Bride of Sharron County

Originally Published in Ariadne’s Thread.

She sat at the end of the bar night after night. The only person she would speak to was Jim, the bartender. And even then it was just to place her order. There were rumors floating around about her. Supposedly she was left at the altar and never recovered. Some of the patrons of the Gorgon’s Den even said she would put on her wedding dress and walk around the county, looking for her true love, the man who abandoned her on that fateful day.

Oh, there were other more dismal rumors, like the one about her killing her fiancée the night before and putting on the charade at the church to seal her alibi. But that didn’t fit. There would be no reason for her to hang around if she was a killer who got away with it. The truth will probably never be known. Night after night, though, she would come into the bar, sit at the end, nurse a cocktail for an hour and then leave. For over two years she had done this, which only caused more weird rumors to float about. Continue reading “Bride of Sharron County”

Boyd & Hash: Player Two

Time to level up and enjoy the second Boyd & Hash. I spoke about the comic briefly on the podcast, Universal Geek, and it really is just a carry over of my enjoyment of writing ‘bits’, tiny jokes that don’t really go anywhere. In my previous web comic effort, I wrote a storyline comic but since I don’t draw, the limitations of the stories began to grow and I spent more time ‘building sets’ (backgrounds) instead of writing.

Ten Songs For When You Are All Out of Bubblegum

It started a week ago when Dan Swensen (@surlymuse) posted the song Anvil of Cromm from the Conan soundtrack to Google+.  Jeff Couturier (@JeffCouturier) said he was going to add the song to his “All Out of Bubblegum” playlist. Inspired by the concept, Dan, Random9q (@random9q), Jeff, and myself started building the ultimate All Out of Bubblegum Playlist.  A portion of what we came up with has been bashed into a YouTube playlist by Jeff.

We all kick ass in our own special way… you did realize that is what an ‘All Out of Bubblegum’ playlist is, right?  It is about ass-kicking and letting someone else take the names.  It is no holds barred, take no prisoners, total annihilation.  Some do it through physical force and others do it through careful calculations.  There is no single right way to kick-ass.  It is the ultimate bit of pragmatism, actually.  So long as ass is being kicked, literal ass or figurative ass, then that was the right way to do it.

This means the music people want to kick ass to isn’t all the same. For me, I tend to prefer orchestral elements, because when I kick-ass I imagine I am doing it in the most epic way possible.  I also like short bombastic punk rock elements, which I see as for those brief but intense moments of ass-kicking.

Before I give you my Top 10, I want to give out a freebie, one of the original ass-kicking songs ever, just to set the mood.

Flight of the Valkyries

Continue reading “Ten Songs For When You Are All Out of Bubblegum”

Six Spots to Get Shawarma in Chicago


Ever notice there is a lot of talk about going out for Shawarma lately?  I have no idea why…

My first question when I heard about Shawarma was – what is shawarma? Isn’t a gyro?  It looks like gyro…

Shawarma is not gyro! Gyro is normally a blend of beef and lamb and shawarma is normally never beef and only occasionally lamb.  Wait, now I’m more confused.

From the Go Mideast website they say –

Most shawarma is made with lamb or chicken, though I’ve also had a lamb/beef mixture, and goat.

What else goes inside is a matter for the restaurant. The best shawarmas I’ve had were in Abu Dhabi and were made in small pita breads which were sliced open and included tomatoes, garlic sauce, pickles, tabouli, and french fries…. (gomideast.com)

So really, shawarma is like the American hamburger, it has some core fundamentals but what makes it a hamburger is going to change from region to region and cook to cook. Continue reading “Six Spots to Get Shawarma in Chicago”