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Ok, I'm sure none of you are following DC's webcomic stuff at ZudaComics.com, but I need a huge favor from you.

I need you to go to Zuda, register, and vote for The Crooked Man.  Because I'm going to kill something if that "Pray for Death" comic wins with that incredibly amateurish and forced bit of writing on page two. Big, fat, huge bubble of unnecessary exposition that just feels ridiculously wrong when the character is supposed to be focusing on something. I lost all interest in the story because of that one panel, because with that one bubble, the character became fake. This isn't a character with a life of its own, its a character that does and says what the author tells it, and it just comes off so wrong.

PLEASE, if you love me, vote for The Crooked Man, because I'm dying to get to read more of it, and I have no desire to read Pray for Death ever again. PLEASE.

Also, slowly climbing the ladder towards being Kitchen Goddess.

Anyone who knows me knows I claim to have no cooking skill whatsoever. Well, this semester, Naomi and I realized that's not true at all. I'm just lazy, and don't like spending time making dinner. But when I do, it comes out delicious! But, because I'm lazy, I'm always looking for easy ways to make grilled chicken and steak tastier, since I don't want to get my George Foreman grill all messy.

So once upon a time, I found a recipe for Sweet BBQ Chicken. It caught my eye because it uses apple butter, which I happen to keep around. Most people don't. Only problem with this recipe is a) I don't have a brush for brushing sauce, b) I hate marinades because you have to think about it a day in advance and c) I didn't have a whole bunch of the ingredients.

So I modified it as follows:
For 2 chicken breasts:
40 ml apple butter, 40 ml ketchup
20 ml olive oil
2/3 tsp honey
1/6 tsp garlic powder, 1/6 tsp pepper
1 clove minced garlic.

mix in a bowl, heat in the microwave for 2 min, beat with a small whisk until mixed well and thickened. Spoon it onto chicken that's straight off the grill. Yum! Really quick, and REALLY easy!

Tonight, I wanted to make grilled steak for the first time, so I was looking up sauces, and I found Beer BBQ Sauce. We happen to have a lot of beer in the fridge right now. However, we DON'T have BBQ sauce, or Worcestershire sauce. So what do I do? Improvise, again!

From the last recipe, I learned that apple butter, when combined with ketchup and honey, already makes a BBQ taste. So I used that instead, and used less, since I didn't want to finish off the apple butter. We also didn't have onions. Instead, we used a very small shallot. So it came out like this:

1 cup Ketchup
1/2 cup apple butter
2/3 cup LaBlat Blue beer
1/4 cup Honey
2 tablespoons fresh squeezed Lemon juice
2 tablespoons Red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tsp tabasco (but I suggest using 1/2 tsp, 1 tsp was too much)
1/2 teaspoon Pepper
2 Garlic cloves -- minced
1 shallot, finely chopped
1/8 tsp onion salt

Again, 2 minutes in the microwave, and whisked until blended and slightly thicker.

This made a lot more sauce than the other recipe, and it was thinner, so instead of spooning it on, when the steaks were done, I just took each one and completely submerged it in the bowl of sauce. Delicious! Though we definitely used too much tabasco. The sauce was nice and sweet, but also left my lips and tongue burning! We took what was left in the bottle of beer and split it between two small paper cups. Add a side dish of peas, and it was a great dinner to have while watching the hockey game!

We followed up with chocolate cake and appletinis. :-) I have a happy tummy.

A blast from the past- in 1999, a crow takes care of a kitten. As of 2005, Cassie the cat was still living with the sweet old couple, and Moses the crow had a nest with his mate nearby.

ADOWABUL!

The comic geeks among you may have heard of Zuda.com, DC's webcomic contest/experiment. I recently got around to taking a look at some of the work on the site, and am sorely disappointed with some of what I'm seeing. On the other hand, some of these creators show promise.

I read five submissions from last month's competition, as well as four titles from this month's contest. Here's what I've got for the November comics.

( November submissions: )

As for this month's submissions... So far, I'm not impressed. I've only read 40% of them, but so far, I haven't seen anything I'd vote for, and I wish we could choose some of last month's material over anything I'm seeing now. If you think my November reviews weren't critical enough, read my December reviews. They're nice and scathing, for the most part.

I'll save my four December reviews, and my review of Zuda's ongoing title Bayou for another post.

Hume, thoughts?

Courtesy of Cute Overload

Anyone who doesn't care about my character backstory, or is in the campaign and doesn't want to have pre-knowledge, can totally skip this post.

( It's a long backstory. )

I fell asleep about an hour after that last post. There's only so much the human mind can take... and it was pretty boring having nothing to do but lie on a shelf, covered with a box.

I woke at about 1am, to the sound of the door opening, and voices...

"Peeeeuuuu! Was a massacre in here... good thing we noticed the bloody hand on the door."
"Heh, weird how they all just dropped at midnight, yeah?"

Then I heard the dragging of bodies, and a sound like a fire extinguisher.

I managed a peek out, and almost screamed. 'More monsters?' I thought. I almost wept with relief when I realized they were hazmat suits. The cleanup crew was here.

Good old Fuji, never missing a beat... the Japanese are so efficient.

I came out from under my box and waved them down... "Helloo! Help me please?"

The hazmat guys were taken aback, and a little out of their element. They were the cleanup crew, not the rescue squad. They did bring me something from the vending machine while I waited for them to finish cleaning so I could climb down. It took several hours, so I dozed some more on my shelf. By the time I could come down, it was already getting light outside, and most of the rest of the outside was clean. I made my way to my desk, careful to keep out of the hazmats' way. There were about a billion voicemails from my mother. How she made it to my aunt's house, I don't know. When she came in for work, she brought me a change of clothes, and I showered in the gym downstairs. Now it's just another day at work... only much more empty... I wonder how man are dead, and how many are just still too afraid to come back?

I'm the only help desk person left (RIP Charles, Brian!)... somehow, I think this will affect my Fridays off. On the other hand, since my boss is dead, (RIP Al!) there's no one to tell me I have to come in. Thank God Mike was out recovering from his appendectomy, because being alone in his house saved him. Which means we've got one guy with network account privileges left, thank god. All the others died in the supply room with me.

Most of our server room guys made it... they used their combined strength to get a rack up against each door. I should have hid in there.

Now that I'm head of the help desk, I can't wait to make some changes! I know Brian and Al would be proud.

I'm so glad laurion and asdr83 made it safely, I hope zapf, valadil,eternalcow27 and laura47 did too.

I can't imagine how bleemoo could have. Rest peacefully. You, rigel, and witticaster will be missed.

Now for a hopefully short-feeling day at work, and then to John's! (Oh, yeah, somehow, he made it out of NYC safely.)

I really hope it can all go back to normal. I just hope Sheena is ok. Woohoo, this means I can actually use my first paycheck!

Oh God, it's terrible. They got Brian. He pushed his way in, and Al was with him, and the others went at them with any equipment they could swing... those old magnetic tape drives finally came in handy for something, I guess. I didn't look. I stayed in my box and didn't peek, like the coward I am. I could hear the shouting as the living killed the dead, and then killed the other bitten before they turned. I heard Charles yell "Oh shit! I'm bitten!" in that slight Nigerian accent of his, and then Andy say, "I'm so sorry, man" before bashing his head in with a keyboard. He recounted it all for me, and then, when he noticed the teethmarks in his arm, he lied down on the ground and made me push an old printer off the top shelf on his head... you know, one of the huge old HPs. I don't even know how they got that thing up here.

Now it's just me, alone in the supply closet. The door is heavy, and swings shut on its own, and everyone who had access is already in here... dead. I can smell the blood and the gore all around me, and I can still hear the screaming outside. I'll never get out of here. I'll be stuck in this room, with reeking, rotting corpses for days, and I'm already having trouble keeping my stomach where it is. I'm going to go crazy.

Somehow the router is still up, but the battery on this laptop is going dead... goddamn it, Dell was supposed to send us a replacement for that, too. I'm sure there's a charger in here somewhere, but that would mean descending to the ground level and stepping over the bodies... and then I might not be able to climb back up.

laurion, bleemoo, I hope we all hold out long enough to make it through. asdr83, laura47, eternalcow27, RUN. Run fast, and run far. Don't look back. Get safe.

Shit, only a few minutes left. This may be my last post ever. So, y'know, just in case....

Hume, Sheena, I'm sorry I still owe you money. God, husband, I hope this isn't happening where you are. Japanese zombies are not as funny as you'd think. Poor Mr. Mori gave such a nice speech at the awards breakfast this morning, and now all he can say is "blaaaaiiins." Nikki, flee for Japan before it's too late. Find Sheena.

Sandler, if you see this, tell John I said not to worry, and good-bye... you know, just in case.

Now I'm going to stay here, on this shelf, in my box, curled on my side, with no way to contact the outside world, in a room of stinking dead people. Dear Lord, have mercy on us.

1 minute until battery death.

We always joked Grad would be the best place to hide at a time like this... hell, even if it wasn't, at least I'd be dying in Boston.

Oh God, I could die laughing, if they don't get me first. I got my first paycheck today... I was going to pay off my credit card, and pay back my mom, and put aside money to pay back Pat... I was so excited...

Even when they started coming, we thought it would be ok... I'm on the third floor and the windows are hard to break, and they were having trouble getting in without passkeys... then they got a few of my co-workers on their way back from lunch. The whole place is as good as gone now.

I grabbed a testing laptop and locked myself in the IT supply closet. Only a few people have passkeys for this room, and most of them are in here, piling computers and equipment in front of the door. If we can move one of the shelving units, we might have a chance... y'know, if we had rations. Damnit, I should have raided the vending machine first.

It's no use, the units are too heavy... maybe if we empty them, move them, and put everything back on to make them heavy again? We'll think of something.

There's no windows here, so there's no way to tell how long we'll have to wait it out... at least a day or two, to be sure... if they don't get Al or Brian. I think those are the only other guys who could get in here. Oh God, I hope Brian's ok. He's exactly the kind of guy I wish had been my dad, and Al's like an extra uncle. I should have looked for them first.

Oh damn, the doorknob's rattling. What if they find a way in? There are plenty of boxes I can fit in... if I climb to the highest shelf, they probably won't be able to reach me... and if I hide in the box, they might not be able to see me... maybe I can be make it.

Please, stay safe. Run. The door's still rattling, I'm afraid they'll break the door handle and they'll be able to get in. The other guys are too heavy to get to the top shelf, but they offered to boost me up there and hand up the box and laptop after me, so I'm going to go do that before it's too late.

Jesus Christ. Zombies. Well, at least it's not reavers.


Blog Like It's the End of the World

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
Boston
The South
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

With the exception of Tuesday, this week so far sucks. That is all.