A lot of semi-shit jobs, especially in post-industrial rural areas with service jobs like helping the elderly, require a pisstest, and 2-Strats isn’t standing for it. Sometimes inspiration comes from deeply-rooted sources and isn’t immediately apparent…
Today we define the word “verboten,” which is decidedly an English word, having to do with grains –think verb-oat-en.
Today we define the word “resilient,” with a quote to back it up. 
It’s been a while since I posted a check-in with the Howlarium! Jason Howell has been inviting writers to take advantage of his challenges and tricks for some years now, and there’s always a killer essential question and a passel of samples of stories from writers everywhere in the Howlarium.
The present edition consists of chunks of writers’ stories and works in progress. If you’re a proper writer, that is to say, a writer who likes to read, you’ll love it. Go visit!
The great great Anika Balaconis has done it again with Far Cry #9, the biggest little speculative fiction zine in the scene, published while she’s not punking down and running her own restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Authors Andrew Massey, Jean Paul Garnier (namesake of the condoms and glowsticks on the cover) and Joe Urson are featured besides Anika’s own story, and she put one of my stories in too!!! Audio version of the latter here for those of you too busy, too nonprofit or too ‘post-literate’ to read. Cover artist London Roman also has an illustration in the back, like a single page from a longer comic, to round it out.
The cover image also gets my approval for featuring the west coast, and a punker wailing on a guitar. Get on Far Cry, or find Éxitos Gnosis, and get yourself a copy today while they last!
Another case –no actually, a single –of leaving a good bottle in the pack when you throw it out. In Santa Cruz I caught this Angry Orchard in the guy’s recycling bin. It’s brewed by Boston (Samuel Adams). I feel like I should do a lengthy, useless video like those cats do on youtube about beers that you’d never ever need to review…
Anyhow I drank the errant Angry Orchard for the first time, warm like I tend to do, and it was like drinking a soda at the same time as a gross cheap beer. Turn the label around and wouldn’t you know, it’s got almost as much sugar in it as a friggin soda. Yuck! Soda is bad for you, kids! Roadbeers are the meaning of life!
Let’s talk about the mouthfeel. Again, sugary, syrupy, not good. Like a lot of American beers, not really fizzy but like liquid sand, or granulated pellets of solid gasoline, like my friend and I were saying when we tried a Steel Reserve Hard Pineapple last weekend –as research for my next novel!
I never eat sweets so I’m pretty sure I can TASTE the high-fructose corn syrup in shit, particularly in Pabst, High Life, these kinds of gross beers, when I feel like increasing my vow of poverty or find myself at a show.
Eugenio Negro Comics 