jazz. I guess I could drop it on the floor and scrape around behind the refrigerator before I try it.

This entry's midget content rating: 0 Miguelitos

Posted by Steve H. at 1:20 PM | Permalink  

Jot These Down

More pirate vocabulary terms:

41. Cutlass – Small pieces of chicken or veal.

42. Spinnaker – Short aggravating man who wins fights while high on spinach.

43. Land ho – Not a sea ho.

44. Abaft – Best to go ahead and use this one in a sentence. “The shower was broken, so we took abaft.”

I also added a new category: "Pirates: Avast Ye, Mateys." Put on your puffy shirts and click.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:38 AM | Permalink  

Finally, a Codpiece Held on by Velcro

I spoke too soon, which is almost always the case.

I said the title problem with my book was resolved. It pretty much is, but yesterday I got an email from my editor, saying he hadn't noticed "The Nigerian Candidate" when I suggested it a week or two ago. He said he liked that title a lot. And it goes with the subtitle "A Fat American Tortures Really Stupid Foreign Spammers," instead of the original "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spam."

You might enjoy part of the email I sent back to him.

I love the subtitle, but I think it ought to be "Fat Rich American," because that makes it snottier. "Fat" without "Rich" doesn't have the same effect. But the original subtitle is really good, too, and it's smarter, and regardless of what the romance lady says, EVERYONE gets it immediately. I hate writing down to an audience.

Is she riding you about this? The next time she brings a romance in, you should stand up and say, 'Let's call it "Knees up, Mouth Closed."'

By the way, I just today realized I had left the story of Smith Bowani out of the book. I convinced this idiot that I was various people, including Stephie Hopkins's personal assistants, Mabel Sirrup and Mrs. Butterworth. He's the one in the photo I sent, holding a card reading 'Mabel Sirrup.' I told him Stephie was paralyzed after being run over by the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

Can you believe a grown-up man gets to write things like that as part of his JOB?

Couple of photos I published a long time ago:

Stephie's nemesis, Darth Mayer, and his fully armed and operational Death Wiener

Click the thumb for a good giggle.

A strangely agitated commenter said I shouldn't complain about being ignored by A-list bloggers, because Tucker Max and Maddox and I are popular and the A-list bloggers aren't. That was really flattering, except for one thing. Tucker Max has a bestseller, and Maddox is at the top of the Amazon list, and I'm still farting along on the Internet at 1400 visits per day.

Other than that, you know, THANKS.

Hey, I got a BlogAd yesterday. So that's 12 bucks to the good, right? Although Henry Copeland took part of it. It's rough, having a pimp. I tried to talk him out of it, but he told me to get my bitch ass back to the keyboard and make him some money. Or no more smack.

If I were Henry Copeland, I think I'd buy myself some chartreuse suits and some multicolored alligator shoes and some bling and an old Eldorado convertible and make a couple of hot young "assistants" drive me around while I drank Thunderbird in the back seat. Why not? It's not like people would stop doing business with him. Except for the Pajamanians. They have their own pimp. And he already has a nice hat.

In other news, I'm up to page thirty-seven of my hot new romance novel, Knees Up, Mouth Closed. We're already having a title dispute. I wanted to call it Knees Up, Mouth Closed, BITCH, but I got a lot of flak from an editor who says it may be mistaken for George Michael's biography, which has almost the same name.

The main character is a guy named Egan Pumpwell. Women love rich-sounding first names like Egan. Egan is going to be a sensitive pirate. Many times in the past I have pointed out that every romance novel needs a sensitive pirate, because that's the kind of nonsensical ideal immature women (i.e. the majority) dream about. Egan will never wear a shirt, because he has to pose on the cover with his abs on display and both nipples in the wind and just a hint of a Woodrow. I may leave the pants off, too. I'll have him wear a big macho pirate belt with suggestive sword hanging from it, and instead of pants he can wear grease paint that matches his spandex jockstrap.

You know what the heroes of romance novels are? They're Chippendale dancers, acting out the roles suggested by their costumes. Seriously. I've never been to a male strip club (except as a performer and midget wrangler), but I've seen pictures. Take a photo of a male stripper, before the clothes come off, and you have the cover of a Barbara Cartland novel. Barbara herself looked like Gore Vidal in drag, but that's another matter entirely.

When I die, I want to go to immature people's heaven. The men will all be sensitive pirates with no pants, and the women will be fighting in fountains about whether Miller Lite tastes great or is less filling or is just basically carbonated pee. And Survivor will be on every night, even though every TV has 10 to the 53rd power channels and never gets turned off, even when guests come over for wife-swapping parties.

Anyway, Egan is a concert pianist when he's not raping people kidnapped from other ships, and in his spare time, he protests seal hunts, works with retarded kids, and writes haiku. Not "haikus." "Haiku." In addition, he never farts or leaves the seat up, and his penis is approximately seven feet long. He beats a lot of people up and cuts their throats and so on, but he generally has a good reason, and anyway, his lady love, Autumn Crevice, knows she can change him. The crew has noticed that Autumn looks a lot like a young Gore Vidal with tits the size of mop buckets, but they're afraid to say anything, because they know Egan will whip their ass.

Autumn started out as a captive, but after Egan raped her fifty or sixty times, she started to like it, and she forgives him, because she knows it was just the hurt little boy inside him, "acting out." She still has to sleep chained to a bulkhead, but now it's a consensual thing.

Autumn has a rival. Silver Crease. Sometimes she distracts Egan, but that's only because she's a flashy little whore who waves her boobs in his face, and one day, the bitch is going to get hers, possibly by being gang-raped by crocodiles while on fire and being eaten by ants, and that will bring Autumn about nine hundred times the pleasure Egan ever gave her with an orgasm, because what women love more than anything is seeing better-looking women in agony.

It needs a little fleshing out, and maybe a plot, but I think it has legs. Egan should probably turn out to be the lost heir to the French throne, without seeming French enough to give off a gay vibe.

That's all I have at the moment, but I'm planning to eat some peyote later on.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:19 AM | Permalink