This is the Charter Arms Bulldog .44. It's a small, five-shot revolver. With the right ammunition, it's nastily accurate for its size. It had a big enough whack, with .44 Special loads, that it was effectively sold for home and concealed-carry as a quick-draw one-shot protection weapon. This gun in the picture is the Bulldog .44 that David Berkowitz used. You may know him better as Son Of Sam, the serial killer who (on instructions from a demon dog) terrorised New York in 1976. The first person he killed, Donna Lauria, died instantly by a single shot from the Bulldog. It's not a big gun. It's not a status-symbol gun. It's not expensive, or flashy. Aesthetically, it's more of a tool than a threat. It's a simple utensil for economically, efficiently and reliably killing people.
I find this odd little device weirdly chilling.
It has a relationship to GUN MACHINE.
(Which I am approving the US and UK covers for, currently. I should be able to show them to you soon.)
Hello.
LONDON/SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND: I am doing a thing at the Kapow Comics Convention in London on MAY 19TH. 45 minutes on stage, taking questions and generally rambling at length without answering any of them. I am NOT doing a signing or any other appearances at the convention. I'm pressed for time, and want to just go off and have a drink with a couple of friends before heading back home to work.
It says on the Kapow website: "Tickets for Kapow! 2012 are only available in advance and there will be no ticket sales on the door."
It seems that, at some point in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to do Citizen Radio with Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny. It's a podcast -- I suspect it's going to happen on the fly, as it were, so there probably won't be an advance notice here, but since it's a podcast, it's asynchronous, so I'll circle back around here when it's out. Or maybe break my weekly rule early. I am unpredictable. And tired. And the sentence three sentences back was really long even for me. (I once got called out by Tom Baker, The Best Doctor Who, for writing a sentence sixty-five words long. And I deserved it.)
(I've met two Doctor Whos. The other was Peter Davison. We were supposed to be doing a panel together. He arrived forty minutes late, entered the room backwards, span around a bit, noticed the audience eventually, and beamed "Hello! Where am I?" He was actually Doctor Who. No acting required. Lovely bloke, but gave the strong impression that he shouldn't be allowed out on his own.)
Other things are being planned, as I force myself to be out in the world again a bit. Eventually, some of the physical appearances will happen in countries other than England. But, for right now, I'm mostly looking at doing a few podcast appearances, and maybe placing a couple of articles somewhere or other.
Because well HEY REMEMBER ME LOOK I HAS A BOOK yes, but also I've been kind of out of sight and off the field for at least eighteen months, really. And I'll tell you something: it's taken the best part of six months to adjust to not being on weekly if not daily deadlines for comics work, and I finally feel like my brain is starting to tick over again. It's honestly been mush -- more than usual mush -- for months, with more than a little of "wait what do I do today?" When you're in the middle of it, you don't really think about what a constant pulp production schedule really does to you. Until you take it away and you're just sitting there going Whuh wait MUST TEND MACHINE what you took machine away I AM MACHINE TENDER world is scary now GIVE ME MY WORTHLESS JOB AND SENSE OF REALITY BACK i just weed myself you get the idea.
So. Yes. This is planning phase. And presumbly being captured on audio for all eternity talking about weeing myself on Citizen Radio soon.
Oh, and I can't recall if I mentioned this last time, so forgive me if I did, but Ariana has a Kickstarter wherein she's getting the funding to restore, design and print some gorgeous 19th Century demonic illustrations as card sets and ebooks. It's really worth a look just to see the art, these fantastic engravings of freakish devils and beasts.
Look, I'm not even going to attempt to embed the player (see way below), but give this a listen. It's really pretty.
By -- and I can't quite believe I'm saying this -- by actual popular request, I am talking about cooking again. I swear to you, people asked me to do this. So here's what I made over the weekend.
Incredibly Lazy Rustic Roasted Tomato And Red Pepper Sauce For Pasta.
By red pepper, I mean a red bell pepper.
By "rustic," I mean "lumpy and unfinished-looking." Also, I don't burn food, I "caramelise" it. As in, "Warren, your dinner is on fire and the house is filled with smoke" -- "It's not on fire, it's CARAMELISING. I am good at cook. Also shut up."
There is, as is usual with my recipes, no exact measurement to be had. And, as is also usual with my recipes, it's both easy and absurdly lazy.
Get yourself a roasting tin. And some tomatoes. I had seven large tomatoes and a handful of cherry tomatoes that needed using up, and a red pepper that had gone a bit manky on one side. So I cut that half off and tossed it. I cut out the seeds and the white bits, so I just had red flesh. And I sliced that down into long red strips. Hold on to those for a second.
Cut your tomatoes into quarters if they're big, and halves if they're small. And arrange them in the roasting tin, skin-side down. The idea is that you've got enough tomatoes to fill the tin. So, you know... guess.
Your oven needs to be at 150C, or 130C if it's a fan oven. That's Gas mark 2 and 300F, or Gas mark 1/2 and 250F. Get that on now.
Okay, let's see what's in your cupboard. I want you to sprinkle a pinch of sugar over it all, and a couple of twists of fresh sea salt. If you've got some balsamic vinegar, give the tin a light drizzle. Now give it a heavier drizzle of olive oil. Ideally, you have some sundried tomato puree -- I want you to put several dots of that across the toms. You're done. Come back in an hour.
An hour later, yank it out of the oven and push your pepper strips between the tomatoes at random. Break the strips up if you like, to fill holes, so it all looks kind of full. Like I say, this isn't an exact thing, and presentation doesn't matter, because you're going to smash the shit out of it all later. Give it all a little sprinkle of oil again and whack it back in.
An hour after that, have a look at it. It should all be starting to char just a little bit. Technically, it should have another half hour from this point, but take a look -- if it's looking on the burnt-offerings side, you can turn the oven down to minimal just to keep it warm, or, if it looks nearly done, turn it down by half for the last half hour.
So now it's done. Take it out of the oven, and grab a fork. This is the part where you smash what you've cooked with a fork. Just blitz it with pointy weapons until you have a pile of lumpy (RUSTIC!) red paste.
I AM GOOD AT COOK AND DID NOT JUST SMASH A WEASEL WITH A MALLET FOR THIS PHOTO REALLY
You've cooked your pasta, so all you do is use a spoon to scrape your sauce out of the cooking tin and into the pasta, swirling it around until it colours and clings to all the pasta. And you're done.
I do hope both those images worked. If they didn't, DON'T TELL ME -- I get sent this too, so I know immediately what didn't work. (Like the music player last week.)
Okay, I'm out. See you next week.
-- W