Anger Burger

I know nothing at all about Jamaican cuisine.  I think they have some kind of meat pie.  There is a dish of savory fruit that has a funny name.  There was a Jamaican restaurant four blocks from my house in Los Angeles that was one of the shiftiest places I have seen in my life.  In the year that we lived there, I think I saw it open maybe half a dozen times, and when it was open, the diners looked like food was the last thing on their minds.

When Nancy at Buncha Jerks asked if they could send me a sample of their seasoning, I wanted to tell her: look, I’ve eaten jerk once in my life.  I really like Appleton Rum.  That is what kind of culinary commitment you are getting from me.  But my kind of moron is perhaps the best kind: I am willing to try things, and I don’t have anything else to compare it to.

Immediately I decided not to follow instructions.  I had almost exactly a pound of chicken thighs, which at Buncha Jerks’ advice would require 1.5 teaspoons of their seasoning.  Their sample packet had about 3 teaspoons (1 Tablespoon).  I licked the end of my pinkie finger and dipped it into the spice; half of the dose just didn’t seem like enough.  What I tasted was a little warm, but not spicy.  I dumped the whole packet in and left it all for 24 hours to think about what it had done.

The next day I asked Mike the Viking what Jamaicans eat with jerk and he answered something about Vikings tasting only the blood of their enemies, so I made some kind of scallion and cilantro rice thing that I made up.  There was also coconut milk involved.  Do Jamaicans eat coconut?  Who doesn’t?

I broiled the chicken in my oven because I don’t have a steel drum spit down by the beach.

Verdict?  It is a very tasty seasoning blend.  Is it authentic?  I have no idea, and it sort of doesn’t matter to me.  More on that in a moment.  For me, the seasoning was very allspice and cinnamon-forward, mostly flavors I associate with pastry and sweets, but with a lightly savory and only very mildly warm finish from the thyme and Scotch Bonnet pepper.  I detected no sugar or salt, but my tastebuds are the sugar and salt equivalent of someone who does like $500 of heroin a day.  I need a lot to maintain.

What disappointed me was the heat level.  The only other time I had jerk was many years ago, and it basically ripped my face off. I did not enjoy it.  However, I have turned into a chili head in the last year or two, much to everyone’s¹ surprise.  But the chicken I prepared was barely warmer than if we had used a lot of black pepper, and certainly many times more mild than any of the quotidian hot sauces we have in the house. So was this a normal amount of heat?  I truly don’t think so, and at their website I notice there are three levels of heat.  Perhaps they sent me the mild one?  I’ll let Nancy get back to me on that one.

I appreciate what Eric and Nancy are doing with Buncha Jerks.  It takes a tremendous amount of energy and personal risk to try and address faults in the culinary industry, and I applaud that.  I can only tell them I am sorry I am such a tremendous jerk noob (a jerk jerk, if you will) (I know you won’t) and that when they initially contacted me a month ago, they were trying to raise money through Kickstarter to really get things going, but failed to meet their goal.  This is really too bad.  They seem like nice people with an earnest product.  That I wish was spicier.

As far as authenticity goes, can I volunteer that I am sort of over it?  I’ve been cooking a lot of Japanese food at home lately, and really embracing the concept of yōshoku.  There are dishes widely acknowledged yōshoku, but I like the general philosophy of it more: Western foods viewed through Japanese eyes.  I really, truly enjoyed Ochikeron’s “Chicken Tikka Masala”  (made with thighs instead of breast meat, of course) and recently read about and made my first batch of Spaghetti Naporitan (uh, needs work).  These foods are deeply, deeply far from authentic.  But they are delicious and have value and merit.  I feel the same about Buncha Jerks: I suspect that everything about how I made my jerk chicken was culturally as far from Jamaica as possible, but it was delicious, and I am not Jamaican.  I think that valuing ingredient quality is the only true aspiration in cuisine, and even that is taken with a grain of salt.  I mean, have you had Bugles lately?!  My friend just brought some into work and holy shit!  They are fried in coconut oil!

I guess what I am trying to say is that I love it when people try to fill a niche.  Thanks, Buncha Jerks, both for your spices, and for having a name that makes me feel like I am speaking like a sarcastic asswipe.
¹ Especially my colon.

Last week I received an email from the publicist for 505 Southwestern apologizing for the hand incident, and a gentle encouragement to please, for all that is holy, at least taste the chipotle honey roasted green chile samples they sent me. And I feel no small obligation to do what they ask, mostly because, you know, they freighted me like $60 worth of their products.

Allow me to cut to the chase.  This stuff is magical.  I would happily buy jar after jar if I knew where to find it locally (I’m emailing the lady as you read this***).  After all my eye-rolling and whinging and the waffling about how nice to be about being totally unimpressed by the salsa – these guys just  poop out OH BY THE WAY HERE’S THE BEST CHILE PRODUCT EVER NO BIG DEAL.

Even the texture is gorgeous – rich and thick and syrupy, nothing at all like cans of limpid, pale green chiles floating in a sallow water.  You can and I did eat a spoonful straight and found it to be up front both smoky and sweet, followed by the bright green of the chile and a slow, pleasant trail of heat.  I jettisoned my plans to use it as an ingredient in a burrito (though that would be delicious) and instead concocted, on the spot, a delightfully bullshit recipe.

You see, I haven’t been feeling well lately.  I feel best in the morning, and by mid-afternoon and evening my Crohn’s disease is acting up in a new and weird way (let’s try stabbing pains now rather than persistent cramping!) (also let’s bring rheumatoid garbage into play! why have just knee aches when we can have knuckle aches too!) and by the evening all I want are comfort foods.  As a true story: I went to a low-income health clinic last week to explore my non-insured options for finding a GI doctor, and when I was telling the triage nurse that I had Crohn’s she looked me up and down and said “Oh! You seem so… robust.”  In the spirit of being robust, I made mashed potatoes.

I made my usual mash and swirled in several large spoonfuls of chile.  And topped with cheese of course because robust.

Here is a tremendous sigh.  This was perfect.  A little tiny bit sweet and spicy-hot, that distant whiff of chipotle, lots and lots of butter and cream and sharp cheddar cheese.  You win, 505 Southwestern.  Even cutting my hand open on one of your jars, you win.

Green Chile Mash

1 lb. yellow potatoes, peeled and quartered
1/2 stick/2oz butter
1/4 cup cream, half and half or whole milk
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup 505 Southwestern Chipotle Honey Roasted Green Chiles
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (or more, probably more)

• Boil the potatoes in water until fork-tender, about 20 minutes.  Drain them and return them to the heat for just a minute to evaporate off any remaining water.  Mash or rice or foodmill the potatoes until nearly smooth.  Add the butter, cream and salt and pepper to taste.  (Always make them just a tiniest bit saltier than you think is right, because potatoes absorb the salt and taste less salty in short while.) (That is not actual science, just let it go.)

• Stir in the green chile, then transfer to either one larger oven-safe dish, or several small oven-safe ramekins for individual serving.  Top with cheese and place under the broiler for about 5 to 7 minutes, or until the cheese is melty and starts to brown in a few spots.  As usual, when using a broiler NEVER WALK AWAY FROM IT.  Watch it always.

• Eat.

 ***UPDATE:  505 Southwestern products are only available in the US southwest (derp), but the marketing director said they would hit nationally at Walmart this summer.  The best part was her email that said “I know you probably won’t love this…” She is correct. I do not love having to shop at Walmart.  But que sera sera.

A rare treat for you scoundrels!  I asked my dad, Jay, to review some of the salsa sent to us by 505 Southwestern because to be totally honest, I just don’t like canned or jarred salsas.  If I want to eat salsa, I typically make a pico de gallo or a very chunky, tomatoey guacamole.  But my dad eats a lot of salsa, and has opinions about it.  I mixed my sample jar with sour cream to make a “pink sauce” dressing for taco salad and found it to be tasty, but I am reasonably certain that any Mexicans I know¹ would cry tears of disappointment if they saw me do that.  Also the words “taco salad.”  In the next week I will review what 505 Southwestern really wanted me to try in the first place, their roasted green chiles.  Anyway, without further adieu, here is Jay.

Having grown up in parts of South-Central and East Los Angeles, I had the distinct pleasure of experiencing some wonderful Mexican-American food. I’ve eaten from the home tables of dear Hispanic friends, where the humble tortilla and various salsas were mainstays with every meal, including breakfast. In thirty years I learned to love a good salsa. Red, green, mild or hot … they are the perfect spicy accompaniment for nearly every savory dish.

So there you have it, my ‘salsa credentials,’ as-it-were.

I was visiting the home of my multi-talented and irreverent daughter (she was raised that way by her incredible parents). As I was about to leave she handed me a large jar of commercially produced red salsa saying, ‘Here dad, eat this and give me your gringo Angeleno opinion.’ (She emphasized the ‘white boy from L.A.’ designation with a passing chola accent. Impressive.)

I have one immutable law for my salsas: if the ingredients do not include cilantro (aka coriander), then it’s not salsa. This one does not have cilantro.

I guess I could just leave it there, let that be my impression and review, but I realize many folks are not as discriminatory as this old gringo.

So, I’ll try a little harder.

This salsa, like most, is formulated with bastardized Norte Americano tastes in mind. It’s thin (read: watery), mostly tomato-y (the first ingredient listed) and consists of all the ‘safe’ ingredients for very broad, generalized taste acceptance. Surprisingly, they have included jalapeños, so I’m compelled to give them that point.

I would never have found anything remotely like this in the homes of my Hispanic friends, nor in any self-respecting Mexican restaurant/eatery.

I respect the fact that they are attempting to market this to as many people as possible. That’s the nature of foods in the business world … so be it.

On the widely-used ‘star’ rating system, I can only give 505 Southwestern All Natural Salsa a 2.5 out of 5 stars. It just doesn’t do it for me.

That’s my opinion … now, ‘somebody get a rope!’

So there you have it from the Williams clan – two product reviews, one thumbs up (green chile sauce, when pureed, makes for tasty green enchiladas!)  And two thumbs held sideways (the red enchilada sauce is a little intense for me, and I wish I could find another way of saying it that doesn’t make me sound like such a puss, but I can’t — it overpowered my chicken and corn enchiladas).  And now this, the salsa.  I didn’t think it was as watery as my dad did, but I did find it on the unremarkable end of the spectrum. But I want to clarify: I think this of all jarred salsas.  They just taste like cooked tomatoes to me.  A great choice to use in a 7-layer dip, but no fireworks as just chips-n-salsa. 

And because I forgot in the last review, I do want to thank 505 Southwestern for allowing a website like Anger Burger to review their products.  And they apologized to me in an email for my cutting my own hand on one of their jars, which was kind, because I am clearly a clumsy bastard and if I were them I’d regret sending me stuff.

¹ Hi Skrappy!

Bad Neighbors at Tabletop Day, Olympic Cards&Comics

So, #Tabletopday has come and gone. We had a grand old time at Gabi’s (aka Olympic Cards&Comics). It was a mad house. Can you spot MORT and VALENTINA in the photo above? Yeah, we’re blurry and tiny. Anyway, we spread the word about Bad Neighbors and even sold a few. People seemed to like it, even perfect strangers. And if you’re in the Oly/Lacey area, you can now buy BN over-the-counter at OCC.

Here’s some more Bad Neighbors Tabletop Day action from Dan and Julie:

I don’t know who that guy is, but he’s got my vote. And Matthew! Of the famous Bad Neighbors card “Matthew”!

Thank you all for spreading the neighborly feelings.

Mike the Viking

p.s. If you have any action shots you’d like to share with us, send ‘em my way. We love to see ‘em and we’ll add them to the wall of ignominy.

Mike the Viking somehow figured out how to use a mobile phone and sent me a text the other day that read: “You have a giant package waiting for you at home.”  To which I responded “JUST LIKE EVERY NIGHT.”

But because he has no capacity for humor, he wasn’t kidding.  The box was massive, and hid a Demon Core of a smaller, heavier box inside.  It was so dense and heavy, in fact, that it was punching out the bottom of its own box.

So you know, I was pretty baffled.  Who knew to send this to me and why?  And then I had this memory of a million years ago in January when someone asked me for my address.  I genuinely remember very little from January.

In case it isn’t clear: those are a dozen sixteen ounce jars.  That is well over a gallon of salsa and green chile products.  Mike the Viking and I were dumb with confusion.  Also, why do no Japanese companies ever read my blog?

Well, fuck it.  When life gives you salsa, make enchiladas.  Also he had been smashing crockery for literally months now because I have been making myself a lot of enchilada soup (more on that later, but summarize it to: sounds gross, tastes rad) and as far as he is concerned I am wasting both enchilada ingredients and enchilada-making energy on something that is not enchiladas so get back in the shark fat curing hut you whore!

Lifehacker also talked about shredding chicken in a stand mixer like a year ago, and I kept forgetting until now.  That sentence I just wrote is all you need to know about it, but it is worth reading through the comments and the WWIII level indignancy for WHY YOU NOT SHRED WITH YOUR HANDS, COMMIE? Frankly, I hate shredding chicken.  I can’t explain it, but I find it tedious and slippery and unsatisfying.

I used thighs and my results were not as advertised, but still not bad for 20 seconds of work.  If you’re shredding a pound or more of chicken, I say do it.

Anyway, I am not going to give you an enchilada recipe.  I’m a white lady from Washington State.  I put meat and some veggies and some cheese into a corn tortilla that has been softened in a little hot oil on the stove top, and then I dump a can packet of enchilada sauce onto it.  Also under it.  I mean, still inside the pan.  You know what I mean.  Today’s masterpiece was shredded chicken thighs (KEEP UP, I KNOW WE’RE ALL A LITTLE RUSTY HERE), corn and some canned roasted peppers.  Hilariously, not the roasted green peppers sent to me by the vat-full from 505 Southwestern, but some regular red bell peppers.

The sauces sure look nice.  I mean, green chile sauce never looks good, it always looks like it’s time for antibiotics.

Which is when I noticed something that shouldn’t matter but does:

I really can’t stand it when companies put religious shit on their products.  And I don’t begrudge them the option to print it on there or anything, just that I am clearly not their customer base.  Did they even read Anger Burger? I unfriend people on Facebook for posting well-meaning but nevertheless overly simple, naive and glurge-y garbage about everything happening for a reason.  I could keep talking about this all day, but it isn’t the point of the story.  The point is that while I was bitching about this to Mike, I failed to notice the following:

See that?  I didn’t.

It’s a short little cut, but it’s weirdly deep, and not the place I’d advise having an open wound while trying to assemble and roll up two dozen tubes of flaming hot chili sauce.

The green chile sauce is not advertised as enchilada sauce, and is in fact suggested as a sauce for slow-roasting meat (green chile carnitas, for example) and a base for stews (chicken, or “white” chili), but I was still unhappy with how thin the sauce was versus the large chunks of chile and tomato.  Immersion blender to the rescue!  Two seconds later I had green enchilada sauce.

I tasted both sauces out of the jar and wasn’t blown away.  505′s red enchilada sauce contains no tomatos, and in fact is made pretty much entirely from dried red chiles.  The flavor straight from the jar was a little harsh and acrid, and the sauce itself is thicker than what I normally use.  I thinned it out with some water before I poured it into the pan.

Verdict?  The green chile sauce is the clear winner.  Excellent flavor, and after blending smooth it needed zero additional ingredients.  Nice heat, too, not too mild and not too spicy.  Goldilocks.  The red sauce was less successful, though still better than anything out of a can.  The sharpness of the chiles was not lessened in cooking, and the flavor overall was somewhat overwhelming.  I can’t believe I am saying this, but it was just too potent.  If I had it to make again (AND I DO, THANKS GIANT BOX OF SAUCE) I’d mix the red sauce with a jar of green sauce — even if I just wanted red sauce — to knock the whole face-slam of chile flavor down a little.  As it was, we could barely taste the fillings, and certainly couldn’t taste what kind of cheese I’d used.

I will get to the rest of the case of sauces later, because guess what?  It’s a mixed case.  And two of the jars are unlabeled and there is nothing on 505′s website that gives and hint as to what it might be.  Uh.  Hooray?

Oh yeah, hello again friends.

So, it’s totally official. Every one of you angry burgers should come on out to Olympic Cards and Comics and play some Bad Neighbors with us.

SATURDAY MARCH 30 From 11 am- whenever (4 pm?) 4230 Pacific Ave SE  Lacey, WA 98503

Also, the new decks arrived here and the new RARE cards look awesome (see above). Even Roxy is finally looking right. I still have some rare cards to add, if any of you have left a review for Sunday’s book  and would like to be immortalized, leave a comment here and I will email you. Or just email mort at bad neighbors dot org.

“But what if I’m not the reading type?” You ask. Well, that’s okay too. You can review Bad Neighbors at the gamecrafter for the same treatment. Honestly, I love drawing the rare cards, so line ‘em up.

Sunday went on a cooking rampage last weekend. She didn’t take any pictures, though, which is bad news. I would take some pictures now, but photos of leftovers are a one way ticket to the Hell Mutt House. What did she make? Oh, Quiche, Galette, Chocolate Cake Frying Pan Fudge, and Freaking Biscotti.

For those who don’t know, Freaking Biscotti is not the stuff they sell at Costco that breaks your teeth and tastes like mortuary toothpaste. Freaking Biscotti is not robed in chocolate. Freaking Biscotti is full of flavor, and more importantly, nuts. In this case, orange and anise flavors plus hazelnuts. Unbelievable. I will try to find the recipe for you. It’s kind of a long process to make (maybe 2 hours?), but low difficulty and it lasts basically forever* (*as long as it takes to eat). Apocalypse chow!

Until Ragnarok I remain,

Mike the Viking

The first echelon of BAD NEIGHBORSes has been steadily arriving at homes across the country, and some of you are already enjoying the sweet taste of fresh-squeezed neighbor-juice. Not coincidentally, today I shipped out the first batch of custom cards for the most eager of Angerburgernicans: those who took me up on the offer before they could have possibly known why it was cool. If you made a request and delivered all your whatnots in a timely fashion, your card might be winging its way toward your mansion or subterranean grotto right now. For everyone else, the first batch is visible down yonder (SPOILERS, possibly).

But first! INTERFRAKKINGNATIONAL TABLETOP DAY is coming to your town, the 30th of this month. It’s a day for boardgamers (aka tabletop gamers) to share their love with everybody. I mean, they’re pretty willing to share their love anyway, but this is an excuse for them to be forward about it.

Tabletop Day  is being organized by Will Wheaton and Geek& Sundry. Check in at your local game shop: they’re probably participating. (Hint: don’t mention Monopoly, unless you’re trolling for a dice-and-miniatures-sack-beating. “Games have come a long way since Monopoly” is the party line and it’s true. That’s good news if you’re not into endless, totally luck-based, rage-inducing, table-flipping aneurysm-bait.)

So, you should probably clear your schedule for that day, so you can go out and play BAD NEIGHBORS and other wonderful games.

If you are in the greater OLY/LACEY/South Sound area, you can even come to Olympic Cards & Comics, where we will* (*almost definitely) have a BAD NEIGHBORS table set up to show and possibly even sell games. We may even have our very own cosplayers. You can get almost certainly get your picture with MORT or VALENTINA, perhaps MOOSE and conceivably WADE. We will even sign your box or cleavage. We are 99.9 percent sure that this is going to happen, and if it does it will be OUR OFFICIAL REAL-LIFE BAD NEIGHBORS GAME RELEASE PARTY. MARCH 30th. More details soon.

UPDATE: THIS IS OFFICIALLY A THING. We’ll be starting at 11am March 30th and be there until 4 pm (depending on how things go). The shop is on Pacific Avenue, directly south of Fred Meyers. Stop by for some hot neighbor-killing action. Or just stop by and say hi.

(Either way, you should visit their store, because Gabi and Eric are super-nice and kind and nothing at all like the guy on the Simpsons. The shop is gigantic, yet friendly and packed to the rafters with goodness. If I had known about this place before, I would have been broke long before now.)

GAME UPDATE: as of about 2 o’clock yesterday any decks you order will have 1 of 5 RARE family members. I bumped ROXY (an original family member) into this pool to make room and because this is the 4th time I’ve had to edit her card. (For some reason, the GAMECRAFTER hates her, and the last printing made her monochrome, like a pageant mom). The other 4 rares were selected by a combination of paybacks and favoritism. If you want to get on that train, it’s not too late.

UPDATE : We received the new sets with the rare cards and they look great. Even Roxy. W00t!

Likewise, if you want a custom card (as shown above), the offer still stands: email me [mort(at)badneighbors(dot)org] proof of purchase (preferably a pic of you playing the game), a reference image, your preferred game alias (such as “raccoonboy”), and address.

FACEBOOK UPDATE: For those of you who like that sort of thing, BAD NEIGHBORS is now on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/badneighborsgame

Dang! Enough with all the reading. Go put your neighbors in the cold cold ground, like I taught ya.

MIKE the VIKING

 CUSTOM CARDS! BASK IN THE GLORY!

If I know Carrie Anne, she won’t be offended by this depiction of her as a crazy cat lady. If she is, TOO BAD. She can go make her own game and make fun of me. BAD VIKINGS, she’ll call it. (p.s. That sounds pretty fun actually. Hit me up if you need some badass viking art for it.)

This is the first official RARE bad neighbors card and it will be added to the random family set very very soon. Also in line are TINA, NICOLE, AMANDA ANNE, and JOY KITCHEN* (*probably not her real name). If you are on this list, I will try to track you down for a reference photo and your in-game name (you don’t have to use your real name or your own photo). If I fail to track you down, please email me at mort@badneighbors(dot)org.

IMPORTANT: If you want to be on the list of random family cards, what you gotta do is buy & review e galactic mu (Sunday’s Novel) on AMAZON kindle. Which you should do anyway. It’s only the best novel ever published in the english language, according to me.

If you are just joining us from outer space or a hell dimension, BAD NEIGHBORS is a card game where you try to kill your neighbors by inflicting a plague of zombies, vampires, aliens, and demons on them. Sunday (the main wheel here) and me (her loyal viking lackey) totally made it up from scratch. It’s fun, easy, and fast. Great for killing time at a bar or in the privacy of your own walled compound. It’s what they refer to as a “casual” game, meaning that you don’t need an advanced understanding of statistics, probability, or string theory to play it. Also, it fits in a standard coat pocket.

The most common question so far is this: IS IT FAMILY FRIENDLY? Well, that depends on your family. There are cartoon boobies in it. As well as light references to the Cthulhu mythos. If your children are cool with doodled demonic sweater yams and unfathomable dread, then they’re going to love it. None of the children we’ve tested it on have shown any signs of long-term emotional scarring.*

The current edition comes with a blank family card so that you can add your own family member or enemy. Those who are kind enough to order the game and leave a comment here will also be receiving a custom family card, hand drawn by me or Sunday. We will start on that when we get our set of blank family cards in the mail. This offer is limited to 52 cards, minus the ones we mess up.**

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT. May all your neighbors be torn asunder.

MIKE the VIKING

*Although Taiyo was not all that keen on KENNY. Go figure.  

**Custom drawings don’t have the luxury of light tables or photoshop. 

The day of reckoning is at hand or something. Because I decided that the plan to have the games shipped to us and then re-ship them to you was totally stupid, needlessly complicated, slightly expensive, and pointlessly extra-worky. So, go nut! Or as I meant to type, go nuts!

You can now buy BAD NEIGHBORS directly from the printer (the lovely THE GAMECRAFTER) for $19.99 plus shipping. If you order today, there is good chance your cards will be getting to your house or apartment or squalid van behind the Grocery Outlet 10 days from now.

If you would like a custom FAMILY CARD, hand-drawn by one of us (as mentioned in the previous post), that is your right as loyal citizens of Angerburgeria. You need to get us the info, like the name you want on the card (or else we’ll assign one to you), an appropriate reference photo, and a mailing address.* I will email you about that after I receive some kind of proof that you have purchased the game. (If you don’t have the full game, I’m not sure why you would want one singular family card. Unless you plan to play the solo version of BAD NEIGHBORS, also known as NO NEIGHBORS or GOOD NEIGHBORS. If so, excelsior! May you live long in solitude, you glorious hermit.)

At this time, the dedicated url (BADNEIGHBORS.ORG) is forwarding to the sales page on The Gamecrafter. Some time soon, once I remember how to set up hosting and DNSes etc, you’ll be able to go there to download the quick start guide, read the FAQs, or watch a “let’s play” video. But you’ll probably see most of that here first. Forget I said anything.

I will leave you with the words of George Susan Patton: “War is hell. And if anyone deserves hell, it’s my goddamn neighbors.”

Go forth and give them what’s coming to them.

MIKE the VIKING

*We’ll be printing up spare blank cards to make this happen. Which means the custom-drawn card will arrive some time after the full game. Uh, savor the anticipation.

The proof of the 1st edition of BAD NEIGHBORS came yesterday (antlers not included). It looks awesome. As you might be able to tell from the above pixels, we tooled up the art, added color to the draw cards, and hand-lettered all the card text. So as I write this, we are moments (days) away from being able to sell it to you and all your friends and family and enemies.

Soon you will be able to order it directly from us (yay!) or from the printer, The GameCrafter (also yay!). There will be some special perks for Anger Burgerenos who order directly, not because we love doing extra work, but because we love you. Either way, the price will be $20 plus shipping. (We’d make it cheaper if we could but that’s not really possible without laying out a bunch of up-front cash).  Anyway, twenty bucks is cheaper than a movie, and the game is a hell-of-a-lot more entertaining and you don’t have to deal with people eating cellophane or kicking your seat.

PERKS:

Perk ichi: We are still working on the quick-start (QS) guide. The game is STUPIDLY easy to play, but since it doesn’t follow the same rules of any other game EVER (at least any that I’ve played), it usually takes people a couple of turns (not games, just around the table) to get it. There are instruction cards included, but those are mostly for clarification. The best way to learn is by jumping in. The QS guide should help you with that. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the printer, we can’t ship it from them without jacking up the price significantly. Since the QS is only necessary for the first playthrough in a house, we’re going to print it ourselves and jam it in with the games we personally handle. We’ll also post it somewhere for downloads, which is maybe better, because, you know, trees, man.

Perk numero dos: In the game, family cards act as a kind of scoring mechanism (i.e. health). You’ll understand when you play it. For this edition we printed a blank family card. Why? So that we/you could customize it with a member of your very own ACTUAL family. If you order it from the printer, you will have to DIY (fun). Use a sharpie so that it doesn’t rub off. HOWEVER, if you order it from us, one of the actual game-makers (the Captain or the Viking) will customize it with a caricature of YOU or your LOVED ONE or FRIEND or ENEMY or PET, or not, your choice.*

If you leave a comment on this post, I will add you to the mailing list of people that will be the very first to know, seconds after we figure out how to make a pay-pal order form and BAD NEIGHBORS officially goes on sale.

FINALLY:

On an unrelated note, thanks to everyone who bought Sunday’s book so far. Special thanks to Carrie Anne who took the time to post a review on AMAZON. I hate to beg, but if you like the book, even if you haven’t finished it yet, we need more reviews. They don’t need to be long or in depth. One-liners are fine, too. Please please please. It helps.

Oh, you’re waiting for that immortality I promised? OK.

Do you know who HONUS WAGNER is? Well if you do, it’s probably because he’s the face of the most valuable baseball card of all time. If you post a review of e galactic mu (and let us know about it here on AB)  you will join Carrie Anne for a chance to be the Honus Wagner of the 21st century. I will be adding a special random Family Card to the next edition of BAD NEIGHBORS. When someone orders a deck, they will receive one of these rare cards. The cards are selected at random from a pool- so the more reviews we get, the bigger that pool, the rarer an individual card is, and (counter-intuitively) the better chance that your card will be selling at auction in the year 2113 for a like 1.5 billion bars of latinum (or whatever currency people are using at the time). FAME!**

This is what a family card looks like (only without a border and with rounded corners):

Wishing you bountiful plunder and gallons of mead, it is I, MORT the VIKING

 *Since it’s pretty time-consuming, we will only be able to offer this for a limited number of orders, so, you know, act fast. Your satisfaction with the attractiveness of the drawing is not guaranteed.

**By the way, it doesn’t have to be you, you can request someone else to be on the card, just post your book review, leave me a comment (preferably on the previous post) and I’ll parley with you on the details. I can’t do an unlimited amount of these but I don’t have a magic number yet– I will post a note when the pool is closed.